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Liberator #1-4
Liberator, Vol. 1: Rage Ignition
Animal cruelty is the most pervasive form of torture in the modern world. The heroes who fight it don't wear capes, they wear ski-masks. Whether it's vicious dog-fighting clubs or senseless lab experiments force-feeding oven cleaners to monkeys, Jeanette Francis and Damon Guerrero have had enough. Using any and all means available to them, Jeanette and Damon not only rescue the animals but also avenge them - delivering harsh retribution to the animals' captors and tormentors.
192 pages, Paperback
First published April 8, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 30, 2016
I'm happy I purchased this book back when it came out; the message is spot-on and it's the kind of work I really want to support.
The art is mostly great. I especially love how Damon is drawn. If I was much younger I'm sure I'd want to "ship" him with someone (I mean, I'm surely too old for that now, right!) but there's not really anyone to do that with in this comic, unless I did hetero-shipping, which, you know, like, ew.
Kidding.
I'm in that mode because this is definitely a book geared to the younger set. The young teen set. I would have loved something like this as a kid. Not because it's great storytelling (because it's not), but because it would satisfy my own rage. Rage is the theme of the book. Rage is not really explored, but it is the theme. It's presented, and very briefly, a character or two thinks about the implications of it. But it would be an overstatement to say it is explored.
Bits of plot are thrown in to justify (and this leads to watering down) the actions of the characters. Do the actions need justification? Maybe not. But for some reason Matt Miner thought it important to , which allows for a bit of moralizing of "are you doing it for the animals or are you doing it for yourself?"
See, I know this is for kids, and possibly the kids who haven't had much experience in life at ALL, because life isn't compartmentalized like that. The argument is false. If you care deeply about animal rights and how they are treated, then anything you do on their behalf is also something you're doing for yourself. It's not exactly healthy to somehow slice those things in half.
And idealism in itself isn't a reasonable justification for anything. You separate your ideals from your heart and you're on the path to a happy dystopia, whatever the parallel would be to oligarchy, but with treatises leading the way instead of corporations and profit.
I'm making this too complicated, of course. The story is simplistic and, toward the end, rushed. We hit "the end" after big revelations are thrown at us and never developed. The bad guys are ridiculous, exaggerated caricatures of demonic terror. The characters soapbox a lot but never develop much beyond that. I commend the message; I'm there with the creators here. But I can't bring myself to inflate my review just because I share an ideology.
PS: this edition comes with bonus features, like any good trade paperback: cover gallery, "pin-ups," some good (some not good) bonus stories from different creators, articles about different action groups.
PSS: I always love to see projects of the heart see the light of day because of Kickstarter and other similar programs.
The art is mostly great. I especially love how Damon is drawn. If I was much younger I'm sure I'd want to "ship" him with someone (I mean, I'm surely too old for that now, right!) but there's not really anyone to do that with in this comic, unless I did hetero-shipping, which, you know, like, ew.
Kidding.
I'm in that mode because this is definitely a book geared to the younger set. The young teen set. I would have loved something like this as a kid. Not because it's great storytelling (because it's not), but because it would satisfy my own rage. Rage is the theme of the book. Rage is not really explored, but it is the theme. It's presented, and very briefly, a character or two thinks about the implications of it. But it would be an overstatement to say it is explored.
Bits of plot are thrown in to justify (and this leads to watering down) the actions of the characters. Do the actions need justification? Maybe not. But for some reason Matt Miner thought it important to , which allows for a bit of moralizing of "are you doing it for the animals or are you doing it for yourself?"
See, I know this is for kids, and possibly the kids who haven't had much experience in life at ALL, because life isn't compartmentalized like that. The argument is false. If you care deeply about animal rights and how they are treated, then anything you do on their behalf is also something you're doing for yourself. It's not exactly healthy to somehow slice those things in half.
And idealism in itself isn't a reasonable justification for anything. You separate your ideals from your heart and you're on the path to a happy dystopia, whatever the parallel would be to oligarchy, but with treatises leading the way instead of corporations and profit.
