Schlock Mercenary
Schlock Mercenary is a comedic webcomic written and drawn by Howard Tayler. It follows the tribulations of a star-travelling mercenary company in a satiric, mildly dystopian 31st-century space opera setting. After its debut on June 12, 2000, the comic was updated daily until its conclusion in July 24, 2020, supporting its author and receiving five Hugo Award nominations.
The comic had been collected into fifteen print volumes as of 2019, and a sixteenth volume has been announced.
The online comic concluded in July 2020 at the end of the twentieth volume, with an announcement by Tayler that the main story was complete, though spin-offs might be expected in the future.
Story
The story primarily centers on Captain Kaff Tagon, his mercenary crew, Tagon's Toughs, and their roles as members in a for-profit military organization. Various story lines have the crew swept into conflicts on a single planet, a galaxy-spanning apocalyptic crisis or intergalactic war.In the distant future of Schlock Mercenary's setting, many changes face Terran society. Faster-than-light travel is attained, alien races are contacted, and technology undergoes radical improvements.
Alien species vary from fairly humanoid to almost unrecognizable. There are carbosilicate amorphs with no easily definable limbs or organs, eight-limbed Gatekeepers, two-bodied Uklakk, and the unknowable Pa'anuri, beings made of dark matter.
The number of sapient species descended from Terran stock increased as Earth's genetic engineers refined their craft. Enhanced chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, dolphins, snakes, octopuses, at least two types of bears, and two species of elephant have citizenship. Genetic enhancement of the human population resulted in the purple-skinned photosynthetic "Purps", along with general improvements to the population.
Technology
As in many science fiction stories, technology forms a large part of Schlock Mercenarys storytelling framework. Several story arcs revolve around the political conflict surrounding rapid technological change. After a particularly complex or interesting new system is introduced to the comic, its in-comic explanation is often supplemented with a footnote.Travel between the stars is accomplished through the use of "wormgates", large wormhole generators controlled by the enigmatic F'sherl-Ganni Gatekeepers. Within the storyline of the comic, wormgates are supplanted by the "teraport", a device allowing near-instant travel between any two points, as long as neither point is within range of an interdicting device. In that case, the teraporting object may be destroyed.
The F'sherl-Ganni also constructed several buuthandi, Schlock Mercenarys take on a Dyson sphere. A buuthandi is a balloon of solar-sail material around a star. Light pressure and solar wind offset the star's gravitation to keep the balloon inflated, while habitats and maintenance facilities dangling from the inner side act as ballast to balance the sails. Despite their tremendous surface area, a buuthandi provides a disproportionally small amount of livable habitat. "Control cables, millions of square kilometers of slack sail material, and some very clever engineering allow the 'balloon' to compensate for the mood swings of the contained star." In the Schlock Mercenary universe, a buuthandi is about 300 million kilometers in diameter.
Medical technology includes nanobots and both artificial and regrown replacements for damaged body parts. One important item in the comic is the "magic cryo-kit", an illegally-modified device with the capability to rebuild an entire body as long as the brain is intact. In the strip, this is shown as "from the head down", but, presumably, nothing more than the brain is necessary. Conventional legal medical technology is also capable of full-body regeneration, although at a much slower pace and dependent on your HMO insurance options. The Toughs employ various technologies to protect survival of heads until their owners can be regenerated. An example of this technology is the comedically ubiquitous "head-in-a-jar", which permits a character to interact in a storyline despite an otherwise-fatal injury. Another is the "nanny-bag", which maintains the severed head and/or entire body of an otherwise mortally-wounded teammate for an unknown length of time. For example, Kevyn Andreyasn's head was sustained for several weeks.
In addition to medical benefits, nanotechnology can "boost" soldiers to levels of physical performance unmodified humans cannot reach. Minor enhancements are legal, but extreme military modifications are highly-regulated. Significant examples of soldier-boosting within the strip are the mercenary grunt Nick and the bounty hunter Doythaban, as well as Kevyn in a particular story arc.
Computer hardware has progressed to the point that true, strong artificial intelligence is common, and several artificial intelligences are characters in the story.
