... that's how many strips Schlock Mercenary has just reached. Howard Tayler has posted one strip per day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days per year, for five thousand days, or more than thirteen and a half YEARS. That's a rare achievement in the webcomic world. Even rarer is his ability to write a military-themed space opera that SUCCESSFULLY combines humor, hard science, and dramatic plotlines, without falling into the ridiculous.