King: A Comics Biography, Special Edition

This special edition of a Fantagraphics classic is now being offered at a special price.

Ho Che Anderson has spent over 10 years researching, writing, and drawing King, a monumental graphic biography that liberates Martin Luther King Jr. from the saintly, one-dimensional, hagiographic image so prevalent in pop culture. Here is Kingfather, husband, politician, deal broker, idealist, pragmatist, inspiration to millionsbrought to vivid, flesh-and-blood life.

Out of print since 2006, King is Fantagraphics' most-requested reprint. In recognition of the advances made in American social equality that has made it possible to elect Americas first black President, Fantagraphics Books is publishing King: The Special Edition, a newly designed volume that includes the original 240-page graphic biography, as well as nearly a hundred additional pages of extras, including:

• Black Dogs is a 14-page prelude to King, a dialogue between a young black couple expecting a child, living in LA in the aftermath of the Rodney King upheaval, a raw and inflected conversation between husband and wife and their racial attitudes in a post-King world;
• Excerpts from the diary and notebook the author kept when researching and writing King, with interstitial notes written specifically for this volume commenting on the method he used to conceived and execute the book;
• Preparatory sketches, discarded images and pages, an interview conducted at the time of the third volumes publication, and excerpts from the draft of the script;
• An epilogue titled Assassin, written and drawn for this new edition, in which Anderson explores the question of whether James Earl Ray actually shot King. Caroline Longstreet, one of the observers who comments on Kings life throughout the book, is obsessed with the assassination, wont let it rest, and pursues her own private investigation and ultimately confronts the reasons why its held her in its grip so long.

Andersons biography traces Kings life from his childhood in Atlanta and his education at Booker T. Washington High School, and his subsequent centrality to the civil rights movement when, in 1955, he organized the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott; his founding of the Southern Christian leadership Conference in 1957; his Nobel Prize in 1964; his help in organizing the 1966 March on Washington and his I Have a Dream speech; and the tragic moment on April 4, 1968 when he was shot dead on the balcony of the Loraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Andersons expressionistic visual style is wrought with dramatic energy; panels evoke a painterly attention to detail but whose juxtapositions propel Kings story with cinematic momentum. Andersons successful use of the comics form to tell a major work of nonfiction has drawn favorable comparisons to Art Spiegelmans Maus: A Survivors Tale and Joe Saccos Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995. King won a 1995 Parents Choice Award. Full-color throughout