I’m drawing a blank!
Lottie genuinely has no idea who Beate is. But I am sure that all Solver readers know that “I Accuse” is the expansion of Émile Zola’s “J’Accuse” letter by German author Richard Grelling. It might still have been called “J’Accuse” in the German edition but as literary experts you will forgive me the transposition here. You don’t get these kind of references in [cruelly insert name of other comic here but John do remember to punch up not down so you don’t get cancelled].
Even her “I accuse” falls apart quickly, proving to be no match for the real deal.
Wobbly j’ accuse!
Superb detail, that. I’ve always admired what Mr. Allison does with his “comic words” (what *is* the pretentious technical term for those? The “bang, zap, pow, vworp, j’accuse” etcetera action signifiers) and this is a perfect example. Little thing, you could totally miss it and the dialogue would still carry you through, but it’s a playful little thing that toys with the form and stuff like that. I don’t know. I’m a literary critic. Pictures confuse me.
Onomatopoeia. Pretentiously yours,
Oh, is that still onomatopoeia? I thought there’d be a special word for doing it in comics. Making it a visual gag. Either way, ta. Now I know.
You don’t even get these kinds of references in Wikipedia, which has no page for this book, though it has one for Grelling which mostly just says he wrote this book there is no page for.
!
Theatricality and J’Accusation. Powerful agents, to the uninitiated. But we are initiated, aren’t we Beate?
Beate isn’t nearly as initiated as she thinks she is.
I love how Lottie instinctively grabs and redirects the pointing finger like an action hero.
Pointing finger safety is important. Remember, never let your kids point fingers unsupervised!
And never, EVER point your finger at anything you are not willing to j’accuse!
Don’t tit about with pointing fingers.
ESPECIALLY if you are also on a ladder.
One has to wonder if there’s a British Finger Council, and if so –
Every finger is loaded, even after you just unloaded it.
Never run while pointing a finger.
You’ll J’Accuse your eye out, kid!
It’s clear that Evilottie failed to load her finger in the emotional wave of the situation, and Lottie knew this – Lottie’s finger is always loaded before it’s pointed
“I do not point with my finger. He who points with his finger has forgotten the face of his father. I point with my heart.”
Who’s going to clean up all those fallen letters in panel 7, though? Or are the seagulls going to eat them?
Fortunately, they’re Bio-degradable letters. This is a zero-emissions web-comic.
Please no seagulls! Lottie has enough on her plate with one nemesis to deal with.
The comic title for 23 May looks ominous.
If left undisturbed long enough, perhaps some of them will eventually sprout and grow into diagetic captions.
Eventually the grow randomly into the letters:
SAUCE I C
which will confuse future solvers for decades to come
Now I need to find anagrams for WOBBLY HEAD to figure out what dialog that came from originally.
HOWDY BABEL?
Who be lady B.?
Ye GODS. Mind. Blown. Blown, I say!
Babel Howdy!
Lewd baby ho. 🙁
Hey, bad blow!
In the last panel Lottie seems about to slap Beate with all her strength. GO LOTTIE, SLAP HER!!! I hope Beate will tell something about the murderer of Miyamoto, probably she was a big fan of him too.
There’s a lot to be said about Miyamoto. He has always been a man of mystery.
I’m pretty sure Lottie is trying wrest a confession so she has audio evidence for Johnny Law when this is all over.
Haha! Blank blank blank! So take that Fraulein!
Now I’ll bet she’s going Really Crazy!
What does she mean?
“Doesn’t even know who I am?”
(As good as invisible!)
Oh God. They will switch places, won’t they?
Took me some time but maybe Beate didn’t think that through. Lottie canceling will cancel the public… persona of Lotty Grote and if/when they switch places, Beate would be the cancelled one. It’s already bad enough that Beate has Lottie’s face. Hmm. Lottie would need a new hairdo and a new hair color.
Hmm. Maybe Beate has something else in mind.
No, I meant, that’s what they are going to agree upon doing in the end. Both have lost their way and are not content with who they are. They will trade place to solve each other being stuck in their lifes. Beate can stop being Beate and be Lottie. Lottie can stop being Lottie for a while and be Beate.
This might be a reference to a German children’s book Beate would definitely know, Erich Kästner’s classic “Das doppelte Lottchen” (lit. ‘The Doubled Little Lottie”, English translation “Lisa and Lottie”), which tells the story of Lotte and Luise, two identical twins who were separated as babies when their parents split up, meet as girls in summer camp, realize they are sisters and switch places to get to to know the parent they haven been growing up without https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_and_Lottie
Nice (and positive) idea! If only!
But for one I cannot imagine that Beate would agree to something like that. She wants Lottie’s life but she also wants Lottie out of the way. Also, we shouldn’t forget that Beate (apparently?) murdered Miyamoto and (definitely!) dropped the shingles on Claire, trying to kill or at least injure Claire. (Please excuse my bad English).
So – I hope you would turn out right but I’m having doubts.
I think the idea that Lottie gives up being Lottie horrible! I hope it won’t happen! But I also don’t think it is Beate’s original plan. I’m just afraid they will make peace and decide to switch as a win-win. I really hope they won’t and I am genuinely worried about Lottie. Which is something I think I’ve never been before for a comic book character.
If they decide to switch, Lottie could easily work around Beate’s crimes, tho. They Myamoto murder is unsolved and was never connected to Beate, there is no official record of Beate trying to kill Claire (or, for that matter, Glenn and Dean, our suspiciously quiet wild card), and if Lottie takes her place, Claire will not press the matter I suppose… it would be possible for them to do it. But it would be a horrible idea.
