A lot going on here, so you might as well take your time. This isn’t the Slag Pit’s first appearance in my comics, as it featured in Giant Days on April 17th, 2013. A mere 11.5 years ago. There are lots of nice venues in Sheffield but I didn’t do any of them the favour of inclusion.
When I worked in Manchester city centre in the early 2000s , a club called “Satan’s Hollow” was constructed in the basement of the building I worked in, 101 Princess Street. The centrepiece of this nightclub was a big old Satan. All good fun, I’m sure you will agree, but at the time of construction we had no idea what business they were building down there, so when they started carting in the Great Deceiver, it was a confusing day.
Satan’s Hollow is still there. The business I worked for is most definitely not.
ADDENDUM: Claire and Glenn are dressed as characters from The Lady Eve. Though Glenn has editorialised with a moustache. I don’t remember where I got Lottie’s costume from as it was designed a bit before.
ADDENDUM 2: I have been reminded who Lottie’s costume is. Rita Hayworth in Gilda!
There you go. A royalty-free birthday song. Sing it to anyone and everyone you know. Always call them “Glenn”.
The Midnight Pumpkin was a real object of desire back in the nineties for Tamiya-heads. I wasn’t one, but my brother was. I looked up to see if you could still buy it, and you can. Apparently there hasn’t been a lot of progress in RC monster trucks. But I suppose, why mess with perfection. Rest assured that when I drew the Tamiya logo, under it, I wrote “TAMSTRAD”.
Note: that’s a “Crumhorn The Caterpillar” cake, the caterpillar cake available at Low Prix Convenience Shop. Other caterpillar cakes are available.
Smiffys is a real shop. The first time you see one, it seems to be a temporary outlet, the sort of thing so flimsy that it could not possibly trade all year round. It’s got “that logo” with the sort of smile-tick thing. But this is not the case. You can get a sexy dray horse costume in one of five UK retail locations and at many, many stockists.
Here’s an unsexy dray horse to calm things down. I think, strictly speaking, the dray is the cart with the barrels on it.
I think there have been more cheques depicted in Solver than I have had to write in the last ten years. I do own a chequebook, but don’t ask me where it is.
The dowager! Lottie has been keen to connect with dowagers in her area for a very, very long time. Below is my first sketch of this beloved and important figure. The lad with the ‘tache received a radical reworking, but Bitsy was born perfect, right on the page.
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.
NO PARPY???
I learned a little while ago that in South Africa a zip line is referred to as a “foefie slide” (pronounced “foofy”). Very enjoyable. But I misremembered this fact and thought that a funicular railway was called a foofy train. So from now on, that is what they are called. Get on, get on, get on, get on the foofy train (get on the foofy train).
There’s a restaurant in Skipton, North Yorks, called Calico Jacks, and I am obsessed with it though I have never dined there for fear of shattering the spell. While it is also cajun/pirate themed, it bears no relation to the imaginary Sheffield business, Calico Jaxx.
To the best of my recollection, when I was a youth, Calico Jacks housed a scooter shop selling Vespas and that.
I don’t think I need to explain who Mildred is. I could do it for new readers but I’m not sure there are any new readers. Her last appearance was in Circus Windows. There have been near misses with other Mildred projects, including such long-gestating sketchbook marginalia as “Dead & Breakfast” and “Spell Check”.
It’s all gone Barry Windsor-Smith for Glenn again. I’m not sure which of the friends is responsible for this (imaginary) happening, but it’s happened before. Yes Lottie has turned into a Jocasta style robot but also I am thinking of the villain’s sister in Superman III. There’s hardly a week when I don’t think about Superman III.
