Schlock Mercenary

Today's the final day of (the final hours, at this point) of the Seventy Maxims Reprint project. Here, then is a nice origin story for you, the origin of Maxim 32. I was signing and sketching at GenCon Indy a decade or so ago when some young men approached the table. They were what a friend of mine likes to call baby sailors": relatively new members of the US Navy. One of them said we have a suggestion for a maxim." I smiled. Let's hear it." Anything is amphibious if you can fit it into an AAV." I chuckled. That's pretty good, but the term AAV' is too specific for Schlock Mercenary use." Then I went silent, stared off into the distance, and I guess this made everyone uncomfortable because our Booth Captain, Darren, spoke next. Shhh... don't interrupt him. The magic is happening." It's true, I'd been wondering how this US Navy aphorism could be repurposed, but I had expected to be able to mull it over all day. Now, however, Darren had turned it into the promise of performance art. Did I curse silently? Maybe. I don't remember, because I was panicking. Still staring into space, trying not to show fear, I dove into the formulae" for the maxims. I knew that many of the maxims were subversions of existing aphorisms. Several of them formed thematic couplets, like Maxims 2 and 3 (a sergeant in motion" and an ordnance tech in motion") are a great example of this. And Maxim 23, Anything is air-droppable at least once," seemed like a good candidate for pairing with what the Navy boys had suggested, especially since Anything is air-droppable" and Anything is amphibious" were already pretty close. All I needed to do was break the amphibious-ness in the same way I'd broken the air-droppability... and I think it was that moment, when I contemplated breaking" amphibious-ness, when the final text arrived in my head. Anything is amphibious if you can get it back out of the water." A quick note. The United States Navy exists to keep things DRY. Everything except the hulls, really. The very idea of dropping something into the water that is not already a boat, runs counter to Navy thinking. So it's no surprise that those Navy boys were visibly horrified by my subversion of their aphorism. That's terrible" one of them said. And then they started to laugh. And then I wrote Maxim 32 in my notebook, because obviously it was perfect.

We're reprinting the Seventy Maxims defaced" edition, and the crowdfunding project for that wraps up in just under a week.

I finished painting the two Chinooks a couple of weeks ago, and have been busy layering stuff behind them for assorted desktop wallpapers and for the promised 8''x10'' print. Absent those layers, this is what the Goddess of Earth, Wind, and Plumbing looks like before and then after her temper-tantrum... The Two Chinooks, by Howard Tayler I'd write more about this project, but I have another project to write about, so I'm gonna move on to that update next.

I've been working on the Two Chinooks" print, which is one of the deliverables for the Mandatory Failure: Schlock Mercenary Book 18 project, and I've found it very relaxing. Here's a progress shot. I haven't finished painting Rage Chinook's smoke-cloak, and the background needs a lot of attention once the painting is done, but I'm quite happy with the way this is turning out.

It took way too long for us to figure it out, and that figuring is a story unto itself that is too long for this post, but I have Long Covid. The impact can best be summed up thusly: it is a disability, not a disease. Disease suggests that I might get better. I wouldn't mind getting better, of course, but as of this writing there's not only no cure, there's no consistent treatment, and many medical professionals will mis-diagnose Long Covid, or even deny that it exists. So, disability. The disabled" demographic is perhaps the only marginalized minority group that everyone who lives long enough will eventually join. My own disability presents itself much like chronic fatigue (ME/CFS). On some days I'm fine. On others I may find myself light-headed and struggling for breath as if I'd just run a mile when all I've done is stand around in the kitchen talking to to the kids. Please don't send us your medical advice. That too long for this post" story begins with two years of visits to specialists wherein we ruled out all of the usual suspects. You may have heard the old aphorism when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." We've ruled out the horses, and looking around at the (metaphorical) scenery, we're not in Kansas anymore, this is the Serengeti. But I'm not here to ask for help, or to garner sympathy. I'm here by way of explanation: the things I used to do, the things I still WANT to do? I can't do all of them anymore. I'd love to be creating a daily comic strip and reviewing 1st-run movies on the day they arrive in my local cinema, but those aren't options for me anymore. The point of this post, which I'll admit I've taken my time getting around to, is to explain what I can do, and what you can expect. First and foremost: Schlock books in print! This is taking longer than we wanted it to, but we have a plan and we have the ability, and we hope to get books 18, 19, and 20 in print over the course of the next 12 to 18 months. Seventy Maxims Reprint! This coming Tuesday we're launching a Backerkit project to reprint the Seventy Maxims books, and as part of that we'll be doing an all-on-one-page Seventy Maxims poster. Click either of the links above for the pre-launch page. Using My Powers for Good: I'll be posting parts lists and instructions for some of the mobility and workplace aids we've custom-built for me. Long Covid affects millions of people worldwide, probably tens of millions, and this little platform of mine can be used to make their lives easier. Reviews of Movies, Games, and More: I can't offer reviews of new-release cinematic things because I don't go to the theater anymore, but I do still consume a lot of media, and it's quite easy for me to write reviews. In fact, the fancy zero-gravity chair I use to keep my heart rate manageable is the same one I'm sitting in while I write this AND while I watch TV, listen to music, and read. I'm Not Letting This Stop Me: Yes, I'm disabled. I can't do all the things I used to do, and I can't do them as quickly, but I can still do quite a bit. So I shall do quite a bit. And this place is where you'll always be able to find me doing it. I hope you'll come back and find me again soon.

