Author Interview: Howard Tayler

By Angela Roberts

April 27, 2011

howard tayler

Howard Tayler is the Hugo-nominated author and illustrator of the long-running science fiction web comic, Schlock Mercenary. Our discussions with this talented and friendly writer quickly became one of the highlights of our trip to Ad Astra. In this interview, Angela talks to Tayler about Schlock Mercenary, web comics, science fiction, and writing. He also joined us in our podcast interview with Larry Dixon, Mercedes Lackey, and Ed Greenwood which you will be able to hear next month.

Angela: How did you get started writing and illustrating Schlock Mercenary?

Howard Tayler: I’d long been interested in science fiction and fantasy. I devoured The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in fifth grade, and by junior high and high school, I’d picked up science fiction through Larry Niven’s Known Space and Asimov’s Robot novels and any number of things. I aspired to be a science fiction author. It wasn’t until I was about thirty years old, working in the software industry and moonlighting as a record producer, that I read a web comic. I read User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance, and with both of those, I read the complete archives, and thought, “This looks like a magnificent way to tell a story, and, oh, it doesn’t appear as if you need to know how to draw”. Now this is a horribly cocky and mean thing to say about my fellows, especially since my early artwork is so much worse than their artwork was. I just didn’t understand how much work it took to learn how to draw. That’s how I got away with it. I just thought, “Ah, I’ll just be able to do this”. And so I just started doing it and you do something every day, it’s hard to get worse at it (unless it’s golf).

That was my start. It looked like a fun way to tell a story; I’m going to try it. I had about a month or two of comics created, but I didn’t know how to go about hosting them. I stumbled across the Keenspace hosting service, put my stuff up on Keenspace, applied for membership in Keenspot, they liked what I was doing and apparently my sales pitch about how awesome I was going to be, they believed it, they admitted me to membership there. So within three months of putting my stuff on the internet, I had a regular audience of 2500 readers and the rest was I just kept doing it. I didn’t tell you the whole history of it. That’s the first eight months.

A: You mentioned Keenspace and Keenspot. My next question is related in a way… You began in 2000, right?

H: June of 2000. June is when the first strips aired. I drew them in March of 2000.

A: Right. You can sort of consider that period as the “Web Comic Bubble”. A lot of web comics were appearing, I think because of the successes of things like Megatokyo and Penny Arcade and stuff like that…

H: It was the trailing edge of the Internet Bubble, and yes, there was a web comic bubble where it looked like all you needed to do was create content, and advertising revenue alone would support you. We were all buoyed up by that. Within a year, we all knew that ad revenue was in the toilet and we weren’t going to make any money that way. And so most of us aspired to some kind of book deal; we just need to get big enough that we can put out books or merchandise or whatever. Most of the people doing web comics at that point were pretty naïve about what’s required to support a business. Having run a hundred million dollar business unit for a software company, having run a failed record production company, I thought I had a pretty good idea of at least the grosser mistakes that I could make. But yeah, 2000 was a period of unbridled optimism for web cartooning and it really ballooned.

The first web comic was Doctor Fun, which I think aired very shortly after the World Wide Web, you know, www and http were acceptable addresses and protocols, and I think it was ’97 or ’98 when Sluggy Freelance, Penny Arcade, PVP all got their start. So they were really the early adopters. Here, in 2011, people look at me as if I am one of the early adopters, and that’s because, you know, five years is forever on the Internet, and I’ve been doing this for twice forever, and just because the other guys have been doing this for three times forever, they sort of lump it together.

A: When you think about it, when you started, there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no social networking.

H: I was pre-Web 2.0. The best way to do merchandising on the Internet was Cafepress.

A: My question is basically about that. A lot of the comics that started up during that period are gone, right? I had this long list of comics in my Favorites, and I go back and they’re gone. They disappeared.

H: In fairness, a lot of the restaurants that opened in that period are gone; a lot of the dot-com businesses that opened in that period are gone. Businesses start and fail all the time, and I think that was some of the perspective I brought to this.

A: Do you think that was the secret to your endurance? That you thought of it as a business?

