Ho Che Anderson

Born 1969 (London, England)
Canadian author, illustrator

A growing number of artists at work in the comics medium became more and more ambitious in the 1990s, expanding their range from traditional superhero themes to tackle serious fiction and nonfiction subjects. An excellent example is the work of Canadian artist Ho Che Anderson, whose three-volume biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was, in the words of Library Journal reviewer Steve Raiteri, "a milestone for biographical comics." Anderson's King, completed over a ten-year period, is a fully fleshed-out portrait of a complex individual. Moreover, it is a brilliant example of how graphic storytelling can be used to make a strong impact on the reader.

"King's world became mine. I read everything I could find, hungry for knowledge. I absorbed facts and times and dates and names. I looked at photographs and hours of documentary footage. I lost interest in the saint-like image and grew fascinated with the man behind the legend."

Born in London, England, in 1969, Anderson was given his unusual name by his father, a politically active Jamaican immigrant (little is known about his mother). The name honors both North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and Cuban Communist revolutionary Che Guevara. The family moved to suburban Toronto, Ontario, Canada, when Anderson was young. Growing up in a predominantly white area, Anderson benefited from his father's belief that blacks should not be limited by societal expectations. "I want to make it clear: he was never anti-white, but he was very pro-black," Anderson told Murray Whyte of the New York Times. "He believed that we as black folks didn't take ourselves as seriously as we should, and we were often our own worst enemy, and we needed to get smart and start moving ahead."

As a child, Anderson read popular superhero comics by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Anderson's family stressed education, but he dropped out of high school, determined to go his own way. Yet he fulfilled his parents' dreams in one respect: he entered a line of work previously dominated by white artists. As a teenager, Anderson began drawing comics. He did his homework, studying the styles of classic magazine illustrators like Norman Rockwell and J.C. Leyendecker and of superhero comics creators Howard Chaykin and Frank Miller. By his late teens, Anderson was writing his own comics and sending samples to publishers, hoping to break into the business.

Best-Known Works

King, Volumes I-III (1993–2004); reprinted as single volume, (2005).

Young Hoods in Love (1994).

Pop Life (with Wilfred Santiago) (1998).

The No-Boys Club (1998).

Scream Queen (2005).

Assigned King project

Around 1989, one of Anderson's samples went to Gary Groth, the Seattle-based publisher of Fantagraphics comics. Originally Anderson sent a pitch for an adult comic series, which was eventually published, but Groth had other ideas for his new hire. He had a series of historical biographies planned, and he suggested to Anderson that he draw the first one, a seventy-page graphic biography of Martin Luther King Jr. Groth thought of Anderson for the job not only because Anderson was one of the few active comic artists of African descent, but also because of his politically oriented first and middle names.

Anderson was familiar with King's accomplishments, but, he wrote in the Boston Globe, "in Canada we didn't talk about King around the kitchen table—maybe other families did. TV supplied details of the legend, but I had no idea about the man." At first, Anderson thought of the assignment simply as a financial break-through. "My inner mercenary accepted the job, unaware of the rigors of the task," he wrote in the Globe. But he was primed for something more, having begun to sort out racial issues in his own mind. King began to take shape in Anderson's mind at a critical moment in North American race relations.

Anderson and his friends were strongly affected by the Los Angeles riots of April 1992, which followed the acquittal of four white Los Angeles police officers who were charged with using excessive force against black motorist Rodney King. Unrest spread not only to other American cities but also across the border to Toronto. When the verdict was announced, Anderson recalled to Henry Mietkiewicz of the Toronto Star, "I remember sitting around the TV with a couple of friends. We turned off the TV and had a discussion, and a lot of bile was spilled that night." When rioting erupted in Toronto, Anderson and his friends drove to the area but remained on the edges of the crowd, observing rather than participating.

"Am I angry about things? Absolutely!" Anderson told Mietkiewicz in 1993. "People sometimes expect when they meet me for me to be walking around with a rifle and my fist raised. But I can't be p—-ed off like that all the time. I just can't do it.… My own life today is not that bad." Unsure about racial issues, Anderson used his work to explore his feelings. One result was a fourteen-page comic called Black Dogs, which featured a black man and woman debating racial violence. It was later incorporated into the first volume of King as a kind of introduction.

