Category Archives: Announcements

Hey, there’s something coming up that I want to tell you about!

Announcements, Crossposted, Journal

2020: There Will Be An Ending

The Schlock Mercenary mega-arc will draw to a close this year.

The arc began when Schlock enlisted with Tagon’s Toughs in the strip dated June 12, 2000. That means it’s basically everything that has appeared on this site so far. It will end with closure, resolution, satisfaction, and a big, all-caps “THE END.”

I’ve been saying this for a while now, and every time I say it somebody pops up and says “wait, what?” So I’m saying it again, but this time around there’s an air of urgency.

You probably have questions. I shall attempt to FAQ you some answers.

Q: When will it end exactly?
A: I’m not telling. Before October, though.

Q: Will all the books be put into print?
A: Absolutely! That’s pretty much our highest priority.

Q: Why are you doing this?
A: Because everybody—the characters, the readers, and okay mostly me—deserves the opportunity to close the book and have a nice rest.

Q: What are you going to do next?
A: My current plans are to explore the true meaning of the word “sabbatical.” Those plans depend on how the finances shake out.

Q: Will there be more stories in the Schlock Mercenary Universe?
A: Yes. Lots of them. We can talk about what kinds of stories they’ll be when I start telling them.

Q: Will there still be daily comics at schlockmercenary.com?
A: That kind of depends on how I arrange things for the sabbatical. I’m sorry if that sounds ominous.

Schlock Mercenary is one of the longest-running things I’ve done with my life. I’ve been a husband and a father for longer, but my career at Novell only ran for 11 years. Taken in its legally-defined entirety, my whole childhood only ran for 18 years, and I can’t remember the first four of those, so it’s more like 14.

I am forced to concede the point that it’s unlikely I’ll launch anything that runs longer than Schlock Mercenary’s 20 years. There are too many different things I want to do, and in twenty years I’ll be 71 (or dead, because there’s a happy thought.)

So here we are, at the start of a shiny new year, and I’m talking about endings. There will be plenty of beginnings for me this year, and you can rest assured I’ll talk about them when the time comes.

Announcements, Crossposted, Events

Streaming the Art while Rolling the Role-Play

Tonight at 9pm Eastern I’ll be playing D&D over at twitch.tv/typecastrpg¹, and we’ve got the art-cam working beautifully. 

You can watch me create masterpieces² like “snake-men with snakes for butts” in real-time!

(No, that’s not an actual creature from the game. That’s what the lying, trap-setting NPC who wanted us to get eaten by ophidians said the ophidians looked like.)

Tonight the party is deep in the icy cave-city of the ophidians, and our goal (at least as I understand it from last week) is to steal the airship macguffin³ before the necromancer and his army of undead can steal it. None of us want to be trapped in this snowy wasteland. We’ve got a world to save⁴.

¹ Typecast RPG is Charlie Holmberg, Brian McClellan, Mari Murdock, Ethan Sproat, Howard Tayler, and Dungeon Master Dan Wells.
² This landscape, inspired by one of the characters’ love interests (a felinoid named “Sunrise on the Curve of the Horizon”) is closer to being okay fine also not a masterpiece.
³ The GODS OF VAERON setting we’ve created features sleeping gods who drift through the sky with cities on their backs. They fly via the magic imbued in something called “Xephyrite,” and their bodies are mined for it.
⁴ Should the flying gods wake up, not only will the mining operations cease, but also about half the world will die in assorted disasters. Our party of adventures thinks we might be helping that NOT happen. We could be wrong.

 

Announcements, Crossposted

A Sale! And Shipping in Time for Christmas!

Head over to shop.schlockmercenary.com and use the discount code 2019HOLIDAY between now and December 5th for 10% off anything in our store.

Additionally, we have a bunch of things already on sale, and yes, the coupon bonus will stack, increasing your savings.

If you need your packages to arrive by Christmas, international orders must to be placed by December 4, and US orders must to be placed by December 18.

If you’re ordering t-shirts, please be aware that those have a separate shipping chart. They’re produced on demand, and fulfilled by the printer, and it’s probably already too late for internationally-shipped shirts to arrive by Christmas (the deadline was Nov 25). If you’re shipping shirts to the US you have until December 10th to place orders for by-Christmas delivery.

Announcements, Crossposted, Essays

Still Thankful After All These Years

This is our 19th Thanksgiving since creating Schlock Mercenary, and our 15th since it was our primary source of income. This is a great time of year to sit back and contemplate ways in which to counter that old saw about familiarity breeding contempt. Just because it’s gotten difficult to remember NOT being supported by the kindness of friends, fans, and strangers on the internet doesn’t mean it’s any less magical.

Thank you! If you’re reading this, you’re one of the reasons this exists. Maybe you’ve shopped with us. Perhaps an advertiser has sent us some money in exchange for the opportunity to pester you. It’s possible you’ve contributed to our Patreon, signal-boosted a Kickstarter, or simply PayPal’d us some change. For any of that, we’re grateful.

But our gratitude needn’t be for transactional stuff. The fact that you read this is itself a reward. Telling stories for other people is incredibly fulfilling, and we’re super-fulfilled for having been able to do this for nigh on two decades.

Thank you!