H: We grew up; I say we, all of the people who were making web comics in 2000, grew up with newspaper comics that had been around for decades. And we all looked at that and thought, “That looks like a great gig. If I could get into the newspapers and write the same story for thirty years, that sounds like an easy job and a wonderful job”. Forget the fact that some of the comics that we loved the most – Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County, and Far Side are my three favorites – and none of them lasted more than fifteen years. We forget that. We often look at Peanuts and Andy Capp (I don’t like either of those – I liked Peanuts a little when I was younger).

But we looked at those and thought, “Well, if this happens on the Internet, it looks like the bar of entry is low; I don’t need a syndicate, I can just do this”. So many of those comics are no longer around, because people realized, ah, nobody’s reading my stuff, my life has moved on; I’ve discovered that this isn’t what I want to do anymore, I’m not making money at this, and so they stopped doing it. Now, there are some diehards who have been doing it for fifteen years; Christopher Wright, who does Help Desk (Ubersoft.net), he’s been doing it for fifteen years and does not make a living at it. He does it because he loves it. And I think, really, that is the distinguishing factor. A lot of people looked at it in 2000 and said, “Oh, I would love to have a job as a cartoonist. I want to have drawn a comic”. And then you start and you realize this is hard work. Oh, and it’s hard work and I’m not getting paid very much. I wanted to have drawn a comic, I don’t really want to draw one right now. Those are the people we lost.

The Penny Arcades, the Scott Kurtzes, the Schlock Mercenaries, the Help Desks, these comics that have longevity, that have been around for a decade or more, those are drawn by people who loved it, and kept loving it in spite of the fact that maybe they weren’t being paid. And to be fair, yeah, some of us have enjoyed commercial success and that’s buoyed us up. If I today had to go back to work, if Schlock Mercenary didn’t pay the bills anymore, I would probably have to find an ending point for the comic and wrap it up. Because as much as I love doing it, I love my family more. So I don’t in any way look down on the people who stopped drawing comics. Now, that said, if I ended Schlock Mercenary, decided to take care of my family and go get a day job, I would also be writing novels on the side, so I have a creative itch that will always need to be scratched.

A: What is your favourite thing about Schlock Mercenary?

H: I think my favorite thing about Schlock Mercenary is that I am able to take things that I see in society and lampoon them, satirize them, and people don’t know that I’m writing blunt political commentary. Because I’m coming at it so obliquely; there are sides that are almost incidental to the storyline. But, you know, I’ve done send-ups of boy bands and bad health care and big box stores, all those sorts of things I’m able to do with the comic. I love being able to do that.

I also love the characters because they’re what really moves the story forward. Society gives me something to talk about. The characters, who are all now voices in my head, give me something to tell a story with. So, twin loves, I suppose.

A: How does it feel to be nominated twice for a Hugo award? [Editor’s Note: Since this interview was conducted, Tayler has picked up two more nominations.]

H: You know, it’s a huge honor to be nominated for a Hugo Award. Not having won is always a little sad. But I love the fact that science fiction fandom (which is where the Hugos come from) loves what I’m doing. In the comic book industry, you’ve got the Eisner awards and the Harvey awards and all kinds of awards that I will never get because I don’t really fit into that. It’s a huge niche, the cartoonists (I mean, I am one of them). But the Eisners are so big in cartooning. In science fiction, science fiction fans are my people. My people are not comic book readers, my people are not people who buy comic books; my people are science fiction fans and I love knowing that. And I am their people. We all have very similar likes and dislikes. I love being part of that community.

The Hugo nomination, for me, is a manifestation, a distillation, of that; an acknowledgement that you are really one of us. Don’t get me wrong. I would love to be nominated one day for an Eisner or a Harvey or something like that, but I don’t feel like those are my people, and I don’t think that they feel that I’m their people because I’m a sci-fi guy. I’m a genre fiction guy first and foremost.