Absorbed King lore

For six months, Anderson worked at learning everything he could about Martin Luther King Jr. "I've read as many books and articles as I could get my hands on," he told Mietkiewicz. "And I've watched a lot of documentaries, because the scenes I draw have to be properly photo-referenced." His conception of the book quickly outgrew the original 70-page framework, ballooning to a projected 150 and then 200 pages. The solution Anderson and Fantagraphics came up with was to publish King in three volumes.

The first volume appeared in 1992, covering the civil rights leader's early life against the backdrop of Southern segregation and his rise to prominence following the successful Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, concluding with King's stabbing during a sit-in at an Atlanta, Georgia, lunch counter. The depth of historical background Anderson included is a distinctive feature of his work. The events of King's life are filled out with surrounding events, both famous and unknown. One passage in the first volume of King deals with the 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat in the back of a city bus—the event that led to the Montgomery bus boycott.

The Martin Luther King Jr. depicted in Anderson's book is not the larger-than-life figure honored every year on the holiday celebrating his birth. At various times, King is depicted as a glutton (someone who eats a great deal), a womanizer, and what would later be called a male chauvinist—in one sequence early in the book he demands that his wife, Coretta Scott King, give up her musical ambitions to stay home in the role of a traditional wife.

Grasping Graphic Nonfiction

As a young artist breaking into the business of comics, Ho Che Anderson had few graphic nonfiction models to draw on. Few other artists had used the graphics medium in works that contained a wealth of historical detail. Renowned artist Alan Moore put graphics in the service of history in Brought to Light, his 1988 exploration of the Iran-Contra scandal of the early 1980s (a complicated political scandal in which the United States sold weapons to Iran to fund secret political activities in Nicaragua). Another important nonfiction graphic novel was Don Lomax's Vietnam Journal of 1990, a work that used a fictional observer to comment on historical events in the same way Anderson did later at several points in King.

However, when the first volume of King appeared in 1993, the most influential existing work in the field was Maus, (1986) Art Spiegelman's family Holocaust memoir. Anderson's King seemed to announce the maturing of the graphic biography and others soon followed. Canadian Chester Brown released Louis Riel, which told the life story of a nineteenth-century métis (mixed-race) leader in what became the province of Manitoba. And in 2005 the American publisher Hyperion, owned by the Disney corporation, announced plans for a series of biographies of major American historical figures. The Center for Cartoon Studies, a Vermont graphic arts school, was recruited to participate in the creation of the new series.

Anderson was not just trying to be historically accurate with these representations of King's failings. He actually felt that by presenting King's flaws, he made the civil rights leader easier to identify with for young people like himself. "I just can't take someone seriously; I can't look up to someone; I can't relate to someone who is so perfect, who has never made a mistake, who has never stumbled, who has never fallen," he told Liane Hansen of National Public Radio. The greater mystique that the memory of Malcolm X (1925–1965), a more aggressive and controversial civil rights leader, held for some young people, as compared with that of King, could be partly chalked up, in Anderson's view, to the sanitized view of King that was passed along in official observances.

Forced to turn to other projects

Anderson's work stirred up interest with its wealth of detail; its use of huge, panoramic drawings to capture the feel of crowd scenes; and its human treatment of King, focusing on King's flaws as well as his powers. In early 1993, however, the idea of using the comics medium for serious themes was still rarely encountered. Maus, Art Spiegelman's Holocaust-themed graphic novel, had been published in the late 1980s, but was joined by few others. Although Anderson remarked that King's story remained on his mind, he also faced the necessity of making a living. King was sold mostly in specialty shops devoted to comics, and profits from the book were small despite a 1995 Parents' Choice Award (given despite the book's use of profanity) and a round of radio interviews Anderson did during Black History Month. Due to financial crisis he moved in with his mother for a time, but he gradually began to find other drawing jobs.

Working as a commercial illustrator, Anderson created a variety of other graphic projects. In 1994 he published a book of graphic short stories, Young Hoods in Love, and many of his works in the 1990s focused on urban life in Toronto. Anderson tried his hand at a juvenile graphic novel, The No-Boys Club (1998). He also illustrated a children's book, Steel Drums and Ice Skates, which was written by Dirk McLean.

