Her friend Esther
Lottie has gone full King Of All Cosmos and I think it suits her! It won’t be happening again because recreating that signature We Love Katamari throne took me a very long time.
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I see that little Lottie would have the idea of madeleines with her sugary coffee drink.
Of course, she is currently remembering things past. You work on so many levels, John. 🙂
That’s Proust!!
You cannot understand how happy this Bobbinsverse/Katamari crossover makes me.
Man, Claire does a lot of suppression in that innocent looking head.
Well Claire was a not so closeted pyromaniac when she was younger and I assume it’s buried down deep somewhere in that subconscious
Claire’s pyromania was the antidote to being good all the time. Perhaps, right now, she needs to do something BAD.
John, what you’re doing here with the different artistic styles is amazing.
Beautiful Lottie in throne and reference to Giant Days ♡. But it’s so weird to have to see my past self in Claire. I would like to say to her not to ruin her life just for not to let her parents down. No one can last long. One day she will slowly walk away and end up sitting on a deserted meadow thinking that she has wasted her life.
Hell, I can see my present self in Claire! Although…..I would consider a deserted meadow a great success.
But what is on that guy’s head?
One of those big knitted toque things?
This is one of the situations where I just typed a random phrase into Google images to get background characters. Those lads were in an up-and-coming band (name now forgotten). One of them had a big woolly hat.
Maybe their band is known as the LEOM Passers.
Kings of LEOM
After Lottie on the King Of All Cosmos Throne, I love that even though we can’t see above their legs, you can pretty much tell which Giant Days heroine is, right down to Susan’s dangling cigarette.
Lottie’s memory exaggerates the size of the Giant Days girls, making her look like a toddler, when she was actually ten. She has also neglected to mention that she was particularly incisive in identifying the ways in which they (particularly Daisy) *weren’t* having fun.
Lottie’s venti frappuccino was mislabelled in #35 but as “Scarlet”, not “Loty”.
If Lottie isn’t an unreliable narrator, I don’t know who is.
Shelly?
Mmm. And didn’t Lottie’s own sister also go to uni? I’m surprised that she didn’t get to visit there.
But did Sarah get her own comic series and a visit from Batman when she went to uni? I think not. Esther’s uni: Clearly more fun.
Oh, Claire. Life doesn’t work like that. By the time the people that expect things of you have died, new expectants will have filled the void.
Just set them all on fire, Claire. You know you want to.
Katamari? That’s those things like onion rings made out of rubber bands innit?
Nah, it’s a double-hulled sailboat.
i thought her sister was Esther?
Lottie’s sister is Sarah Grote. Esther de Groot was Sarah’s best friend in high school. I’ve often wondered what John A was playing at by using such similar surnames.
As I have explained several times over the years, Esther de Groot is named after the singer and actress Myra de Groot, and the Grote family got their name from a business card that was pinned up over my desk for several years.
It explains how they met. As tots themselves, they were lined up alphabetically by a school administrator who misinterpreted “de” as a middle name, thus GROOT next to GROTE. They immediately became pals and remained so. It’s *a* theory, anyway. 😉
I believe that’s the way they do it in the Netherlands (de Groot under G), though not in Belgium.
Well. The things I have learned. The misapprehensions under which I must no longer labour.
Oh, being good at things until you get to university and then finding it’s kind of a slog and you have to actually do some work, no that’s not relatable at all *WEEPS*
Take my word for it Claire, the last 20 years of your life are overrated. A lot of the “fun” things you postponed are not quite as fun when you’re trying to do them in a 60+ year old body.
My thoughts exactly
I am reminded of the story about the alien who came down and observed humans, and was baffled that we did everything backwards. For instance, we should be enjoying life while were were young and then working until we die.
Also, that dogs are in charge of the world and humies are just the dogs’ slaves.
Well, cats.
Amen. Living the life right now. If you call it living.
Don’t forget about the inclination. I’m 40+ and comfort and safety are MUCH higher priorities now than they ever were. Do uncomfortable things while young!
PROUST
She’s in a Proust Stupor! (though that may be hard to distinguish from a caffeine/sugar buzz)
Perhaps she was in a summarize Proust competition?
Proust in his first book (Proust he said, Proust he said), Proust in his first book (Proust he said)…
I like how hungry these two are. They got ice-cream and now are getting burgers(?.)
That’s my favorite thing to do with friends as well.
They actually got coffee and kanelbullar immediately before the ice creams. This is a crisis after all.
If in doubt, eat like the Gilmore Girls.
That’s how the Fat Banshee gets you!
As Marcel Proust would say…
How do you spell Esther? With black goth letters of course!
If meeting other people’s expectations is THAT important to Claire, then she’d hate a life in which she failed to so and felt constant guilt about it even more than she hates the life she’s living right now. Unless I’m Wrong.
The problem is, when you meet their expectations, they raise their expectations. And then you have to meet the new expectations. Until eventually, and unavoidably, you can’t. Which appears to be where Claire is now.
Disappoint people early! Beat the rush!
That’s an overachiever’s perspective, my wife was one. Thankfully, she realized she was doing this right when she gave the Naval academy all the ‘right’ answers and didn’t waste her life as a naval officer.
As it turns out, you teach other people how to treat you (more or less) and parents get over you not becoming what they always imagined, so long as you don’t end up in a ditch.
When I was in school years and years ago I had a german teacher who used to tell us that if we didn’t study hard we’d end up digging ditches. Even at the time I thought that was a bit unfair on ditch diggers and in any case digging ditches didn’t seem such a bad prospect.
Ending up in a ditch isn’t being the guy digging one (I often find myself digging ditches even now) but since traditionally all roads had ditches on the side to catch precipitation and therefore improve overall traction, it generally implies the end result of a life of dissipation, in old stories getting so drunk you fall off a cart and end up asleep in the roadside ditch, and if you’re unlucky, perhaps drowning in your own vomit.
Digging ditches is a fine, if not terribly profitable, business.
Dang it, I was hoping to see all of Esther not just her legs.
Esther would fix things and by fix, I mean make them worse.
Given John’s penchant for using the page titles to tease us, I wasn’t expecting to actually see Esther at all- I thought it would just be an off-hand mention. So I’m pleasantly surprised. Even if it’s just an unreliable flashback.
The Katamari art reminds me a bit of the old Illustrator days for SGR. It’s like two references in one!
I know The Englishman needed to ditch that style to grow as an artist, but I miss it so much. I’d love to see a throwback someday.
You’re literally seeing a throwback in this comic and the previous one! I did that Six Sidekicks cover in Illustrator last year, a lavish rendering. I don’t think I’d ever do a whole comic that way again though, I know too much and let myself get away with far too little, it’d take me four times as long.
I appreciate every bit of your work, communication, and dedication to your craft and am thrilled just to see these panels.
Long life and blessings, Baron Tackleford.
Um, Claire? You keep operating at THAT level of stress, and you WON’T outlive your parents.