"March" was inspired by "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." I actually first heard about that comic from John Lewis, who told me that it played an important role in the movement. And so once he told me about that, it made me start thinking, "Well, why doesn't John Lewis write his own comic book?".
Andrew AydinOne of the biggest challenges for us is that people have different accounts. People say different things happened at different times, and when you're trying to sort through all that, how do you decide what's right?
Andrew AydinI think ['March'] is not just for the Black Lives Matter movement. It's for everyone. We all have to understand what happened then, so we can understand what's happening now.
Andrew AydinI spent almost two years working on this book ['March'] before we ever had a publisher, before we ever had a title. And when you're reading it, and you're writing it, and you're ingesting it, sometimes a single word just comes up over and over and over again. And if you're trying to capture the essence of what it is you're trying to tell, you don't have a whole lot of space.
Andrew AydinWhat crystallized the importance of speaking out like that - of making nonviolence not just a tool or a tactic, but a way of life - was in San Diego [at Comic-Con]. One of the young girls who marched with us was wearing a hijab, and she came up to me afterward because I talked about my beard, and I talked about why I was doing it, and she came up and she gave me a hug, and she was crying. And she said, "Thank you. You have no idea how the other students treat me because they're shown that this is OK by Donald Trump. Thank you for speaking out."
Andrew Aydin