Pre-orders On Hold, Ovalkwiki Now Open
After careful consideration (and a closer look at the shipping manifest) we've decided to open pre-orders for Schlock Mercenary: Emperor Pius Dei in two weeks, on Monday, June 27th. Yes, that's a full fifteen days after the 11th anniversary of the strip (which is today,) and yes, this announcement sort of hijacks the "Hurray for Eleven Years" slot, which is why it is often a good idea to not tie product releases to other things.
Hurray for eleven years, though. By way of celebration, we are pleased to throw wide the doors at Ovalkwiki.com.
Ovalkwiki is, as emblazoned on the image above, the official encyclopedia of all things Schlock Mercenary. And you Schlockfen (that's the SF-jargon plural of "Schlock fans") get to help write it. With me. I've already fleshed out a few articles with details from my private wiki -- things that might as well be canon because they already inform the progress of the story and the characters -- which means that yes, Ovalkwiki contains more than just fan-brewed chocolaty goodness. There's some expensive imported stuff in there too.
(Editorial Note: I'm not sure the above metaphor works, but I'm leaving it for now. We can clean it up later if we need to.)
(Addendum to note: I'm not sure the wiki meta-humor works in the previous parenthetical. This particular style of editorial commentary is Not Notable.)
Last week at this time there was no Ovalkwiki beyond a parked domain name I've had for six years. Tuesday the site sprang into being with the organizational help of Jason "FreeRangeOyster" Dyck, a local fan who has helped with book shipping in the past. Thursday it began to fill up with content thanks to a few early adopters to whom I tweeted the URL. Today, June 12th, it looks and feels like the Schlock Mercenary website under the expert stylesheet ministrations of yet another volunteer, Lee Falin.
But there's plenty of content still to be created. Do you think you know the Schlockiverse? Do you want to know it better? "Ovalkwiki.com, now with more Schlock than Wikipedia!"