I'm making this too complicated, of course. The story is simplistic and, toward the end, rushed. We hit "the end" after big revelations are thrown at us and never developed. The bad guys are ridiculous, exaggerated caricatures of demonic terror. The characters soapbox a lot but never develop much beyond that. I commend the message; I'm there with the creators here. But I can't bring myself to inflate my review just because I share an ideology.
PS: this edition comes with bonus features, like any good trade paperback: cover gallery, "pin-ups," some good (some not good) bonus stories from different creators, articles about different action groups.
PSS: I always love to see projects of the heart see the light of day because of Kickstarter and other similar programs.
June 11, 2018
Well this was fun.
A few years back I read the first two issues of the special Liberator "Earth Crisis" series, which came out along with Earth Crisis' "Salvation of Innocents" album. I liked what I read, then could never find them anywhere.
At Albany Vegfest last weekend came across the first bound volume of the original series.
Pretty straight forward stuff-- two animal rights activists break into labs, fur factories, dog fighting rings, etc, release the animals, burn shit down. A few twists here and there, back stories, emotional stuff, but mostly just the fun of watching people in black masks do the right thing.
Also, many references to great bands like Earth Crisis, Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Propagandhi, Black Flag, and more.
Saving animals, burning things down, and good music? How could you go wrong with that?
A few years back I read the first two issues of the special Liberator "Earth Crisis" series, which came out along with Earth Crisis' "Salvation of Innocents" album. I liked what I read, then could never find them anywhere.
At Albany Vegfest last weekend came across the first bound volume of the original series.
Pretty straight forward stuff-- two animal rights activists break into labs, fur factories, dog fighting rings, etc, release the animals, burn shit down. A few twists here and there, back stories, emotional stuff, but mostly just the fun of watching people in black masks do the right thing.
Also, many references to great bands like Earth Crisis, Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Propagandhi, Black Flag, and more.
Saving animals, burning things down, and good music? How could you go wrong with that?
September 3, 2014
This is the first comic to ever make me cry. Gut-wrenching and unflinching, it's one of the best books I've read all year.
May 17, 2025
I'm surprisingly frustrated by this.
The foreword is by the singer and guitarist of my favorite animal rights band, Propagandhi.
It has a cameo by the food truck whose former location in Penn Station was a favorite go-to for me before Phish concerts at Madison Square Garden.
It shouts out Nightwing, who is the character who finally made me fall in love with this medium after multiple false starts.
And it's all about nonhuman animal liberation, which is a theme I crave more of in comics in general.
But... I find it weirdly cowardly.
The protagonists are doing direct actions that I frankly don't have the guts to do. It's a vandalization and disruption power fantasy, and that's a smart way to escalate these themes. But it also--with every page turned--seems to be really, really avoiding the fundamental and mundane issues related to animal rights.
Lots of people are anti-fur and anti-dogfighting, and lots of people are skeptical of animal testing.
But lots of people see no real problem with animal agriculture. And that is not challenged hardly at all in this book.
Even though bands like Earth Crisis get a shout out in dialogue, there is painfully little attention paid to the fundamental values of carnism or the urgent merits of veganism. There's truly not much daylight between this book and the intellectually and morally bankrupt "I do eat meat, but I'm against factory farming" crowd. (Factory farming is the logical consequence of animal agriculture, y'all. It's not a distortion of it; it's merely the industry being efficient in order to meet demand. You know, the demand that you create if you do not abstain from it completely?)
The most everyday lever of sponsoring or boycotting animal exploitation is via food products taken from animals, and this book just has shockingly little to say about that. One of the protagonists is even a barista, and nothing is mentioned about the politics and violence of milk.
This avoidance of veganism feels like a baldly conservative/commercial choice. Let me emphasize that it feels REALLY deliberate and conspicuous in its absence, which leaves a really bad taste when it's trading in radical politics as a theme.
It makes all of the vandalism feel so much more pointless, myopic, superficial, self-satisfied, and sophomoric than if it was accompanied by full-throated vegan advocacy. Absolutely none of the main chapters do that advocacy. Only two of the eleven "Liberator Stories" engage with it at all.
