Year: 2016

Okay this is a joke, this class isn’t actually taught in TAPS/SEPS, but it should be.

The transition from active duty to civilian is tough. It really is. I’ve lived it, and I know how it can be.

Probably the hardest part that no one tells you though?

Letting go.

I’m not ready to draw a conclusive correlation between veteran suicide rates and acceptance of your new civilian life (if that were even possible), but I would anecdotally argue that the veterans that tend to do the best on the outside are the ones that really leave their former active duty life behind completely. This means not wearing moto hats and veteran-branded T-shirts from any one of over 9000 veteran apparel companies; this means not lamenting civilians from your bearded mouth and your Facebook statuses; this means avoiding toxic mentalities and memes that permeate much of online veteran culture.

It means truely integrating back into the culture you left years ago.

Of course, I’m not saying you shouldn’t get together with veterans you served with and enjoy some good stories and memories over a few drinks. These are normal, healthy activities that I think anyone would encourage.

What I’m referring to with this comic is the insistent need to identify as a veteran before your individuality as a person. Veterans have a unique skill set, experience and a capacity to the be the best leaders in American history. Unfortunately, many are bogged down in the poisonous subcultures that so easily infect the recently separated.

Odd I’m sure, coming from a guy that draws comics about the Marine Corps. Illustration and art is my profession, and I keep a healthy mental distance. I’ve mentioned before that I consider Terminal Lance to be an “Active Duty” brand, and I stand by that despite my distance from my own service. Perhaps maintaining this mentality has been why Terminal Lance is not often bogged down by many of the pitfalls of other “military” brands and pages.

My allegiance is, and has always been, to the Lance Corporal. I feel this way because I remember distinctly just how much it fucking sucks to be in the suck. I like to think that Terminal Lance offers some respite to the monotony of the barracks life in the form of an illustrated 3-panel comic that understands.

Of course, I love veterans as well, being one myself. I just find the “veteran” isolationist subculture to be more frustrating than the average Lance Coolie wishing he was somewhere else.

It doesn’t take a scholar to notice that every single time there’s some outrage over a “military” issue in the news media, it is never the active duty guys that actually care. The most vocal outbursts of anger and malice come solely from the Angry Facebook Veteran. One could argue that overarching censorship of active duty individuals keeps them from being more vocal, but I would disagree. I think most Lance Corporals just have too much to worry about to care, and are good at rolling with the punches anyway.

On a side note, if you noticed this comic looks a little different, it’s because I did the entire thing from start-to-finish (including this blog post) on my iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. This is different than how I normally do it using my desktop and a Cintiq, but I wanted to see if I could make this work. It has actually been a success! A convoluted success, but a success nonetheless. I want to do a more indepth review of the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil (a year late) from the perspective of a professional artist and how it can actually work in a realistic workflow.

Turns out it’s more difficult than you’d think.

Lastly, I just want to mention again that I will be in Brooklyn this weekend at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday! Come by and hear the panel, say hi, and get something signed.

You drink, I drink, we all drink!

Lest we forget, the Corps was founded in a tavern back in 1775, the day my Marine Corps came alive.

Marines love to drink, ranks low and high, but for as many different reasons as there are snowflakes in a blizzard. Okay, there aren’t actually that many reasons, most of them just come down to getting turnt. From PFC’s (illegally) to First Sergeant drinking his miseries away in the darkness of his kitchen counter at 11pm, you’ll find alcohol and Marines nearly synonymous with each other. You could say the barracks is a lot like a frat house, except with men.

Okay I don’t have a lot to add to this strip, which was previously featured in the Marine Corps Times. Terminal Lance and the Marine Times have been great allies for nearly 6 years now, and you can find new comic strips every other week in the print edition of the Marine Corps Times.

Also, don’t forget that I’ll be in New York City this weekend at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday. I’ll be on a panel called “The Art of War” at 5pm with some other awesome writers and artists drawing from wartime experience in graphic novels. It should be a good time!

A big deal on the national stage this week has been 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. The Veteran Outrage Machine™ has been in full gear after Kaepernick refused to stand for the National Anthem as his own dumb way of protesting some unrelated issues.

