Author: Maximilian

As I’m sure all of you are aware, this weekend saw the passing of the legendary “Gunny” R. Lee Ermey, a Marine veteran and actor that was renowned and loved across all spectrums. He was obviously best known for his work in Full Metal Jacket as the ubiquitous film Senior Drill Instructor, a role that has yet to be surpassed by anyone for its authenticity and character.

I don’t often regret the work that I do, but I have to say that I’ve always regretted the making the only strip that I did about the good Gunny. It was quite unfair to him and his work as a professional actor. Like many celebrities, I found myself easily able to distance myself from the reality of the man behind the character, and he ended up being the butt of a joke about selling out while he is referred to as a “Drill Sergeant” in a Geico commercial (the idea being that every Marine knows that they’re called Drill Instructors). Not my best work, at any rate, and I’ve always felt bad about the strip.

The truth is that I’ve always loved Full Metal Jacket as a film, specifically for Ermey’s amazing work in it. He will always be a legend in Marine Corps culture for his acting work and deserves all of the love he has received.

My deepest condolences go out to his family and friends, and may he rest in peace.

This is a guide. It’s not necessarily the best guide, but it’s by far the most accurate, based on the amount of photos I get every day of fucked up haircuts across the Corps…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhIceD0n8u9

It’s 2018 and Marines have figured out how to order clout goggles on Amazon but not how to cut hair. This might seem like a strange obsession to the laymen, but know that for (male) Marines specifically, haircuts are about 50% of your day to day. The great Green Weenie demands the weekly sacrifice of a decent hairdo, lest yee want your butthole filled with its powerful wrath. Show up on Monday morning with a fucked up fade line and you can guarantee that Staff Sergeant will have nothing better to do but fuck with your life for the rest of the day.

You’d think that with haircuts being so important to the every day existence of Marine life, they wouldn’t possibly forget every week. But they do. You’d also think that Marines would eventually figure out how to do a decent fade. But they don’t.

On a side note, I will be at Barnes & Noble Oceanside (CA) on April 28th at 1400! Join me for the release of the Terminal Lance Ultimate Omnibus! It’s gonna be lit, fam. Pay attention to the official TL Instagram and Twitter for updates, linked below.

Respect is important in the military. In fact, one would argue that respect is paramount to the entire damn operation. If your subordinates don’t respect you, you’re going to have a much harder time getting them to do things. Getting people to do things they may not want to do is literally the entire point of military service from day one.

You’ll find within the military community at large that respect is directly correlated to misery. How miserable is your fucking life? Within its own context, infantry Marines are usually at the top of the food chain in terms of how they’re universally regarded. However, this is a double-edged NCO sword, because it must mean that their life is extremely shit. This is a law of physics exclusive to the military.

I call this the Law of Shit.

Respect is tied directly to how shit your life is.

It is nearly a one-to-one relationship. If you work in an office and you don’t spend half your week sleeping in the dirt and being treated like you’re ten years old with forty of your best and worst friends, your life is probably not shit. You have the benefit of telling people “my Marine Corps career wasn’t so bad,” and they’ll immediately know you were a POG. This is because infantry Marines universally hate their fucking lives as Marines, and will never regard their experience with such jubilant nostalgia.

Because it was shit.

The Law of Shit is not limited to the Marine Corps either, you’ll find that the Army, Navy and Air Force experience this as well. The Army is blessed with its own miserable fucking infantry, and they earn the respect of the Navy and the Air Force as a result. The latter two don’t bother worrying about respect, because they’re much more comfortable sleeping in air conditioning that works.

Hiyoooooooooooooo! I’m pretty sure if you actually count the days of reservist duty and Jewish holidays in a calendar year you will come to the same valid conclusion. It’s like reservists aren’t even real people.

I’m only half-joking. There’s an flourishing disdain for reservists amongst the active duty community. Part of it is jealousy (because they get to be at home most of the time) and part of it is pride (because they aren’t looked at as real Marines since they only do the job once a month). Of course, in reality being a reservists has its own sets of challenges, but that’s a thoughtful examination not usually reserved for barracks shit talking.

For me personally, I didn’t know anything about the reserves when I enlisted. When I was at SOI, the reservist members of my 0351 class were getting ready to head back home after graduation and all I could think was:

That was an option?!

I wish you all a great Good Friday and Easter this weekend, as well as a blessed Passover tonight. Chag Sameach.

Being in the infantry sucks. It sucks so much, in fact, that one has to assume it’s intentional. When people refer to the Marine Corps and refer to “The Suck,” what they really mean is every day life in the infantry. The problem I have trying to discuss the suck of the infantry in relation to other MOS fields is that one always assumes we’re talking about combat. Naturally, but that’s really not the heart of the problem.

