A review by weirdtea
Army@Love, Vol. 1: The Hot Zone Club by Peter Kuper, Rick Veitch, Gary Erskine

1.0

I think some of the satiric elements have potential. The fetishization of technology and the sexualization of warfare; the corruption; the infiltration of corporate culture and marketing into just about everything; and the absurdity of it all--it works. However, it never quite came together for me. It was all a bit too broad, too easy, and it hit the same notes a few too many times. It didn't make me think all that much. Or rather, it made me think that I would have responded to it better as a novella. What ultimately put me off was the art style. I couldn't see it as effective satire because it seemed to fall too far into a place that makes me think of icky exploitative juvenile fantasy. It makes the book complicit in a way that makes it less able to point out the cracks in the system. It is a kind of grotesque that is uncomfortable not because it exaggerates, distorts, and makes us confront the ugliness in us and around us, but because it seems to revel in it. And that isn't offensive as much as it is disappointingly boring.