David Walker and artist Marcus Kwame Anderson’s new graphic novel, Big Jim and the White Boy, is an inspired retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a year full of them, reimagining Jim and Huck as the abolitionist heroes of a rousing and thoughtful history of American slavery. In Walker’s version, Huck and Jim are real people, set in the story of an escaped enslaved person and a white boy on the run from slave catchers and confederate soldiers, who are determined to find Jim’s family years after they were sold on the slave market. We first meet the two in a scene from the original novel...before Walker shifts the tale to 1932, as an elderly Jim and Huck retell their harrowing story to their children and grandchildren. A third time jump features Jim’s great great-granddaughter who’s the author of a scholarly book that details the real heartbreak and brutality left out of Twain’s depiction of slavery. In this 11-page excerpt, Jim confronts two murderous thieves on a wrecked steamboat, then the story shifts to 1932 and the bickering but devoted lifelong friends— then again to 2022, where we meet Jim’s scholarly descendant. Big Jim and the White Boy by David Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson is out now from Ten Speed Graphic.