Year: 2013

Well this marks the end of our foray into the realm of the Dependapotamus. The last day of the year seems like a fitting event for such an occasion. I hope you all learned something over the last month:

Don’t pick up women at the E-Club.

Seriously. If she’s a civilian at the base E-Club, it means she’s either married or some General’s daughter. The latter might be a weird kink for you, the former as well, but with any addition of common sense to your daily life, you would avoid things like this. For those of you that don’t know what an E-Club is, it’s where Marines below the rank of E-6 can enjoy themselves with cheap alcohol and buffalo wings. Of course, it pales in comparison to the base Staff NCO Club or Officer’s Club. I had a weird opportunity to eat at the O-Club at Kaneohe Bay–it was super nice and made the rest of the Marine Corps look like plebeian cavemen.

They say that the greatest cure for ignorance is travel, and I now understand why Officers often feel so out of touch with the commoners of the enlisted. The O-Club, as well as that entire side of the base (in Hawaii), is exponentially nicer and higher-budget than anything we’re given. Officers are treated like shiny little gods aboard a base, they don’t get it because their cultural experience is skewed to favor the nicer commodities. Of course, I’m not referring to Mustangs or otherwise regular folk who struggled to get a bachelor’s degree on their own dime and worked hard to be where they are–I’m naturally referring to the silver spoon type.

Anyway, this is a weird tangent and it has nothing to do with this comic.

Without further adieu, I present to you the winner of the REVENGE OF THE DEPENDAPOTAMUS contest!!!

Alex Pei

There were a lot of really great entries in the contest, as well as some crappy ones, but Alex managed to secure his victory with over 3900 Likes on the Facebook Fan Page. Alex will be receiving a package of Terminal Lance gear for his hard work!

Anyway, today is the last day of the year. Enjoy yourself tonight, make up some resolution you won’t follow through on, and be ready to start 2014 with a bang.

2014 is going to be a good year.

May the Force of your Bullshit be with you, always.

One more page of Revenge of the Dependapotamus to go! The contest entries have been posted to the Facebook fan page, make sure you check it out and vote on your favorite by clicking “Like!” Someone named Antony Lopez also sent me a photo of their hairy asshole, which I did not include as an official entry, because it wasn’t within the rules. Sorry, hairy-asshole Antony, maybe next time I’ll do a competition where I ask for the absolute hairiest asshole in the world and you could win without contest.

I imagine taking a shit for you is like watching a Cirque Du Soleil acrobat fall into the net every time.

When I was writing this I was trying to figure out what the holiest of holies is for excuses in the Marine Corps. I’m sure there are other ones that would have fit the bill, but dental is always such a huge deal. The last part about the Battalion NJP for missing a dental appointment wasn’t a joke either, that was an actual policy for my Battalion.

Moral of the story? Don’t miss dental.

The other thing I was leaning toward was ‘I have an appointment with base housing’–or really–anything that has to do with your wife. Being married in the Marine Corps is a free pass out of a lot of shit, it’s no wonder so many Lance Corporals are tempted into such things, much like our friend Garcia here. While of course this whole website is one of humor and exaggeration, the tale of the Dependapotamus is grounded in reality. I won’t badger on about the flaws in the marriage system of the military, I’ve already done that many times, but proceed with caution when you propose to that girl you just met at Nashville’s last week.

I’ll be heading back to the bay area this weekend, it’s been a great week in Portland being able to meet up with my family and such. Someone email me a great place to eat between Portland and San Francisco so I can stop there and stuff my fat face.

We’re only two more pages away from the epic conclusion of Revenge of the Dependapotamus!

A little known fact:

Officers are actually taught the secret of summoning the Green Weenie from their loins when they go to OCS. The power of the Green Weenie resides in every officer as well as all Staff NCO’s (they acquire it through years of green weenie abuse, however).

I’ve talked about the Green Weenie over the years quite a bit. Of course, while the comic depicts this glorious phallus very literally, in real life it is but a metaphor. It describes the omnipresent ability for the Marine Corps to fuck you at any given time. It’s always watching, waiting, it can strike at any moment. For years the buttholes of Lance Corporals everywhere have clenched and cowered at its mere mention.

It seeks to fuck you, and at some point in your Marine Corps career (no matter how short)… it will find a way.

