If you ever wanted to make sense of the bubble-riding, downsizing, outsourcing, debt-inducing, credit-crazy, middle-class-destroying era we’ve all just lived through—and in many ways, which we all continue to live in—a comic book will do the job as good as any. Hilarious, clever, very relevant, and remarkably insightful and thought-provoking, “The Adventures of Unemployed Man” features a cast of superheroes and arch villains made for the Great Recession. In addition to the main hero, Unemployed Man, who looks for jobs while fighting the bad guys, there’s Plan B, an aging Robin-like sidekick who can’t retire because he was swindled out of his 401(k), and villains such as an evil corporate lawyer called Loophole, a stretchy credit card creature known as Plaztik, and a psychopathic Wall Street clown named The Broker.

Unemployed Man’s superhero friends include Wonder Mother, who was fired for refusing to breastfeed in a closet and who fights crime with her infant secured in a Baby Bjorn-type contraption on her chest. There’s also Master of Degrees, a brilliant, overly educated perpetual grad student who can explain anything but who refuses to work for the bad guys so he can’t get a decent enough job to pay off his student loans. Then there’s David Tanner, who was once a meek corporate employee who worked a dead-end job in a cubicle straight out of “Office Space.” After receiving an accidental overdose of Fox News rays, however, he turned into White Rage, a muscle-bound Hulk-like creature (in a ripped “I Love Glenn Beck” T-shirt) who can’t control his anger and who sometimes tries to destroy even the things people need, like unemployment insurance and public transit.