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daggerzine · 5 years

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Tony Potts of The Monochrome Set gives us the details! (interview by Steve Michener)

I started writing a weekly post on Facebook about two years ago, wherein I would pick a song from the extensive catalog of The Monochrome Set and write a few words, trying to hep people to their fantastic music. It became a fun, online conversation with friends and fans and the band would sometimes join in, adding to the story or correcting my (frequent) historical errors. I was presenting myself as a TMS scholar when I was really just a doofus with a love for the music. The FB feature eventually led to my volunteering to drive the band on the West Coast swing of their recent US tour, which was a total blast.

Recently, I came up with the idea of interviewing various members of the band and when I initially hit upon this plan, the first person I thought of was Tony Potts, their early ‘5th member.' Tony added another dimension to the band’s early shows by projecting films onto screens (and sometimes the band), helping to differentiate the band in the crowded post-punk music scene of the late 70s/early 80s England. I never personally saw any early TMS shows so I missed out on his contributions until last year when I attended the TMS 40th anniversary shows in London and got to experience his visuals along with the music (albeit from a laptop now instead of a Super 8 film). I’ve always been intrigued by his role with the group and he was nice enough to answer some of my email questions about the early days of the band, his art, and, of course, his favorite TMS song. Tony’s Facebook page is one of the most entertaining around; he doesn’t hold back much, whether it’s about his cancer diagnosis, politics, or the state of the Great Western Railroad. TMSF and now Dagger Zine present the Weird, Wild and Wonderful World of Tony Potts!

That’s Tony far right

Q: How did you come to be involved with the Monochrome Set? What drew you to them and them to you?

Ah, now there are two answers to this question. The first is terse and accurate, although less interesting than the second. Well, I knew John, J.D. Haney. That's the terse answer. However, in the interests of interest, and name-dropping, we have to travel back to about 1974. The story illustrates I think, how our lives are built upon great swaths of happenstance.

While studying on my pre-degree arts foundation I became close friends with Edwin, later Savage Pencil, who later still formed The Art Attacks. After some itinerant drummers, including Ricky Slaughter of The Motors, and Robert Gotobed of Wire, JD became the Art Attacks drummer. Now, Edwin didn't know him, so I can only guess, at this great distance, that I put his name forward. But again, we must spool back in time. How did I know John? After Edwin left for London, and still at my provincial art school, I became good friends with two fellow student artists like myself, Andy Palmer and Joy Haney. They both became founder members of Crass, under the names N A Palmer and Joy De Vivre, and are now exceptionally good fine artists.

It was through my friendship with Joy that I meet her brother, the aforementioned JD, when he came down from university in the summer of '76. We hung out with his college chum, Jean-Marie Carroll, later to join The Members, and discussed narrow neckties and casual trousers. Then Joy, Andy, and I went off to the Greek islands for the summer, before returning to London to take up our degree course at Chelsea School of Art.

Thus it was, with us all now in London, that I believe I introduced JD to The Art Attacks, with whom I worked until their demise, at which point JD took up with TMS. Due to mutual creative interests in art, I was invited to display my films at their gigs. That was late '78, with my first gig with the band being at Acklam Hall, Notting Hill, on 22nd February 1979. Thereafter we fell together and I started to make films specifically for the live shows. It’s worth pointing out that the TMS was not formed in an art school, or by art students. It is lazy journalism that perpetuates the Art School band epithet. Both Bid, the main song writing power behind the longevity of the band, and the other key lyricist, JD Haney, have never been anywhere near an art school.

Q: What were your films like? Who were your art-school influences at the time? What were you doing with the Art Attacks?

I was studying fine art painting, and painting was my main interest. Although I loved films, I never expected to move in that direction. As a painter, I was a devotee of the Russian Constructivists like Tatlin, but mostly the geometric forms of El Lissitzky, and the Suprematist Kazimir Malevich - best known for Black Square and White On White. My paintings were an amalgam of geometric forms in the vein of Lissitzky on grounds inspired by Malevich's painterly surfaces. With the rise of the Punk movement in London, I somewhat changed direction, moving into filmmaking that had a quasi-narrative style, intended to be more emotional and poetic. Although driven by what was happening in music during ‘76/'77/'78, ironically, my films couldn't be any less punk if I tried. Well, not to punks anyway. These days I regret that I never resuscitated my painting practice.

At the time of the Acklam Hall gig, I had made one large scale Super8, and two 16mm works. I think it must have been 'Strange Meeting', which in part was about aliens and The Red Army Faction murders, which we showed at that gig, but as a support. I had previously made some other 8mm films, and I might have used them during the band, but I can't recall. However, I now have vague memories of projecting B & W film over the whole stage and band. With The Art Attacks, I didn't have a creative role, I just supported the band in rehearsal and at gigs with Paul Humphries their manager, and the initial manager of TMS. Paul, JD and I all shared the same squat in Brailsford Road, Brixton. So, with TMS I had something more creative to do.

Q: For those of us who weren't able to see those shows, describe for us what you were doing with the films during the shows. How were the films received by the audience?

As I said, initially I used the films that I had made in another context, and they were added to the performance to create an overall ambiance, a statement of presentation that was not about a band energetically leaping about on stage, as was the order of the day. Soon I started to make Super8 material specifically for TMS performances. This included the scratched and bleached footage for 'Lester Leaps In', or images filmed on the road, like the Berlin footage used for ‘Viva Death Row’, or staged material of the band getting up to also sorts of antics, like the beach ball larks and bits of animations I would make with no specific aim. In the early days, I made two roller blind screens in long boxes, [we took them on the first two US tours] with one on either side of the stage as space allowed, with film projected onto them so the band members were often in silhouette, although it bled onto them also. The stage was very dark, lit by blue footlights, which I made. I think Mark Perry of Sniffing Glue/Alternative TV said something like it was the most brilliantly depressing thing he had seen. That was always the irony at that time, the music was pert and poppy and uplifting, but the show wasn't. What a laugh, we all thought.

The shows became increasingly more elaborate with more screens, more projectors and a theatrical lighting rig. At this time we were using Ground Control, Bowie's original PA, run by a lovely guy called Robin Mayhew. Using the theatre lights allowed me to focus and shape controlled beams of light exactly where I wanted them. For example, I could just illuminate Bid's face or other small areas with geometric shapes, while leaving the stage largely unlit. Then the film screens could glow and flicker in the dark. The lads tended not to move a great deal. A tradition assiduously upheld by Mr. Warren.

As to reception, well some people liked it, and others couldn't see the point. I think it mostly worked as a spectacle, an integrated whole, a total experience, but for those just into the music, it was probably irrelevant. I mean, they are a great band, so nobody missed me when I didn't set up, like at the M80. That stage was toooo big, man.

Bid and Tony

Q; As the 'Fifth Member' whose focus seemed to have been on the live performances, how did you fit in with the band in the recording studio?

Yes, my key role was the live performance; anything else was a bonus for me. I was at all recordings from the second Rough Trade single to the end of the second album, as an enthusiastic supporter and admirer. Of course, I chipped in with the odd suggestion or noise and was probably ignored where and when necessary. Being musically incompetent, my timing is off by a good margin so I'm not sure my handclaps ever made a final mix. You can hear me on TWWWWofTP. I've got quite a pleasant singing voice, also, just not in public. Bid once marked out the chord changes for Ici Les Enfants on a plastic organ I had, to fill out the live sound, but after the first chord change, I was lost and bewildered.

