Terminal Lance

Terminal Lance creator sends ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ to commandant

By Hope Hodge Seck on August 19, 2014 Battle Rattle, Terminal Lance, The blogosphere, The CMC

It’s on now. If you’re on Facebook and don’t live underneath a rock, you’ve probably heard of the Ice Bucket Challenge fad sweeping the nation. It reportedly started in Boston with former Boston College baseball star Peter Frates, who was diagnosed with the degenerative disease ALS in 2012. The concept is simple: if you’re challenged, you have 24 hours to film yourself dumping ice water on your head for ALS awareness, or donate $100 to ALS research. Or, preferably, both. Then you get to challenge another handful of people. Well, this morning Maximilian Uriarte, creator of the wildly popular web…

Uniform Board may fix those pesky cammies pixels

By Hope Hodge Seck on December 26, 2013 Battle Rattle, Terminal Lance, Uniforms

The latest Marine Corps Uniform Board meeting resulted in a pretty significant change: the adoption of the men’s white dress cover for use by men and women. The next time the board meets, it may consider a tweak based more in practicality than policy: adjusting the black pixels on the collars of the Woodlands camouflage utilities blouses. Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Eric Flanagan said the Uniform Board would likely be considering pixel placement because the black squares can make it hard to read enlisted rank. And with all those black bars and rockers to count, sometimes that task can be…

The night Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlton Kent endeared himself to the Lance Corporal Underground

By Andrew deGrandpre on November 15, 2013 Pop culture, Terminal Lance, The Sgt. Major of the Marine Corps, Veterans

Something wonderfully awesome happened last night in San Francisco. In case you don’t recognize the guys in this photo, they are: * Paul Szoldra, an infantry Marine who left the Corps as a sergeant a few years ago and went on the create The Duffel Blog, a satirical website that pokes fun at the absurdities within military culture. * Retired Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent, the 16th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps and top enlisted adviser to two commandants. * Max Uriarte, also an infantry Marine, and the original terminal lance corporal who created the popular Terminal Lance cartoon series.…

For sale: challenge coins for Marine wives

By Hope Hodge Seck on September 5, 2013 Battle Rattle, History and heritage, Pop culture, Terminal Lance

Occasionally we come across a military-related item that just makes us curious. Today, it’s these “Marine wife” coins that are widely available online, wherever challenge coins are sold. As all Marines learn early on, a challenge coin is part of military unit identity. Technically, all Marines are supposed to carry their unit coin at all times. If you are “challenged” by another service member and don’t have your coin, you owe the other guy a drink, according to the accepted rules. The Commandant of the Marine Corps has an elaborate oblong coin featuring his signature. Other top officials, such as…

Staff picks: Best of “Terminal Lance” 2012

By Gina Harkins on December 28, 2012 Terminal Lance

As the year comes to a close, I challenged my colleague here at Marine Corps Times, James K. Sanborn, to accompany me in picking out the best “Terminal Lance” comics of the year. This was no easy feat, and we spent some time chuckling over the 50-plus emails we received from “Terminal Lance” creator, Maximilian Uriarte, this year with each week’s strip that would grace the opinion page of the paper. We filled Max in and asked him to comment on our top five picks to give some background to our readers on how he came up with each. So…

Strip club holds ‘Toys for Tatas’ event for Toys for Tots

By Dan Lamothe on December 12, 2012 Terminal Lance

The Toys For Tots campaign run by the Marine Corps Reserve has been an existence since 1947, and is substantial enough that First Lady Michelle Obama raised awareness about its mission by visiting an organization service project Tuesday at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. Not all efforts to raise money for Toys for Tots are as straightforward, though. An Arkansas strip club known as Platinum Cabaret is holding a “Toys for Tatas” event this month in which patrons who donate a toy are offered two-for-one lap dances. The effort was first reported by KHBS TV-5, a local news station in Arkansas. It’s…

‘Terminal Lance’ Tuesdays: Why’s First Sergeant so upset?

By Andrew deGrandpre on December 11, 2012 Terminal Lance

It’s Tuesday, so we’re opening the vault once more to bring you another exclusive “Terminal Lance” strip, published heretofore only in the pages of Marine Corps Times. “Dismay,” one of my all-time favorites, appeared in the issue dated Feb. 27, 2012. Seeing this, I imagine that First Sergeant’s a real close-talker — the sort of guy whose breath you have to smell every time he barks at you. And given his proclivity for java, as Max has depicted here, I’ve got to think First Sergeant’s breath has its own pulse. Ugh. That said, coffee in the workplace is a serious…

‘Terminal Lance’ Tuesdays: We’re cool with ‘Boot’

By Andrew deGrandpre on November 27, 2012 Terminal Lance

First, our apologies for the two-week hiatus. Now, here’s this week’s installment of “Terminal Lance” Tuesdays, newly released from the Marine Corps Times archive. “Anatomy of a New-Join” first appeared in the March 7, 2011, issue. When the strip’s creator, Max Uriarte, submitted this strip for publication, he prefaced it — as he frequently does — with a disclaimer. “The original title was ‘Anatomy of a Boot,’ but I figured ‘New-Join’ might be more socially acceptable for the newspaper,” he warned me. “At least I remember when I was in, they wouldn’t let us call them ‘boots’ anymore.” I’ll say…

‘Terminal Lance’ Tuesdays: At the intersection of IEDs and grooming standards

By Andrew deGrandpre on November 6, 2012 Terminal Lance

If there’s one thing I think we’ve all learned from “Terminal Lance,” it’s that the strip’s creator, Max Uriarte, doesn’t pull any punches. Case in point: “Numbers,” another exclusive from the Marine Corps Times archive. This strip first appeared in the newspaper dated Aug. 29, 2011. “It’s a fairly simple image,” Max told me when he submitted this last summer, “but I think it speaks pretty clearly.” For me, this strip calls to mind the story of Gunnery Sgt. Benjamin “Gus” Lepping, whom Marine Corps Times’ senior staff Dan Lamothe encountered three summers ago while embedded with Marines at an…

‘Terminal Lance’ Tuesdays: Knife-Hands and Yoo-Hoo

By Andrew deGrandpre on October 30, 2012 Terminal Lance

We’ve pulled another “Terminal Lance” strip from the Marine Corps Times archive. “Vigilance” first appeared in the issue dated June 27, 2011, and includes, in my opinion, one of TL creator Max Uriarte’s most outstanding depictions of the infamous — or dreaded? — knife-hand. This strip calls to mind a cover story we did back in 2010 examining the Lance Corporal Underground’s growing presence on the web. Max, not then a contributor to Marine Corps Times, was interviewed for that article, which includes (tragically) the newspaper’s only known reference to the term “knife-hand” — references to the title of Max’s…

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