Paul Buhle

Paul Buhle is an aged revolutionary, involved in social movements for fifty years as of 2010. He founded the SDS journal Radical America, the Oral History of the American Left project at NYU, has taken part in many failed but semi-historic movements, and has been reinvented if not reborn as an editor/creator of radical comic books. He is still a syndicalist.

• Book events
• Reviews
• More from Paul

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About

This unique comic by Milton Knight illuminates the early years of C.L.R. James (1901–1989), known in much later years as the “last great Pan-Africanist.” The son of a provincial school administrator in British-governed Trinidad, James disappointed his family by embracing the culture and passions of the colonial underclass, Carnival and cricket. He joined the literary avant-garde of the island before leaving for Britain. In the UK, James swiftly became a beloved cricket journalist, playwright for his close friend Paul Robeson, and a pathbreaking scholar of black history with The Black Jacobins (1938), the first history of the Haitian revolt.

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About

Executed by a British firing squad on May 12, 1916, for his role in organizing the Easter Rising, James Connolly was one of the most prominent radical organizers and agitators of his day. Born in Scotland in 1868 to Irish immigrant parents, Connolly spent most of his adult life organizing for labor unions and socialist organizations in Ireland, Scotland, and the United States. Despite attending school for only a few years, Connolly became a leading socialist writer and theoretician, founding and editing newspapers including The Socialist (Scotland), The Harp (United States), and The Workers’ Republic (Ireland). As a labor organizer, Connolly stressed the importance of direct action, broad working-class unity, and a commitment to ending labor’s exploitation. As a socialist agitator, Connolly saw economic and political independence as inextricably intertwined. This pamphlet, the first graphic treatment of Connolly’s life, is issued on the centenary of the Easter Rising.

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Praise

“Paul Buhle is the best informed and most sincere left-wing scholar that I know.” —Harvey Pekar, artist

“Paul Buhle is my socialist conscience.” —Robert Crumb, artist

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Introductions by

“Radical America Komiks was the funniest issue of that whole series of New Left magazines because it included the best cartoonists in the underground. Gilbert Shelton, master humorist, creator of the Furry Freak Brothers, edited the extra-thick comic book as one of the earliest projects at his fledgling company Rip Off Press. Nothing like funnies to liven up political discussions.”
—Patrick Rosenkranz, author of Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution

“Radical America Komiks is a treasury of Austin’s radical artists from the 1960s and ’70s, especially Gilbert Shelton, truly a global figure of comix innovation.”
—Thorne Dreyer, founding editor of The Rag

“Radical America Komiks not only provides an unparalleled sense of how leftist politics and avant-garde narrative art intersected at the end of the sixties, it anticipates many of the innovations and tropes we associate with the alternative comics movement of the 1980s and 1990s.”
—Kent Worcester, coeditor of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium

“There is a certain irony that Radical America Komiks is likely to be one of the best-remembered parts of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). That the visual and the satirical turn out to have a longer shelf life than the polemical would perplex, and more, the members of SDS who encountered the wonderful comix drawn and assembled by Gilbert Shelton. Viva comics, no matter how it is spelled!”
—James Danky, Underground Classics Illustrated

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Book Events

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Reviews

• You Can Read It in the Funny Papers
• William Morris on Rain Taxi
• Who’s your favorite Robin?
• What Modern America Is All About: On the Ground, A Review
• We Called Each Other Comrade — a window into American radical publishing history
• The Young C.L.R. James in Race & Class
• The Young C.L.R. James in Hypelit.com
• The Young C.L.R. James in Against the Current
• The Struggle For The Commons
• The Fifth Inning on Swans.com
• The Cost of Lunch, Etc.: A Review in Swans Commentary
• The Black Wobbly
• The Anarchist in the Comic Book Shop
• Science Fiction in a Time of Crisis in Filmmaker Magazine
• Robin Hood: People’s Outlaw and Forest Hero, A Graphic Guide in the MidWest Book Review
• Robin Hood in Socialist Action
• Robin Hood in North Adams Transcript
• Remembering Spain Rodriguez (1940-2012)
• Real Cost of Prisons in the Monthly Review
• Radical America Komiks in Staf Magazine (Spanish)
• PM Press Reissues Radical America Komiks, Proving There Is Still Hope For Humanity
• Paul Buhle on Comics: The Cargo Rebellion: Those  Who Chose Freedom
• On the Ground: The Brainpan Review
• On the Ground: New Book Collection of Sixties Underground Press
• On the Ground: A Review
• On the Ground Reviewed in Logos
• On the Ground on RalphMag
• On the Ground in The Rag Blog
• On the Ground in Counterpunch
• Occupy Sherwood Forest
• Notes from Underground: On the Ground in Guernica
• Notes from Underground
• New York According to the Artist behind ‘Spy vs. Spy’
• Komiks from the Underground: the Radicalism of Gilbert Shelton on CounterPunch
• Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Lucky Strike
• Joe Hill Again!
• Jobs with Justice: 25 Years to Trying to Transform Gompersism in the Labor Movement
• From the Foreword to E.P. Thompson’s “William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary”
• Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! on Counterpunch
• Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! in the New York Journal of Books
• Department of Book Reports: “We Called Each Other Comrade”
• Dangerous Visions and New Worlds in Rain Taxi
• Dangerous Visions and New Worlds in MBW
• Bringing Pan-Africanist C.L.R. James To a New Generation
• Black Mask: Trip Through an Anarchist Turf War
• Anarchy Comics in Anarchist Studies
• A Red Robin?
• A New Notion: Two Works by C.L.R. James
• (H)afrocentric Comics in Socialism & Democracy

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Interviews

• Galileo’s Dream: A Q & A with Kim Stanley Robinson
• Allen Ruff speaking at the Cooperatives for Labor rally
• The Happy Hero: An Interview With Paul Buhle About Robin Hood
• ‘A Full Life: James Connolly the Irish Rebel’
• Paul Buhle talking about A Full Life: James Connolly the Irish Rebel on Law & Disorder Radio May 23rd, 2016
• Gilbert Shelton, Famed Freak Bros Artist, and Graphic Novel Publisher Paul Buhle

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Mentions

• The Unbuttoned Mind of Jeremy Brecher

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Blog

• Paul Buhle on Comics: ‘Mutual Aid: an Illuminated Factor of Evolution’
• The Unbuttoned Mind of Jeremy Brecher
• The Black Wobbly
• A Syndicalist Memory Introduction continued…
• Robin Hood (Again!)
• Uncovering a C.L.R. James treasure trove
• The Irish Socialist Who Organized an Uprising on Truth out