Congratulations to Michael Virgilio for winning the Terminal Lance Comic Strip Contest of Manliness!
We had a bunch of great submissions though, here are the runners up, all of which will receive copies of the Illustrated Art of Manliness and The White Donkey!
Wow this got dark.
Being an alcoholic father is actually part of the training and prerequisites involved with being a Marine Corps Drill Instructor, so if you’re not used to getting your shit thrashed by an angry, sweaty man… You’re gonna learn.
It goes without saying that bootcamp fucking sucks. I mean, I think it’s supposed to. There’s a certain amount of masochism involved in wanting to be a Marine, since you know from day one it’s actually going to suck.
One of the favorites of the Drill Instructor is called the “tornado,” where they come into the squad bay and just start thrashing shit for no apparent reason and yell at you. It’s more inconvenient than anything else, which I think is the point, since you end up having to sort through all of your stuff and clean it up. Don’t be too surprised if you end up with someone else’s socks, canteens, or herpes, since most of your stuff is going to be intermixed basically every day.
Ya this is a daily thing, really.
I don’t think I could ever be a Drill Instructor. I just don’t drink enough, I guess.
In other news, we got some cool ass new gear at the official Terminal Lance Shop! Click the link to check it out.
There’s a lot up in the air right now and I’m just waiting on some stuff to fall back to the ground before I can make official announcements, but stay tuned… There’s plenty more cool stuff to come.
We’ve all lived with this guy.
There’s always that one fucking douchebag that is dirty, smells bad, talks loud, has zero consideration for his other roommates and makes you hate your fucking life. And somehow, you always end up living with him.
He’s the guy that doesn’t help clean the room, even though most of the shit on the floor is his. He’s the guy that always eats a slice of your pizza without asking. He’s the reason your room failed field day inspection, but he just doesn’t understand why everyone is being such a dick. He’s the guy that saves over your Bloodborne game halfway through New Game+.
He’s the shitty roommate.
If you don’t know who I’m talking about, it’s very possible that you are in fact the shitty roommate.
Staff NCO’s always take it so personally when you tell them you don’t want to reenlist.
Of course, to each their own, I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone how to live their life. If the military lifestyle is working great for you and you love the relative stability of it all, by all means keep re-upping. After all, retiring at the age of 38 is actually a pretty sweet gig, if you make it that far.
However, the Post 9/11 GI Bill really opened up an entire world of opportunity for those of us that take advantage of it (and you should). Even if you actually don’t hate your life at all, getting out and exploring something new is a great way to live, and you have all the freedom in the world to do it.
With that said, even I know some guys that might have been better off just staying in. Generally, they’re the guys that don’t use the GI Bill to go back to school, bounce around shitty jobs and wondering why life on the outside sucks, grow out their veteran beard and live off VA disability checks for their “injuries” and accost people on Facebook for not thanking them for their service.
Don’t be that guy either. Just remember that it’s your life, you get to decide how to live it.
(Unless you reenlist, then the Marine Corps gets to decide. Sorry.)
On a side note, yesterday was weird.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BV0c8xvh9K_/
This comic was originally featured in the Marine Corps Times newspaper, which has new, original Terminal Lance comics every issue! Check it out.
Rank and rate are big deals in the military, and there’s always a bigger boot fish. Chain of command and a sense of seniority is innately bound to the lifestyle of being a Marine, where rank and rate can actually matter in a combat zone. Back in the rear and amongst your own peers, however, the line can start to blur between who rates and who rakes (the grass. This is a great saying. I just made it up. Deal with it.).
As well, there’s always that one douchebag that will pull any small ounce of seniority they can to avoid doing work, or be the guy pretending to work by “supervising” the work.
We all know that guy.
Standing by for hours on end honestly isn’t all that bad, it’s when you’ll get the bulk of your video game time in to give you the chance to finally Platinum Bloodborne. Still, as we’ve pointed out before, Marines will bitch about basically anything.
Standing by has a storied tradition of fuckery for Marines. It’s when you have absolutely nothing important to do but your command can’t really release you at 11am or else eyebrows start to get raised. So they tell you to go to your room and “wait for word,” which usually means Staff NCO’s are in the company office drinking and bullshitting with each other until they can’t hide from their wives any longer (around 6 or 7pm) so they text your Squad Leader that you guys can actually be “off work.”
This is just the daily in the infantry. I mean, when your actual job description is to get shot at and shoot at people, what else does one do back in the rear?
