2020 ushered in the convergence of multiple societal, political, environmental, and health crises. Racial reckoning collided with fearmongering on a national scale and punitive policies targeted non-citizens simultaneous to the global health pandemic COVID-19. COVID-19 required the unexpected pivoting from in-person instruction to what was, for most, an uncharted total reliance on virtual and remote delivery (Lederman 2020). The complexities of crafting content across multiple modalities amid national and global turmoil meant that curricular creativity became paramount (Mishra et. al, 2020). I will begin by discussing why comic books were an ideal medium and how I used them in the midst of curricular and sociopolitical upheaval. Next, I will describe lessons inspired by the issue of the comic book "El peso hero," titled "The Essentials," that were effective to broach politicized topics in class, such as the essentiality of migrant labor, immigration categories, contradictions between labels and policies, and racialized political rhetoric. Finally, to demonstrate how pictorial storytelling lent itself to internalize and eventually narrate what Landis et al. (2008) refer to as "difficult dialogues," I will highlight examples of multi- and single-panel visuals created by students.