Of course, this story technically has nothing to do with veterans or the military.

This is a story about the flag, America, patriotism, traditions, racial inequalities in America, football, etc. A better story on this would probably be about the shallow commercialization of American traditions by massive multibillion dollar conglomerates such as the NFL and the force-fed social obligations of fans and players in the name of “patriotism.”

In actuality, not a single one of these is exclusive to the military community, active or otherwise. And yet, the veteran community has taken ownership of this “controversy” due to the usual undying obligation to turn irrelevant issues into something about them. Everywhere I look, I’m seeing yet another veteran offer their “unique” opinion on why Kaepernick should or shouldn’t stand for the National Anthem.

I would argue that very few veterans check enough boxes to even come close to offering anything remotely insightful on the subject, and to that extent I would give credit to Nate Boyer for his levelheaded and understanding take as both an NFL player and multi decorated combat veteran.

However, for every one Nate Boyer, there’s ten Angry Facebook Veterans offering shallow perspective and grossly misusing the term “fought” as it relates to Kaepernick’s constitutional rights.

(Pro-Tip: if you were a POG [or grunt] that never even deployed, you probably didn’t “fight” for anyone’s rights)

My opinion on Kaepernick?

Who the fuck cares what I have to say about it?

In other news, there’s some fresh new skivvies up on the official Terminal Lance store! Show some love for the firing line.

I’ll admit, I’ve never used Tinder on a Marine Corps base, but I can imagine this is basically what it’s like. There’s not a whole lot of dating opportunities aboard the base, you’ll have to travel far and away… As far and away as you can… To find a woman (or man) worth your interest. As a straight male, that isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with female Marines, it’s just that… I dunno… It’s weird.

Of course, romantic life while active duty is always rather tumultuous, whether you’re in a relationship or not. When you’re with someone you genuinely care about, being separated for months at a time is extremely difficult. When you’re in an unhealthy relationship, cheating is always on the horizon (you may as well be a ram trusting his sheep with a pack of lions for 7 months). When you’re single, well, you have to use Tinder.

I was on Tinder last year for a couple of weeks before I deleted the app. It was occasionally fun but mostly a huge time waster.

I don’t recommend it.

There exists in many military myths and legends an animal that is rarely seen by man. Its collar is adorned with a unique crimson shine seen in no other rank structure. They aren’t really officers, but they aren’t enlisted. They exist somewhere in a realm in between those two worlds, mysterious in their nature and powerful in their abilities.

I speak of course of Warrant Officers.

The Warrant Officers of the Marine Corps come and go as they please, often unseen and mostly unheard of. They are said to possess unnatural abilities and are often deterred by sunlight, silver, and bullshit.

It is said that the crimson on their rank represents the dark blood oath that Staff NCO’s have to pact in order to become one. Warrant Officers can be summoned through incantation, though it’s unwise to do so. It usually involves reading various passages of the Rituale Romanum in Latin and making a strong pot of coffee.

You will never see them at formations, the field, humps, offices or retirement ceremonies. No one knows what they actually do, but you can find them in the deepest corners of the Marine Corps. They exist in the darkness, in the shadows, manipulating the strings of their puppets.

They are Warrant Officers.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Chemlights, otherwise known as glowsticks, are an integral part of training and field operations for Marines. Seriously, we use the damn things all the time. They’re handy for marking trails, cleared areas, Marines, and really just about anything else you can think of.

Random chemlight storytime:

When I was in Iraq in 2007, we were about 10 minutes from embarking on a night patrol into Zaidon. Another Marine in my platoon, and a good friend, walked up to me and sprayed chemlight juice all over me. Honestly I thought it was pretty funny, until my section leader came up to him and said “You realize we’re about go on a combat patrol at night, you fucking idiot.”

Of all the confusing and strange safety briefs Marines have to sit through prior to being unleashed on a typical long weekend, the course on “Fraud, Waste, and Abuse” is probably the most confusing and irrelevant to the average infantry Marine. You sit there, mouth agape at a bunch of DOD terminology that you don’t care about, learning about a concept over the course of 4 hours that could literally be described as shortly as “don’t let Marines waste resources.”

In all actuality, I don’t really have that much to add to this comic, I just thought it was a funny joke. I’m also kind of under the weather, as I ingested some angry spirit in my spaghetti last night. My gastrointestinal system is not fond of me at the moment.

I feel like lately I haven’t been getting too personal with things in the same way that I used to. Sometimes I also feel like every comic strip needs to be 10x funnier than the last one and provide some profound commentary satire on the state of being in the military.

Of course, that’s ridiculous.

Sometimes I just do comics because I think they’re funny.

I’ve often heard it said that a bitching Marine is a happy Marine.

To be frank, I’m not sure if I agree with that. However, there is truth in the sense that Marines definitely love to bitch. In the case of a MEU deployment, Marines are often finding themselves longing for the “action” of a proper combat deployment. While it is true that they might be spending some miserable hours on a big gray boat, at least they get to stop all over the world and check out all kinds of interesting foreign sights and sounds.

You know what foreign sights and sounds you see in Iraq? Women in burkas and gunshots. That’s basically it. Shit sucks bro. I would have rather been on the MEU.

Of course, the grass is always greener. You can’t blame Marines for wanting to experience the whole combat deployment thing, it’s what they’re brought up to do. When I enlisted back in 2006, I knew for sure that I would get sent to the middle east, one way or another. 10 years later? The prospects of such adventures aren’t as foretold as they once were. This is essentially peacetime, and combat is nowhere to be seen for most of the Corps.

This has been interesting for me, personally, as the creator of Terminal Lance. I started back in 2010 when most Marines were like me: two-pump chumps that were largely disillusioned and disgruntled. Today’s active duty Marine Corps is undoubtedly different than the one that I left behind, and the last of the Lance Corporal combat veterans are most likely out or soon to be.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but it’s food for thought.

If you liked the art style in the 2nd panel here, you’ll love the 290 page Terminal Lance graphic novel “The White Donkey,” which chronicles Abe and Garcia on their 2007 deployment to Iraq.

Follow The White Donkey.

The worst punishment for Marines isn’t paperwork or menial labor, it’s the stuff that truly gets under the skin. There are few offenses worse in the Corps than being a boot–in fact, I would argue that there are none. Boots are the lowest of the low, they have earned no respect and thus deserve none. Once you escape the proverbial event horizon of boot-hood, you are generally treated as a real person again. To be denigrated back to that lowly status is to be stripped away of all pride and purpose.

This is the worst punishment.

To be treated like a fucking boot.

I can recall shortly after my first deployment to Iraq, we arrived to find brand new boots, still smelling of third phase and Cobra 65 ready and waiting to take our packs up to our barracks rooms for us. They were small, afraid, and replied quickly with “yes, Lance Corporal” any time you said anything to them.

Being as salty as I was (naturally after my first deployment), I got a bit lazy about cleaning my room. I happened to get lazy on the wrong day, as the battalion Sergeant Major walked through the barracks while I was out at the armory or some such. He wasn’t as entertained with my lax cleaning standards as I was, and threw me on a working party with a bunch of boots at the battalion headquarters. Of course, I had it coming, and the best part was when senior Staff and Officers that knew me from Iraq would walk by and see me mopping the floor and ask “What did you do?” with a laugh.

You’d better believe my room was clean after that.

It’s an effective form of punishment.

Everyone is issued their first CAC (Combined Access Card) in boot camp, but unfortunately, that means your first official government photo is taken… in boot camp.

Boot camp you is probably the least flattering version of yourself throughout the history of your life.

Your head is sloppily shaved, you’re visibly tired, you smell like a strange mix of flatulence and Cobra 65 smell good, and you generally just don’t want to be there. Unfortunately, this ID is what you’ll carry around with you for most of your enlistment, should you choose not to reenlist and are particularly adept at gear accountability.

Of course, rarely is anyone particularly ecstatic about their identification photo, in nearly any scenario. There’s just something about a crappy webcam photo printing onto a 1″x2″ spot on a plastic card that is especially underwhelming.

Then again, it’s better to have your unfortunate first card than to lose it…