By Michael Ceraso — The late Congressman John Lewis is a civil rights icon. His life story as an activist, the mayor of Atlanta, and a long-tenured federal legislator has been documented in various mediums, including in the three part graphic novel series, March. Published from 2013 to 2016, March focused on Lewis and the 16th Street Church bombing, the Freedom Summer murders, and the Selma to Montgomery marches.

Now, a new series called Run is a continuation of Lewis’ story and the political fallout and heartbreak he experienced within the civil rights movement. Put simply, this book is a masterpiece. Both March and Run belong on the bookshelves of every college, public school, and community library for generations to pick up and read and discuss. There is no doubt that Lewis lived a complicated life, filled with uncertainty and deep pain leading him to second guess himself as a leader in the civil rights movement. But he was also a man who preserved and triumphed with an air of joy and hopefulness against the hate and anger he endured. 

We caught up with Andrew Aydin, a former congressional staffer to Lewis and the co-writer of March and Run, to discuss the creative choices and historical significance behind telling Lewis’ story in a graphic novel format.

INTERVIEW: Andrew Aydin talks RUN, the newest graphic novel about Rep. John Lewis

MICHAEL CERASO: My favorite scene from RUN is at the start when Congressman John Lewis, then part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is kneeling in front of a police officer. With cuffs in his hand, the cop looms over a kneeled Lewis. All of this transpired in front of a white-only place of worship. 

ANDREW AYDIN: That's a neat panel. The artist, Nate Powell (Come Again, About Face, Two Dead, The Silence of Our Friends), is a master, you know? The other point about that whole scene is that that's a scene that's largely overlooked in history, and I couldn't find any sort of vigor like more than a sentence or two in any book, period. But the way I was able to recreate it was it we found a handful of articles both from local America's paper and some that ran on the news wire that had different quotes from the different people as the day spilled on. So like the dialogue that you see in those, particularly with the Deacons of the church, then later with Calvin Crag, those are all quotes 100% quotes, and you know when you piece these scenes together, right, it's your kind of become a detective. You know, and you're looking at like, Okay, what is the city look like? What road are they on? What street are they on? How is this all working? And it's a heavy privilege when you find something that's been lost like that and history. 

CERASO: What lessons from writing MARCH did you take into RUN?

AYDIN: The most important lesson that I took from MARCH into RUN was [the need for] perseverance and its necessity and every element of our life. I think John Lewis was a model of persistence. And just in those moments during the Freedom Rides, when they were trying to call them off, John Lewis and Diane Nash and the Nashville contingents said, “no, the rides must go on.” Is that perseverance in the face of fear? Do you [the reader] see that lesson? Even when it is about understanding and recognizing your loss. You see him lose everything. He loses his chairmanship; he loses his organization. And he brings that same persistence, picks himself back up, moves, takes on a different career path, finds a new job, finds a new life. And I think we're all struggling with that right now. It makes understanding how he did it all the more important because if we're going to put them on a pedestal, we will look at him as this icon, this figure of the bronze bus that now exists everywhere. 

 CERASO: How did writing MARCH and RUN help your growth as a writer?  

AYDIN: You know, you can read through 100, 200, 300 pages of primary documents, but how do you find the one that helps you tell the story better, that embodies the point you're trying to make or the truth that you're trying to show while at the same time, recognizing that you can't include everything you find and I think honing that skill. I mean, that was the thing that was so hard about RUN - there wasn't as much research material to use. We had to double down on primary documents in a way that we didn't have in MARCH because, you know, you deal with so many people doing oral histories and interviews and writing their book. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of books about [19]60 to [19]65. And yet, there are maybe ten major scholarly works about [19]66. And most of them come from scholars who are advocates of Stokely Carmichael's. So you don't you see it as like, Okay, this was the next successive wave embracing Black Power and the arming of the movement and those elements, as well as the denunciation of Dr. King, get glossed over, and they are forgotten. And I think that's one of the biggest problems that I've found even reading other nonfiction graphic novels. All too often, the writer has a point they're trying to make rather than creating a historical evaluation, a recreation of the facts as best as they can.

CERASO: Your approach to violence throughout the graphic novel was captivating…

AYDIN:  I appreciate that. You're just trying to get it right because, you know, it's a streaming world with Netflix, etc. There’s very little restraint, and how people show violence in many ways. They get excited. They’re like, well, that’s action. And I think when you show violence against real people in a historical context, you have an obligation to be respectful of that. To not glorify it. And that was very important to us and the Congressman {Lewis], when we made those pages and L. Fury, who is a talented artist, she experienced the violence as an artist personally. The emotional toll of it is profound.

