Survival Street Volume 2: The Radical Left

by James Asmus, Jim Festante, Abylay Kussainov (illustrator)

Survival Street is an unrepentant action satire tearing through a dystopia packed with economic and humanistic cautionary tales.

The political satire action-adventure hit series returns!

After America is sold off to private companies, this A-B-C-Team of ex-entertainers rescues kids from cruel company towns. But Portland can’t hold everyone, and the cracks are about to break… Prepare for a radical departure in the series Library Journal called a “blisteringly satirical mash-up of Sesame Street and Robocop.”

A candy coating of pop culture madness, humor, cartoonishly absurd hyper-violence, and just enough hope to keep holding on.

Collects Survival Street series II #1–#4.

112 pages, Paperback

Published June 10, 2025

About the author

James began writing for live theater; creating sketch comedy, stand-up, plays and musicals. After a few years writing and performing in New Orleans and Chicago, a run of one his shows in New York garnered an offer to write for Marvel Comics' X-Men. A lifelong comics fan, James pounced on the opportunity and would go on to write Marvel titles like Uncanny X-Men, Captain America & Bucky, Gambit, Runaways, Generation Hope, Deadpool Team-Up and more.
His work for other comics publishers includes Thief of Thieves with Robert Kirkman (creator of the Walking Dead) and The End Times of Bram & Ben (which he co-created with Jim Festante) for Image Comics. In 2014 James signed a year-long exclusive deal with Valiant Entertainment where he wrote The Delinquents and Quantum & Woody - the latter of which received 6 nominations at the 2014 Harvey Awards; including Best Writer, Best New Talent, and Special Award for Humor noms for James.
He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife Mara and son Devlin. There, James has written for film, television, and video games. But he plans to create comics as long as you'll have him.

Reviews

[Mee Too · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some fun one liners, and some decent arguments to consider in this, and i think this should be the last installment. Theres really nowhere to go with this. Its a half assed storyline of our current political drama.

Nothing people like more than backing themselves into their own trap then complaining about no one getting them out of it.

Listen, the rulers of society have been using the same tactics since the beginning of society!! There was never good ole days. People just choose to be ignorant to the past. And the world is just the way they like it.

Society is what we made/allowed it to be.🤷🏽

3✨

[Nicholas Haney · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s just a fun, satirical look at the “future” of our country, while somehow feeling behind the times in current levels of government debauchery. There’s a Kermit/Animal amalgam in this one, and it makes this Muppet fan proud. Also some nice digs at HBO/HBOMAX/MAX/HBOMAX and David Zaslav. I hope there will be more of this series coming down the line in my future.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The adult version of the muppets from Sesame Street are back. They're fighting corporate greed as freedom fighters in the near future of America. There's not really a central story that keeps it from being great. It's still solid though.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's good to free people from oppression but you need a plan and a place for them to go to or else they will return to their old way of life.

I'm not playing pretend here!

Some interesting philosophy around advertising and capturing the attention of people.

[Ya Boi Be Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to the last time, at least iirc, some light genuine liberal discourse done up with uber-fun anti-facism anti-alt-right fun!