Blógünder Schlock

Howard has once again collaborated with his daughter Keliana to create some Schlock-themed artwork. This piece was done as margin art for the upcoming book Schlock Mercenary: Resident Mad Scientist, and features Reverend Theo Fobius discussing something (probably religion) with Petey and a Meaty-Petey.

Keliana has expressed the desire for some Christmas money, so we’re auctioning this original prior to publication of the book in which it will appear. As usual, half of the proceeds of the sale will go directly to Keliana. You can place your bids here.

If this original gets out of your price range, don’t forget that the small original artwork ACEO cards are still available in our store. Those are all Howard, though. If you want Keliana-colored ACEO cards you’ll have to wait a while… perhaps indefinitely. Those don’t interest her very much, and we’re letting her follow her interests rather than just chaining her to a drawing table in the basement.

In completely unrelated news, it did not take long for somebody to reference today’s strip in the Wikipedia article for Styx’s “Mister Roboto.” Howard now feels culturally significant!

The good folks at Garden Ninja Painting Studio have received their shipment of Schlock miniatures. This means that those of you who missed out on the first round can now order the mini you wanted.

The Schlock App engineer at Plus14 has more than enough beta testers now. Anybody else will just get turned away.

Impatient? I think our biggest delay between now and launch will be getting it approved by Apple…

Congratulations to Redeemed Althalus and CPAD! They each won a copy of John Brown’s debut novel Servant of a Dark God. You two need to email schlockmercenary@gmail.com with a current mailing address (not a P.O. box, please!) and Tor will get your books into the mail right quick.

Speaking of email, if any of you iPhone owners would like to participate in the Schlock Mercenary iPhone beta, we’ll need the following:

• Device type and generation (e.g. “iPhone 3GS” or ” iPod Touch 1^st Gen” etc).
• Device UDID (which you can find by following the instructions here )
• A short explanation of  why you would be a good beta-tester. If we get inundated with requests, this is where the winnowing of applicants will take place.

(UPDATE: Belay that request, friends. The beta is full now.)

While there’s no charge to participate in the beta, the production app is going to require a paid subscription of $0.99 per month or $4.99 for six months.  In support of that we’re doing everything we can to make the iPhone Schlock experience hugely superior to using your iPhone to read the comic free on the web, and better even than reading from your computer at home, school, or work.

We started by letting you read three days ahead of what appears on the web. Then we boosted the strip resolution by 28%, and provided panel-by-panel navigation (we’re about 1/3 of the way done on that.) Panning and zooming manually is supported too. We’re also providing a bookmarking feature, and the application will pre-load the strip that follows the one you’re currently reading.

But enough with the sales pitch. Have a look at the iphone.schlockmercenary.com page, and email us if you want to participate in the beta.

First, a holiday comic for you.

Too early? Not if you’re ordering Christmas cards! Pre-orders are open for 5-packs, 10-packs, and individual “Merry XDMas” cards featuring this cartoon on the front, and the XDM Fortune Cookie Magic System on the back. The interior of the card is blank and awaiting personalization… like an invitation to get together for some holiday-themed role-play during the solstice…

There is absolutely no better way to get the gamers back together for the holidays than to send the invitation along with an adventure hook AND a magic system.

We’ll be making the print run early next week, and we’ll order some extras, but if you want to be guaranteed enough cards to send to your gamer friends, please pre-order this weekend. We will have the cards in hand the week of the 16th, and you should receive your order shortly thereafter — in plenty of time to send cards out for Christmas.

(Sorry for the late notice. This was one of those ideas that kind of snuck up on me at the last minute. I only knew I had to do it once I realized that Kringle has been deceiving us for decades.)

First a quick note: We have 40 more Schlock Mercenary ACEO cards from Series One in the store. These are the last of them. There will be a series two, but we’re not launching it until these are gone.

Some of you may have met or heard of John Brown before. He is a local friend and debut novelist who Howard helped interview in two recent episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast: How Not to Repeat Yourself, and Emotion in Fiction with John Brown. If you click the links you can listen to the podcasts right on your computer. They’re worth the time because John knows what he is talking about when it comes to writing.

John is celebrating the release of his first novel by giving away copies of his book Servant of a Dark God. He has kindly offered two copies for us to give away here at Blogunder Schlock. The winner must be willing to provide a mailing address via email. The simplest method for determining who wins these books is for us to draw names out of a hat. There are two ways for you to get your name into the hat.

1. Leave a comment here on this post between now and midnight on Sunday November 8. You will get one entry just for commenting. Only one entry per name even if you make multiple comments. NOTE: The first time you comment after registering, your comment goes into a moderation queue and has to be approved before it will be visible. This dramatically reduces the amount of spam in our blog comments. There is no need to comment again, we’ll see it and put your name in the hat.

2. We are curious to know how many copies of XDM and Schlock books are making it into friendly local gaming stores. If you visit your local gaming store and see our books there, snap a picture. Mail that picture to schlockmercenary@gmail.com and we’ll throw your name into that hat two times. (Yes that is in addition to adding your name for a comment.) If we get some good pics, we’ll be sure to share them.

So that’s the contest. Ready, set, go!

We appear to be having archive trouble again. This is why we are anxious to get moved over to our new server and site architecture. For now you can check out the RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SchlockRSS) The right sides of the images are truncated, but you can see them by right clicking and selecting View Image. Sorry for the clunky solution, but at least it lets you read the comic while we’re scrambling to get the archive fixed.

When the Astro-Boy movie first introduced us to “positive blue energy” and “negative red energy” I decided to dumb myself down enough not to care. Unfortunately, this set a precedent. I really wanted to enjoy the film, and I’m afraid that by the end of it I had shed enough I.Q. to grant full sapience to a cage of guinea-pigs.

(No, I didn’t actually go see that movie this summer.)

Drooling idiot that I had become, I was delighted with the film by the end and could find nothing wrong with it. The final battle between the blue-charged Astro-Boy and the red-charged Peacekeeper was heaps of fun, the plot twists at once surprising and chilling, and the moral lessons were both timeless and timely.

I’m not suggesting that you have to be stupid to enjoy this movie, nor that those of you who loved it are lesser minds. Far from it! If you liked this film, you’re smart enough to have installed an I.Q. Attenuator dial on yourself.

If you dial it far enough back you can probably watch television news without wincing.

Today’s strip features Fan Art from Cannon Hamaker of Animal Ward. His piece deserves to be seen in full, so here it is:

Thank you, Cannon! I love it!

The Schlock Miniatures are now sold out. Thanks to everyone who ordered. To those who did not yet get a chance to order, never fear. The re-order has been placed and more minis are on the way. The re-order is twice the size of the original order, so everyone who wants a mini will be able to have one. We’ll post as soon as minis are available again.

In other news, Yes we know that the archive calendar has gone screwy. There are Schlock archive pages that are not being built correctly and thus preventing people from reading. We’re working on the problem, mostly by scrambling to finish up the new architecture that won’t have either that issue or the “sometimes the blog doesn’t load correctly” issue. Until we get it all fixed, I direct your attention to the RSS button over to the left of this blog. It is orange and located right under the “contact” link. If you click that button, you’ll be taken to the FeedBurner page for Schlock Mercenary where you can find all of the recent Schlock strips. You can also subscribe to the feed and have it sent to you without interruption. Thanks to everyone for your patience while we work to sort it out.