Street roots., January 04, 2013, Page 9, Image 9

street roots
Jan. 4, 2013
get people to look at it. And once people
started looking at it, it started catching on.
And then once it caught on enough, the
Marine Corps Times did a story on it.
R.B.: How quickly did your readership grow
after that story in Marine Times?
M.U.: It went crazy. As soon as they ran
the story, my server crashed and I had to
get better hosting. Yeah, once that story hit
the paper the whole Marine Corps kind of
knew about it, which was the best thing that
could have possibly happened for me. Then
after that story broke out and once
everybody realized that they all kind of liked
it, and nobody was offended by it or angry at
it - which was good for me - then they
offered to put it in the newspaper.
R.B.. What s been the feedback from your
fellow Marines?
M.U.. It s been good, actually. I’ve gotten
some angry e-mails a couple of times, but
it’s always for really specific things. I did
one about women in the infantry a couple of
months ago; I got some angry e-mails about
that one.
R.B.: Some could describe you as a modern
equivalent to Bill Mauldin, the combat
cartoonist ofW W II whose comic “Willie and
Joe” depicted life on the battlefield. How would
you react to that comparison?
M.U.: I’ve gotten that a lot, actually, and I
think it’s an honor to be considered that. I
guess the difference is that I didn’t even
know who Bill Mauldin was before I started
making Terminal Lance. It wasn’t until
somebody pointed it out to me that I
realized he was doing the same kind of thing
during World War II with “Willie and Joe”
I think he and I tried to do the same type
of thing. Before I did Terminal Lance, there
wasn’t really anything like it. There was
SemperToons, which was really the only
Marine Corps comic.
R.B.: But SemperToons is a lot tamer than
Terminal Lance.
M.U.: Yeah, it’s very family friendly, with
G-rated Marine Corps humor. So I looked at
that and it didn’t represent the modern
Marine Corps that I know, that I was in for
four years. It doesn’t represent the guys
that have been to Iraq and Afghanistan — I
haven’t been to Afghanistan, but I have that
perspective at least, having been to Iraq —
and I just felt like I could do it better. I
could represent that voice better.
That’s what I was trying to do really, to
put a new comic out there from the lance
corporal, lower-enlisted perspective and kind
of point out problems or absurdities in the
military.
R.B.: Do you feel you hit the mark with
that?
M.U.: I think I did a pretty good job. It’s
one of those things where everybody was
afraid to talk about it because everybody
was afraid of getting in trouble. But if you
can make people laugh about it and do it in
a way where everybody can laugh about it,
not just lance corporals and below, which I
think I’ve been able to do. At the very least
I bring things up for discussion so people
can look at it and go, “Oh, this is stupid.
Why don’t we see if we can figure out a way
to fix this.” And a lot of times I’ll pick on
something, and then I’ll say that I don’t have
a solution, but if somebody else does, then
by all means, you should fix it. So I don’t
offer solutions, I just point things out.
R.B.: How would you describe the
progression of Terminal Lance?
M.U.: When I first started, I guess it
didn’t have the parameters that it has now.
It didn’t have characters, and also I didn’t
keep a standard style of drawing. It wasn’t
until about strip 150 that I started really
falling into a set way of drawing the
characters. So now there’s a certain look to
Terminal Lance that I don’t think was there
in the beginning. Mike Krahulik, he’s a
great artist, and Penny Arcade was kind of
the template for Terminal Lance when I
started doing it.
R.B.: Terminal Lance was at one time
described by Marine Corps Times as “caustic”
in its genuine depiction of day-to-day military
life. How do you react to that?