Q: You've done promotional videos for the band. Can you talk about a few of those projects? Do you have a favorite video?

The first promotional film I made was the one for Dindisc, and called Strange Boutique, not after the title of the first album as many think, but coincidentally, after the name of a pair of corduroy trousers! Actually, that may not be true. So, this was conceived as a short film, with two songs and a Rod Serling type piece to camera as a linking devise. Done on the very cheap. Unfortunately, there were syncing issues with some of the dialogue and the master got damaged, scratched, and I'm not sure if I still have the original film, or not. It's on our DVD as a complete piece as far as I remember, but it turns up on YouTube, usually cut down to either of the two songs LSD and Strange Boutique, without all the linking material.

We then waited a long time until I was commissioned by WEA to make the promo for 'Jacob's Ladder' with the release of 'The Lost Weekend' album. The deal was negotiated from a public phone box on Clapham Common tube station. It was somewhat compromised by cock-ups at WEA which meant I was forced to hand it over before it was fully edited to my satisfaction. I seem to have made a style out of technical imperfections; at least that's what I'm saying. At the time Top of the Pops had a video preview section, and a short clip of Jacob's Ladder was shown. That’s primetime TV, folks!

And then, of course, I was delighted when Bid asked me to make the official MaisieWorld video for ‘I Feel Fine’, which I was very pleased with. All these projects were very personal to me, not just the execution of a job, and the first two were part of my life at the time of making.

Q. The only footage I've seen of you actually playing with the band is the Old Grey Whistle Test TV spot. Was it common for you to join the band onstage?

Well, I was usually visible on stage, controlling the projectors, which needed constant manipulation, like a DJ scratching, changing speed and switching images, fading and mixing. Also, there might be some little set piece we had devised, which required me to do something. At one point, during the Ground Control days, I remember I had my own mic so I could interact with the stage, which didn't last that long. So, to some extent, I always had a relationship with the stage as both performer and technician. Once, when Lester Square had had enough, I did perform the encore, He's Frank, by incessantly plucking one string of his guitar. Pretty good, actually! Music and Maths very similar to my mind, no sooner do I believe that I have mastered the execution of some small calculation, but I soon discover that I haven't.

Don’t shake the ladder, Tony gettin’ down to work.

Q: Tell us about your film education and your career in film and video outside the band.

I made a living of sorts working commercially in film and video production, and teaching, but as I mentioned before, I actually trained in fine art. My art foundation took a very academic approach and involved copious hours of life drawing and other drawing classes, while being given time to develop one's own particular discipline and style.

I made one Super8 film based on geometric elements in my painting. I had made three other 8mm film before this. It wasn't until I was on my degree course that I started making more moving image work, but this stemmed from a fine art perspective, so I didn't ever have any film school type training. My own work I would categorise as poetic experimentalism, that is under the general umbrella of artist film and video. Just a reminder that you can catch up with lots more detail of everything I've said at my website, http://tonypottsloopform.altervista.org. Although it has all the history of the films and staging, as well as the making of Jacob's Ladder, it's rather old and not up-to-date. That site includes all the art projects I've worked on, the history of TMS film, and my own films. My creative life can be divided into three separate but overlapping strands. The first being, my personal practice as an artist/film maker, the second, my skills and knowledge deployed in the service of collective artworks and community arts projects, and those same skills employed commercially in film and video production and teaching.

Q: It's obvious from FB that you are a big film fan. Who are some of your favorite directors/favorite movies?

With a few exceptions, I'm not much interested in modern Hollywood, old Hollywood is better, and pre-Hays better still. My film tastes are somewhat esoteric for most folks. I prefer silent film, particularly that of the classic German period of the twenties, Lang, Murnau, Pabst, Dreyer. Then in the sixties, PP Pasolini, Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa, soviet era Tarkosky and Parajhanov, plus a host of even less well know eastern European directors like Miklos Jancso, Jan Nemec, or Frantisek Vlacil. Don't you wish you'd never asked?

Q. You live in Wales, pretty far away from the London of your youth. How did you end up there and what appeals to you living there?

Well, we split our time between London and Pembrokeshire at present, while my wife Rachael is still working. In a few years, we'll move out completely, I think. I can't relax in the city anymore. I need some more space to feel comfortable. I've had as much London as I can handle. Rachael is Welsh, although Pembrokeshire is known as little England beyond Wales, and we are fortunate to own her childhood home there.

Q. You were recently diagnosed with cancer and posted your experience on Facebook. How did you discover that you had cancer and how are you doing now?

Yes, that was unfortunate. The prostate gets larger as us men grow older and so puts a bit of pressure on the bladder, changing the way you take a pee, like urgency and frequency. So any chap of a certain age should cut along to a doctor if they have persistent symptoms of this type. Our neighbour in Wales insists on calling it prostrate cancer, but I refuse to take that lying down, and firmly pronounce it prostate, but to no avail. But seriously, although it's a slow-growing cancer, the sooner you act, the sooner you can get the appropriate treatment. I had to have surgery, but it's not necessary for everyone. As my cousin, who luck would have it is a cancer specialist said, do you want to be erect or dead? Haha, what a great choice!

Q: Since this is a TMSF, after all, can you pick a favorite song and say a few words about it?

My choice of song to end this pleasant excursion is 'The Devil Rides Out', from the 'Eligible Bachelors' album. By the time of recording this record JD had left the band and was living in NY, and I was also spending a great deal of time in that city also. I was still contributing to the occasional gig or short tour, but I certainly wasn't around when this album was recorded. Christ, what do you expect for a record made in Luton?

So it is the live performances of this song that I recall, since it was in the repertoire well ahead of it being recorded. Although I could say it of many other songs, the open chords of 'The Devil Rides Out' always gave me a buzz as I waited to play in whatever the film images were [I can't remember]. Even if the audience or critics found the films superfluous or unimportant, I usually enjoyed watching the way that a set of otherwise unrelated images somehow meshed and synchronised with the music and gave the illusion of a premeditated vision. Of course, it was premeditated in as much as I knew what pieces of film would be used for a particular song, but beyond that, there was a lot of slack in the system. With the various parameters of the live installation, having to follow the cue of the band and the hand manipulating the projectors [no computers], there were great possibilities that the extemporisation would result in entirely unique sets of images and sound on each occasion.

Well, I should say something about why I like the song. It's one of a number of Bid's more esoteric lyrical compositions. He had previously pushed the Latin boat out with Adeste Fideles [not everyone's favourite song title to pronounce], and my spell checker isn't too keen on the words, either. In this case, the bridging line is rendered in Latin, but with the exception of the 'Hails', this is written in the ancient language of Sanskrit. Or at least that is my understanding and belief. Whatever the lyrical origins are, this is a classic TMS arrangement, altogether thrilling, incomprehensible and mysterious, yet totally pop, totally accessible and it dumps from a very great height those chart-topping household names who have followed in their wake.

