Harmony!
Farewell for now, Mildred. Although her part in Wobbly Head is done, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the beloved blonde phantom.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
Farewell for now, Mildred. Although her part in Wobbly Head is done, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the beloved blonde phantom.
one Glenn, 3 wives. 1 in NZ, Lottie, Little Claire.
This has all the makings of a great sitcom.
A telepolycule?
Checkov’s KitKat.
Oh no
Describing the sections of a kit kat bar as fingers… so intimate.
Three in the glenn, one in th’eclair
Mildred is awesome, but I understand what Lottie means. Claire is really sweet when she’s talking about how nice her friendship with Glenn is. Also…Lottie called him Glenn!!!
!!!
A tectonic shift!!!
oh dear, it *is* serious
Is that a heart quickened by jealousy or one quickened by her desire to help a friend?
And if jealousy, of whom?
A question I’m glad someone asked to get this polycule going. I would love for bi lottie to be a thing.
Aw. Just long enough to make me realize how much I miss her. Now I’m sad.
Bye Mildred, I hope we see you soon! Also it looks like we’re getting more Glenn x Claire (Glenaire? Clorm? I’ll work on it) shipping hints.
Glaire
Perfect!
Their future’s so bright you need shades.
… Oh, that’s hamster guts Lottie’s picking our of Claire’s hair. It took me a minute to figure out. Seemed a bit lumpy for snow, and the wrong season for flower petals…
What’s hamster gut season in the UK? Over here it’s mid-summer, but I know many things are done differently Across The Pond.
November, apparently.
John threw the cat in amongst the pigeons, and now the cat leaves, it’s job complete.
Yes, the disruptor.
claires expression in panel 4… delightful in its unassuredness. i would love to see how claire and glenn navigated this vaguely romantically tinged candy interaction
I love Lottie’s face in that last panel. It’s too bad we’ve already seen MiniChibiLottie in this story- this somehow feels like a MiniChibiLottie moment. (In my mind, I call MiniChibiLottie “Carlotta”, since that’s what she called regular-sized-Lottie in her first appearance. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but I’ve come to associate her with the name, somehow.)
🎶Carlotta Valdez!🎶
You’ll know if Claire and Glenn’s relationship progresses to another level if they start sharing Coffee Crisp bars.
Mildew swoops in, solves a mystery, then swoops out.
Well, “swoops” as well as someone on the British Rail System can “swoop”!
A “flying” visit, yet Mildred did not at any time use the zipline. HMMMMM.
I want to see Shauna. And Linton
I miss Shauna, too.
Likewise. A mini series and a small apperance just wasn’t enough and Linton and lottie is still something I ship. They had a nice bit of tension as bad machinery wound down and like I’ve said, Im curious how Linton is doing as he was already drifting from the mystery boys before jack got trapped in an existential chronal nightmare. I hold out hope he took can join the solver squad and out of the old cast he makes the most sense. I mean if dean Thompson can make a comeback there’s hope.
There was a British KPop band on Strictly last night, and I thought of Solver at once. They were… very mid.
I saw this too, and was delighted to tell my parents that I had “already thought of this”
This was probably even more rewarding for you than when Ant and Dec were beaten up by the Robotanian Ambassador
Everyone wants to see more Mildred, more Shauna and the missing Linton. Is there no love whatsoever for poor Sonny? The forgotten Mystery Kid? Is this some sort of long-term set-up where Sonny will later be revealed as a secret villain? The one who sent Jack back in time, who framed Lottie for murder!? And if so, what did he do to Linton!? Oh, the humanity!
At least we got to see his cousin.
Sonny’s gay. Making him a villain would (IMHO) be kind of a cliche. Mr. Allison doesn’t do cliches. 🙂
Sonny does not have a drop of villainy in his kind heart.
Yeah, Sonny’s literally the most pure good of all the (former) Mystery Kids.
tbf, that would make for quite an interesting villain
An antagonist or rival maybe, Lottie charges through a mystery bulldozing all in her path to discover that Sonny has gently charmed a better solution
I want to see him again as him being queer hasn’t been explored yet. I’m not calling for it here as unlike the others he doesn’t really have history with lottie: Shauna’s her best friend emeritus, Mildred is third chair bestie, jack and her while not interacting often were cordial and her and Linton have unresolved tension. I’m probably missing some interaction as it’s 10 volumes I have not read in a decade or since they came out. That said I like the idea he’s involved in it’s the 90s get used to it or if him having his own one off. We saw him start to break away as bad machinery ended, what’s he like now.
