344 pgs. color | $29.99 hardcover
Karl Marx famously began The Communist Manifesto from 1848 with the line, “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.” Marx intentionally used this ghostly imagery as a metaphorical call-to-arms aimed to rabble-rouse the proletariat masses to break free from the chains of the oppressive bourgeoisie class. Unfortunately, as his economic theory grew in popularity among the workers during the industrial revolution, the ruling minority soon reverse engineered this aberrational communist bogeyman to be less a mascot for unionized workers and more an attack on the foundations of “polite” capitalist society. This red scare hysteria is explored in meticulous detail in acclaimed cartoonist Derf’s newest graphic novel The Dissidents: Autocrats! Vigilantes! Communists! And Cartoonists!.
In The Dissidents, Derf tells the true story of a group of political cartoonists and writers located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City who published a socialist magazine called The Masses from 1911 until 1917. As the United States prepared to enter World War I in April of 1917, The Masses was targeted by the U.S. government with red scare tactics, wartime mailing regulations, tiresome and costly court trials, and even some vigilante violence. All combined, this ultimately shuttered the radical pamphlet and left many of its contributors either jailed, exiled or broke. Derf presents this story as a thoroughly researched history of The Masses and its successor magazine, The Liberator, as well as his personal love letter to political cartoons, and an ominous warning of history repeating itself.
Derf is no stranger to political cartooning. He started his career as political cartoonist in the Ohio State Lantern for his alma mater Ohio State University, then eventually began publishing his weekly comic strip The City that was syndicated in local alternative newspapers all over the country in the ’90s. (St. Louis readers of the now-defunct alt-weekly the Riverfront Times will likely remember The City fondly.) Derf broke into mainstream popularity with his 2012 graphic novel My Friend Dahmer, an autobiography focusing on his teenage friendship with notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, which was eventually adapted into a major Hollywood film. The Dissidents most resembles his 2020 nonfiction graphic novel Kent State, which focuses on the shooting that left four student anti-war protesters dead after being gunned down on campus by the Ohio National Guard in 1970. Unlike this event, known as the “Kent State massacre” – is there a baby boomer alive that doesn’t know this story through the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song? – the saga of the persecution of the political cartoonists of The Masses is mostly lost to anyone other than hardcore political cartoon collectors and socialist scholars. Luckily, Derf is a bit of both and has taken the time with this book to reveal the story of his unsung heroes.
There is no single central character in The Dissidents, so Derf inserts himself as a fictional pseudo-surrogate named Joe Hertle (an amalgamation of his personal experiences as a political cartoonist and his own immigrant grandmother’s experience in America) who helps focus the narrative. Joe Hertle is an aspiring political cartoonist that lives in the Akron/Cleveland area of Ohio. “The articles and cartoons in The Masses have opened my eyes to so many ideas,” he explains. “The Masses has made me question everything I was taught and once believed.” Inspired, Joe decides to attend a rally for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also commonly known as the Wobblies. Its leader “Big Bill” Haywood, an orator who passionately calls out the massive absurdities of class inequity (his ire focused on oil baron, John D. Rockefeller becoming the world’s first billionaire in 1916) attracts the attention of the police and a motley crew of hired thugs. The IWW event is violently broken up, and Joe is caught in the crossfire, leaving him with an amputated leg and a chip on his shoulder.
After this tragic preamble, Joe decides to relocate to Greenwich Village. He works in the Art Department at The New York World, but he really hopes to submit his comics to The Masses. Here Derf introduces us to all the real major players of the magazine. He divides his story evenly among all the bohemian contributors of The Masses, but editor Max Eastman and cartoonist Art Young are largely spotlighted, especially when the group is put on trial for their leftist beliefs. The third major player is Robert Minor, an anarchist cartoonist that acts as a B-plot in this story documenting the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the later Bolshevik civil war (Minor was notably once a very popular cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as well).
One of the major highlights of The Dissidents is that Derf has painstakingly reprinted many of the political cartoons that originally appeared in The Masses, taken from either his personal collection or from archival sources like the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Columbus, Ohio (a must-visit for any serious comic book fan). Here The Dissidents almost resembles a trip to a museum where the text on the page is equivalent to a placard on the wall next to a painting giving you additional context about the process, historical insight, and interpretation of the piece. Derf has true reverence for the cartoons he chooses to include, detailing the important transition during this period to black crayon as the main tool to craft satire in newspaper comics near the turn of the century. His publisher, Abrams ComicArts, has done a fantastic job of reprinting full color The Masses and The Liberator covers on the front and back of the hardbound collection as well as an enticing collage of issues on the inner covers.
