King parts 1, 2, and 3

This week I read the graphic novel King by Ho Che Anderson. The story is about Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. At first I found the beginning of volume one a tad disorienting, it was a series of scenes, in color, that were of different racial incidents that still occurred in 1993 followed by suddenly going into pure black and white images and scenes from 1933. It was a tad confusing because the 1933 scenes had no explanation and were very short and quick. It took me at least 3 pages before I realized these were scenes of the child Martin Luther King Jr. Book one covers him growing up to after the Bus Boycotts. I really like the style of this volume more than the other two. it looks a tad more cleaner and the poses are a bit more gestural and less static than in the other two books. The splashes of color when added to images in this version make the images stand out, where as the over abundance of color in the later editions seems to mute the effect. I also really liked how most of the faces are in shadow in the first volume. It's a tad more graphic and feels a bit more powerful with the use of dark verses light on the page.

Of all the volumes I think I liked the second one the least. In this one all the faces were more exposed and images were almost over exposed with the use of white on the page. It felt like it lost a bit of the power of the first piece. Images were less emotionally distant, and more about facial emotions. Photo montage was more prevalent as was the use of coloring on top of them. Figures were also a little more distorted and felt a little less refined and finished than in the first book.

The third book was predominantly color. I do like the texture of the materials and how expressive the colors were. Yet it still didn't feel like it matched the first book. Figures were very geometric and distorted, even compared to the second book. Yet this book had a lot more life to it. Over all I respect what this book was trying to do, but I'm not as impressed with it as I was with other graphic novels like Blankets.