CERASO: The story does an excellent job leading up to the murder of Jonathan Daniels in 1965 by depicting acts of violence without murder being involved against Black men and women. The 26-year Daniels jumped in between an Alabama deputy sheriff and construction worker who pointed a loaded shotgun at 17-year old Ruby Salas. Daniels pushed Ruby to the ground before the shotgun was fired, killing Daniels immediately. 

AYDIN: There are two elements of that one is the actual scene in Fort Deposit [where the Daniels murder happened] that builds up to that, and that is a scene that you have to build up. Because when you read the oral histories from the people there, this palpable tension existed in their minds and memories. So if you don't show it, you're not showing what they felt. But I think the flip side of this is when you look at it, for instance, in the context of Watts [Uprising in 1965], or in the Freedom Day, organizing and the guns pulled on certain stick staff members, that's history. In many ways, it reflects the fact that violence was building towards that violence, but that's also simply what happened. So it wasn't necessarily an attempt to deliberately show that we were building towards that violence. You do that in your scenes, but when you create the narrative, you'll be surprised, particularly if you do an honest, full depiction of history, how much building happens on its own. I also think it's interesting to recall in your head the quiet, silent page of the shotgun smoking because we went over that many times trying to figure out the best way to show that in a respectful, authentic way. We did not want to glorify the violence. I think there's all too often a desire to show like the dead bodies and the bleeding and the pain and not the act. And so what we did for that was we took all the narration out. Congressman Lewis had narrated that scene, and we took it all out because we felt like the silence of that. As a reader, you fill in the noise in your head. 

CERASO: I recently watched Spider-Man: No Way Home. I realized Congressman Lewis’s hero arch in the third act of RUN is similar to Peter Parker’s third act in the movie - they both sacrificed and, in many ways, failed. Not to give away spoilers, but Peter Parker has to reset himself at the end of the film. At the end of RUN, Congressman Lewis reimagined himself making the shift from being an activist to a candidate for office in epic comic book fashion: in the rain, with water dripping down his face, self-narrating what he is about to do next. 

AYDIN: RUN is about loss, And it was about John Lewis's loss. But it was also the story of how he picks himself back up. And then sometimes we have to move on for moral reasons. And I think that is the most important lesson for me is that you don't have to do the same thing over and over. You make these decisions, and you do things for moral reasons. There are a lot of people in this book who did things at the time that undermined Dr. King, that largely was based on selfish motivation. Everybody wants to recast their history as the most flattering version of themselves. And I think John Lewis never pushed me to do that. He said you couldn’t sweep anything under the rug. You have to tell the truth. If it tells the whole story, make it real, make it plain, and you know, you see it with like, yeah. Folks who were like with a Meredith March, right, like that's, it was such a seminal moment and yet so misunderstood and the conflict behind it so misunderstood any of his obligation to tell that old truth, and it's like, the John Lewis did not look good. You see him trying to preach to a crowd that didn't want to hear it, right. But to be honest about that, you say they didn't want to listen to it. Because then today when everybody's like, Oh, everyone must love John Lewis his whole life. 

CERASO: The role of comic books in the civil rights movement is lifted in RUN and moves the story. I thought that was pretty neat. 

AYDIN: You need to understand this is not a new idea, what we're trying to do. You know what Courtland Cox and Jennifer Lawson did to educate [Black voters] is extraordinary and should be remembered. Also, I think we wanted to be a little bit cheeky. “Hey, everyone can read comics, right?” And honestly, as I was reading [their comics], I was taken aback because there were so many points there that I had no idea. It made me wish that somebody would go through and make comments that explained all the [government] roles and responsibilities so that people could easily digest this before voting. But imagine trying to mobilize a whole population that had never been allowed to vote. 

CERASO: How has your writing work and the creative process in RUN influenced the way you approach future projects? 

AYDIN: I think MARCH made me much more conscious of its importance to have a complete cast of characters. You know, you read a lot of comics, read a lot of stories, and it's all focused on the main character, and the cast itself can sometimes be treated as an afterthought or less important, but in the way in which John Lewis valued his friends and his colleagues. As a writer, it taught me how those bonds and interactions that's where a good story becomes great.

You read the Batman story I did with Damian Wayne that came out a couple of months ago. We had Jason Todd, Damien, Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain, and these folks made it a more rich experience to weave that together. To put yourself in the shoes of all those different characters. Batman doesn't even show up until the very end, and I think what is fascinating is the family around characters like Batman. It’s about the cast, and we look at it from how we tell a better story — John Lewis pushed that into my mind and my heart through his love and valuation of his colleagues and friends.

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This piece is by Michael Ceraso, who has previously visited the Library of Congress for Comics Bookcase.