Welcome to Afbaghistan, soldier.
The Bagh, as we call it here, is hot, dirty, and crawling with baghis armed to the teeth. And the li'l buggers ain't scared of dying, neither, and will stop at nothing to take you with 'em. So remember your basic training, make good use of our superior technology, and be ready for the fight of your life.
Ain't it the coolest?
Army@Love takes place just a little bit into our future and to the left of our reality. The war has been going on for a long while, and the army has had a hard time getting people to recruit. In a stroke of genius, middle management executives are drafted and come up with a plan: market war as peak experience.
Responding eagerly - not to say slobberingly - an adrenaline-addicted generation joins the battlefield, enjoying a moral license to do, well, anything actually - and concentrating on the combination of sex and violence, the ultimate rush. Up until now, the violence part took place in the battlefield, the sex one in "the resorts" - a few days of unbridled nudity, fornication, music and drugs.
But then Switzer, a sharp-shooter with a craving for fun, convinces Flabbergast, a stage-magician who looks good in uniform, to join The Hot Zone Club: actually doing the deed under fire. So now, everybody wants to join The Club, especially after Motivation and Morale - MOMO for short - catches on and spreads the rumor around.
Switzer is none too happy about the growing popularity of The Club, especially since Flabbergast is telling everybody he came up with the idea. Never trust a hypnotist (as his lovely, if somewhat zombified, assistant could have once - alas, not anymore - testified). Loman, Switzer's husband back on the home-front, overheard the whole thing over the phone, so he's not ecstatic either. He has bigger problems, though, as his business is moving stolen parts - car or human, everything goes - from and to Afbaghistan, and the local bosses are none too happy with his recent work. He's also sleeping with Allie, the wife of MOMO head-honcho, Healey, who, on his part, is exploring the nether-regions of his dedicated secretary, Woyner, while being squeezed by the Secretary of War, Stelaphane.
- Flabbergast confuses his priorities
As you probably understand by now, Army@Love is a rather crowded comic, it's about contemporary American wars, and it doesn't pull its punches. But how well does it bode?
Well, that depends. On the satire front, it's a bit too over-the-top while also too obvious: okay, yes, Big Business stands to gain from the war; leaders will stop at nothing to get people to follow their plans; when the fighting starts, morality flies out of the window. Nothing new or very original here. Another problem is that Rick Veitch's satire lacks real bite by taking all of the risks out of the game. Satire is ultimately a tragic genre, while Veitch's universe is, surprisingly enough, rather optimistic: no US soldiers die during the comic, for instance.
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