Matt Miner (Toe Tag Riot) follows up his animal activist comic Liberator from Black Mask Studios with a spin-off starring Jeanette and Sarah on their own adventures.
Pre-orders for the collected edition are being sorted for the May release of Volume 1, so Earth Crisis and pit bull fans should get the word to the LCS.
Black Mask Studios recently launched a new YouTube channel for ‘tubecomics’ — motion comics versions of your favorites, including a prequel for Critical Hit with Liberator – tubecomic episode 1.1.
Jeanette and Sarah’s adventures aren’t always legal and they definitely aren’t safe, and this first volume of Critical Hit exposes the real risks and dangers of sticking it to the man!
Issue #1 starts out with our protagonists going hard on an ‘action’, smashing vehicles and invading cabins in the woods. The cabins are for deer hunters in the area, and Jeanette and Sarah do their best to destroy the camp with a firestorm.
Hot on their trail, however, are the hunters with their guns, chasing the girls into a ditch.
Miner tells the rest of the story in a series of flashbacks from the nexus of the camp invasion as the starting point.
Going back as far as seven years and leading up to this action we get the backstory of Sarah’s record store days and Jeanette’s abusive relationship she is lucky enough to survive.
The Scooby Gang in this story is made up of a supportive group of diverse vegans and punks, boys and girls, seen camping but also hanging around the local punk shows, roller derbys and getting into the requisite fistfights.
In a flashback scene in issue #2, the girls liberate pit bulls from the worst possible situation — an underground ring of dog fighters being run out of a fireworks store.
Props to artist Jonathan Brandon Sawyer for making the puppy Independence Day sparkle and the tails wagging! Jonathan’s storytelling and designs are strong in this world.
All the while, in the present the hunters have taken the girls to a shipping container where they suffer abuses for destroying the camp.
These guys don’t mess around and the real life violence might be triggering for some, as the rednecks blackjack Sarah in the face, knocking her unconscious.
Both of these strong ladies have suffered longstanding abuse from partners in the past, Eddie is the winner of a boyfriend that Sarah has to return to living with her mom for, and Jeanette’s ex Daniel can’t stay sober for any good amount of time.
The survival instinct that both Jeanette and Sarah have will save them in the end.
Jeanette’s story edges back a bit further than that, actually. With an alcoholic father and a brother that went off to college, she truly feels alone at an early age.
What I enjoy most about this volume of Critical Hit is that the characters are fully formed and the story is more based in reality than it is in my usual world of super heroes. Jeanette and Sarah’s super power is the aforementioned survival instinct and their willing to sacrifice their own safety for innocent animals. And yeah, Jeannette does end up carrying some pretty cool tactical equipment that is capable of getting her out of a bind.
The last chapter of the trade deals with Sarah and Jeanette’s captivity and another action at a “Live Poultry Fresh Killed” market.
Whether you agree with the politics of extreme activism or not, these are great comic book stories and role models (if not in the traditional sense) for people searching for strong female leads in comics. Matt Miner and Black Mask Studios are definitely keeping a punk rock aesthetic in these books — and I for one couldn’t be happier
“I’d teach ’em how to plant a bomb, start a fire, play guitarand if they catch a hunter, shoot him in the nutsI’d try to be as progressive as I could possibly beas long as I don’t have to try too much”