Well it’s that time of the year again, when all of the Lance Corporals get together and all the biggest brands appealing to 18-24 year old males present their newest and latest creations to an adoring crowd.
Wait, that’s not actually a thing…?
…Why not?
Well, at the very least, the real E3 unveils new video games, which is kind of the same thing and also pretty neat. I’m sure those of you that have been following Terminal Lance for a while now know that I play a lot of video games. What can I say, it’s just part of who I am. I grew up on the likes of Mario, Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy VII and continue the hobby to this day.
I thought this year’s E3 was a little stale. I’m not much for Microsoft, so the new XBOX ONE X wasn’t particularly exciting for me and Sony failed to show anything overtly groundbreaking. I was hoping we’d get to see some new gameplay footage of The Last of Us II or Death Stranding, or perhaps even an announcement like Bloodborne 2… But oh well.
Nintendo had (in my opinion) the best showing today with Super Mario Odyssey and announcing Metroid Prime 4 oh my fucking god, which I’m way too excited about. Also, Sombrero Mario might actually be my favorite thing ever.
On a sidenote, I might be onto something with this Lance Corporal Convention idea…
Much to the dismay of senior leadership, the Corps is always changing and molding to the world in which it exists. Ever since the fall of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (remember when gays weren’t allowed in the military because they were gay?), new social orders have become the norm in a community that was previously steeped in its own cultures and traditions.
Many in the Corps and veterans on the outside decry these cultural shifts, but they are a product of the times. In my anecdotal opinion, it is the rise of social media that is to blame for pop culture working its way into the barracks. While new generations always bring new culture with them into the Corps, it used to be a very closed off environment once you got past those yellow footprints. Now, anyone and everyone is instantly connected via Snapchat and Instagram to the latest trends, and there’s not much the Old Corps can do to stop it.
Put on your rompers and flick your fidget spinners, cause it’s a new Corps out there.
As the modern social landscape shifts and changes, I would give the Marine Corps credit for generally doing a good job of adapting and overcoming the new challenges brought with it. However, one area that they’re still trying to wrap their heads around is social media.
A few months ago we saw this all come to a head and blow up with the nude photo scandal that rocked the Corps and reverberated across the nation. As a reaction, the Marine Corps implemented new guidelines and orders that pertained specifically to social media. This was a pretty necessary step in the right direction in order to maintain military discipline and order, which is completely understandable. The problem is that lately there’s been a fairly knee-jerk reaction to crack down on literally anything being posted on social media regardless of whether or not it’s morally abject or insubordinate.
As an example, the other day I posted a photo of a Marine stuffed into a main pack. It was pretty funny and harmless, and judging by the smile on his face, was not forced. Everyone had a good laugh about it except for the “commander,” who sent a bunch of panicked Lance Corporals and NCO’s my way to demand that I take it down and tell them who sent the photo so they could be punished.
For the record, Terminal Lance doesn’t snitch on Marines. Don’t ask me to. I’m not in the business of the great Green Weenie or the mighty Blue Falcon, and unless someone is breaking the law or causing harm to others, I have no reason to give away that information to aid in fucking over another Marine. Sorry, just not what I do.
Terminal Lance does not snitch, go fuck yourself. pic.twitter.com/4FTZgdmyTs
— Terminal Lance (@TerminalLance) June 4, 2017
(Generally, if a person in a posted photo asks me to take it down, I always do it out of respect for their request and personal safety.)
This backfired, as the photo ended up on Reddit’s Photoshop Battles and got exposed to a lot more people than it otherwise would have.
In any case, none of this has stopped us from posting hilarious original content on our own social media channels. Click the buttons below to find us!
Doc always wants to be a Marine until it’s time to do Marine shit.
For the record, getting yelled at and forced to do dumb shit is definitely classified as Marine shit.
Ever platoon has at least one Corpsman, and somehow they always find a way to skate out of all of the shitty Marine shit. Of course, BAS is their go-to, but we all know they don’t actually do anything there. This is further backed up by the fact that Marines never actually go to medical, so I mean what would they be doing there?
Everyone loves Doc, but he’s also an asshole because he gets to get out of the daily suck since he’s Navy and they usually get treated like ‘people’ instead of pieces of shit. In that regard, Corpsman is kind of the best job in a platoon, if you ignore being forced to look at random sores on the genitals of your platoon every day, as well as anally violating Marines with thermometers…
Then again, they’re Navy, so they probably enjoy that too.