Sorry for being away for so long. There was One Last Big Push at work, then I got strep throat.

Getting rid of the latest pile of blogspam appears to have removed a number of legitimate posts (mostly posts commenting on the blogspam). Apologies for this. I suspect it removed those posts because they were treated as responses to the spam posts, and it deleted the entire "thread." Never mind my comments aren't threaded...

I think there's a fix for this and I'll try to set it up so it doesn't happen again...

Every once in a while I feel proud of being around for 14 years. It's no mean feat, but there are other webcomics, and creators of webcomics, who flat-out put me to shame.

Let's take, for example, Howard Tayler. Howard Tayler, creator of Schlock Mercenary, a brilliant webcomic set in the far-flung future starring a carbosilicate amorph and the mercenaries he runs around with.

Schlock Mercenary started on June 12, 2000, with Schlock signing up with Tagon's Toughs for the first time. It is ten years later, and Howard has updated every single day since he started. No breaks. No holidays. No long-winded explanations on his front page about how he's too busy to update... and he actually draws everything. His comic tells long-form coherent, side-splittingly funny stories that involve violence, death, explosions, and ominous hummmmms.

He has published 3,653 comics. In other words, he has done more in 10 years than I will probably do in 20.

When he started he was employed full-time at a day job. Now he supports himself completely on his comic. He has an entire store full of swag, including a soon-to-be-released new book, "Resident Mad Scientist," that republishes one of my favorite storylines in the Schlock Mercenary universe.

Happy Birthday, Schlock Mercenary. And congratulations, Howard, for reaching the 10 year mark. And for those of you reading this, if you haven't discovered Schlock Mercenary now is an excellent time to start.