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Underground > Comic Books >

ARMY@Love

Janean Patience

18:55 / 22.03.07

Rick Veitch has already been responsible for one of the standout post-9/11 books, the symbolic and bizarre Can't Get No. His latest, the first issue of which is out this week, is satire of America's ongoing wars in Afghanistan (though actually that one's been left to the British Army) and Iraq. It's satire before the war is over.

Having just read #1, I think I kinda like it but I'm not quite sure. The art reminds me of The Filth, unsurprising as it's the same inker, and the story's somewhat odd. In five years time, something new's needed to win America's wars. The army has to become a cool place to be, living on the edge, the best of sex and drugs and the thrills of real-life combat. This, obviously, has to be kept secret from the pious supporters of the troops back home. Cue sex mid-firefight and soldiers digging the rush, like Vietnam with better marketing. The satire's there and accurate, there's set-up for stuff to come, but there's something jarring about the whole thing, like I'm reading a pitch for a comic rather than the comic itself. It could just be that I read very few first issues these days.

Anyone else pick this up?

Janean Patience

19:02 / 22.03.07

Oh yeah, and you can read the first few pages here.

yawn - thing's buddy

20:05 / 22.03.07

got a soft spot for veitchy-bo. introduced to him via swamp thing's crazy post-Moore quest fora (get it?) story line as he journeys through time.

great!

I will check this out, fellow comic readers.

Long live comics!!!!!

Phex: Dorset Doom

20:13 / 22.03.07

Yeah, I picked this one up since I like to give everything from Vertigo a shot. God knows why.
It's ah... well the art is ugly as hell. I mean, really, really ugly. Check out the previews if you don't believe me. The comic is ostensibly supposed to be sexy, but when everybody in it looks like they have serious birth defects that doesn't exactly some through. Look at the top panel on the last preview page linked to above- they don't just look like their mother and father were cousins, they look like their mother and father were the same person. The art should make readers smell sweat and cordite and feel desert sand on their bare asses, not look like a Support Our Troops themed exhibit at the Museum of Barnyard Oddities.
As for the script: if this is satire then it's weak enough to count as homeopathic. For something set in an analogue of a conflict we see on TV every night (ARMY is set in the realistically named Afbaghistan, which I believe shares borders with Durkadurkistan from Team America: World Police) ARMY@Love just doesn't seem to connect with anything really happening in the world. There are no lines or situations that make me LOL, ROFL or LSHMCOOMN (laugh so hard milk comes out of my nose) and nothing that tells me Veitch has any special insight into the Iraq war.
To sum up: ARMY@Love is ugly and it smells. Download it if you have to but otherwise avoid.

yawn - thing's buddy

20:14 / 22.03.07

pictures - you're right to wonder . . .

read those pages and i feel already that i've read about as much the comic will say.

yawn - thing's buddy

20:16 / 22.03.07

ah well.

21:14 / 22.03.07

Haha. I just read those first few pages. This comic is DYNOMITE. Dynamight, Dinamite. Dammit. Looks good.

Carry on.

21:15 / 22.03.07

Not sure if I'll actually buy it though.

21:16 / 22.03.07

Not that I download...Which I don't.

I don't.

Shut up!.

Someone else's turn to talk.

Phex: Dorset Doom

22:17 / 22.03.07

Dynomite? Bwah? Buh-buh-buh... but... the ugly.

22:41 / 22.03.07

What I really can't believe, and I actually checked because I thought it was noteworthy how unpleasant the colour was - an old Vertigo specialty to be sure - was that it was done by Jose Villarubia. Who's a great colo(u)rist, normally.

Everything about this comic should be right, in fact, but it looks about as good as, say, Gerber's Nevada, or some other late 90's Vertigear and reads probably not as good. Really disappointing, and I was hoping this would be the book that rescued the imprint from the doldrums with me, after trying the hideously dated Testament and embarrassing polemic of DMZ and suffering several years, on and off, of borefest on Hellblazer. Maybe I should try Scalped instead, eh?

22:48 / 22.03.07

I'm looking for another good Vertigo title as well, (I still think Transmet holds up...but I have yet to finish it), and I liked the first trade of DMZ...(Does it not get better? PM me if you care to tell).

But for Army@Love...I think I will end up buying the first issue, and then the second issue, and if they read like they are the same issue, then the issue Vertigo will have is the issue that I have an issue with two issues that read like the same issue.

22:54 / 22.03.07

I think it's really promising. I'll stick with it as long as Veitch does.

http://geniusboyfiremelon.blogspot.com

04:34 / 23.03.07

It's pretty fucked up, and I mean that in a good way. Ugly art? Go look at Charles Vess you big arty ninny! Veitch is for men and butch girls!

It does feel devious and subversive: hope it will leave no taboo unblown (or unmolested or whatever). I liked it very much and am staggered that is exists via Vertigo in the first place.

Janean Patience

10:50 / 23.03.07

The art is problematic. Veitch has always been an ugly artist, not that that's entirely a bad thing. He does ugly well. His classic Swamp Thing run mentioned above had ugly people doing ugly shit in a way that really got under the skin. (The back of that limousine Wild Thing was driving... urgh.) There can be beauty in his twisted style. Dealing with this kind of subject I don't think it's inappropriate. Erskine's inking and the colouring break it up too much, taking the clarity out of the panels, but it's the first issue and they've never worked together before. I'd hope for it to improve.

