Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The White Donkey: Terminal Lance
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1986
WEBSITE: http://terminallance.com/
CITY: San Francisco Bay area
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_Lance * http://terminallance.com/about/ * https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilianu * http://blogs.pjstar.com/kravetz/2010/12/02/qa-with-a-terminal-lance/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1986.
EDUCATION:Studied at Portland Community College; California College of the Arts, B.F.A., 2013.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Storyboard artist, animator, and writer. Creator of Terminal Lance Web comic, 2010—. Served as a consultant with Fox Television, 2013.
MIILITARY:U.S. Marines, 2007-11, served in Iraq.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Maximilian Uriarte is a storyboard artist and animator who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He served two tours in Iraq with the U.S. Marines between 2007 and 2011. While assigned as a combat artist-photographer, he created the popular Web comic Terminal Lance, about life in the Marine Corps in Iraq.
Uriarte published his first graphic novel, The White Donkey: Terminal Lance, in 2016. Book-smart Abe and street-smart Garcia are lance corporals in the Marine Corps. They look out for each other and the other members of their unit as they face the dangers and complications of daily life in Iraq. A frequently appearing white donkey serves as an ethereal reminder for them to slow down and take life in.
In an online interview for Peoria, Illinois’s Journal Star, Uriarte talked about realizing his Web comic Terminal Lance‘s appeal across all levels of the Marine Corps before deciding to turn it into a graphic novel. Uriarte said, “In all honesty, nobody has ever told me to my face that they didn’t like ‘Terminal Lance.’ I think it has an inherent truth about it, something that all Marines can identify with regardless. I believe it is that way because I do my best to stay honest—I speak my mind about the Corps and try to make it funny at the same time. Even though my strip is infantry-centric, people from all MOS’ across the Corps and even the world have sent me emails telling me they identify with my humor.”
In an article in the We Are the Mighty Web site, Uriarte talked with Blake Stilwell about his approach to writing the graphic novel and how it differs from common depictions of war produced in Hollywood. “I wanted it to be a grim war story,” he remarked, adding: “I wanted it to be more self-aware in a way. I think the usual Hollywood narrative is always very heroic. I feel like a lot of being a Marine is not heroic in the slightest sense of it. I think I wanted to have a narrative that combats that idea of that glorified American ideology, that going to war is heroic.”
Booklist contributor Ray Olson described the book as being “a masterpiece in the old sense of a work that proves a craftsman has become a master.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly observed that the graphic novel is “both respectful to the military and its role” and “sympathetic to the delicacy of the young soldiers.” In a review in Xpress Reviews, Martha Cornog said that the book is “compelling reading for news watchers and would-be enlistees, older teens and up, and for veterans and their families and caregivers.”
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Marine Corps general Robert Neller was recorded as saying that Uriarte “understands our Marine culture because he is, and will always be, one of us. … He uses his art and wit to tackle issues that Marines deal with, from the mundane to the most serious.” In that Wall Street Journal article, Ben Kesling observed that the story is “drawn with stylized realism.” Reviewing the graphic novel for the Washington Post, Thomas Gibbons-Neff suggested: “While The White Donkey has its fair share of humor, it is really a story about the war Hollywood chose to ignore. There are no firefights in frames of violent color, and no special operators rappelling from helicopters. Instead one of the most compelling scenes is when the book’s main character, Abe, is filling out a post-deployment health assessment.”
Writing in the Washington Free Beacon, Temple Cone remarked: “It is unfortunate that a book so careful and thorough in its examination of the enlisted experience and of life in post-insurgency Iraq should feel so rushed at the end. But the final quarter of the book, which details the consequences of the traumatic event that overturns Abe’s life, is less fully realized than the narrative preceding it.” “Still,” Cone conceded, “there is no denying the power of the final pages. The image of the white donkey … is a remarkable symbol for the war with all its ambiguities and suffering. Uriarte has grasped at powerful mysteries … and by the end of the book, has given us a portrait of one man’s lonely, courageous attempt to come to terms with these mysteries.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2016, Ray Olson, review of The White Donkey: Terminal Lance, p. 40.
Publishers Weekly, April 25, 2016, review of The White Donkey, p. 78.
Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2016, Ben Kesling, review of The White Donkey.
Washington Free Beacon, September 4, 2016, Temple Cone, review of The White Donkey.
Washington Post, December 14, 2016, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, review of The White Donkey.
Xpress Reviews, March 18, 2016, Martha Cornog, review of The White Donkey.
ONLINE
Journal Star (Peoria, IL) Online, http://blogs.pjstar.com/ (December 2, 2010), Andy Kravetz, “Q&A with a Terminal Lance.”
Terminal Lance Web site, http://terminallance.com/ (February 21, 2017), author profile.
We Are the Mighty, http://www.wearethemighty.com/ (January 11, 2016), Blake Stilwell, “‘Terminal Lance’ Creator Gets Real with ‘The White Donkey.'”
Q&A with a Terminal Lance
I have long wrote that I haven’t served in the military and really don’t know what it is like beyond what people have told me. I confess that makes for an interesting dilemma when you are the military writer for a paper. Fortunately, there are enough grunts, jarheads and flyboys around here who keep me in the loop and who will answer my questions so I don’t sound like a complete idiot.
Why this little blurb? Because one of those resources I use to learn about the service is this Web site, www.terminallance.com. It’s a cartoon strip written by former Lance. Cpl. Maximilian Uriarte, a OIF vet and a grunt. The Marines have a system for promotions that is based upon cutting scores. I don’t know why they are called that but hey, they are. For the grunts, the combat arms, it is apparently difficult to get a promotion past Lance Corporal due to various reasons hence the name of the strip (though the service in a twist, promoted him after he left). While he was in, Uriarte served as a 0351 Assaultman and a photographer who went to Iraq as well.
