Since 2020, Christopher Sperandio has produced more than 6,000 drawings, prints, and paintings under the name Pinko Joe. Combining text and image, his work operates as a sustained act of political resistance and social engagement. Through satire, slapstick, and the visual language of vintage comic books, Sperandio confronts contemporary power structures with urgency and persistence.
Working across Risograph prints, graphic novels, and daily webcomics, his practice addresses themes that feel increasingly unavoidable: corporate greed, out-of-control capitalism, the erosion of democracy, and the rise of fascism in America. The work is explicitly anti-gun, anti-fascist, anti-racist, and pro-democracy. Rather than positioning itself as neutral commentary, Pinko Joe takes a clear stance.
Sperandio describes his method as “forced collaboration.” Drawing heavily from public-domain comic books, he creates collages and redraws them, subverting the original contexts of these mass-produced narratives. By engaging with the assembly-line history of comics, he retools a medium once shaped by industrial production into a vehicle for critique. Familiar characters and tropes are repurposed to deliver biting political commentary, often with dark humour at its core.
His Risograph prints, typically produced at 11 x 17 inches, emphasise bold colour and graphic immediacy. The medium’s tactile, slightly imperfect quality reinforces the DIY ethos of the work, standing in contrast to the polished surfaces of corporate media. Alongside these physical editions, Sperandio maintains a rigorous daily art practice on Instagram, where digital drawings continue the project’s momentum. The consistency itself becomes part of the message: resistance is not occasional but ongoing.
Vintage comic books are an obvious inspiration, both visually and structurally. In addition to producing his own work, Sperandio creates fonts and paper textures that other artists can use, distributed through RetroSupply.co. This sharing of tools extends his interest in collaboration, even when it is indirect.
There is also a personal dimension that runs through the project. As Sperandio puts it, “The United States paid my father $50 a month to fight nazis. I’m just following in the family business — and making about the same amount of money.” The line carries the blend of humour and seriousness that defines Pinko Joe. Beneath the joke lies a generational continuity of resistance.
Sperandio’s work has been commissioned by institutions including MoMA PS1, the Public Art Fund, Creative Time, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His most recent graphic novel was published in 2023 by Kuš Komikss. He is also an Associate Professor of Art and founder of the Comic Art Teaching and Study Workshop at Rice University.
Across platforms and formats, Pinko Joe operates at the margins between mass culture and museum culture. By reclaiming the visual language of popular comics and redirecting it toward urgent political critique, Sperandio demonstrates how printmaking and graphic art remain potent tools for dissent.
More information:
https://pinkojoe.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/pinko_joe/
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