I thought the reaction to this photo was interesting:

Yes, the President of the United States of America had a boot Corporal hold an umbrella for him while he gave a speech.

The reactions were interesting because people let their political butthurtedness flow into their opinions on the matter. People seem to forget that we’re Marines, and this is exactly the kind of shit that Marines do. Somehow, holding an umbrella for the President and the Turkish Prime Minister is seen as demeaning, while all of the other bullshit that Marines do every day is not. I find it entertaining to see Marines on my Facebook page saying things like, “I would have told him to fuck off and hold his own umbrella.”

No you wouldn’t.

Shut up.

We’re Marines, if the President of the fucking United States asks you to hold a fucking umbrella, you hold a fucking umbrella. As well, the day I give a shit about a boot Corporal holding an umbrella is the day I’ve forgotten what the Marine Corps is. Honestly, holding an umbrella for the President is probably the least demeaning thing I could imagine doing as a Marine, as opposed to the other bullshit I had to do every day. No one would think twice about asking a boot to police call cigarette butts across the entire base at 5am, but the minute this boot has to hold an umbrella for the Commander in Chief, people get upset.

He’s the President, he rates an umbrella.

Get over it.

I’ve talked about this phenomenon before. When you come home from deployment, you’re most likely geared to want to touch your penis against anything with a pulse. I have to urge against this. As a general rule of thumb, try to avoid sleeping with anything that wasn’t already attractive before you left. This means when you come home, you should probably just hit up old girlfriends, female friends with an awkward sexual tension, or your wife (if you have one of those).

Of course, this is easier said than done, and the results might be less than impressive. Regardless, you have to stay strong! Just because something has a vagina (or a penis, if that’s your thing), doesn’t mean it needs to touch any part of your body.

As per the female perspective of this. Well, naturally I’m not really qualified to comment on it seeing as I don’t possess a vagina. I’m guessing it probably goes both ways (the situation, not your vagina).

Okay, I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but it’s good to be back. I’m trying to get back into the swing of things around here. I’ve still got some loose ends to tie up but I plan on putting a lot more time into the site in the near future. I’m officially a college graduate, as I mentioned before. That GI Bill worked wonders, and if you find yourself post EAS with no direction, just go to fucking school. I can’t stress this enough. It seems like common sense, but I know Marines that just don’t want to go to college. I don’t get it. They pay you to go. Just do it.

Fuck.

In other news, howabout that congresswoman calling out all those misogynistic military Facebook pages? Yeah. That’s a thing. Pro-tip: just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I suppose my issue with these pages is that they generally start off as funny places for Marines and soldiers alike to get together and laugh at boots and such, and other generally funny content; but quickly degrade into endless sandwich jokes and (clearly) inappropriate and blatant misogyny. I suppose if I hated women I’d be upset by this news, but since I don’t, and Terminal Lance wasn’t on her list, I simply moved on with my day after a good chuckle.

Seriously though, the fucking sandwich thing was funny like the first (over) 9,000 times I heard it.

Shit gets old, bro.

Well yesterday was my last day of classes, I’m officially a college graduate (Animation, BFA). I’m a little bit too hungover tired after shenanigans last night to actually do a new strip today, but here’s an oldie from the Marine Corps Times archives that I’ve always liked. Every time I see a homeless veteran on the street I’m reminded that they were once someone a lot like me. Much like how Frodo realizes Smeagol was not unlike him many years ago.

Regular updates will resume next week! In the meantime, don’t forget you can read new, original Terminal Lance strips every week in the Marine Corps Times newspaper.

During my last 4 or 5 months in the Marine Corps I FAP’d over to the MCBH Combat Camera shop to finish out my contract in relative peace. The mere fact that the FAP (Fleet Assistance Program) exists is in a way the Corps actually acknowledging how shitty being in the infantry can be. Generally (ideally), when a Marine comes back from their 2nd deployment they usually don’t have much time left on their 4 year contract. As a general attaboy, the command will often let Marines go to other parts of the base to finish out their contract without having to be bothered with the daily grind of being in an infantry battalion.

When I went to ComCam, I remember being in a constant state of awe at how different it was.

Marines live like this?!

I thought to myself daily.

It’s true, the grass is actually much greener on the other side. Much, much greener. That’s not to say that the daily tasks of being in a “shop” (as they call it) don’t get monotonous or even stressful at times. But it’s a different world. There’s no bullshit formations every day, there’s no standing by to stand by, there’s very little to no yelling. The rough-housing and hazing is replaced with office drama and busy-work.

Once, a Marine in the shop was explaining to me how they were going to get office and cleaning supplies at the supply place. My typically ignorant infantry response was something like, “There’s a place where you can get that stuff?” Of course, they all just stared at me like I had a dick on my forehead. I explained to them that we usually had to buy our own cleaning supplies for the company office or Gunny would give us a few bucks to run to the PX. Adams, a videographer, said to me, “You poor thing… you’re like an abused wife that just found out that not everyone beats their wife.”

