Calendar Pre-Orders on Monday

Okay, you folks are absolutely amazing. It's been just 48 hours and the Schlock Mercenary Board Game Kickstarter is already within spitting distance* of funding.

But you're not all board-game fans. That's okay. You don't have to be. You can still support this crazy, make-a-living-making-comics endeavor of ours while getting something you desperately need!

This Monday, November 14th, we're opening pre-orders for the 2012 Schlock Mercenary Calendar. It will feature the first 12 maxims from The 70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, and each will be accompanied with all-new, never-before-seen artwork.

Except for this piece. It's not never-before-seen because you've seen it.

I'll post previews of the other pieces as well, if only to render my above marketing fluff completely prevaricative. Travis still needs to color a half dozen of them, and I've got one left to draw as of this writing, so I can't start posting previews yet.

Also included in the pre-order: regular and sketch editions of Schlock Mercenary: The Blackness Between (2nd ed.) We had to reprint that book in order to fill orders for Emperor Bundles, and I figure I'll give some more of you a shot at owning a sketch edition. The 2nd edition includes enough typo fixes and color correction that we decided to call it a second edition rather than a second printing. 

Also-also included? Mugs, t-shirts, bags, magnets, dice, and patches. We'll lay the whole spread out on Monday. 

Pre-orders will run for about two weeks, and then we'll start shipping packages.

To prepare for this event we've done something that has been in sore need of doing for several years: we redesigned the Schlock Mercenary store-front. And when I say "we" I mean "Gary Henson did it using Tyler Martin's design elements." All I did was shout encouragement from the side-lines.

(*Note: I find it a little surreal that I honestly feel like $3500** is "spitting distance." You people did this to me. You know that, right?)

(**UPDATE: Since this writing the Kickstarter has funded, and the "distance" has become negative. The spitting metaphor needs to be discarded for obvious reasons.)