Army Times takes a close look at Army@Love, a satirical comic book series that imagines the Pentagon sending men and women into battle together and encouraging them to ease combat tension by building R’n’R around blowout orgies. Though an April LAT op-ed gave writer Rick Veitch props, noting that “satire has a habit of becoming prophecy,” the military reporter just isn’t sure how soldiers will react to the storyline… although he does get Veitch’s mentor, the legendary Joe Kubert, praising his former student as “one of the hardest-working, one of the most devoted guys” in the business even though he completely disagrees with the comic’s premise.
Looking beyond the troops, how’s the rest of America—at least the segment that’ll go into a comics shop—reacting to the series? The Beat considers the sales figures, observing a 23% drop in sales between issues #1 and #2 (which actually is not terribly uncommon in the comics market). The greater concern is likely to be that sales started below 15,000 copies and are just hovering over 11,000 as of April—but again, the comics blog suggests that’s a common problem for Vertigo, even if the sale of trade paperback collections offsets it somewhat.