Greetings from Valhalla
Little Claire can be quite… intimidating. In the same way no one would want to have a stag beetle getting “all up in their “grill”””.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
Little Claire can be quite… intimidating. In the same way no one would want to have a stag beetle getting “all up in their “grill”””.
Percy Peas? The image of Ryan’s last day there is etched forever in my memory and, I suspect, his.
My immediate association was Shelley eating Hamilton Percy’s brain.
I’ve got mystery boys on the brain
Possibly the “nyam nyam” may have influenced this.
Claire should find a good strong man, who can just toss Lottie into the wilderness.
A good, strong man, or a good strongman?
I really don’t think Lottie wants to get involved with circus folk again.
A good, strong strongman man. Good.
Just count yourself fortunate that they’re only metaphorical flames, Lottie.
Especially given Claire’s early pyromaniacal tendencies.
If there’s one place you don’t want Claire when she’s riled up, it’s anywhere near your grill.
Do you really WANT to know peace, Lottie? It doesn’t seem like it would suit you, somehow.
That postcard makes me think of Valhalla, New York. When I was a kid in New York City, i used to sometimes take the train to Chappaqua to visit my grandfather. One of the stops along the way was Valhalla. I was always disappointed that no Valkyries got on there.
Valkyries commute by winged horse, as I understand it.
I must agree with Miss Little that camping in November at ~50°N latitude sounds like a terrible holiday… but then, I have to bundle up indoors when the thermostat is set to 70°F.
As an American who has camped in the UK in September: hard agree.
Sometimes the worst holidays are the best holidays.
“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake”
I think about this line all the time!
Claire is fascinating. Even when engaged and on fire, she’s sensible enough to take her shoes off before jumping on the bed. I confess i can’t follow how she got to Vacation and Camping in November
Lottie’s clearly burnt out right now, and going on a vacation is the universal treatment for burn-out. And presumably in the story it’s currently November, so that’s when they’re going, to waste no time. At least, that’s how I read it.
Yes this interpretation is correct
And camping is probably the one option that’s within their presumably constrained budgets.
Look, if there’s anyone who knows “burnt out”, it’s Little Claire.
Cut to Claire dressed in outdoor regalia with a bound and gagged Lottie on a train bound for England’s Lakes District.
Also, is there a substantial amount of pickup trucks in the UK or no?
These days there are, but nothing as enormous as some of the behemoths you have in Murica
To be fair, it’s not like you’d need a Steyr Puch Pinzgauer or whatever to drag Lottie. A Fiat Panda could do the job, easy, as long as it didn’t have a boot full of bricks.
And, assuming that Tony doesn’t have to fix it again.
Fire walk with Claire. Love how she can be persuasive, Lottie has no possibility to avoid that camping. I don’t think Glen can avoid that too. Let’s hope for some weird, fascinating mystery waiting in the wild for the trio.
I love Little Claire SO MUCH. I want to adopt her and keep her on a shelf like an adorable wee wise gonk.
We need action figures of Lottie, Claire and Glen!
I want action figures of Carlota, Shailey, Daísíe, Gren, and Tom (with interchangeable snake head). Unfortunately I suspect there are legal impediments, or at least persons who will try very hard to create legal impediments.
What they need is a road trip. They should hire an appalling ugly car and then do a road trip to some theme park on the coast, (possibly called Witch World), visiting various friends and relations on the way. Yes that’s definitely the thing to do – a road trip. I may have dreamed that.
This is a very good idea for a story.
Although they don’t need to hire an appalling ugly car when they have Glenn’s ultra-sensible nana mobile the Nissan Note.
“I am going to wash the smell of my ex off my duve”
When exactly was someone with Lottie under her duve? That seems like something that would’ve impinged on my consciousness.
Ronald, this was the previous story, it lasted 14 weeks! I think you’re making fun of me now.
