Comics & Graphic Novels

This unique comic by Milton Knight illuminates the early years of C.L.R. James (1901–1989), known in much later years as the “last great Pan-Africanist.” The son of a provincial school administrator in British-governed Trinidad, James disappointed his family by embracing the culture and passions of the colonial underclass, Carnival and cricket. He joined the literary avant-garde of the island before leaving for Britain. In the UK, James swiftly became a beloved cricket journalist, playwright for his close friend Paul Robeson, and a pathbreaking scholar of black history with The Black Jacobins (1938), the first history of the Haitian revolt.

The artistic skills of Milton Knight, at once acute and provocative, bring out James’s unique personality, how it arose, and how he became a world figure.

Palestinian political cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh has gained renown worldwide for his stark black-and-white drawings that express the numerous abuses and losses that his countrymen suffer under Israel’s occupation and celebrate their popular resistance. This collection includes 180 of Sabaaneh’s best cartoons, including some depicting the privations he and other Palestinian political prisoners have suffered in Israel’s many prisons. This book offers profound insights into the political and social struggles facing the Palestinian people and a pointed critique of the inaction or complicity of the “international community.” Veteran graphic artist Seth Tobocman contributes a foreword.

Palestinian political cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh has gained renown worldwide for his stark black-and-white drawings that express the numerous abuses and losses that his countrymen suffer under Israel’s occupation and celebrate their popular resistance. This collection includes 180 of Sabaaneh’s best cartoons, including some depicting the privations he and other Palestinian political prisoners have suffered in Israel’s many prisons. This book offers profound insights into the political and social struggles facing the Palestinian people and a pointed critique of the inaction or complicity of the “international community.” Veteran graphic artist Seth Tobocman contributes a foreword.

Baddawi explores the childhood of the author’s father from a determinedly boy’s-eye view as he witnesses the world crumbling around him and attempts to carry on, forging his own path in the midst of terrible uncertainty. Ahmed was raised in the refugee camp of Baddawi in northern Lebanon, one of many thousands of children born to Palestinians who fled (or were expelled from) their homeland during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Ahmad’s dogged pursuit of education and opportunity echoes the journey of the Palestinian people, as they make the best of their existing circumstances while remaining determined to one day return to their homeland.

Anarchy in the Big Easy is an anarchist graphic history of the quest for freedom in radical and revolutionary New Orleans.

The story begins with the anarchic forces of nature creating the land and the cooperative indigenous communities that thrived before the European conquest. Next we see the revolt against domination through the Enslaved Peoples’ Uprising of 1811, the rise of maroon communities, the work of figures such as anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus and utopian revolutionary Joseph Déjacque, and the moving history of labor militancy—exemplified by the First International, the General Strike of 1892, and the rise of the Industrial Workers of the World. The anarchic aspects of jazz are explored, including its birthplace, the famous red-light district of Storyville. Other episodes recount the history of the Black Panthers, including the legendary shootout in the Desire Project, and the important role anarchists played in the grassroots recovery after Hurricane Katrina. The often-subversive People’s Carnival is depicted, from the history of the Mardi Gras Indians through today’s anarchist marching Krewes. The book concludes with the recent struggle to take down the confederate monuments, and the growth of a decentralized, autonomous mutual aid movement.

These stories are recounted by surregionalist writer Max Cafard and brought vividly to life through the striking images of comix artist Vulpes.

Down by Law: Criminalization, Solidarity, and Survival in Europe is a collaborative graphic novel by ethnographers, artists, and activists that starkly and honestly illuminates people’s stories of those whose lives have been shaped by the social and political implications of criminalization across Europe.

The near-total ban on abortion in Poland, new hate speech laws across Europe, a de facto ban of sea rescue in the Mediterranean, and the criminalization of sex work—these trends toward a harsher politics of criminalization, securitization, and threat are spreading throughout the continent. In eight moving, illustrated vignettes, readers encounter everyday people involved in search-and-rescue activism, sex work, internet content moderation, abortion activism, drug use. We set sail with civilians who take action to save the lives of migrants at sea who face increasingly militarized borders, follow the journey of a woman jailed for a bus fare she couldn’t pay, see the impact of state neglect and violence on people who use drugs in Poland, and follow a migrant woman navigating the challenges of sex work policing who finds resilience in her community, and more.