In other news, I’m back in Portland for the week with my family and it’s expectedly cold, rainy and terrible outside. With that said, regular updates are of course continuing and I’m still accepting submissions to the Revenge of the Dependapotamus contest! I’ve already got a lot of them, so make sure you get it into me by Friday if you want to be considered an official entry!

After Friday’s comic, I’ll post the entries on the Terminal Lance Facebook Page, where voting will commence via “Likes.”

Check last week’s comic for the official rules.

Otherwise, tomorrow is Christmas day! Christmas can either be a really great or a really shitty time of year depending on your circumstance. It can be especially hard if you’re overseas as well. I spent a Christmas in Iraq, so I understand how it can be.

Always remember that while you’re away from your family back home, you’ve got nothing but family all around you. The Marines to your left and right aren’t your coworkers, they’re your family, and it’s up to you guys to make the best of it.

Merry Christmas, Marines.

It only gets stranger from here.

We’re almost done with our Revenge of the Dependapotamus special!

As such, I thought it would be fun to tie in a little bit of the audience this Christmas. We haven’t done a contest in a while, the Kickstarter stuff has kept me so burnt out on anything extracurricular it’s been hard for me to think about other things. But alas! I’ve got a lot of extra shit here, so why not give something away?

So here’s the deal:

Revenge of the Dependapotamus Contest

Rules:

• Draw, paint, sketch, whatever, some Star Wars-themed Marine Corps artwork! That’s it.
• Send it to me at maximilian.uriarte@terminallance.com with the subject as ‘REVENGE OF THE DEPENDAPOTAMUS CONTEST‘
• The artwork can be digital, hand-done, or whatever you feel like, it just needs to end up as a digital image you can send me via email. The requirements are that it must be Star Wars AND Marine Corps themed, not one or the other. You must combine the two!
• Your deadline is Friday December 27th.  Once I have all of the images in, I’ll put them up on the Terminal Lance Facebook page for voting. The image with the most ‘Likes’ by Tuesday December 31st will win the prize! The prize? A care package with some Terminal Lance swag in it! I might even draw a penis-dragon just for you.

In other news, Christmas is certainly coming up next week, no matter how much you try to deny it. I’ll be traveling from my abode in the bay area back to the motherland of Oregon. I’ll be in Portlandia for the most part, though I might travel a bit to Corvallis. Going home is always weird, it hasn’t been the same ever since I joined the Marine Corps some 7 years ago. I haven’t lived there since then, and I don’t really ever plan on going back. There’s something about leaving the nest that makes returning never the same again.

You go out into the world, you embark on this epic journey that takes you around the globe, you experience so much, and when you come home everyone else is exactly the same as you left them. It’s both good and bad. It’s good because you know where your roots will always be, but it’s not so much in the sense that you can’t really identify with anyone anymore. It’s kind of weird being here in California, honestly. Ever since my divorce I don’t have any family here whatsoever (except for my dog Charlie), yet I refuse to go back to Oregon, where everyone I grew up with is at.

I guess I just like it here.

It’s true, COSTCO pizza is an amazing value. Then again, basically anything at COSTCO is a great value if you have the money upfront. It’s one of those places where you walk in thinking you’ll just get one or two things and somehow end up spending like $200 on shit you didn’t know you needed, stocking up because of the great bargain.

That’s how they get you.

When I was writing this I kept going back and forth between COSTCO and the base commissary. The commissary might have been more appropriate for a Marine Corps comic, but COSTCO is pretty fucking awesome. Specifically though, COSTCO pizza is fucking glorious and super cheap. Every time I go I make it a point to stuff my fat ass with one of those $1.50 slices of American splendor while bald eagles and the Blue Angels soar overhead to “Danger Zone.”

These are the kind of crucial creative decisions that keep me up at night.

I’ve actually never been to the commissary at Twentynine Palms. My two thirty day stints at Mojave Viper were the extent of my experience at the desert oasis of a base. However, I do fondly remember the commissary at MCBH Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii. The sandwich deli counter is a far superior solution to the 3 (literally) Subways aboard the base. Jared can go fuck himself, I’ll take a real sandwich please. The commissary is also a great place to get cheap groceries “tax-free.” I say “tax-free” because there’s a rather suspect surcharge associated with buying items at the commissary that I could never figure out.

It’s not a tax. It’s a surcharge.

For those of you wondering what a commissary is, it’s a fancy word for grocery store.

Huhuhu… Hahahahaha!

