Le retour de la colonne Durutti

This broadsheet comic illustrated by André Bertrand is perhaps the most famous of the published documents from the SI’s occupation of the university in Strasbourg. Printed in October 1966, the comic was pasted up all over the Strasbourg campus and into the city, and almost certainly travelled further.
 

Part didactic lesson in the workers’ struggles of the day, and part sarcastic take-down of everything from the family, society, and orthodox Marxism (especially as practiced in Soviet contexts), the comic was a prime exercise in détournement, pulling images from mass media and pop culture and text from leftist publications. The document is itself named after an anarchist militia in the Spanish Civil War (although misspelled).
 

One particular technique used in the document is to use images of children to host large word bubbles of didactic leftist text, creating a humorous juxtaposition of the innocent with extremely academic terminology.

The comic was translated into English in 1968 and the name, misspelling included, was used for the name of a British punk band. It remains one of the more iconic graphic creations from the Situationist lead-up to May ‘68.