“But, at night to Mohammed, he confessed his doubts: It will not be as we dream, when those of us who survive finally get there. Corrupt politicians have already ensconced themselves. They are waiting for us—waiting for us not as brothers but as our masters. They will use us."

– As told to John Berger, "Two Recumbent Male Figures Wrestling on a Sidewalk"

"For a moment, he actually feels he can’t go on, can’t function anymore, living two lives with enough stress for ten but less than enough sleep for one."

– Doug Moench, BATMAN #484

The United States is a broken empire. It just doesn't know it yet.

The 1990s marked the full bloom of the international counterrevolution, whose mission to destroy the gains of the 20th century had just seen its first major victory in the destruction of the USSR. With no systemic power to oppose it, capitalism molted the old skin of social democracy, unveiling its truest form to hollow fanfare and a dead-eyed audience.

Bereft of an external enemy worth organizing against, unsatisfied with the empty calories of the video game war, confronted with the grim realities of vaunted liberal democratic values, Americans tried to make sense of life at the end of history. Whose triumph was this?

Even superhero fans found themselves yearning for—but never quite finding—meaning in heroes whose integral, inflated violence now seemed both superfluous and insufficient to the moment. Despite having "won" the Cold War, maybe what American audiences needed to see was one more domino fall.

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Special thanks to our Lovable Sidekicks: Better Possible Futures, Kourtney Smith, Walt Lewellyn, Kafka, The Black Casebook's Very Own Nightwing, JD Lunt, Ambird, Mr. Pig from the Intervention, Travis Armstrong, Chris Marks, Wirecats, Sheeee-itttt, VoidTek, Mars Hottentot, Richard Bell, TakoTuesday, Joseph, and Knife Money

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Email: [email protected]

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlackCasebook

Bluesky: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bsky.app/profile/blackcasebook.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackcasebookpod/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/blackcasebook/posts

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Email: [email protected]

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/cacomixpod.bsky.social

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics

"What the hell is water?"

Art, music, literature, drama. When the frontiers of human potential slam against capitalist industry, a force that can't be stopped confronts an object that can't be moved. Capitalism twists and redirects culture and imagination into a revenue stream, limiting to its flow the ideas we're allowed have and drowning all the rest.

At the nexus of pop culture and "Pop Culture" struggles Superman, swimming against the current.

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Special thanks to our Lovable Sidekicks: Better Possible Futures, Kourtney Smith, Walt Lewellyn, Kafka, The Black Casebook's Very Own Nightwing, JD Lunt, Ambird, Mr. Pig from the Intervention, Travis Armstrong, Chris Marks, Wirecats, Sheeee-itttt, VoidTek, Mars Hottentot, Richard Bell, TakoTuesday, Joseph, and Knife Money

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Errata: I mention that the Boravians are speaking Czech. They're speaking Croatian. Thank you to the listeners who pointed that out.

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Email: [email protected]

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/cacomixpod.bsky.social

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics

Finally, the definitive Marxist take on Lex Luthor. Just what we've all been waiting for.

The strange flavor of 90s foreign intervention, the eventual goal of capitalist policing, and why you should never trust a homeless shelter (it's not what you think) all tie together into the stories of two of the world's most famous mad scientists - one a product of capitalism, the other a perpetuator.

It's our final Superman-less issue. In a way.

Join us, won't you?

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Issues covered: Supergirl and Team Luthor #1

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Special thanks to our Lovable Sidekicks: Better Possible Futures, Kourtney Smith, Walt Lewellyn, Kafka, The Black Casebook's Very Own Nightwing, JD Lunt, Ambird, Mr. Pig from the Intervention, Travis Armstrong, Chris Marks, Wirecats, Sheeee-itttt, VoidTek, Mars Hottentot, Richard Bell, TakoTuesday, Joseph, and Knife Money

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Email: [email protected]

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/cacomixpod.bsky.social

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics

Announcing a major new collaboration with the inimitable BLACK CASEBOOK podcast.

This summer, get ready for a fall.

What do heroes leave behind?

The answer should be obvious.

The contest for control of the world economy entered a new age at the end of 1991. Socialist forces were in retreat as the then-second largest superpower, the USSR, crumbled under pressure from more than 70 years of capitalist onslaught. Its splintered masses would be powerless to defend themselves against instantaneous pillage and plunder by the avaricious.

Half a planet away, the ostensible beneficiaries of capitalist success, the US working class (including the writers and artists behind Superman), would find their rights and livelihoods under immediate and vicious attack as well, although you wouldn't know it by asking them.

An ideology of righteous violence befits a class of owners who need the workers to fight their wars, and it limits the imagination of a class of workers who need each other if they ever hope to win their own freedom.

What do heroes leave behind?

More heroes.

It's time to grasp what that means.

