Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance

Emblematic of the defiance, irreverence, and care that inform this graphic history by Ignatz winner Passmore (Sports Is Hell), the “arms” of the title refer to both weapons and an embrace. In 2020, a young man named Ben watches on his phone as Philando Castile is shot by police, despite disclosing that he has a firearm in the car. Ben’s beret-and-dashiki-wearing father encourages him to study “the canon of the Black radical tradition,” which he proceeds to do Quantum Leap–style when he is teleported to 1900s Louisiana and witnesses “Anarchistic Negro Desperado” Robert Charles shoot white police officers who are harassing him (“This triggerin,” Ben says). Tracing a path from Marcus Garvey’s Black Nationalism through the Black Power movement, Sanyika Shakur, and Black Lives Matter, Passmore pokes at the sanctity of civil rights icons, including Martin Luther King Jr. (“Cue the sad gospel music”), but he doesn’t idealize radicals, either. Rather, he offers a rollicking survey course in a history that has often been reduced to slogans or erased altogether. As a friend of Black Liberation Army activist Assata Shakur says, “The whole white world doesn’t want us to know we ever fought slavery.” The cartoonish art has a daring quality that leavens the text’s treatment of more heady topics. Passmore’s sharp humor and refusal to blindly parrot any prescribed narrative make for a necessary reckoning. Agent: Chad Luibl, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Oct.)