The Dissidents

Reviews Jim Falcone | October 13, 2026 Whether we like it or not, entertainment has become the continuing education for most of America’s adult population. I’m sure I’m not the only one who learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre from the Watchmen TV series, or the crimes against the Osage Tribal Nation from Killers of the Flower Moon. There’s a whole slew of narratives considered too obscure or subversive for public or private education to cover, which leaves it up to artists to make sure those stories aren’t forgotten. Derf Backderf’s newest graphic novel The Dissidents is in this same tradition of edutainment, filling in the parts of World War I that your history teacher failed to mention. The story follows the political cartoonists of The Masses, an American leftist magazine that covered a range of topics from popular revolutions abroad to labor disputes at home. Their drama is seen through the eyes of the fictional Joe Hertle, a German-American “hyphenate”—a euphemism used in the 1910s to describe first-generation European immigrants—who joins the ranks of The Masses as a cartoonist contributing to the cause. While I don’t think Hertle’s character adds much to the comic, the tru...