Since I was born?
Christmas comes early for Charlotte, she’s found her perfect problem person. And Christmas will come early for you too, dear reader, as due to a terrible accident of scheduling, the Solver Christmas story will run in the early summer. If I hadn’t done Savage Sword of Susan and two lots of NEMS, it would have neatly landed in December 2025. In my defence (and this may not be mitigation), I hadn’t started thinking about what was in it until about October last year. But keep a bit of tinsel handy for June.
The figure in the window of Smile Lawyers looks ominous
Might just be a cardboard standup of Edgar Allen Poe.
When I was living in Chicago, someone posted an enlarged print of the Sickos Guy (Yes…Hahaha… Yes!) in their window facing the train, and I’d laugh at it every time I see it on my way home from work.
I think he’s waiting for an ambulance to chase.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
Looks pensive to me.
Prescient!
Maybe Bobby would have a bit more money if he didn’t buy labubu dolls for his pack?
(Although I honestly don’t know how much they are, I’m just guessing they’re not cheap because they’re so popular)
(probably got scammed by fakes)
Even the imitation ones are expensive. You have to get the imitation imitation ones to be properly economical.
Maybe those are a gift from a sweet,older lady that’s actually some spirit cursing him.
Around here, they’re $30 per doll. (My children are unfortunately into them).
I don’t think they are enough to ruin someone in themselves but they certainly are an indication of things
They were expensive, but the bubble popped. The resale market for them has collapsed.
He probably got them as an investment property, just in time for the bubble to pop.
Of course Bobby’s phone screen is cracked. I mean, how could it not be?
…prompting Lottie to INSTANTLY change his phone background to that background of Captain America throwing his shield at the screen.
BAM. One problem down! What’s next??
Steve would never do that.
But Sam would!
He’s up to date on all the modern educational literature, and understands that schoolchildren see much better outcomes at schools where phone use is banned.
According to Durkheim’s “Division of Labour” and J. D. Vance’s Europe/UK-corrollary Bobby Problems can be solved by putting him in the military and sending him to the eastern front in Ukraine.
This year let’s have Christmas in
JulyJune!It works well for those of us in the antipodes!
Is it even Christmas if there isn’t a risk of heatstroke?
Interesting she picks those two cases as things to worry about, and not, say, a gang of evil clowns, or an insane homicidal doppelganger, or having her mentor kidnapped by sea creatures, or having her entire world imperiled by time travel shenanigans. But burning sheds and cursed mopeds? It’s Tuesday.
Stopping the criminal wife of a Russian football team owner and the cursed folktale spirit that haunts them from sabotaging the city’s football season.
Outwitting a testosterone-mainlining safari hunter and his city-destroying menaces to public safety – twice!
Consoling one of her best friends after his girlfriend turned out to be a selkie.
Stopping a giant, hope-eating Polish ghost walnut from sending all of Tackleford to a mental ward in despair.
With such a rich tapestry to choose from, perhaps it’s hard for Lottie to pick just one or two favorite crises.
That was ONE case, not two. She’s telling him about a single case (The Case of the Modern Men) where both those things happened.
She leaves out the part where, after much of her mystery case notes and souvenir artifacts were burned in the shed, her response was to have a bonfire in her own yard to burn up much of what she had left of it, leaving her with little record of her whole mystery history.
Bobby is a mess hotter than the sun.
June? So, I’ll get Christmas for my birthday? I’ll take it.
Lottie looks so happy to have met Bobby. Panel 3, with the wind moving her hair and leaves, is so cinematic and romantic.
So I’m going to make a bold claim.
Bobby Problems is the illegitimate issue of the nocturnal escapades of Brian Fitzpatrick. Brian has known many women, biblically and satanically. Bobby Problems’ luck is an effect of his biological father’s connection to The Dark Lord.
Of course ALL heavily bearded men HAVE to be closely related to each other.
Len Pickering was bearded once
Do you think he still feels the mental connection
They all descend from the original hirsute hominid, Herr ßweet
Nice callback to yesterday’s comments section!
My guess is that Bobby’s beard is descended from Brian, but the rest of him isn’t.
Who knows? Brian has been known to sow his seed far and wide!
Well they must be, as everyone knows the beard is passed down patrilineally. Except in a few, very rare cases.
While Lottie helping poor hapless Bobby get his life a little more together is adorable, I’m concerned that it will be a distraction for her while something on the periphery (rhymes with “Lean”) threatens to derail everything she’s come to know.
Glean would never do that to her!
Glerm wouldn’t intentionally, but we still haven’t unpacked the wedding he fled. It’s a bomb waiting to go off, presumably just as things are going well for him again.
There’s also the more mundane blow up of Glemp and Claire getting together i’ve been hotly anticipating. Lottie seems only vaugely aware it’s possible with it being very hard to read if her mentoning Glom to the Clarem was her needling claire into action, or her geninely not realizing Glenn has feelings for Claire. The fact Dean Thompson is more aware and respectful of their chemsitry than Lottie is another red flag if not a suprising one. This is going to be messy and i’m here for it.
I think running the Christmas comic in summer is a good idea. It will allow our antipodean friends a small taste of what it’s like to celebrate when it’s all cold (?) and dark (?) out
We often celebrate at night time, so that’s nothing new
But we haven’t had snow for a long, long time – maybe it will snow this Christmas for the first time!?