These ethnographic stories not only bring to life alarming insights into criminalization across Europe but the hope and solidarity of everyday people in the face of increasing repression. The criminalized don’t stay put. They adapt, resist, and survive. Their personal stories are rarely seen or heard, until now.

With contributions from Agata Chełstowska, Agata Dziuban, Aleksandra “Sasza” Stachowska, Asia Bordowa, Beate Binder, Friederike Faust, Florian Krynicki, Carmen Grimm, H-P Lehkonen, Janita-Marja Juvonen, Jan Peukert, Jérémy Geeraert, Joris Bas Backer, Justyna Struzik, Juulia Kela, Katarzyna Urbaniak, Monique Horstmann, Salla Sariola, Sylvain Adam, Todd Sekuler, Valerie Assmann.

In the early-20th century, strikes and union battles were common in industrial centers throughout the US. But nothing compared to the class warfare of the West Virginia Mine Wars. The origins of this protracted rebellion were in the dictatorial rule of the coal companies over the proud, multi-racial, immigrant and native-born miners of Appalachia.

Our illustrated history begins with Mary Harris “Mother” Jones's arrival at the turn of the century. White-haired, matronly, and fiercely socialist, Jones became known as the “miners’ angel,” and helped turn the fledgling United Mine Workers into the nation’s most powerful labor union. “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” was her famous battle cry.

In 1912, miners led by stubborn Frank Keeney struck against harsh conditions in the work camps of Paint and Cabin Creeks. Coal operators responded by enlisting violent Baldwin-Felts guards. The ensuing battles and murderous events caused the governor to declare and execute martial law on a scale unprecedented in the US.

On May 19, 1920, in response to evictions by coal company agents, gunshots rang through the streets of a small-town in “Bloody Mingo” county. In an event soon known as the “Matewan Massacre”; the pro-union, quick-draw chief of police Smilin’ Sid Hatfield became an unexpected celebrity—but also a marked man.

Events climax with the dramatic Battle of Blair Mountain that pitched the spontaneous Red Neck Army of 10,000 armed strikers against a paid army of gun thugs in the largest labor uprising in US history and the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War.

This graphic interpretation of people’s history features unforgettable main characters while also displaying the diverse rank and file workers who stood in solidarity during this struggle.

Addicted to War takes on the most active, powerful, and destructive military in the world.

Hard-hitting, carefully documented and heavily illustrated, it reveals why the United States has been involved in more wars in recent years than any other country. Read Addicted to War to find out who benefits from these military adventures, who pays and who dies. Over 450,000 copies of the previous editions are in print.

This edition is substantially reworked and fully updated including Barack Obama's drone wars, Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks, statistics on military spending, and the ongoing costs and consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Before the Golden Age of comic books, there was Mr. Block: a bumbling, boss-loving, anti-union blockhead, brought to life over a hundred years ago by subversive cartoonist Ernest Riebe.

A dedicated labour activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Riebe dreamed up his iconic, union-hating anti-hero to satirize conservative workers’ faith in the capitalist system that exploits them. This wickedly funny anthology of Riebe’s writings and comics is a treasure trove of radical 20th-century art and an essential addition to the bookshelves of comics lovers, historians, and labour activists alike.

As income inequality skyrockets and the collective power of the working class is undermined, the lessons from Mr. Block’s misadventures and misbeliefs are as relevant today as ever. Building the new world from the ashes of the old demands many tools—and laughter will always be one of them.

Before the Golden Age of comic books, there was Mr. Block: a bumbling, boss-loving, anti-union blockhead, brought to life over a hundred years ago by subversive cartoonist Ernest Riebe.

A dedicated labour activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Riebe dreamed up his iconic, union-hating anti-hero to satirize conservative workers’ faith in the capitalist system that exploits them. This wickedly funny anthology of Riebe’s writings and comics is a treasure trove of radical 20th-century art and an essential addition to the bookshelves of comics lovers, historians, and labour activists alike.

As income inequality skyrockets and the collective power of the working class is undermined, the lessons from Mr. Block’s misadventures and misbeliefs are as relevant today as ever. Building the new world from the ashes of the old demands many tools—and laughter will always be one of them.

