2 out of 5

Hoo boy.

This was a National Guard promotional comic, published by Marvel.

So – look, I’m not the most rah-rah guy out there. I should thank people for their service and so on, and have respect for those who do their various duties along those lines, but I get a little… weirded out by the “business” of things like the army, and maybe I’d use more aggressive terms than ‘weirded out’ depending on the time of day.

This business has always been a thing, of course, as have oddball promotional comics from Marvel and DC. The post-9-11 landscape got especially weird, though, and we saw Chuck’s name on books like The Call at the time… but I hadn’t been aware of this one-shot until recently.

It’s maybe not as flagrant as it could be. It celebrates the call-to-action dedication of Guard members, and tries to point out that things like paperwork are just as important as being out in the field; and that the Guard does more than shoot guns – sometimes they’re firefighters! Though the book does end with shooting guns, so we know what the real selling point is here.

Except there’s not much of a comic otherwise. I realize it’s an ad, but it’s structured narratively – Chuck circles around a group of Guard members as they’re called out of their day-to-day to go rah-rah somewhere – and then, oddly, ends with a ‘To be continued…’ which is maybe like a meta, “to be continued when you join!” but I dunno. As an ad, it’s not especially flashy – artist Ben Lai does straight ahead camera shots and minimal backgrounds – and though I guess it’s nice that the content is more like a pamphlet than some flashy pitch, it lends itself to a big ol’ Why Does This Exist? feeling.