He was right. Grunts are abused wives.

I’ve never really known how to respond to this question. This is probably the most ubiquitous challenge many Marines face when they come home from a deployment–dealing with the onslaught of self-interested civilians that wouldn’t understand if you said yes or no. A Marine friend of mine (Iraq vet) by the name of Adan Pulido gave me an interesting perspective on the whole thing, to which I agree. To paraphrase, he told me that it puts the veteran in a rather vulnerable position. The answer to this question is giving away a large part of your experience to someone with little to no genuine interest.

If you say yes, they’ll likely write you off as crazy. If you say no, they’ll write you off as unworthy. The question is never in the interest of understanding, but of validating their own expectations for your experience overseas. Even the most feign of interest is secretly a plea to satisfy their own morbid curiosity. Either way, you’re condemned to their standards of what your experience should have been.

Regardless, the obvious insensitivity of the question shows the nature of the average civilian. They don’t care about the war, they don’t care about what actually goes on overseas. They don’t care about counter-insurgency, they don’t care about all the time you spent with the local population or what it meant to you.

They don’t care.

In other news, I apologize for the flaky updates lately. I’m graduating this semester and things are coming to an end here in these final moments. On top of that, I caught some stupid cold and I really wasn’t in a great mood on Tuesday. I need all the time I can get for school right now, but once summer comes along I have a lot of cool stuff planned for Terminal Lance. As well, people have been asking me about the White Donkey. Be patient… All will be revealed in time.

As I was sitting and contemplating what to do with the new strip this beautiful Friday, I realized that, while I have talked about being on post before, there’s a surprising dearth of post-related content on this site. Standing post is a ubiquitous pass-time of deployed Marines in every instance; it’s something you hate to do and have to do.

As for people fucking goats–well, that’s just part of the entertainment of third world countries.

There’s simultaneously so much and so little to talk about in regards to standing post. Favorite time-killers while staring out into nothingness include listing celebrities you’d like to sleep with, drawing penises in or around the post, getting into ethical or religious debates with your battle buddy, singing songs, masturbating, and basically anything else you can think of that can be done in an 8×8 square box. The post itself is usually a depressing fair, consisting of plywood, sandbags and thick glass. Probably my favorite work surrounding the act of standing post is this video from a Marine in Iraq:

This work played a large inspiration in my own animated video on the subject, titled “POST.”

On a random note, why did I decide to do this comic differently? I dunno, I just felt like doing something different I guess.

Another late update today. What can I say? It’s a busy time with the semester ending in a matter of weeks. Speaking of, I actually have a lot more animated “POST” related content in mind once school is out and I actually have time to tackle some of this stuff. Look forward to more in the near future!

If it weren’t for the fact that they get paid out of the box about twice as much as an equally experienced enlisted Marine, I might feel bad for them sometimes when they enter the fleet. The Lieutenant has the dubious honor of being in charge of about 40 guys that really have absolutely no respect for him whatsoever. To the average salty Lance Corporal with a deployment and an NJP or two under his belt, someone with no deployment experience and shiny bars is just as boot as the fresh-faced kid from SOI that can barely tie his own boots.

Unfortunately there’s not really much you can do about it. New Lieutenants are given a platoon to command, that’s just how it is and they have to get their experience somewhere. My platoon went through a few butter-bars in my time, and it’s always interesting to see how they act when they first get there. One of them actually used to stand at parade rest for the senior Lance Corporals and would refer to them by their rank. While I respect the ideology of this approach, it ultimately fails to gain respect because an infantry platoon is prison rules, bitch. You better make someone your bitch on the first day, or else the green weenie won’t be the only thing working its way up your rectum daily.

In other news, I’ve been following the Boston Marathon bombing and I have to express how awful it all is. My thoughts and best wishes go out to the families and victims of the attack. Be prepared to see both an influx of moto-boner propaganda rallying for the next war in addition to the disgruntled hippy that wants to tell you how other countries also have tragic bombings and so you shouldn’t feel about the people of Boston.

Both are assholes.

Abe isn’t lying, if you’ve been reading for a while, you might have noticed that the only women he sleeps with or otherwise seem to be Asian. Don’t ask me, I just draw it how it is. On a more serious note though, I’m sure this has crossed many Marines’ minds as war with North Korea becomes an increasing possibility in the currently heated political climate. I have my doubts as to whether or not it will actually happen, but you never know.

As Garcia mentions though, Korean food isn’t really bad–it’s just weird. I’ve only had it once, but there’s a reason for that. One time, as I was on leave in Los Angeles, my wife at the time lived in Korea Town. My mom and my niece came to visit us and we decided to try out this Korean restaurant near our apartment. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, and honestly I wasn’t really sure what I got either.