Lances are a low-level NCO for those who don’t know and really important within the Corps. They often do jobs which should be assigned to higher ranks and usually have very experienced guys.
The strip which isn’t PC-friendly, probably not safe for work on some days, is brutally honest. Uriarte draws from his time in the Marines, his love of the Corps and his intelligence to point out some of the silliness that is the military. The cartoons are well drawn and there is a very active forum there full of jarheads and others who like to poke fun at the Marines. I love this strip. I love it’s humor which is often dark and I love his inside knowledge. It might be crude, and at times offensive but it just has the real, raw feeling that I love.
Below is Q&A which I got from Uriarte a few weeks ago but haven’t had the time to get it up on the Web. Check out. Visit his strip. but I wouldn’t let kids read it And for us non Grunts, here’s a few quick terms:
POG – Person other than Grunt
EAS – end of active service
ASVAB – a military test for placement into the job fields
AO – area of operation
Name, rank, home town, etc.
My name is Maximilian Uriarte, Corporal (now). I’m from Portland, OR. I grew up in Oregon and joined when I was 19 after two years of community college.
When did you join the Marines and why. What did you do and did you deploy to Iraq.
I joined in May of 2006. I was in a rut and needed to do something crazy, so I decided I would join the Marines where I knew I would go to Iraq. As well, even though I scored a 92 on my ASVAB (131 GT Score) I felt an overwhelming need to go infantry. I was contract 0300, because I wanted to know what it was like to be in Iraq the way it’s supposed to be.
When I got back from Hawaii, I figured I would try something else and tried to lat move to Combat Camera given my talents in art and photography–which ultimately didn’t work out at the time. So, still with 3/3 I was a squad leader during the year-long training cycle; and right around the time we were about to deploy for the 2nd time I was given the opportunity by my Battalion Commander to serve in a unique billet working with our Combat Camera and PAO attachments. Somehow my penchant for the arts reached him, he requested me by name. For all intents and purposes, I served my 2nd deployment operating as a Combat Photographer (unofficially) and a Combat Artist, while retaining my 0351 MOS. This was great, because I got to travel all over the battalion’s AO and photograph and sketch Marines. Having an infantry background made me much more credible in the eyes of the CO, allowing me almost free reign over what I could undertake. Even though we were stationed out of al Asad, our Battalion’s AO was spread all over Iraq, which let me see everything from Baghdad to the Syrian border–which most grunts wouldn’t typically get to do.
When we came back from the 2nd deployment I only had 6 months left. It is usually standard practice for the EASing Marines to leave the battalion and work somewhere else on base for the rest of their time. So in all obviousness, I chose to go to the base Combat Camera, where I spent the remainder of my contract.
Why did you want to get out, you seem, on some level, gung-ho Corps,. Not Chesty Puller (wherever he is) but you get the idea. It’s obviously you have a good heart for the Corps but like to poke fun at an insanity.
I got out because I have other ambitions in life. The Marines was never going to be a career for me, but a stepping stone to greater my artistic ideas. I always hated the idea of filmmakers and artists creating images of suffering and horror without ever truly understanding it themselves. I felt that empathy was not a substitute for experience. I got out because I want to make film.
You got out this spring, and are now attending art school. Talk about that, where you go, how it is to be an “older” student (weird for me as I am 40 but you get the idea. You have blogged about that. I’d like some explanation)
Right now I am attending the California College of the Arts in Oakland and San Francisco. I am an illustration and animation dual major. It is odd being older, especially since I have to attend certain “core” classes for my majors, which are usually filled with 18-19 year old students. Being 24 and “salty” as they say, I often feel like an old man compared to many of them.
Your strip. It can be mean at times. It can be revealing. It can be NC-17. Yet, it always has a tone of honesty and in your face about the Corps. Have you gotten grief from people still in the service about it or… do most people say OOHrah for you and what you are doing. I realize you take the approach of an 03xx and not a POG. However, what do the POGs think, and what do the SNCOs think. I am sure the Lcpls. And below groove on it. Or not.
In all honesty, nobody has ever told me to my face that they didn’t like Terminal Lance. I think it has an inherent truth about it, something that all Marines can identify with regardless. I believe it is that way because I do my best to stay honest–I speak my mind about the Corps and try to make it funny at the same time. Even though my strip is infantry-centric, people from all MOS’ across the Corps and even the world have sent me emails telling me they identify with my humor. There was one time, after I did the strip about Reservists; some angry officer sent me an email about the importance of the Reserves and how I shouldn’t disrespect them or something rather. While I understand his point of view, I think he completely missed the point of the joke. As well, being strictly an active duty Marine, I don’t personally identify with reservists in the same regard that I do other active members. Personal biases on my part, but they are two different worlds all together.
Ultimately, I think the people that like the comic will be the ones that are able to laugh not only at the Corps but at themselves. You need a sense of humor to appreciate humor, otherwise you’ll just find yourself angry and upset that someone is making fun of you. However, I never really try to upset anyone with Terminal Lance, but I will always stay honest with myself. If that upsets people, then so be it.
Maximilian Uriarte
Storyboard Artist, Animator, Creator of Terminal Lance
San Francisco Bay AreaAnimation
Current
Terminal Lance, Gannett Government Media Corporation
Previous
Fox Television, Athena Studios, Veteran's Expeditionary Media
Education
California College of the Arts
500+
connectionsSend Maximilian InMailMore options
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilianu
Contact Info
Background
Summary
In 2010 I created a small, underground webcomic called Terminal Lance. In less than a year, the comic grew to be one of the most popular on the internet as well as a weekly spot in the Marine Corps Times newspaper.
I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation (with distinction) from California College of the Arts in 2013.