Finally, after nearly ten years, Anderson returned to the King project. The second volume was published in 2002, and by that time, book buyers were more aware of graphic literature. This installment, which culminated in King's "I Have a Dream" speech during the 1963 civil rights March on Washington, earned strong reviews. Raiteri wrote that "[Anderson's] effort will convince skeptical adults of the value of comics as a medium." New readers were amazed by Anderson's unique drawing style, which incorporated hand-tinted copies of photographs and other images, creating a multimedia effect. Publishers Weekly noted that "Anderson combines illustrations and photocopy collage in a rugged chiaroscuro comics style." (Chiaroscuro refers to the use of light and shade in a work.) Anderson's high-contrast, mostly black-and-white drawings had a monumental quality appropriate to the theme of King's life. In the second volume, Anderson included an imagined conversation between King and President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) that was hailed by some reviewers for its believability but also added an element of historical fiction to a biographical work.

The last volume of King was released in 2003 and added to Anderson's fame. Using color throughout, Anderson depicted King's 1968 assassination in what Murray Whyte of the New York Times, described as "a chaotic wash of searing crimson that spills over four pages, seeming almost to seep from the book." The three volumes of King were reissued as a single book in 2005, with some revisions and an introduction by the prominent African American cultural critic and newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch. King was issued not only in the United States and Canada but also in England, where critic David Thompson, writing on the Guardian Unlimited Web site, compared Anderson's work to that of other graphic artists who used historical events and materials in their works. "Anderson splices his comic book chronology with archive material and anonymous witnesses addressing the reader directly with their own often contradictory reflections," Thompson wrote. "This narrative technique exploits the unique advantages of the graphic form and … the results demonstrate what comics can do that literary fiction can't."

Satisfied activist impulses in work

Although he gained renown with his portrayal of an activist figure, Anderson was not an activist himself. In fact, he became interested in comics and graphic arts in the first place partly because he was rebelling against his parents' political focus. "I've thought about hands-on activism in the past, but it's just not me," he told Andre Mayer of This magazine. "I admire people who get out and protest and speak out. I admire them more than anybody. But it's not really part of my makeup." Anderson felt that he could influence young people through the comics medium, telling National Public Radio's Hansen that "I'm hoping younger people will be attracted to the graphics [of King]. I think it looks flashy and hopefully they'll pay attention to the words."

After becoming famous beyond the world of comics and graphic literature, Anderson branched out in several new directions. He credited Martin Luther King Jr. directly with the inspiration for his decision to obtain his high school equivalency degree, a credential that helped pave the way for a general assignment reporter position with the Toronto Star daily newspaper. A film buff who named director Martin Scorsese as an influence on his drawing style, Anderson thought several times about enrolling in film school. In 2005, he worked on a play commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) radio network, but it was shelved in the midst of labor unrest that plagued the CBC that year. Also in 2005, Anderson issued his first graphic volume since the completion of the King series: Scream Queen is a horror tale with a zombie theme. In 2005, he was also looking for a publisher for an already completed graphic novel called Corporate World, a sci-fi action-adventure epic. Having already gained respect for the new genre of graphic literature, Anderson seemed to be looking for new challenges.

For More Information

Periodicals

Anderson, Ho Che. "Drawing Board Capturing King." Boston Globe (January 18, 2004): H4.

Andrews, Jan. "That First Kiss … with an Up-to-Date Twist." Ottawa Citizen (August 16, 1998): C15.

Atkinson, Nathalie. "'Cartoons' Fit for a King." Globe and Mail (June 7, 2003): D12.

Mietkiewicz, Henry. "Comic Illustrator Takes Hard Look at a True Hero." Toronto Star (September 26, 1993): E2.

Publishers Weekly (November 1, 1993): 72; (May 13, 2002): 53; (February 14, 2005): 56; (May 30, 2005): 41.

Raiteri, Steve. Library Journal (September 1, 2002): 148.

Whyte, Murray. "King's Life in Pictures of Every Kind." New York Times (August 10, 2003): AR26.

Whyte, Murray. "Not Your Average Superhero." Toronto Star (May 30, 2003): J1.

Web Sites

"Biography." Ho Che Anderson. http://www.hocheanderson.com (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Gibson, Brian. "The Man Who Would Draw King." Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=1847 (accessedonMay 3, 2006).

"Ho Che Anderson." Fantagraphics. http://www.fantagraphics.com (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Leshinski, Guy. "King of Dreams." Exclaim! http://www.exclaim.ca/index.asp?layid=22&csid=20&csidI=1125 (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Thompson, David. "The Dreamer Lives On." Guardian Unlimited. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/artsandentertainment/0,6121,1553067,00.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Other

Additional information for the profile was obtained from an interview with Ho Che Anderson, conducted by Liane Hansen and broadcast on National Public Radio on January 16, 1994.