Bad Machinery

[This was posted on Patreon last week, I realise some of you aren’t signed up to the free tier where you get the newsletters – sorry for the repeat if you do.]

From late April I am taking a two-month sabbatical from work. The long and the short of it is that I’ve completely worn myself out. About a month ago I realised I was going to have to take a serious, actual break.  Usually, I get a second wind, a wind which on this occasion was not forthcoming. A friend got me to write down everything I’d done in the last two-and-a-half years, and it was ludicrous. It looked like four years work, if not more. Their words: “this reads like a really great death warrant”.

For a one-man show run by someone who lives alone, this is a serious decision. “Never give your readers a jumping-off point,” as I like to tell people. But my health is starting to suffer, so it’s best not to let things get catastrophic.

The next Solver story is finished, completing Volume 2, and will run throughout my break. After that, I’m going to re-run Murder She Writes (with commentary i.e. “mirthful asides”), Monday-Thursday for eight weeks. Not ideal, but I believe it’s been off the website for more than a decade, and it’s been titivated for a 15th anniversary reprint. Re-running it on badmachinery.com probably removes the need for a reprint, we shall see.

Patreon updates will continue, I have plenty in the queue, including a process zine that reprints a whole A4 notebook full of story notes and drawings. It is hefty.

My webcomics career has had phases – Bobbins, Scary Go Round, Bad Machinery, the various nostalgic excursions during my time writing Giant Days every month, and the pandemic and post-pandemic stage of Steeple, Solver and various glossy minis, created full US-format comic style. Six years seems to be about the structural limit of any of these broader projects for me, and I’m ready to rethink my approach, which is near-impossible when I’m in full production mode (which for nearly six years has been all the time).

So, once I feel like myself again, I’ll start thinking about how to go forward. I don’t know if anything will change, a rest might be enough. But I’m too tired right now to think about what I want to do. I don’t know what comes next, and in a way, that’s liberating. I have a lot of unused story ideas on the board – years’ worth. I don’t want to throw them away. And I love making comics. I hope that still comes through.

Thank you, as ever, for supporting me here.

JA

I have a request for help that will not cost you any more than your hard-won influence and social capital.

While I am lucky to have a robust, engaged and enthusiastic audience here, in 2026 it is near-impossible to grow it on a website like this. My work does not lend itself to the virality of social media. This isn’t a problem now, but five years from now it definitely could be. I put everything into what I’m doing with my comics and even modest growth in the readership would go a long way towards keeping things sustainable. Word of mouth is the only promotion that has ever worked for me – it has been vital at every stage – and I need your help with that.

Since the end of last year, Solver has been running on webcomic platforms Webtoon and Tapas in the mobile-friendly long vertical scroll format they use. These are reruns, starting from Circus Windows, so if you’re reading here, I don’t suggest you now go and read there. But if you have a friend, colleague or younger family member who uses Webtoon/Tapas to read webcomics and if you think they’d like my work but you can’t sell them on prehistoric desktop website-based webcomic formats, this could be the answer.

SOLVER on Webtoon

SOLVER on Tapas

Thank you!