Foul! But restorative
I’ve never had to have a nip of anything to “settle my nerves”. I feel like it would be counterproductive. I usually just hide in the woods until the moment has passed. I cover myself in a big pile of leaves.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
Natural curiosity has me wondering just how extended Gerlmn’s tape measure got before it was retracted so abruptly
Of course the tape measure isn’t a metaphor or anything, I was only intrigued because we use metric over here in NZ (where he’s from) and imperial in the UK – hopefully he didn’t get confused…
The UK uses the metric system but retains some old, customary units, like stones, pints, inches etc., for specific applications (like other metric countries).
The UK use the metric system, but badly and inconsistently (and can you be surprised? Even the US gives us side-eye over stones,) and with the traditional ill-grace applied to anything that could remotely be described as ‘newfangled’.
Or. French.
I’m kinda surprised his tape measure retracted when Claire threw herself against his body like that.
Well, she did say she wasn’t going to thtrip…
Claire is always a surprise, her acting in the third panel is Oscar-worthy. She knows exactly what to say and how to say it to push Dean to leave them. She also manages to contain her panic until she’s alone with Glenn. Who now seems to be the one in panic. Let’s hope Dean is right and the insurance will pay her.
I mean finding out the love of your life nearly died and the realization he’s probably the next target is a lot.
So people will leave you alone?
At least Claire’s mind is in the right place (being slightly paranoid.) But she needs to come up with a better plan than that rubbish. They all need to wear disguises, to throw Skeleton Lottie off?
Bad idea. They don’t want EviLottie to have any idea that Lottie disguised herself and left town (assuming she doesn’t already know). Claire and Glenn need to remain visible and (relatively) normal.
I get the sense she knows Lottie is absent and that was the plan. Get Lottie in a panic and running off…and giving skelottie freedom of movement to take out her load bearing emotional support. I don’t think she knows exactly where Lottie landed but I’ve now realized Lottie was never the target. The goals to destroy her mentally. The question I can’t crack is why.
Sure, but Claire and Glenn don’t know that.
I suspect Claire’s figured it out. Partly because she’s something if a sleuth herself and partly because of the attempted murder.
Meinertzhagen’s Haversack!
Why should she think that? But letting her know that they’re on to her is a lot!
Ah, but what if they both disguise themselves as Lottie? Let’s get a lotta Lotties in there!
If the solvers still in Sheffield are to disguise themselves as anyone, they should go as Bobby Problems. Who would be able to see through that disguise!
The normality bit will be the real challenge.
The substantiality of the tome in question points to armor, not disguise.
Mind you, I’d have gone with Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. Or one of volumes in the Johnson biography.
Oh I say! Infinite Jest? Nay lass, Ulysses is more your style. Plus it has the added benefit of the full spectral support of James Joyce.
Of course if we really wanted to punish her we’d get copies of Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks. I’d still like to read the first draft, which supposedly can only be understood in five dimensions.
Finnegans Wake offers 360 degree all-around protection, though
Back in my day we’d make do with a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and counted ourselves lucky to have it!
War and Peace? Luxury! When I were a lad, we had one copy of The Stars My Destination among the five of us!
Right. I used to have to write my own manuscripts and print them myself on a 9-pin dot matrix printer with a missing tooth on the paper roller, so it’d slip and mis-feed the paper every half-page.
Sir, you made me chortle, nay, even release an audible chuckle.
You had a PRINTER???
Copy? You don’t know you’re born. We were ripping out chapters from t’complete works of Emile Zola and passing ’em round the whole family, all nineteen of us in two thin coats of French realism. But we were ‘appy, weren’t we?
Aye, but you ‘ad real paper. We used to wrap ourselves in toilet tissue, damp from the ink we used to copy misremembered extracts from One-Hundred Years of Solitude. One roll of single ply and one chapter between three families, and I say ink, but it were really our own blood.
Well, I say “manuscripts”, but of course I had to submit those to publishers, who would burn them and send men around to thrash me for wasting their time. All I had left for personal protection was the edging I tore off the printouts with me own raw, paper-cut-covered fingers.
Luxury…
You had FINGERS???
I love this subthread so much.