Specialties: Illustration, animation, writing and editing, storyboarding, photography, military consultant
Experience
Creator, Writer, Illustrator
Terminal Lance
January 2010 – Present (7 years 2 months)Bay Area, CA
Terminal Lance is the military's most popular webcomic, with over 250,000 fans on Facebook and over 100 million web hits in 3 years. Terminal Lance is published weekly in the Marine Corps Times newspaper, and has seen two compilation books published.
Over the course of 4 years, I have produced over 500 comic strips published in print and online. Terminal Lance is one of the largest Marine Corps communities on the internet, the Terminal Lance forum is home to over 4000 members.
During this time I have managed and maintained the website, expanded social media exposure and gained over 250,000 fans on Facebook. I've produced and directed animated shorts, commercials, composed and compiled books, and been published countless times online and in print as a military cultural expert.
(Open)3 projects
Cartoonist
Gannett Government Media Corporation
December 2010 – Present (6 years 3 months)
Produced "Terminal Lance" weekly in the Marine Corps Times newspaper as a contract artist. Coordinated weekly with managing editor and other editing staff for publication across the military.
Terminal Lance
Terminal Lance
Military Advisor on "Enlisted"
Fox Television
October 2013 – October 2013 (1 month)Fox Studios
"Enlisted" creator Kevin Beigel invited me out to work with the writers on the set of the show for a week. During my short time with the cast and crew, I spent time on set correcting haircuts and providing military cultural expertise as well as added input to the writers of the show in the writer's room.
Freelance Storyboard Artist
Athena Studios
July 2013 – August 2013 (2 months)Emeryville, CA
Providing storyboards for an upcoming animated film!
Storyboard Artist
Veteran's Expeditionary Media
November 2012 – June 2013 (8 months)
Working with Brian Iglesias on the animated short film, "Chosin: Hold the Line." We successfully raised $25,000 via Kickstarter to produce the animated short. Brian asked me to storyboard the film, I produced over 150 boards for the film, which is currently slated for production.
"Sabotage" Story Artist/Visual Consultant
QED/Brentwood Productions
July 2012 – August 2012 (2 months)Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA
Writer/Director David Ayer asked me to be a visual consultant on the Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Sabotage." During my time at QED I worked directly with the director daily in planning shots and visualizing the film.
Infantry Assaultman, Combat Photographer/Artist
United States Marine Corps
May 2006 – May 2010 (4 years 1 month)MCBH Kaneohe Bay, HI; al Anbar, Iraq
I enlisted as an 0351 Infantry Assaultman. During my time in the infantry, I did a variety of jobs. Notably, I was a lead turret gunner, squad leader, team leader and SMAW gunner. I gained many skills in small team leadership.
Additionally, I was asked by my Battalion Commander at 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines if I wanted to serve as a combat photographer/artist on my 2nd deployment to Iraq. I accepted the position and was given the opportunity to travel all over Iraq, photographing and sketching Marines professionally for documentation.
Courses
California College of the Arts
Visual Storytelling with Mark Andrews
Storyboarding with Pam Stalker
3D Animation with Ed Guttierez
Publications
Marine Corps Times(Link)
Gannett Media Corp.
December 10, 2010
Terminal Lance is published weekly in print in the Marine Corps Times newspaper.
Terminal Lance: KNIFE-HANDS!!!(Link)
Veteran's Expeditionary Media
July 1, 2011
Terminal Lance: KNIFE-HANDS!!! is the first compilation book for the series "Terminal Lance."
Terminal Lance: Head Call(Link)
Amazon Kindle
June 15, 2013
Terminal Lance: Head Call is the compilation of strips previously only published in the Marine Corps Times print paper.
War, love, suicide: Terminal Lance gets serious(Link)
Marine Corps Times
December 10, 2015
The cover story to a special White Donkey edition of the Marine Corps Times newspaper.
Projects
Terminal Lance: The White Donkey
January 2011 – February 2016
Terminal Lance: The White Donkey is a 284 page graphic novel written and illustrated by Maximilian Uriarte. It follows Abe, a Marine, on his surreal journey to and from Iraq.
Terminal Lance(Link)
Starting January 2010
The largest webcomic in the military!
A Dog and His Boy(Link)
May 2013
My Senior Thesis project at the California College of the Arts
Skills
Top Skills
99+Storyboarding
99+Animation
89Illustration
62Military
52Photography
51Illustrator
40Art
37Photoshop
35Film
27Character Animation
Maximilian also knows about...
26Military Experience
21Traditional Animation
20Editing
20Maya
19Computer Animation
16Microsoft Excel
15Security Clearance
14Marine Corps
14Adobe Creative Suite
12Film Production
12Social Networking
12Creative Writing
11Physical Security
9After Effects
8Tactics
See 4+
Education
California College of the Arts
California College of the Arts
Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A. with Distinction), Animation
2010 – 2013
Graduated in 2013 with Distinction in the Animation program.
(Open)3 courses
Portland Community College
Portland Community College
n/a, General Education
2004 – 2006
Additional Info
Interests
art, animation, military, marine corps, comics
Terminal Lance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Terminal Lance
Terminal Lance logo.jpg
The logo for Terminal Lance
Author(s) Maximilian Uriarte
Website TerminalLance.com
Current status / schedule Active
Launch date January 5, 2010
Publisher(s) Self-Published
Genre(s) Humor, Satire, Military
Terminal Lance is a comic strip and website created in 2010 by Maximilian Uriarte that satirizes United States Marine Corps life. Uriarte publishes the strip in the Marine Corps Times newspaper and on his own website, TerminalLance.com. The name is a slang term for a Marine who finishes an enlistment (i.e. terminates) as a Lance Corporal. The system for advancement to Corporal and Sergeant, "cutting scores," is heavily dependent on career-field and seniority—this leads to a large number of "terminal lances" in infantry specialties who might, in another field, have advanced to NCO rank.[1][2] According to Uriarte, he created the strip "to poke fun at the Marine Corps, much like Gunny Wolf [Charles F. Wolf Jr.]'s old Sempertoons, but with an emphasis on the grunt Lance Corporal’s point of view."[3]
In 2016, Terminal Lance creator Maximilian Uriarte independently released the 290-page graphic novel Terminal Lance: The White Donkey which he wrote and illustrated. The book was independently published on February 1st, 2016, after a successful Kickstarter in 2013. Shortly after, the book was picked up by Little, Brown and Company and retitled The White Donkey: Terminal Lance, and was released on April 19, 2016.