In a straight up POG environment, one is usually sent to a shop where they work with like 5 other Marines. They can’t treat each other like total garbage, because they have to work with each other every day and each one is doing the thing they are paid to do. In the infantry, you have like 50 dudes in a platoon, and you’re all treated like total shit on some level. The shit tends to roll downhill, so if you’re a boot, you’re treated like shit by your senior Lance Corporals. If you’re a senior Lance Corporal or NCO, you’re treated like shit by your Staff NCO’s. If you’re a Staff NCO at a platoon level, you better believe Gunny and First Sergeant treat you like shit.

The infantry is treated like shit. It is the foundations on which the Marine Corps rests. Any time someone reads my comics and says to me “I don’t really remember the Corps being that bad…”

…I immediately know they were a POG.

In all seriousness, Abe might have a real problem and should probably get help. Celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day is especially easy for Marines, because we drink profusely and already wear green every fucking day. If you didn’t know any better, you would think every day is Saint Patrick’s Day in the Marine Corps with Marines running around in “green on green” PT gear and reeking of the last night’s binge.

Of course, it would be remiss of me not to provide you with some good influence as well. I urge you all to drink safely in your barracks rooms and hide when the OOD comes by. Don’t piss off the side of the catwalk when the Staff Duty comes around and make sure to drink enough alcohol to be hydrated the next day.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, Marines.

It starts off innocent enough… Staff Sergeant tells you in formation that you need to report to the motor pool on Monday… You’re getting your Humvee (HMMWV) license.

But then things change. First it’s the course. Sure, it’s only a week long, but that’s a week of barracks shenanigans you’re not really a part of. That’s a week of bullshit armory stuff that you skate past. At first it seems like a hook up, but then you realize you never see your friends anymore.

They get told to pull out weapons for the field op at 0500. You get told to be at the motor pool to pull out a 7-ton. You don’t stand by on your pack with them anymore, instead making friends over at Motor T. You know they’re POG’s, but you try not to think about it…

…But deep down inside, you feel like a traitor to your squad.

This is your life.

You’re a driver now.

In unrelated news, the comic updates have been reduced to once a week over the last month (I’m sure you’ve noticed). This isn’t a normal thing, but I’ve been balls deep in an upcoming project that I can’t announce quite yet. You’ll know soon enough… But you’ll have to be patient with me for a bit longer.

Stand by to stand by.

In every platoon there is at least one guy that can write the most eloquent self-expressions in the form of poetry. This Marine also chooses to write those exclusively on the porta-shitter walls.

This Marine is a morale-booster, a savant of sorts that entertains every member of the unit with his sharp wit. Go into any porta-shitter across the Corps and you’ll find a shrine of rotten thoughts and crude illustrations from the deepest nether regions of the Marine mind. The true nature of the Marine Corps and possibly the most profound secrets of the universe can be found here if you look hard enough.

I applaud the shitter poet, for he has kept us all entertained in the darkest, smelliest hours of our lives with his candor and brilliance.

Man school is getting rough these days. I hope these kids and teachers are getting that combat zone pay, because I did when I was in Iraq and it wasn’t nearly as dangerous. My sister is actually a 4th grade teacher in Corvallis, Oregon, where I grew up. It’s sad that this is what it has come to, but I’m also grateful that I’ll now be able to share stories back and forth with her about getting hot brass down my neck or police calling the ranges I’m sure we’ll have in common. Those kids better fill a damn sand bag on their way in, too.

On a serious note, what happened in Florida is a tragedy beyond belief. This is obviously a contentious debate, and I don’t have the solution. The answer that a lot of people float is always “MORE GUNS” which is obviously ridiculous. What I do know is that 17 kids got killed at their own school, and when I was in Iraq not a single person in my platoon lost their life. Knowing how combat affects veterans, from PTSD to grievous injury, I can only imagine what many of the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are dealing with.

My deepest condolences go to the victims and their families of the horrific event.

I always wanted to go Scout Snipers. Well, at least until I saw the Marines running the indoc at K-Bay. The misery on their faces was enough to make me happy enough to ride out the rest of my contract as I was.

I was a big fan of the 2005 film Jarhead before I enlisted, where we see Anthony Swofford become a Scout Sniper and hate his life. For whatever reason, I thought that looked like a great idea (really missing the point of that film), so my initial intent upon enlisting was to go 0317 when I got the chance. When I finally got the chance after my first deployment to Iraq, I noped the fuck out after watching some friends and other Marines kill their bodies over the course of 3 days as they practically did laps around the entire island of Oahu.

I don’t need that stress in my life.

The Marine Corps gives me enough stress as it is.

Why make it worse?

Ultimately my buddies ended up dropping out of the indoc and coming back to the platoon as Assaultmen. They regretted everything.

On a side note, don’t forget that the Terminal Lance Ultimate Omnibus comes out in hard cover on April 24th! Check it out here.