I just rejoined the proceedings this week. Anything that’s new after “Steeple” is new to me. 😐
The previous Solver story was before the end of Steeple. What came after steeple was a several-part Conan story John was working on until he got a cease and desist from Conan Properties International (who don’t actually own Conan, but like to pretend that they do).
You’ve forgotten Nero?
I couldn’t remember so I went back through the archives. It was easy to forget. The guy’s name is Nero and Claire refers to him as a ‘himbo’ at some point. Anywhere, here’s a good place to start if you want:
https://badmachinery.com/comic/2023-01-25/
“It Was Easy To Forget: The John Allison Story” (2024, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Apparently, Mr. Allison, the story of Lottie’s making D-Slide into something marketable, only to have them dump her when some big, famous (and somewhat evil-looking), promoter/manager lured them away from her, wasn’t compelling enough to capture the attention of some. Or maybe ronald came on recently.
So how about a sequel to the Lottie/D-Slide saga where Big Music squeezes all the money from D-S they can, leaves Nero and the guys at the curb, then Lottie finds them and rebuilds them into something better than a boy band? They could even learn to play their own instruments.
Uh-oh. I think I just spoiled it for “some”.
I mean, he was an important, central part of the previous story, and directly connected to the reasons (at least the immediate reasons) why Lottie’s in the state she’s currently in.
Well, that still doesn’t prove he was in her bed. 😉
You can always (re)read the story now, you know. Click on “Select Chapter”, and select “Boys Like Fun”.
Although, if you did miss that story, it’s entirely possible that you also missed the several Solver stories before it, too. Maybe you should go back to “Circus Windows” and read them all through, just in case.
Having just skimmed through “Boys Like Fun” again, this does actually appear to be the first indication we’ve had that he was in her bed. We know he was in her shower, and that she was in his bed, but prior evidence that he was in hers was merely circumstantial and implied.
Don’t wash it. That duvet is a work of art. Worthy of a Turner Prize.
Pardon my French and possibly my ignorance: is duve British English for duvet?
It’s the usual way Lottie tortures and leaves French for dead.
It’s a jocular abbreviation of “duvet”
Any chance that “Greetings From Valhalla” postcard will be available for purchase?
I love the Bad Machinery comments section. It’s full of people whose sense of humour resonates with Mr A (by which I mean Mr Allison, not the Ditko guy, which would be a very, VERY different thing).
Although I do now have a hankering to see how Ditko would have tackled Tackleford…
I suspect, like Tommy Lee Jones, he would not have sanctioned the buffoonery.
Little Claire can definitely be scary. It always freaks me out more when somebody soft-spoken starting raging than it does when a hothead does the same thing.
Lottie seems to be dragging only the duvet cover and leaving its contents behind. Perhaps she is unaware that goose-down is actually machine washable.
Lottie doesn’t let anything bring her down.
She should goose the washer motor to get things truly clean
On the subject of “worst holiday ever”, I’m reminded of the year before last, when I faced the daunting prospect of a November weekend – not camping but visiting a camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau, that is. I maintain that would have been considerably tougher than camping.
(In the end, we didn’t go; we went the following summer, I for my work, my son and his girlfriend as teenagers wanting to learn about WWII history – it was he who asked to go, and I couldn’t very well ignore that, because how often do teenagers ask to go and see Auschwitz?)
I think Lottie and Claire will be fine camping, however much they might disagree with that assessment.
Ah, so the lisp emerges in moments of sheer unadulterated wrath. Okay. 🙂
“The worst possible holiday”? Does Britain have some particular problem with November for which we United Statesians lack the cultural referents? Plenty of people in the USA travel in November EVERY YEAR to visit family at Thanksgiving, which is generally considered a darned good holiday.
Ah, but then you don’t spend Thanksgiving outside, at the mercy of the elements!
Camping in Britane’s November weather seems less than optimal.
American trucks are well stupid. Y’all have access to various flavors of Unimogs over there.
Is Clair’s skirt partially see-through? The shading makes it seem like I’m looking at the outline of her legs.