¡Brigadistas!

Ferguson recounts the story of American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War in this heroic if unsubtle historical comic. Jewish Brooklynite Abe Rubenoff—a composite of figures, but primarily inspired by Abraham Osheroff (1915–2008)—grows increasingly frustrated with watching his neighbors suffer amid the economic troubles of the 1930s. He flexes oratorical skill in arguing for communism while he and his friends undertake risky demonstration, and meets love-interest Caroline, a young Catholic woman connected to Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker House. Over Caroline’s objections, Abe joins some friends in traveling to Spain to fight fascism. They survive a shipwreck en route and join the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Lack of supplies stymies their efforts (Abe gets in a fistfight after stealing canned food from Ernest Hemingway, whom he meets in a bar), but they persevere. What they experience on the front lines, though, tests their resolve. Timmons’s artwork is an intentional homage to the realistic, clean lines of Golden Age comics, a good fit for Ferguson’s straightforward good guys story line, though the throwback propaganda feel may not wow contemporary art-comics readers looking for greater nuance. It will please lefty book groups, though, looking to rally around an accessible portrait of everyday superheroes. (Aug.)