Blógünder Schlock

I’m taking a vacation, during which I will not have access to email, or even the web. As always, Schlock Mercenary will continue to update in my absence, and since I haven’t had to touch the updates for a couple of weeks now, I don’t anticipate problems.

Or rather, I DO anticipate problems, and have plans for dealing with them, but I don’t expect said problems to actually materialize. I’m only going to be gone for two days. Yeah, it’s not much of a vacation, but at least I’m getting out of the house.

In related news, I’ve got a massive pile of email needing responses. If you’ve emailed me in the last month and not heard back, I’ll try to rectify that sometime next week. I really do intend to answer every email that crosses my desk — even if all I’m saying is “thanks for the note, buh-bye.”

I’ll be back online sometime Monday morning.

Jim Baen, one of the giants in the Science Fiction industry, passed away last night. In a fit of foresight, he asked David Drake to write the obituary, and David obliged.

I never got to meet Jim, but I hope to meet him in the next life. “R.I.P.” (Rest In Peace) doesn’t fit my wishes for Jim. I hope his passing into the next world presents him with adventure, challenge, and the opportunity to watch what he created continue to grow and flourish. Okay, maybe I’ll wish him some Peace, but he’d better not just be lying around Resting In It.

I can’t add much to the great things that have been said about Jim Baen, so instead I’ll offer up some brief humor in tribute by misquoting DeForest Kelley:

“He’s Jim, dead.”

Let’s get the obligatory disclaimers out of the way. Michael Z. Williamson is a friend of mine, and I’m happy to count him as such. He is a fan of Schlock Mercenary, and I am a fan of his work.

Recently (well… Penguicon, so maybe not so recently) Mike handed me three books he’d written which were not in his usual Military/SF genre. They were straight-up “modern military fiction.” No rocketships, robots, or ray-guns.

The books were The Scope of Justice, Targets of Opportunity, and Confirmed Kill. I devoured them over the course of about a week, and enjoyed them thoroughly. They chronicle the fictional missions of a pair of elite snipers, missions that seem very plausible in light of current world events.

The first book (Scope of Justice) starts a little slowly, but that didn’t bother me. Mike’s attention to detail really shows with this subject matter, and I enjoyed it. When the shooting starts, the pace picks up just fine.

The second and third books don’t suffer from any pacing issues (or maybe by then I was so hooked I didn’t notice — it’s irrelevant either way.) My favorite of the set is probably the second (Targets of Opportunity, in which somebody has to make a shot in which the target is smaller than the bullet fired at it), but it’s a tough call. Especially since Confirmed Kill has a Schlock Mercenary reference in it right at the end.

As I said in my disclaimer, Mike’s a friend, and I’m a fan. Both the friendship and the fandom have been earned, though, so I recommend his books to you with no qualms whatsoever.

Okay, the pistol itself is fictional. What I’m auctioning off is the sketch that was used on page 41 of Schlock Mercenary: Under New Management (and can be seen in the sample PDF for those of you who haven’t bought your book yet). You can see the auction here.

The original is still unsigned, but will be signed upon request by the winning bidder.

… but somebody posted it on eBay anyway.

It is a drawing I did back in early 2002, when Keenspot PREMIUM (the all-caps was Chris Crosby’s way of making it look special in print) debuted, and subscribers got free swag. I think I did maybe twenty or thirty sharpie-marker Schlocks, and it tickles me to see one of them on eBay. I know, some folks get bent out of shape when they see other people trafficking in the works of their hands. Me, I’m just happy knowing that somebody thinks there’s a market.

No, I don’t make any money on this auction. No, I can’t vouch for the seller. No, Schlock’s eyes are NOT drawn correctly — when he’s facing left his near eye should be smaller than the far eye. But yes, I DID draw this… fifty-four months ago. It’s like a piece of History made out of poop.

Okay, now that I’ve disclaimed it correctly, here’s the auction.

Yesterday I consumed a couple of pieces of entertainment which were produced and/or published in 1985.

