Staff Picks (December): Your Black Friend And Other Strangers HC

This is an important book.

Ben Passmore is a very talented creator, part Spain Rodriguez and part George Herriman, and he uses every inch of the page in this compact graphic novel to turn panel into truth and ink into lightning.

Your Black Friend is a truly subversive comic in the way underground comics were in the 60s and 70s. It cuts through the sensational headlines that are dominating the media about the challenges facing minorities in America. It brings us inside the real everyday reality of racism, the hundreds of small knife cuts of choice and compromise that must be made internally before one can act or speak out loud. The thousands of pin pricks of overheard conversations politely ignored. Passmore seems to pack as much insight and understanding about race in a single page as Ta-Nehisi Coates can in whole chapters.

It is not a coincidence that Your Black Friend has won accolades and recognition with Eisner Nominations and Ignatz Awards. This is an outstanding example of the medium and of what comics can do. I am very happy Silver Sprockets is putting this out in a hardcover edition. This is the kind of book that parents should give their children and children should give parents. This is the kind of book that should be kept on the counter at retail and on the coffee table at home.

This is an important book.

—Jim Fallone

Publisher: Silver Sprockets
Item Code: DEC171793
Release Date: 2/28/18
SRP: $19.95