What Would You Ask Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary?
I’ll soon be interviewing Howard Tayler, the creator of Schlock Mercenary. The interview will be posted in December over the course of a week. The schedule for that week will be:
Monday: Interview with Howard Tayler, award winning cartoonist for Schlock Mercenary, co-creator of the Hugo Award winning “Writing Excuses” podcast
Tuesday: Interview with Sandra Tayler, business manager for Hypernode Press
Wednesday: Making Sausage – a photo essay of the cartoonist process from concept to print
Thursday: “Ask Howard” Q & A from the fans
Friday: A very special surprise. More info as we get closer
I need your help for the Thursday post. What would you like me to ask Howard? There’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to ask him every question and of course, he (and I) may edit the question for content and length.
But, here’s your chance. What do you want me to ask? Put your question in the comments. I’ll collect them and get him to address as many as I can.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Really looking forward to reading this! 🙂
My question: “can you tell us about the time you realized ‘hey, schlock is actually feeding my family successfully!’ How did you know, and what did it feel like?”
Ooh, this will be interesting!
How much research do you have to do for Schlock Mercenary these days, in particular to maintain consistency with 15 years of previous strips and getting the physics reasonably accurate (e.g. Oisri’s mass and gravity, or antimatter containment in carbon buckyballs)?
When is he going to start working in other mediums? (Movie, TV series)
What is the craziest thing you’ve done in the comic since you began to write it?
On the lighter side, which is your favorite character? 😉
Thanks for doing this Rodney, and thanks to Howard for agreeing to it. Your comic has meant a lot to me and a lot of other people over the years!
Q: At what point did Schlock go from a collection of world ideas and characters to a consistent overarching story with a coherent universe of rules and an overarching plot, or has it pretty much always been like that?
In the (increasingly more miniscule amounts of) free time that you can scrape together, what fiction do you prefer to be a consumer of? Do you have a bookmark folder full of other comics you read (perhaps justifying it as market research), do you veg out in front of favorite tv shows (which?), or do you have a long watchlist of movies?
Assuming that Schlock Mercenary will come to an end (say it isn’t so!), how much headspace have you dedicated to your next great epic? Is it something that you find yourself actively thinking about, or is it recognised and put entirely on the back burner for now?
My question for Howard: Are there any ways in which your personal faith or beliefs influence your writings (whether thematically, what content you are willing or not willing to include in the comic, etc)?
“So, how come we never see any left handed charectors? Hmm?” from a concerened lefty who is so left handed I could lose the right arm and not miss it.
Longtime reader and Schlock fan, thanks!
Given your (Howard’s) introduction of aliens and intellects of carbosilicate amorphs, dark matter, advanced networked AI’s, gas inflated foil etchings, regenerated lives, time clones, duplicated clones with identical memories and more, what do you think would be the first of all those creations of yours for humankind to be likely to encounter or create?