You weren’t trained up for this
One of my favourite parts of living where I now live is riding the bus through Headingley, where many Leeds students live, and enjoying the fashion safari. The way lads look now is just priceless. The proliferation of Kentucky mountain mullets, the fashion confusion, it’s beyond brilliant. Paul Mescal has a lot to answer for. I could have given Jack a terrible little moustache but it was just too horrible when I tested it.
What has Blossom Cooper done to her foot? I think this question will be answered. There’s a character you never thought you’d see again.
Indeed, I did not expect to see Blossom! Interested to find out how she’s doing, though.
I also did not expect Sonny to spend his summer re-enacting the movie Duel.
I’m headcanoning this as Sonny being chased by a Super Derek themed truck, much like the Green Goblin in Maximum Overdrive.
Also Jack looks… younger than he did in the 90s so perhaps time travel hijinks are still in his future
Based on the next page, I’ll correct my sentence: “Interested to see how they’re doing.”
In panel 1, I espy a certain fishy hand over to the left.
Wonder what Gloom thinks of that
Spoiler: it’s just the hand. Mounted on a plaque (there was an accident). World’s WORST novelty pub decor.
Itās okay. Heāll grow a new one.
Worst? BEST!
I would love to see all of the characters that have disappeared over the years. Erin, Amy, Ryan, Esther, Daisy, Susan, Ed, McGraw.
Erin and The Boy had an adventure along those lines, a while back.
I mean we recently focused on Esther in the present day (Albeit with time travel) via NEMS 1968
It all depends on the kind of story John wants to tell
I was expecting to see Blossom again! Her secret identity was on the tree. (I’m guessing she hurt her foot flipping her rig.)
It’s the Ragged Stoat I was surprised to see again.
(John, of course, sneakily revealed Blossom’s secret identity in the comments a while back.)
I think you may be onto something.
I definitely did not expect Sonny to become a truck driver, that’s for sure. Not sure what path I would have expected him to take, but… that wasn’t it.
But at least we get a (partial) Desmond appearance and a Super Derek mention. Really, what more can one ask for out of life?
(Also, for some reason, I would think Linton would be the one to try for the terrible ‘stache, but it’s probably best neither he nor Jack did it.)
He says “It WAS a stressful job…”- I think it was just a summer job that he’s now finished with. Next summer he’ll probably be test piloting jet fighters, or wrestling alligators.
What is written on Blossom’s t-shirt?
Enquiring minds need to know…
JUGS
GUNS
Fits the letters revealed.
LUGE
FUNK
It’s probably a lesser known Indie band that John likes
FUCK
TRUMP ?
DUCK
LUNGS
DUCK
HUNT
Thank Mordawwa. As an Aussie all I could see was two very crude words that seemed quite out of character (for John that is, not Blossom).
Linton and Blossom?
Not like it hasn’t happened before.
Oh man, I can’t tell you how grear it feels to see all of the Tackleford Mystery-Solving Teens reunited like this. Definitely Sonny as a truck driver is the biggest surprise after Blossom’s surprise show up. Also it looks like Sonny’s been working out quite a bit.
I do like the idea though of Sonny writing a travelog as a sort of gentleman trucker throughout the UK and Europe.
I was a truck driver, albeit not in the UK or Europe. I can tell you with some assurance there is no such thing as a “Gentleman Trucker,” although there are some pretty decent guys. There’s also plenty of absolute douche-knuckles. Make of that what you will.
I’m sure he could make it work if he uses the pen name:
Sonny Cravassen, Gentleman Trucker
“Douche-knucles”?
Time for soup!
The whole crew! š„²
Des hand upper left panel one?
Then Lotte arrives after Blossom, and BOOM goes the dynamite!
It really is so good to see all our old friends together again like this. I can’t wait for Lottie to complete the “Tackleford Mystery Kids” set. Poor Glenn looks like he sees Claire as his familiar, comfortable anchor amidst this sea of stranger (yes, he’s met Mildred before, but none of the others). I’ve been there, Glenn. I can relate.
That should be “strangers”, plural, not “stranger”, singular.
You were right the first time. There is no stranger sea than Tackleford!
I don’t think it’s the strangeness that’s the problem for Glenn, though. I think it’s the unfamiliar social situation, surrounded by people he doesn’t know, who all know each other really well. I stand by my correction.
Weāve all been Craven to see Sonny in the present day
Blossom has a nice patch on her hoodie. Seems to be cthulhu-esque.