And of course, I can never resist a song that features a sleigh bell, The Devil Rides Out and The Stooges 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' being the two finest examples.

http://tonypottsloopform.altervista.org

www.themonochromeset.co.uk

www.tapeterecords.de

www.facebook.com/themonochromeset

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magick-socks · 4 years

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This blog post is about the sixth mask, Blue Throat Bat created for the Prismic Vision NYE event hosted by the Body Earth Collective in Longmont. Read the previous posts in this series about Rabbit, Skunk, Swan. Antelope, & Bat, and other posts about the beginnings of the process as a whole and the success of the actual event. There will be one final post after this one. Be sure to Follow my blog to catch all the updates. So far it has been so wonderful writing and reflecting on the process of this project.

Indigo – Third Eye – Hawk Mask by Khiri Lee

The Beginnings

All of 2019 I was working very closely with the medicine of the birds. Every week I wrote a zine about a different bird messenger called 52 Feathers. Hawk was the perfect ally to have at the Indigo Altar, which was nestled deep in the Third Eye Sky Shrine at the event.

Processed with VSCO with c1 preset

This mask went through many iterations as I finessed the shape, editing it several times to attempt to capture Hawk, versus another bird such as Eagle or Vulture. This was the second mask I ended up working on, immediately diverting away from my original intention to create the masks in order from Root to Crown. However I have no regrets in following my intuitive path through these seven masks, and in some ways activating my intuitive flow early on, by working with the messenger of intuition, was a fitting choice.

Since this was one of the first masks I worked on I learned a lot about the best ways to work with Papier-mâché. I watched a ton of youtube videos to get the best sense of which paper to use, how thick to make the paste, which materials to make the paste out of, and how to build the armature. The armature is the structure beneath the Papier-mâché, and most of mine included materials such as cardboard, tinfoil, styrofoam, balloons, and masking tape.

I settled on using newspapers for the paper. Even though using an unprinted newsprint may have saved time later, due to needing to prime over all the ads and words, I felt really good about giving new life to the trees that had been used for advertising and news. I didn’t quite realize how much newspaper was being mailed to me each week; weekly ads for the grocery, local press, and a subscription to the daily camera I don’t remember signing up for. I also was thrilled by the magic of tearing newsprint. Pro tip – newsprint has a preferred way to tear, much like fabric. When you find the correct orientation it tears with ease in a straight line. It was SO satisfying tearing hundreds upon hundreds of strips of newspaper.

For the paste I used a homemade mix that was simply flour and water with a pinch of salt to keep it from molding. This project was done on a shoestring budget, so I ended up using a ton of materials that I had in abundance around my house, like flour and water. I found I was happiest using a paste that was fairly thick as long as I could keep it from clumping. There is something extremely satisfying about creating a piece of art with materials that have been in use for hundreds of years. There are records of Papier-mâché being used in China as early as 200 BC!

Before

After

Working with Hawk Medicine and the Energy of Indigo Third-Eye

When Rachel and I began calling in animal allies through Oracle for the event we worked from Crown to Root, and so Third Eye was the second card we pulled. I knew that the Oracle was working when Hawk appeared, since birds are already symbolic messengers of intuition, clarity, and true sight. Their connections to the Heavens through flight makes them a strong ally for the upper Chakras, which are all connected to spirit.

Indigo Hawk – Third Eye Altar Sketch

The Third Eye Chakra is located in the forehead, between and just above the eyes. It is associated with the Pineal Gland, which regulates our circadian rhythm, deeply connecting us with body intuition to the cycles of the world around us; day to night and the change is seasons. The mantra for the Third Eye is I Am Connected.

Indigo is a rich and moody color, easily lumped in with Blue or Purple to the unexperienced. Indigo vibrates with it’s own unique light, a color deeply connected to magick, spellwork, and enhancing psychic abilities. It is the color of the sky in the liminal transition from dusk to night, and night to dawn. Simply resting your eyes on the color Indigo invites a deep sense of meditation.

The Mask in the Space

It seems the Indigo Hawk Altar literally transitioned into a space beyond time, a truly ephemeral altar as I somehow failed to capture an image of it, and no one else I know from the event felt called to capture a picture of the altar. It was so beautiful!

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When conceiving of the design for the Hawk Altar, which would be nestled in the Third Eye Sky Shrine, where psychic readings were being offered, we wanted to have it emulate a nest. We designed it to be a round space, with opportunity to sit and rest all around the altar. Oracle and Tarot Cards were available at the Altar for individuals to tap into their own intuitive knowing, receiving messages for the year ahead. I participated in two powerful readings by the Altar.

The first was a relationship reading, an impromptu divination into my primary relationship performed by a friend using the Osho Zen Tarot Deck. It was spontaneous and amusing to get insights, and like so many tarot readings it was mostly an eerie reflection of what I already knew to be true.

The second reading I did was after New Year’s had passed, as the evening was winding down. I have a tradition of drawing an animal messenger card for the year ahead to see what animal totem would best assist me. I was completely unsurprised when I drew the Blindness Card, which is the card for the snake, whom I was aspecting for the Opening Procession. More on this in the next post for the Violet Snake Mask.

In the Opening Procession, after completing a rebirth dance of the Bat, we flocked together with the Hawk Avatar leading our movements. We concentrated on activating our own head tail connection, a great medicine from bird totems, and peeked over the edges of the balcony, weaving a web of connection through the upper and lower levels. By the time we reached the upper level and were flocking the energy of the Hawk a grand crowd had gathered, to the point that it was becoming difficult to stay together as a flock for the ceremony. Despite the difficulty I was moved by the attention from the participants who were eager to be a part of the sacred manifestation we as ritualist animal avatars were calling into the event.

The words on the Altar were as follows:

Indigo – Third-Eye – Hawk

Medicine of the Messenger.

Far Seeing… Seeing the Whole Picture.

Knowing Somatically & Intuitively.

Mystic observer of the wind and sky, with piercing insight and attention lend me your eyes so that I may see more clearly the landscape of my life. May the subtle movements of emotion, opportunity, and growth be illuminated to me under your keen vision.

With eyes and heart and mind open wide, like the expansive sky, may the obstacles real and unreal be overcome by fierce competence. I am sovereign of my body and spirit as you are sovereign to your sky. – Excerpt from 52 Feathers Zine by Khiri Lee

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Prismic Vision – Indigo Third Eye Hawk This blog post is about the sixth mask, Blue Throat Bat created for the Prismic Vision NYE event hosted by the…

#2019 #2020 #birds #Colorado #Dreams #Eve #Events #Masks #Performance Art #Sacred #Sculpture #Theatre

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irisbleufic · 7 years

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You don't have to answer if talking about this has been stressful, but I can't stop thinking about how illogical it was for the Gotham troll to do what they did. Trying to use Ao3 stats against you, like the 30something people who defended you pointed out, was petty and illogical and spoke to deeper underlying irrational hate in the perp. I keep trying to isolate what it could be if not jealousy, because I've seen this happen to other people. Do you have any thoughts on this form of bullying?

First of all, anon, don’t worry about upsetting me. I’m not that easily rattled, so no apology is necessary. I find your question a fascinating one; I had to sit on this for a couple of days to gather my thoughts on the subject, because it turns out that I do have some notions about possible motives that stem from, oddly enough, some much older fandom attitudes and trends that I’ve recently seen return in a new guise. I frame this with the usual YMMV caveat; this is my perception of the situation, but it might not be what’s really going on at all. I’m going to do my best to explain this. If anyone needs background on the troll situation to which anon is referring, those posts are here.