M.U.: I don’t know if caustic is the right
word, but I would say that it was definitely
controversial at first. I think people are used
to it now, but like I said, nobody was really
doing anything like it before. I think Duffel
Blog [a satirical military news site] creator
Paul Szoldra, he mentioned in an interview
that Terminal Lance was an inspiration for
Duffel Blog because it was the first thing in
the military to put it out there and point out
problems and have this public voice of
what’s wrong with the military on some
level, and being able to criticize it without it
being, well, caustic. I think what the people
really like about Terminal Lance is that my
perspective was never about hating the
Marine Corps or just being angry. It was
about genuine problems and being honest
about it. And I’ve said that a bunch of times
with my comic, I don’t hate the Marine
Corps, but there are some of these things
that are just hard not to make fun of.
R.B.: It is funny because Terminal Lance is
Marine Corps specific, but even from my
experience in the Army, so many of those jokes
and problems that you highlight are easily
applied to the other branches.
M.U.: I get that a lot from people from
the other branches. Even Australians. A lot
of Australian military guys; it’s taken off
over there. And some Royal Marines have
e-mailed me. It’s interesting.
R.B.: In addition to Terminal Lance and
your work on the graphic novel, what else do
you have working?
M.U.: I’ m still working on the screenplay.
I’m writing it as a screenplay because I plan
on turning it into a movie at some point. So
I’m in the process of writing that. The goal
is to have the whole book done by the end
of the summer.
I’m also working on an animated short
called “A Dog and His Boy,” which is a really
depressing story about a Marine that goes
to Afghanistan and dies, and it’s told from
the point of view of his dog at home. I’m
hoping to have that done by May. It’s about
five minutes long. I wanted to do something
military-themed so I could still put it up on
the Terminal Lance site.
R.B.: Switching gears to your experiences
now as a veteran, how would you describe your
reintegration - your transfer from the Marine
Corps into regular life again?
M.U.: I think it’s hard to adjust to certain
R.B.: I ’ve recently talked to some other
veterans who are using the arts as a means to
deal with their reintegration. Have you found
that focusing on your art helps you?
M.U.: Yeah, I guess Terminal Lance itself
is a little cathartic in the way that it lets me
talk about my problems - really, everybody’s
problems - but my problems from my
perspective and put it into a joke and laugh
about it and hopefully other people laugh at
it too. So I think it helps me come to terms
with a lot of stuff from the military in a way
that other people might not be able to.
R.B.: What are your thoughts on how
veterans are being portrayed in the media
versus your experiences and what you see
among your veteran friends?
M.U.: I did a comic about it, how like
anytime a veteran does anything bad, like
shoot someone — that’s bad no matter who
you are — the headline’s always “Ex Marine
shot this guy.” It’s like, no, he was just an
asshole. Being a Marine has nothing to do
with it. I think that it’s really easy for people
to get that stereotype of Marines or
ex-military as being fucked up in the head.
These are people who are dealing with
problems, but at the same time I think the
media should try to focus more on what
good the veterans are doing, like going back
to the workplace and being more
professional and better at what they do than
most people because they have life
experience and doing some crazy stuff
around the world a couple of times. I think
it gives guys like us a better perspective on
the world, and when we do get out and go
back in the workplace, we tend to be better
employees at what we do, at least ideally,
from what I know from my veteran friends. I
don’t think it’s necessary to point out if
somebody was an Iraq veteran or something
anytime they rob a bank, because it has
nothing to do with it. It really doesn’t.
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things. I think it’s hard because, say you’re
like me and you go back to school on the GI
Bill, which is the natural course. You go
back to school and you’re around a bunch of
18 and 19 year olds, and you’re this old dude
and you’ve been to Iraq or whatever, and it’s
just like, I don’t fit in. It was funny, because
my first day at school, it’s an art school, so
one of the things we did was we had a white
sheet of butcher paper on a table and the
teacher had these bowls of food dye with
soap mixed in them. So what we did was we
took straws and we were blowing bubbles
onto the paper to make designs. And I
remember taking a step back and thinking I
was in Iraq not even a year ago and here I
am blowing bubbles on a sheet of paper. It
was a weird realization. I think that it’s hard
to adjust to that difference of lifestyle.
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