I can admit when I’m wrong and turns out it’s not a romantic crush. Still given she has plenty of ships in the bay and Bobby has a lot to deal with as is, i’m not too disapointed. Bobby somehow having a clarna caseworker and Lottie casually referencing my faviorite bad machinery case are both pure gold.
Not sure if it’s because I’m on the wrong side of the Atlantic or because I’m more of a luddite than I realised, but I don’t recall hearing of Klarna before. Another one of those things that has always been there today, but didn’t exist yesterday?
You may know it better by its typical American name, the “Quarter-Klarna with cheese”
per Google: “Klarna is a Swedish fintech company and digital bank known for its “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) services, letting shoppers split purchases into interest-free installments (like “Pay in 4”) or pay in full within 30 days, offering flexibility and control over payments for online and in-store shopping. It partners with retailers and provides various payment plans, acting as a lender by paying merchants upfront and collecting payments from consumers, often through automated card charges. “
You may have noticed fast food restaurant apps offerung Klarna at checkout to spread your value menu purchase across a financial quarter instead of your account taking the hit all at once
First time commenter long time lurker. I had to say that the “Klarna assigned you a caseworker?” panel is in the top echelon of all timers- right up there with “Professor Xavier is a JERK!”. That bitten lip. That flipped nutcracker. My man. MY. MAN. Always a vibe. It SENDS me. Thanks.
Excuse the Yank ignorance, what’s Klarna? Feels like I’m missing a big joke here.
Klarna allow you to split payments for online purchases, so you can buy a sofa in three installments or indeed, a pair of shoes or some comics. They like to call it ‘post-payment’. Or ‘debt’.
If they assigned you a caseworker (this probably isn’t actually a thing) you can assume you’re in big trouble, money-wise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klarna
‘fintech’ is such a sinister portmanteau, isn’t it.
And here I thought fintech was the name of a Scandinavian parent company when it popped up several times in my quick online search to find out what Klarna is.
Exactly same here.
You’ve probably missed it while online shopping, but rest assured the US is not safe from the siren call of klarna.
I also had to look it up, I think Affirm and Stripe are the bigger names for the same thing in the US, but they maybe also do a wider range of things (Stripe at least does).
Yeah, feel like I’m missing a joke there myself.
The worst of bad luck–his bottle’s water is escaping.
…I don’t know why that stood out to me, either.
Keep Christmas in your heart EVERY day of the year!
Bobby Problems needs an old-timey delta blues song written about him, stat. Someone get me Huddie Ledbetter on the phone!
Don’t apologise; if it means we got SSoS out of it, Christmas can come in … er … September!
John, do you take your own reference photos, or do you just ue Google Street view?
Either way, your Scott’s Pantry is on point.
I use anything I can get. Street View will tell me enough to get started most of the time!
That’s remarkable
I just looked at Scott’s Pantry on Google Street View and felt like I’d stepped inside the comic for a moment!
Also I’m hungry and they sell bacon sandwiches for £3.00, so now I’m REALLY hungry
Now I wonder if that’s British bacon or “streaky” bacon.
In my experience: could be either!
Has Lottie ever had a romantic interest before or, indeed, expressed any interest in boys/men at all? I don’t recall; the fact that I’ve been following John’s work since the original incarnation of “Bobbins” doesn’t mean that I remember all of it. 😐 I thought that perhaps solving mysteries occupied every nook and cranny of her psyche, no room for romance or anything else.
You don’t remember issues 9–10? Nero? D-Slide?
Related to Nero, I think Lotties some form of demisexual. She only experiences attraction with a connection if ever. Nero was the rate unicorn that somehow fit for her. I thought bobby might disprove this theory but she’s solely attracted to the solve.
I usually spend a total of less than four minutes a week on this website. It’s not a memory priority. 😐
FWIW, in “Author Unknown” (the Steeple crossover), Lottie referred to Billie as a “sexy streak of whitewash.”
The Author Unknown page in question. It doesn’t seem very conclusive by itself, but maybe it could be used as one among many data points.
Lottie was definitely pash-onate about Nero in the Boys Like Fun arc, though.
Very hard to peg. Like her goth mentor Lottie is very open with others looks. Lottie was trying to be hardboiled but was also really specific in a way that’s either Lottie not realizing she also likes women or Lottie being Lottie.
A lot of 28 year old virgins on the internet have social media profiles expressing their very complex sexual identity, which is presumably based on their crushes on anime characters. I always think Lottie Grote is happy just being whoever she is on a given day.
^
/_\
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Also FWIW, let’s recall the opening pages of Circus Windows. Lottie: “I may get a perm or take a lover, or both.” After hearing the cost of a Japanese digital perm she settles for a trim, then tells Mildred “I’m ready to visit the United States of Amore-ica… I’m behind the curve on love… I can love! I can kiss a face! I’ve imagined kissing several!”
What’s Klarna?
In a nutshell: buy now, pay later. There’s a google summary and a wikipedia link earlier in the comments already.
No worries, Mr. Allison sir: I have always wanted to experience the fabled “Antipodean Christmas,” and this schedule slippage is a good deal cheaper than a flight to Adelaide.
He needs a whole Lottie love
I like that it’s a virtual tour of Sheffield
I love the implication that Bobby’s luck/judgment is so bad that Klarna is losing money on him.