The Antifa Comic Book, Revised and Updated by Gord Hill
Vivid, compelling—and, more than ever, a must-read
Along with clouds of cigar smoke, the late film noir director Samuel Fuller liked to puff out advice on storytelling. Don’t over-explain, he counselled. “Two words: show it!”
And not just with fictional stories. Blunt, in-your-face images are a powerful way of getting history across. Which is the beauty, often a terrible beauty, of Gord Hill’s The Antifa Comic Book.
The first edition of Antifa, named for the global anti-fascist movements, came out in 2018. Hill has updated his comic book for 2025 to include recent episodes of right-wing terrorism. Example: the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Try, just try, not to cringe at Hill’s image of the mob breaking through the police to smash windows. The shining splinters of glass will seem about to hurtle off the page at you.
Hill also captures the ridiculous, like the Capitol rioter in a coonskin cap with long, sharp horns sticking out the sides. Terrorists know how to use ridiculous: they make what should be stupid-funny all the scarier for not being.
In Hill’s depiction of the January 2022 Canadian Freedom Convoy, you’ll flinch at the vaxx protester, face twisted in hatred, about to fist-slam a woman wearing a medical mask. And be ready to gag at the sight of noxious fumes roiling from the convoy trucks that drivers deliberately idled round the clock.
Unbothered by residents’ dismay at their presence, the convoy crowd enjoyed roasting huge slabs of meat on barbecues and jumping in bouncy play castles. Hey, terrorists just wanna have fun.
Illustrating the origins of fascism, Hill explains it’s “an ideology that promotes a strong, centralized state under the command of a supreme leader.” Hill’s image of a teeth-gritting, wild-eyed Adolf Hitler is supremely disturbing.
Hill also relates how Antifa began. In 1932, the German communist party formed Antifaschistische Aktion, or anti-Fascist Action, to counter growing Nazi power. “Organized as autonomous and decentralized groups,” he writes, “Antifa see it necessary to confront Fascists both ideologically and physically.” Extreme right-wingers’ response then and now? Mud-sling Antifa by portraying it as a communist threat.
Yet another of Hill’s vivid images shows bundled wooden sticks with an axe protruding. These were the fasces carried in Ancient Rome by bodyguards of magistrates. In the 1920s, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini revived the symbol to mean, essentially, obey Musso or get executed. Talk about sticking it to democracy.
Antifa’s literary antecedent is The Complete Maus (1996), by Art Spiegelman. Based on his father’s concentration-camp memories, Spiegelman depicted Nazi cats preying on Jewish mice. Like Maus, The Antifa Comic Book is a cautionary tale you won’t be able to put down.
This is not to suggest Maus and Antifa as replacements for traditional writings about fascism and the struggles against it. On the contrary, these books will likely encourage readers to find out more. One that comes to mind is American journalist William Shirer’s now-classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960).
I can attest to the power of comic-book-type images. It was a Bill Mauldin cartoon in the Chicago Sun-Times that inspired me to study 1960s American history in university. You’ve probably seen the ’toon: the U.S. Capitol statue of Abraham Lincoln weeping after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In a perfect Sam Fuller-type show-it moment, Abe is mourning what the world has lost—not only going into the 1960s but beyond, to our current parlous times. With you on that, Abe.
About the Author
An artist, author, political activist, and member of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation, Gord Hill has advocated for Indigenous people since 1988. He’s participated in numerous protests, blockades, rallies, and other movements. Previous books include The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book (Arsenal Pulp Press) and The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book (Arsenal Pulp Press).
The introduction is by Mark Bray, Assistant Teaching Professor in History at Rutgers University, and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House, 2017).
About the Reviewer
A Vancouver freelance writer/editor, Melanie Jackson is also the author of such middle-grade/young-adult suspensers as the Dinah Galloway Mystery Series (Orca). Other novels by Melanie include Medusa’s Scream, named by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre as a Best Book, 2018. CCBC also awarded Melanie a TD-CCBC Book Week touring-author award.
Book Details
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press, August 26, 2025
Language: English
Paperback: 8” x 10”/160 pages
ISBN: 978-1834050041
 | A guest post by
|