Okay, so last week I did an homage to “Willie and Joe” by Bill Mauldin. Today I thought I’d throw a shout-out to another military comic I enjoy, “Terminal Lance”.

“Terminal Lance” was a bite of comfort food when I started BOHICA Blues. I had been wanting to do a comic based on the Iraq War for awhile, and in March of 2013 the 10-year anniversary stuff started bubbling up on TV and radio. I started (slowly) contemplating getting off my duff and doing my comics, and I had started putting together the original website and some cartoons. I had done comics before, in the dark pre-Internet days of all-print/Xerox-copy fan magazines, and I knew what I was potentially getting myself into. I wondered if there was even an interest, a market, for these things, or if I was wasting my time. Looking for “Iraq War comics” and stuff eventually took me to “Terminal Lance”.

I loved it, and it showed me that yes, there was an interest in military comics that took a look at today’s military. “Terminal Lance” and BOHICA Blues are very different, of course. Obviously, “Terminal Lance” is about the Marines rather than the Army, and it is in black-and-white with frequently no (or minimal) backgrounds. “Terminal Lance” also focuses on just two recurring characters, featuring a stand-alone joke each day– whereas BOHICA Blues has a fairly large cast of characters and mostly follows a running story.

Generally, I dislike drawing other people’s art styles. Max Uriarte of “Terminal Lance” has a very different style from mine, much more smooth and flowing, and probably easier on the eyes. I did the best I could with a random Marine drawn as if from his world. When you’re a cartoonist, people always ask for things like “Can you draw me Calvin and Hobbes?” or maybe the Hulk or Batman or whatever. I don’t practice drawing other people’s styles since it doesn’t feel natural to me, and I’m never satisfied with the result compared to the original. I’ve always preferred to use my own style. The only exception to this, for me, is Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” style, and that’s because I really learned to draw cartoons by copying his stuff when I was a kid. So I can draw Charlie Brown pretty well, but that’s about it. If I draw another person’s character, I try to do it my way instead of imitating the art style.

So hopefully you enjoy this, and when you’re done binge-reading BOHICA Blues, go check out “Terminal Lance”.