It only gets stranger from here, gents. I mentioned this before, but this is a 10 part series. If you’re dying for some good old-fashioned 3-panel humor, be sure to check out Terminal Lance in the Marine Corps Times newspaper, where new regular strips are currently running every week.

It’s a busy time in the world of Terminal Lance, there’s a lot of great stuff coming down the pipes; but it all takes time and I am but one man. The extra money from the Kickstarter campaign is being put into new projects, some of which you already know about, but others I haven’t announced yet. I’m trying my hardest to focus strictly on The White Donkey, but my ambition sometimes gets the better of me as I’m constantly thinking of new projects to put resources into.

If this series wasn’t enough proof, I feel like it should be apparent that I’m a huge nerd. There’s a weird dichotomy in the world of nerds though; many are neckbeard virgins that never leave their mom’s basement while others maintain a regular life and have the capacity to get laid when they need to, keeping their Star Wars and Lord of the Rings obsessions under the surface. I prefer to think of myself as the latter, as I maintain a decent physique and am not disgusting or socially inept. I play video games, love Star Wars and the like, but I also am familiar with vaginas. Believe it or not, those two things are not mutually exclusive.

Star Wars made an impression on me very young. I was 11 when the Star Wars trilogy was re-released in 1997 under the moniker of “Special Edition,” with added shitty effects and some visual clean-up. Needless to say, I fell in love instantly. The scene where SgtMaj Yoda steals LCpl Skywalker’s tray-rat sausage was probably an inspiration for me to join the Marine Corps. As a child, Return of the Jedi was always my favorite because of the Jabba the Hut sequence and the space battle over the forest moon of Endor. I would actually say that Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Jurassic Park are probably the 3 most influential films of my life. All three of which led me to want to become a filmmaker, which I am still pursuing to this day (hence the animation degree).

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Just know that Terminal Lance is not the last thing up my sleeve, but it will always be important to me.

Here’s some character sketches from The White Donkey!

We finally get a glimpse of the great Vagabba the Slut in all of her glory!

I know some people lack patience around here, the same things happened when I did the “Necropocalypse.” Half the audience really loved it and the other half were posting asinine remarks like, “this is gay ur not funny anymore go back to comic strips ur a fag i sucked a dick once in college but I’m not gay i swear i love vagina why don’t u believe me?” and so forth. Much like the Necropocalypse, this is a 10 part series and it’ll be over when it’s over. If you’re not a Star Wars fan, then that sucks for you, since 99% of the world has seen and loves Star Wars. My favorite one is, “the comics were funnier when u were still active duty and one time i gave a hand job to my buddy that was passed out from drinking it wasn’t gay but i kind of liked it but i love pussy” which would be remotely true except for the fact that every comic after strip #34 is post-active duty.

Yes. #34.

The criticism over the last page was interesting. It was the Chaplain’s 4th appearance in Terminal Lance and certainly not the first appearance of a penis (or even half of one), but people found it “offensive.” In fact, someone even asked me to take it down from the Facebook page.

Yes, I’m totally going to take down a link to my own website because it offends you.

As Terminal Lance gets bigger it really does get more difficult to please everyone. My core audience of Marine Corps infantry that made Terminal Lance what it is is but a small minority of the masses that read this now. I certainly love everyone, regardless of what you do or who you are, but Terminal Lance hasn’t changed over the last 3 years, and I really don’t want it to.

It’s a simple fact: I can’t please everyone.

So if I can only please one group of people, it will be the Marines I started with, and I’ll be happy.

Terminal Lance has had an interesting journey over the last few years. It’s as much about Abe and Garcia as it is about the fans that keep it alive and me as the creator. It’s a lot of work, but it’s what I do, and I love doing it. You guys have had a glimpse into my life over the last three and a half years that has had good times and bad times. Terminal Lance has more of a personal connection to people because they know me, Max, the guy who writes and draws all of this stuff. For those of you that have been with me for the long haul, I applaud and love you. For those of you that are new, stick around and go back, read the older comics and try to catch on.

I can’t please everyone, but if you’ve only read one comic and you didn’t like it, I have no interest in pleasing you at all.

I’m sorry.

Okay, not really. “A little bit of shaft” is just one of those things that makes me laugh every time.

The Master Skater Lance Corporal has successfully made his way into Vagabba the Slut’s palace, only time will tell if he’s able to successfully save Garcia from her wretched grasp.

