Principles of detection
Drawing this page was a torment unequal to the final result, but I tried to render what I had roughed out a month before.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
Drawing this page was a torment unequal to the final result, but I tried to render what I had roughed out a month before.
I have found that to be an effective disguise. All my life.
I’ve never been able to pull that disguise off.
Pulling the mask off to reveal the same face underneath
Lottie and Clare are smörgasbowled over.
*Claire
I am going out on a limb here and guessing that Lottie’s impostor is actually Moustached Interpol Man. Lottie’s proof that the presence of the Ghent International students was no coincidence was too much of a blow to his professional pride!
Beate seems to have really great intuition and intelligence. But she also seems to be easily fooled by appearances. Lottie’s will beat her so bad without ever notice her.
She has Micky Maus socks. Does this mean as the underling she never gives up?
According to Google Translate, the Japanese text in there translates to “Detection Principle”.
Well done, John. Well. Done.
“Principles of detection”
I also checked 検出の原理 (kenshutsu no genri) in Google Translate before looking at the comments.
The kanji that gave me the hardest time to type was the 出. It’s not 出 listed as a 5-stroke radical in my computer, and my other radical guess, 山, doesn’t have it in the +2 strokes list (and I’m baka gaijin enough to not know the reading of a first grade kanji without looking it up).
I used Jim Breen’s JDIC almost 25y ago when studying Japanese and afaict it hasn’t changed in the intervening time. It’s listed there under 5-stroke and also under 山+2. Functional kanji lookup; highly recommend!
Hi! I’m enjoying this story arc greatly! I happen to be a native Japanese speaker and just wanted to mention that the term “検出” (ken-shutsu) is commonly used in the context of detecting the presence of substances (as in detecting contaminants in drinking water, for example). I’m going to guess that the great Miyamoto in this panel was talking about detecting traces of evidence during the course of sleuthing.
This whole page is amazing.
Agree. Powerful and well balanced. Really impressive.
Lottie is going to Clousseau poor Beate into being Herbert Lom, isn’t she
Sure looks that way. Hey, John, can we get an animated unusual-colored feline? Or is that the significance of all the Garfields we’ve been seeing?
I’ve learned from Wicked Things that sneaky teenage sleuths tend to notice more things than professional police groups
It seems Interpol needs more wobbly heads (drum riff)
Professional Police Groups have rules about that sort of thing, with regulations and channels of authority. That’s how Unions work…!
It seems that Beate finds it easy to slip into the mindset of presuming competence in EVERYthing if there is competence in ONE thing.
No Beate, they are most definitely not nincompoops. Though they don’t exactly operate on the level of the great Kendo Miyamoto either.
Yet
Nincompoopery is a brilliant disguise – it’s really NINJA!-compoopery!
“Drawing this page was a torment” – it’s complex and really packs a lot in, so one to be proud of, IMO.
Or as a Japanese might say about that coincidence song, “-Whoaaah!!”
This page works so well it’s making me question many of my life choices.
Good work, sir!
It’s a lovely page. You’d think that a page this full of stuff, with no panel borders to separate or structure it, would be jumbled and confusing, but it’s not. The text boxes act as signposts and the backgrounds as guide rails to lead the eye through it.
I hadn’t even noticed. It’s very smooth with those almost invisible borders. Thank you for pointing that out!
Notice that in the upper left corner and lower left corner we can see another person – EvilLottie? also note the speech bubble in the lower left corner. Very subtle, but worth the torment,
Well-spotted. Particularly interesting in that Beate was given a single room, as we saw a couple of pages back.
Maybe that’s the Ideal Investigative Person: Her inspiration to be someone and solve crime?