Maybe is was one of the Rev’s fight’n’ hoodies he left behind at the charity shop when he went back to his calling.
I wasn’t expecting to be so glad to see the whole gang back together
Me neither. Especially with Blossom, who has gained a neck.
Oh, Jack seems alright.
He’s been replaced by a robot doppleganger.
A sexy robot doppleganger!
Jack has a closet full of Jack robots to take his place any time he’s been marooned in the past or something. Just like Silver Age Superboy.
They’re actually just mannequins wearing headphones.
So action-adventure truck driver, action-adventure quilter, detective/career advisor, time travel traveler, time travel scientist and Linton.
C’mon Linton, I’m pulling for you.
I still like a long ago comment casting these folks as the Justice League, including Green Linton.
Oh man, I wanna play. My vote’s Green Linton, Aquawickle, the Wonder Twins, The Finch, Batgrote and Claire the Girl Wonder (or, for a deeper DC cut, Nightwing and Flamebird).
Yay! The gang is back and especially Jack! My favorite of the mystery kids
I was just thinking about Blossom the other day! I’m so glad she’s back. I love characters who are jerks!
Also I’m deeply intrigued at Jack’s presence. How did his 90s adventure end? Or did it? Is that a robot/clone? Has he not gone to the 90s yet and his disappearance was unrelated? If that is him and he is back I’m glad he’s embracing the present with his terrible hair.
Maybe he’s just back for the holidays and will return to the 90s in the new (so to speak) year.
Based on Shelley saying, “Say hi to Jack for me”, it’s probably safe to assume this is after his 90s adventure. (There’d be little reason for Shelley to single out Jack like that otherwise.)
Due to wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, Shelley already had her encounter with Jack in the 90s whether or not he’s gone back there yet.
Yeah, I’m in the “this Jack hasn’t gone there yet but this Shelley has seen him long ago” camp
There was a line in wobbly head, where Linton implied no one had heard from Jack in a while so I assume that was his 90s jaunt.
The thing about time travel is you can be gone awhile and come back at the same time you left.
Not lovin’ 2/3 of the mystery boys having undershaves/mullets, but I suppose that is just the way with the youth now. At least Blossom seems to be pulling it off better.
Blossom is seriously rocking the new look.
Agreed; that is a great look for Blossom.
Many terrible masculine fashions become powerful when applied by the ladyfolk. I assume Blossom’s been listening to a lot of Bikini Kill lately, as it were.
John, we both grew up in the 1980s/1990s. Itās not like our generation hasnāt had some fashion confusion.
BLOSSOM! Can’t believe to see her again and she’s still alive, with just a little foot problem. She looks so cool! Sonny’s summer job sounds like something perfect for him. The only problem is, this seems to be a bit too much for Glenn. He seems to be uncomfortable among Claire’s old friends…poor thing!
I think Gerd is also 3-5 years older than Claire and her friends. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but the difference between 20 and 24 can be stark.
It could be the fishman / other exotic patrons that are throwing him off
Early on, 19-year-old Lottie said that the average of her age and Glwnn’s “exceeds 21, just“, which I interpret to mean he was 23. He’s had a birthday since then, at the beginning of “Wobbly Head”, on or around Halloween.
The mystery kids are 19ā20. Mildred and Shauna are 20 already. Sonny’s 20th birthday is tomorrow. Lottie’s still 19 for another seven months. The others’ birthdays have never been pinned down.
(Incidentally, that was a legit typo. I’d intended to spell his name correctly, but fate dictated otherwise.)
I’m totally there for the lorry-based spin-off.
Sonny Craven is… the Lorryman.
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
It’s an old Leeds based reference, but it checks out.
She’s still a very angry cloud.
Calling it now: Blossom hurt her leg up against Fizz in a roller derby match.
Fragments of the roller rink were found as far afield as Penge.
I’ve never been, but I hear it’s very nice.
It is that, but a fair hitch from Brentford.
Fizz being more powerful than Blossom would be so awesome.
Thank God Jack is fine.
It’s so nice to see the Mystery Kids back together.
I feel like all the mystery boys went through a EuroTruck phase. Sonny’s just the one who stuck with it after having to get an 18 wheeler through Dubrovnik’s Old Town.
Enjoying Blossom’s Twin Six style patch.
See, I have an entirely different take on it sunny with his very posh background, and his incredibly good heart somehow got himself involved completely innocently in a Wages of Fear type truck misadventure (also Iām so happy they are all back together)
Is that a manifestation of the Sesh Gremlin in the lower left corner of the first panel?
