King Comic

For this week I read King by Ho Che Anderson.

This comic actually reminded me a lot of a movie I saw called the Virgin Suicides because it had a similar type of multiple person narrator.  While it did give an interesting insight to different kind of perspective on things, this type of narration always tripped me up because the way it moves from one person to another.  It's almost like I finally get something to grab onto, and we're onto the next person's thoughts.  I mean, the comic gave you an almost godlike vantage of everything, but at the same time you were left wanting because you didn't know one person's whole belief.  All you have is pieces of everything.  And in King, these opinions were not always positive and a lot of the views weren't what you were expecting.    I mean, the first time you see him in the comic he's trying to steal food. I was like whattt is going onnnnn.  This is just degrading.  It would be degrading to anyone.  It's not the normal picture you would be expected to be painted of Martin Luther King.

The beginning was very in your face.  It was like a bunch of short subjects of people doing crazy things.  My favorite line would have to be "...jungle bunny share-cropping twelve sandwich eating..." because that is just ridiculous.

There were a lot of Christian overtones throughout this comic.  Especially one page where MLK was talking to his wife and there was like a down view of him on his bed and there was like an intense contrast of King looking at the cross with half of his face in shadow and the cross had like intense lighting on it so it almost looked threatening.  It reminded me of that famous picture of the two people who were sharecroppers with the cross in the background, the American Gothic.

Most of the non-African Americans in this book were not really shown in the best light, for lack of a better word.  I mean, what was it--the second page where there were a bunch of hoodlums yelling about Chinks and something else.  It kind of took the idea of the racist Southern person of the time and ramped it up 100%.  I think the page with the old lady on the bus who says hello to the driver and angrily mutters niggers to all the black people in the back was a good example of that.  It's still true today as well my grandma thinks black people are lazy and don't do anything even after all these years.