Five o’clock in the morning is a “preferred time” for Peter Schumann to make comics, he said. Ideas can come from just about anywhere: the weather in the Northeast Kingdom, where he lives, or a piece in the Monthly Review, a long-running socialist publication. “I go by what’s happening in the world,” he said.

Helen Keller (1880-1968) was one of the most inspirational figures of the 20th century. But most people know the writer and activist for her determination to overcome the barriers facing people with physical disabilities in her lifetime, not for her equally fierce determination to replace American capitalism with a system in which the workers control the means of production.