I know "accessibility" is a term that's kind of thrown around wantonly today, especially with talking about visual media. But I think that the strength of comics [is how they] really allow you to transcend those last barriers between a reader absorbing the information of an experience, and a reader being able to project themselves into the [experience of the] people about whom they're reading.

The rules have changed as information and technology evolve, but it's essential that people stay in the streets, stay visible in their communities, on the news, on the Internet, and in this crucial public discussion. There are a million people just like you (or me), sharing the same doubts, fears, and insecurities that keep us from speaking out. Finding each other in our neighborhoods, online, in the streets - this is what keeps us from believing we're alone, from giving in to hopelessness.

A decade passed between King's assassination and my birth, but the older I get, the more acutely aware I become that 10 years is nothing.

I was born in the late '70s and grew up in the deep South, and I was very much still of an era where racism was a casual part of white people's public and private lives, though it had been pushed more into its own little echo chamber by then. As a five year old, I saw a fully costumed Klan circle, complete with burning cross, on a town square in rural Alabama at high noon.

One of our priorities when doing "March" is to sort of undo what we feel is the disservice done by what we call the Nine Words Problem. Which is that most American kids, whatever they do learn about the movement, especially in school, is usually limited to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream." And so there's sort of a layer of unreality; there's not a sense of continuity.

I also think it's crucial to convey that the [Black] Movement largely succeeded because of the unwavering dedication of young people willing to risk their comfort, their safety, their lives.

People of every age group have connected strongly with the story [the March], identifying with different components of it. A sense of fairness and recognition of injustice seem to be hardwired into kids - I know it was for me, even as an elementary school kid - and I kept that in mind throughout the creation process.