Broken Frontier

Rick Veitch is an industry veteran in every sense of the word. He’s dabbled in every corner of the comics medium—from the mainstream to small press to underground. He’s collaborated with legendary creators (Allan Moore), worked on legendary lines (Marvel’s Epic brand) and has made his mark on present-day comics culture (he’s the co-founder of comicon.com).

Now, he returns to the company where he’s enjoyed some of his biggest successes, both recently (Can’t Get No) and way back (Swamp Thing) as he launches a new ongoing series at DC/Vertigo. Army@Love, written and drawn by Veitch, with an inking assist by Gary Erskine, mixes action, soap opera and dark comedy in a story centering on a New Jersey National Guard unit on a battlefront in the Middle East.

BROKEN FRONTIER: What’s the premise of the story overall, and the first story arc, The Hot Zone Club, in particular?

RICK VEITCH: It's Six Feet Under meets MASH in an Iraq-like war still raging five years in the future. The set up is that things became such a mess; the military had to resort to modern marketing tactics to rebrand the entire enterprise. By reshaping army life and promoting the war as a stylish consumer choice, the military has succeeded in building recruitment and turning the whole war around.

In the first story arc we meet the extensive cast and begin to see the intricate and unexpected web of their relationships, especially romantic ones, that oscillate between the combat in Afbaghistan and the corruption and intrigue back home in Edgefield.

The military has instituted a wild "Spring Break" culture as a reward system and the young recruits have totally embraced it. But in the first issue, the hedonism seems to get completely out of hand when two troopers, Switzer and Flabbergast, strip down and get it on under fire. They name their exploit "The Hot Zone Club" and soon the other troopers are trying to join by repeating the stunt.

You'd expect the military to shut something like the Hot Zone Club right down, but Army@Love's zany characters decide it’s an incredible marketing hook and rush to exploit it.

BF: The solicitation bills this series as a genre-bender with comedy, drama and over-the-top action. What’s the tone you’re aiming to set with Army@Love?

RV: Army@Love is a mashing of war comics and romance comics with lots of black comedy and quite a bit of skin. But like all Veitch comics its got a strange sensibility. The war scenes are often played for laughs, or as backdrops to soap opera stuff. The sex stuff has quite a bit of farce in it.

So, "black comedy" is probably the simplest way to describe Army@Love.

BF: The preview pages show Switzer, amid a war zone while on the phone with her husband Loman at home having a conversation about a lost tie. Through this surreal scenario, are you indicating that in the not too distant future, people will have become indifferent to war, even though it’s perennially present in their lives?

RV: If you go back and read the history of the world wars you see that after a while combatants and civilians reached the point where there was little or no empathy left for the enemy or even civilian victims. That's part of where I'm coming from in Army@Love. But I'm also extrapolating on how the current war is presented to us through television. It seems crazy surreal to me that this horrible human tragedy is packaged like entertainment, surrounded by ads for consumer products.

BF: Is Army@Love meant as a comment on modern times and America’s difficulties in Iraq?

RV: First off, it's meant to be entertainment. Satirical entertainment to be sure, but I think its fair to tell stories that make you laugh and think about the world at the same time.

In terms of cultural comment, Army@Love is less a comment on today as it as a warning to the future. It imagines how a merging of military and consumer marketing might play out. It fantasizes how military technology will evolve and what that will mean to how war is fought.

One of the big worries on everyone's minds right now is whether or not we are going to be able to extract ourselves out of this mess. I'm creatively riffing on how it might look in five years if we can't.

BF: When did you come up with the idea for the series, actually? What inspired you?

RV: I'm not sure what day and month it was, but it was probably at the point where it became obvious the war in Iraq had gone completely berzerk. 

BF: Did the success of your 2006 graphic novel, Can’t Get No, make the soil more fertile at Vertigo for this project to sprout up?

RV: I've always had a great creative relationship with Karen Berger. She and I go back to before Alan Moore started Swamp Thing. She's always been open to letting me explore my nuttiest ideas while acting as a sensible editorial sounding board.

After Vertigo published Can't Get No, which was a literary graphic novel that made no bones about being a challenging read, I wanted to offer them something more accessible and entertaining.

What's cool about comics is how something like Army@Love can be entertaining while still being full of subversive ideas.

Army@Love #1 hits stores this Wednesday, March 21.