When I first got into fandom as a young teenager in the early-to-mid ‘90s, a significant number of the people whose stories I was reading (and who were my mentors) were very much part of that first wave whose writing and zine efforts had to remain hidden because the mainstream contingents, in the overwhelming majority, hated slash. However, I noticed a common-thread attitude between some of the slash community and the larger part of the mainstream community, which was this: Canon Is God. Even if you’re writing stories about romantic or otherwise nontraditional relationships between various characters (or even just writing gen stories, for that matter), you accept that what you’re doing should never be held in the same reverence as canon. You are a pale shadow, and you must be self-deprecating. You must allow that the creators know best and that what you do is, at best, wishful thinking. Do whatever you like, but revere the creators and do not believe that you or any other fan-creator may be capable of making a wiser decision.

In a community as essentially as subversive as fandom, this attitude puzzled me. My experience of the media with which I was beginning to engage and about which I was beginning to write was this: the creators did not, in fact, always know better, at least not what was better for me personally. In some respects, I developed a reputation for being a civil, yet stubborn contrarian early on. Even more than that, my writing gestures began to hit a register that sometimes made my mentors nervous: for the first time, I learned what it meant for someone to like you only up till the point you start to turn heads and develop friendships with like-minded people outside the circles that inducted you. What I mean to say, mostly, is that my writing approach has almost always been along the lines of this narrative is broken, it hurt me and it hurt some other people, and I think I might know how to fix it; I want to write an alternative that will carry an equivalency of canon’s essential captivating qualities, but will alter the narrative such that it no longer damages me or the other people I know who have been similarly hurt. And I learned very fast that thinking on that scale of ambition was something of a taboo to those who had grown up with the idea that Canon Is God (You Should Not Even In the Slightest Believe You Might Know An Equally Viable Approach).

Still, I never stopped writing that way. I never stopped hoping I could offer an alternative canon-equivalent for myself and for anyone else who wanted something like what I was reasonably confident I could produce. Scale this across twenty years, and I’m in a position where I’ve absolutely written a significant handful of what are considered some of the foundational fic-series for the fandoms in which I wrote them. I prefer to make narrative gestures on sweeping scales, because that’s what storytelling is. We fall in love with the media we fall in love with, usually, because they tell compelling stories across multiple novels, across multiple seasons, across multiple films, etc. How can I hope to alter a story for readers who desperately want the alteration if I don’t try to do it on a scale commensurate with the scope of canon? One-shots are a thing, and an admirable one, too, but I’m one of those creators with an insatiable heart. I don’t like to stop until the story gives me the sense it’s time to stop. And I’m at a point in my fandom career where I know I have readers counting on me if they get invested in a project, so I’m going to do my damnedest to see nearly everything I start to completion. I know I’m not the only fanwriter who thinks and works like this, anon, and the fact that you’ve seen similar bullying happen to others is about to become relevant.

Let’s back up a second to the concept of Canon Is God. For the most part, I’ve seen fandom as it exists now give canon the finger and never look back. I think that’s glorious. However, I’ve also seen movements within several of the fandoms I’ve been part of, in just the last ten years, argue that dissent against canon, even civil dissent against canon, counts as negativity. I don’t necessarily want to talk about the fact that canon dissenters and canon supporters alike often go at each others’ throats as rudely and cruelly as you please; jerks are just jerks, and nobody with either philosophy should be behaving like that. However, maybe you can see what I mean about Canon Is God appearing in its latest form. Some feel that you can write what you want, but that it’s wrong to even politely dissent with the events of canon on your blog and in your fan-works. The mere existence of dissent, even civil dissent, is offensive. There’s an idea that the only way to participate positively in your fandom of choice is to accept that canon is canon and that you should like it, or, if you don’t like it, you should at least make an effort at pretending you do (in spite of what you may be writing or drawing).

The trouble, of course, is that some of us aren’t adept at pretending. Write or otherwise create with ambition—with conviction, with no intention to hide the fact that you’re discontent with canon—to the point that you effectively serve an existing like-minded readership and even sway enough other people (into feeling that your vision is indeed one way things literally could have or should have gone), and, in the eyes of some, you become this: a dangerous heretic and a narrative terrorist. Your challenge to canon is perceived as effective, and a threat, because of the number of folks who latch onto it.

I’ve run into people before who don’t like the level of influence that they perceive I have over my readers’ perceptions of the characters at hand, and it wouldn’t at all surprise me if the person who attempted to attack me is thinking along similar lines—but realized they’d have to disguise it as something supposedly more logical or community-minded. I find this an incredibly sad outlook, though, because you can’t stop writers from writing what they want to write. You can’t stop readers from reading what they want to read. You can’t stop readers from commenting on, leaving kudos for, or reccing what becomes dear to them. Fandom is a fucking free-for-all. There will also always be some writers whose works get more exposure than others, and the patterns governing those levels of exposure are about as difficult to parse as any other trend. In some cases, it’s the level of scale and conviction I’m discussing; in others, it’s because they’ve brought a fanbase with them from RL or a number of previous fandoms. Sometimes it’s a combination of the two; sometimes it’s neither. Sometimes it’s just that they, as a human, embody a bunch of differences that someone hates. Heaven knows I embody enough of those.

This might be a more complicated answer than you were looking for, but, if we’re looking at me as the case-study writer that drew some mystifying and laughable abuse by just writing and existing, I have to take into account that high emotions (and even insecurities) usually drive the sorts of decisions that bullies make. I have enough years’ worth of data to suggest that my stories are intensely meaningful to the readers they attract and, yes, even sometimes sway or convert, if it’s useful to keep using that language. And this is the juncture at which I want to revisit the idea of writing with ambition and conviction, because that’s an approach I hold dear for a specific reason.

If we don’t transform our beloved narratives here at the fringes, narratives in the mainstream will never change. Although it feels like mainstream trends aren’t changing rapidly enough in the face of our efforts, speed is not what matters. It’s that we understand that the shifts we model and effect may not come in our lifetime—and persist. I will not placidly accept what hurts me. And if you fear the level of conviction and brand of vision with which I transform it, get out of my way. Hell yes, I’m out to take the chance that I might sway hearts in addition to serving like-minded fans, because maybe, one day, I’ll sway the right ones. You never know who’s watching; you never know who’s reading. Maybe it’s no one, or maybe it’s someone with the power to make a different choice about how a mainstream narrative will turn out. One day, some of us will have that power. Some of us already do. Changing the face of stories from the outside can, in a way, mean doing it from the inside.

(Besides, every broken narrative is a puzzle, and I love puzzles. I just have to figure out where the useful pieces actually go, patch the gaps accordingly, and then rewrite the ending. If you don’t like the way I do it, then find another way instead of coming at me with something as time-wasting as abuse.)

#fanfiction #fandom history #trolling #st scully the fuckless #writing advice

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seniorbrief · 6 years

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This Was Jackie Kennedy’s Incredible Mark on History

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This article was originally written by Carl Sferrazza Anthony and first appeared in the June 2001 issue of Reader’s Digest.