The Cargo Rebellion tells a true story of mutiny on the high seas in which four hundred indentured Chinese men overthrew their captor, the Connecticut businessman and slave trader Leslie Bryson, taking a stand against an exploitative global enterprise.

The laborers learned that Bryson’s claimed destination of San Francisco was a lie to trick them into deadly servitude in the dreaded guano islands of Peru. Reaching a dramatic tipping point, the mutineers rose up and killed Bryson and several of the ship's officers and then attempted to sail back to China.

This book's centerpiece, a deft graphic account of the rebellion in the context of the “coolie trade” and the struggle to end traffic in human “cargo,” is supported by essays that spotlight the rebellion itself, how the subject of indentured Asian workers is being taught in classrooms, and how Chinese workers shaped the evolution of American music, particularly in the making of the first drum set. The Cargo Rebellion is a history from below that does justice to the memory of hundreds of thousands of indentured workers and demonstrates how Asian migration to the Americas was rooted in slavery, colonialism, and the life-and-death struggle against servitude.

In the summer of 2012 the Kurdish people of northern Syria set out to create a multiethnic society in the Middle East. Persecuted for much of the 20th century, they dared to try to overcome social fragmentation by affirming social solidarity among all the region’s ethnic and religious peoples. As Syria plunged into civil war, the Kurds and their Arab and Assyrian allies established a self-governing polity that was not only multiethnic but democratic. And women were not only permitted but encouraged to participate in all social roles alongside men, including political and military roles.

To implement these goals, Rojava wanted to live in peace with its neighbors. Instead, it soon faced invasion by ISIS, a force that was in every way its opposite. ISIS attacked its neighbors in Iraq and Syria, imposing theocratic, tyrannical, femicidal rule on them. Those who might have resisted fled in terror. But when ISIS attacked the mostly Kurdish city of Kobane and overran much of it, the YPG and YPJ, or people's militias, declined to flee. Instead they resisted, and several countries, seeing their valiant resistance, formed an international coalition to assist them militarily. While the YPG and YPJ fought on the ground, the coalition coordinated airstrikes with them. They liberated village after village and in March 2019 captured ISIS’s last territory in Syria.

Around that time, two UK-based filmmakers invited the author to spend a month in Rojava making a film. She accepted, and arrived to explore the society and interview people. During that month, she explored how the revolution had progressed and especially the effects of the war on the society. She found that the war had reinforced social solidarity and welded together the multiethnic, gender-liberated society. As one man in Kobane told her, “Our blood got mixed.”

Founded in 1979 by Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper, World War 3 Illustrated is a labor of love run by a collective of artists (both first-timers and established professionals) and political activists working with the unified goal of creating a home for political comics, graphics, and stirring personal stories. Their confrontational comics shine a little reality on the fantasy world of the American kleptocracy, and have inspired the developing popularity and recognition of comics as a respected art form.

This full-color retrospective exhibition is arranged thematically, including housing rights, feminism, environmental issues, religion, police brutality, globalization, and depictions of conflicts from the Middle East to the Midwest. World War 3 Illustrated isn’t about a war that may happen; it’s about the ongoing wars being waged around the world and on our very own doorsteps. World War 3 Illustrated also illuminates the war we wage on each other—and sometimes the one taking place in our own minds. World War 3 artists have been covering the topics that matter for over 30 years, and they’re just getting warmed up.

Contributors include Sue Coe, Eric Drooker, Fly, Sandy Jimenez, Sabrina Jones, Peter Kuper, Mac McGill, Kevin Pyle, Spain Rodriguez, Nicole Schulman, Seth Tobocman, Susan Willmarth, and dozens more.

Wildcat Anarchist Comics collects the drawings of Donald Rooum, mostly (but by no means entirely) from the long-running “Wildcat” cartoon series that has been published in Freedom newspaper since 1980. Rooum does not just purvey jokes but makes the drawings comical in themselves, “getting the humour in the line,” provoking laughter even in those who do not read the captions or speech balloons.

The chief characters in the strip are the Revolting Pussycat, a short-fused anarchist who is furious and shouty; and the Free-Range Egghead, an intellectual who would like anarchism to be respectable but sometimes appears foolish. Governments, bosses, and authoritarians are presented as buffoons, and quite often so are anarchists. This thoughtful and delightful collection includes strips from The Skeptic and many more, all beautifully colored for the first time by Jayne Clementson.

