SOLVER
The penultimate page. Not too much to say so let’s celebrate with a song appropriate to this moment.
Good to see Little Claire, Bad Machinery favourite and Lottie’s Wicked Things co-star, briefly back. I’m afraid you will have to wait to find out exactly what her wig-blowing news is but we will get to the Great British Bump-Off eventually.
The original version of this page had a note about the fate of John Cloake (left to perish in the snow earlier in the story), in the end I threw it away so we could see Claire, but here’s the relevant piece of the page to reassure Cloake fans…
Thanks for reading Circus Windows! If you want to see more Lottie adventures, let me know in the comments, and be sure to pick up Wicked Things Volume 1 from Boom Studios — wherever comics and books are sold.
Do you like Charlotte Grote? You’re here, aren’t you? Do you like mysteries? GREAT! Then you will enjoy WICKED THINGS, written by me, drawn by Max Sarin, coloured by Whitney Cogar and lettered by Jim Campbell. It’s out on April 14th, 2021 from BOOM!BOX – in comic shops, from book shops, and digitally via Comixology.
If you’re in the UK, you can get a signed (by me and Max) and sketched (by Max) bookplate (drawn by me) from OK Comics with your order. Congratulations on making it through all those brackets.
A new story starts on Monday, the SOLVER 2022 SPRING SPECIAL. I had a big story worked out called The Great British Bump-Off, but I got cold feet about it. It was too long and complicated to serialise on the web, so it has been kicked into the longest available grass. What takes its place is a 22-page story assembled from the ideas I had at the top of my head the day after I set aside the Bump-Off. Under the circumstances, I think it has come out well.
A new story begins! Fortified by her adventures amongst clowns and the Cornish, Charlotte Grote is back to a level of pep and vitality that we haven’t seen in several years. This surely bodes well for the coming tale.
Comics will run on a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule for the next 7 weeks.
You may remember Mike Savage from his Scary Go Round misadventures or his Bad Machinery misadventures. His relationship with Lottie’s mum (forged in the very final pages of The Case of the Severed Alliance) should not be thought of as a misadventure.
I named Lottie’s friend “Fizz” in tribute to a character from Eldorado, the BBC’s doomed early Nineties soap opera. Today, let’s dedicate a moment (40 seconds) to thinking about Eldorado, Fizz, and her new husband, Bunny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P3FaYWxYB8
I hope you like today’s product placement. Still available at Topatoco!
Lottie’s new way with coffee may be a by product of her incessant enforced police brew-making in Wicked Things. She did her 10000 hours.
These are real drinks, I would not flannel you. Well, I would flannel you, but I am not flanneling you on this occasion. I haven’t drunk cheese coffees but given the proliferation of cafe culture, surely it won’t be long before someone offers me these beverages at a reasonable (unreasonable) price. I could make them for myself at short notice, but where’s the fun in that?