“I’m sixty-two now, and I’ve been in the public eye for more than thirty years,” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis told a friend in 1991. “I can’t believe anybody still cares about me or is interested in what I do.” How wrong she was.

When she stepped into our lives, she was just 31, the youngest First Lady of the 20th century. She lived in the White House only from 1961 to 1963, yet remained an object of admiration, and even obsession, until the day she died. Part of the fascination with Jackie was due to timing: television exploded as a mass medium at the precise moment she and JFK and their beautiful children became the First Family. We could see them on TV, we loved what we saw, we wanted to see them again. Later, after the assassinations of JFK and RFK, she provided a place to focus the national grief.

She was more, though, than a pretty face on the small screen or the queen in a sad fairy tale. As a modern Supermom, she raised Caroline and John into exemplary adults, avoiding the potholes many of their cousins hit. Just as feminism arrived, she went to work as a book editor, brown-bagging her lunch and sitting in a windowless office until she earned her way up the corporate ladder. She kept on trying at romance, too, marrying Aristotle Onassis and, after he died, settling into a comfortable relationship with financier Maurice Templesman. This spring a tribute to Jackie Kennedy— modern American woman plus some spectacular clothes she wore in the White House—will be on exhibit at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, before traveling to Boston. “It’s an opportunity,” says guest curator Hamish Bowles, “to explore the style and the substance of a woman who defined a generation.” Here, a fresh look at Jackie, and why we still admire her.

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Although she called it Camelot only after JFK’s assassination, Jackie began working on an image for the Administration the moment she and the President moved into the White House. She thought everything through, especially how things looked.

Take, for instance, the many photographs of the family at play, which appeared in magazines like Life, Look and The Saturday Evening Post. Seemingly casual, some of them were in fact professionally lit, and the people in them styled, made-up and posed. Photographer Richard Avedon shot a breathtaking series of photographs of Jackie and baby John. The pictures are as crisp and alluring as the fashion-magazine covers for which Avedon is best known. “She was aware of what the camera did for the children, and for the family,” says Jacques Lowe, another photographer who worked with Mrs. Kennedy.

All of her efforts at creating a Kennedy image came together in the 1962 television tour of the White House. One-third of the nation was watching that night—56 million people. The special, which won Jackie an Emmy Award, displayed her meticulous restoration of the Executive Mansion. But it was the First Lady, not the glorious Empire style of the revitalized Red Room, that riveted the nation. “I remember watching and listening to Mrs. Kennedy more than thinking about the White House,” Barbara Bush later said in an interview. See these rare photos of John and Jackie Kennedy.

Creating Camelot also meant that bad habits were discouraged, at least in public. A lifelong smoker (Marlboros, Salems), Mrs. Kennedy did her best to veto photos that showed her with a cigarette in hand. Her press policy was “minimum information given with maximum politeness.” Her unavailability, in the end, only heightened her mystique.

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“I feel as though I have turned into a piece of public property,” Mrs. Kennedy told an acquaintance in early 1961. During the Presidential campaign the previous summer and autumn, the press and the public focused intently on the young Mrs. Kennedy. And small wonder: no candidate’s wife in living memory had looked so good. The blunt cut of her hair, the clean, simple lines of her brightly colored clothing—American women craved the Jackie Look.

Partly it was the sheer novelty of her. Jackie was a new woman for a new time—the ’60s. She waterskied, she danced the twist, she listened to the bossa nova on her White House hi-fi.

Department stores began using models and drawings in ads that looked like Jackie. A movie magazine offered advice on “How to Be Your Town’s Jackie Kennedy,” with penny-wise advice on copying her look. The subject of all this attention left her somewhat bewildered. “What does the way I wear my hair have to do with my husband’s ability to serve as President?” she asked.

The scrutiny became so intense that Jackie realized she needed help from a professional. She turned to New York designer Oleg Cassini, a family friend who had once been one of Hollywood’s top costume designers. As she wrote him, “I refuse to have Jack’s Administration plagued by fashion stories of a sensational nature—or to be the Marie Antoinette of the 1960s.” Cassini recalled his initial meetings with Mrs. Kennedy, when they worked out what she would wear at her husband’s swearing-in:

“She asked me to come meet with her in her Georgetown University Hospital room just days after she gave birth to John], two months before the Inauguration. All the other women [ would be wearing] furs, looking like bears. My concept was to make her look divinely simple in a beige coat and hat. She came out, and was instantly distinct.

“Immediately a style was established. It was not a French look, not an American look, but a Jackie Look. She said to me, ‘You dress me perfectly for the role.’ For the role! And what was the role? First Lady of the country. And First Lady of the world, really, at that moment.”

(You’ll want to steal these 7 timeless fashion tips from Jackie Kennedy.)

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On Friday morning, November 22, 1963, Jackie put on a Chanel suit in the rooms she shared with the President at the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth. The President, Mrs. Kennedy told friends later, had chosen the suit for her. Within hours, the pink wool jacket and skirt had become a part of history. Mrs. Kennedy wore the suit through LBJ’s swearing-in ceremony, on the long, sad flight back to Washington, and finally for the return to the White House.

On the plane coming East, she began to reflect on how she wanted the White House prepared for the return of the President. As White House usher Nelson Pierce recalled: “That afternoon was spent looking up the details so that we could have things as near as possible the way they were at the time Lincoln was assassinated. It was 4:20 Saturday morning when Mrs. Kennedy came with the President’s body, and at 4:10 we had finished putting up the last pieces of crepe.”

Everyone had an opinion about the funeral details. Catholic Church officials in Washington wanted her to hold the ceremony in the grand Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. She held out for St. Matthew’s, which was smaller—but was where the President had often attended church. Some members of the President’s family wanted him buried in the Kennedy plot in Massachusetts. She decided on Arlington National Cemetery. The Secret Service questioned her decision to walk behind the caisson from the White House to the church.

Jackie stood firm. Familiar as it is, footage of her long walk behind the riderless horse, Black Jack, a pair of boots tucked backward into the stirrups, has lost none of its awful majesty. Recalling Mrs. Kennedy, and the dignity she showed, French President Charles de Gaulle said, “She gave the whole world an example of how to behave.” This is the last thing JFK said to Jackie before he died.

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Even while attending her husband’s burial, Jackie never forgot her obligation to Caroline and John. Just hours after the funeral, the widowed former First Lady hosted her son’s third birthday party at the White House.

From the time they were toddlers until they left home, Mrs. Kennedy’s children were her priority. Caroline and John drew nearly as much curiosity as their parents. “I think it’s hard enough to bring up children anyway, and everyone knows that limelight is the worst thing for them. They either get conceited or else they get hurt,” Jackie said. “They need their mother’s affection and guidance, and long periods of time alone with her. That’s what gives them security in an often confusing new world.”

She relished the role of everyday mom. For Caroline and her classmates, Jackie managed to get ahold of a pregnant rabbit so that the children could all anticipate the arrival of a litter of bunnies. Recalled Kennedy friend and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “On Halloween evening in 1962, the doorbell rang. When my fourteen-year-old daughter opened the door to the trick-or-treaters, she found a collection of small hobgoblins leaping up and down. After a moment a masked mother in the background called out that it was time to go to their next house. It was, of course, Jackie.”

