Your Black Friend and Other Strangers collects over 100 pages of honest, thought-provoking, argumentative, and humorous comics by Ben Passmore! Mostly published in other venues, such as stand-alone minicomics, The Nib, and small press & self-published anthologies, these comics are connected by concerns Ben has had about race, identity, and modern societal structures.

The book opens with the eponymous comic, a letter to his white friends about his own experiences trying to navigate America as a black man. It’s a sharp, funny, honest comic that is grounded, centered, and gets better every time you read it. Your Black Friend sets the tone for the rest of the book, as Ben writes comics essays about confederate monuments, gun safety, Trump, not being “woke enough,” and his experiences getting arrested. Ben also spins revenge fantasies against cops, and self-reflective allegories about identity, capitalism, and failure.

This comic’s technicolor pages are jam-packed with a stylistic penchant for apocalyptic scenery, cartoon action, and deep thoughts about what we’re doing wrong, and the chances we need to take to do right.