The book also includes a lively autobiographical introduction that discusses Rooum’s role in the 1963 “Challenor case,” in which a corrupt police officer planted a weapon on Rooum at a demonstration, ultimately resulting in Rooum’s acquittal.

Actions speak louder than words.

It’s said that the flutter of insect wings in the Indian Ocean can send a hurricane crashing against the shores of the American Northeast. It’s this premise that lies at the core of The System, a wordless graphic novel created and fully painted by award-winning illustrator Peter Kuper. From the subway system to the solar system, human lives are linked by an endless array of interconnecting threads. They tie each of us to our world and it to the universe. If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, get ready to run for cover!

A sleazy stockbroker is lining his pockets. A corrupt cop is shaking down drug dealers. A mercenary bomber is setting the timer. A serial killer is stalking strippers. A political scandal is about to explode. The planet is burning. And nobody’s talking.

Told without captions or dialogue, The System is an astonishing progression of vivid imagery, each brilliantly executed panel containing a wealth of information, with layer upon layer forming a vast and intricate tour of an ominous world of coincidences and consequences.

“Underground comix,” an artistic expression of rambunctious rebellion in the Vietnam War era, were exploding in 1969 when Radical America, a journal affiliated with Students for a Democratic Society, published a memorable comic art edition. Its principal artist and editor, Gilbert Shelton, whose Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers would be enjoyed in many editions across the world, brought to the project his Texas pals Frank Stack and Jack Jackson. Also on hand, among others, were Chicago comics innovators Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson. Together, these and other contributors issued a veritable artistic manifesto: a new vernacular art had arrived!

A half century after its original appearance, Radical America Komiks retains its rebellious spirit and its rollicking humor. Dopey but also militantly antimilitarist, the comics in this reprinted volume speak to the ideas, sentiments, and artistic experiments of a generation.

Longtime underground artist Jay Kinney, coeditor of the satirical series Young Lust and Anarchy Comics, adds a foreword, and Radical America editor Paul Buhle offers an extensive introduction to the saga of comic art, radical and otherwise.

Freedom Shall Prevail is the first graphic novel exploring the life and struggle of Abdullah Öcalan, affectionately known as “Apo.”

Highly regarded around the world, Öcalan led the Kurdish freedom struggle as the head of the PKK from its foundation in 1978 until his abduction by the Turkish state in 1999. He has, so far, spent twenty-five years in captivity. In this graphic novel we learn, in his own words, what Öcalan’s childhood was like in the partially Kurdish areas of Eastern Turkey and how his political awareness and commitment grew as a student in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Through the personal struggle of Öcalan we also see the terrible devastation that Kurdish people have suffered and learn about the tumultuous and dramatic history of the relationship between the Kurds and the Turkish state.

The book also dives into the theories developed by Öcalan that continue to influence the ongoing struggle today. Expanding on these, the second part of the book gives us a wider consideration of the issues and policies around women's freedom, democratic confederalism and paints an inspiring picture of one of the most impressive attempts to build a genuinely grassroots democratic system anywhere in the world. The struggle going on in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava, is one that is directly combating gender and racial discrimination and the abuses of the capitalist economic system—in truly interconnected ways.

This wonderfully illustrated graphic novel is a collaboration between award-winning Scottish writer Sean Michael Wilson and Kurdish artist Keko, with backing and research help from Peace in Kurdistan Campaign and the International Initiative “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan—Peace in Kurdistan,” groups with long term and impassioned commitment to the cause of Öcalan and the Kurdish people’s freedom.

His life belonged to him, only. His books belonged to the public.

B. Traven: Portrait of a Famous Unknown is a graphic biography that tells the larger-than-life story of the German revolutionary, actor, and writer known as B. Traven (1882–1969). Despite his commercial success as a best-selling writer, Traven managed to keep his identity a secret during his lifetime. It is now generally accepted that Traven was in fact “Ret Marut” (another psudonym), a German stage actor and editor of an anarchist newspaper in Germany called Der Ziegelbrenner (The Brickburner). As Marut he was a major participant in the short-lived Bavarian Council Republic of 1919–20. Barely escaping execution, he fled Germany and lived incognito for the remainder of his life. His entire literary work, a great commercial success in its day, combines lively and often humorous storytelling with radical critique of capitalism and nationalism. His best-known work, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, from 1927, was adapted for film in 1948 by John Huston.