After the assassination, Mrs. Kennedy and the children moved into a house in Georgetown. To her dismay, crowds of gawkers still showed up daily for a glimpse of John and Caroline at play or on their way to school. The next year Jackie moved to New York, hoping the big city and an apartment high above Fifth Avenue would offer a refuge. “I want them to know about how the rest of the world lives,” she told the New York World Journal Tribune in 1967, “but also I want to be able to give them some kind of sanctuary when they need it, someplace to take them into when things happen to them that do not necessarily happen to other children.”

Through the ’60s and ’70s, Jackie made JFK as much a part of her children’s lives as she could. They visited some of his favorite places, such as the ranch of an Argentine family friend, where JFK had spent a spring vacation as a teenager. On that trip, John Jr. was too young to grasp what the visit was about, but Jackie said she believed it would all fall into place for him later. “I want to help him go back and find his father,” she said.

Said family friend Fred Papert: “She raised her kids so that all three locked onto each other in a way that families almost never do. They needed one another. They all came through for one another. She really liked them as friends, and they her.”

AP/REX/Shutterstock

Many people reacted with astonishment when Jackie married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis in October 1968, just four months after the assassination of Robert Kennedy. She was 39. He was in his sixties. What was she thinking?

In fact, Onassis had been a Kennedy family acquaintance for years. Rose Kennedy, JFK’s mother, gave Jackie her blessing. As she later wrote, “I told her to make her plans as she chose to do, and to go ahead, with my loving good wishes.” Jackie later said: “When I married Ari, she of all people was the one who encouraged me—who said, ‘He’s a good man. ‘”

One thing Onassis also offered was security. “He was a source of refuge and protection,” said her brother-in-law Sen. Edward Kennedy. “I think she felt safe with him.” Jackie married Ari on his private island, Skorpios, and had at her disposal homes in Paris and Athens, helicopters, a yacht and Olympic Airways—all of it heavily guarded.

Transformed from the Widow Kennedy to Jackie O, she became a sort of irreverent, naughty figure in the American imagination. She withdrew, but people still wanted to see what she was up to. Paparazzi from all over the world obliged, once even photographing her sunbathing with no suit on.

The marriage grew cooler as the years went on, and Onassis went into a slump after the death of his son, Alexander, in 1973. Two years later, he was dead. Jackie and Ari were together for just seven years. For her, it was a healing interlude. ”Aristotle Onassis rescued me,” she said, “at a moment when my life was engulfed with shadows.”

Peter Simins/Penske Media/REX/Shutterstock

The period that began in September 1975 was perhaps the happiest time of Jackie’s life. She was doing exactly what she wanted––and not what parents, husbands, family, friends, and the public expected. Now 46, she took an editing job at Viking Press. She had no previous professional editing experience. She was assigned a tiny office, which was what she also got when she moved to Doubleday as an associate editor in 1978. “Like everybody else,” she said, “I have to work my way up to an office with a window.” She finally got a view when she was promoted to senior editor in 1984.

She was an intense, hands-on editor. Colleagues could tell when she was pleased—she would rub her hands together and say, “Hot spit!” Variety was the only consistency of her projects: photography books like Egyptian Time by Robert Lyons and Allure by Diana Vreeland, biographies of Czar Nicholas II and Jean Harlow, recollections by friends of Fred Astaire and George Balanchine, and even a collection of articles from Rolling Stone. Says Doubleday colleague and friend Lisa Drew:

“Part of the joy of publishing is that you learn from every book. Much was made in the press about how she got her own coffee and did her own xeroxing. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was written about as if a miracle had occurred. It amused us how people outside were dazzled by this celebrity. Brighter, funnier, nicer than many, yes—but she was just another person.”

In February 1994, when she was 64, it was announced that the former First Lady had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, often a treatable form of cancer. Five years earlier, she had responded to my written questions and then corrected the manuscript for one of my books, First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power, 1789-l990. Judging from her notes, I sensed she was able to view the notion of being the world’s most famous woman with detachment. In the middle of a sentence that read “If there was one sphere where Jacqueline had great influence, it was fashion,” she scribbled, in blue ink, ‘Much to her annoyance!’”

She was pleased with the book because she felt it would move people’s opinions of her beyond mere style: “I hope now that people will realize,” she said, “that there was something under that pillbox hat.”

Now, take a look at these rarely seen photos of Jackie Kennedy.

Original Source -> This Was Jackie Kennedy’s Incredible Mark on History

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oselatra · 7 years

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The incredible adventures of Nate Powell

The Little Rock native is the first cartoonist to win the National Book Award. His graphic novel 'March,' the memoir of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, may well be the mother text for a new era of nonviolent resistance.

If you've followed the quality and depth of graphic novels over the past 20 years, you'll know how odd it is to say that Little Rock native Nate Powell is the first cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. That's no knock against Powell, by the way. As a longtime fan of the format, Powell admits it's surprising to him, too.

At the National Book Award ceremony in November 2016, Powell shared the prize with writer Andrew Aydin and U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) for the "March" trilogy. 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.

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. 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. 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.

Lewis, repeatedly jailed, fined and beaten as a young man in his quest for equality, has called that kind of protest "good trouble." Powell has been getting up to that kind of trouble for years, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon.

Soophie

Born in Little Rock in 1978, Powell grew up all over America. His father was career Air Force, and Powell's boyhood included stints living near bases in Montana and Alabama. When he was 10, his dad retired from the military, and the family returned to Arkansas and settled in North Little Rock.

By 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. 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.

Very much a part of the 1980s generation obsessed with toy-centric kids' shows like "G.I. Joe" and "Transformers," Powell soon started buying the comics associated with those brands, along with the early "independent, gravelly, black-and-white" incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before the series hit the big time and became lunchbox worthy. Looking around in the local comic book store for another series in the same vein of "G.I. Joe," Powell came upon "The 'Nam" by writer Doug Murray, a series that ran between 1986 and 1993.

"It was fiction, but it was more or less a realistic, unflinching account of drafted teenagers who were forced to serve in the Vietnam War," Powell said. "Growing up in a military family, being a G.I. Joe kid in the Reagan era, this comic, 'The 'Nam,' really opened a lot of doors to me to begin having real conversations with my dad, to understand stuff like cognitive dissonance, and to understand the moral and ethical quandaries of war and political structure."

Powell said the comic book and the conversations it spawned with his father also opened his eyes to the idea that a lot of what he had read about war in "G.I. Joe" comics had nothing to do with the reality of war. Those realizations were soon buttressed by other, gritty titles in the more realistic comics of the late Reagan era. Soon, Powell was reading edgier underground comics by artists like Chester Brown, Geof Darrow and Frank Miller while expanding his artistic horizons through the well-stocked Japanese anime section of a neighborhood video store.

"That kind of changed my path in life," he said. Powell, along with his friends Mike Lierly and Nate Wilson, would go on to write and self-publish a comic book series called "D.O.A.," with the first issue appearing in September 1992.

