Today I scripted, pencilled, inked, and then colored a full nine-row week of Schlock Mercenary. Theoretically this has always been possible, since the average amount of time spent on any given row only adds up to about 10 hours of work for 36 of them. I’ve never actually cranked a complete week in one day, though.

But today I did. Now I’ll be the first to concede the possibility that it’s not my best work, and that it’s not the hardest-hitting Schlock week out there, but it’s far, far, far from my worst work — even my worst RECENT work, and the Sunday strip’s coloring is some of my best.

So, the score… 79 rows to go, and 6 days to go ’em in.

Unfortunately 4 of those six days are looking like they’ll be half-days at best (Daddy-daughter campout this Friday evening through Saturday Morning, and then a church BBQ Saturday evening, and then church work next Tuesday, and departure next Wednesday), so from a count-the-actual-hours perspective, I’m probably only looking at 4 days for those 79 rows.

26 of the rows remaining are Bonus Story Coloring, which is the shortened form of “difficult and time consuming work spent with my kiester nailed to the chair in front of my computer.” I’ll be starting those tomorrow. Theoretically, that’s about 14 hours of solid work. Let’s see how long 14 hours takes.

I only got nine rows done today. It was all coloring work, and what I did went pretty quickly. But Tuesdays are only half-days for me, since I spend most of the afternoon and evening at the temple in religious observances. Thus I only got about half a day’s work done.

Tomorrow I need to script, pencil, and ink a week of buffer, and color a page of Bonus Story. It’s going to be a bit of a push.

I scripted, pencilled, and inked the last of the Bonus Story for Schlock Mercenary: The Blackness Between today. It’s more violent than the last bonus story. four of the eight pages have some sort of weapon discharge depicted, and of the four non-firing pages, only one of them doesn’t have a weapon being drawn or brandished.

There is BLAM. There is Omminous Hummmm. I haven’t colored them yet, but when I do there will be THOOOOM.

By the way, 8 rows of work I thought I’d be doing isn’t on my plate anymore. The Bonus Story topped out at 30 strips, not 32.

The score, then, is 115 rows to go, and 8 days left. I’m more than halfway there – backtracking through the scorecards, I started this with 264 rows on my plate. In 8 workdays I’ve pencilled, inked, scripted, or colored 141 rows (and decided not to do 8).

(I would be much happier if this work-to-do counter included the cover and the huge pile of needed marginalia. I refuse to distract myself just yet, though.)

Apparently the Schlock Mercenary webserver had some issues last night. I missed all the excitement because I was in bed early. It’s probably a good thing — I’ve got work to do today, and needed the 11 hours of rest I got.

The server guys, bless their 24×7 hearts, are looking into the problem, which only manifests itself under extremely heavy loads. Yes, it’s related to the dynamic page content, but it shouldn’t be difficult to track down and kill. For the next couple of days, however, the blog under the comic is going to be absent.

–Howard