For the record, that’s the year I graduated High School (Riverview High, Sarasota, Florida) and the year I started college (Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah). It was, as they say, a banner year for me.

We’ll start with Weird Science, a fringe brat-pack film featuring a very young Kelly LeBrock trying to look like an “older woman” (she was 25 at the time), and pulling it off thanks to the fact that the leading “men,” Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith were respectively 17 and 16 years old.

What can I say? I’ve only seen this movie twice now… once in 1985, and once 21 years later. I don’t remember it being nearly this corny, and I certainly don’t remember 80’s fashion that way. Pretty much all the main characters looked like they were wearing clown suits… except for Vernon Wells, who looked great in his biker bondage outfit. I was excited about recognizing having seen him in other things, until we realized the “other things” were Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.

The best thing to come out of Weird Science was the title track by Oingo Boingo. I love that song… and the music video is a lot more watchable than the movie.

My other consumable from 1985 has reached a rather wider audience. As far as twenty-one years can prove, it has proven to be timeless. I fully expect it to graduate from “timeless entertainment” to “part of human mythology” sometime in the next 300 years.

I’m speaking, of course, of Calvin and Hobbes. My copy of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes arrived yesterday, and I read the first 50 or so pages, whose comics first appeared in fall and winter of 1985. This book is a masterwork… a true treasury — especially for someone working full-time as a cartoonist.

In reading the introduction by Bill Watterson, I learned that he appears to accept a few things as universal, self-evident truths of cartooning, but which are neither universal nor self-evident. I’ll go into more detail on these musings in another column sometime, but mostly they center around “audience feedback” and “work environment.” Bill was and is reclusive. I’m merely introverted, and I’ve learned to work around that. In fact, I’ve learned that I HAVE to work around that. But, as I said, now is not the time for that extended ramble.

Time… Twenty-one years is a long time. For Weird Science it’s too long. For Calvin and Hobbes it’s barely time to rotate the bottle.

You may have noticed a “BlogAd” in the right column, telling you that you can “get fit fast” and “master your own bodyweight.”

I now have a copy of the advertised book, Matt Furey’s Combat Conditioning: Functional Exercises for Fitness and Combat Sports, and so far it looks pretty good. The claim — calisthenics can get you in better shape than weights or other equipment training — is a bold one. Since I can’t currently afford a gym membership, and would dearly love to be able to get into solid shape without having to go someplace special to exercise, Matt’s claim is one that I’d like to prove true.

So I’m going to give it a shot. I’ll report back in a week or two and let you know how it’s going. I doubt I’ll have a washboard belly or tree-trunk neck before the ad stops running (it expires on July 12th), but I’ll let you know how things are while there’s still time to click.

–Howard

Now is your chance to own one of the pieces appearing as “marginalia” in the first Schlock Mercenary book. If you’ve got the book in front of you, turn to Page 18, please…

Bid here. Bid often.

–Howard

I’ve finally finished the Schlock Mercenary Archive Synopsizer, which offers links and synopses for all the major storylines, and hints at shipping dates for upcoming books.

Have a look. Lose yourself in the archives again. Only this time you won’t be quite as lost, because you’ll have the Schlock Mercenary Achive Synopsizer as your Schockiversal Sherpa.

Some of you may have noticed that twice in the last week the update has been a little screwy. In each case, a strip from the archives ended up below the current strip, confusing some readers, and leading to a little email and a last-minute scramble here on my end.

We’re still trying to figure out how archive strips got re-uploaded to the updater with new filenames. That’s not the sort of mistake I’m prone to make, but I won’t rule out ID10T errors in this case. I may be a high-level Geek, but I don’t have very many ranks in “webserver.” I’ve been multi-classing as a Market Mage in hopes of being able to consistently cast “create revenue stream.”

Speaking of which, apparently my “create market demand” spell worked. The multiple-unit auction for six sketch editions went up to $80 each, and the auction for sketch edition #300 shot up to $510. That’s $990 raised in a week. Thank you, friends and fanatics, for your enthusiasm, and your disposable income. We’re still living on a tight budget here, but thanks to your generosity I remain able to schlock full-time.