In autumn 1966, a group of students sympathetic to the Situationist International (IS) were elected to the University of Strasbourg student union (AFGES). They used its entire budget to publish two pamphlets: the text “On the Poverty of Student Life” by Situationist Mustapha Khayati, and a four-page comic by student André Bertrand called The Return of the Durutti Column. This unique comic, assembled in collage and laden with visual and textual references, was reprinted in full or in part around the world. The furor around its appearance was the first in a chain of protests eventually leading to France’s May 1968 uprisings.

As students protest the austerity that structures their lives today, we look back to understand why a comics zine played a role in igniting France’s last great protest movement. We must engage the concept of metagraphics – later called hypergraphics – first articulated by Lettrist movement founder Isidore Isou, and carried forward separately by Situationist International founder Guy Debord. These two, related movements produced a body of fascinating comics which reveal that hypergraphic writing and détourned comics are not just part of our radical and avant-garde histories, but are a living legacy that finds reflection in contemporary work pointing to comics’ future.