Under the Bridge: Cont'd

In last month’s “Under the Bridge, Part I,” we learned the history of the collar industry in Troy, of the city’s legacy of civic activism, and of a working-class neighborhood around Hoosick Street a quarter-century ago. This history got personal as readers met Kathleen, a fictitious character in that neighborhood, whose family home is threatened by a project to build the new “Collar City Bridge” over the Hudson River.

The two-part comic series began with oral histories from people who lived and worked around Hoosick Street. An Art Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts helped get the story started, and filmmaker Jim de Sève came up with a plan to make the comic. Taking photos of staged scenes, and using a variety of archival images, de Sève fashioned the frames of these pages image by image, layering Photoshopped pictures and archival material into the dense visual geography of the comic. New York cartoon artist Mike de Sève brought Kathleen’s nightmares to life for this issue. The story in “Under the Bridge” represents actual history, but the characters are fictional—except for the Reverend John Lyons, who worked hard for the people of Troy, and passed away three years ago. John’s legacy of activism, and his sense of humor, survive.
—Amy Halloran