Chapter 16 | Page 5a: Charmed, I’m sure…

Evil Inc – February 25, 2025
by Brad J. Guigar

Panel 1
(Exterior of an office building, music notes are floating out of a window.)
Caption: The following day...

Panel 2
(Inside the office, Miss Match looks distressed, covering her ears. Lightning Lady is also covering her ears. Through a glass window, Jeremy is seen playing a clarinet for Cassie Cruz, who sits at her desk.)
Miss Match: What’s that horrible noise?!

Panel 3
(Miss Match and Lightning Lady continue covering their ears in agony.)
Miss Match: Jeremy has been playing for Cassie for hours!

Panel 4
(Close-up of Miss Match and Lightning Lady, both wincing from the sound.)
Miss Match: This is terrible!
Lightning Lady: Tell me about it...

Panel 5
(Inside Cassie’s office, Jeremy enthusiastically plays the clarinet, with music notes filling the air. Cassie sits at her desk, looking unimpressed. A cobra in a basket, presumably meant to be charmed, looks just as miserable.)
Lightning Lady (off-panel, in a thought box): Just our luck we got a tone-deaf cobra!

Schlock Mercenary Fan Art

Schlock Fan Art for Book Three

Big news from Howard Tayler’s blog:

I’ve been checking the pagination on the next Schlock book, and it turns out that it is going to have room for some margin art done by folks besides me.

This next book is the first 518 days of
Schlock Mercenary. If you think you’ve got the chops, and would like to try your hand at my characters, I’m looking for artwork that topically fits those first 17 months of comics, and that outshines my own artwork by leaps and bounds.

This shouldn’t be hard. We’re talking about 2000-2001 here. I was still learning to hold a pencil.

What do I mean by “topically fits?� Well… you could give me your take on the Kitesfear, the original Doctor, the new Doctor, or maybe a cute-as-a-button diamond beetle. And obviously you can gimme some Schlock. But no General Xinchub, no Jevee Ceeta, and no Legs, Elizabeth, or Andy — these folks don’t show up until 2002. Also, I’m not looking for strips, or gags, per se. But if you think you’ve got a good one, run it past me and we can discuss it.

What do you get out of this? Name recognition and linkage — your name goes along with the picture, and your name and URL will go in the credits in the back of the book. Oh, and you get a free sketch-edition copy of the book, too.

If you’re interested, please email me (howard dot tayler on gmail) and say so as soon as possible. Space is limited, and time even more so. You probably have less than a month to do something shiny.

If you’ve already sent me fan art in the past (including photographs of sculptures, renderings of Schlockiverse spacecraft, etc) and you’re willing to see it in print, please re-send it. I can’t guarantee it’ll make the cut, but I will at least LOOK at it again.

SPECS: All images should be at least 4 inches by 4 inches at 300dpi or better. Usually the space that needs to be filled is 7 inches wide and 5 inches high, so landscape orientations are better, but there may be some portrait-oriented slots as well. If you REALLY shine, you may get a full page to yourself. If you’ve got flavor text for your image, like a title, or a brief description, please send that along as well.


Interested?