Little Rock’s Nate Powell’s triptych depicting the struggle of civil rights activist U.S.
Rep. John Lewis
is approaching its climax. Powell, a veteran of the long-lived performance art band Soophie Nun Squad and eight-time nominee for the Eisner Award—the pinnacle achievement in the comics industry — will celebrate the release “March: Book Three” (Top Shelf) Aug. 2, with a debut at San Diego Comic Con July 21.

Lewis co-wrote the books with Andrew Aydin, recounting his involvement with (and eventual departure from) the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church and the police violence that erupted on “Bloody Sunday” after the standoff at Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Ala. An early review from Kirkus states, “Powell’s high-contrast black-and-white images underscore the narrative’s emotional intensity with a parade of hate-filled white faces and fearful but resolute black ones … essential reading for an understanding of those times — and these.”

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Powell, who was born in Little Rock and grew up partially in Montgomery, Ala., described his connection to Lewis’ story in an interview with Comic Book Resources, saying, “I discovered that the secular private elementary school I went to in Montgomery was founded in 1955 as a white-flight response to Brown vs. Board of Education. … I was going to that school thirty years after the desegregation order came down from the Supreme Court. Thirty years is a tangible thing, and it’s not a long time. I understand what that is in real terms, now. It’s haunting.

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