Review by C.J. Bunce
Words have meaning. If you go for analogies, you could say as an analogy that the movie Clueless is to Jane Austen’s Emma, and the movie Forbidden Planet is to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s Big Jim and the White Boy is to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Said another way, in similar ways that the movie Clueless is a modern twist on a well-established, classic work of literature, so is Big Jim and the White Boy. It’s at times as if Twain’s work is being reinterpreted by David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino, with so much more happening. A new twist on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Big Jim and the White Boy is now available here at Amazon and at all good comic book shops. If you loved what was good about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you’ll love this new spin on the book in graphic novel form as we begin Black History Month 2025.
What are the good parts? That’s Twain attempting to reflect a historical period intertwined with experiences from his youth in Hannibal, Missouri, including its setting, its two heroes on a dangerous river adventure together, and its use of local, historical dialect (with the exception of the “n” word). Writer David Walker and artist Marcus Anderson, both celebrated Eisner Award-winning comics creators, begin the story with a historical look at Twain’s work and what they aimed to accomplish with the book. The key change was stripping away the elements that have been identified over the decades as derogatory of Jim, a slave of Huck Finn’s family who joined Huck on his journey down the Mississippi River. Along with the theme of “words have meaning,” the authors surprisingly don’t remove the “n” word, instead scratching through it when used–the inclusion explained as necessary for the era and to not inadvertently participate in erasing a dark part of our American history.
They slide right into their story at this point, which weaves in different points of view, including aged Jim and Huck in their senior years, looking very much like the brothers at the end of David Lynch’s The Straight Story. The writing of these two in the future is laugh-out-loud funny at times, mirroring the similar humor of the banter of the two young men in Twain’s original story. Another point of view emerges showing descendants of Jim, one a teacher, explaining in critical but respectful and historical ways the context of Twain’s book, along with a thread that humanizes Jim, showing a family taken from him. This thread plays out in many ways like Tarantino’s story of slavery Django Unchained, which feels like inspiration at least in part for this segment of the story.
Pop culture fans and borg readers will no doubt recall the episode of The X-Files called “Bad Blood.” One of the top 10 episodes of the series, it revisited supernatural events through the multiple views and very different takes of Mulder and Scully, as well as Luke Wilson as a sheriff. The authors use the same hook here, with Old Man Jim criticizing Old Man Huck for telling Twain’s story wrong. It’s funny, it’s thought-provoking, it’s sharp and smart, and it’s current and important. It’s also thoroughly entertaining.
Around the midpoint the story verges on buddy comedy, as the bickering of Old Man Jim and Old Man Huck escalates. Soon the reader is in TV spin-off territory, like the BBC’s Sherlock or Canada’s Murdoch Mysteries series, which had its lead often crossing paths with famous people of the day (here that includes John Brown), with the “further exploits of Jim and Huck,” as the duo get in and out of trouble, modern trope style. Stripped of their more problematic elements, the reader gets to enjoy an adventure in the same spirit that Twain probably intended for his tale in his era. But it also is a weighty and serious story that doesn’t shy away from the violence and horrors of the day.
In some ways the story is like a sequel, think of the late-breaking and lesser sequels to both Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird–both also with the underpinnings of racism and blacks not getting justice at their core (and with Lee getting her book much closer to truth). Those books could have benefited from a sequel as well handled as this book.
It’s good, important stuff, as well as entertaining, a good use of the “old man” trope, and another book that should be in every public library. Don’t miss Big Jim and the White Boy, now available here at Amazon and at all good comic book shops.
