Nine years ago today I woke-up, went on Facebook and discovered that my good friend Robert (Bob) Morales had died.

We met at VIBE magazine where he quickly became a running buddy. We went to the movies together, hung-out in bookstores and talked on the phone sometimes two or three times a day.

Bob was one of the smartest, funniest dudes I knew. He was also a wonderful writer of comics, prose and interviews who also had a much storied life that included having worked as an assistant to Samuel R. Delany, collaborating with Kyle Baker on various comic book projects including The Truth aka Black Captain America and Q&Aing everyone from Toni Morrison to Vanessa Del Rio, who he insisted that I meet when she came up to VIBE to pick-up some magazines.

I loved Bob like a brother and, though he had a mean streak and more than a few idiosyncrasies, was always nice to me and often gifted me with bags of used paperbacks, comic books and VHS/DVDs.

Bob turned me on to many writers and filmmakers, expanding my knowledge on these subjects considerably.

We had a few disagreements, the funniest being who was a better filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard (him) or François Truffaut (me):

You only say that, because you’re a sentimentalist.

…he screamed, sounding very new wave.

Considering all I’ve just written, I suppose he was right.