Terminal Lance / Characters

Characters / Terminal Lance

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Abe

All There in the Manual: His last name has yet to appear in the comic itself.
Author Avatar: Like Uriarte, he has a surname that is difficult to pronounce and is a Lance Corporal in the infantry. (Also, while the name "Belatzeko" appears to be vanishingly rare in real life, it's very similar to "Belasco/Velasco"—which, like "Uriarte," has its origin in Basque culture.)
Limited Advancement Opportunities: Abe is a Terminal Lance, a Marine who will never see advancement beyond Lance Corporal. One strip shows that he's been demoted more than a few times and made his way back up to Lance Corporal.

Drunken Master: He's able to perform astonishing feats while heavily intoxicated, such as setting the battalion record on a run.
Real-Person Cameo: Tyler Cone was a friend of Uriarte who committed suicide in February of 2014.

Cool Old Guy: Compared to Abe, he's older (roughly mid-20s) and a bit more calm.
Gratuitous Spanish: Only during Abe's zombie fantasy. Garcia bluntly responds that he doesn't actually talk that way.
Only Sane Man: Generally the most mature and level-headed character in the comic. Not that that's saying much...

Abhorrent Admirer
Depraved Homosexual
Hello, Sailor!: The United States Marine Corps uses Navy chaplains, so he is necessarily this, although not in the usual form.
Memetic Molester: Invoked within the strip by characters. According to Uriarte, he's not based on any real-life person (Uriarte says the chaplains he knew were good guys), but that chaplains in general are acceptable targets.

Serial Homewrecker: Jody exists only to sleep with military wives and girlfriends while their respective husbands/boyfriends are deployed.

Black Bead Eyes: Boots are drawn this way to emphasize just how much they are subhumans.
Butt-Monkey: The point of Boot is to get fucked around because no one likes or respects him, be it forcing him into doing more work or just being a plain jerk to him because that's what happens to boots.
New Meat: Boots are just out of boot camp and perform actions (such as their preferred civilian attire) that make them stand out like sore thumbs.

The Friend Nobody Likes: That Guy is literally the asshole who ruins everything for everyone. He kills puppies (and uploads the videos to YouTube), drives drunk, and does every obviously-stupid and/or distasteful thing imaginable. This results in all Marines being viewed as drunk Jerkasses, getting their weekend liberty passes cancelled over things they didn't do, and having to sit through hours upon hours of training about why they shouldn't do things they all know not to do and don't do anyway.