We call that HB in this subforum, Strat D=.
Personally, I find that beginning artists always press too hard with a pencil and it makes erasing harder later. For starting, I'd recommend a harder lead, like 6H. And you almost never need to sharpen hard pencils.

Anyway, Shade, don't shun off or defend against comments such as IconGuy's or Strato's - they are very important. Something to understand about visual art is that it is a field where what you see is always what you get; all books need to be judged by their covers. if IconGuy says it looks like it was drawn in MSPaint, then that means an actual person looked at your art and the first thing that came to their mind was the (false) impression that you used an outdated program. That's a bad thing, so you need to fix it, and while it feels bizarre it's also nice to thank people that inform you that you are doing something wrong.

Most important in visual art is - by definition - how it looks. Strato is right about the process and programs. If you don't have a tablet, it's best to start off by sketching your drawings on paper and scanning them. In art - no, scratch that, any field - you can't expect people to treat your product with sympathy if you used inferior equipment.
Use a pencil - maybe a 6H like I recommended above, though HB (aka #2) are fine if you're light with them. From there, either ink your drawings with a dark colored pen so you can easily color them digitally, or bring the sketch into your art software of choice and start coloring or inking it digitally right away. For software, I (of course) suggest Adobe Illustrator, though Photoshop can do the job as well. I've always found Linux-based art software a bit sub-par, though Inkscape seemed quite nice for inking.

As for what Moonblaze says, I agree a bit less. Online tutorials are great, but there's always a few things they don't cover - you should be looking for criticism all the way through your learning process. As far as online tutorials, this is my suggested cirriculum:
Do all the free Mark Kistler tutorials. Even if you think you already know this stuff, just follow along through them; it's a perfect introduction to many concepts.
Read through this thing on body language and posing.
Do a few PolyKarbon tutorials. DEFINITELY the character design one, female and male body, and clothing. Anything else you have trouble drawing, just run through the tutorial on it.
As far as dead-tree resources, one of the better books I've read is "Action! Cartooning" by Ben Caldwell. Most retail art books are all about "draw a circle.. then another circle inside that", but A!C has a greater focus on what different angles and shapes imply to the viewer.

Anyway, lastly I want to talk about what Strato has against straight lines. One of the most important things in a piece of art is unity - things don't necessarily have to look perfect, but they have to fit in with their surroundings. If your entire drawing is shaky, mouse-drawn lines, having perfectly straight lines in some places - especially on the same character - will only make it look worse. Would FreeFull's drawing of a tree look right if he had drawn the trunk as a straight line? Probably not. As is, your background, character, text, and sky don' go together at all, really. Try to stick to one style - as strange as it sounds, the picture would probably look better if you had drawn the text and background with a mouse as well.

And, as a closing note, shading. Don't forget shading. And do try those tutorials I suggested.

EDIT: Oh, and Icon is right, Snipers are pretty easy to draw when you know how. It's just one of those things, like how unicorns are easier to draw than horses.