It's a classic comic book story line — a common person finds a source of tremendous power and becomes a superhero by wielding it for good.

Rather than one Man of Steel, however, a new graphic novel about the 1946 Stelco strike tells the story of more than 2,000 who stood up to a giant company and changed their lives forever.

"Showdown: Making Modern Unions" is a collaboration between historian Rob Kristofferson and artist-scholar Simon Orpana. It was designed to bring an important period of history to people in a new, modern way.

It's a story, Kristofferson said, that has to be retold today.

"One of the main reasons we felt this had to be done is because so much of what was won in 1946 has been dissipated in the last 30 years," he said. "What they created was a society that, for the first time, offered people a measure of protection from cradle to grave.

"We needed the ability to put this all in a new perspective and graphic novels like this are becoming a really popular form of history," he added.

"This is the story of a society and value it places on the public sphere, the role of government and how working people are given a place in society," he said. "It shows what you can make of a society if you really want to."

The project grew out of Kristofferson's work with the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre to develop a cellphone app for tracing Hamilton's labour and industrial history called WorkersCity.That project was sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. A portion of that grant also paid for the research and illustration of "Showdown."

In 125 pages they tell the story of a turbulent time in Canadian history when the country was rocked from coast to coast with labour unrest. The Second World War had ended barely a year earlier and thousands of veterans were coming home to civilian jobs.

After the decade-long Great Depression and six years of war, however, they were determined they were not going to take the old deal again.

In comic strip form, "Showdown" tells of the years when a Stelco foreman could hire and fire at whim, demanding weekly tribute from workers desperate to keep their jobs. Sometimes it was $5 tucked into a package of cigarettes, sometimes a bottle and sometimes, time alone with a man's wife.

Immigrant workers, especially Italians, were special targets.

Fed up with those conditions, Stelco workers signed on with the new Steel Workers Organizing Committee, forerunner of the United Steelworkers union, and started negotiating with the company in January 1946 .

The worker's proposals were modest — a wage increase, a 40-hour week, recognition of the union as their bargaining agent and automatic dues check off. The talks went painfully slowly, however, with company president Hugh "Old Iron Jaw" Hilton, declaring the union would win recognition at Stelco "over my dead body."

By July 14, patience was gone and after a meeting at a Sherman Avenue North movie house, 2,000 workers spilled onto the street, marched down to the Stelco plant and set up picket lines. The strike lasted until Oct. 3 with the union winning most of what it sought.

"Showdown" tells that story through the eyes of the men and women who stood up to the company: the Italian and Polish housewives who kept a steady flow of food to the picket lines, the violence and the shows of support from folksingers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and entertainers such as wrestler Whipper Billy Watson who all staged shows for the picketers.

Stelco's wasn't the only strike that summer — at its peak 13,000 Hamilton workers were on picket lines, marching in front of the Westinghouse plants scattered around the city, the Firestone rubber plant and even The Hamilton Spectator. (Historical note: While most workers won their confrontation, those at The Spectator were defeated.)

The book even repeats the enduring Hamilton legend of mayor Sam Lawrence declaring to a meeting "I'm a labour man first and chief magistrate second." (That's actually one of the great misquotes of Hamilton history. A couple of days after putting that statement in a headline, The Spectator printed a correction saying the mayor really said "I'm going to speak to you as a labour man first and chief magistrate second." The legend, however, refuses to die.)

Those events have been described in many academic histories over the years, weighty tomes such as labour historian Craig Heron's recent 700-page opus "Lunch-Bucket Lives: Remaking the Workers' City."

"This would not be looked at in a positive way in the academic world," Kristofferson said.

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That's why Kristofferson and Orpana think a comic book/graphic novel will bring this slice of history back to the people who need to understand what it meant for their lives.

"I think the graphic novel format lets people engage with the historical material in a way that an authored history book does not," Orpana said. "A format like this brings you into the historical space in a different way."

That's what he said he experienced during the year he spent drawing the book and studying the faces of people who took part in those events.

"Toward the end, when I was drawing the crowd and parade scenes, I found myself lingering on faces and feeling a strange connection them," he said.

For Kristofferson and Orpana, what emerged from the confrontations of 1946 was a new kind of society, one that has been under attack during decades of conservative governments.

"This is a story about building a society that values the public sphere, the role of government and how working people are given a place in society," Kristofferson said.

Published by Toronto-based Between the Lines, the book goes on sale in September.

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Showdown art show •"Showdown: Making Modern Unions" will be launched at a special party Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre on Stuart Street.

•An art showed entitled "Draw the Line: Graphic Histories of Work, Struggle and Activism" opens Sept. 9. An opening reception is planned for 7 p.m. It will run through Feb. 6 at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre.