In January, The Center for Cartoon Studies welcomed cartoonist Ben Passmore to campus. Passmore’s work engages political realities, identity, and systems of power while maintaining a deeply personal voice. He is an Ignatz and Eisner Award–winning cartoonist and the author of Your Black Friend and Other Strangers (Silver Sprocket, 2018), Sports Is Hell (Koyama Press, 2020), and, most recently, Black Arms to Hold You Up (Pantheon, 2025). He has self-published numerous mini-comic projects and illustrated the graphic novel BTTM FDRS, written by Ezra Clayton Daniels (Fantagraphics, 2019).
During his visit, Passmore gave an in-depth look at the making of Black Arms to Hold You Up, which The New York Times described as “Virtuosic… refreshing… Every element seems packed with meaning.” The book traces a century of Black insurrectionary movements in the United States, blending history with the personal — narrated in part by a character version of Passmore and his father — transforming historical research into something intimate, current, and urgent. Like the work we aspire to do at the Lab, Passmore’s work not only clarifies complex subject matter but also challenges formal boundaries, bringing together elements of creative nonfiction, journalism, and civic engagement within a single practice, as his lively presentation demonstrated.
