Comics & Graphic Novels

This gripping graphic novel tells the story of the 1891 Coal Creek War—one of the most significant yet overlooked labor and abolitionist uprisings in the history of the United States.

Told through the eyes of a young Welsh immigrant, Trouble! at Coal Creek is the epic story of a cross-racial struggle to abolish the system of convict-leasing in the mines. Austin Sauerbrei's evocative black-and-white illustrations and masterful storytelling show the personal battles and motivations that led thousands of miners to repeatedly take up arms against the powerful companies, their militias, and politicians.

Lured by coal companies’ promises of good pay, stability, and opportunity, the narrator’s father brought their family across the Atlantic Ocean for work in the mine. The job, however, was deadly, and life grew unbearable as the coal companies immiserated miners and their families. Meanwhile, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, racist terror, and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan were still fresh memories for most. Coal companies relied increasingly on the forced labor of mostly Black prisoners who were loaned out from the state, an extremely profitable continuation of the old system of racist brutality. As Ida B. Wells noted at the time, "The Convict Lease System and Lynch Law are twin infamies which flourish hand in hand."

The miners of Coal Creek, however, set fire to the edifice of convict-leasing and inspired similar rebellions throughout the South. In this captivating graphic novel, Saurbrei brings their overlooked story to life for new generations of organizers.

“…often remarkably judicious.” That’s what Peter Davison, the editor of George Orwell’s Complete Works, said in 1998 about these authors, Orwell for Beginners, contained in this volume 

No twentieth-century writer remains more vividly etched in the public imagination than George Orwell, thanks to Animal Farm and the unforgettable Nineteen Eighty-Four— and thanks, as well, to the persisting power of the logic-defying authoritarianism Orwell warned us about. George Orwell remains relevant because Big Brothers remain as brazen and truthless as ever. 

This book brings Orwell to life as never before. New discoveries—including a human rights manifesto coauthored with Bertrand Russell and Arthur Koestler—help us better understand the worldview behind the words. In part two of this book, Planet Orwell, Orwell’s manifesto appears here for the first time, along with a wealth of fresh biographical and literary insights.