Talk:Schlock Mercenary

Fans overrunning article
This article has been overrun by Schlock Mercenary fans, eager for a place to store technical data and other details about the convoluted comic. The expected outcome is a rush of new info in some need of wikification, followed by a slower rise to the standards. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Should you think ill of this, then I'd like to point out that the non-spoiler part will stay as good as it was, if not better, other comic pages have stuff that benefits only the readership (I love the list of panda attacks over at PvP), the strip is a Keenspot member which gives it a high degree of notability, and that reading below the spoiler line will have about the same effect to someone who doesn't follow the comic as doing so with another comic's article will do, as the tech is a large part of what makes Schlock good to its fans.

W00t. -- Kizor 02:59, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * This is so awful it makes my head hurt. This information is of no use to anyone.  It's got too much disorganized trivia for regular people to digest, and not enough detail for fans. I'm cutting it down and rewriting it into something useful for the average reader.


 * I'd suggest fans head over to Wikicities and start a (free) Schlock Mercenary fan site there. There you can talk about genetically enhanced chimpanzees joining the judiciary and carbosilicate amorphs all you want. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 00:54, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Hell, now I'm starting to think of doing it. Between this page and the characters page, there's enough seed material for a couple dozen initial articles over there. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 21:23, 17 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your efforts and agree that this trivia collection would be better off in a separate fan-wiki. :-) --Astat (talk) 01:20, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Erm, I think Chupaqueso's are real... I've heard of them before Howard Taylor mentioned them, though untill he said what it was I didn't know much more then that it was a foodstuff. So why doesn't it have it's own wikipedia page? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.95.11.137 (talk • contribs).
 * It is a real food, but it's Howard Tayler's own creation, and I don't know that it's made enough penetration in the popular culture to merit its own article. –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 23:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

As to the current state of the article today (August 16, 2009), I found its length and level of detail both succinct and encyclopedic. I am a fan of webcomics in general, but I have not read Schlock Mercenary before today. I popped over here to find out more about the characters and setting, and was gratefully surprised to find an article that answered all of my questions, as well as providing an example of the type of humor presented by the comic. The page length is appropriate to one of the most venerable webcomics, and the lack of character spoilers is delightful. Kudos to the editors who have made this page what it is today; this page is a stellar example of webcomic articles on Wikipedia. --BlueNight (talk) 05:06, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I added a link to the recently created official Schlock Mercenary wiki ovalkwiki.com. Hopefully that will alleviate any further issues. --Benreece (talk) 18:17, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Chupaqueso in the cookbook
The full recipe, while nice, takes an awful lot of space for a marginally relevant subject. Should it be moved to the relevant part of Wikibooks, and if yes, could someone with the faintest idea on how to do this do so? --Kizor 20:14, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if that's necessarily the right target, but yes, I think this should be moved somewhere, or indeed just removed. I don't think the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates material needs as much length either, and the entire tone could do with a good deal of improvement, ranging at present between "chatty" and "gushing".  Alai 01:45, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Space Opera vs. Hard Sci-Fi
In this article Schlock Mercenary is discribed as Space Opera but in the article Schlock Mercenary characters it is discribed as Hard science fiction. To me it seems that the two articles should be consistent and personally I lean towards space opera. Anyone else have an opinion on this? Cmdr Adeon 16:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure this is a conflict. While they are offten contrasted, it seems from our articles that Hard Sci-fi is defined more by the plausibility and consistency of it's technology, while Space Opera is a thematic description. --Falcorian (talk) 17:52, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Falcorian is correct that something can be both space opera and hard science fiction. Schlock Mercenary is definitely a space opera.  It is arguably also hard sci-fi, but that argument is couched in the assumption that future technology will enable different technologies.  For instance, off the top of my head are some elements that could be considered to break hard sci-fi "rules": teraport technology, gateway technology, and shields.  However, each of these things is (fairly) easily explained away by applying certain interpretations of Einsteinian or quantum physics theory.  In summary, Schlock Mercenary can be considered hard science fiction because the author treats it as such, taking the time to explain the "why" in addition to the "what" of the technology that the comic explores. Thanks, Dan Slotman 23:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Pic available
I took the pic to the right at a recent convention, and I think it should be used somewhere in this article. I'm not sure where the best place would be, though. Any ideas? Perhaps a separate article about Howard should be made? ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihon joe 04:39, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sure it will fit into the article somewhere. I have the impression that it's even more difficult to keep an article about a web cartoonist from deletion than one about a web cartoon. TCC (talk) (contribs) 05:03, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * For future reference: Pretty much, but the rationale for that is one that I can't dispute. To wit, if "he does a webcomic" is more or less all we can say about a person, why wouldn't we be better off by just mentioning him under that webcomic? --Kizor 14:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

January 20 Reversion
I was reading the article and noticed that it had a huge gap. A large portion of the article was deleted causing it to skip from part way into the technology section to near the end of the recipe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.62.132.101 (talk) 10:16, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Self-sufficient?
I was under the impression that Taylor and his family were supported by Schlock Mercenary, with the result that it should be listed on the List of self-sufficient webcomics. I am not certain of this though and I do not have any source. Anyone else know? --zandperl (talk) 20:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair to say that Schlock is self sufficient.

"I currently work full-time as a cartoonist, writing, drawing, and coloring Schlock Mercenary, as well as doing comics for assorted corporate clients." http://www.schlockmercenary.com/schlock_author.html

There is no argument that Howard is a full time cartoonist, but he does contract work for "corporate clients". Thoughtful Goose (talk) 03:37, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Rule 37
From what I can tell, perseveration is a form of following Rule 37. 76.191.157.25 (talk) 06:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Chupaqueso site gone
The listed (and previously official) chupaqueso website appears to have had its domain name expire, as it is no longer pointing to anything at all. In fact, it is no longer resolving to anything.

I don't know when this happened or why, or how the page should be updated to reflect this, so could someone more experienced please update the page?

Raceimaztion (talk) 09:51, 24 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, the domain name is still registered under Jay Maynard and expires 30-nov-2012 (not expired according to the registrant godaddy.com, so the server may just be temporarily down. The archive of the site still exists at http://web.archive.org/web/20110207102613/http://chupaqueso.com/ . If the problem persists many days I suppose the external link could be removed. -84user (talk) 15:34, 24 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Update (Revisiting this over a year later.) It appears the chupaqueso.com website server has been dead for over a year, but the domain is still registered to Jay Maynard: its registration is valid until 2013-12-01. However, such a dead link cannot be of any use to readers so I have replaced it with a link to the last archived copy. -84user (talk) 15:38, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Board Game
I'm not sure where to put info about the board game, so I stuck it at the end of Collections. Feel free to put it in a better place (also check out the game - it's fun!). rewinn (talk) 06:20, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

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Domain expired?
Has the domain expired (2015/10/25) or something? Seems to be on a domain parking (dotster-inc) website now. 80.176.229.143 (talk) 16:39, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The site works fine now. A post on the site's Facebook group mentioned DNS issues.--  Auric    talk  22:34, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

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