As for the story... satire-lite so far, yeah, but the idea of marketing the war as an adventure for bored Americans works for me. That's how we Brits did it when we had an empire. According to Blackadder, the army he joined was a travel agency for young men with unusually large sex drives. When we're living in a culture which glorifies war and violence and the skill involved, full of people doing extreme shit for kicks, where men with office jobs spend their evenings executing crazed urban maniacs, then it's an interesting notion. I'd like to see where it goes. Veitch's stories usually start with absolute corruption and moral degeneracy and get worse from there, so I'm keen to see what happens next.

furioso: It's pretty fucked up, and I mean that in a good way.

Yeah, that's what I take. If it stays on the plane it's on I'll be bored. If it gets worse and worse, deeper and deeper, and the stacks of banknotes at the husband's house would suggest it's heading that way, then this could be worth the effort. Nobody else is doing it.

Haus of Mystery

15:46 / 23.03.07

I quite liked it. I wonder how long I'll stick with it, but there was a certain garish weirdness that I found compelling. Now y'all are saying the art is ugly, but I think that works in the comic's favour - these post-paris American teens so caught up in teir self-image actually look more in place in a Dan Clowes comic. And the colouring was one of the highlights - I think deliberately going for a more clean sci-fi palette as opposed to the gungy browns and greens of a more 'realistic' comic is a smart move. It's a war but it looks positively clean.
I see it more of a sci-fi story than a straight satire. The trick will be whether Veitch can sustain the right combination of soapy melodrama and bizarro social commentary in orser to make an interesting ongoing. I suspecvt not - he's one of those creator's that aims high, but often misfires.
I don't know - i didn't love it, but I thought it was intriguing and offbeat enough to try for a few more issues.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:39 / 24.03.07

I read the couple of pages that were in the back of an issue of Y and was just completely confused as to what the point of the story was. It reminds me of the way Outlaw Nation was dropped on to the scene with no attempt made to tell people what the point of the story was until a good five or six episodes in. And we know what happened to that in the end. So can someone tell me what it's about and why it has such a stupid name?

Janean Patience

11:49 / 24.03.07

I can tell you that while passing through a comic shop earlier today I heard one of the staff call it Army Of Love, which I actually think I like more.

The Timaximus, The!

17:54 / 24.03.07

Re: The coloring:

I thought it was intentionally crummy, in the style of old DC war comics. Like when Chip Kidd uses really high-res scans of Peanuts or Plasticman comics on old newsprint. I also stopped noticing it a few pages in, and don't have a copy in front of me, so maybe it was just a printing error.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

02:59 / 25.03.07

DC comics used to publish a book called Our Army at War. The Army @ Love title is a (too self-conscious, methinks... I mean... the @ is too much) play on that.

23:15 / 22.04.07

I liked Army better this time - the colouring definitely looks like it's been upgraded, although I've not sat #1 and #2 side-by-side to verify this feeling, but still have my complaints: i) it still seems very much like an old 2000AD story, and I dunno if Erskine did much there (hum, not really) but he's ii) quite a distancing inker. Everything feels much like the Filth as a result and every character is iii) almost completely unsympathetic (and has a really fucking stupid name.) However, on the up, it is a good high-concept, pretty on-target and becoming more feasible daily, so I will - I think - stick with it a bit longer.

23:21 / 22.04.07

(That all being said, reading Shelly Bond's On the Ledge, or whatever it is now, pitch for the next project from the already overstretched and under-talented man did have me quite seriously contemplating a 'Mike Carey - what is the fucking point of you? really. You are to Gaiman as he is to Moore, leaving only water-flavour soup.' thread. And a scream.

God Save the Queen is, apparently, about layabout 'punk' faeries and saving christing Titania. Because what Vertigo really needs is new faerie comics, but with wacky twists. If you even contemplate purchase, you and I - we are enemies.)

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

23:26 / 22.04.07

God Save the Queen is, apparently, about layabout 'punk' faeries and saving christing Titania. Because what Vertigo really needs is new faerie comics, but with wacky twists. If you even contemplate purchase, you and I - we are enemies.

Did he get drunk and read Wisdom or something?

23:32 / 22.04.07

Mike Carey will be the death of Vertigo yet, Papers. You watch. Everyone sits about just... letting it go on, I suppose, but the time to strike is now, I feel.

Especially after "shut up" Neil Gaiman's completely untrue endorsement of him as being within mainstream comics top six (what an endorsement, Neil! "Yeah, top six mate, def-o." Shut up.) I don't rate a huge amount of mainstream writers but otoh: Morrison, Moore, Ennis, Ellis, Fraction, Brubaker, Jeff Parker, Adam Warren, fuck, probably Waid - Brave & Bold should be wrong but is somehow completely right - and Busiek while we're at it. Joe Casey. All very much better.

23:35 / 22.04.07

Cooke, Milligan. I could just go on forever, plucking names out of the air. And they would all be better than Mike bastard Carey, scribe of the adaptation of 'Neverwhere'.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

23:37 / 22.04.07

He also wrote those rather dull-as-dishwater Constantine stories. I've found that the quality and meaningfulness of Hellblazer reflects the overall urges and thrust of Vertigo as a whole.

Haus of Mystery

09:07 / 23.04.07

Brave & Bold should be wrong but is somehow completely right

Too right matey. It's my favourite 'trad' superhero comic of the moment. It reminds me of DC comics from the late 80's when I was first getting into american comics.

We should probably start a seperate thread for it though.