Uriarte at the 2016 Texas Book Festival.
Contents [hide]
1 In popular culture
2 See also
3 References
4 External links
In popular culture[edit]
On May 30, 2012, The Duffel Blog ran a satire piece stating that the creator of the Terminal Lance strip was not Maximilian Uriarte, but instead was Carlton Kent—the former Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps.[4] The article made a joke that Kent had said that he created the strip in order to reach out to junior Marines in better ways.
About Terminal Lance
Disclaimer: Terminal Lance is in no way sponsored nor endorsed by the United States Marine Corps or any other branch of the US Armed Services. All opinions and properties belong solely to the creator and no one else.
The Comic
Terminal Lance is a comic created by myself, Lance Corporal Maximilian Uriarte, USMC. The idea behind Terminal Lance is to poke fun at the Marine Corps with an emphasis on the grunt Lance Corporal’s point of view. As an 0351, this is a point of view I’m very familiar with.
While Terminal Lance has featured a few unnamed recurring characters, the two main protagonists of the series are Abe and Garcia.
Abe and Garcia
Abe and Garcia
Abe is dark haired and has been the central character since the first strip. Garcia made his first appearance in Terminal Lance #93 “POG’s Impressing the Grunts”. Abe and Garcia met shortly after entering the fleet. Abe is an 0351 Assaultman, and has been a Lance Corporal for what seems like as long as he can remember. While Garcia is actually an 0331 Machinegunner, he was moved to the Assault section when he arrived in the fleet due to ‘Guns’ being overfilled.
Abe’s actual name is Lance Corporal Abraham Belatzeko, but when he arrived in the fleet, his name was found too hard to pronounce by his seniors. When asked his first name, he replied, “Abe”, and his seniors gave him the nickname of his own name. He is largely known throughout the company as simply “Abe”–people as high up as the Company First Sergeant have given up on using his last name.
Lance Corporal Garcia’s last name is Garcia. He is known throughout the company as Garcia.
Abe is notably more disgruntled than Garcia. Garcia is the kind of guy that goes along with whatever is in front of him. He sees the bullshit and it occasionally pisses him off, but he regards it as a reality of the Marine Corps. Garcia comes from a very poor background, and to him the Marine Corps was a way out of poverty. Abe is primarily from a lower-middle class background on the west coast, the Marine Corps may or may not have been the best choice for him, but with a high GT score and other talents to claim, he counts the days til his EAS to move on to something greater. Abe realizes he’s probably going to be a Terminal Lance, and is proud.
The Creator
Terminal Lance Corporal Max 2010
My name is Max, I was an 0351 Assaultman stationed in Hawaii. I’ve been to Iraq twice, first as a turret gunner of an MRAP in 2007-2008 in the Zaidon region. My second deployment in 2009, my artistic talents brought me to the world of Combat Art and Combat Photography. I worked with our ComCam shop for the entire deployment and got to travel all over Iraq shooting photos and sketching Marines at work. Aside from that, in my 4 years in the Corps I’ve been a SMAW Gunner, Team Leader, Squad Leader, .50Cal Gunner, Combat Photographer, and a Combat Artist.
I have since moved on, I EAS’d in May of 2010 and am currently residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. I recently received my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation at the California College of the Arts in Oakland and am seeking to make a career out of animating and storyboarding.
The Namesake
The term “Terminal Lance” comes from a phenomena common to the Marine Corps infantry: the inability to pick up Corporal, sometimes due to a number of things–sometimes not. In my case, as an 0351, my MOS’ cutting score is beyond ridiculous when it’s not closed. In the mid-to-upper 1700’s, someone like me who has done a number of noteworthy jobs and never been in any kind of NJP (Non-Judicial Punishment) situations, it’s just a matter of cutting score.
For those of you who don’t know what a cutting score is, it’s a broken system of numbers that the Marine Corps uses to promote people. It’s a value based on your physical performance, rifle score and other factors like time in service. Outside of the infantry, people are usually promoted around 1500. The score to promotion is determined by the number of active corporals in relation to the MOS. i.e.: you can only have so many corporals per MOS.
The Project
This project has been a long time in the making. I thought of the concept a couple of years ago but hadn’t had a chance to sit down and do it until now.
I hope the Marines reading this appreciate the humor and where I’m coming from. If you’re not a Marine and you’re still reading this, good job! Most of the terminology in this comic is derived from the Marine Corps, so good luck deciphering it.
Comic updates are scheduled for Tuesdays and Fridays.
'Terminal Lance’ creator gets real with ‘The White Donkey’
By Blake Stilwell
Jan 11, 2016 4:42:10 pm
Books, Entertainment
2.2k1900
It was tempting to make the headline for this review-interview “‘Terminal Lance’ creator Maximilian Uriarte gets dark with The White Donkey. That wouldn’t be truthful, at least not completely.
