Circus snakes
I hope you enjoy the period-accurate flashback in today’s comic, roughly contemporary to The Case of The Good Boy, in which Mildred takes on the fairground-industrial complex. If you read it on GoComics it has a lot of bonus pages.
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Not quite as sneaky as she thinks
Clown alert! And the clown is definitely watching them! Maybe all those possible clowns on earlier pages were, in fact, clowns?
Panel 3 certainly looks like both the shadowy figures in the darknesas and the patrons in the diner.
I believe I can say WITH AUTHORITY that clowns are absolutely not involved — in any way — with the remainder of this story. Clowns are innocents, naifs! They could never do harm!
You have no authority here, John Allison.
It’s only a single step from “death of the author” to “Death TO the author”
Indeed not!
READ THE STANDING ORDERS, MR ALLISON!
READ THEM AND UNDERSTAND THEM!!!
You are a liar sir. A bought man of the Clown Cartel. I regret living to see this day.
The strongman noticed them. I hope he will be an alley, because someone with such magnificent mustaches can’t be evil♡♡♡. And is very nice to see the hold trio, even if in a flash back ♡♡♡
ITYM ‘ally’ – the alley, as seen in Panel 5, is strictly opposed to their presence.
I can’t decide whether the skull is more or less foreboding for having springy eyes.
More. Definitely more.
It’s an alarm — the eyes sprung and the tongue lolled when the girls entered the alley.
It’s clearly a clown-skull – all the more foreboding, as clowns are scary enough. At least this one doesn’t have a honky nose – clearly meant to be a silent clown-alarm.
And really, why put the warning signs on the INSIDE of the Clown Alley entrance? No one’s gonna see them there!
I have laboured long and hard in this story to portray “clown logic” as I believe it would be, feel free to make a note of all the intensely idiotic hallmarks of clown culture as they appear.
Okay, I just want to note that even the *fonts* are period-flashback-accurate.
It’s the little things, you know, always just the little things that keep me coming back.
Maybe one day we’ll see a time-travel story where toddler-, tween-, teen-, and adult-versions of the same character(s) appear together and each one is drawn in her/his “original” style and speaks with her/his “original” fonts. But probably not. 😉
SHAUNA!!!!
Ninja’d!
Just home from work and my first reaction on reading was exactly this one word. I am now being…looked at.
A bomb in panel 1?
Human cannon.
That case is being repeated right now in GoComics!
I fully agree with Mildred’s stance on bear dancing. But do bears know how to dance? The only “bear-dance” I know of is a human dance belonging to the Ute peoples of the Central Rocky Mountains my side of the Atlantic.
The dancing bear is an old standby… or dance-by?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_bear
I’m hoping Shauna’s still making music wherever she is.
Was it difficult to return to your previous style?
It’s just a trick of familiar fonts and colours!
I had a bizarre dream the other night where I was in school and arguing with Lottie, Jack, and Linton about whether the local Wimpy had such a thing as a ‘Four-Square-Meal-Deal for Four” offer or not. What was really strange was that everything in the dream was rendered in your (previous) art style, including me.
A most peculiar experience.
I wish to have this dream. Can you specify what you had for dinner that evening so I can try to reproduce your results?
A “Four-Square-Meal-Deal for Four”? That DOES sound rather odd…
If someone’s implying that the guy in Panel 6 is a clown, well, it’s obviously the strong man from Panel 2. Same beige-and-gray ensemble, same shoes, same knuckle protectors.
The clown is watching them in panel 3.
Lower left corner of panel 3.
Oh. Missed that completely. Sorry about that.
Lottie’s kicky little boots are killing me.
I’ve drawn a range of kicky little boots over the course of the 44 pages of this story and I’m very pleased with my progress in the “form”.
Surely that triangle is Carrot after finally having found his clique.
I’m starting to wonder if maybe Carrot and Mrs Terry might actually be wayward clowns.
Carrot’s mom had a similar hairstyle, as I recall.
The first time I heard about dancing bears, my thought was “that sounds like an adorable and quaint tradition, why would anyone want to ban this”. Then I learned *how* the bears were made to dance… yeesh. Mildred’s on the right side of history.
Not sure I understand all this anti-clown sentiment. Clowns wear brightly colored clothes and cover their faces. They jump and caper. They crack jokes and want things to turn out for the best. It’s not for nothing that Spider-Man himself has been referred to as “a costumed CLOWN.” 😉
In panel 4 flashback, is that a bag with CCCP on it? I seem to remember Shauna having such a bag or other accessory. I still have my “I CCCP” shirt that you designed. One of my (and my kids’) favorites.
Except that I now see that Shauna has her bag in hand, so maybe it was Lottie who had that bag? Or maybe I’m just making it all up.
It was Lottie, I just got a sighting of it in Case of the Good Boy.
The CCCP bag is Lottie’s. Shauna’s says Books not Boys.
Seems people are forever getting that mixed up!
“CCCP” *can* have that effect on people.
Shauna’s original bag just had a big S on it!
Now, about Mildred’s bag. Is it fake leather? Seems like a Vegan would be obliged to find something other than leather for that.
I think it’s just brown. It’s made of brown.
Is it sustainably harvested brown, though?
https://i.makeagif.com/media/8-18-2015/7n124t.gif
addendum: In case anyone was reluctant to click the link, it’s a gif of DANCING BEAR (actually a human being in a costume, of course), a character from the late, much-lamented American kids show “Captain Kangaroo.”
“roughly contemporary to The Case of The Good Boy”
This means it’s not a “flashback” to an existing strip but just happened around that same general timeframe, right? I don’t want to just make presumptions.
“in which Mildred takes on the fairground-industrial complex”
Is that a reference to the deal with the magic pencil or is it something I have yet to excavate?
Thanks for the time of all involved. 🙂
I think the phrase “in which Mildred takes on the fairground-industrial complex” goes with “the period-accurate flashback in today’s comic”, rather than with “The Case of the Good Boy”. I think it just means that, in opposing forced bear dancing, Mildred was taking on the fairground-industrial complex.
Totally off-topic, I’m sure I’m not the only one who remembers that Mildred hoped to marry Eustace “The Boy” Boyce when she was an adult (if I had the slightest clue of what the date for the strip that revealed that was, I’d post a link, but alas). She had the math done and everything.
Eustace was dead for a while (we learned of Mildred’s secret love for him when she was at his gravesite) but his status was updated to “alive” years ago, and since he and Neil (Mildred’s father) were close friends, I would presume that he let Neil know he was alive and that Neil in turn let Mildred know, and Mildred is quite obviously now an adult, and being married doesn’t necessarily prevent a woman from being a nucular flirt, so….
😉
Of course, Eustace may have instead married ERIN when I wasn’t paying attention (making him Shelley’s brother-in-law and Peggy’s uncle and Scout’s step-uncle (I mean, I guess) and et cetera) and thus, again, so…
BTW, although I realize it’s hardly a unique name, is Eustace by chance named in recognition of Eustace Scrubb from The Narnia Chronicles? I think I’ve wondered that before but never gotten around to asking until now.
In Panel 1 Mildred kind of resembles her mother Glynis, only a bit more sinister.
Are the bonus pages mentioned available in the print copies? Gocomics doesn’t seem to organize by case, making navigation a little tedious.