Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined

Walker and Anderson, the team behind the Eisner Award–winning The Black Panther Party, present a retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that places Jim at the center of the narrative. Where Twain imagined Jim unthinkingly following young Huck through a series of misadventures along the river, Walker and Anderson depict him as a man whose lifelong battle for survival and dignity in a dehumanizing world has made him deeply sensitive to the plight of others. They reimagine Huckleberry Finn as Jim’s unofficial foster son who becomes a sidekick when the pair set out on a mission to rescue Jim’s kidnapped wife and children. The duo’s journey across the postbellum South and Midwest finds them passing through Civil War camps, assisting in an Underground Railroad mission, and crossing paths with various historical figures. Walker and Anderson shift their storytelling perspective to emphasize the experiences of characters and communities who were relegated to supporting roles or omitted entirely from Twain’s original novel, and often from the historical record as well.