July 10, 2002
Well, my vacation is over. I spent the last few days relaxing, but now I'm back at work waiting anxiously for my next break.Fortunately, my next break begins the week of July 31st, when I travel to Comic-Con International in San Diego. If you're going to be at the 'con, come see me and your other favoritest web-toonists at the KeenSpot booth. We'll have swag for you to buy, and there will probably be lots of sketching and doodling going on. I'll post more details as we approach the event.
Speaking of stuff for you to buy, there are now weekly archives of Schlock Mercenary available for KeenSpot PREMIUM subscribers. The "W" on the calendar will get you there. Coming soon for subscribers, a gallery of concept art, sketches (including some truly horrid early stuff), and 'special' pieces that I'll try to keep updated three to five times weekly. Hopefully we'll see our first set of installments early next week.
What's that you say? You want more Schlock without having to part with any of your hard-earned money? Well, I suppose you could go check out Under The Lemon Tree, where the hero is having a very unpleasant dream that involves enlisting with Tagon's Toughs. Ralph Hayes and I have swapped some email about this, and he's staying pretty true to the spirit of the Schlockiverse, while still introducing some elements of his own that ought to be raucous good fun. The story is currently in progress, and frankly, I can't wait to see how it turns out.
(This is a new sensation for me. Usually when I want to see how Schlock-related things turn out, I just sit down and script them... freaky, no?)
A less conspicuous (but possibly more widely-circulated) cameo will be appearing in, of all places, a reference book for database administrators. Jared Still, co-author of PERL for Oracle DBAs with Andy Duncan, explains in one passage that some processes are harder to kill than others, and that rather than resorting to a plasma cannon, one should resort to commands that leave the hardware intact. He footnoted "plasma cannon" with the Schlock archives URL for the BH-209. I'm not sure whether this means I'll become the new hero for Oracle database admins out there, but I'm quite happy at the tribute. I'm also happy to know next to nothing about database administration -- I suspect that my life is a better place to be with this particular element of ignorance.