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U.S. Army
Members of the U.S. Army encounter hostile Czervenian forces in the graphic novel series
The fictitious nation of Czervenia has just attacked its neighboring country with a "massive military offensive" and several Army soldiers sit around a conference table, planning how to rescue refugees and send a long-range surveillance team into enemy territory.
A helicopter hovers over a refugee camp in the rain, its blades whirring as rain falls. Soldiers parachute into the forest near a Czervenian staging area and watch through night-vision scopes.
The scenes are part of "America's Army," a graphic novel launched by the U.S. Army in 2009. Once available only in a static form through a web-based reader, the panels now come alive with sound effects and partial animation in a new iPad and Android app released last week.
Soldiers can be heard rustling in leaves as they try to hide from Czervenian forces on a night mission. Gunfire rattles as the screen flashes with "BOOM," "PING," and "PANG."
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The app is the latest iteration of America's Army, which began as a video game in 2002. The first three issues of the comic will be re-released on the app, followed by new issues every couple of months.
U.S. Army
U.S. soldiers conduct a mission in Czervenian enemy territory.
Michael Barnett, a chief engineer for the Army Game Studio and executive producer of the comic series, told msnbc.com that the comic is designed to show the personal aspects of missions as well as highlight the various roles soldiers play in conflict.
Kirby, for example, is a soldier on his first deployment who is unsure that he'll perform well under pressure. Minor characters include a lawyer and doctor, both of whom wouldn't normally get screen time in a video game. Many of the stories, Barnett said, are based on soldiers' real experiences.
The Army has published comics for decades through PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly, a series for soldiers that teaches maintenance skills and tips via a monthly strip.
Barnett said he did not know yet how many users have downloaded the app, but is hopeful that the tablet technology will help reach civilians and soldiers alike.
"That’s what we really love about comic books," Barnett said, "they bridge a very wide audience."
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Leave a Comment:
How cool!
Let's just turn all our military tactical, and law enforcement personnel's killing and mutilation into a video game or comic strip.
I can tell you, that I found nothing more exciting than packing my best friends intestines back in his abdominal cavity while trying to shove a 'trach' tube into an area where his jaw formerly resided. And, nothing could be more, totally, bomb than laying out the bodies of bloodied, dismembered and unrecognizable enemy corpses. I felt so damn tough and warrior-like.
What a great country when, what is supposed to be our Nation's military defense arm becomes its own purveyor of graphic comics in order to glamorize and market its own sense of deviant pride in destroying another human life.
Obviously, there are no real adults left in the Pentagon. The Army's phony berets, camo orgy and self-aggrandizing "Army Strong" advertising bull@!$%# is fast becoming worse than the worst Al Qaeda training and advertising films.
We served the Nation more honorably as soldiers than the hyperbolic 'warrior' of today. But then, soldiers were about representing a country, while warriors are part of a self-important industry. Drive onto any Air Force base today and the signs abound, calling even administrative personnel 'warriors'. It's @!$%#ing delusional!
And, it is un-American (when America used to try and be principled).
The Pentagon plans on spending $88.4 billion ($230,000 per minute) on the war in Afghanistan next year. How about we withdraw now, and spend that money repaying the $2.6 trillion owed to the Social Security Trust Fund (that was borrowed/stolen) instead?
Now that would be cool!
You forgot to add the word " Hero" , so over used that it is meaningless.
Well said.
Happy birthday, Sergeant Rock, wherever you are.
What else could we expect from our government? The average soldier joined the military because he is an uneducated, immature, video game / comic book junkie who couldn't land a job outside a fast food restaurant and thought that killing people for the military for a whopping $1,600 / month was the opportunity of a lifetime. That's the kind of personnel the military wants: stupid, hopeless, and willing to kill without conscience-- the kind of punks who will find these comic books entertaining as hell until they sign up and do the real thing.
Institute a draft. That will bring some normal-minded people into the military to balance things out a bit.
The guy shooting at the Black Hawk looks like Pakistani Army..... I'm just sayin...
That guy looks white as a sheep. Then again, he's probably a soldier of "Czervenia..."