Weapons technology drastically improved as well. A mercenary's arsenal can include railguns, lasers, non-lethal nanomotive "goober" rounds, and plasma cannons. Old-fashioned bullet-firing firearms continue to be effective against unprotected targets... and are less likely to rupture a hull than a plasma bolt.
Energy is a resource literally too cheap to meter. Anything powered by miniaturized fusion reactors, is easily-fueled by massively powerful neutronium-annihilation "annie" plants—spherical devices generating massive amounts of power by gravitationally converting mass to energy, a means of power generation made possible by ubiquitous gravity manipulation. One-shot devices are often powered by fullerened antimatter, a carbon-based powder which contains antiprotons at the parts-per-thousand level, and should never be incinerated.
Gravity manipulation is a process as commonplace as modern electronics, employed in starship propulsion and artificial gravity, and weapons and shielding against weapons. Controlled/artificial gravity is referred to as "gravy." Gravitic weapons in particular are common and developed due to their dual purpose—as potent weapons, they can compress matter into neutronium which can then fuel an annie plant. The degree of this control is dependent on the number of projectors. For example, the battleplate Tunguska was able to manipulate individual limbs, and individual digits of crew on board the Serial Peacemaker while smaller ship create nodes of gravity in a few points on the ship and without the same level of control. However, the generation of gravity is beyond the capabilities of the sophonts of the Milky Way, necessitating ships to be constructed around annie plants as sources of gravity to manipulate.
These devices and more are built using fabrication technology, or "fabbers". While rare and expensive, possession of one of these portable factories and the appropriate designs allows for the cheap mass-production of any physical item. Several of the mercenaries are trained in fabber design, allowing the company to cheaply produce and repair their gear.
Main characters
Notable members of the crew include Kevyn Andreyasn; title character Sergeant Schlock, who is a carbosilicate amorph; Petey, a former artificial intelligence and now Fleetmind and pseudo-God; and the wry AI and former boyband, Ennesby.;Sergeant Schlock
;Captain Kaff Tagon
;Kevyn Andreyasn
;Breya Andreyasn
;Ennesby
;Post-Dated Check Loan
;Chief Warrant Officer Gunther Thurl
;Doctor Edward Bunnigus
;Ellen "Elf" Foxworthy
;The Very Reverend Theo Fobius
;Alexia Murtaugh
Publication history
Over time, Tayler's art improved, in his words, from bad to "marginally less bad." Jean Elmore served as colorist for the strip from February 9, 2003, to the spring of 2004 when she developed a repetitive strain injury from her work.On March 3, 2003, the comic reached its 1001st strip. Tayler marked the milestone by "re-launching" the comic. With the relaunch, the strip was slightly reoriented for publication, organizing the comic's ongoing story into "books". Each book has a fairly self-contained story, although they are still chronological and connected. On December 2, 2005, Tayler published the comic's 2000th daily strip since the series' debut. On June 12, 2010, Schlock Mercenary marked ten years of uninterrupted daily run, a feat matched by few other webcomics.
In March 2006, Tayler published Schlock Mercenary: Under New Management, the first book-based collection of Schlock Mercenary comics. This collection features stories printed from March 9, 2003, through August 23, 2003, plus five pages of new material including a foreword by John Ringo, a feature explaining how Sgt. Schlock "got turned on to plasma cannons", bonus art, the author's biography, and architectural deck plans to Tagon's third ship Serial Peacemaker.
In December 2007, Tayler published Schlock Mercenary: The Tub of Happiness. It features stories from the beginning of the webcomic to October 2001, as well as the bonus story "Baggage Claim," explaining the circumstances around Schlock joining the Toughs. There are numerous pieces of fan art throughout the book, as well as early concept art drawn by Tayler and notes to the reader from both Tayler and his wife, talking about the characters and Tayler's early cartooning efforts.
On Monday, February 17, 2014, Tayler announced that the strip had reached 5,000 comics. On Tuesday, June 11, 2019, Tayler announced that the strip had reached 19 years of continuous daily comics.