Much of Uriarte’s self-published graphic novel could be considered dark — and likely will be. But the word “dark” could also be substituted with the word real. Though the book opens with a disclaimer that it is a work of fiction, veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom will find a lot of familiar feelings in its pages.
e6ea395fd6d9d69e911bb638b3d87c90_large
“It’s 90 percent true and then there’s a lot of fictional elements put into it,” Uriarte says. “I don’t like saying that it’s a true story because it’s not. It’s fictional. I feel like once you add one fictional element to anything it becomes a fictional story. The white donkey was real. I really did run into the white donkey in real life, which I write about it in the back of the book. In real life, I only saw the donkey once when we stopped for convoy and that was it. I thought about it a lot every day after that though.”
The White Donkey is a departure from his bread and butter work on Terminal Lance. But Uriarte’s graphic novel was a long time coming. He first conceived the idea in 2010, and launched the Kickstarter for the project in July 2013, a funding process Uriarte will not soon repeat.
“I don’t think I would ever do a Kickstarter again because I hated that. I still hate it,” he says. “It’s one thing to have an investor to answer to. It’s another thing to have 3,000 investors to answer to when things take too long. It’s really stressful.”
Uriarte may be producing the first graphic novel written and illustrated by an Iraq veteran about the Iraq war, but the process of telling this story far outweighed the stress of the financing, in Uriarte’s opinion.
He loves writing, even though he didn’t even know how to make a graphic novel at first. But writing is writing, except when it comes to novels. It’s important to note there’s no corporate ownership to his work. His graphic novel is an independent endeavor, the culmination of more than five years of work.
tumblr_nz5vwq8f091r3cu6go1_1280
“I love writing,” he says. “I wrote this book as a screenplay first and that was how I approached it. I went through a few different processes of trying to figure out how to make this into a graphic novel because I had no idea how to make a graphic novel when I got into it. I started writing it out really novel-like, as a book. It didn’t really do me any favors because I needed a screenplay. I needed a script for the graphic novel. Waxing poetic in sentences and paragraphs didn’t really do me any favors. I thought, ‘Why write all this beautiful poetic language that no one is going to see?'”
Fans of Terminal Lance may wonder why The White Donkey seems so different from the comic strip. The reason is because that’s the reality of war, or at least Max Uriarte’s experience with war.
CplAlbrecht
“I wanted it to be a grim war story,” he says. “I wanted it to be more self-aware in a way. I think the usual Hollywood narrative is always very heroic. I feel like a lot of being a Marine is not heroic in the slightest sense of it. I think I wanted to have a narrative that combats that idea of that glorified American ideology, that going to war is heroic. Even the “personal journey” aspect of it is pretty arrogant of people to think they’re going to experience some enlightenment at the expense of people dying. It’s a very sad and a very false reality I think.”
tumblr_np3q1yXlCe1r3cu6go1_500
The White Donkey is a thought-provoking, poignant work, on the level of Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and is bound to raise Uriate’s profile beyond the large and loyal audience he’s already earned. Still, no matter how successful The White Donkey is, he wants fans to know Terminal Lance isn’t going anywhere.
“Terminal Lance is going to be around for a while if I can help it,” he says. “There’s going to be some changes on the site. I want to open it up more for op-eds and some other content. I want it to be a place any branch can come to for entertainment.”
The White Donkey will available on Amazon in February.
The White Donkey: Terminal Lance
Ray Olson
Booklist.
112.18 (May 15, 2016): p40.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The White Donkey: Terminal Lance. By Maximilian Uriarte. Illus. by the author. 2016. 288p. Little, Brown, $25
(9780316362832). 741.5.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Possessed of a clean, simple comicsrealist style, this graphic novel's creator did two tours in Iraq with the U.S.
Marines, in the infantry in 2007 and as a combat artistphotographer in 2009. In 2010, he launched the webcomic
Terminal Lance. Despite its satire of the service, the Marine Corps Times soon picked it up. Its principals, lance
corporals Abe and Garcia, were originally conceived for this somber book some five years in the making. Uriarte's
experiences, especially the incident of the wandering creature of its tide, inform the book deeply, though he was not
haunted by the donkey, like Abe. The two Oregonians, one unskilled working poor, the other lowermiddleclass, don't
know each other before the marines, but they become very good buddies, with Garcia, inured to hardship, almost a big
brother to the schoolsmarter Abe, who grouses a lot, to the point of becoming an ugly American to the Iraqis. Garcia,
selfdescribed as dumb, is characteristically more downtoearth, as armedservicesmart as he is streetsmart. The
ultimate breach between them puts Abe nearly round the bend, pondering his next, possibly mortal decision.
Marvelously realized in black, white, and gray already, the finished book will feature sparingly added color, too, to
heighten mood and atmosphere. A masterpiece in the old sense of a work that proves a craftsman has become a
master.Ray Olson
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Olson, Ray. "The White Donkey: Terminal Lance." Booklist, 15 May 2016, p. 40. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453913640&it=r&asid=b571a48add6e75facc7e5c805983891a.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A453913640
2/5/2017 General OneFile Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486323370563 2/3
The White Donkey: Terminal Lance
Publishers Weekly.
263.17 (Apr. 25, 2016): p78.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The White Donkey: Terminal Lance
Maximilian Uriarte. Little, Brown, $35 (288p) ISBN 9780316362832
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Pulling from his own experiences as a Marine in Iraq, debut author Uriarte combines a casual, straightforward dramatic
style with clear, nofrills art that draws readers into his characters' everyday experiences and then wallops them with
the tragedy of ordinary life. Abe has enlisted for reasons he doesn't understand, but explains it as looking for something
that's missing. Alongside his buddy Garcia, Abe's journey through training, experience in combat, and home visits is a
long odyssey during which he becomes displaced from his old life. The military lingo that dominates much of the
dialogue can seem like a foreign language to a civilian, but that's crucial to the story, defining the insular alien world
Abe has entered. Both respectful to the military and its role and sympathetic to the delicacy of the young soldiers, the
story's power lies in a middleground view of the ongoing social conflict, seeking to bridge understanding on both
sides. Agent: Katherine Boyle, Veritas Literary. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"The White Donkey: Terminal Lance." Publishers Weekly, 25 Apr. 2016, p. 78. General OneFile,
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Uriarte, Maximilian. The White Donkey:
Terminal Lance
Martha Cornog
Xpress Reviews.
