Very much a part of the 1980s generation obsessed with toy-centric kids’ shows like “G.I. He’s been drawing since he was a small child, and began to take seriously the idea of writing and drawing his own comics in the sixth grade.
When he was 10, his dad retired from the military, and the family returned to Arkansas and settled in North Little Rock.īy then, Powell said, he’d been into comics for years, thanks mostly to 1980s TV shows featuring the Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man. His father was career Air Force, and Powell’s boyhood included stints living near bases in Montana and Alabama. With President-elect Donald Trump ascendant and progressives warning that nonviolent protests of a size and vigor unseen since the 1960s are necessary if we are to preserve not only the nation’s social progress but perhaps the American experiment in representative democracy itself, Powell hopes “March” may someday be seen not just as a piece of history, but as one of the principal texts in the coming fight for the soul of the nation.īorn in Little Rock in 1978, Powell grew up all over America. While the National Book Award is a silver feather in the cap of the 38-year-old artist, Powell sees the bigger accomplishment of the “March” trilogy - with its account of how patriotic Americans once met hate, police batons and fire hoses with love and open hands and somehow won the day - in what it may mean to readers-turned-leaders in the next four years. The award was a bright way station on a still-winding road for Powell, who has been playing in punk bands and writing and drawing underground comics and graphic novels of his own since he was a teenager growing up in North Little Rock. Part memoir, part history, part handbook for a new generation of nonviolent social activists to which the books are dedicated, the series employs Powell’s black-and-white imagery and a moving script by Aydin and Lewis to powerfully chronicle Lewis’ Alabama youth, his awakening to the injustices of Jim Crow, and his trial-by-fire young adulthood, when, as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the future congressman helped spearhead the effort to break the back of institutionalized segregation in the South through nonviolent protest. John Lewis (D-Ga.) for the “March” trilogy. At the National Book Award ceremony in November 2016, Powell shared the prize with writer Andrew Aydin and U.S.
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