Today’s e-books lack a certain je ne sais quois of good old fashioned ink on paper. There’s hardly a difference anymore in the physical protection offered by a long-winded Tolstoy piece and a Geisel opinion piece on virescent breakfast foods.
I got Moore’s Jerusalem for Christmas, including a a small forklift to actually move this slab of words around and a pulley system to turn the pages. I’m immune to small arms fire while I’m in there
Yeah, but if you use Ulysses that opens you up to uncomfortable questions about Joyce’s letters to his wife.
Glenn is a class act. Claire plans to take her pants off and his reaction is to focus on the wounds.
I have to say, I’m surprised that Dean caught that hint. I would have thought it would take a heavier clue-by-four to get him to, “Oh, I should be leaving now,” rather than just switching into Unwanted Medical Advice Mode.
Also, I cast all my votes for sword-wielding Claire.
He apparently has taken a few steps down the road to Not Being A Twit.
He was sent on a course to recognise “the signs,” after all.
And it opened up his mind.
I choose to believe that it’s a plastic bottle of supermarket-brand booze.
Ah, worse, it appears to be E&J brandy. Is it a post-Brexit thing, or the natural love of the people of Fronce for the English driving up costs, but I’m rather surprised a California brandy-swill would be the “finest, cheapest” grape liquor of choice all the way across the ocean!
No fan service from Claire? I’m outraged!
Use you imagination
Sophisticated readers (like me) appreciate the way Claire’s lisp appears and disappears in the same speech bubble. Maybe that’s not enough for the likes of you.
It’s thprinkled just often enough to remind you without making it difficult to follow conversations
I seem to recall this discussion some time ago with our Mr A
I believe that discussion occurred before the Great Reset, and is either lost or archived in the Wayback Machine.
Anyone else think Dean actually has an inkling as to what’s really going on? Also Claire’s take on brandy is perfect.
IIRC (and I might not be doing so) Claire used to be an arsonist, so she might have a better insight on the criminal mind than most.
I’m intrigued as to what’s on Claire’s hoodie. We get tantalising glimpses (an angry blue triangle?) but the shots of her are perfectly placed to deny us a clear view.
It’s the “Essen Verboten” hoodie from a few pages ago.
https://badmachinery.com/comic/a-very-random-factor/
Gloom is still wearing his NUT TEA shirt from that same page, so this is obviously the same day.
Lottie had that same hoodie back in “Fire Inside”. Claire may have raided Lottie’s wardrobe.
Somehow, that second-panel look had me thinking that Glurm was EvilLottie, but a comparison set those horrible thoughts aside. Wrong face shape.
(I’m sure that he has alibis for all the other appearances.)
He was with the real Lottie at the party.
3 comics ago, on first glance, I thought it was revealing Claire to be evil Lottie until I looked at the art properly. (After all Claire did get Colm arrested(?) for arson before.)
“SNAP”? That’s an almost *realistic* sound effect. Surely “RETRACT” would have been more appropriate onomatopoeia!
Zettels Traum by Arno Schmidt
perfect protection and if dropped from a certain hight guaranteed to flatted evilottie
Reading the comments here today – John, I hope you never forget how fortunate you are to have such a clever & literate audience. Especially since I live in a country run by flabby & delusional goobers who think they have the hugest tape measures of them all.
“I have the best tape measure; nobody has a better tape measure than me. So perfect. And long! Mine is the longest. So long…”
“Everybody says so.”
The lesson I learned early on was that you get the readers you deserve based on the art you make – an audience in your art’s own own image – and apart from the audience’s many crimes which have lead to not one but two Imperial Hamper Incidents in the last two months (total cost £12000) I think they are generally a good lot, if misguided and very very bad at guessing who the doppelganger is.
Where’s the fun in guessing correctly? If we guessed correctly, there’d be just one answer and then we’d be done. Boring. If we let ourselves guess badly, then the world is our canvas!
our … canvas … AHA! This duplicate Lottie must be a creation of the enchanted pencil!
Audience in the art’s own image? How transcendental! Art that transcends borders and guessing that transcends narrative plausibility.
Well… I suppose that’s a more sane response than setting DoppelLottie on Fire.
Unless Claire thinks the flame is too good for her.