The Saga of Volume 1, Issue 5

by James Norton

Issue 5 was some stormy shit. One of the school paper's more impish operatives (the omni-talented Brady Clark) "outed" the members of the Liberator inner circle with a series of posters, prompting retaliatory posters from the Liberator staff. And although our identities were already semi-public, the outing came at an unfortunate time; issue 5 had some of our weakest content to date, and represented a backslide from its illustrious predecessor.

We spent half a page on an illustration of a middle finger and an atom bomb destroying the school. Our front page article was uncharacteristically weak. My "Ask Bob" advice column got bashed for misogyny when – I swear! – it was intended as parody.

And... Yes. This issue features "Fat Girls," the worst piece of content (comic strip or otherwise) in Liberator history. This poorly drawn, poorly thought-out, screamingly unpopular comic was put together in literally the last seconds possible by Adam Osborn, our normally reliable cartoonist. I remember him running up into my room right as I was about to draw a map to his house on the back of the issue, as we were about 10 minutes before our print time, and we still had no cartoon. I wish I'd drawn the map. Sorry that the cartoon is almost unreadable; it wasn't much better in the original issue, which was actually sort of a blessing.

We also carried an interview with one of the "West Three." Three West students – all of whom were good poker buddies of mine, and supporters of the Liberator – were arrested for the serious vandalism of principal Libby Burmaster's home. This was serious stuff – they had spray-painted obscenities on her house and car.

The event and its aftermath greatly shook the paper and diminished the anti-administration radicalism of our staff – although we continued rattling the bars a bit, our mission was turned toward comedy and wit-laden satire, not bristling personal attacks on the administration.

We had a good, restful summer after issue 5, and when fall came, we pulled off the masks, took off the gloves, and womped ass.