Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History

“In a new book, Students for a Democratic Society, Pekar and longtime collaborator Gary Dumm remember the definitive student revolutionaries of the 1960s in a gripping narrative that is one-half eulogy and one-half exposé.” —Gerry Canavan, Independent Weekly

“Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History will make old timers remember, discuss, argue and laugh, while the young will bubble with questions. For me, it brought back untold memories and induced visions of the next great wave of social activism!” —Michael James, JOIN/SDS organizer, founder of Rising Up Angry, and proprietor of Chicagos Heartland Cafe

“My own radical journey began with Mad Magazine, so it feels great that SDS should enter the culture of comic folklore thanks to Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle. May this graphic history be an informing contribution as a new generation of SDS writes its own story.” —Tom Hayden, founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society

“Hey! Did you know grandpa was a revolutionary?  If you want the inside story from SDS veterans themselves, with a minimum of rhetoric and a maximum of sex, drugs, violence, and internal faction-fighting, check out this wonderful graphic history . . . Grandma and grandpas bedtime stories are guaranteed to get the children dreaming of their own anti-imperialist movement.” —Mark Rudd, a founder of the Weather Underground, the last National Secretary of SDS, and the Chairman of the Columbia University chapter of SDS during the 1968 student strike

“Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History brings the historical power of SDS to life for the new generation of SDS activists. At a time when the state repression and militarism of the 1960s and 70s finds its closest parallel in the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, this accessible book maps out the legacy of resistance our generation has inherited. This is mandatory reading for serious young organizers who desire to combat oppression while avoiding the errors of their predecessors.” —Senia Barragan, Brown University/Providence SDS

"The story of the legendary 1960s student-activist group, in words and pictures . . . this graphic history of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS): written mostly by Pekar, supplemented by several former SDS members; edited by Buhle, founding editor of the SDS journal Radical America, who also wrote several sections; with effective art by frequent American Splendor collaborator Dumm. Although he's never been shy about his angry leftist political leanings or about shoving himself into a narrative, Pekar keeps almost entirely in the background here as the book parses the minutiae of SDS's creation, rise to prominence, post-Nixon splintering and, very briefly, its resurgence in 2006. Founded in 1960 as an offshoot of various lefty-labor organizations that traced their lineage back to Upton Sinclair in 1905, SDS quickly alienated more staid elements of the Old Left with its emphasis on personal freedom, solidarity with the civil-rights movement and vehement antiwar stance. Throughout the mid and late '60s, SDS grew in numbers, leading demonstrations and publishing agitprop journals in cities and campuses across the nation, while it was simultaneously riven from within by agent provocateurs and fractious infighting among factions like the Weathermen and doctrinaire Marxists. Eschewing a standard time line, many of the book's later pages offer journal-like contributions from rank-and-file members, who provide snapshots of the life-altering struggle they were engaged in—often with a self-deprecating nod to its more naive aspects. Learned, passionate and accessible history of the first order, casting a critical but mostly benevolent eye on an often-contradictory movement." —Kirkus Reviews

"[Pekar's] newest effort works on a variety of levels. For one, Pekar is not the sole author. He constructs a narrative of the history of the Students for a Democratic Society, but frequently steps aside to allow actual participants in that history to tell their own stories, using his casual first-person model of storytelling. The narrative moves through the decade of SDS history and then moves into the participant accounts, offering both a macro and a micro vision of the times. The artwork is mostly by frequent Pekar collaborator Gary Dumm, whose crisp, neutral realism . . . [moves] the story along and does a fine job of conveying the various settings. As a whole, the book acts like a sophisticated handbook on an often misunderstood organization. It's good comics and excellent history." —Publishers Weekly