I still have my M16A1 Operation and Preventive Maintenance comic. Vintage 1969, illustrated by Will Eisner. Much more effective than a plain-Jane TM. There are a few combat scenes in it, including a soldier with a jammed weapon looking panicked, and a grinning NVA right behind him. Definitely not funny if you ever had your Mattel jam-o-matic turn into a paperweight from a smidgen of dirt that wouldn't trip a fly. Then again, I don't think we were as sensitive back then, what with all the abuse from our own countrymen, a little comic was the last of our worries.
"...Definitely not funny if you ever had your Mattel jam-o-matic turn into a paperweight from a smidgen of dirt that wouldn't trip a fly" lol hey Cygnus61, good read!
What did you mean about, "...abuse from our own countrymen..." ?
@Mack M
Ask Hanoi Jane and the creeps at the airport calling returning GIs "baby killers" and murderers. Being spat on by somebody who you thought you were fighting for tends to stick with you. So does being turned down for jobs by companies who enriched themselves on the blood of American (and Vietnamese) soldiers and civilians. 'Nuff said.
Surely this is for recruiting more "heroes to be warriors". We have enough people in uniform, we should be downsizing at a rapid rate but we won't; too many kickbacks and jobs rely on the slush fund.
5 years in the USMC and a deployment to Afghanistan where I saw nothing but waste and laziness.
Our country is in the crapper on so many levels it's overwhelming.
Agree. Let's get the hell out of everywhere where in theory we are at risk of being attacked. Uh, can you spell oil? Let's see, we are friends with the Iraqis, then Iranians, then we assassinate several leaders, violating UN treaties. Thousands of dead soldiers. Of course we don't have the cojones to go after the Chinese, Northern Viatnamese and Russians, they would push a little red light and we would be history. We are cowards, invading small, defenseless nations, then leaving them to clean up our mess. You think 9/11 was anything, wait until the next one.
I still have the little Tabasco Sauce cookbook for C-Rations. I carried a CAR-15 and never had much of a problem except for it heating up. The muzzle flash was huge though.
In the dark days of Vietnam and the early, post-Vietnam period, with the military gutted , despised, and in disrepute, with the Soviets triumphant and anti-American revolutionaries chasing out the US imperialists in South and Central America, in Africa, East Asia, and the Mid-east, a lot of people were predicting the "end of the American Century". The Soviet Navy was actually bigger than ours - better armed, too, and the Russians were able to seriously challenge our pretensions to being a blue water superpower.
Of course, by 1989, that had all changed and not only had we triumphed, but the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
Know how I knew, in the darkest of those days, that we were gonna win? It was when the Navy introduced the "Navy Tactical Data System" - a command and control system that turned naval warfare into something not unlike a video game. Any kid with a basic grasp of an Atari gaming system suddenly had the ability to out-general (or "out-admiral") any foreign flag officer in the world. SO, while the Russians had to spend time and money just to teach their recruits and draftees to drive a vehicle, our youth were paying for their own education as master tacticians by playing video games. Now THAT is brilliance. "Missile Command" (a popular video game in the days of the dinosaurs) was the perfect practice system for destroying a Russian combined air and sea assault and our kids could do it in their sleep. Too bad, Admiral Gorshkov, you lose... Dos vidanya.
SO, war as a "graphic novel"? Why not? Donald Duck went to war in WWII to teach a bunch of hicks how to strip an M-1. Why can't we create a modern "Sgt. Rock" to teach "noise and light discipline"?
Well it's not teaching kids anything. It's just propaganda aimed at teenagers and gamers to try to show how great it supposedly is to be in the military.
Ever see the movie Act of Valor? There's a scene in the movie that's filmed from a first-person perspective that looks EXACTLY like a Call of Duty/Battlefield game. You could argue that it was trying to add more realism to the film, except the makers of the film signed a deal with EA (Electronic Arts) to advertise their film in Battlefield 3...
The armed forces are flipping out. It is bad enough that so many of our weapon systems look like video games such as the drones they fly from the safety of a computer room, dropping "smart" bombs and other assorted dehumanized warfare. The farther the soldier gets away from the real killing and battle, the easier it will be to senselessly kill and start wars. Toons and games as a facade for killing. It is scary.
"BOOM," "PING," and "PANG."
Yea....
Go Apple.....