I noticed those right away, and they are great, but also quite easily legible, so I thought there might be something smaller to which John was referring.
John, I have loved your stuff ever since my local Comix Shop urged me to shell out my hard-earned Bux for Giant Days years ago (never regretted it.) I signed up for your Patreon too. But, I don’t understand what’s at play here. Why are Lottie and Glenn/Glym/Gynm so intent on reeling him in? For what purpose? Dean is not a really lovable guy but it seems rather cruel.
I think Lottie’s theory is that someone like Mr Thompson must have problems that need solving, and must lead to other people who also have problems that need solving. They’ve been unable to find problems to solve by other means.
This has been a very weird storyline. Maybe it makes more sense to a UK resident, but there’s a lot of stuff that I just don’t follow in addition to your very basic ‘what are they trying to do here?’ question.
Does DT recognize Glenn from the school? Charlotte introduced him and he’s sort of treating him like he’s never seen him before?
Also, aren’t Charlotte and Glenn living in a building for impoverished people? Why is this guy here too? Isn’t he a full time teacher at what looked like a pretty big school? Why is he living three doors down from them?
You’re not the only one. I’ve been following since the start and yesterday re read every page; I too am somewhat lost. Living in the uk has not helped me. I still don’t understand the guardianship thing – I thought they were taking up residence in an empty building, but there are other people living there? Who share a kitchen and fridge? It’s a little fuzzy
If consolations are required (I imagine they probably aren’t and that you’re accustomed to this), despite not being from the UK, I found it all pretty self-explanatory between the exposition provided and your previous works with Charlotte (I adore Lotte) that the owner wanted individuals to reside in the building for a token rent in an effort to prevent squatters and never-do-wells from taking up residence in an otherwise unused and abandoned building. Charlotte pursuing DT is her nose for mystery/problems to solve (well, that and general mischief).
They’re just meddling like mean weirdos. It’s kind of interesting to see that this is what Lottie becomes, having grown up from a kid who meddled in adults’ schitt to an adult who meddles in adults’ shit. They’re received very differently, it seems.
This part has me a little flummoxed, too. Isn’t he a middle aged man with a pretty good job and no known dependents? Maybe he has a gambling problem? Or maybe THIS ITSELF is the mystery to be solved!
Maybe he lives there because he just loves the aesthetic of living in a run-down institutional building. In general, Dean Thompson’s tastes seem to have only very limited overlap with the tastes of normal people, so this doesn’t seem too farfetched to me.
Having not read his Giant Days appearances, I’m speculating on very little evidence here, but… I have a suspicion that, given half an opportunity, D.T. will expound at length on how conventional property rental is a fool’s game, complete with price comparisons of the bizarre measures he’s taken to mitigate the drawbacks of guardianship living to the costs of ordinary renting, all without ever questioning the basic premise that marginal cost savings are worth all the weirdness and hassle.
John, I really feel that as a devotee of my comics, you should get Giant Days out of the library and learn a lot more about Dean Thompson. He tries to get married in an MMORPG, sets up an “AI” essay-writing system, cultivates a very deep collection of 1990s “bad girl” comics, has an illicit dog, makes sauerkraut, destroys an expensive coffee machine, cultivates some truly mystifying hairstyles, and many more crimes besides.
So is this an attempt to get a good client so that they can get a detective agency going here so that they don’t have to work as baristas/career councillors? So like, they’re solving a big case so that other people can refer them to others? Or are they just doing it because they are bored/eccentric?
That is exactly what they’re doing, but it’s not a detective agency. Think of Lottie as a n overconfident mobile agony aunt/troubleshooter. Think of Glenn as a terrified back office manager. Think of Claire as a horrified onlooker/enabler.
They’re looking for good word-of-mouth for their services. The question is whether Dean, with his anti-social ways, has anyone to give good word of mouth to. Is he the super-connector that they seek?
And it’s not exactly a detective agency; it’s wider but a bit stranger than that. As John said in the comments on 3 August, Lottie is “recalibrating from detective to pure solver”.
If an exterminator finds one house full of rats, it doesn’t really matter if that homeowner is an antisocial weirdo who shuns all neighbors, he’s still found a whole neighborhood of new clients.
Dean doesn’t need to give them a good referral or anything, it’s sufficient if he’s simply adjacent to a bounty of problems.
It’s been explained in rather great detail throughout the story – they’re fishing around looking for potential clients. People who have messy, problematic lives that they can get involved in and get paid for solving those problems. Yeah, it might be a bit predatory, but we know that Lottie and Glenm are both good-hearted people, so it will probably be okay.
That looks to me less like a smile, and more like a thousand-yard stare. Phone has seen some things. Unlike her Luggage, it didn’t get left with Billie when she attended Brian’s special black mass.