The other thing that I love about the Hugo awards; I love the awards ceremony and I love the trend that was started by, I think, John Scalzi, which was renting a tux. I skipped the Hugos in 2006 at LACon because I thought it would be boring. I skipped the Hugos with Phil Foglio and we had sushi together. Phil and I talked about how we didn’t want to go to another stuffy boring awards ceremony. Fast forward to Melbourne, Australia, last fall; Phil and I sat next to each other. I was in a tux and he was in full formal steampunk garb and we loved it. We had a great time. And I think the change came about when Scalzi and some others started dressing up. And he told me, “I dress up because I want to raise the bar for this event. I want people to recognize that I’m not here in a tux because I got nominated, I’m here in a tux to honor all of the other nominees.” And that spoke to me a commitment that I wanted to share. I’ve decided that, whether or not I get nominated, if I go to the convention, I’m going to go to the Hugos, and I’m going to wear a tuxedo, because those are my people, and I’m going to dress to the nines, to pay homage, to pay honor, to pay respect to them.

A: You’re also part of the Writing Excuses podcast with Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells. How did that come about?

H: So Jordan Sanderson, Brandon’s brother, wanted Brandon to do a podcast because Jordan was taking a podcasting class. It was actually a podcasting class, a new media class with a podcasting focus. And they had listened to some podcasts like Webcomics Weekly, and Jordan said, “I don’t want to do something that long because a lot of long podcasts are just sort of rambling, and they only have about fifteen good minutes in them, so we want to do something a lot shorter.” Brandon said, “Well, I want Dan to be with me,” because Brandon and Dan came through the writing program at Brigham Young University together. They’d been fast friends for a long time. The two of them thought, “We can’t just be the two of us; we need a third person.” And Brandon had recently discovered that I was a full-time cartoonist doing science fiction and said, “Let’s bring Howard in because he can be funny.” So he invited me and I had never met Dan.

We started recording and I came up with the tagline: “Fifteen minutes long because you’re in a hurry and we’re not that smart.” And it just clicked. We recorded one episode that was awful, and we didn’t air it, and then we recorded a second episode and it was wonderful. Wonderful by our standards; I listen to it now and I think, “Oh, that was still kind of rough around the edges, wasn’t it?” At this point, three years later, when we sit down and start recording together, those are some of my favorite discussions in the whole world. I love coming to conventions like Ad Astra where I can have these sorts of conversations. I get to do that with two best-selling authors every couple of weeks. And we get to have these discussions and it’s just brilliant fun. And it’s been brilliant fun ever since the very beginning.

A: And XDM: X-treme Dungeon Mastery. What led you to become involved in that project?

H: OK, Tracy Hickman and I were guests at a little convention in Utah, a little symposium called Life, the Universe and Everything. And Tracy had been talking about this project he was working on called XDM, which was all about fixing people’s role-playing games so that they worked. He wanted to provide a framework whereby whatever structures you’re already using can fit, but you will have good story, you will have good role-playing, you will have a good time. We’ll take role-playing back to some of its really fun roots. And as he pitched it to me, I listened, and I realized, wow, this is really neat. And I said, “Tracy, when’s the book coming out?” And he said, “Well, yeah, I want to do a book but I can’t find a publisher.” And I handed him a Schlock Mercenary book and said, “You should self-publish. See, I have self-published. It can be done. I can show you how to do this.” And what Tracy heard, apparently, was, “Hi, Mr. Hickman. These are the pictures that I can draw. I would like to illustrate your book, and can I be your publisher?”

He came to us about a week later (us, me and Sandra, my wife, who handles most of the nitty-gritty details of publishing, and really who, if Tracy is the soul of X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, and my illustrations are the face of X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, then Sandra is the gristle and the bone and the ligament and the sinew, because she handled all the publishing details.) Anyway, Tracy came to us about a week later and said, “We want this in time for GenCon.” This was in late February and we said, “We can’t put a book out in that time. There’s no time to draw all those pictures.” And he said, “Oh, that’s very sad.” And then he came two weeks later and said, “No, really. I really want to do this.” And we said, “OK. We will try and do it. We really wish we’d come to this decision two weeks ago.” So over the next five weeks, Tracy finished the book; at the same time, I was illustrating the book. At the same time, Sandra was laying out the book; at the same time, Stacy Whitman was editing the book. It was an insane process of running things in parallel that are usually run in series and so, in about five and a half weeks, we put the whole book together and had it out in time for GenCon.