The same year, Lierly, Powell and other friends at North Little Rock High founded the pioneering and beloved local punk band Soophie Nun Squad, which didn't formally call it quits until 2006. Part band, part arts collective, part performance art troupe, Soophie's shows were an explosion of expression and creativity, with most songs driven by a chorus of voices. The band recorded almost incessantly, and after Powell graduated from North Little Rock High in 1996 — after which he attended George Washington University in D.C. before transferring to the cartooning program at the School of Visual Arts in New York — Soophie toured annually between 1997 and 2006, including three tours of Europe in 2002, 2003 and 2006. In all, the band played over 400 gigs in the U.S. and 14 countries.

Powell remembers his time with Soophie fondly. During the latter half of the 1990s, he would work six months out of the year in different places throughout the country, then rendezvous with bandmates in Central Arkansas to record and plan the next tour.

Even as he was living the punk band dream with his friends, the urge to be a comic book artist never left him. Powell said that as high school came to a close, he took his cartooning to the next level by dedicating himself to art as a career. Powell remembered that his parents, while always supportive of his art, weren't immediately on board.

"You've got to remember this was 1996," he said. "This is peak Clinton era, middle-of-the-road, middle-class prosperity. There was definitely a comfort zone that I was in danger of violating by saying, 'Well, I'm going to throw it all away and go to art school so I can be a comic book artist.' There were definitely some intergenerational issues and some class issues there between my parents and I. It was a bit of a struggle to actually push my way through and convince them of my argument." Powell said that struggle would continue to some extent until 2003, when his first commercially produced book, "Tiny Giants," a collection of his previously self-produced comics, was published by Soft Skull Press.

"From my parents' perspective, it was the first time they could have a tangible example of something they could be proud of," Powell said. "I think once they got over that hump, by seeing a physical product that someone else had lent some approval by publishing, then they were like, 'OK, this really is something that's serious.' " From then on, Powell said, his parents were "staunch allies" of his cartooning career.

Maralie Armstrong-Rial became a member of Soophie Nun Squad in 1997, soon after starting at North Little Rock High in the ninth grade. Powell, she said, was one of the first people she met after moving to North Little Rock. She remembers Powell and the circle of friends who formed the core of Soophie as friendly and welcoming. "They were hilarious," she said. "I didn't like going to school, but I liked going because it meant I could see them and hang out."

Soophie was like an extended family, Armstrong-Rial said. While every member had his or her own level of influence over what she called "the project" that was Soophie Nun Squad, she said, Powell was the one who pushed for action over talk.

"He helped organize all the energy people had," Armstrong-Rial said. "We'd talk about a tour, about this, about that, and he would say, 'Let's get it done.' He handled some of the nitty-gritty things people didn't jump to so much."

Armstrong-Rial said she was first exposed to Powell's cartoons through his work as an illustrator with the North Little Rock High School newspaper. "I'd keep those," she said. "They were very much in line with what he cared about in the world."

Eli Milholland, an early member of Soophie who has been married to Armstrong-Rial for 15 years, said that Powell became a source of creative inspiration soon after he met the young Nate in elementary school. "He drew every day, every chance he could find, during school and at home," Milholland said. "In the following summers, he and his other comic book friends started to flesh out what would become his first self-published comics. Throughout the next six years, he produced comic books, poetic and emotional zines, social and political cartoons for school newspapers, and self-published cassettes and records of local bands."

Milholland said the bonds of his Soophie family are still as strong as his blood family, even though they're scattered across the country. That includes Powell, who now lives with his wife, Rachel, and two children in Bloomington, Ind. Like Powell, Milholland remembers the Soophie tours as a time of exuberant creativity.

"I recall being on what I imagine was our third European tour with Soophie and I looked over at Nate, gazing out of the window of the van at some mountains as we were driving across whatever country," Milholland said, "and I saw him as the 12-year-old that I had met many years prior. I started to wonder how we got all the way across the globe in a van full of kids, performing music to strangers based on the desire alone. It was because of Nate. He had the drive and courage to contact strangers and set up those tours, the practical and the philosophical abilities to make them all run so smoothly. We all had the desire to see them happen, but it was Nate that made sure that they did."

While Powell wouldn't trade his time in Soophie for a different past, he said he can't help but wonder how his present might have been different had he farmed all his creative energy into cartooning and building his comic book career, as did many of his classmates at the School for Visual Arts. Almost every decision of his early life, he said, was structured around recording or touring with Soophie Nun Squad.

"One reason I think my comic career didn't really take off until about 2008 was this structure built around Soophie Nun Squad," he said. "Once we stopped being an active band in 2006, all of a sudden it became very clear to me that I was now free to structure my time any way I wanted. ... There is a part of me that wonders about that alternative timeline where I would have put everything in the comic basket, but Soophie Nun Squad is a very special entity. It's one that — especially in hindsight — is so centered around this familial bond that we all shared. The level of love and dedication and friendship among band members of Soophie is so strong."

'The Nine Word Problem'

Powell graduated from SVA in New York in 2000 after winning awards and grants for his work as a student cartoonist. Having started work as a caregiver for the developmentally disabled the previous year, Powell would work in the field as his day job for most of the next decade, taking jobs all over the country for several months a year before regrouping with his bandmates for what he called "Soophie time." Meanwhile, Powell continued self-publishing comics through his Food Chain imprint in the early years. While at SVA, Powell had made contacts that would be crucial to his future career in the arts, including befriending Chris Staros and Brett Warnock, who would go on to become the founders of the small graphic novel publisher Top Shelf Productions, based in Marietta, Ga. Top Shelf would eventually publish Powell's award-winning graphic story collections "Swallow Me Whole" in 2008 and "Any Empire" in 2011.

Powell quit his career as a caregiver in early 2009 and started working as a cartoonist full-time. It's a job that requires him to constantly work on at least two projects to stay above water financially. Unbeknownst to Powell, by the time he dived into life as a full-time illustrator, the project that would eventually win him the National Book Award had been in the works for years.

Andrew Aydin is the digital director and policy adviser for Lewis, who represents Georgia's 5th Congressional District. An avid comic book reader and collector since he was a youngster, Aydin was already working for Lewis when he came across a historical oddity that melded his interests in comics and the history of civil rights struggle, a title called "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story."

Long out of print, the short 1957 comic book played a crucial role in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s by telling the story of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. Published on pulp paper by the hundreds of thousands, the comic was used as a teaching tool in the early days of the civil rights movement, handed out to young people who wished to join the struggle against segregation. Aydin would go on to write about the importance of the comic book to the movement in his graduate thesis at Georgetown University.

Spurred by the idea of teaching nonviolence through comic books, Aydin spoke to Lewis about doing a similar project: a graphic novel version of his story to help a new generation of activists. With some badgering, Aydin eventually convinced Lewis of the value of the project, and would later conduct over 30 hours of interviews with the congressman. He turned those interviews into the 300-page script for what would become the first book of the "March" trilogy.

With a draft of the script in hand, Lewis and Aydin signed with Top Shelf Comics in late 2010, and the search was on for an illustrator who could strike just the right tone. Presented with the work of several artists who had previously worked with Top Shelf, Aydin and Lewis eventually settled on the art of Powell. Working in Powell's favor was that he was then finishing up work on another graphic novel, "The Silence of Our Friends," a fictional story of the civil rights movement set in Texas.

