“The entire process was immersive,” with new details from Lewis whenever the three men traveled together, which was often. “From Andrew’s script, I’d typically cross-reference details with other historical accounts” and Lewis’s earlier memoir, while digging up photos from the civil rights era, Powell says. Powell - who rendered his illustrations in black, white and shades of gray, evoking the TV news footage of the civil rights era - describes the collaborative process as “very intensive,” requiring three-way communication at every step. Sometimes, “an audience question or something about the place we visited would spark a memory” for Lewis, “and he would say, ‘We have to make sure that’s in there,'” Aydin says. (© Sandi Villareal)Īs each volume was published, the three collaborators appeared together at speaking events.

Powell, left, and Aydin, right, pose with co-author Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Along the way, he showed the congressman how the script was coming along and asked for his feedback. Creating a modern classicĪydin remembers interviewing Lewis after work or on weekends. “It took some convincing to persuade Congressman Lewis that a comic book was the right path for bringing the history of the civil rights movement to new generations, but once he became convinced, he embraced the idea with his whole being,” Aydin says.

But Lewis, already the author of a memoir titled Walking With the Wind, was skeptical. Congress.Īydin suggested that Lewis narrate his experience for a comic book. Aydin’s peers teased him about it, until Lewis stepped in to say that a 1957 comic book about King had influenced his own journey, from young activist to long-term member of the U.S. It all started years ago, when Aydin, then an aide in Lewis’s office, told his co-workers that he planned to attend Comic-Con, an annual convention of comic book creators and fans. ShareAmerica reached out to Lewis’s collaborators on March, co-author Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell, to learn about their artistic partnership with the late congressman. The 1963 March on Washington (Art by Nate Powell from March © John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, courtesy of Top Shelf Productions)Īt age 23, Lewis was the youngest speaker at the Lincoln Memorial on that August day 57 years ago, addressing the crowd immediately before Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

John lewis march trilogy