(Mar. 18, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170289/xpress_reviewsfirst_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
Uriarte, Maximilian (text & illus.). The White Donkey: Terminal Lance. Little, Brown. Apr. 2016. 288p. ISBN
9780316362832. $25; ebk. ISBN 9780316362849. F
[DEBUT] Twotime Iraq War veteran Uriarte (Terminal Lance webcomic) wants to show how a soldier returning home
from war can turn suicidal. In this story, the author's "hero" is Abe Belatzeko, who seeks what's missing in his life in
the marines. As a "boot" newbie likely to finish out his enlistment as a lowly lance corporal ("Terminal Lance"), he's
submerged in acronyms, baroque hierarchies, conflicting and purposeless orders, physical discomfort, and perpetual
danger. Soon alienated and then horrified by the meaningless, casually misdirected violence, and amorphous goals of
the war, he attributes the loss of the one relationship he cares about to his own negligence. Uriarte's art shows spare
realism, with sometimes minimal differences among faceswhich accentuates the disorientation. The single color wash
varies by setting and mood.
Verdict Spiked with bitter and obscene humor, this debut and firstever graphic novel about the Iraq War from a veteran
reveals the cynical tedium of daily life in combat and how voluntary service can lead to an existential crisis of selfblame.
Compelling reading for news watchers and wouldbe enlistees, older teens and up, and for veterans and their
families and caregivers. See also Oliver Morel and Mael's Walking Wounded: Uncut Stories from Iraq.Martha
Cornog, Philadelphia
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Cornog, Martha. "Uriarte, Maximilian. The White Donkey: Terminal Lance." Xpress Reviews, 18 Mar. 2016. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449663279&it=r&asid=15cbf303624b372397a46c1c02dae92b.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449663279
A Graphic Novel Looks at War in Iraq
Maximilian Uriarte sent up life in the Marine Corps in his comic strip ‘Terminal Lance.’ Now he’s getting serious, using his Iraq deployment as material for ‘The White Donkey,’ a graphic novel.
Illustration from ‘Terminal Lance: The White Donkey’
Illustration from ‘Terminal Lance: The White Donkey’ PHOTO: MAXIMILIAN URIARTE
By BEN KESLING
Updated Feb. 17, 2016 12:31 p.m. ET
4 COMMENTS
Maximilian Uriarte started drawing a comic strip six years ago, when he was a lance corporal stationed in Hawaii. The comic strip, which he called “Terminal Lance,” drew on his experience to make light of the silly, tedious and coarse aspects of daily life in the Marine Corps.
To publish the comics, Mr. Uriarte launched a website, TerminalLance.com, in early 2010. Word spread among the troops, who embraced the author’s absurd take on life in uniform. Marines liked how they were portrayed as somehow relishing any chance to make life harder for themselves. Officers, cast as bumbling buffoons, also began following “Terminal Lance.”
Within months, the site was getting more than a thousand hits a day. Traffic spiked later that year after the Marine Corps Times ran an article about Mr. Uriarte. His site now gets about 100,000 hits a day and 1.2 million unique visitors a month, he said. A version of the comic strip runs weekly in the Marine Corps Times, which is distributed to bases around the world. Some fans got tattoos of images Mr. Uriarte has drawn.
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About the same time he created “Terminal Lance,” Mr. Uriarte began sketching out something serious: “The White Donkey,” a graphic novel based on his 2007 combat deployment outside Fallujah, Iraq. In the book, he uses words and comic-book style drawings to convey the war, its aftermath and the relationships it forges and destroys. The title comes from a white donkey Mr. Uriarte spotted during his time in Zaidon, near Fallujah and stuck with him.
“I see it as a war drama, an Iraq war drama. The whole frame of the story is based on my own deployment,” said Mr. Uriarte, now 29 years old, who earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from California College of the Arts after leaving the Marine Corps.
Mr. Uriarte self-published “The White Donkey” with money raised on Kickstarter. He aimed to raise $20,000, which he estimated would cover printing costs and keep him fed for six months while finishing the book. Hoping to hit his goal in a month, he instead reached it in 13 hours. Within a month, he had $162,000 in pledges, which let him work on the book full-time for two years. Three fans pledged $1,500 apiece and were rewarded by being drawn into the graphic novel as characters. The Kickstarter donations also paid for the stickers, T-shirts, sketches and books promised to other supporters. In the end, it cost $22,000 to print 5,000 books.
Illustration from Terminal Lance: The White Donkey by Maximilian Uriarte
Illustration from Terminal Lance: The White Donkey by Maximilian Uriarte PHOTO: MAXIMILIAN URIARTE
Mr. Uriarte spent some long days packing and mailing many of the 1,800 books promised to donors. His book went on sale Feb. 1 on Amazon and the first run of 3,000 copies sold out in 36 hours. A few days later, Little, Brown and Company acquired the rights and announced a hardcover print run of 50,000 copies for the spring.
Many of the book’s fans are male enlisted Marines, combat veterans and videogamers—hallmarks of a target audience for a graphic novel. The drawings are influenced by videogames like Metal Gear Solid, a Marine favorite with violent and often surreal aspects.
Bing West, a fellow Marine veteran and the author of dozens of books, including a memoir about his time in Vietnam, said the graphic novel is a form Marines, especially those who were in the fight, will relish, read quickly and pass along among each other.
