Give Me Liberty

Comprising four issues, Give Me Liberty (1990), a comic book limited series written by the American writer Frank Miller and drawn by the English illustrator Dave Gibbons, is a political satire about Martha Washington, an African American woman living in the near-future who grows up in a public housing project, later becoming a war hero and an influential political figure.

The first issue, "Homes and Gardens," begins in 1995, five years in the future when Martha Washington is born in a Chicago hospital. Her family lives in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project. In 1996, while protesting the living conditions in the housing project, Martha's father is killed. As Martha grows up, she becomes interested in computer programming and finds a mentor at her school in a teacher named Donald. One day, Donald is killed by the Ice Man, a henchman working for the Pope, a local crime boss. Martha avenges Donald's death by killing the Ice Man with his own hook. The state remands her to a local mental hospital in the wake of the attack. There, she discovers horrific genetic experiments are being conducted on children to transform them into, essentially, human computers.

Meanwhile, the corrupt and highly conservative President Edwin Rexall repeals the Twenty-second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allowing him to run for as many presidential terms as he wishes. After an attack by Saudi Arabian terrorists renders Rexall comatose and kills almost everyone else in the presidential line of succession, the liberal Secretary of Agriculture, Howard Nissen, becomes president. Nissen recalls Rexall's PAX Peace Force from fighting various foreign wars and, instead, deploys PAX to South America to fight cattle industrialists who are destroying the rainforest.



After the mental hospital shuts down due to budget cuts, a homeless Martha joins the PAX Peace Force and travels to South America, where her hair is turned permanently blonde after a chemical weapon attack. When Martha discovers her commanding officer, Lieutenant Stanford Moretti, is collaborating with the enemy, she kills all his men and tries to kill Moretti, but the attack renders both of them severely wounded. Moretti blackmails Martha into working for him.

In the second issue, "Travel and Entertainment," Moretti takes credit for a number of Martha's heroic acts while fighting for PAX. Nevertheless, Martha's heroism does not go unnoticed by President Nissen who, at Martha's request, sends PAX troops to help alleviate the poor living conditions at the Cabrini-Green Housing Project.

In 2011, white supremacist terrorists have gained control of a laser cannon located in space aimed at the White House. Martha is sent to stop the terrorists. Before she can kill them all, however, they initiate the launch sequence for the laser cannon. Martha recognizes "Raggy Ann," one of the children who was turned into a human computer at the psychiatric hospital. Although Martha convinces Raggy Ann to end the launch sequence, they can't stop the space station from crashing in the desert in the Southwest in territory belonging to the Apache Nation. Martha and Raggy Ann bond with their Apache captors.



Meanwhile, President Nissen has become a power-mad alcoholic in the intervening months. He has also become especially vulnerable to the nefarious machinations of Moretti, now a colonel, who tries to convince Nissen to obliterate the Apache Nation—and Martha along with it—using PAX's own laser cannon.

In the third issue, "Health and Welfare," Raggy Ann uses telepathy to learn of Moretti's plan to destroy them. Martha steals a Jeep and, along with Raggy Ann and their Apache associate Wasserstein, barely escapes the blast radius before the laser cannon fires. Unfortunately, Martha can't help but look behind her when the blast goes off, and she is blinded by the brightness. Shortly thereafter, the trio is captured by the Surgeon General, who runs his own separatist army stationed in the Pacific Northwest. A madman who opposes rock music and pornography, the Surgeon General restores Martha's eyesight but also brainwashes her into working for him under the alias "Margaret Snowden."

Meanwhile, Moretti makes public the executive order to destroy the Apache Nation, thus ruining Nissen's reputation in the public eye. After conspiring with the Cabinet to assassinate Nissen, Moretti blows up the White House, killing all of his co-conspirators and leaving him in charge of the country as interim president. While Moretti is engaged in a battle to subdue the Surgeon General, the brainwashed Martha is tasked with killing her old companions, Wasserstein and Raggy Ann. Fortunately, Raggy Ann has all of Martha's old memories stored as data. She uploads them to "Margaret’s” brain, restoring the old Martha. At the end of the issue, the Surgeon General destroys Moretti's laser cannon before it can be used to destroy the Surgeon General's headquarters, Fortress Health.



In the fourth and final issue, "Death and Taxes," Martha returns to Fortress Health under the guise of "Margaret." After learning the Surgeon General's plan, which involves creating a clone of Rexall using his brain, Martha shoots the Surgeon General, revealing that he is actually a robot. Martha, Wasserman, and Raggy Ann flee with Rexall's wife and Rexall's brain. They manage to escape Fortress Health in a plane, but they find the robotic Surgeon General clinging to the side of the aircraft. Using a shotgun, Martha shoots the Surgeon General from the side of the plane, and his robot frame is destroyed by a missile fired by Moretti's troops that was intended to destroy Martha and her crew.

Moretti tracks Martha down to Brazil, where Martha has formed a small but formidable army made up of former compatriots and former enemies. After her army defeats Moretti's men handily, Martha defeats Moretti in hand-to-hand combat, arresting him. Using the brain and a robotic body, they build a clone of Rexall who wins a special election. The story ends as Martha visits Moretti in his cell. She gives him a belt, which he uses to hang himself.

In Miller's pessimistic outlook, neither conservative leaders like Rexall nor liberal leaders like Nissen can save America from the personal and institutional corruption that inevitably settles in the halls of power.