*Edit*

So people were offended at the Chaplain thing again. I say again, because this isn’t the first time this character has occurred in the Terminal Lance lore. Of course I don’t hate Chaplains, this is one character, get over it.

I think it’s worth talking about that no one actually hates military wives. I mean, that’s just stupid, considering I was married for most of my enlistment. Whenever I make fun of things like the Dependapotamus, I’m not necessarily talking about every military wife on base; it’s really just a satirical poke at the (unfortunately) typical enlisted wife that feeds off of BAH, credit cards, child support and misery. There’s a lot to be said about military wives, and a lot of it is positive. For every disgusting creature feeding off the life-force of whatever stupid Lance Corporal dragged her into his shitty life, there are great women that do great things for our Marines.

Of course, we all have a good laugh at the bumper stickers and other moto wife-gear that says silly tag-lines like, “Toughest job in the Corps,” but it’s all in good fun. Realistically, it goes without saying that the job of a military wife can be obviously stressful. Raising children while your husband is on deployment and you’re on a base hundreds of miles away from your family is no easy task, and many women perform it admirably. I think many Marines should put their wife’s perspective into consideration more often. You have a woman that you probably dated in high school or whatever, transplanted to a far away land with likely no familial support and really no bearings, living her life for the sole purpose of being there for you. Of course, many wives get jobs and try to live normal lives, but you’re really at the mercy of whatever the Marine’s command decides to do with him next.

Marines give up a lot of freedoms for a variety of reasons, but military wives give up a lot of their freedoms for you.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of shitty wives out there. However, there’s also shitty husbands, shitty Marines, and just shitty people in general.

Don’t lose perspective, a lot of it is just shit.

This Lance Corporal seems to have evaded the first line of guards at Vagabba the Slut’s lair, will his Master Skater training prepare him for the Chaplain?

FIND OUT ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF REVENGE OF THE DEPENDAPOTAMUS.

Okay, I know it really doesn’t make any sense that the Chaplain is at this woman’s house. Just go with me here.

Isn’t modern technology a wonderful thing? Smartphones, tablets, portable gaming devices and the like have really changed the way we consume porn for the better. No longer are you stuck dragging your big, bulky laptop into your barracks bathroom with the obvious intent of self-flagellation; you can now just bring your smartphone already in your pocket.

On a completely unrelated note, I was always kind of confused on the official regulation of the green USMC zip-up hoodie. It’s a superior clothing item to the crew-neck sweater you get issued in boot camp, but from what I understand it isn’t officially in regs. When I was in Hawaii, I stayed home for the holidays (I was saving up for terminal leave). We had a terrible tropical storm, and since the entire battalion was on leave, no one was really doing anything important. First Sergeant had called us all back to the barracks for an accountability gathering, but it wasn’t an actual formation. I was married at the time, so I drove to the barracks from base housing.

I decided to wear nothing more than my cammy bottoms with a skivvy shirt and the green zip-up hoodie. The first thing I hear as I approach the barracks is my First Sergeant telling me, “Hey Devil, you know that hoodie isn’t within regulation right?”

I actually didn’t know, because like most Lance Corporals I’ve never wanted to take the time to read any regulations myself.

I think my reply was something along the lines of, “Well that sucks, First Sergeant.” We were all in ‘holiday mode’ however, and he didn’t even really care.

Anyway, can you believe it’s December already? It’s really caught me off guard how fast the holidays have shown up. Enjoy your leave if you get it, and if you don’t, enjoy sitting in your room playing Battlefield 4 when you’re not on duty.

Today marks the beginning of my holiday Revenge of the Dependapotamus fest. The great Lance Corporal Garcia has made the terrible mistake of drunkenly entering into a contract marriage with a woman at the E-Club! It is up to a lone Lance Corporal to rescue him from his imminent doom.

I know, I know, Abe and Garcia are stationed in Hawaii–howcome they’re in 29 Palms? Well we just have to assume that they were there for Mojave Viper or something.

Just roll with me here.

For those of you that might not know what’s going on here, this is a 10-part storyline like the Necropocalypse a couple of years ago. I’ve actually had this one in my head for a long time, but it wasn’t until the Kickstarter that I had a good opportunity to put it out. Star Wars is obviously a fairly well-parodied item in the world of media, and this is no different. The Marine Corps and Star Wars already share a lot of the same mythos, with Wookies and such, plus things like how Yoda is who makes all of those horrendous tray-rat sausages you eat in the field.