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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Well now, that's just different.

NEWSARAMA.COM: MIKE MACKEY ON LIBERALITY FOR ALL:
"Not what you were thinking the writer of a comic book that’s set in a 2021 America ruled by Liberals, a place where G. Gordon Liddy and Sean Hannity (of Fox’s Hannity and Combs) are biomechincally enhanced freedom fighters, fighting against President Chelsea Clinton and a culture that has all but eliminated Conservative thought would lead off with, huh?

Joining with a handful of other titles that have ultimately received more attention outside of comics than inside, Liberality For All is either a satire of Liberalism, a parody of Conservativism, or just a mad joke, and Mackey is laughing at everyone. Which makes Mackey either a genius or a lunatic – and he freely admits, the Liberality For All audience may still be split on the final verdict.

The first issue of the eight issue miniseries, Liberality (illustrated by Donny Lin) came out at the end of October, and perhaps the most anticipated comic of the season in some quarters – yes, even more so than House of M or Infinite Crisis #1.

No – you haven’t entered fantasyland. Since the announcement that Mackey was producing a comic set in a dystopian future, with the dystopia due to a Liberal administration taking the White House in 2000, he and his comic have appeared in more mainstream television spots, newspaper articles, and radio shows than…well, safe to say, all of the comic creators working for Marvel and DC put together.

...As Mackey explained, the inspiration for Liberality came from two prime sources, the first a painting entitled “Rush the Warrior” by Clyde Caldwell showing talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh as a battling barbarian, fighting a three-headed monster (with Bill Clinton, Hilary Clinton, and Al Gore as the heads, while Liberty and Justice – aptly portrayed as hot babes are shown to be what Rush is defending); and a John Kerry bumper sticker from 2004’s election season that said, “Kerry for a Stronger America.”

“I saw the bumper sticker the same day that Kerry had made a comment about fighting a ‘more sensitive’ war on terror,” Mackey said. “That got me thinking about what this ‘other world’ would look like, one where Kerry was leading the country in a more ‘sensitive war.’ I started listening to a lot of talk radio, both right and left wing, and tried to come up with something that had elements of both the extreme right and extreme left.”"

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