It’s one of my favorite projects I’ve ever worked on. I got to draw (cartoonists hate drawing hands, most of us hate drawing hands); I got to do technical illustrations of hands doing magic tricks, which is some of the most difficult hand drawing you’ll ever do, because someone has to look at that picture and be able to tell what is going on (the people that are reading this article can’t see me moving my hands around, unfortunately.) I had photos to work with for a reference, but the illustrations were just fun to do. I got to draw a Gollum holding a lightsaber. I got to draw an Ewok and a Hobbit walking together, talking about how “Yeah, we’re basically both the same thing. We have a big party at the end of the show, and we have hairy feet.” And that’s the Ewok talking. And the Hobbit says, “Yub, yub.” Anyway, so, a fun project.

A: Has it been well-received?

H: Yes, it’s been very well-received. It’s paid for itself, which is more than most role-playing game projects can claim. And when I say that it’s paid for itself, Tracy and Curtis were paid handsomely for their time, I was paid well for my illustrations, and Hypernode Media, our little publishing company, turned a profit and still has inventory that we can sell, so it’s good business. And I get to sit next to Tracy Hickman at GenCon, which is a bit like getting to sit next to Jesus at the Sea of Galilee. You know, he really is amazing, and the people there love him, and I get some halo effect, which feels good.

A: Any advice for new or young artists? For anyone wanting to start a web comic of their own?

H: Advice. Wow. If you’re going to go into writing, or illustrating, or cartooning, or any of that, do it because you would be writing or illustrating or cartooning anyway. Don’t do it because you want the money, do it because you have to, because you are passionate about it. If you are that passionate about it, you will pour the necessary time into it to find out how to do it well. That’s not a promise of financial success. A metaphor I like using is the Grizzly Bear Soup; the recipe for grizzly bear soup: First kill a grizzly bear, the rest is just a soup recipe. The business details of having a successful cartooning or authorial business or any of that, anybody can teach you that. That’s just the soup recipe. How to gain a large enough following, how to get the attention of an editor so you get published, how to get the attention of an agent so you can get the attention of an editor, these things are tricky, and they are like killing a grizzly bear. They’re a difficult thing to teach.

Second piece of advice, come to these conventions. Come to Ad Astra, come to Life, The Universe and Everything, come to CONduit, come to the World Science Fiction Convention, the World Fantasy Convention, and talk to people who are in the same boat as you, people who’ve been in that boat and who’ve sailed across the ocean on it. Network, meet these people, and have fun, and recognize that you’re not alone. There are a million other people that are trying to do what you’re trying to do, and many of them have figured it out. And if you’re cool, if you’re a nice person to be around, if you’ve got mad skills and we can tell that, we’ll help.

A: What’s next for you project-wise?

H: Next for me project-wise. Well, in the short term, next I have a book coming out, probably open pre-orders on it this summer, called Schlock Mercenary: Emperor Pius Dei. I have a couple of books waiting in the wings that I need to do bonus stories for; one of them is Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, the other is Schlock Mercenary: The Sharp End of the Stick. And so I’ve got my Schlock Mercenary work cut out for me.

The other thing that I really want to do is write a novel. I want to write an epic fantasy or maybe epic science fiction. I want to write something where I don’t have to draw the pictures. I might be involved in a project with Jim Zub’s Skullkickers, writing a bonus story for one of their “between” books. But yeah, I want to do some writing where I don’t have to draw, because I think I’ve got a time bomb in my right hand. I don’t think it’s going to support me as an artist in my late fifties, and so I want to build a career as a writer. I’m not saying I’m cancelling Schlock Mercenary anytime soon, although the storyline that I have planned for the next eight to ten years would make a nice place to stop. But I’m not going to burn any bridges or blow up any dams yet.

Links: