Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: Divided by Steve Sheinkin, Toby Cypress

Divided by Steve Sheinkin & Toby Cypress, Comic Prequel to Civil War

Divided by Steve Sheinkin and Toby Cypress, a comic book prequel, to the American Civil War for 2025

Divided by Steve Sheinkin and Toby Cypress is a YA nonfiction graphic novel set in 1850s Washington DC, in a polarized nation on its way to Civil War. How very opportune.

1850 saw Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, introduce The Compromise of 1850, a package of five separate bills passed by Congress that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states in the years. It obviously did not stand, but the compromise centred on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War. The bills strengthened fugitive slave laws, banned the slave trade in Washington DC, while still allowing slavery itself there, and defined northern and western borders for Texas while establishing a territorial government for both the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, with no restrictions on whether any future states from this territories would be free or slave. In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act reversed long-standing compromises by providing that each new state of the Union would decide its posture on slavery. The newly formed Republican Party stood against the expansion of slavery and won control of most Northern states. This, and all that followed, before the secession of American states in 1860 and the American Civil War in 1861, makes up Divided.

Artist Toby Cypress posted last year "I've been working on a new graphic novel at FirstSecond Books about Abraham Lincoln's decision to run for President. I've been working on it for the last two years in seclusion which is why you haven't seen me at conventions or posting art. But I'm almost done with preliminary art, and hoping for a release early next year." Maybe a bit later than that…

Mark Siegel and Connie Hsu at First Second have bought world rights to Divided, Connie Hsu will edit and publication is planned for 2026. Steve Sheinkin's agent Susan Cohen at Writers House negotiated the deal.

Steve Sheinkin is the author of fast-paced, cinematic nonfiction histories, including Fallout, Undefeated, Born to Fly, The Port Chicago 50 and Bomb. His awards include a Newbery Honor, three Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, a Sibert Medal and Honor, and three National Book Award finalist honours.

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