So we sit down, it seems like a nice enough place, it’s clean and not too crowded. There’s a weird button on the table, it’s red and has some drawing of a person on it. Being the naturally curious person that I am, I push the button about 40 times before a waiter comes to our table and says to me, “Stop pushing button!” Apparently it was some kind of service button, or a panic button, I’m not sure. Looking at the menu, I had no idea what to get. I saw something with chicken and rice so I got that, it also came with soup so I figured it would be a safe bet. The soup comes out first, but it’s cold. Apparently this is a normal thing: cold “soup,” filled with cabbage and other vegetables. Not really my thing, so I take a few sips and pass on it. My niece had ordered some kind of hot soup, and it came with an egg still in the shell.

Naturally, you would assume that this was a hard boiled egg. My niece, maybe 8 years old at the time, picks up the egg and cracks it open to eat, only to have the raw contents spill on the table in front of her. All of us were surprised, but apparently you’re supposed to put the raw egg into the hot soup, and the soup cooks it. There was no instruction manual, of course, so our largely white mentalities (sans my ex wife, who is Lao) didn’t suffice for this experience.

Anyway, back to the point, of course no one really wants to go to war with North Korea. Not because we’re afraid, but because it would be an unnecessary ass-beating. No one wants to see an unnecessary ass-beating.

This week is just one of those weeks where everything is piling on me at the same time. It’s like an orgy of work and I’m the meat in its sexual sandwich.

So here is a Marine Corps Times strip I did in response to the “Service Uniform Fridays” regulation that was recently introduced Corps-wide. It seemed like a good opportunity to do a follow up to Terminal Lance #3, which is a classic by most fans.

Standing by and playing video games in your room has never been more professional.

Anyway, I’m swamped with work so stick around for updates later in the week!

I feel that, first and foremost, I am an artist. I put my art before everything I am, because that’s what I am. I put my life on the line for the sake of my art. I enlisted with an ASVAB score of 92, I chose to be infantry not because of job security or benefits–but because I wanted the experience. Art is the voice of humanity, and a voice isn’t worth listening to if there’s no wisdom behind it.

Something that always kind of irks me is when people compare Terminal Lance to those veteran social media Facebook pages you see every day these days. You know, the ones that post pro-gun memes and anything that glorifies the military experience; the ones that degrade females with endless sandwich jokes and generally have anonymous administrators. Terminal Lance is not like those pages. What immediately separates my creation from these other pages, for starters, is that it’s actually a fan page for a different website–or more accurately for the comic. Additionally, Terminal Lance is run by me, Max. You all know me, my life has been transparent to you over the last 3 years and I’ve never made an effort to hide behind the internet.

I find it interesting that if you Google my name, this is what happens:

Apparently people seem to be interested enough in my personal life. Yes, my ex-wife and I separated some 6 months ago. I assure you, I’m fine though (and so is she). The past 6 months have been a new experience for me, possibly a bit too overwhelming at times. I found myself drinking a lot, neglecting work and dealing with intense anxiety and depression. For the first time in my life I found myself sitting and talking with a psychiatrist, courtesy of the VetCenter. They say artists tend to be more sensitive in some regard than most, and perhaps this is true for me–I couldn’t really tell you. I can tell you, however, that my visionary nature tends to find me caught up in my own mind quite frequently. What-if’s turn into epic tales, fantasies become fully realized stories and my own stories become immensely burdensome emotionally.

I wonder sometimes if my experiences in Iraq had been different if Terminal Lance would exist. Maybe my problem was that I never found what I was looking for when I enlisted. I never saw any hard combat (not for lack of trying anyway, we were outside the wire every day), and I think this lent itself very easily to looking at the entire experience as some kind of laughing matter. Then again, I was never the guy that enlisted because his daddy’s daddy was a Marine and it would make my family proud. I suppose I always had a sort of disconnect with the experience, a sort of automatic third-person perspective, as if I weren’t a Marine myself but taking part in some grand experiment. An embedded artist out of place in an organization of men with purpose. I felt like a spy of sorts, not really belonging to the Corps from the start. I earned the title like anyone else, but I could never stop myself from feeling largely out of place.

Regardless, the experiences I came to find in the Corps are mine. Over the last 7 years since I enlisted, I’ve been to war twice, I’ve gone around the planet, I’ve been on my own, I’ve been married and divorced, I have lived. When I look into the eyes of the civilians around me in my post-EAS state, they are the same age as me, but they’re not. I look at them and I feel like I don’t fit into their world either. I think this is the struggle of every post OIF/OEF veteran returning to the civilian world.

I’m not sure what the point of this blog post is, I suppose I just felt like rambling.