It honestly feels like they tried really hard to avoid the subject in order to not alienate non-vegan readers. That's frankly super cowardly and I'm not impressed by it. It undermines all of the rest of this, and it's really disappointing.
Animal Man, Beast Boy, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Robin have all been vegetarians at one point or another. Those five are just off the top of my head.
Surely you could have squeezed in more of an indictment of animal agriculture in what is supposed to be a more radically laser-focused text than those things.
Honestly, Grant Morrison's Animal Man from a good number of years earlier is very possibly more ambitious with these themes than this comic is, and this comic is supposed to be exclusively and passionately focused on these themes. It's supposed to be underground and subversive in a way that not even DC's Vertigo brand aspired to under Karen Berger's leadership. And it fails. (To be fair, this is partly a compliment to Karen Berger and her encouragement of bold visions in those comics.)
The foreword (which I didn't expect or know about) from Chris Hannah had me on such an optimistic high. And then... there's just not half as much backbone here as there is in a Propagandhi album. Heck, the sarcastic line from Propagandhi's "Human(e) Meat" of "Because I believe that one can only relate with / another living creature by completely destroying it" packs more punch than this entire TPB does. Not flattering. You're lucky to be getting 3/5 stars from me, gang.
The foreword is by the singer and guitarist of my favorite animal rights band, Propagandhi.
It has a cameo by the food truck whose former location in Penn Station was a favorite go-to for me before Phish concerts at Madison Square Garden.
It shouts out Nightwing, who is the character who finally made me fall in love with this medium after multiple false starts.
And it's all about nonhuman animal liberation, which is a theme I crave more of in comics in general.
But... I find it weirdly cowardly.
The protagonists are doing direct actions that I frankly don't have the guts to do. It's a vandalization and disruption power fantasy, and that's a smart way to escalate these themes. But it also--with every page turned--seems to be really, really avoiding the fundamental and mundane issues related to animal rights.
Lots of people are anti-fur and anti-dogfighting, and lots of people are skeptical of animal testing.
But lots of people see no real problem with animal agriculture. And that is not challenged hardly at all in this book.
Even though bands like Earth Crisis get a shout out in dialogue, there is painfully little attention paid to the fundamental values of carnism or the urgent merits of veganism. There's truly not much daylight between this book and the intellectually and morally bankrupt "I do eat meat, but I'm against factory farming" crowd. (Factory farming is the logical consequence of animal agriculture, y'all. It's not a distortion of it; it's merely the industry being efficient in order to meet demand. You know, the demand that you create if you do not abstain from it completely?)
The most everyday lever of sponsoring or boycotting animal exploitation is via food products taken from animals, and this book just has shockingly little to say about that. One of the protagonists is even a barista, and nothing is mentioned about the politics and violence of milk.
This avoidance of veganism feels like a baldly conservative/commercial choice. Let me emphasize that it feels REALLY deliberate and conspicuous in its absence, which leaves a really bad taste when it's trading in radical politics as a theme.
It makes all of the vandalism feel so much more pointless, myopic, superficial, self-satisfied, and sophomoric than if it was accompanied by full-throated vegan advocacy. Absolutely none of the main chapters do that advocacy. Only two of the eleven "Liberator Stories" engage with it at all.
It honestly feels like they tried really hard to avoid the subject in order to not alienate non-vegan readers. That's frankly super cowardly and I'm not impressed by it. It undermines all of the rest of this, and it's really disappointing.
Animal Man, Beast Boy, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Robin have all been vegetarians at one point or another. Those five are just off the top of my head.
Surely you could have squeezed in more of an indictment of animal agriculture in what is supposed to be a more radically laser-focused text than those things.
Honestly, Grant Morrison's Animal Man from a good number of years earlier is very possibly more ambitious with these themes than this comic is, and this comic is supposed to be exclusively and passionately focused on these themes. It's supposed to be underground and subversive in a way that not even DC's Vertigo brand aspired to under Karen Berger's leadership. And it fails. (To be fair, this is partly a compliment to Karen Berger and her encouragement of bold visions in those comics.)