The real-life white donkey who inspired the title once wandered out into the middle of a road and stopped, forcing an entire Marine convoy to halt and wait until the animal moved. That upending of power impressed the author. In the book, the donkey appears at key moments to the protagonist, Abe, a Marine who turns 21 while in Iraq.
Abe realizes early in his deployment he is looking for meaning in someone else’s country. An Iraqi police officer who surprises Abe with his proficient English tells the Marine he is disgusted by young Americans who come arrogantly to Iraq to become men in battle and then go home, leaving behind a shattered country.
In “The White Donkey,” a sense of alienation pervades Abe’s experience. He endures the tedium of war, the yearning for action to gain legitimacy in the eyes of fellow Marines and, finally, the horror of combat—maimed civilians and the evisceration of his best friend by a roadside bomb—all drawn with stylized realism.
The author “understands our Marine culture because he is, and will always be, one of us,” said Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps. “He uses his art and wit to tackle issues that Marines deal with, from the mundane to the most serious.”
Mr. Uriarte would like to see his book become a movie. He is moving to Los Angeles from the Bay Area, hoping to set up his own animation studio and turn “Terminal Lance” into a TV show. He doesn’t plan a sequel to “The White Donkey” and says his next graphic novel will be about a complicated mother-and-son relationship.
Illustration from Terminal Lance: ‘The White Donkey’ by Maximilian Uriarte
Illustration from Terminal Lance: ‘The White Donkey’ by Maximilian Uriarte PHOTO: MAXIMILIAN URIARTE
Corrections & Amplifications
Mr. Uriarte was stationed in Hawaii when he launched his website. A previous version of the story said he was stationed in California.
‘I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For’
Review: Maximilian Uriarte, ‘The White Donkey: Terminal Lance’
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BY: Temple Cone
September 4, 2016 5:00 am
There’s a lack and a longing in the heart of Abe Belatzakof, the main character of Maximilian Uriarte’s graphic novel about the U.S. Marine Corps, The White Donkey: Terminal Lance. A middle class kid from Portland, Oregon, with a sharp intellect, an absent father, and a lover whose status in his life is uncertain, Abe enlists in the Marine Corps because he is “looking for something else.” His journey takes him from the Marine base at Twentynine Palms to the war in Iraq, and finally home again. Along the way, his life will confirm what Aeschylus cautioned more than two millennia ago: “We must suffer, suffer into truth.”
At the start of The White Donkey, Abe finds himself in the Bellows Training area of Oahu, Hawaii, in 2007. Alone in a hot, rainy forest, he is ambushed and captured by the man who will become his close friend, Jesus Garcia. (The image of one man’s hand reaching for another’s recurs throughout the novel, a leitmotif for the brotherly care that binds Marines.) Garcia has had far fewer life opportunities than Abe, but he proves himself to be good-natured and generous nevertheless, and he sees the Marine Corps as his escape from poverty, crime, and a future in prison. He also sees his decision to join as God’s will, and his faith in God and in the Marine Corps at times clashes with Abe’s atheism.
From the beginning, the two men are dogged by their inexperience—they’re both new to the fleet and constantly being called “boot” because they haven’t seen action in “The Suck” of the war in Iraq.
Abe: “How long do you think this whole boot thing is gonna last? I figured once we got to the fleet we’d be treated like actual Marines…”
Garcia: “I don’t know. It’s not so bad though. So they call us boot and make us clean their shit, but it’s kind of just how it is you know?”
Abe: “Yeah I guess so… I just think it’s fucking stupid.”
Olsen: “You’re a boot until you’ve seen combat, boot… It’s quite simple.”
Uriarte is unsparing in his representation of the tense, sometimes hostile interactions between Marines, whether enlisted or officers. Abe is hazed by a drunken Lance Corporal before deployment, Garcia regularly endures Hispanic slurs, company briefs are littered with sexist remarks, and many Marines display an uneasy mix of homoerotic and homophobic attitudes toward each other. Uriarte’s portrait of the incompetence and conniving amongst officers is especially scathing. During training in Hawaii, Abe’s platoon commander, LT Ding, delays his men’s return home with a fabricated training exercise, in which they must search for a hidden weapon (“a notional weapons cache,” as Abe calls it): LT Ding’s own M4, which he misplaced in a port-o-john. It’s a critique of the need some officers feel to save face before their men, and it’s a pointedly ironic comment about the search for weapons of mass destruction that was the Bush administration’s initial explanation for invading Iraq.
Uriarte also satirizes the sentimental treatment of the military by civilians. While on leave in Portland before deploying to Iraq, Abe and Garcia meet Abe’s uncle Sammy, who “thanks them for their service,” even though, as Abe says, “We…haven’t really…done anything…” Uriarte evokes all the awkwardness of the exchange, from Sammy’s lack of real understanding to the discomfort Abe feels. The civilian-military divide yawns wider at a dinner with Abe’s friend Spencer, who asks, “Are you excited to go to Iraq?” adding, “I would be, your life is like a real life Call of Duty or something.”
Once Abe and Garcia deploy to an area outside of Fallujah as part of a unit providing security for a commanding officer, they encounter a war that is decidedly post-insurgency, where the line between enemy and civilian blurs, and the mission goals are obscured by the fog of politics. “How the hell are we supposed to know that these are good guys?!” Abe asks upon seeing black-masked Iraqi Police in civilian clothes. “The glow-belts,” responds his team leader.
Uriarte dramatizes the impact of such ambiguities on the character of Marines who have trained for combat but must face a very different enterprise, one that is humanitarian, mind-numbingly dull, and potentially fatal. While the Marines interact with Iraqi locals, negotiate disputes, and bond with children, they also must face potential IEDs, the occasional sniper, and their mounting frustration that their efforts will lead to nothing. While Abe doesn’t face armed combat, the war harms him nevertheless, from his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend Jen, to the moral crisis of deciding if he should shoot an Iraqi driver speeding heedlessly toward a checkpoint, to the unexpected trauma that will shatter his world and redefine his life.