Golo’s account of Traven’s life, rendered with stunning artwork, begins and ends with his ashes being dropped from a plane over the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas, Mexico, just a quarter century before the explosive uprising of the Zapatistas seemed to echo his deepest wishes.

Freedom Shall Prevail is the first graphic novel exploring the life and struggle of Abdullah Öcalan, affectionately known as “Apo.”

Highly regarded around the world, Öcalan led the Kurdish freedom struggle as the head of the PKK from its foundation in 1978 until his abduction by the Turkish state in 1999. He has, so far, spent twenty-five years in captivity. In this graphic novel we learn, in his own words, what Öcalan’s childhood was like in the partially Kurdish areas of Eastern Turkey and how his political awareness and commitment grew as a student in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Through the personal struggle of Öcalan we also see the terrible devastation that Kurdish people have suffered and learn about the tumultuous and dramatic history of the relationship between the Kurds and the Turkish state.

The book also dives into the theories developed by Öcalan that continue to influence the ongoing struggle today. Expanding on these, the second part of the book gives us a wider consideration of the issues and policies around women's freedom, democratic confederalism and paints an inspiring picture of one of the most impressive attempts to build a genuinely grassroots democratic system anywhere in the world. The struggle going on in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava, is one that is directly combating gender and racial discrimination and the abuses of the capitalist economic system—in truly interconnected ways.

This wonderfully illustrated graphic novel is a collaboration between award-winning Scottish writer Sean Michael Wilson and Kurdish artist Keko, with backing and research help from Peace in Kurdistan Campaign and the International Initiative “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan—Peace in Kurdistan,” groups with long term and impassioned commitment to the cause of Öcalan and the Kurdish people’s freedom.

Consisting of ten collaborative picture-essays that weave Cindy Milstein’s poetic words within Erik Ruin’s intricate yet bold paper-cut and scratch-board images, Paths toward Utopia suggests some of the here-and-now practices that prefigure, however imperfectly, the self-organization that would be commonplace in an egalitarian society. The book mines what we do in our daily lives for the already-existent gems of a freer future—premised on anarchistic ethics like cooperation and direct democracy. Its pages depict everything from seemingly ordinary activities like using parks as our commons to grandiose occupations of public space that construct do-it-ourselves communities, if only temporarily, including pieces such as “The Gift,” “Borrowing from the Library,” “Solidarity Is a Pizza,” and “Waking to Revolution.” The aim is to supply hints of what it routinely would be like to live, every day, in a world created from below, where coercion and hierarchy are largely vestiges of the past.

Paths toward Utopia is not a rosy-eyed stroll, though. The book retains the tensions in present-day attempts to “model” horizontal institutions and relationships of mutual aid under increasingly vertical, exploitative, and alienated conditions. It tries to walk the line between potholes and potential. Yet if anarchist and other autonomist efforts are to serve as a clarion call to action, they must illuminate how people qualitatively, consensually, and ecologically shape their needs as well as desires. They must offer stepping-stones toward emancipation. This can only happen through experimentation, by us all, with diverse forms of self-determination and self-governance, even if riddled with contradictions in this contemporary moment. As the title piece to this book steadfastly asserts, “The precarious passage itself is our road map to a liberatory society.”

Escaping slavery in the Americas, maroons made miracles in the mountains, summoned new societies in the swamps, and forged new freedoms in the forests. They didn’t just escape and steal from plantations—they also planted and harvested polycultures. They not only fought slavery but proved its opposite, and for generations they defended it with blood and brilliance.

Maroon Comix is a fire on the mountain where maroon words and images meet to tell stories together. Stories of escape and homecoming, exile and belonging. Stories that converge on the summits of the human spirit, where the most dreadful degradation is overcome by the most daring dignity. Stories of the damned who consecrate their own salvation.

With selections and citations from the writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz, Herbert Aptheker, C.L.R. James, and many more, accompanied by comics and illustrations from Songe Riddle, Mac McGill, Seth Tobocman, and others, Maroon Comix is an invitation to never go back, to join hands and hearts across space and time with the maroons and the mountains that await their return.