The foreword (which I didn't expect or know about) from Chris Hannah had me on such an optimistic high. And then... there's just not half as much backbone here as there is in a Propagandhi album. Heck, the sarcastic line from Propagandhi's "Human(e) Meat" of "Because I believe that one can only relate with / another living creature by completely destroying it" packs more punch than this entire TPB does. Not flattering. You're lucky to be getting 3/5 stars from me, gang.
November 14, 2024
Liberator, Vol. 1: Rage Ignition collects the first four issues of Liberator, which I have previously read and reviewed here, but also ten Liberator stories by different writers and artists. For those that don’t know Liberator is about Jeanette Francis and Damon Guerrero who take direct action to fight for animal rights.
In the first issue Damon works alone, while Jeanette is protesting animal rights abuses more legally. This changes and she starts to work with Damon. I think the story in the first four issues of Liberator makes for a very interesting revenge story. It’s pretty powerful stuff, even though I still think the resolution to that cliffhanger at the end of issue two is weak. On the whole this series tackles quite difficult animal rights issues, and does it well.
This collection also includes Liberator stories by different writers and artists. The cutest of the lot is Lil’ Liberator by Sean von Gorman which had actually been in the original run of the series, but there are also others. These stories come to that world from different angles, some fit in with the original series like Broken by Ed Brisson with art by Brian Level which is a story of Jeanette liberating a dog from an abusive owner, short like all these extra stories are, but powerful. Then there are others like Unlocking by Fabian Rangel jr. with art by Jonathan Brandon Sawyer, and colored by Doug Garbank that take the reader beyond the original and work as origin stories. Lil’ Liberator does that also, but Unlocking gives a more realistic narrative to how Jeanette came to animal rights. That one is actually my favorite, along with Lil’ Liberator of these extra stories. Very good stuff.
Now my question is, will I be able to find copies of the mini series Liberator: Earth Crisis?
In the first issue Damon works alone, while Jeanette is protesting animal rights abuses more legally. This changes and she starts to work with Damon. I think the story in the first four issues of Liberator makes for a very interesting revenge story. It’s pretty powerful stuff, even though I still think the resolution to that cliffhanger at the end of issue two is weak. On the whole this series tackles quite difficult animal rights issues, and does it well.
This collection also includes Liberator stories by different writers and artists. The cutest of the lot is Lil’ Liberator by Sean von Gorman which had actually been in the original run of the series, but there are also others. These stories come to that world from different angles, some fit in with the original series like Broken by Ed Brisson with art by Brian Level which is a story of Jeanette liberating a dog from an abusive owner, short like all these extra stories are, but powerful. Then there are others like Unlocking by Fabian Rangel jr. with art by Jonathan Brandon Sawyer, and colored by Doug Garbank that take the reader beyond the original and work as origin stories. Lil’ Liberator does that also, but Unlocking gives a more realistic narrative to how Jeanette came to animal rights. That one is actually my favorite, along with Lil’ Liberator of these extra stories. Very good stuff.
Now my question is, will I be able to find copies of the mini series Liberator: Earth Crisis?
August 10, 2021
Such a good premise. This is a promising graphic novel series. As a fan of the sci-fi and fantasy genre, this one just gave me the expected character building and hinting of bigger things to come in the next installments. I wish the world-building was better and the flashback or the change of timeline of the story back and forth from past to present was not my favorite element in this piece. Overall, the concept was good and I am hype to read the next one.
May 16, 2025
This volume opens the Liberator series, and starts off slow, compared to what's to come. The drawing style is nice, even though it wasn't my favourite, but you can see a different one for each volume. The story is interesting, showing things that are a bit extreme, but still I could believe it to be true, a slice of life that you probably wouldn't know about. It was exciting to get a glimpe into it. And there is a lot of extra content at the end of the book, which I really liked. Could have been it's own book, but I'm very pleased to get that as well, more glimpses into someone's reality, that wouldn't be on your radar. I liked it!
April 6, 2015
Absolutely bloody brilliant! This series is moving and inspirational. Hoping for a second volume.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews