The Marine Corps, the grass is always greener on the other side… even if you’re not allowed to walk on it. Anywhere but here, anything else but this; these are common woes of the active duty Marine… unless anything else is a working party.
Fuck that shit, no one wants to do that.
For you Terminal Lance connoisseurs, you’ve probably noticed that today’s strip was previously published in the Marine Corps Times newspaper. There’s no new, new strip today because of some very big news…
I got a whole lot of books yesterday, and today I’m going to be shipping a whole lot of them out to Kickstarter backers. If you backed The White Donkey Kickstarter over 2 years ago, I need you to pay attention to your inbox. I sent out some instructions earlier today for confirming your address. Your address needs to be confirmed before I can ship you your book (my roster is over 2 years old at this point). If you have emailed me at kickstarter@terminallance.com between November 15th, 2015 and today, you are good to go.
Yes, you will be able to purchase the book on Amazon if you did not preorder it with the Kickstarter.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about and don’t understand my weird obsession with white equine, Terminal Lance: The White Donkey is the world’s first 284 page graphic novel about Iraq, written and illustrated by an Iraq veteran (yours truly). I started writing it in 2010, and it’s been a very long journey to get to this day.
That oversized safety pin has been on every gear list I ever had, and I’ve never once actually used it (it’s for laundry, or possibly changing the diapers of giant babies).
Gear lists are frustrating because you usually never actually have whatever stupid knickknack your boot ass Platoon Commander thinks you need to spend 3 days in the rain. You’ll be overburdened with everything from rape whistles, compasses, comically large safety-pins, five pairs of cammies and countless skivvy items.
As you get used to going out into the field all the time, you start to realize you need less and less stuff. How much of anything are you actually going to use on a 3-5 day field op? Certainly not at least half of the ridiculous shit they throw on these gear lists. Not only that, but good luck running to the PX to buy this shit the night before your inspection, because I know you lost most of it on the last field op.
It’s always fun seeing Marines scramble to collect the treasure hunt of items at the PX at 2000 the night before a company field-op.
On an unrelated note, I’m sure some of you noticed I was gone last week. I was going to put up a comic strip on Friday but became swamped at the last minute dealing with this whole graphic novel thing. Books are almost here! For real! Pay attention to your Kickstarter registered email address, I sent out a mass email earlier asking for updated addresses. I ONLY NEED YOUR UPDATED ADDRESS IF YOU’RE GETTING A HARD COPY OF THE BOOK.
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the premiere of Michael Bay’s newest explosive extravaganza 13 HOURS. It was an absolute honor to be invited in the same group as 3 Medal of Honor recipients–Ty Carter, Florent Groberg, and Salvatore Giunta–and it was a great time all around. I want to personally thank We Are the Mighty and Paramount for all the hospitality in Dallas. I met a ton of awesome veterans and had a blast.
I would call it a nice respite, if I got more than a few hours of sleep the whole time I was gone, but it was definitely a good time. In any case, it’s back to the grind here, as I scramble to prepare for all of these books. The next few weeks might be a bit bumpy but I’ll do my best to stay on schedule here.
Myself, Dan Caddy from Awesome Shit My Drill Sergeant Said, and Medal of Honor Recipient Ty Carter.
I’m not the type to lament the current state of the “New Corps” in favor of the ever-glorious and omnipresent Old Corps. However, if there ever was an event that could distinctly signify the new, it is the recent news that the Marine Corps will officially be fully integrated and moving toward gender-neutral MOS titles.
The Marine Corps is changing, and you can’t stop it.
This is upsetting for a lot of Angry Facebook Veterans, as you’ve probably noticed over the last few days if you’ve been anywhere near the internet. If you were to believe them, you’d see the integration of females as the end of the Corps as we know it or the Wookpocalypse, as I like to call it, and possibly even being an early sign of the end of times.
Camp Pendleton, CA — After the Wookpocalypse
This is of course nonsense.
I’ll be honest here… I don’t really see this as a huge deal.
Remember that awesome co-ed shower scene from Starship Troopers?
Or the badass Vasquez from Aliens?
Those scenes were never going to happen in real life without dramatically changing the way the military handles females. People keep talking about standards, and it’s because women have never been held to the same standards as men in the Marine Corps. This creates a culture of separation, and a culture where men simply don’t respect female Marines on equal ground–because there has never been equal ground.
If you’re not a Marine and you’re reading this, what I mean is that women have essentially been coddled by weaker PFT standards than men. Women aren’t required to meet the same physical fitness standards as men, and they never have been. The Marine Corps tried to implement pull-ups into the female PFT a couple years back and was met with laughable results; forcing them to double back.
Another study was recently conducted on the viability of women in the infantry by monitoring integrated teams against all-male teams, and concluded that women performed notably worse–with higher risks of injury and weaker performance overall. However, I would argue that this study was inherently flawed from the start, and the data gleaned from it essentially useless. The women in the study were still never held to the same PFT standards as male Marines, yet tasked with competing against them. Had the women been properly vetted as recruits with male standards, you might have seen different results.
If the Marine Corps is willing to raise the standards for women in the Corps to the same as men, this whole thing will be a nonissue. You will lose a lot of females in the Corps, but you will maintain the same combat viability as before and everyone will truly be equal. My assumption here is that this will inevitably happen.
Let’s be realistic here: men already dominate the Marine Corps statistically. The infantry is also a relatively small population, and I assume there won’t be a plethora of women clamoring their clams to be grunts. At most, you’re going to have one or two females in a single battalion, and if they can’t hack it physically they’ll probably just be the company clerk or something anyway.
Hardly a game changer, if you ask me. At the end of the day I don’t see this having a profoundly huge impact. My hope, as well as many others I’m sure, is that women will finally be held to the same standards as men. If you can’t hack it, maybe the Marine Corps isn’t for you.
On a vastly unrelated note, I’ve still got some limited edition 6th Anniversary prints left! These are 11×17 prints, autographed by yours truly.
We’ve also added a new T-Shirt with the same image on it for a limited time! I haven’t done a print sale in a long time, so if you’re a TL fan you should definitely order one here.
Six years ago today I launched what is now one of the most popular military comic strips in the world. While still active duty I stayed up late, stumbled my way through building a website, printed out flyers and pasted them up in the barracks laundry rooms and lounges. At the time, there really wasn’t anything like Terminal Lance on the internet or otherwise. The idea of openly criticizing and laughing about the Marine Corps on the internet was somewhat taboo, and it was a risk for me to put it out there while still in uniform. For the first few months, I thought for sure that I was going to feel the wrath of the green weenie for putting this thing out there… But by maintaining an honest point of view, funny jokes, and (usually) decent artwork, I was able to win the hearts and minds of most of the Corps.
Now, with hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe, it’s surreal to look back and see how much work has actually gone into this comic strip of mine. I know some of you are reading this and wondering if I’m going to run out of jokes or get bored. I don’t know, maybe some day, but to be honest I still have a lot more in the works. Actually, I wanted to use this post to talk about what I’ve got coming up in the near future. Sort of my way of doing some kind of State of the Union Address I suppose.
Firstly… Obviously…
I was hoping I’d be able to launch The White Donkey today, and unfortunately that’s just not happening. As with every step of the way in the creation of this book, it’s taking the bulk shipment of books a lot longer than anticipated to get to me. I suspect that this was due to ordering them right at the start of the holiday season, but the book should be available this month–I just don’t know exactly when.
I know it’s been a long journey with this book, but just stand by for a bit longer. The early copies I got were only enough to send to various media outlets. If you didn’t back the Kickstarter, the book will be available on Amazon this month for $24.95. If you did back the Kickstarter, keep in mind that I’m not going to release the digital PDF version until books are in peoples hands, that way the story doesn’t get spoiled (there’s some major spoilers).
Stand by to stand by.
Second, I think we’re long overdue for a new website. Building a new website for Terminal Lance will allow me to do a couple of things: firstly, it’ll be more modern and functional; but as well it will allow me to start doing some new things. I had mentioned before that I want to open up Terminal Lance for more content, such as op-eds and the like from members of the active duty and veteran community. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but I feel like the current website design isn’t very conducive to more than a comic strip and a blog post. Ironically, expanding Terminal Lance will help take some of the weight off of yours truly so that I can focus on some other things, like developing some new things…
Aside from these late books, everything else is still on track. On a personal note, the books being so late has really been dragging me down lately. I had all of this momentum and excitement finishing the book and now I’m just stuck waiting. Still, I’m excited to finally release it to the public! I don’t think anyone will be expecting what this book is going to throw at them, in the best possible way.
I’ll still be relocating to Los Angeles in a couple of months, and I am going to be aggressively pursuing creating an animation studio (among other things). Don’t worry, Terminal Lance isn’t going anywhere any time soon. There’s still so much to do, including some things I’ve been working on that I haven’t even announced yet.
I also just want to take a moment to thank all of my readers for sticking with me for so long! You guys are the reason I keep doing this! I was enlisted in a Marine Corps without a Terminal Lance… Can you imagine?
Lastly, expect today’s poster to go up for sale this week as a limited edition print!
