The Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook Serves Up Distressingly On-Point, But Hilarious, Political Satire
April 13, 2021 Jamey Alea 0 Comments
“What if everything the right thought about the left was real?” That’s the driving premise behind The Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook, the latest from The Nib’s own Matt Lubchansky. To be honest, the premise puzzled me a little at first. On the one hand, I’m automatically a bit wary of anything that might end up being touted as “proof” of the type of conspiracy theories popularized by Alex Jones or QAnon. But on the other hand, they do say some pretty wild stuff that’s hard not to laugh about, so I could also see this comic being extremely funny. Ultimately, I’m a fan of Lubchansky’s satirical work and I had a feeling they would tackle this with the right balance of humor and reality and nonsense. And I was absolutely right—The Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook is cutting, relatable at times, and most of all, completely hilarious.
The central conflict of the story, naturally, is between a group of protesters who meet at their local union hall and the local police department. There is one main character from each side—Max Marx, an antifa operative who was recently accepted into the lucrative “super soldier” program, and Paul O’Shea, a good ol’ boy cop who was recently promoted to Sergeant. This conflict comes to a head when Adonis Asproulis, “the bad boy of online” who appears to be a parody of Milo Yiannopoulos, comes to speak on a local college campus. Naturally, antifa wants to deplatform him and the police department are… suddenly really big “uh, defenders of free speech,” once they hear antifa wants to deplatform him.
But to be honest, the extremely badass, highly organized operation that the antifa group is running is even more central to the crux of the book than the plot. There’s an underground base with a war room, a chemical lab, and a “psychological warfare division, where most Hollywood movies and television shows are made.” They have throngs of people in matching antifa uniforms and an actual helicopter. They use chemtrails to mind control college students into thinking their way, really hitting all the conspiracy theory bases. The titular “super soldier” program includes features like an eye camera that can doctor fake footage on the fly, a concrete dispenser for dispensing into milkshakes, and wrist rockets that make you hit the ground faster to frame cops for pushing you, among others.
Read the rest of my review and essay at WWAC! This comic, in addition to being topical and funny, honestly really resonated with me in a lot of ways and it was an honor to be able to write about it. Definitely pick it up if you have the chance!