I spotted it immediately. The phones’s symbol page lacks a UKP symbol, despite having Euro, Yen and USD. Do I get my badge and gun back? I had also thought the bottom right button was “Acorn” until I zoomed in and squinted.
Ross Webster, Lurpak is a fairly famous national brand of butter. Yikes! I just found out that it is Danish. After all these years…
Don’t tell me Lottie’s plan is to have Claire’s bus woman meet Dean and solve both problems?! I don’t think that poor woman deserves her life to get worse and the age gap between the two is probably 20 years or more. I’m still sorry not to see Dean’s little dog, but you probably can’t keep a dog in that house.
Please don’t let the commenters grind you down. I’m following the story clearly, I’m from the USA so I don’t think you’re pulling cultural literacy shenanigans on us, and–as always–I find you to be the best artist in the medium of dialog in our whole generation.
I joined the comments just to chime in that I’ve really been enjoying the recent run of Solver stories and also feel that recent comments have been much more weirdly critical and demanding than seems necessary. These are being put on the internet for free, folks! You’re not paying anything! As a Canadian, anything that I haven’t understood and have suspected might be lost in linguistic or cultural translation (i.e., the guardianship thing) has been pretty easily resolvable with an Internet search in about fifteen seconds – and educational! Dean Thompson’s surprise entrance in this story has been very thrilling for me, a person who read and enjoyed Giant Days so much I did not rest until I had successfully bullied my partner into reading the entire run as well. Please do not ever stop making comics
I also really enjoy this story and all the solver runs! I’m a big bad machinery fan and I’m always smiling at Lottie pulling an energetic « laaaaa ».
Thank you for your hard work mister Allison.
(Also I’m french so any cultural brit weirdness is welcome as a way to know more about you rosbifs. Cheers or whatever it is you say)
To me, what’s funny about the autocorrect is that Lottie’s phone correctly suggests, as its first suggestion, that maybe Lottie meant to write “Glenn” (which is in fact his actual name), and she completely ignores the suggestion.
Not just that… my experience with autocorrect suggests that Lottie typed “Glem”, then when she started with the exclamation marks, the autocorrect would have automatically corrected it to “Glenn”, as it does, and then she went back and forcibly uncorrected it.
(Also, “Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”)
FWIW, I am almost as far away from the UK as you can get in Canada without boarding a ferry; I had never heard of guardianship in this context before in my life; and I’m having no trouble following this. And I’m known to lose the thread of Paw Patrol plots.
I am not sure of the identity of the barely visible joke in panel 2, but I am a bit mesmerized by the lipid background in panel 4.
Look at the spell correction suggestions.
I noticed those right away, and they are great, but also quite easily legible, so I thought there might be something smaller to which John was referring.
The funniest thing about the spell corrections is that she is deliberately showing it to Glenn.
I had 100% forgotten his name wasn’t actually Glem…
I keep coming back for that wall of melting Lurpak
John, I have loved your stuff ever since my local Comix Shop urged me to shell out my hard-earned Bux for Giant Days years ago (never regretted it.) I signed up for your Patreon too. But, I don’t understand what’s at play here. Why are Lottie and Glenn/Glym/Gynm so intent on reeling him in? For what purpose? Dean is not a really lovable guy but it seems rather cruel.
I think they just want a client – nothing obviously nefarious
Client for what exactly? What is the problem that they think he might pay them for?
I think Lottie’s theory is that someone like Mr Thompson must have problems that need solving, and must lead to other people who also have problems that need solving. They’ve been unable to find problems to solve by other means.
This has been a very weird storyline. Maybe it makes more sense to a UK resident, but there’s a lot of stuff that I just don’t follow in addition to your very basic ‘what are they trying to do here?’ question.
Does DT recognize Glenn from the school? Charlotte introduced him and he’s sort of treating him like he’s never seen him before?
Also, aren’t Charlotte and Glenn living in a building for impoverished people? Why is this guy here too? Isn’t he a full time teacher at what looked like a pretty big school? Why is he living three doors down from them?
It’s not been very clear.
You’re not the only one. I’ve been following since the start and yesterday re read every page; I too am somewhat lost. Living in the uk has not helped me. I still don’t understand the guardianship thing – I thought they were taking up residence in an empty building, but there are other people living there? Who share a kitchen and fridge? It’s a little fuzzy
There isn’t usually just one person in a guardianship.
If consolations are required (I imagine they probably aren’t and that you’re accustomed to this), despite not being from the UK, I found it all pretty self-explanatory between the exposition provided and your previous works with Charlotte (I adore Lotte) that the owner wanted individuals to reside in the building for a token rent in an effort to prevent squatters and never-do-wells from taking up residence in an otherwise unused and abandoned building. Charlotte pursuing DT is her nose for mystery/problems to solve (well, that and general mischief).