"We got the final versions back, and we were like, OK, that's it," Aydin said. "Maybe two or three of the pages that Nate did to try out for 'March' actually ended up in the final version of book one." Powell formally signed on with the project in November 2011.

Like a lot of Americans, Powell said he had a bare outline of the history of the civil rights struggle but was light on specifics. It's an issue that is so prevalent, Powell said, that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls it "The Nine Word Problem."

"It's the idea that most kids graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: 'Rosa Parks,' 'Martin Luther King,' 'I have a dream.' That's absolutely true, if your history class even gets to the movement, which mine never did."

Armed with Aydin's script, an original copy of the "Montgomery Story" comic Aydin had bought him on eBay, and a copy of Lewis' best-selling 1998 autobiography, "Walking with the Wind," Powell set about educating himself. Having spent part of his childhood in Montgomery, just 40 miles from the little farm in Troy, Ala., where Lewis grew up, Powell said many of the locations in the script and memoir were immediately familiar.

"The landscapes that he was describing from his childhood were things that I literally knew like the back of my hand," he said. "A lot of the locations in the 'March' trilogy, I'd spent time there. I'd grown up down the street from them. I was able to explore them in my own memory as much as I was able to explore them through the archives."

Focusing mainly on Lewis' Alabama childhood and coming of age in an era of unrest, the first book of "March" helped Aydin and Powell learn the collaborative process. "I was able to learn a lot about how Nate functions," Aydin said. "What his skills are, where he likes to put a splash page or things like that. I tried to write it best I could to fit with Nate's talents."

Aydin and Powell said that from the beginning, one of the main challenges of the trilogy was humanizing figures that have long since been enshrined as legends, including Lewis. "What we were trying very hard to show and to show fairly was, who were the real people in '63, in '64, in '65?" Aydin said. "Not how they're seen today, but who were they then based on their actions and words? Who were they when they were on the front lines? They're different people."

Powell agreed. "We wanted to actively reject this urge to make the civil rights movement a story, in hindsight, of gods and kings," Powell said. "We wanted to try and illuminate the people who had been swept under the rug, like the Bayard Rustins and the entire female makeup of the movement."

"Part of what helps people gravitate toward 'March' and feel a deep connection to it," Aydin said, "was that we showed human beings before they'd been turned into gods. We need that. When we put them on a pedestal, we remove our own responsibility to be able to do something with hard work in the same way."

"March" was initially conceived as a single, massive book, but a decision was made to split the project into a trilogy. Both Aydin and Powell agreed that worked to the benefit of the project as a whole. The first book of "March" was published in August 2013 to almost immediate critical acclaim. While Powell said graphic novels are a "small pond" where it's hard to find either lasting success or failure, something was clearly different about the appeal of "March," especially in the way it quickly made the jump outside normal audiences of the medium.

"Once that book came out," Powell said, "the real game-changer was when we realized what it meant that teachers and librarians were incorporating the book into schools and institutional settings. English teachers were using "March," but it was kind of a shock that history teachers were using "March" as history. It is history, that's true. But it meant we had to give ourselves a crash course in what it meant to follow historical guidelines to make sure it stayed in history classes."

That realization led to what Powell called "a radical shift" in the amount of research they did for books two and three. While book one, which mostly dealt with Lewis' childhood and coming of age, could rely largely on Lewis' accounts, as the focus of the trilogy pivoted toward well-known historical events, including the 1963 March on Washington and the Freedom Rides that challenged segregated interstate public transportation, Powell said he, Aydin and their editor at Top Shelf were forced to take on what he called the "second full-time job" of researching every aspect of the period and the events they were describing.

"It was this increasing shift by which the books were being taken more seriously as history, and as memoir, and as fine art, but then the responsibilities on the creative and editorial end were increasing radically. By the end of 'March: Book Two,' and during all of 'March: Book Three,' we were spending so much time digging into the rabbit hole of history and uncovering things [that it] was kind of like pushing along this giant snowball that was 'March' as an entity."

That quest for historical accuracy included not just reading every published book they could find about the movement, but digging into primary source documents as well. Doing so allowed 'March' to actually move the ball on the documented history of the time. In one case, Powell said, the minutes of a SNCC meeting held just before the first Freedom Ride in 1961 revealed that every other historical text available had erroneously named the wrong person as one of the original 13 participants. In another instance, a deep dive into FBI documents obtained by Top Shelf editors through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that Rosa Parks, whose simple act of defiance had sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, was a keynote speaker during an event on the steps of the Alabama Capitol after the bloody 1965 Selma to Montgomery march that spurred President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act.

"If Rosa Parks decided to bookend the civil rights movement by speaking at this event on the Alabama state Capitol steps," Powell said, "one would think history would have that well-documented. ... That's a perfect example of how history is a living creature. We were actually able to find some photo stills that may have been FBI shots from observers in the crowd that actually showed what Rosa Parks was wearing. So 'March: Book Three' is the first book that actually transcribes and gets into Rosa Parks' speech on the steps. It's transcribed from FBI surveillance documents, but it just got lost in the shuffle."

Time and time again

The second volume of "March" was released in January 2015 to huge critical acclaim, and went on to win the Eisner Award for the year's best reality-based graphic novel. When the third book appeared on Aug. 2 last year, it immediately shot to the top of the New York Times' best sellers list, where it and the other two books in the series stayed for six weeks. Nominated for the National Book Award for Young Peoples' Literature, Book Three — which ends with images of Lewis attending the 2008 inauguration of Barack Obama — won the prize Nov. 16, a week and a day after the surprise election of Donald Trump as president. Aydin sees that as the culmination of a trend that had dogged the publication of the three books, and which reveals their necessity.

"When Book One came out, the Supreme Court had struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act," Aydin said. "When Book Two came out, Ferguson happened. And when book three came out, Donald Trump happened," Aydin said. "I think what's happening in our nation has been this steady progression toward a necessity for 'March' ... . There is immediacy to it that we didn't expect. We always pitched 'March' as being a handbook. That was the idea. But we're lucky we had the idea when we did so it's available and it's out there. If we were just starting it now, it wouldn't be there to help, or at least be a founding document in whatever this new struggle will be."

"I felt increasingly, especially while we were making Book Three, that we felt like we were watching something unavoidable unfold, and we had to get in and push back against it," Powell said. "We had to push with a particular side of history to make a future that wasn't as dark as maybe it appears to be right now. It's been very intense."

Powell, who is working on a new graphic novel of his own called "Come Again," along with a project with writer Van Jensen called "Two Dead," agreed that the "March" trilogy has a new power and relevance since the election. America just made a collective choice to wind back the clock on social reform several decades, he said, but the books can serve as a guide to turn the nation away from the dark future he fears.

"It shows the successes and failures of a massive social movement to make the world more balanced and more just for everyone," he said. "But particularly, it shows a roadmap by which people can learn from those mistakes, can adapt, with a lot of the successes, and push them in new creative ways. ... We're living in such an urgent, grave time. This is not a drill. That's where I kind of return to the recognition that 'March' is a tool. It's personal, it's political, it applies to all of us, but at the same time it's the document of a group of young people and their experiences changing the world, as young people have done time and time again."

The incredible adventures of Nate Powell

#The incredible adventures of Nate Powell

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