Martin Olsen

I don’t read a lot of webcomics. In fact, there are only two that I follow on a regular basis; Girl Genius and Schlock Mercenary. One of those I catch up on every couple of weeks, but the other I read every single day.

Why? Because it updates every single day, and, on June 12^th, will have done so without a single missed update for 12 straight years!

I don’t think I’ve gotten out of bed as consistently as Schlock Mercenary has released a new strip.

And you’d think that after so long the comic would have gotten stale and the jokes repetitive, but the exact opposite has happened. Not only has the art gotten significantly better, but the stories have gotten bigger and more complex, the characters keep evolving, and the jokes are funnier than ever. For a comic that delivers a funny punchline every single day, that is a truly remarkable feat.

Compare the earliest strips to the ones released today:

You almost can’t believe they were drawn by the same hand.

Howard Tayler, the keyboard and pen behind Schlock Mercenary, is one of the few cartoonists alive who is able to make a living solely through his webcomic, and he really deserves it. He keeps claiming to be a lazy cartoonist, but that is just humbleness speaking. I’d be hard pressed to name a harder working comic-book artist. He is an inspiration to me when it comes to work-ethics.

“Just quit whining and write!” – Howard Tayler

And that’s what I love about Schlock Mercenary; it’s consistently there every day, and that’s something that you can rely on. I’m not an avid reader of science fiction, but Tayler’s blend of satire and military space-opera is so finely crafted that every strip is just a pure joy to read. I don’t even mind having to read the story one strip a day over the course of many months, because each strip is self-contained enough to keep me coming back for the daily punchline.

I started out only reading Schlock Mercenary online, but two years ago I decided to try out the printed book Resident Mad Scientist, and it was a darn good decision! All of the strips were beautifully re-colored by professional artist Travis Walton, there was plenty of great bonus-art spread around throughout the book, and there was a brilliant little bonus story that has never been released online.

I’ve since bought the next book in the series, and I fully plan on getting the newest one, Sharp End of the Stick, that has just gone up for pre-order.

My favorite Schlock-story to date, Massively Parallel, is the perfect example of what makes this webcomic so great. It’s a mammoth of a story that spans no less than a year and a half of daily strips, which indeed sounds rather daunting, but it works beautifully! The large cast of characters, who usually works as a group, are split up into smaller groups that each get their own plotline. This makes it possible for some of the side-characters to get their chance to shine before they’re all brought together for a fantastic ending.

Massively Parallel also showcases Tayler’s willingness to experiment and push the boundaries of what a webcomic can do. Telling such a massive story in a serialized format on the Internet required a huge amount of trust in the loyalty of the readers. And it paid off! It’s by far the best webcomic-story I’ve read.

That said, I fully expect Tayler to top it later.

Tags: awesome, dei, emperor, end, genius, girl, howard, is, mad, massively, mercenary, of, parallel, pius, resident, schlock, scientist, sharp, stick, tayler, the, travis, walton, why

admin  May 16 Books, Comic books