The whole gang back together again. Merry Christmas to us all!
It really does my heart good to see everyone together again šššššš You have made this poor old 32-year-old very happy today!
I wish I knew who the characters showing up were. I only read through all of these quite recently, but with my neurospicy brain, I don’t remember most of them without being reminded. Would love something like “we first saw them /here/” with a link. It usually doesn’t take much to remember, but from the comments, most people don’t seem to have my issue.
These are the main characters from Bad Machinery (the series about Lottie and her friends solving mostly-paranormal mysteries when they were kids)- Sonny, Linton , Jack, Shauna, and Mildred (Lottie hasn’t arrived yet)- as well as Blossom Cooper, who was also a character in some of the stories in that series. Here’s some information about the Tackleford Mystery Kids: https://scarygoround.com/badmachinery/characters.html
I wasn’t clear, I meant that I read all of the comics, Bad Machinery, Scary Go Round, Giant Days, all of em. But I have a hard time remembering secondary characters, partly AuDHD, partly a consequence of binging.
The thing is, none of the characters on this page, except Glenn, originated in Solver. This (and this whole story in general) is fanservice for those of us who read John’s previous comics, which there have been a bunch of, mostly set in the same continuity as Solver, and largely in Tackleford, which is Lottie and Claire’s hometown, and where we are now. Most of them are available under the “My Old Comics” link up in the header.
The link on my name here is a timeline showing how the various comics fit together, as best I can work it out. It started with Bobbins, back in 1998. None of these characters go back that far, but Shelley, who we saw on the last couple pages, and who guest-starred in “Author Unknown”, goes alllll the way back to the very first Bobbins strip… which she is now the only surviving character from. Bobbins followed the misadventures of Shelley and company working for the Tackleford events magazine City Limit. Bobbins eventually morphed into Scary Go Round, which started out focusing on a couple of minor characters introduced towards the end of Bobbins, but who eventually got sidelined and the main Bobbins cast, with some additions, took back over. Lottie and her BFF Shauna ā the blonde in the pink cap ā were introduced as little kids towards the end of Scary Go Round, and the boys here in the last SGR story.
The SGR ended, and Bad Machinery picked up after a three-year timeskip. Bad Machinery followed Lottie, Shauna, and the others here through their time at grammar school, where they solved paranormal mysteries. Shauna we met briefly in “Wobbly Head” and “Holiday Surprise 2022”, but she has history with Lottie going all the way back to SGR. Mildred guest-starred in the proto-Solver story “Circus Windows”, but was introduced at the beginning of Bad Machinery, and became Lottie’s alternate BFF. The boys ā Sonny, the blond, who’s Mildred’s cousin, and the goodest boy; Jack, the dark-haired one, who’s an audiophile, dated Shauna for a bit when they were young, and recently got stuck in the ’90s with Shelley; and Linton, who’s the intense one and son of the Tackleford police chief ā started out as rivals, then joined into a unified mystery team, as the main cast of Bad Machinery. Claire was a later addition, who first appeared in “The Case of the Simple Soul”, and never quite made main character status during Bad Machinery. She was formally added to the mystery team in the new Bobbins story “Hard Yards”. The other girl is Blossom Cooper, who was introduced in “The Case of the Lonely One” and also had a major role in “The Case of the Missing Piece”. She’s been an antagonist more than an ally, and was the source of friction between Lottie and Shauna. She’s very strong and very nerdy. The shaved sides are new, and a huge improvement on her look.
There were also new Bobbins stories that ran parallel to Bad Machinery, following the original Bobbins and SGR characters, with crossovers from the mystery kids. They started out as a weekends and intermissions kind of thing, and eventually got their own lengthy stories. Then there was bobbins.horse (don’t visit that; it got taken over by squatters), which revisited the original Bobbins period, but with much better art and writing. And there was the print series Giant Days, which, though they were published later, fit into that three-year gap between SGR and Bad Machinery. Giant Days followed Esther from SGR, who we saw recently in “NEMS”, off to uni in Sheffield.
Then there was another print series, Wicked Things, which was sort of proto-Solver. It got canceled, and kind of turned into Solver, and the loose plot was wrapped up here in “Wobbly Head”. There was also the print series Steeple, which also went to web, and was originally advertised as in the same continuity but separate, but ended up crossing over with proto-Solver and SGR/Bobbins in “Author Unknown”.
