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Army @ Love #1
Writer: Rick Veitch
Artist: Gary Erskine
Publisher: Vertigo
Released: 2007
Eugene Mirman, the independent comedian signed to Sub Pop Records, released a comedy album last year titled: En Garde, Society! Among the skits on the album are a series of "letters" to different nouns (including Right-Wing Christianity and Islamofacism). One of those letters is addressed to soda commercials. In the letter, he requests that soda pop manufacturers write commercials that imply an even greater connection between the soda in question and fantasy. "You’re in the desert," he says (though I’m only paraphrasing his skit). "A terrorist Mountain Dew bottle is hiding behind a rock. Slowly the camera creeps up on him - and then you rip the head off the terrorist and drink him. The tagline? Do the Dew Before the Dew Does You!"
Nowhere is the relationship between reality and fantasy as blurred as in comics. Marvel’s recent Civil War storyline superimposes legislation like the Patriot Act onto the Marvel Universe. There, a Mutant Registration Act is posed, and mutants line up on both sides of the issue - pro and con. The comic still titillates the reader with the essential promise of superhero comics (the fantasy of superpowers), but wraps it in the concerns of the daily news.
In [mostly] removing superheros from their comics, DC imprint Vertigo reached an inevitable impasse. How do you titillate a reader if your characters can’t fly, blow fire or reverse time? Yet, more than any other imprint at the moment, Vertigo is in touch with modern issues. This has made the match between fantasy and reality a more tenuous one, and one that is underlined in their new series: Army @ Love. Exactly what is the fantasy if you don’t have superpowers? And why should I read a Vertigo comic instead of watching The Daily Show?
Apparently, Army @ Love’s answer is more in line with Eugene Mirman’s than with traditional comic books. By injecting an unnatural (and possibly overwhelming) amount of sex into their title, Army @ Love has gone for the jugular of male fantasies: pornography. Not just pornography, either. Combat pornography, which combines the sensationalism of a snuff film with the erotica of a triple-X one. The cover art, attributed to writer Rick Veitch, inker Gary Erskine and colorist Jose Villarrubia, shows an attractive woman lying against a male’s chest. They’re both wearing army fatigues, though the female’s fatigues are splayed open at the chest. In her right hand is a gun. She’s wearing enough eyeshadow and lipstick to qualify as one of the whores in Full Metal Jacket, not one of the soldiers. Serendipitously placed over the woman’s breast are the words: "Suggested for Mature Readers." The promise of the cover is implicit: Sex and violence! Excited yet?
The comic posits a world in the not-so-distant future (though distant enough that the President of the United States is both a female, and a female ok with rampant orgies in the army) where a Motivation & Morale bureau keeps soldiers happy by offering sex retreats and giving permission to use cell phones in the midst of combat. The first issue actually opens with the female protagonist on the phone with her domestic husband - as her corp is firebombed by insurgents. If war is a disturbing, horrific experience, Veitch sees no reason to mix that particular reality with his fantasy. As buildings collapse around them, the soldier, Switzer, gives her husband suggestions on where to find his misplaced tie. Then she goes up to a roof to shoot down some snipers - and ends up having sex with another soldier in the middle of combat. Any relationship between these events and reality are, clearly, purely coincidental.
There’s a subtle, sexist undercurrent in this story, too. When the two soldiers are surprised by insurgents, the woman poses nude to distract the attacker (and the reader), while the male soldier kills the insurgents. She’s also the one who suggests sex during combat, and she’s cheating on her husband. To be fair, he’s cheating on her too, but why not make a strong female lead that doesn’t drop her pants half-way through the very first issue? Well, obviously nudity sells - though the fascination with cartoon erotica (anime or otherwise) has always escaped me.
Sometimes, Vertigo has pulled off mature themes in their comics in a way that doesn’t unsettle the plot, and doesn’t distract needlessly from the story. Preacher was coated in sex and violence, and the currently running Testament features nudity in every issue. But Preacher also had strong characters and implied deep relationships between its leads. When Jesse Custer and Tulip O’Hare jumped into bed together, it propelled the plot forward. When Testament discusses sex, it’s in the context of paganism and subversive religion. After all, the Bible was full of sex, so Testament can’t be faulted for reproducing it.
Army @ Love’s use of sex feels as random as a stray bullet in combat. When you detach sex from the plot, much like when you detach violence from a plot, it tends to feel unnecessary at best, and juvenile at worst. So what does it mean when the entire premise of the comic is an army full of random no-strings-attached sex? It’s enough to make you paraphrase Eugene Mirman. Comic books, can you imply an even greater connection between fantasy and reality? Army @ Love’s answer seems to be: We’re trying as hard as we can.
by Mordechai Shinefield