Join the Army by Darren Cullen

Book Review by Ryan Rushton | 03 Dec 2013
Book title: Join the Army
Author: Darren Cullen

Join the Army has the capacity to offend a lot of people. A pull-out concertina-style jumble of adverts and comics, parodying recruitment materials of the armed forces on one side and a horribly beautiful Iraq war reworking of the Bayeux Tapestry on the reverse. This is a brutal piece of satire from an artist whose work is subtle as a brick, but undeniably effective.

The recruitment ads are replete with slogans like 'become a professional murderer,' 'putting the laughter in slaughter' and 'be the meat.' The kind of hyperbolic heroism marketed to young men in these flyers and brochures is replaced with grim realities, amped up to bombastic proportions – 'join the fucking army,' a panel demands, whilst two shellshocked soldiers kneel underneath, smiling maniacally. This is a pamphlet of the absurd, full of jokes too sombering to raise a smile. In contrasting, quieter comics depict two soldiers in Afghanistan, on bended knee before an anonymous wall, saying and doing nothing before a final panel depicting an explosion. In one ad a chatline offers soldiers wives, 'live and lonely.'

The haunting images making up the 1.5m opposite side of the work serve as both a timeline of the Iraq war and the machinery of warfare more generally. Civilians are fed into the system of killing and civilians are spat out, sometimes injured, sometimes dead. Admitedly influenced by comic artists like Chris Ware, it is the attention to details which mesmorise: internal army bullying; governmental squabbling; and prisoner-of-war torture.

Cullen's previous projects, such as his Baby's First Baby, have been misunderstood and I'd expect this to receive the exact same kind of treatment. However, the target of his satire is not the men and women of the armed forces, but the instiutions above that would lie to ensnare them and possibly send them to an early grave. If we keep this in mind, then we wince at the hyperbolic ugliness of the comic not because it dishonours the fallen, but because we recognise how unflinchingly truthful it is. 

Out now, available from bethemeat.co.uk, £6 http://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com