For this week I read King by Ho Che Anderson and Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow by James Sturm and Rich Tommaso. I really liked the path that Ho Che Andreson took to portray Martin Luther King. It was an evenhanded portrait not just of King, but also of the public at the time. I enjoyed reading the several differing accounts and opinions about Martin Luther King. They showed the several different facets of his public image. I liked how every success in King's movement was tempered by the harsh reality that change isn't immediate in terms of both governmental policies and the culture ingrained in some African Americans.
The noir art style was really well done. My only contention is that the stylization made it difficult to keep track of who was Martin Luther King. I think that this would be important since it is a biographical work after all. Although I really enjoyed the art direction in the first volume, I felt that the third volume's style with its dated Photoshop effects and expressive art didn't have a purpose. As the author said in the epilogue, he changed the style because he thought he proved himself with the first. I don't think that is at all a good reason to distract the reader from the story. I support experimentation as long as it is purposeful. I did enjoy the inclusion of photographs from the time period. It really drove home the point that this is rooted in history, that it really happened.
The narrative was sometimes hard to follow. At times I had no clue who half the people in a scene were and I still don't. I am fine with that. I'm sure I didn't need to know who they were in order to grasp the point of the story. At times I didn't know who was speaking or in what order. I am less okay with that. I didn't know who to attribute certain characterizations with. I had to guess based more on word choice, and since King was a more eloquent speaker that was easier to do. I also had to reorder certain passages I read, because they didn't make sense in the first run through. I'm glad that in the third novel the author used colored text boxes to distinguish between speakers. That allowed for some interesting sequences where you knew who was talking but the imagery didn't necessarily go along with the words. Some of my favorite passages include those of King's promiscuity. The images suggested his philandering nature while the narrative moved along not even acknowledging it. I also liked the conflicting facts Ho Che Anderson presented you with. He showed you those scenes where he cheated on Correta Scott King, but he also included opinions of people who said unequivocally that he never cheated on her. I wish there were more moments of conflicting information like that. I thought it provided an extra layer of reality and involved the reader to make their own sense of who Martin Luther King was.
Some of the sequences were very word heavy in my opinion, and just used copied panels to move along the story. I don't know how much I liked that. Having said all that I found it really interesting, probably mostly because of how well researched it sounded. I could believe every single detail. It was real in that visceral way which deals the good and the bad in the same hand. It was definitely thought provoking.
I read the Satchel Paige biography also because I have heard of this person and I wanted to learn about him, and also to add another biographical work in addition to the 5 or so we have already read. Although I have never seen a game of baseball, I did feel tension and excitement whenever Paige was on the pitcher's mound due to the perfect pacing of the panels. I loved how the artist exaggerated the pitching poses and how he told it from the point of view of another player's experience of him. That allowed the author to show how much of an impact he had on a personal level in a small town.
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