Schlock Mercenary

On the plus side, people who are looking at more than 260 bodies don't tend to be interested in the kind of rigor that would require the fancy equipment he doesn't have. Better dial down your standards a notch, Lieutenant!

Also, generally, when your crime scene has that many bodies, you typically don't have someone who's trying to hide who they are and what they're doing.

So reading back a few days ago, I found the author notes (under the comic) detailing Murderfinder and Meat-Puppet to be quite amusing. I'd watch that show!

That was a common reaction on the SM Facebook page, and HT himself even posted there about being very tempted to do up something working with that show concept, perhaps as a print bonus.

edited 8th Jan '16 9:54:18 PM by Nohbody

Hm, it seems there's been something of a disconnect in the last 10 million years.

....That sounds ominous?

Well the Zoojack Gate was 8 million years old, so it clearly post-dates the collapse of the Oafa by at least a couple of million years, but that doesn't mean to say the two aren't connected.

edited 10th Jan '16 2:01:07 AM by MattII

Paanuri. Totally paanuri.

Well we'll be finding out a lot of answers realtivly soon. According to an interview Howard did Big, Dumb objects is going to be the second to last (Or possibly third to last he isn't 100% sure if he'll try to squeeze in another section or not) book in the story.

....Although on second thought, didn't the Eina-Afa's AI say they were hiding from the paanuri? My WMG needs refreshing.

Yeah, it did.

When you say "last in the story", do you mean it's the end of the story arc or that he's finally going to end the comic? Because, um, I know he can't keep it up forever but this is a great comic.

Okay, refreshed WMG: Oafans saw Paanuri as Mass Effect Reapers: inevitable end. The Librarian will be VERY surprised.

According to the interview it'll be the end of the entire Schlock Mercenary story. At least the part of it dealing with Tagon's Toughs.

But not the end of his making Schlock comics. Afterwards the plan is to do a time skip and start a whole new story following Schlock without any need to have read the previous stories.

What comes next? The current plan (subject to change) is pretty simple: We’ll fast-forward to a point where it makes sense to not be following this same group of characters around. The ones who survive Book 18 will be given ample time to retire, die of old age, disappear mysteriously and become legends, or perhaps all three. Schlock will still be there, of course, but these stories will not require any knowledge of what was in the previous eighteen-or-so books.

Though rereading it.. 'die of old age' isn't that supposed to be impossible now? Or hint that something is going to happen to those plans?

Full interview here

edited 10th Jan '16 11:49:07 AM by Seraphem

Oh, that sounds cool. Long as I still get my daily fix of space opera comic. (Also, oh nooooo spoilers that the nearly invincible character in the cast survives the finale...)

Just "nearly" invincible ? The only way he can die now is if he gets flash-frozen again (or vaporised, or...) and Petey loses his backups.

He's immune to bullets and physical attacks, and can mostly survive explosions and hard vacuum, but anything that kills things by making them very hot can still hurt him. Such as, you know, the weapon he carries around on his person at all times. Or a thermal grenade. Or sufficiently big explosives. Throwing him into the sun would definitely be fatal.

For that matter, if you threw him into hard vacuum and nobody was able to rescue him, he'd be effectively dead. Or at least dead enough that he wouldn't be up and running again without *gasp* a huge timeskip!

Well, that revelation... looks like the whole Pa'anuri = Reapers idea might be right.... or something to that effect.

Sounds a lot like it, yes.

The main thing stopping me from playing Mass Effect as Schlock Shepard in response to this news is that Mass Effect has tragically few "eat him" options.

Well, if you keep Wrex in your squad...

Well, they have found ancient 12 mya guys as well as the amorphs being around for that long as a species.

Though the Amorphs and Vog's race are kind of an oddity. A race capable to live that long, and yet apparently with no space travel at all, beyond possible near planetary orbital stuff. So likely could have stayed under the radar of whatever wiped everyone else out.

Hm yes, they have been under the radar of everything.

However then we have Gatekeepers, which weren't going to die off any time soon.

edited 10th Jan '16 8:08:08 PM by Adannor

Well other then the whole nearly being wiped out along with the entire galaxy thing.