March
23 Army @ Love #1

Creator: Rick Veitch, writer and penciller; Gary Erskine, inker
Vertigo, 32 pages, color, $2.99
So? With this one issue, Rick Veitch brings back into the spotlight the kind of wicked satire that made indie comics cool in the days before everything was angling for a movie option. The moment that either will sell you on this or prompt you to throw it back in disgust is the heavily-previewed scene in which a perky U.S. Army sniper invites a fellow soldier to join the “hot zone club” by having sex in the middle of a firefight. But wait, that’s just part of it! The writer-artist who pushed the edge of superhero comics in “The One,” “Bratpack” and “Maximortal” — and whose reaction to DC nixing his plans to put Jesus in an issue of Swamp Thing started one of the industry’s more interesting and lont-lived fueds — doesn’t stop there. In this book, the Army has a new strategy for its Motivation and Morale department, which entices recruits and keeps them coming back for with not just the promise of combat action, but at secret bacchanalian retreats during which anything goes. The average citizen back home — especially the spouses — doesn’t know how much excitement they’re missing out on, and the brass want to keep it that way. This is a book full of the kind of wild ideas that comics used to do all the time. It is not the sort of thing you want to apply a lot of story logic to, but it is a book that offers some food for thought along with its titillation and violence. Grade: A-