Executed by a British firing squad on May 12, 1916, for his role in organizing the Easter Rising, James Connolly was one of the most prominent radical organizers and agitators of his day. Born in Scotland in 1868 to Irish immigrant parents, Connolly spent most of his adult life organizing for labor unions and socialist organizations in Ireland, Scotland, and the United States. Despite attending school for only a few years, Connolly became a leading socialist writer and theoretician, founding and editing newspapers including The Socialist (Scotland), The Harp (United States), and The Workers’ Republic (Ireland). As a labor organizer, Connolly stressed the importance of direct action, broad working-class unity, and a commitment to ending labor’s exploitation. As a socialist agitator, Connolly saw economic and political independence as inextricably intertwined. This pamphlet, the first graphic treatment of Connolly’s life, is issued on the centenary of the Easter Rising.

A declaration of love to Peter Kuper’s adoptive city, where he has lived since 1977, this diary is a vibrant survey of New York City’s history. Kuper’s illustrations depict a climb to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, the homeless living in Times Square, roller skaters in Central Park, the impact of September 11, the luxury of Wall Street, street musicians, and other scenes unique to the city. With comics, illustrations, and sketches, this work of art portrays everything from the low life to the high energy that has long made people from around the world flock to the Big Apple.

Drawn to New York is a reflection of one artist’s thirty-four years on twelve miles of island with eight million people in a city whose story is ever being written.

Painting a vivid, personal portrait of social and political upheaval in Oaxaca, Mexico, this unique memoir employs comics, bilingual essays, photos, and sketches to chronicle the events that unfolded around a teachers' strike and led to a seven-month siege.

When award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper and his wife and daughter moved to the beautiful 16th-century colonial town of Oaxaca in 2006, they planned to spend a quiet year or two enjoying a different culture and taking a break from the U.S. political climate under the Bush administration. What they hadn't counted on was landing in the epicenter of Mexico's biggest political struggle in recent years. Timely and compelling, this extraordinary firsthand account presents a distinct artistic vision of Oaxacan life, from explorations of the beauty of the environment to graphic portrayals of the fight between strikers and government troops that left more than twenty people dead, including American journalist Brad Will.

This expanded paperback edition includes 32 pages of new material.

Drawn by South African political cartoonists the Trantraal brothers and Ashley Marais, Crossroads: I Live Where I Like is a graphic nonfiction history of women-led movements at the forefront of the struggle for land, housing, water, education, and safety in Cape Town over half a century. Drawing on over sixty life narratives, it tells the story of women who built and defended Crossroads, the only informal settlement that successfully resisted the apartheid bulldozers in Cape Town. The story follows women’s organized resistance from the peak of apartheid in the 1970s to ongoing struggles for decent shelter today. Importantly, this account was workshopped with contemporary housing activists and women’s collectives who chose the most urgent and ongoing themes they felt spoke to and clarified challenges against segregation, racism, violence, and patriarchy standing between the legacy of the colonial and apartheid past and a future of freedom still being fought for.

Presenting dramatic visual representations of many personalities and moments in the daily life of this township, the book presents a thoughtful and thorough chronology, using archival newspapers, posters, photography, pamphlets, and newsletters to further illustrate the significance of the struggles at Crossroads for the rest of the city and beyond. This collaboration has produced a beautiful, captivating, accessible, forgotten, and in many ways uncomfortable history of Cape Town that has yet to be acknowledged.

Crossroads: I Live Where I Like raises questions critical to the reproduction of segregation and to gender and generational dynamics of collective organizing, to ongoing anticolonial struggles and struggles for the commons, and to new approaches to social history and creative approaches to activist archives.

Finally available for the first time in a single book format, Abolish Work combines two influential and well-circulated pamphlets written from the frontlines of the class war. The texts from the anonymous workers at Prole.info offer cutting-edge class analysis and critiques of daily life accompanied by uncensored, innovative illustrations.

Moving from personal thoughts and interactions to large-scale political and economic forces, Abolish Work reads alternately like a worker’s diary, a short story, a psychology of everyday life, a historical account, and an angry flyer someone would pass you on the street.

The classic “Abolish Restaurants” is an illustrated guide to the daily misery, stress, boredom, and alienation of restaurant work, as well as the ways in which restaurant workers fight against it. Drawing on a range of anti-capitalist ideas as well as a heaping plate of personal experience, it is part analysis and part call-to-arms. An additional piece, “Work, Community, Politics, War” is a comic book introduction to modern society, identifying both the oppressive and subversive tendencies that exist today in order to completely remake society.

