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America's Army: Chapter Two

I just got my free European propoganda comic Hidden Disaster this morning. It's really quite good, if a little noble in places. There are characters, relationship, drama, all set against a humanitarian crisis in a fictitious state.

Also today, the second chapter of the America's Army graphic novel has been released online, based on the propoganda/training computer game of the same name, in a warzone in a fictitious state. And they've learned from their first chapter, we're getting character backstory now, but then it suddenly starts to read like some kind of military version of a Jack Chick Tract, someone with personal problems who meets another who starts to reel out the solutions like some kind of pre-prepared monologue. Just with the Army instead of Jesus. I know, I know, some people think it's the same thing.

But there's also some complecity – nothing moral you understand, nothing going into the complex reasons armies engage in certain countries or the side-effects of doing so – but an actual understanding that people get injured and people die while fighting in a warzone. Essential for this chapter, concentrating on a medic, but for what is a piece of propoganda, this is getting dangerously close to M*A*S*H territory. And some of it, especially the montage training scheme, actually works well as a comic.

Out of the two Hidden Disaster wins out, probably because it's created by a truly accomplished cartoonist, where this is mostly a by-the-numbers sub-Wildstorm wannabe production. But for all that it has one or two surprises. And it's free – well, paid for by American tax dollars. Same thing.

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