Riot Comics

Johnny Damm

Johnny Damm's follow-up to "I'm a Cop", Riot Comics offers an oral history of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot, begun by the NYPD when they cleared an unhoused encampment from the Lower East Side park.

The comic uses direct quotes from riot participants, combining these contemporary accounts with details from Depression-era photography and cut-out figures of cops taken from mid-twentieth century crime comics. By placing comic book police officers in the context of a real-world police riot, RIOT COMICS seeks to challenge the carceral logic that dominates U.S. comic books and to question if this medium might instead serve as a space of abolitionist possibility.

Comic Book. 8.25″ by 5.85″; 34 pages, cover 100 lb, interior 80 lb; full color, signed.