We have a lot going on this year, but most of it isn't happening here on this site. Yes, some of our plans involve additional content here at schlockmercenary.com, but the biggest plans revolve around finally getting the entire series into print.

Here's the Kickstarter link for Mandatory Failure: Schlock Mercenary Book 18.

Here's the Kickstarter link for Mandatory Failure: Schlock Mercenary Book 18.

We've launched the Kickstarter for Mandatory Failure: Schlock Mercenary Book 18, and it has already funded. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/howardtayler/mandatory-failure-schlock-mercenary-book-18 Not only have we funded, but we've reached some stretch goals, too! Click here to visit the Kickstarter and see the latest news. The project will run until October 20th of 2023. Back it early to ensure that you don't miss out on the bonus goodies, and to help us afford even more bonus goodies.

We've launched the Kickstarter for Mandatory Failure: Schlock Mercenary Book 18, and it has already funded. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/howardtayler/mandatory-failure-schlock-mercenary-book-18 Not only have we funded, but we've reached some stretch goals, too! Click here to visit the Kickstarter and see the latest news. The project will run until October 20th of 2023. Back it early to ensure that you don't miss out on the bonus goodies, and to help us afford even more bonus goodies.

If you're looking for a starting point for Schlock Mercenary, we recommend starting with Book 10, The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse. I bet I can turn this tank into a longshoreman..."

If you're looking for a starting point for Schlock Mercenary, we recommend starting with Book 10, The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse. I bet I can turn this tank into a longshoreman..."

The late 2022^1 Twitter fiascochuro^2 necessitated the creation of a socials post detailing where you might find me on the various social media platforms. Here we go! howardtayler.com

The late 2022^1 Twitter fiascochuro^2 necessitated the creation of a socials post detailing where you might find me on the various social media platforms. Here we go! howardtayler.com

We've launched the Kickstarter for A Little Immortality: Schlock Mercenary Book 17, and it has already funded. Also, it has already blown past all but one of our original stretch goals, including one that gives everybody (not just backers-everybody) a free desktop wallpaper. Our plan was to launch it *quietly* on Tuesday, and then announce it here a day later in order to see how our newsletter was performing, but the launch was not quiet, and then things got busy, and now the a day later" is more than half a day gone. I'd write more, but everything I want to say is over on the Kickstarter project page, so click that and learn all the things!

We've launched the Kickstarter for A Little Immortality: Schlock Mercenary Book 17, and it has already funded. Also, it has already blown past all but one of our original stretch goals, including one that gives everybody (not just backers-everybody) a free desktop wallpaper. Our plan was to launch it *quietly* on Tuesday, and then announce it here a day later in order to see how our newsletter was performing, but the launch was not quiet, and then things got busy, and now the a day later" is more than half a day gone. I'd write more, but everything I want to say is over on the Kickstarter project page, so click that and learn all the things!

We've teamed up with TopatoGo to crowdfund a 500-piece puzzle! https://go.topatoco.com/products/space-turtle The project closes on APRIL 7th, so if you like whimsical worldbuilding, wildly-out-of-proportion animals, and jigsaw puzzles, don't delay!