Wesley, I suggest you watch the Phoebe Waller-Bridge TV show “Crashing.” It’s an excellent primer on guardianship.
Keep reading, and find out!
They’re just meddling like mean weirdos. It’s kind of interesting to see that this is what Lottie becomes, having grown up from a kid who meddled in adults’ schitt to an adult who meddles in adults’ shit. They’re received very differently, it seems.
This part has me a little flummoxed, too. Isn’t he a middle aged man with a pretty good job and no known dependents? Maybe he has a gambling problem? Or maybe THIS ITSELF is the mystery to be solved!
Maybe he lives there because he just loves the aesthetic of living in a run-down institutional building. In general, Dean Thompson’s tastes seem to have only very limited overlap with the tastes of normal people, so this doesn’t seem too farfetched to me.
Maybe he’s going to be the type of person who, upon dying after living an impoverished life, leaves an estate of, like, 28.6 million pounds?
Having not read his Giant Days appearances, I’m speculating on very little evidence here, but… I have a suspicion that, given half an opportunity, D.T. will expound at length on how conventional property rental is a fool’s game, complete with price comparisons of the bizarre measures he’s taken to mitigate the drawbacks of guardianship living to the costs of ordinary renting, all without ever questioning the basic premise that marginal cost savings are worth all the weirdness and hassle.
John, I really feel that as a devotee of my comics, you should get Giant Days out of the library and learn a lot more about Dean Thompson. He tries to get married in an MMORPG, sets up an “AI” essay-writing system, cultivates a very deep collection of 1990s “bad girl” comics, has an illicit dog, makes sauerkraut, destroys an expensive coffee machine, cultivates some truly mystifying hairstyles, and many more crimes besides.
You should do one of those “See Giant Days #3 true believers” thing.
Do you have a Giant Days omnibus edition that has everything in one book? I like everything being together in one cumbersome volume.
Dean isn’t middle aged, he just APPEARS middle aged. He’s about 32!
Holistic Detective Agency vibes here.
Lottie says exactly what purpose Dean might serve in August 5th’s comic.
“We’re looking for a super connector, someone who sucks other problem people into their orbit.”
So is this an attempt to get a good client so that they can get a detective agency going here so that they don’t have to work as baristas/career councillors? So like, they’re solving a big case so that other people can refer them to others? Or are they just doing it because they are bored/eccentric?
That is exactly what they’re doing, but it’s not a detective agency. Think of Lottie as a n overconfident mobile agony aunt/troubleshooter. Think of Glenn as a terrified back office manager. Think of Claire as a horrified onlooker/enabler.
Well, when you put it like that, then DT is surely in for a wild ride (and so are we)!
I’m too busy thinking of Glen and Lottie as Jimmy Stewart and Katherine Hepburn.
They’re looking for good word-of-mouth for their services. The question is whether Dean, with his anti-social ways, has anyone to give good word of mouth to. Is he the super-connector that they seek?
And it’s not exactly a detective agency; it’s wider but a bit stranger than that. As John said in the comments on 3 August, Lottie is “recalibrating from detective to pure solver”.
(and John beat me to it)
If an exterminator finds one house full of rats, it doesn’t really matter if that homeowner is an antisocial weirdo who shuns all neighbors, he’s still found a whole neighborhood of new clients.
Dean doesn’t need to give them a good referral or anything, it’s sufficient if he’s simply adjacent to a bounty of problems.
Money.
It’s been explained in rather great detail throughout the story – they’re fishing around looking for potential clients. People who have messy, problematic lives that they can get involved in and get paid for solving those problems. Yeah, it might be a bit predatory, but we know that Lottie and Glenm are both good-hearted people, so it will probably be okay.
It’s highly predatory, and I’m entirely unconvinced that Lottie is anything other than True Neutral. I watch in fear
I would like to see more speculation about Lottie’s Alignment. Lot of plausible ways to go
Are you referring to the various spellings of “Ygln” you are displaying?
I think you mean “Glymn”
You sure a pint isn’t the solution, anyway? What about two?
You think they’ll have to go to quart to settle this?
This does assume that anyone without ulterior motives would want to have a pint with Delirium Tremens, here.
Maybe the ulterior motives were the friends we made… along the way???
I like the cheerful little smile the phone seems to have in the notch above the screen.
That looks to me less like a smile, and more like a thousand-yard stare. Phone has seen some things. Unlike her Luggage, it didn’t get left with Billie when she attended Brian’s special black mass.
Perhaps someday we will see a spinoff comic featuring Lottie’s phone, her luggage, and the purple puffer jacket having adventures together!
Now I’m conjecturing that when we see the Luggage returned, it will have grown many little feet and a serious attitude problem.
I believe that’s the emoticon key.
Not that face. The one at the top.
