Some Words About This Thing I’ve Been Making • Howard Tayler

I began creating Schlock Mercenary in March of 2000. That’s 18.25 years ago. It’s 91% of two decades. It’s longer than half my children have been alive. It’s longer than a lot of things.

Book 18, Mandatory Failure, is wrapping up. A week from today we’ll see the first panels of Book 19, A Function of Firepower, and as currently outlined that book should run for about as long as this one did. Sometime in or about the early summer of 2019, Book 20 will begin. That book, which will run for about the length of a book, is outlined in a manner that should wrap things up satisfactorily. The twenty-year-long (by then, anyway) Schlock Mercenary mega-arc will draw to a close.

It might be useful to consider books 18, 19, and 20 as a trilogy, especially in light of the fact that trilogy-style is the way I’m writing them. Book 18 will end with some unresolved threads, which Book 19 will pick up. Book 19 will will also end with some unresolved threads, which Book 20 will pick up.

As to what comes after Book 20, I remain firm in my twin commitments to 1) keep making Schlock Mercenary and 2) not launch another twenty-year story arc. We can talk about those plans in a couple of years. For now I have some comics to ink.