Hmmmm… Why DOES this data quicken Lottie’s heart?
Drama and intrigue to follow.
Have the girls (and guys) of the Mystery Kids been depicted attending university? If so, that somehow slipped past me completely. And that bothers me. 😐
They are all attending university, apart from Lottie. I haven’t depicted them doing so specifically very often because I have 16 volumes of university comics already published.
Can a series set in a post-graduate setting be far behind. Panel after panel, page after page, of bleak featureless days spent in a lab or library interspersed only by other days also without feature? And hard drinking, lots of hard drinking. Like university but much, much less fun.
Claire was at uni, in a dorm with Lottie as a semi-welcome guest. She bailed on her program, and I THINK dropped out entirely (but may be planning to resume with a different major?)
ah, John replied while I was typing! This is my brush with greatness for the day
And as we’ve just seen Jack is studying computer science in the 90s. Maybe for Christmas John can give us a peek at how each of them is faring; something like the prologue for that first volume of Bad Machinery…?
In “Circus Windows” and the “Spring Special”, Claire was in uni at the London School of Economics, which she hated but felt obligated to. Lottie’s visit in the “Spring Special” liberated Claire from the shackles of parental expectations, and she transferred to Sheffield between terms.
As of the “Autumn Special”, Claire had started studying sociology at Sheffield University with Lottie freeloading off her. I believe that’s still Claire’s situation, though we haven’t seen much of her school life since she got Lottie out of her dorm and set up in her own place. She seems to be spending all of her free time with Lottie and Glenn.
Your artwork is always brilliant, John, but I think you’ve outdone yourself with this page
I guess you drew the line at ‘vithit’?
I don’t think I have ever visited a restaurant with a zip line in it, but in San Miguel de Allende Mexico there is a rooftop restaurant with a slack line, where a ropewalker performs while the diners wave firework candles, serenaded by a wandering violinist. The food is OK, but a bit pricey.
This restaurant reminded me of the famous Colorado restaurant, the bright pink Casa Bonita. It doesn’t have a zip-line or live, trained parrots like the original Rainforest Cafes, but it does have cliff divers.
I love the little bits of local scenery that crop up in John’s backgrounds – in panel 3, aren’t they walking along the shiny water wall fountain in Sheaf Square?
I was just thinking the same reading this, John clearly needs more Sheffield and/or Yorkshire based readers to appreciate how well observed his backgrounds are.
Because someone above mentioned the introduction of Germ in the first couple of Solver stories, I went back and re-read them. While he didn’t reveal he had ducked out on his wedding, he did tell Lottie and Claire, “About a year ago, my home situation, er, collapsed.” They just never followed up to find out exactly what that meant.
https://badmachinery.com/comic/2022-07-06/
The reflection in the fountain– J’adore!
So some general nonsense that’s been kicking around in my he
Some nonsense kicking around in my head thanks to the comments here….who else in the bobbinsverse would we like to see come back besides the mystery kids? Either in their own serial or as guests here on solver. My personal picks
Esther: While the story of her in college is done and was done beautifully and I don’t blame John if he’s done with the character it feels like there’s a gap in the verse without knowing what happened to her, if she and lottie stayed in touch etc. I’d love to also see Susan or Daisy again but feel that’d require their own story, where as as lotties mentor and Deans arch enemy she has a lot of cache with our cast here.
Sarah: an obvious return I kick myself for not considering sooner. I’m curious how life shook out for her after the night hero debacle. Plus she likely has some thoughts on her sisters life.
Ryan: here or anywhere I miss my boy. I mean he’s doing fine, loving wife, child, head mastership but given both the school was in a weird place last we left it and he’s my faviorite I could use a refresher.
When oh when are we going to see the great and long foretold Gibbous Moon return?!
According to the Moon Phase Calendar, she should be back on Sunday the 10th.
Ryan and Shelley were *tight* in school. I pine for a story involving those two in milk money days