This month’s pick from Patrol Base Abbate book club is The White Donkey by Maximilian Uriarte and damn, what a powerful read. Uriarte captures the humor, brotherhood, chaos, and weight of war in a way only someone who lived it truly can. Beneath the laughs and dark Marine Corps humor is a story about identity, trauma, purpose, and the things we carry long after deployment ends. It’s raw, honest, and hits harder than most war books because it feels real the entire way through. Books like this remind you why veteran stories matter. Not just the firefights or the gear, but the human side of service, the friendships, the struggles, and trying to find your place again afterward. The best books sometimes aren’t just entertainment they make you reflect on your own path, the people you served with, and the price paid by a generation of warriors. #PewsAndPages #TheWhiteDonkey #MarineCorps #VeteranReads #PatrolBaseAbbate
#242: Literary Lethality with Max Uriarte
Today, we welcome Max Uriarte to the show. Anyone who joined the Marine Corps post-2010 knows the name. Max is best known for his comic, @terminallance , but he is also an author with a book on the CPRL. White Donkey: Terminal Lance is the first and only graphic novel featured on the Commandant’s Reading List, a testament to both Max and the Reading List.
Listen Here: https://podcast.show/1465696/episode/153864933/
We talk about his service and his transition to becoming a professional artist, how Terminal Lance came to be, the genesis behind White Donkey, and his thoughts on having the first graphic novel on the CPRL. This is a conversation I’ve wanted to have since I first laughed my ass off reading three squares in the back of the Marine Corps Times.
Max's Links:
terminallance.com
instagram.com/tlcplmax
Check out Terminal Lance: White Donkey @ The Book Store:
/products/the-white-donkey-terminal-lance?_pos=1&_psq=terminal+lance&_ss=e&_v=1.0
Most people laugh at dark military humor…
but don’t realize what it’s actually doing.
It’s not just jokes.
It’s how a lot of guys process anger they never got to deal with.
Two deployments.
A lot left unsaid.
And the only way it came out… was making people laugh.
That’s why it hits E4 and below so hard.
Because if you’ve been there, you know…
you’re not laughing because it’s funny.
You’re laughing because it’s true.
And when other people laugh with you…
it’s the first time it feels like you’re not the only one carrying it. Humor is a form of shared therapy in its own way.
“Hey devil… that’s a nice jacket.”
If you were in, you already know where this is going.
Max Uriarte telling a story every Marine instantly understands:
one sentence in, and you already know your day just got worse.
That is why Terminal Lance hit so hard.
Not because it explained the Marine Corps.
Because it nailed it.
Full episode out now.
#vethumor #TerminalLance #Marines #USMC #MarineCorps
@tlcplmax had just come back from Iraq. Not even a year later, he was sitting in art school blowing bubbles on paper.
That sounds ridiculous until you understand what it really was.
Not art class.
Not busy work.
Not some soft reset.
It was one of the first safe places he had to decompress.
A lot of veterans get out and feel that same identity whiplash. You spend years learning one way of being, one way of thinking, one way of surviving. Then the uniform comes off and suddenly nobody tells you what comes next.
That is why this matters.
If you are getting out and feel lost, use your GI Bill. College. Trade school. Something. Give yourself somewhere to go and something to build.
Sometimes the next mission does not look like what you expected. Sometimes it starts with blowing bubbles on paper.
Full episode with Terminal Lance out now.
A few months ago I traveled up to Oregon to visit ShadowMachine’s Portland studio, where they let me hold the Oscar they received for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022). They are heavier than they look. We also officially began developing my NYT bestselling graphic novel The White Donkey as an animated feature film—with me attached to write and direct. 🫏
“If you can draw it, you can make it.” These words from the UCLA Animation Workshop head Chuck Sheetz have resonated in my head every time I pick up the pencil. The UCLA Animation Workshop allowed me to experiment with new ideas and gain new skills—as well as meet many new and wonderful friends along the way.
