People in our circles typically follow the gadget world pretty closely. For our podcast, that assumption would be half right. Listen to Jason tell Steve about all the devices he’ll be pining for in the next year! Marvel as Steve couldn’t give less of a crap! All this, plus a sad tale of misaligned brotherhood and our first of many forays into the deep, dark area of space that encompasses Howard Tayler’s long-running classic, Schlock Mercenary.
Midshow music provided by Emitremmus.
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THANK YOU.
It hurts me, reading my oldest stuff. UGH! And finally someone (besides me) has articulated all the things that were wrong with it. Fortunately for me and my career, I was able to forge ahead ignorant of the Dunning-Krueger-ishness of my foray into the field. Had I been that aware of my shortcomings in the craft at the time I doubt I could have kept going.
Some clarifications:
1) Nope, I’ve never missed a day. That one day when the server farm caught fire, and one of the UPS battery-banks actually exploded? Yeah, we were mirrored someplace else within 6 hours. Working ahead has been my salvation. The list of “real life” intrusions I could have used as excuses is as long as my arm.
2) The App was written by Gary “@Tarlen” Henson of Plus 14, LTD (www.plus14.com) and he did brilliant work. I upload larger versions of the strips to the schlockapp server, and then I define panels within the admin interface so the strip is easy and convenient to read on phone screens.
3) Brandon Sanderson said, in his introduction to the 2nd volume of Schlock Mercenary print collections, “this is where Schlock Mercenary decides what it wants to be when it grows up.” And no, you have not gotten to those strips yet. You’re ALMOST there (November of 2001 is where THE TERAPORT WARS begins.)
Thanks for the feature, and for the reminder that I should just remove the “FIRST STRIP” button completely and make people start with LONGSHOREMAN OF THE APOCALYPSE (www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-02-29) when my storytelling got reasonably tight.
Addendum: I listened to your ‘cast while cleaning up the inks on strips that will run during the first week in October. So there’s that for you. 🙂
Thanks for the mention, and I hope enjoy the app.
One of the things I love about Schlock is reading through the archives linearly (after initially overcoming the cringe at the first strip quality), and suddenly realising that the graphical quality has vastly improved, and not being able to figure out exactly when that happened.
Something I feel needs to be pointed out: The first printed collection of the strips was Book 3 (Under New Management – March 2003), as that was the point Howard has said he finally felt happy enough with the quality to actually ask for money for it. The first three years of strips only went to print after the fans of the comic requested it.
It’s also worth mentioning that the site itself now recommends new readers start with Book 12, from late 2010.
I knew I should have logged in the day the show went live. Sorry for the late response.
Howard:
I definitely want to make it clear that I am very much looking forward to our next book club episode (coming in 3 weeks). I am fully on board with this whole journey and want to know everything that happens to the characters and the world.
I look forward to reading the comics knowing we provided the audio back ground for in October…of 2015.
Gary:
The fact that this comic has had the impact on you that you wanted to make an app for it it speaks volumes to me. Keep it up! I’m really looking forward to using your app for my readings for next episode.
On the whole:
We totally feel your feelings about wanting to change where people jump into the series. People ask me what episode of this show they should start with and I always say “Last week’s” because anything more than two weeks old fills me with dread.
But just like can’t erase our high school year books, our archives search as a great reminder to all Internet creators and consumers just how far we’ve come and how bright our future is.
We hope you and everyone who listened to this episode because of your link sticks around, if for nothing else than to find out what other horrible things Jason did as a child.