Judas kiss
Dean Thompson only appears on one page of this story but I hope he will return for a potential Solver volume 2 with a bigger part to play. And look, there’s Persil Non-Bio with its second appearance of the story. I’m an Ariel man myself.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
The horror on Lottie’s face in Panel 3, as she realizes where the path she’s put herself on leads to… Good thing she has a friend with another path in mind.
Wolves, or Dean? I’m thinking, I’m thinking…
I realise that he has the mind and soul of a 55-year-old Daily Telegraph reader, but how old is Dean Thompson? Is he seriously at the ‘dispensing hard-won life lessons’ stage of life?
Even in Giant Days, Dean’s age was something of a mystery, with him looking and acting older than he actually was/is. Assuming he was in the same age bracket as the Giant Days cast, he would be about 10 years older than Lottie, which would put Dean in his late 20’s / early 30’s as of Solver.
Related, I wonder if Dean ever made the connection between Lottie and Esther. Lottie was, though her sister Sarah, one Esther’s friends and viewed Esther as her fashion role-model, while Dean viewed Esther as his nemesis.
Dean was a bit visually vexed in Giant Days. My intention when designing him was that he was a young man who dressed with no fashion at all, like a much older man. Real “Blue Harbour at Marks & Spencers” energy. But Liz Fleming who was inking the comic at the time had kind of a wobbly brush ink style, which made him look older and droopier around the jaw line. My thought was he’d changed universities multiple times so could have been 23 or 24 by the end of the series. That would put him in his early 30s now.
Lottie visits Sheffield in issue 35 before Esther and Dean live together, so they never meet. But I think “chibi Vampirella’ to describe Charlotte was a line originally destined for that issue, delivered by Dean, that I couldn’t fit in.
I see she’s reading the classics.
Judith Krantz’s Dazzle? Lottie? Maybe it’s research…
John, I’d love to know about the writing process behind the dialogue on a page like this. Do you revise repeatedly, honing it until gems like “I was sent on a course to ‘recognise the signs'” and “the Judas kiss of each new dawn” appear, or do those spring to mind as you go?
They just emerge as i go. There’s a need for someone to say something, and I write the funniest thing (to me) that I can think of. It’s all pencil and paper and I seldom erase! There certainly isn’t any deep thought about these things.
Ever consider a side hustle as a speechwriter? 🙂
There’s nothing that can make you react like the terror of becoming like Dean Thompson. Lottie has the same irrational fear of wolves that Esther used to have, hilarious!
In the UK I’m pretty sure anti-wolf spray is just a can of Mace.
Ashamed to say I had to look up Judith Krantz. She is described as a Sex-and-Shopping novelist in the Guardian’s obituary of her which seemed a bit snobbish. Anyway, she’s now on my reading list, thank you John.
Dazzle can be found in many branches of Oxfam and British Heart Foundation. Or try a jumble sale. Pay no more than 20p.
20p for a book in Oxfam?
They do tend to have a wider (and cooler) selection than most charity shops, but I’m fairly sure they properly research the value of what they’re selling.
You probably won’t find a book in Oxfam for less than a pound.
@ Steve, try smaller local charity shops for proper bargains. My personal preference would be a cat charity. 🙂
Ah, nothing like Dean’s presence to remind you things could be a lot worse.
While I’m not sure if anti-wolf spray is a real thing, anti-bear spray certainly is. When my brother and his friend came back from a trip to Yellowstone National Park, his souvenir for me was the manual for using bear-spray which is actually quite entertaining right down to the founders “not only am I the president, but I’m also a client photos.” Also the manual stressed not to use it as a cologne or else it might actually attract bears to you.
There was at least one fairly recent instance of a tourist, when faced with a bear in Banff, spraying himself with his anti-bear spray.
The bear was demonstrating proper use of anti-tourist spray
Remind me. What does Claire do for a living?
Duck delivery
She’s a student
Jam Queen. Jelly Empress. Saints preserve us.
Will there ever be a King Chutney?
Raspberry is the Kings of Jams, Strawberry is the queen.
Chutney declared itself Emperor and First Consul after pulping the fruit aristocracy.
Dean Thompson is reminding me of Bruno. Let’s hope they didn’t share the same fate.
Has Dean always had those guns?
Yes, you may recall the life drawing class and the Ubuntu tattoo, he’s beefy
Is this the first time this has actually been directly confirmed ?
Perhaps!
I kinda want the thing in Claire’s bag to be Mary Poppins’s umbrella
It is, in fact, a brolly. [As seen here](https://badmachinery.com/comic/2024-06-19/)
Well, now I know that Markdown syntax doesn’t work for this comments section!
Yeah, it uses straight HTML, though a limited subset. I believe the allowed list (from another comments section that shows them) is: a, abbr, acronym, b,
, cite,
code,del, em, i, ,s,strike, strong.Dean was sent on a course to learn empathy… and it kinda *worked*?!?!?
Is it because he got to expend so much of his awful personality traits on the bus woman that it opened up just enough room for a tiny amount of personal improvement?
We’ve seen before that, as awful as he is, Dean does have some glimmers of good traits buried in there somewhere. It’s just that they usually come out in twisted, distorted ways, due to all the bad traits.
Missing word in the 3rd panel: “You too will BE able” etc.
be is am are was were been
Or ‘become’! or ‘grow’!
This is something of a pattern for Lottie, isn’t it- having encounters while doing her laundry that bring her face to face with the fact that she’s wasting her life, resulting in a life-changing epiphany, with a book somehow peripherally involved. https://badmachinery.com/comic/2022-06-24/
I don’t just throw this stuff together (except when I do)!!
Apropos of nothing, just turned on the radio to Lamacq interviewing Self Esteem, she was talking about how there’s now Sheffield buses with local pop folk on the sides and they get them to drive the bus (not ALL the time). Her, Reverend and the Makers, Rich Hawley and the Leadmill so far
Just launched it a bit too late to make it into Dean’s bus-based adventures in Green Door!
It occurs to me that the background text in panel 4, as redacted by panel borders and Little Claire, describes Lottie’s current situation. She was with D-Slide, but now she’s D-Fired.
I must admit I’m not sure what a “zzeria” is, though. Maybe it’s the model of the slab (it’s too big to be reckoned a tablet) she’s using in the last panel: The Zambian Zeria.
Honestly. Appearing in semi-public with his singlet tucked into his pants.
I ask you.
Spoilers much! I don’t know how invested I can remain in this story knowing there is no more chance of DEAN-ing to come.
I feel sorry for Dean. Once described as a genius with a deeply flawed personality. He should be running his own crypto currency trading platform by now.
You don’t have to be old to be a warped, frustrated man but it helps.