Howard was born on leap day. This means he technically doesn’t get a birthday this year. Instead I use it as an excuse to wish him happy birthday for two days instead of one.
I can’t find words to express how grateful I am to have Howard in my life. He is a truly wonderful husband, friend, and father. The fact that he’s also a brilliant cartoonist is a bonus.
Happy Birthday honey! I love you!
–Sandra
There’s a brief mention of Schlock Mercenary in this blog entry on ‘the World of Webcomics’. There’s probably nothing there about me that Schlockers didn’t already know, but the article is a pretty good read.
This week’s auction is now up!Click on the picture to visit the auction, and to see a larger version of the picture
(Yes, this is a shameless ploy to get you to visit the eBay page, where I can track click-through and generate fascinating demographic data regarding “how many people I can convince to click on something with the promise of an image file.”)
Some of you may already have one or more of the new Schlock Mercenary URL cards. This artwork was originally intended for the “Basic Training” page, but never made it that far. It does, however, appear on one of the 9 different URL cards, along with the caption “Note: Attorney Carries No Cash.”
I’ve been remiss in my duties.
1) I got a Molon Labe (pronounced “mo-lone lah-veh”) hat and a “Peace Through Superior Firepower” patch from the folks at Life, Liberty, Etc. The hat is very comfortable, and the patch is screaming at me, insisting that it be affixed to my drawing kit. Which is fine, because if the pen is mightier than the sword, that rolling suitcase is a WMD.
2) Baen’s Universe just signed up to sponsor Schlock Mercenary for three months, and I can’t be happier. You really, REALLY need to go check them out (their ad is on the top there in the left column). Many of the people commenting on my Boundary book review had already read all or parts of it electronically through Baen.
3) Pen vs Sword round two… as a cartoonist, I’m pretty passionate about my rights to speak, write, and draw whatever strikes my fancy. The current conflict over the Mohammed cartoons points out the clash between that right and the despots and crackpots who would take it away. There are those who urge restraint in our media, saying that we should take extra care right now not to offend Islam. Our most recent BlogAds advertiser is clearly not in that group (and by extension, neither am I). Click on that ad to the left, and have a look at a t-shirt that would probably get you killed in some parts of the world.
“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” — Voltaire
There were a couple of things I didn’t have links for when I blogged LTUE 2006 that I’d like to point you folks at.
The first is Bob Defendi’s very cool RPG setting. Final Redoubt Press is Bob’s project, and he has previews up for you to look at. I played a demo in this fantasy world of Bob’s, and it’s a very interesting setting. More interesting still is the fact that he’s licensing a few different RPG “engines” to keep the tabletop fanatics as happy as possible. The demo I played was d20, but he’s got Rolemaster and a couple of others in the works as well.
Oh, and it’ll be published to the world through either ebooks or on-demand publishing. Bob’s no dummy.
The second is the Bellows Brothers’ site Damn Interesting, in which they blog things that happen to strike their technical, historical, or literary fancies. The most recent two posts discuss the discovery of a species of woodpecker thought to be extinct, and the technology behind “dial-a-yield” nuclear weapons.
So… go have a look. It’s Monday. What ELSE were you going to do (besides read the Schlock Mercenary archives again…)
I just finished taking a vacation day. I decided to read a book — Boundary, by Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor. I couldn’t resist. It had a picture on the front of dinosaurs fighting over a crashed spacecraft.
This was my kind of story: Hard science-fiction, Heroes-and-Heroines, and a Happy Ending. And it doesn’t hurt that “The Tayler Corporation” gets a couple of prominent mentions, along with credit for using “carbonan” to make spacesuits.
The story is set in the near future (mid-21st century), and begins with an archaological dig that uncovers something unexpected and completely unprecedented. There are three things driving the story forward: the characters, who are engaging, funny, and now feel like friends fo mine; the archeo-paleontological puzzle, which is nicely engaging; and the authors’ love for explaining how things work.
That last bit may be a bit of a weakness in the book. Sometimes characters explain technology to others who really should already understand it. This is forgivable since only a fellow writer or a critic is going to catch it in this case. There are a whole lot of “narrated” explanations, though, which is less forgivable, because the narrator isn’t an especially interesting character (in this book the narrator isn’t a character at all). Fortunately, the technological explanations themselves are interesting, and THAT is what kept me going. The book was pretty easy to put down around page 20 (just after the first of the technical narrations), but once I picked it back up I only stopped to eat and excrete.
This is Ryk Spoor’s first book with Eric Flint, and his second with Baen books. I’ve loved Eric’s 1632 series, and enjoyed Ryk’s Digital Knight. This book establishes them both as fine collaborators (and further establishes them as fine writers, but I’ve never doubted that.)
Pluto is a weird planet. So weird, in fact, that lots of respectable scientists want to call it NOT a planet.
My own view on the matter is that calling something a planet is like naming your dog. It’s arbitrary. Completely arbitrary. For any definition of “planet” you come up with, you’re going to find objects in this universe that fit, yet defy explanation… unless your definition of “planet” is “one of the nine celestial objects either named for the greek gods or conveniently right underfoot, those being Mercury, Venus, Earth (underfoot), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.”
Does a planet have to have moons? Nope. Venus and Mercury are both moonless, and Pluto now has THREE. (more…)
It used to be that a successful film would get optioned for a sequel, and that “two” movies (sequels) were ALWAYS worse than what came before.
There have been exceptions. Spider Man 2, X-Men 2, and Toy Story 2 were all roundly decreed by critics and audiences alike to have been better films than the ones that spawned their respective film franchises.
Dungeons and Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God calls our attention to a new twist on sequelization: take a movie that sucks hard enough to cause the lens on the projector to start outgassing, but whose franchise lives on in another genre… now, simply try again. (more…)
Dungeons and Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God is sitting next to my DVD player right now.
“Sitting,” I say. I’m sure what it’s actually doing is lurking, lying in wait, eager to assault and maim fresh prey. And it already has my money…
I rented Doom from the RedBox machine at the nearby McDonalds. Usually I rent from the local Blockbuster. I’ve used NetFlix before, though I’m not a member now.
Which is best?
Let’s rate each in terms of Cost, Service, Selection, and Convenience. (more…)