To seal the deal
Clip and save Claire’s latest shredding! Collect ten and you can send off for an exclusive Palitoy Bobby Problems figure. Warning: features several choking hazards.
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Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
Clip and save Claire’s latest shredding! Collect ten and you can send off for an exclusive Palitoy Bobby Problems figure. Warning: features several choking hazards.
Comments are closed.
Perhaps Claire has substituted shredding for arson as a tension reliever in her life.
Nah. She’s just making kindling.
I hope they don’t need to look up any ferry times on those timetables that just got shredded.
Presumably even ferries are not so antediluvian as to avoid the internet entirely with their vital info?
Ferries are pro-diluvian!
(Probably already the joke you were making but expositing for general audiences) “antediluvian” is a word that means “before the deluge” (deluge referring to Noah’s flood). If there was a ferry during Noah’s time…. well it stands to reason a ferry is indeed very much post-diluvian. E:
Ray, the last time I booked a ferry to the UK I received via the post a ticket similar to those featured prominently at the start of “Home Alone 2,” handwritten with my travel details. This was post-Covid, mind.
(Please note this is in no way a complaint)
Ah yes, physical letters in the post… the only time I’ve had to write a letter in the last 15 years was to J P Morgan who refused to provide me a contact email address and whose phone service is not available over here in NZ. Turn around time for acknowledgement correspondence was 4 weeks, so I was getting a barrage of reminders to fill out attached forms despite having sent it weeks earlier…
(Please note this is in every way a complaint)
J.P. Morgan died in 1913, so you may be waiting a while for a reply! Haha, oh my sides.
As opposed to Captain Morgan, who retired from a life of piracy to sell rum.
Though some people maintain that J.P. was also a pirate…
The historical Captain Morgan retired from a life of piracy to become lieutenant governor of Jamaica.
The irony of letting their hand-made confetti fall to the floor as they set off to prevent the real thing – genius!
(And the blur of hands is excellent)
The J’Accuse is so strong, it enters the comic reality from the borders of the page
I am deeply curious about the type of car that Dean chooses to drive.
Maybe Lottie was being literal: Dean drives an Amstrad Jalopy ZL.
“Dean, I was merely doing a bit, but didn’t imagine to be so correct.”
It looks exactly like the car the Archie gang drives around in. Yet somehow it also has AI-powered full self-driving!
The Archie car was a mid-production Ford Model T Touring Car, although “jalopy” is also appropriate. The term “jalopy” is generic for an old, unreliable car. Boy, have I had a couple of those!
I thought Claire might pull an Esther and subconsciously tear the paper into the word “DOOM”
Claire lacks Esther’s natural talent as a drama magnet.
“And I ran, I ran so far away…” — A Flock of Seagulls
(hope he didn’t go to Iran; it’s a war zone now.)
I know he’s flustered and all, but Glym really should know better than to take Dean’s advice seriously.
You should read Bethany’s comment on the page I’m linking to here. I suspect it may be relevant here. https://badmachinery.com/comic/2026-02-20/
I’m starting to think Clippy makes for a better therapist than Dean.
Lottie telling Dean he’s going to do penance is so satisfying.
The Pirates of Penance
I was just thinking how great it is that John commits to the bit with the logo on Zambian phones but then flicked back and on the back of Glurm’s phone there’s….an A? https://badmachinery.com/comic/2026-01-26/
What could the tackleford Android be? Astroboy? Angenrheidrwydd[1]?
It can’t be a burner – that’d be Claire’s.
[1] ‘necessity’ in welsh, apparently, and pleasingly close in pronunciation to our thing.
A for Amstrad, obviously.
Back in the days when I had a Vic-20, my mate got an Amstrad and it was the most brilliant and wondrous thing I’d ever seen! The screen! The built-in cassette deck! The BASIC variant that allowed graphics without having to type in undocumented POKE codes!
Bazzargh are you pointing out a continuity error via the medium of a convoluted piece of snark? Because there’s a form I have to fill in for that and the penalty has been well established.
Nah, genuinely wasn’t sure if it wasn’t deliberate; you’ve Zambian-logo’d all kinds of tech for years, and the second phone is a staple of mystery plots. I only flicked back to look at the older pic because I’d noticed the phone today wasn’t just a generic rectangle but the modern style of large smartphone with a cluster of cameras, and it made me wonder if you’d upgraded the character’s phones over the years – not a continuity issue, but mirroring life.
I have definite thoughts on the characters’ phones. Dean’s should always be as big and ‘pro’ as possible. Glenn slightly less luxe but still very new and fancy. Claire, colour is key. Lottie’s phone is inevitably going to be lost or in bits so it’s a disgraceful burner. She often has to revert to an older phone.
Glenn’s phone in that social sciences building panel is a mistake, I do lose track of everything when I have to draw a complicated page and every panel of that one was redrawn at least once – a terrible day!
The “A” is on a phone case, and it stands for “Avoid direct confrontations”
A stands for “Aesmond Aishman”, of course.
Gods I adore this writing ❤️
Ooooh! An exclusive figure! But yikes – I wouldn’t mind if it were just one choking hazard, but several choking hazards is a bit… problematic? * clips and saves anyway *
Sorry to inform you that Palitoy went out of business in 1994 in this part of the Multiverse.
Lottie and Claire are repressing their curiosity about Glenn’s past under politeness. Looking at their reaction it could be very unhealthy for them.
I feel the vapours! Ah, the flashbacks, the memories jolted, the figurative madeleine cookie…
I just realized that Claire is dressed up like Gaston Lagaffe…
What a spot! Completely subconscious choice but impossible to deny.
Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.
Cricket up north…
I had to look that up, but indeed!
Unrelated, YouTube armor reviewer and stage combat nut Jill Bearup was wearing a similar green jumper this week in a video. Otherwise she looks more like Billie Baker than any of our other characters.
The one titled “Breathe. Just breathe.”
Not germane to this particular page, but — jilted fiancée or now — Glenn’s exodus from New Zealand may have been subconsciously driven by powerful demographic and economic forces. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/06/world/new-zealand-australia-emigration-midlife-intl-hnk-dst
Well that’s depressing…
You know, despite his pettiness and foolishness… I do sympathize with being a bit unhappy about his life being endangered but Dean is also a thoughtless, selfish child and a dipshit.
I just… wanna give him a pop on the back of the head. He had cause to be angry, but because it’s fucking DEAN, he just… You know. This shit.
I don’t think this has anything to do with Dean being angry about that at this point. I think he completely dropped that as soon as he found out what Glenn was dealing with. I think this current situation is more likely the result of Dean genuinely trying to be helpful to Glenn, while a) being Dean and b) possibly being slightly under the influence at the time(though I think it’s more (a) than (b), frankly).
I reference that anger in the overall catalyst that lead to the lawsuit to begin with.
but what’s going on now has nothing to do with the lawsuit.