On Zambian phones the face-like notch at the top is the emoticon key
It’s the teeny tiny spreadsheet, isn’t it?
Umm, definition for lurpak please? Sounds almost like some Nadsat word in A Clockwork Orange.
A sort of butter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurpak
LMWPTFY
I spotted it immediately. The phones’s symbol page lacks a UKP symbol, despite having Euro, Yen and USD. Do I get my badge and gun back? I had also thought the bottom right button was “Acorn” until I zoomed in and squinted.
Ross Webster, Lurpak is a fairly famous national brand of butter. Yikes! I just found out that it is Danish. After all these years…
Thanks for the clarification! Lol. Well I wasn’t too far off with the language origin then, some northern lands.
No UK pound sign. Way too subtle for me.
Ben Bishop and his oil-oozing alien pals are clearly in deep with those globalists in Brussels!
(Dear everyone, this is a joke, please don’t murder me)
Don’t tell me Lottie’s plan is to have Claire’s bus woman meet Dean and solve both problems?! I don’t think that poor woman deserves her life to get worse and the age gap between the two is probably 20 years or more. I’m still sorry not to see Dean’s little dog, but you probably can’t keep a dog in that house.
DT and The Nuisance? I ship ’em already! 😀
Well sure. And I can see how it could solve multiple problems. What I don’t see is a pathway to profit.
I don’t think anyone sees a clear path to profit here, even Lottie only ever so vaguely
We’re currently in the “…” phase of the plan.
But, hell, I’ve worked for dot-coms with less clear business plans.
“…” certainly puts the dots in dot-com.
This is where I think it’s going as well.
Well, I think you may have just spoiled the story.
Wait… NOOOOOOO!!!!
Why doesn’t Gllm say “down the pub” instead of “to the pub”? Which one of your 39613495 local idioms would that be?
Gmll is from New Zealand, so who knows what unearthly speech patterns he has brought with him?
I’ve never said “down the pub” in my life.
Is today a special day where the readers just pick on me, btw? Was this pre-arranged? Because I would like it to stop.
Please don’t let the commenters grind you down. I’m following the story clearly, I’m from the USA so I don’t think you’re pulling cultural literacy shenanigans on us, and–as always–I find you to be the best artist in the medium of dialog in our whole generation.
Ditto – I live in Oklahoma and the storyline is perfectly clear to me.
Love the melting butter background in panel 4!
Never, said “Down the pub”? Not even when quietly singing along with Sham 69? (or do I date myself too much) They were on TISWAS, dammit.
I joined the comments just to chime in that I’ve really been enjoying the recent run of Solver stories and also feel that recent comments have been much more weirdly critical and demanding than seems necessary. These are being put on the internet for free, folks! You’re not paying anything! As a Canadian, anything that I haven’t understood and have suspected might be lost in linguistic or cultural translation (i.e., the guardianship thing) has been pretty easily resolvable with an Internet search in about fifteen seconds – and educational! Dean Thompson’s surprise entrance in this story has been very thrilling for me, a person who read and enjoyed Giant Days so much I did not rest until I had successfully bullied my partner into reading the entire run as well. Please do not ever stop making comics
I also really enjoy this story and all the solver runs! I’m a big bad machinery fan and I’m always smiling at Lottie pulling an energetic « laaaaa ».
Thank you for your hard work mister Allison.
(Also I’m french so any cultural brit weirdness is welcome as a way to know more about you rosbifs. Cheers or whatever it is you say)
I feel honour-bound to start a band called Big Bad Machinery now.
By the way(s):
1. Is Glemm related to the famous astronaut “John Glemm”?
2. Please do not take my inability to find the UK Pound joke,
as a lack of appreciation once it was pointed out.
The pound sign is on the previous keyboard pane on UK iPhones. Needless to say I did a screen dump of my own phone screen and traced it.
Don’t go ruining a perfectly good wild hypothesis with your so-called “facts”.
I appreciate the ZamCloud joke in panel 2, along with the autocorrect business.
To me, what’s funny about the autocorrect is that Lottie’s phone correctly suggests, as its first suggestion, that maybe Lottie meant to write “Glenn” (which is in fact his actual name), and she completely ignores the suggestion.
Not just that… my experience with autocorrect suggests that Lottie typed “Glem”, then when she started with the exclamation marks, the autocorrect would have automatically corrected it to “Glenn”, as it does, and then she went back and forcibly uncorrected it.
(Also, “Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”)
What if… the real super connector was Lottie all along?
I’m pretty sure just being born in Tackleford gives you the Weirdness Magnet trait.
FWIW, I am almost as far away from the UK as you can get in Canada without boarding a ferry; I had never heard of guardianship in this context before in my life; and I’m having no trouble following this. And I’m known to lose the thread of Paw Patrol plots.