I think that covers most of the major stuff. And I have no idea if this essay will actually post.
An excellent summary for all of the fully in-panel characters on this page.
But I feel like something should also be said about Desmond Fishman, who sort-of kind-of appears on this comic page as well (if that really is his hand in panel 1). I think Desmond first appeared in Scary-go-Round. There were a few stories that revolved around him in SGR. He was an occasionally recurring character in various projects since then as well. He was a bizarre mermaid/human hybrid who thought he was an ordinary person and kept trying to act like one, but wasn’t very good at it. At some point he inherited a lot of money and a huge mansion, where he then lived with his elderly butler Fotheringay. I don’t think he’s been a major character in any stories for a while now, but he regularly shows up in background cameos like this one.
I actually made a follow-up post that went into that and some other stuff, but it hasn’t appeared. I’m not sure if it got eaten by something, or if it’s waiting at John’s mercy in the moderation queue.
If you post posts as long as that one they don’t even end up in moderation, they go straight to spam. I have dug it out.
Thank you, sir.
I feel a bit bad about not making it clearer, but I meant that I read /all of them/ recently. As in all of Johns available comics. So, I already know vaguely where the characters are from. Someone else linked to a strip with Blossom and seeing them in context made me remember them. It’s just an AuDHD thing. I do remember the boys but was unsure about Shelley, however, I knew vaguely where she was from. It is probably also a consequence of having binged all of the comics in a row over a couple of weeks, they tend to run together a bit. XD …I wonder if it helps to reread all the comics again?
Oh yeah, we saw Linton, briefly, and Sonny, even more briefly in flashback in the flashback, in “Wobbly Head”. Jack was mentioned, but didn’t appear due to, as previously noted, being stuck in the ’90s with Shelley in “It’s the Nineties, Get Used to It”.
Blossom was drummer in Claire’s band, Go-Kart Conspiracy, along with Lottie (guitar) and Shauna (lead singer). Lottie was opposed to her addition, but Claire overruled her. She hasn’t appeared since Go-Kart Conspiracy’s first gig, at Peggy’s baby shower at the end of “Hard Yards”. (Well, she had a minor part in the apocryphal story “Wen-Tack”.)
Mayor James Mayor, who we saw in the Tackleford promotional video at the beginning of the story, was an actual character in Scary Go Round, and Shelley worked as his assistant for a fair bit of SGR. Tim Jones, who was also mentioned in that segment, was one of the other characters who was in that first Bobbins strip with Shelley. Tim defeated Mayor in a mayoral election probably shortly after Shelley made that video, but was himself exiled to Wales after losing a mad science contest, and replaced as mayor by Dai Davies, the mad scientist who defeated him. Davies in turn reverted to atavism, and, due to quirks in Tackleford’s bylaws, was himself replaced by Mayor Mayor, who later cracked under pressure and was removed from office, after which Tackleford was forbidden from having any more mayors.
Tim is also the father of Shelley’s daughter, Lottie’s goddaughter, Peggy. He has reportedly blown himself up off-panel in the four years since we saw him last.
The scaly green hand at the edge of the first panel belongs to Desmond Fishman, the 19th Lord Sunderland, who’s something of a celebrity. We’ve seen him in doll form and such in various strips. We first met Shauna and Lottie when Des ran away from where he was staying in Shelley’s care and ended up taking refuge at Shauna’s house, and Shauna invited Lottie over to see “the biggest frog in England or the world”. Shauna bore a grudge against Shelley for a long time for taking Des back. Lottie, on the other hand, has been Shelley’s protege since Shelley was writing music reviews (under the nom de guerre “Dr Ladysounds”) for Lottie’s older sister Sarah’s zine.
The next story in the queue here, “Murder She Writes”, is a rerun of a Bad Machinery-era one-off that further explores Shelley and Lottie’s mentor/protege relationship, when Lottie goes on a holiday writers’ retreat with Shelley.
As a Headingley man born and bred, I can attest to the outrageous panoply of mugwumps on parade. Glad to know you’re still a local lad John!
seeing the mystery children in their 20s is filling me with great joy. like running into a lapsed childhood chum at the store and finding out they are thriving.
But are Jack and Shauna an item again? Inquiring minds need to know!
This page has made me very happy.
The Greeks thought that nostalgia was a disease and it appears I am coming down with a dose.
Nostalgia is a drug.
(I think that link just imploded from its own irony.)