The Bad Machinery site has had a major spruce-up. I’ve been working on this for ages. AGES. There are a few story banners still to design but I’ll get to them. Hopefully everything works, but I’m bound to have messed up somewhere. I was finally able to discard the ancient ComicPress theme, and I’ve done my best to make things as easy to use as possible. I’ll keep an eye out for anything that immediately collapses.

I’ve had a few messages over the last week about unusual stuff in the RSS feeds for some of my less-used URLS – chiefly, bobbins.horse and destroyhistory.com. I let all my niche sub-site URLS go a couple of years ago. If you subscribed to those feeds, just delete them. The only up-to-date RSS feed I have ever used is the Badmachinery.com one, no matter which poorly thought out URL I might have been putting my comics up at.

This is my last word on really simple syndication (RSS), extensible markup language (XML), and irresponsible domain name purchase (IDNP) for the forseeable future.

My Gumroad page (where you can download DRM-free PDFs of my various books) has been updated. I’ve added Solver Volume 1 (which includes the Circus Windows mini), Savage Sword of Susan, Giant Days: Snooker Could Be Better, and the Murder She Writes 15th Anniversary Edition. Plus, there are three new multipacks – one with everything in it, one with just the Scary Go Round collections, and one with everything new, for anyone who bought the old 2024 ‘EVERYTHING’ multipack. I think I have covered all possibilities!

(If you bought Murder She Writes in the past, the new edition has been added to your Gumroad Library).

I have a few in-person events (in the UK) coming up:

Saturday June 27th – MACC-POW, Macclesfield

Saturday July 11th – Big City Reads: Meet The Authors, Nottingham Central Library 4-6pm.

Wednesday August 5th – Big City Reads (John Allison in conversation with Laura Snapes) 5.30-6.30pm

Saturday October 10th – SCARF, Sheffield (free entry!)

Sat/Sun November 14-15th Thought Bubble Festival, Harrogate

—

The two Nottingham events have to be booked in advance, but they are both free.

A few people have been experiencing 431 errors when trying to view the site. I think this was a problem with cookies that one of this site’s plugins (Comments Like Dislike) was creating. I’ve deleted the plugin and added code to clear its cookies automatically. But that’s why you can’t “thumbs up” comments any more. Comment below if you’re still having issues and I’ll look for what else might be causing the problem.

In the last couple of days something very strange happened, another webcomic linked to me. This used to be common 20 years ago, but now is so unusual that I looked at my stats and couldn’t work out why they were up for several days in a row. So thank you to the creators of Cassiopeia Quinn. I have been thinking for weeks of instituting a new links list to (free) webcomics I like, but wondered if it wouldn’t just be archaic and weird. Once again, our old friend the cosmos, indeed Cassiopeia itself, has sent me a sign. So I will proceed.

[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 wrote back in February about Solver on Webtoon and Tapas, but neglected to mention last month that Steeple is now running on Webtoon Originals, as part of their tie-up with Dark Horse Publishing. They’re re-running it from the start (to the end of volume 3), including the original 5-issue miniseries that preceded its appearance online. Here’s the link if you’re interested!

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!

On my Patreon, I did a free Q&A post that included a PDF that shows where you can read (or can’t) everything I’ve published on my various websites or with book publishers, excepting anthology appearances. I feel like this could be of interest to people who’ve arrived later at my work, or people who’ve forgotten things. I put myself in the latter category. If this is of interest, take a look!