Abrams ComicArts will publish Derf Backderf’s next graphic novel, The Dissidents, in September. The creator of My Friend Dahmer and Kent State said the new project is “a story about autocrats, vigilantes, communists…. and cartoonists.”
Set in the early 1900s, the graphic novel features an America that’s teetering on the edge of chaos under President Woodrow Wilson. Amid rising racism, economic inequality, labor unrest, political extremism and looming war, a group of real-life political cartoonists at The Masses, including Art Young, Boardman Robinson and Cornelia Barns, use their art to challenge corruption and defend free speech. When the government charges the artists with sedition for daring to document the truth, they face prison, exile and execution.
“It’s the era when modern comics are born,” Backderf said on BlueSky. “The daily comics page has just been invented, as have animated cartoons. Comics are suddenly everywhere and quickly become a national obsession. Renowned cartoonists are celebrities, on par with the first generation of film stars.”
Here’s the full description from Abrams:
From the award-winning author of My Friend Dahmer and Kent State comes a timely graphic novel about racism, violence, and political turmoil in the early 20th century, when a handful of cartoonists and journalists pushed back against a corrupt administration to defend the rights of free speech
It’s 1916. President Woodrow Wilson—a deeply divisive authoritarian who is also a white supremacist with open contempt for constitutional rights—sits in the Oval Office. Racial tensions, unprecedented economic inequality, a groundswell of support for unionization, and the rise of both a reactionary far right militia and a growing radical opposition shake the very foundations of American society. A pandemic is two years away. And the 1900s have only just gotten started.
The Dissidents follows a group of real and influential political cartoonists who worked for the magazine The Masses—Art Young, Boardman Robinson, Cornelia Barns, and others, dominant in their day but now forgotten—as well as a fictional young German immigrant from Cleveland, Joe Hertle, who has come to New York to make his name. They rub elbows with the great opposition voices of the day, such as journalists Max Eastman and John Reed, and the radical provocateur Emma Goldman. What they document in their cartoons and illustrations is a country spiraling into darkness, under attack by German saboteurs and private militias, plagued by racism, and rocked by class war. For the crime of documenting the times they live in, these cartoonists are indicted for sedition and put on trial by the U.S. government—with twenty-year sentences hanging over their heads. Two others are forced to flee the country into exile. Another is incarcerated by the U.S. army and scheduled for execution!
The Dissidents will arrive in stores Sept. 15.