Glyph Award winner Juliana “Jewels” Smith and illustrator Ronald Nelson have created an unflinching visual and literary tour-de-force on the most pressing issues of the day— including gentrification, police violence, and the housing crisis—with humor and biting satire. (H)afrocentric tackles racism, patriarchy, and popular culture head-on. Unapologetic and unabashed, (H)afrocentric introduces us to strong yet vulnerable students of color, as well as an aesthetic that connects current Black pop culture to an organic reappropriation of hip hop fashion circa the early 90s.

We start the journey when gentrification strikes the neighborhood surrounding Ronald Reagan University. Naima Pepper recruits a group of disgruntled undergrads of color to combat the onslaught by creating and launching the first and only anti-gentrification social networking site, mydiaspora.com. The motley crew is poised to fight back against expensive avocado toast, muted Prius cars, exorbitant rent, and cultural appropriation.

Whether Naima and the gang are transforming social media, leading protests, fighting rent hikes, or working as “Racial Translators,” the students at Ronald Reagan University take movements to a new level by combining their tech-savvy, Black Millennial sensibilities with their individual backgrounds, goals, and aspirations.

The year is 1923. The Ku Klux Klan is at the height of its power in the US as membership swells into the millions and they expand beyond their original southern borders. As they grow, so do their targets. As they continue their campaigns of terror against African Americans, their list now includes Catholics and Jews, southern and eastern Europeans, all in the name of “white supremacy.” But they are no longer considered a terrorist organization. By adding the messages of moral decency, family values, and temperance, the Klan has slapped on a thin veneer of respectability and has become a “civic organization,” attracting ordinary citizens, law enforcement, and politicians to their particular brand of white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant “Americanism.”

Pennsylvania enthusiastically joined that wave. That was when the Grand Dragon of Pennsylvania decided to display the Klan’s newfound power in a show of force. He chose a small town outside of Pittsburgh named after Andrew Carnegie; a small, unassuming borough full of “Catholics and Jews,” the perfect place to teach these immigrants “a lesson.” Some thirty thousand members of the Klan gathered from as far as Kentucky for “Karnegie Day.” After initiating new members, they armed themselves with torches and guns to descend upon the town to show them exactly what Americanism was all about.

The Day the Klan Came to Town is a fictionalized retelling of the riot, focusing on a Sicilian immigrant, Primo Salerno. He is not a leader; he’s a man with a troubled past. He was pulled from the sulfur mines of Sicily as a teen to fight in the First World War. Afterward, he became the focus of a local fascist and was forced to emigrate to the United States. He doesn’t want to fight but feels that he may have no choice. The entire town needs him—and indeed everybody—to make a stand.

Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection brings together the legendary four issues of Anarchy Comics (1978–1986), the underground comic that melded anarchist politics with a punk sensibility, producing a riveting mix of satire, revolt, and artistic experimentation. This international anthology collects the comic stories of all thirty contributors from the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, and Canada.

In addition to the complete issues of Anarchy Comics, the anthology features previously unpublished work by Jay Kinney and Sharon Rudahl, along with a detailed introduction by Kinney, which traces the history of the comic he founded and provides entertaining anecdotes about the process of herding an international crowd of anarchistic cats.

Contributors include: Jay Kinney, Yves Frémion, Gerhard Seyfried, Sharon Rudahl, Steve Stiles, Donald Rooum, Paul Mavrides, Adam Cornford, Spain Rodriguez, Melinda Gebbie, Gilbert Shelton, Volny, John Burnham, Cliff Harper, Ruby Ray, Peter Pontiac, Marcel Trublin, Albo Helm, Steve Lafler, Gary Panter, Greg Irons, Dave Lester, Marion Lydebrooke, Matt Feazell, Pepe Moreno, Norman Dog, Zorca, R. Diggs (Harry Driggs), Harry Robins, and Byron Werner.

A 60-page illustrated guide to the daily misery, stress, boredom, and alienation of restaurant work, as well as the ways restaurant workers fight against it. Drawing on a range of anticapitalist ideas as well as a heaping plate of personal experience, it is part analysis and part call-to-arms.