We've teamed up with TopatoGo to crowdfund a 500-piece puzzle! https://go.topatoco.com/products/space-turtle The project closes on APRIL 7th, so if you like whimsical worldbuilding, wildly-out-of-proportion animals, and jigsaw puzzles, don't delay!

If your only method for taking my pulse is asking how often does this site update?" I probably seem kind of dead. Whoever it was who said the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," they nailed it. Of late I've been focused almost entirely on the XDM2e project. Here's a fun picture I drew for that book. Once that project is complete, I'll dive back into more Schlock Mercenary print editions. In the meantime, I'm still role-playing on Tuesdays with TypeCastRPG, and quietly developing the worldbook and back-stories for a completely new project which I'm not ready to announce yet. The salient point here is that I'm still alive, and alive" appears to be a stable, persistent sort of condition. Yay!

If your only method for taking my pulse is asking how often does this site update?" I probably seem kind of dead. Whoever it was who said the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," they nailed it. Of late I've been focused almost entirely on the XDM2e project. Here's a fun picture I drew for that book. Once that project is complete, I'll dive back into more Schlock Mercenary print editions. In the meantime, I'm still role-playing on Tuesdays with TypeCastRPG, and quietly developing the worldbook and back-stories for a completely new project which I'm not ready to announce yet. The salient point here is that I'm still alive, and alive" appears to be a stable, persistent sort of condition. Yay!

Every weekday at noon my time^1, from now until the sketch editions are complete, I will be live-streaming the sketching. I don't know how long each stream will run, so be sure to click follow" over at twitch.tv/howardtayler to get notified the moment my cameras go live. You can view previous streams via this link, but they expire after fourteen days, so don't wait too long before clicking through. The chatroom has been a friendly place, and you're welcome to join us. Ask me questions, even! I can absolutely talk while I draw^2. ^1 12:00 noon Mountain time. That's 2pm in New York City, 7pm in London, and 3am in Tokyo.

Every weekday at noon my time^1, from now until the sketch editions are complete, I will be live-streaming the sketching. I don't know how long each stream will run, so be sure to click follow" over at twitch.tv/howardtayler to get notified the moment my cameras go live. You can view previous streams via this link, but they expire after fourteen days, so don't wait too long before clicking through. The chatroom has been a friendly place, and you're welcome to join us. Ask me questions, even! I can absolutely talk while I draw^2. ^1 12:00 noon Mountain time. That's 2pm in New York City, 7pm in London, and 3am in Tokyo.

This Memorial Day I wish to acknowledge those who continue to fight on the front lines of the pandemic. Their service has saved millions of lives, often at the expense of their own. This Sunday I met a young woman who has been working as a nurse in rural parts of Utah. Our conversation was brief, but I could tell she was carrying a very heavy burden. To her, and to uncounted tens of thousands of people like her, I say thank you. My household and I-all five of us-got vaccinated as much for them as for our own selves. For my own part, I view my body as a temple, and now it's a temple where certain coronaviruses can come to die. SARS-COV-19 won't amplify itself on my premises, and I won't be darkening any hospital doors with a load of it in my lungs. This Memorial Day, as we pause to reflect on those who have passed, especially those who have done so in service to us, let's ask how we might pay their service forward. Like the Minutemen of the 18th century, we can arm ourselves, not with muskets, but with antibodies. The pandemic continues to rage, but we can eradicate this particular enemy from our shores. From every shore. Gird up, get vaccinated, and soldier on my friends. It's never been easier to save lives in the service of others.

Last week I signed the covers of all the copies of BIG DUMB OBJECTS necessary to fill pre-orders. This week I begin sketching. You can see the wall of books in front of my sketching station, which, unlike stations for previous books, is configured with gear to allow me to live-stream the process. The streams, when they happen, will be found at twitch.tv/howardtayler. I'm still waiting on a USB hub and a power strip, so it might be a day or two before I get started. Then again, it might begin today. I have a lot of sketching to do, and waiting on UPS is not the way to get it done...

Big Dumb Objects is on its way back from the printer! We had a couple of delays, but yesterday we received our advance copies of the book, along with some advance copies of the slipcase for books 12 through 16.

