Tag Archives: Schlock Mercenary

Seventy Maxims, Maximally Available

Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries is now available.

At this time, the book is only available from the Planet Mercenary backerkit page. The Planet Mercenary RPG is not yet shipping, so if you want your Seventy Maxims book to ship immediately, make sure it’s the only thing you put in your cart.

There are two editions, which we’re calling “Pristine” and “Defaced.” Cover-compareThey are both in-universe artifacts: the pristine version is one of the thousands of copies of the Seventy Maxims book that the average connoisseur of 31st century printed collectibles might find themselves fortunate enough to acquire; the defaced version is the copy that CDS Sergeant Edwards¹ handed to Private Karl Tagon on March 1st, 3035.

Karl’s book has some mileage on it. He made notes on the pages, and on January 28th, 3093, handed it off to his son, Captain Kaff Tagon, who had it for six years, making his own notes. He gifted it to Captain Alexia Murtaugh in 3099, and she added her notes. When Murtaugh was injured in early 3100 Sergeant Schlock went through her stuff, and borrowed the book. He found a felt-tip pen, too, and treated the existing notes as permission to deploy it.

The pages of the two books look quite a bit different.

M27-Compare

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Both books have scholarly² commentary at the bottom of each maxim’s page, and and the scholars do not always agree with the sentiment of the source material.

This book took a lot more work than we thought it would, but based on the response from people who’ve already gotten their copies, all that work was worth it.


 

¹ Sergeant Edwards, later Banneret Commodore Edwards of the Continuance Fleet, does not appear in the comic strip anywhere. Maybe someday I’ll tell his full story. 

² The scholars in question are all me. I had far too much fun critically pontificating on my own writing.  

 

You Can Have Ad-free Schlock Mercenary

Would you like to read Schlock Mercenary without the ads? How about a week at a time, in higher resolution?

SchlockPatreon-HugeThe Schlock Mercenary Patreon¹ now offers all of that.

  • Patreon supporters at the $2.50 level and above get ad-free browsing, and can read the archives a week at a time
  • Supporters at the $5 pledge level get the ad-free, week-at-a-time browsing in Retina-resolution²

Our designer, Gary Henson, has done great work with this stuff. It’s a beautiful thing. When you go week-at-a-time, and use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate, the reading experience improves drastically.

Once you subscribe you’ll see a Patreon post explaining how to link your Patreon account to the Schlock Mercenary site. Here’s a link to that post, but only Patreon subscribers at the $2.50 and $5.00 levels can see it.


 

¹We’re using Patreon’s “Charge Up Front” payment method. Details on this can be found in the Patreon Charge Up Front faq

² Retina resolution strips are 2,000 pixels wide. Standard resolution strips are 780 pixels wide.

Politics: Neither Fun nor Profitable

Schlock Mercenary is, in its heart of hearts, satire. It has always been political, but those messages are delivered in the abstract. It is sociopolitical satire framed in military sci-fi comedy. It invites the reader to laugh as they ask questions, but it does not commit to giving them hard and fast answers.

On rare occasion the blog posts beneath the comic have been a bit more explicitly political. Over the years I’ve determined that political punditry isn’t something I enjoy, and that the people who find it profitable seem to also encourage a widening of the spaces between us, driving both the left and the right to more entertaining¹ extremes. Mostly, then, my blog is about movies and merchandise.

Of late, however, my Twitter feed has been extremely political. This isn’t because I enjoy politics, nor because I’m seeking attention. It’s because important things are happening², and I believe they’re important enough for me to expend a bit of my social capital to boost critical messages. I still tweet the slice-of-life silliness I used to, but the mirth is diluted a bit.

The pattern described above is likely to continue:

  • Schlock Mercenary is going to follow the outline I’ve established for it, and won’t wander off into what would definitely be the weeds for the story I’m telling in order to take specific political positions.
  • The blog below the comic is going to focus mostly on movie review things, merchandising, and the occasional public service announcement.
  • My Twitter feed is going to reflect my personal opinions on matters of the soul, the State, and a scattering of other things. It’s going to remain on the side-bar here at schlockmercenary.com, but you’re neither required nor expected to read it.

Regardless of what is said in any of these spaces, each of them belongs to me. I’m under no obligation, legal or moral, to give equal time to positions other than my own³. I do feel a strong obligation to say things that are true. I aspire to the high levels of journalistic integrity currently demonstrated by people like Farenthold and Tapper, but I’m not a journalist, so I’m much more likely to get things wrong from time to time.


¹ “Entertaining” in the same way that watching a car accident is entertaining. I hold the modern pundit-provocateur in extremely low regard. 

² Political protest appears to be on track to be the American national pastime for 2017, displacing Baseball.

TakeMeOutToTheProtest

³ My personal political positions have changed over the years, and some have flipped nearly 180 degrees. You can peruse howardtayler.com/blog if you’d like (not everything there cross-posts to schlockmercenary.com) but only the most current stuff is going paint an accurate reflection of what I think.

 

Shopping Schlock Mercenary for the Holidays

From time to time people ask us: “what’s the best way to support Schlock Mercenary?” Here are some answers!

Shop at Amazon with the Schlock Link

Just click on this link before beginning your Amazon.com shopping trip, and we’ll get a small portion of what you spend.

Shop With Us Directly

We’ve got plenty of merchandise for your consideration:

70momem-adv-pristine-onwetproofs2Pre-Order Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries and/or the Planet Mercenary RPG

This link will take you to Backerkit, where you can pre-order Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries in defaced and/or pristine versions², as well as the Planet Mercenary tabletop role-playing game.

Share the comic with a friend

Do you know people who might enjoy reading Schlock Mercenary? The archives are oppressively deep, but there are good starting points³ at the beginning of books 10, 11, and 12. You might even start them at book 15. If they decide they want to go back to the beginning, they totally can.


¹Sandra wrote two children’s books, which were illustrated by Angela Call. They’re beautiful, and make great gifts.

²The pristine version has scholarly annotations under the maxims, and lots of white space. The non-pristine version has handwritten notes from both Tagons, Murtaugh, and Schlock in the margins. The pristine version is pictured atop the wet proofs for pages from the non-pristine version.

³Seriously, don’t start people at the beginning. Just don’t.