Portland’s David F. Walker tells the Black Panther Party’s revolutionary history in new graphic...

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was formed in 1966 in Oakland, Calif., by two friends and fellow college students, Huey P. Newton & Bobby Seale. The history of what became one of the most famous and revolutionary organizations of the Black liberation movement is told in illustrated form in the new book “The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History.”

As its introduction reads, “the Panthers defiantly stood in stark contrast to the nonviolent philosophy of the mainstream civil rights movement. … Some people admired them. Some people hated them. In time, the Black Panthers became mythical — and it can be difficult to separate myth from reality.”

The book, a vibrant collaboration between Portland-based writer and historian David F. Walker and illustrator Marcus Kwame Anderson, seeks to make that separation.