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Issues covered: The Legacy of Superman #1

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Special thanks to our Lovable Sidekicks: Better Possible Futures, Kourtney Smith, Walt Lewellyn, Kafka, The Black Casebook's Very Own Nightwing, JD Lunt, Ambird, Mr. Pig from the Intervention, Travis Armstrong, Chris Marks, Wirecats, Sheeee-itttt, VoidTek, Mars Hottentot, Richard Bell, TakoTuesday, Joseph, and Knife Money

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Email: [email protected]

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/cacomixpod.bsky.social

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics

Superhero comics are cycles of endless strife, dialectical tides pushing and pulling between too often oversimplified representations of "evil" and "good."

As if on a journey from vulgar physical form to enlightened spiritual ascendence, superheroes die and are reborn over and over, with little consideration that this time might be the last.

What happens when an economy does the same? How do we allow it to rise and fall like the characters in our funny mags? Like the souls in our bodies?

Will it ever be enough?

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Issues covered:

The Adventures of Superman 499

Action Comics 686

Superman: The Man of Steel 21

Superman 77

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Special thanks to our Lovable Sidekicks: Better Possible Futures, Kourtney Smith, Walt Lewellyn, Kafka, The Black Casebook's Very Own Nightwing, JD Lunt, Ambird, Mr. Pig from the Intervention, Travis Armstrong, Chris Marks, Wirecats, Sheeee-itttt, VoidTek, Mars Hottentot, Richard Bell, and Takotuesday

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Email: [email protected] I

nstagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/cacomixpod.bsky.social

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics

Small town boy makes good? or big city media conglomeration makes believe?

Absolute Superman is an ostensible return to the character's origin as a voice (and fist) for the masses, but can we trust DC Comics (a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery) to deliver such a hero?

More importantly, does the book's intent even matter?

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Special thanks to our Lovable Sidekicks: Better Possible Futures, Kourtney Smith, Walt Lewellyn, Kafka, The Black Casebook's Very Own Nightwing, JD Lunt, Ambird, Mr. Pig from the Intervention, Travis Armstrong, Chris Marks, Wirecats, Sheeee-itttt, VoidTek, and Richard Bell

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Email: [email protected]

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/cacomixpod.bsky.social

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics

How many of your neighbors have you met?

When was the last time you helped the homeless?

Do you, as a worker, have the power to affect government policy?

Organizing takes many forms, some immediate and some sustained. While the abilities of Superman would certainly be helpful, they're by no means necessary to build a world that protects the vulnerable.

Journey with us as we explore historical currents in oppression and the never ending battle to oppose them.

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Issues covered:

Justice League America 70

The Adventures of Superman 498

Action Comics 685

Superman: The Man of Steel 20

Superman 76

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Special thanks to our Lovable Sidekicks: Better Possible Futures, Kourtney Smith, Walt Lewellyn, Kafka, The Black Casebook's Very Own Nightwing, JD Lunt, Ambird, Mr. Pig from the Intervention, Travis Armstrong, Chris Marks, Wirecats, Sheeee-itttt, VoidTek, Mars Hottentot, and Richard Bell

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Email: [email protected]

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/cacomixpod.bsky.social

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics

What does it mean to be "super?"

What does it mean to have "power?"

The Death and Return of Superman has us asking these questions in an era when it was less and less appropriate to do so.

It was also a time of deep unrest, being the first sprout from the seeds of counterrevolution the previous decade. The ostensible leaders of resistance to such reaction were about to take us on quite the merry chase, and many liberals in the US were relieved to be "represented" once again, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Join us. Join us as the Man of Steel dies and with him, our tomorrows. We may yet see them reborn.

Welcome to season three of Collective Action Comics.

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Erratum: I called it the "North American Free Trade Association," but everyone knows it's the "North American Free Trade Agreement." I'm a ding dong.

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Issues covered:

Superman: The Man of Steel 18

Justice League America 69

Superman 74

The Adventures of Superman 497

Action Comics 684

Superman: The Man of Steel 19

Superman 75

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Special thanks to our Lovable Sidekicks: Better Possible Futures, Kourtney Smith, Walt Lewellyn, Kafka, The Black Casebook's Very Own Nightwing, JD Lunt, Ambird, Mr. Pig from the Intervention, Chris Marks, Wirecats, and Sheeee-itttt

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Email: [email protected] Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics

IT'S A SAN DIEGO COMIC CON TAKEOVER, FOLKS!

Many thanks to SDCC for hosting our panel "Revolutionary Comics: Revolutionaries in Our Comics!"

Five wonderful creators, one amazing moderator, and some goofy schlub with a podcast came together to talk radical politics in comics we love, our visions for the future of comics, and how we engage with creative works socially.

**Apologies for the panel audio, it's explained in the intro. Please feel free to write in making fun of me for being an absent minded doofus.**

Find the slide deck here: https://tinyurl.com/revolutionaryslideshow

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Find everyone here:

Alec Robbins: http://alec.land/

Iggy Craig: https://iggy.zone/

Mariah-Rose Marie: https://www.mariah-rose.com/

Julio Anta: https://www.julioanta.com/

Jacoby Salcedo: https://www.jacobysalcedoart.com/

Cartoonist Coop: https://cartoonist.coop/

That Distant Fire: https://www.thatdistantfire.com/

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Email: [email protected]

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectiveactioncomics

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAComixPod

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics