At SPX 2026: Political Cartooning,Women Laughing and Iran: Voices from the Ground
At SPX 2026: Political Cartooning, Women Laughing and Iran: Voices from the Ground
Three separate events at this weekend’s Small Press Expo look at political cartooning, women’s place in American cartoon humor and artists documenting everyday life in Iran.
Small Press Expo opens in North Bethesda on September 12 with two days of independent comics, books, workshops and conversations. Among the programme are three events that approach cartooning from very different directions.
Derf Backderf is bringing a new graphic history of political cartoonists working during the Woodrow Wilson era. Liza Donnelly’s documentary Women Laughing looks at generations of women cartoonists connected with The New Yorker. On Sunday, another panel turns to two anthologies containing stories and artwork connected with young artists in Iran.
SPX has not presented these events as a single theme. They are separate parts of a much larger programme. Seen together, however, they offer three different routes into questions that have long followed cartooning: who gets published, what artists choose to record and what can happen when drawings become part of political or social arguments.
Derf Backderf and The Dissidents
Backderf’s new book goes back to a period when cartoonists and journalists found themselves at the centre of bitter arguments over politics and free expression in the United States.
The Dissidents is set in the United States during the 1910s, when political cartoonists and journalists connected with The Masses were working in an atmosphere shaped by war, labour conflict, racial violence and arguments over the limits of dissent.
The book draws on the history of cartoonists including Art Young, Boardman Robinson and Cornelia Barns. Their drawings were not detached illustrations of the political arguments around them; the work itself could become part of those arguments.
Backderf, who began his own career as a political cartoonist, discusses the book at SPX with executive director Warren Bernard. Abrams lists The Dissidents for publication on September 15, 2026.
Women Laughing and the women who drew for The New Yorker
On Saturday evening, SPX will screen Women Laughing, the documentary directed by longtime New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly with Kathleen Hughes.
The film looks at women’s humor and the history of women drawing cartoons for The New Yorker, placing contemporary cartoonists alongside a longer history of women working in a field that was for many years dominated by men.
Its subjects include cartoonists from different generations, among them Roz Chast, Liana Finck, Emily Flake and Donnelly herself. The film also looks at the editorial and professional routes through which women entered and reshaped the magazine’s cartoon pages.
The SPX screening begins at 5:30 p.m. on September 12 in Brookside C. Afterwards, Publishers Weekly comics editor Meg Lemke will moderate a discussion with Donnelly, Sofia Warren, Hilary Campbell and Rani Som.
Iran: Voices from the Ground
Iran: Voices from the Ground
Zareen Choudhury, Tom Hart, Liz Frances and Iranian cartoonist Shaghayegh Moazzami discuss two anthologies containing work connected with young artists in Iran.
September 13 · 2:00–3:00 PM · Brookside CSunday’s Iran: Voices from the Ground panel centres on two anthologies: Young in Iran and I Won’t Pretend These Missiles Are Stars.
The discussion brings together Zareen Choudhury, Tom Hart, Liz Frances and Iranian cartoonist Shaghayegh Moazzami. The books contain stories and artwork connected with young artists describing aspects of life in Iran.
SPX’s programme description also points to the risks that can accompany writing or drawing openly about personal and political realities.
The circumstances are very different from the historical world explored in The Dissidents, and the two should not be treated as equivalent. What links them within a comics festival is something simpler: drawing can become a record of the conditions in which an artist lives.
Elsewhere at SPX 2026
These three events make up only a small part of the weekend. SPX brings together hundreds of independent creators and publishers, alongside panels, workshops, creator conversations and the annual Ignatz Awards.
For readers particularly interested in cartooning and its political or social history, however, The Dissidents, Women Laughing and Iran: Voices from the Ground offer an interesting route through this year’s programme.
