Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1474575
2 4 P E R S P E C T I V E | J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 Phil Langone Liberation Day is the story of Vander Shaw, a burned out lieutenant on a mission to free child laborers from an infamous war factory, a place where children are worked until aging out and then sent to the front lines of an unrelenting battle. e first meet Shaw and his fireteam as they shepherd a group of surrendered child soldiers out of a hot zone. Tragically, most of the team and kids are killed. Nearly broken mentally from the long, grinding war, Shaw is given another mission, this time to liberate the child workers of the war factory. t first he says no, but after being informed his seemingly dead brother Brant is still alive and working in the factory, Shaw agrees and assembles the two remaining men from his team, Coburn and Pearce. One hitch: Is Brant now a true believer in the enemy side's cause and will he alert the factory Commandant to the plot or will he come home with Shaw? Liberation Day is a race against time about a man struggling to free children from a world they didn't choose, while fighting against his own relentless demons. PHIL LANGONE left San Jose in 1993 to attend UCLA's School of Arts and Architecture. After finishing his first short animated film Dog Fur Hired as an undergrad, Langone went through WB Animation's trainee program, eventually working on the classic Iron Giant. A short stint on The Simpsons followed, then a move to Ireland where he shifted into storyboarding live action shorts and commercials. rriving back in Los ngeles, Langone reentered animation, storyboarding on Family Guy, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Young Justice and the feature animated film, Free Birds. From there he worked with Jon Favreau on The Jungle Book and The Lion King. More recently, he storyboarded all three Jon Watts' Spider-Man films, Kong vs Godzilla, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Moon Knight. In his own time, Langone returned to his first love, comic books and completed the first issue of Liberation Day, an original series inspired by global inustice towards children. e's currently shopping his story around town in the hopes of seeing it evolve into a miniseries, animated or otherwise.