Big Dumb Objects has been sent to the printer. And it’s about time. Big Dumb time, even. The cover inset art was done a year ago, and the principal art and story was done five years ago. It was the bonus story which hung us up, and a lot of things went wrong during 2019 and 2020 (including the flooding of my office, and several productivity-impacting health problems), but we finally got that last piece finished a week and a half ago. From there all I needed to do was assemble the cover, with all the circuits and stuff, write the back cover copy, and clean up some of the interior marginalia. I did all that last week, between December 28th and 30th, and then Sandra assembled the final files for the printer and sent it away. It feels nice to be finished with that. Sandra has promised me that on Monday she will unearth the sketches I’ve forgotten about drawing, the ones which outline the covers for books 17 through 20, and I guess it was nice having a two day vacation.

I loved Soul.

The up-front summary: I enjoyed Wonder Woman 1984 but I was disappointed. I don’t regret signing up for HBOMax¹, because #WW84 was worth the $15 (cheaper and safer than going to the theater) but I really do wish the film had been… y’know… better. The good: there were lots of fun moments in the film, and everyone turned in great performances. It was fun seeing Chris Pine again, and Pedro Pascal chewed scenery like a guy who spent his last big feature hidden behind a helmet. The bad: the 1980’s-ish visuals (especially the titling and the credits) did not evoke nostalgia, and the metallic-neon-rainbow palette felt out of place. It felt to me like someone said “I want it to look like Thor: Ragnarok meets Stranger Things” without considering that the palette and the cultural touchstones were not actually what made those two things successful. And that means that the central conceit of the film—it’s a prequel, set in a glitzy-because-we-don’t-know-it’s-trash-yet version of 1980’s USA—was baggage rather than a selling point. It was something the film needed to buy, rather than currency it could use to sell me other stuff. I can’t talk more about the things I did or did not love without spoiling stuff, so I’ll leave it at this (which I first shared in a tweet.)

TENET is one of those films like THE SIXTH SENSE in which any review of the film must dance around the fact that it’s very, very difficult to say much about it—especially in any sort of critical examination—without spoiling something. So let me just say this before saying anything else: I enjoyed it. I really liked the pacing. It seemed like they took a very fast-paced action thriller, then cut all the interstitial bits where things are explained and/or set up, expecting the audience to fill in the gaps. Everything on the screen was there for LOTS of reasons—no footage was wasted on stuff like “this is how we get from Kiev to Mumbai.” There were scenes which were confusing, and they worked (at least for me) because I could tell that I was supposed to be confused. My confusion was there to help me identify with the protagonist¹. For that alone, I think the movie is an exemplary piece for people who want to work on the pacing in the stories they tell. If you’ve got a big chunk of worldbuilding to do, but don’t want to infodump, have a gander at what TENET does. The rest of this review will be mildly spoilery. Sandra and I sat down to watch it, and I asked if she’d seen trailers. She had not. So I told her that it was an action movie, and that the title was probably picked not for its meaning, but because it was a one-word palindrome. About a third of the way in, Sandra predicted the entire last act, and she and I agreed that the central conceit of the film was “what if we take this thing we’ve learned to do with cameras and SFX, and write a whole story around it?” By the final scenes, we were a bit disappointed, not because Sandra was right, but because there were opportunities for Nolan et. al. to surprise us despite Sandra having been right, and if they swung at any of those, they missed.² At one point during a big battle, Sandra said “I am glad someone was tracking all of these moving parts with a spreadsheet, because that was probably fun for them, and it means at least one person got to enjoy knowing what’s going on here.” (If you’re the lucky person who managed that spreadsheet, we’re actually a little jealous.) TENET is something I’m glad we saw at home, not least because we could have actual food, and pauses for toilet breaks, but because we can watch it again and see if—err… hang on. Sandra has informed me that it will not be “we” watching it again. TENET is something I’m glad I saw at home because I can watch it again and see if I can reverse engineer that spreadsheet. If you’re the sort of person who watched THE SIXTH SENSE a second time, just to see if you could find all the cues you missed on the first go-round, you might enjoy TENET in the same way. ¹ John David Washington did a brilliant job in the role of the protagonist, but as IMDB is my witness, he deserved to play a character with an actual name, rather than a chunk of meta. ² It can be kind of tedious to watch movies with me and Sandra when we’re at home. At one point late last year, our soon-to-be son-in-law Tyler turned to us and asked “HOW DO YOU DO THAT?” My explanation (“we’re storytellers who have been around for a while, and we’re not actually that good at these predictions”) did not enhance his enjoyment of whatever predictable thing we were watching.

