MARCH added to Jersey City school curriculum!

In New Jersey news: what an honor to have March included in Kamala Khan’s hometown curriculum (alongside Nikki Giovanni, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and the Spider-Verse books!) as proof of concept that young people are not afraid to learn accurate history and how to apply its lessons today.

We’ve been saying this for years now: memory laws, “discomfort” laws, and book-ban campaigns seek to exploit the emotions and weaknesses of many white parents who don’t want to answer their kids’ questions, or nurture their curiosity. (Here’s my Washington Post op-ed comic with Andrew Aydin from 2022 about all of this in the context of March and specific cookie-cutter book-ban legislative language.)

But young people want to learn and question— so let’s continue to help them grow. This is the 10-year anniversary of the release of March: Book One— let’s continue to honor the legacies of the civil rights movement, and the late, great freedom fighter John Lewis by keeping this history alive and available.

Fellow pro-democracy, antifascist white people: don’t sit this out.

10 years since finishing MARCH: BOOK ONE.

10 years ago this weekend, I had just finished drawing March: Book One and joined my collaborators John Lewis & Andrew Aydin on a pilgrimage to sites of the civil rights struggle in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, Alabama.

It’s increasingly hard to wrap my head around that weekend’s sincerity and sense of reckoning, in the knowledge that the last decade’s rise of mainstreamed fascism and white supremacy— including concrete work to dismantle the entirety of our society’s gains from the civil rights movement onward, as well as consolidated efforts to suppress the history and context of the civil rights movement itself. That includes coordinated intimidation campaigns and legislative attempts to ban and suppress our own work on March, including schools in John Lewis’s own congressional district. (I’ve written about all of this additionally at CNN, the Washington Post, and the Nib.)

Other specific moments, like then-Montgomery chief of police symbolically removing & giving his badge to John Lewis (specifically identifying the white supremacist police forces preceding him as “doing the work of evil”), and then being fired for it shortly afterward— a decade later, this kind of gesture is unthinkable as police have far beyond passed a point of no return.

I’m remembering that powerful weekend through the lens of still being fairly early in our work on the March trilogy, but I’m mostly struck with sadness and anger at a majority of white American adults’ refusal to question, learn, grow, and fight back against the rapidly-consolidating monster of fascism today. Fascism will come for them, too, and you, too— unless we stop it.

Our institutions absolutely will not save us. Only we will save us, strangers as neighbors. All power to the people— and especially all power to the young people.

"Banned Comics & Education" virtual panel July 15th!

I’m proud to participate in this upcoming “Banned Comics & Education” panel this Friday, July 15th at noon Eastern Time alongside the great Jerry Craft, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Tim Smyth! Please register for the panel here.

If you’re interested, I’ve recently made 3 short comics covering interrelated aspects of the mainstreamed fascist right’s very serious push to enact memory laws and limit access (in schools, libraries, AND private businesses) to histories and fiction featuring the perspectives and voices of people of color and LGBTQ+ people:

Part 1— “Shelf It” via The Nib

Part 2— “Divisive Concepts” op-ed w/ Andrew Aydin via Washington Post

Part 3— “Comics and Their Strengths” info-comic via Booklist

New op-ed collab w/ Andrew Aydin in the Washington Post

Andrew Aydin and I got the band back together, conjuring the voice, spirit, and concerns of our collaborator and friend John Lewis, in a Washington Post comics op-ed piece to continue highlighting the dangers of ongoing far-right legislative efforts to diminish and outlaw the inclusion of uncomfortable history (largely through the lens of Black and LGBTQ voices) in school curricula and libraries. Please do what you can where you live to speak up for the importance of including truthful first-person historical accounts in our communities!

This follows a related comic I did called “Shelf It” for The Nib in February, shedding light on the historical context for comics as targets of book bans and challenges— please read that piece as well. Thank you!

I reviewed Jason Reynolds' new book at the Washington Post!

It was both an honor and a welcome challenge to review Ain’t Burned All The Bright, written by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Jason Griffin, for the Washington Post! Check out the review here, and then definitely get a copy of their ambitious and moving book.

(I think this may also be my first professional writing with zero drawing involved!)

RUN named a "best of 2021" book by NYT & WaPo!

It’s an honor to find that Run has been selected by the New York Times as one of the 5 Best Young Adult Books of 2021, and by the Washington Post as one of the Best Graphic Novels of 2021! Congressman Lewis would be heartened and proud to find his work and personal account of history to resonate so deeply.