Derf’s own artwork can sometimes be slightly off-putting. His characters often have exaggerated, caricatured features, though somehow can also feel rather stiff. Some move through the panels like they’re goose-stepping, not out of ideology, but more so they just look somewhat rigid and inflexible. Still, Derf has a mastery of knowing exactly what to include to keep his story, ostensibly just about a socialist magazine, both visually entertaining and fluid for nearly 300 pages. There are no wasted panels. Moreover, put a Derf illustration in a lineup with 100 artists’ illustrations and you could immediately tell which one was created by Derf, which is really the ultimate compliment for any artist.
The Masses hit its limited circulation peak as the U.S. prepared to enter World War I in April of 1917. Soon President Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned on not entering the war, declared war against the Germans, initiated a mandatory draft for all males 21 to 30, and whipped up an anti-immigrant furor particularly against German-Americans, a.k.a. the “hyphenates.” Derf details the terror the U.S. inflicted on its own citizens in a sequence where members of The American Protective League, a vigilante group that amassed nearly 25,000 between 1917 and 1919, pour a bucket of urine on an immigrant saloon owner. The cocksure vigilante explains, “Our agents uncovered a nest of German spires that used this saloon as a meeting place.” The poor beaten mustachioed man replies, “I-I’m not German! I’m Dutch!” Derf explains in the appendixes that he pulls some of this history from his own German-American ancestors’ experiences, who lived in “hyphenates” neighborhoods that at the time primarily spoke their native language, not English. (For St. Louisans, think the Italian-American neighborhood The Hill where, miraculously, you can still pick up a locally-published Italian-language newspaper called il Pensiero since 1904!)
Unlike many other mainstream papers that complied with the war effort, the cartoonists at The Masses maintain a clear anti-war message in spite of President Wilson’s draft enlistments. This marks the beginning of the end for the magazine. Congress would go on to enact the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918; both essentially hamstrung The Masses from printing anything that would oppose the U.S. War effort. The contributors were brought to trial when the Government found “treasonable material” in the August 1917 issue and accused the magazine of “obstructing the recruiting and enlistment of the United States military.” Derf depicts two court trials, both of which find eccentric cartoonist Art Young sleeping through his own defense and ultimately end with juries unable to come to unanimous decisions causing a mistrial. Still, The Masses could not overcome the financial burden caused by the government’s case and had to end the magazine. Editor Max Eastman would go on to found The Liberator in 1918, which had many of the same contributors as The Masses, but Derf interjects that the magic of its predecessor, especially with regards to its political comics, was never fully replicated. Derf quotes the critic Irving Howe on the end of The Masses: “A slapdash gathering of energy, youth, and hope, The Masses was the rallying center for almost everything that was… alive and irreverent in American culture.”
Derf explains that the magazine’s mix of varying opinions and economic theories was what made The Masses exceptional. Through his surrogate character Joe Hertle, he pragmatically explores the anarchist philosophy of radical figure Emma Goldman. He contemplates, “I don’t fully grasp the theory of anarchy. There are no governments. No nations. No capitalism. No private ownership of farms or factories. The anarchists’ world is one of stateless collectives that all govern themselves, and peacefully ally with other collectives to share goods and skills. The reality of human nature of course, would see such a society quickly devolve into savagery, conquests, and slaughter.” Yet, he still embraces her as one of the central important leftist thinkers in this story. He also condemns the cartoonist Robert Minor, who spends much of the book in Russia during the Revolution of 1917. In the appendices, he writes, “Minor best represents the agony of the American radical left, turning a blind eye to Stalin’s genocide and brutal oppression, for the lofty dreams of Marxist theory. This unwavering support cost their movement much popularity among the American working class.” Derf certainly still has an admiration for Minor, as well as all the other characters he explores in The Dissidents, but he never presents their stories in the form of propaganda.
The release timing of The Dissidents could not be more fitting. Our current administration is run by a president that villainizes immigrants, launches unpopular wars, and when his poll numbers drop evokes the “spectre of communism” as the ultimate bogeyman to scare voters into sympathizing with the norms of the ruling class. Derf details essentially the same story happening just over a hundred years ago in The Dissidents, but revels in a time where the political cartoonist held enough sway to scare the powers that be so much that a tactical government effort was made to stop their voices from being heard – something not all that far from modern political satirists of our time like Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel being removed from broadcasting by an increasingly conservative government. Still, as a wave of democratic socialist candidates are on the ballot in the upcoming 2026 mid-term elections, a wave of class solidarity hope is in the air. Reading The Dissidents may be one of the best things you can do to prepare yourself to not repeat the red scares of the past, while also engaging in a new appreciation for the struggles of the forgotten political cartoonists that helped define our freedoms to speak and vote for something more unifying today. | Jon Osia Scorfina
You can find The Dissidents: Autocrats! Vigilantes! Communists! And Cartoonists! at your local comic shop or at the Abrams Books website.
