The Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook

Lubchansky, a cartoonist and editor at The Nib, reveals the secrets of left-wing protest groups with tongue held firmly in cheek, starting from the premise, “What if everything the right thought about the left was real?” It turns out activists only pretend to spend most of their time in boring meetings; a flyer for homemade kombucha hides the button to access their secret lair, where the President of Antifa oversees the construction of cyborg super-soldiers. The clashes between protestors and police build to a showdown between Antifa super-soldier Max Marx and Sgt. O’Shea, a cop enhanced with state-of-the-art police weaponry. In the end both sides come off as similarly awful, muddying the satirical message. Lubchansky’s thickly inked, boldly colored artwork keeps the visuals as broadly cartoonish as the plot, ensuring that even while dipping into real issues of police violence and free speech, nothing gets too serious. Some of the in-jokes may fly over the heads of less meme-aware readers, such as references to concrete milkshakes or the can of soup Max wields while warning, “Prepare to be... deplatformed.” All in all, the concept is just substantial enough to sustain a 60-page comic—fortunately, that’s exactly what this delivers. [em](Apr.) [/em]