Black history shown in graphic novel form

Not many comics tell Black history. But some of those that do are among the best examples of graphic storytelling:

■ “March,” Books 1, 2 and 3 by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by North Little Rock native Nate Powell. The series is a history of the American civil rights movement as it was lived by the late U.S. Representative Lewis. “March” was the first graphic novel to win a National Book Award. Lewis recalled being influenced by a comic book he had read as a teenager: a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.

■ “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story” is the comic that so impressed Lewis. It tells about the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that began when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, and how King taught a “new way to end racial discrimination … without violence and without hating.” Published for 10 cents in 1957, the 16-pager endures as a $10-to-$20 reprint or used copy.

■ “Abina and the Important Men” by Trevor R. Getz and Liz Clarke. Abina Mansah fought her wrongful enslavement in British court. This book won the American History Association’s James Henry Robinson Prize for its recounting of the trial, in 1876.

■ “The Life of Frederick Douglass” by David F. Walker and Damon Smyth. The book opens as the white-haired abolitionist and public speaker dips his pen in ink to tell that his name “was taken after my escape from slavery.”

Douglass gave a speech in New Orleans, in 1872, to raise money for the widow and family of Louisiana Lt. Gov. Oscar Dunn, as author Brian K. Mitchell notes in his graphic history, “Monumental.”