King by Ho Che Anderson

    King is a graphic biography of Martin Luther king jr.. The New York Times summarized it best by saying, "[King] is a study in extremes. Stark, uniform black-and-white panels contain talking heads: a Greek chorus providing varying opinions and historical background. Among these, Mr. Anderson inserts montages full of raw, visceral energy. At times, tightly-rendered grids give way to near-collage, in which retouched photography is melded with oblique, loosely sketched forms that convey an ominous tension with moody imprecision. Violent eruptions splay into vast,painterly tableaus, as in the Birmingham riots of 1963."
    For me it was more moving and moody due to the black-and-white portraits that the New York Times mentions. The panels are striking due to Anderson using no gradients, no hatching, just stark black on white, white on black. I also thought it was interesting how in the panels with "the witnesses" that he has multiple people and in order to recognize them each individually, he has the same portrait each time the same person speaks rather than having them change in position. Along with this, when Anderson gets into his larger panels (one's that are not just portraits) he really plays with space. For example in some he makes taller than need be to add a looming dark space above the scene.
      Another thing to note in Anderson's work, is that he writes, before he goes into the comic, a little background about both Martin and the historical context in which he was living. Then when you get into his actual text in the word bubbles he quotes people. Meaning, he lets the characters speak like they normally would with out cleaning anything up. They curse, use slang, etc. I also like that in some panels where no one is speaking, he has the radio on playing a tune from the era and in one imparticular, the first time we see this, he has the words flow in and out of the panels like they are swaying to the song and finally end up looking as if they are coming out of the jukebox.
And I truely think the image for the back of the book is really quite breathtaking. (See image below)