Maximilian Uriarte served in the Marine Corps Infantry, deploying to Iraq in 2007 and 2009. Though he began his popular comic strip Terminal Lance in 2010, Uriarte had already envisioned The White Donkey, and he used the comic strip to develop Abe and Garcia as characters. The White Donkey has a strong, unified feel, and though its stylized realism sometimes makes recognizing the Marines a challenge (because the men look similar in build, hairstyle, and uniform), Uriarte uses that sameness to bring out his characters’ expressions. One easily comes to see these characters as real people.
It is unfortunate that a book so careful and thorough in its examination of the enlisted experience and of life in post-insurgency Iraq should feel so rushed at the end. But the final quarter of the book, which details the consequences of the traumatic event that overturns Abe’s life, is less fully realized than the narrative preceding it. In his afterword, Uriarte writes that he approached The White Donkey as a film, and that the novel could be seen as a fully realized storyboard. Abe’s return to the U.S. and his experience of PTSD are indeed cinematic: Uriarte offers powerful images of the stupor, anxiety, and rage that a traumatized person suffers. But these powerful later scenes lack the more nuanced and developed narrative driving the rest of the novel. Perhaps the change is psychologically apt: by the end of the book, Abe’s world has collapsed around him, and the number of close-up frames on his eyes is almost suffocating. But the fact is that others do still exist in Abe’s life, though we only get glimpses of their lives and the way that Abe’s suffering affects them.
Still, there is no denying the power of the final pages. The image of the white donkey, which Abe first encounters on a road in Iraq and which appears to him again at moments of great moral and personal crisis, is a remarkable symbol for the war with all its ambiguities and suffering. Uriarte has grasped at powerful mysteries—about what drives young people to join the military and willingly confront danger, about the experience of trauma and grief, and about friendship—and by the end of the book, has given us a portrait of one man’s lonely, courageous attempt to come to terms with these mysteries and “finally figure out what I was looking for…”
‘The White Donkey,’ a graphic novel of the Iraq War by a Marine who fought in it
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff December 14, 2015
The main characters of “The White Donkey,” Garcia and Abe. (Picture courtesy Maximillian Uriarte)
Every veteran of the forever war, the long war, the Global War on Terror or Whatever You Want to Call It, has a day (or many days) they’d rather not remember. Days they’d like to keep in the back of their mind, under lock and key and submerged in a handle of whiskey.
We articulate those days differently. Some talk. Others never will. Some write novels and memoirs. Others Tweet and Tumblr. But Iraq veteran Maximillian Uriarte — creator of the Marine Corps famous “Terminal Lance” comic strips — turned his forgotten days and his war into a 250-page graphic novel and called it “The White Donkey.”
The byproduct of five years and a successful Kickstarter campaign, “The White Donkey” is both accessible for non-military types and a fitting tribute to the Americans that have fought in the wars that followed Sept. 11, 2001.
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For the uninitiated, “Terminal Lance” began in 2010 as a weekly strip that followed two Marines — Garcia and Abe — on some of their offbeat adventures within the Marine Corps infantry. The strip, which appeared on his own website, appealed to Marines because it was written and drawn by one of them (Uriarte is an infantryman with two Iraq deployments under his belt) and managed to capture the masochistic humor of the USMC right down to the port-o-john art.
While “The White Donkey” has its fair share of humor, it is really a story about the war Hollywood chose to ignore. There are no firefights in frames of violent color, and no special operators rappelling from helicopters. Instead one of the most compelling scenes is when the book’s main character, Abe, is filling out a post-deployment health assessment. The familiar questions with the familiar bubble answers re-purposed to tell a narrative that many veterans might see as their own.
A scene from “The White Donkey” (Courtesy Maximillian Uriarte)
The book is drawn in hues of blue and tan, giving the palate the feel of a scrap book while also helping the reader place themselves in the narrative. Sepia is for Iraq, green is for the United States, while blue and black are reserved for flashbacks and the segments that take place while Abe is on leave in Oregon. Meanwhile the plot revolves around the tedious months before deployment, the peculiar absurdity of a war zone, and the uncomfortable conversations when you come back from it all.
Uriarte tackles a lot in the pages of “The White Donkey,” from love (“Do we have to put a label on it?”) to mental health. In the book’s afterword he explicitly says how he wanted “The White Donkey” to show what might drive a veteran to suicide, and it’s something he does evenhandedly by relying on sound character development while managing to flesh out many of the tropes commonly associated with Post Traumatic Stress (something that many Americans/family members/caregivers could glean much from).
Visually, the most compelling scenes come at the end of the book, but it is how Uriarte conveys the tedium of 2007-2008 Iraq that anchors the novel in reality. Rigid frames give way to wide angled pictures that capture the chaos of snap vehicle check points and the tedium of resupply convoys. Meanwhile, in the background of his deployment, Abe wrestles with his coming of age under the weight of his body armor, 130 degree Iraqi heat and his own misguided reasons for joining the Corps. It’s not a glorious existence, and Uriarte uses Abe’s constant complaining and ambivalence to frequently underscore how ridiculous the war is.
In many ways, “The White Donkey” is one long illustrated deployment journal. Pages filled with offloading water bottles and staring out into the desert and waiting for that plane ride home. Yet, tucked into the panels and frames, are those singular moments that, like a rock cast into a pond, send their ripples out almost infinitely–altering lives and ending others. “The White Donkey” follows the tremors, backwards and forwards, and manages to illustrate what feels like a ‘true’ war story and a lonely chapter in a war our country is trying desperately to forget.