Army @ Love: The Art of War #6

by Rick Veitch (with inks by Gary Erskine)

I really enjoyed Veitch's two Army @ Love series. The first one was a perfect example of Bush-era satire (I love that we can start talking about the Bush era in the past tense), eschewing the war for profit mentality and taking it to its extreme.

This second series has seemed to flounder some, as it looks for a semi-credible way to resolve the various plot lines and character arcs that began in the first series, while still attempting to maintain its satiric vision. I don't really think the second series succeeded in this mission. It was still a good read, and often very funny, but I feel like it went off-message quite a bit, and in some ways, became more of a parody of DC's Crisis fixation, with its multiple realities and Big Finger provided deus ex machina.

It's still a good book, and once again, I admire Veitch for his vision and his bravery. I know that he has taken a lot of flack for this series in the on-line community (I don't remember reading very many positive reviews), but I also think that in a couple of years, when some skeletons are unearthed from the Bush's closets, historians begin to re-examine the War on Terror, and it becomes more socially acceptable to criticize soldiers again, this series will be rediscovered and praised by some of the people that gave it a pass the first time around.

Army @ Love: The Art of War #5

by Rick Veitch
Inks by Gary Erskine

I know that this series, both in this and in its original incarnation, has received a lot of internet hate, but I have always found it to be original and whimsical. I've liked the way that Veitch has poked fun at the American war industry, and at government efforts to brand and market the war on terror. I thought the idea to write a soap opera set against that backdrop was inspired, and liked that he set it slightly into the future and in a fictional country so that the satire could stay just that - there was never any attempt to make this a 'real war comic', like some of the other recent offerings from DC/Vertigo (scroll down).

This new mini-series has had two strengths in particular: the covers and the framing sequence. Every issue in The Art of War has begun with a page or two set in a Guantanamo Bay-type of detention centre, where the real Rick Veitch is being tortured (sorry - placed into positions of 'stress and duress') by American interrogators looking for some of the military secrets displayed in the comic. These are often the funniest part of each issue.

The covers have been great - spoofs on classic pieces of art, updated to Veitch's modern Afbaghistan war. This issue's is a dissapointment, although after what he did to Whistler's mother, I guess there's not much more to say.

So, I'm a fan of this series. I'm okay with Mongrolian Mothers of Mountains that are really beautiful actresses. I'm okay with drugs that can be used to access government satellite-intelligence things. I'm good with growing replacement organs on the outside of your body to eventually harvest and transplant within the body. But I think he lost me around the point that I realized that this is Army@Love: Final Crisis.

The world is a copy of another world using some strange law of physics, and is now being deleted, at least according to a message from the future that has taken 4 or 5 issues to decrypt? Actually, it's all good. I'm just sad that I don't think there will be a volume three after this.