It’s been a while, I know. I haven’t been to the theater since February, and I suppose I could describe my spring, summer, and fall to you, but all three of them were mightily 2020’d, so let’s just give that a miss. Will I make it back to a movie theater anytime soon? I doubt it. I’ve been watching things at home, including some theatrical releases, but I haven’t said much about them. I do keep hearing from people who say they miss my movie reviews, and y’know what? I think I can start doing those again. Sandra and I watched TENET last night, and I’m sitting down to watch GREENLAND right now. I’ll get reviews up for those shortly.

Maybe I’m putting too fine a point on this, but holiday shipping is going to be a mess this year. There are a lot of factors at work, but let’s just set aside the “why” and talk about how to get ahead of it. Shop Early. If you’ve got online shopping to do, start now. And if you’ve got online shopping to do with us, we’re encouraging your early start by running a sale during October.

Sabbatical notwithstanding, I’ve got work to do. The big project on my plate right now is the BIG DUMB OBJECTS bonus story, tentatively titled “The Big Disassembly,” which shares the TBD acronym with “to be decided.” The story will be told with big page spreads. I’m doing the preliminary page composition, and Travis Walton is handling the big pieces of art. Then I’m doing the inset panels and the lettering. Here’s what page 2 currently looks like: And here’s what it looks like if you pull back a bit for the two-page spread:

My friends at TypeCastRPG¹ are hosting a streaming AMA with me at 9pm Eastern on July 28th. You can post questions into the chatroom, so if you’ve ever wanted to ask me something, this is your opportunity. Aim your browser at twitch.tv/typecastrpg, and have questions ready! ¹Ordinarily we play D&D on Tuesday nights, but one of our players is sick.

When I started creating Schlock Mercenary it poured forth like a dam had broken. I was driven—whether by deep personal need, or demons from the deep, it doesn’t matter—to make comics, and I felt compelled to deliver them daily. Then there was this thing, this sort of a watershed moment, just fifteen months after I started making comics, in September of 2001… Lots of us in the webcartooning space sought to express our feelings—of grief, anger, patriotism, fear, it’s a long list— and I realized that my story-based comic strip just wouldn’t work well for that. So I decided to keep telling the story I was telling. The only change I made was to amp up the triumph and the funny a bit, because I had this epiphany (or at least this slow dawning of realization) that my job was to help people cope by letting them laugh and cheer. I was still writing social satire (a fact which the dawn of realization didn’t break over until 2008, which stands as strong anecdotal evidence that you can make a thing without knowing that thing’s name) but just because it’s got the word “social” in it doesn’t mean it can’t also have joy, with laughter and cheering. Kind of like how a really long paragraph can be comprehensible, but also have multiple parenthetical phrases slipped into it. Parentheticals aside, here we are, 19 years after 9-11, and I’ve been doing this job pretty well—or at least very consistently—for that entire time. But it is now entirely time for me to stop. I need a break, and it’s the kind of break which, until I take it, I don’t know how long I’ll need it to be. A break? REALLY? I look at the world around me. I know in my heart of hearts (or perhaps by the yammering of those 1st-paragraph demons) that the world needs joy and laughter and cheering and triumphs in their entertainment just as much now as they ever have. How can I possibly LET myself stop? And then I have a pair of epiphanies, which are kind of like dawning realizations, except on a very swiftly-spinning planet—no glow, no warning, just the instant awareness that it’s time to find shade and sunblock. Epiphany the first: I cannot create enough joy to save the world. If I live a thousand lifetimes, and pack all the work of those lives into this moment, it still wouldn’t be enough. Epiphany the second: The 20 years of Schlock Mercenary I’ve made won’t vanish just because I stopped making them. If I’m lucky, and the internet keeps furiously pumping words and pictures through tubes, maybe I CAN let myself stop. Maybe, when I take a break, people will still get enough joy to get by. Because while I can’t do it all, and although what I’ve already done won’t be enough, that’s pretty much the whole human condition. That’s the story of all of us—not being able to do it all, and never being able to do enough. So I’ll show my demons the door, and then try very, very hard to allow myself some contentment, some satisfaction, with what I have been able to do. At least for a while. That door won’t hold for long. It’s trying to do the job of a dam, and it’s just a door. It won’t be enough.