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Toonbots review of Schlock Mercenary

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Space opera. Attorney drones. (Mostly) real science. Sentient elephants. A monorifical antihero. Every day. What more could you possibly want?

Howard Tayler is the culprit behind Schlock Mercenary, the trials and tribulations of a small band of mercenaries in a very funny world. Schlock, the title role, is an alien who is basically a large amoeba with eyeballs, one orifice (it's hard to smile without one) and a very large plasma cannon. To date, he's (yeah, OK, so how does he have gender? Yet he does) -- where was I? Oh, yeah, he's been completely blasted into smithereens three times. He just kind of pulls himself together and regenerates.

And when I first read the strip, that was basically it. Ha, ha, OK, let's move on.

However, in the last few months, Howard has done something very interesting. He's taken a comedy strip with a science-fiction air to it, and he's made it into bona fide science fiction! I was convinced of this upon seeing Howard's rendition of the Earth-Luna system in the 31st century, at which time Luna has been terraformed (Howard even knows that this will be possible, and that the atmosphere of Luna will be very, very deep to provide Earth-similar oxygen partial pressure at surface level.)

Check this out. Here. Let me find it. OK. This little snippet from the December 3 strip of last year, a picture of the Earth-Luna system:

See what I mean? The Earth has a ring. Nowhere is it explained or justified or even commented on -- it's just assumed that if you're clueful, you'll know that the ring is space stations, industrial waste, and traffic. That, ladies and gentlemen, is science fiction. And Howard is Da Man, people.

Oh. Read that storyline. It has elephants.

Toonbots review of Schlock Mercenary

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