Grelling didn’t go with “Ich Beschuldige!”? Doesn’t flow so well, admittedly, but German rarely lends itself to flowing.
I don’t know if he did, but Alexander Gray (or Hodder & Stoughton) didn’t, in the English version
The German edition is called “J’Accuse (By A German)” – that’s the title of the German edition. The English translation of that is what I posted under the comic. So the translation if J’Accuse by a German is literally I accuse. This is like an exam question. I now wish I hadn’t said anything. I’m going to go and lie down in the graveyard. Time will do the rest.
REF:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/305842662870
Prac. Crit. (impromptu) claims another victim.
The title in the original Deutsch version is: “J’accuse! Von einem Deutschen.”
Which means that “I accuse! By a German” is the full title. And not the translator neglecting to put in the name of the original author, as it looked at first glance (though they certainly did.)
The use of J’accuse! is of course a reference to Zola; but while Grelling was similarly accusatory, he wasn’t accusing about the same thing. Specifically he was accusing the German state of being responsible for the Great War that had just started the previous year (it was published in 1915).
The worms will find me soon
The hamper becomes the hampee
Beate’s weak accusation being so weak that the I ACCUSE literally falls apart in the next panel made me laugh. I always get a kick out of the way you play around with SFX and other narration text like this.
I think the secret is Lottie’s mastery of J’ACCUSE lies in the ability to project it so that it releases all guilt and shame rendering the subject powerless to deflect it. Beate fails in that the only thing she’s accusing Lottie of are only crimes in her delusional minds.
Considering Lottie’s relatively humble beginnings and Beate’s priviledged background, Beate’s accusation in panel 6 is nothing but cheek pure and simple.
Yes, but she’d been rehearsing that speech so long she knew that Lottie would crumble on the other end of her accusation. But her reason for this is a mistake, a misunderstanding, that she may have just realized. (So much for careful preparation.)
So J’ACCUSE is Lottie’s version of Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare?
Also I’ve been noticing a lot of similarities between Beate and Batman: The Animated Series villain, The Clock King.
https://youtu.be/WGhDjv9TS28?si=lrz3_33IANewLBrh
C’mon, Lottie, didn’t you watch the flashback?
She slept right through it.
come on Beate, this is amateur hour accusing, everyone knows you need to full send it with your entire arm
Give it the beans!
No follow-through AND she left the safety on. The judges will dock her harshly for that.
Said a similar thing about an earlier page but that last line from panels 7-8 really does sum up Lottie’s character, especially from these past few years of her life, extremely well.
So much emotion is just blaring out of that last panel. Dang.
I just find myself adoring Lottie so much more here. There’s something about her acknowledging that her life has been insanely adventurous makes her feel so real. Life’s insane, hers particularly, and what else are you gonna do but kick ass in order to live it?
Especially when you really can’t think of anything better to do!
I don’t think it’s just that she can’t think of anything better to do. I think she genuinely feels she’s not qualified to do anything else.
Lottie had a life plan, but Claire soaked it with mayonnaise rendering it unintelligible
From Claire’s reaction, I suspect it was unintelligible before she condemnented it.
But, “Jobby” said Charlotte should be a “CAREERS ADVISOR!”
“99.7% MATCH.”
She’d be “flushed with success”, too! See what happens when you ignore Jobby’s advice?
I don’t think Lottie’s answers on that test were, shall we say, entirely honest.
Sorry, I forgot to put a “/sarc” at the end of that.
She was doing pretty well at roasting beans until someone convinced her to put on her detective persona again.
She was roasting beans well, but I don’t think she was doing well, herself, at all.
It would be difficult to know what she was thinking, but at least sometimes it’s possible to not be satisfied until there’s a better fit, you learn the ways, and CAN be. The people around her were pleased with her abilities, and there must have been something there for her.
But that wouldn’t be a very good story then, would it?
Oh John, this is the second time you’ve taken a dig at [cruelly insert name of other comic here but Dan do remember to punch up not down so you don’t get cancelled].
I’m going to start reading it, just to spite you. [Cruelly insert name of other creative here but Dan do remember to punch up not down so you don’t get cancelled] would never act in this way…
The be fair the blank I always fill in for webcomics in particular, I dislike in part because the creative in question doesn’t act this way. Instead they love to punch down but never ever get cancelled for it, because getting cancelled requires having some modicum of shame?
Anyways, John [Always Remembers to Only Punch Up] Allison is to all appearances a better person than he gives himself credit for and a joy to read the works of even if he is “consistently exactly 30% too hard on himself”.
It’s cruel of him to tease us this way! Any idea which comic he refers to?
I’m not referring to anything, I’m being heavily ironic
I recall something about the price of taxes being what it is, and life in the graveyard being too short and precious, for that kind of deliberately stoked kerfuffle.
Who else was surprised the universe didn’t explode when they touched?
What? They’re still cleaning up the rubble around here (and I can’t find my socks!)
I have this feeling that one of them should be wearing an eyepatch
I was watching these videos about Batman villains who go to seek revenge and the revengee usually says “who the hell are you?”
Didn’t Lottie pull a “Jack Hughes” on someone way back in Bad Machinery?
That was Shauna. I think she’s done “Jack Hughes” more than once. I interpret that as her imitation of Lottie being not quite the same as the original.
Also: “It takes constant effort to maintain a life this ridiculous!” is among the very best of John Allisonisms, in my humble opinion.
If you had that on a T shirt you’d have to constantly explain it (but on a bumper-sticker everyone would probably agree with you.)
I have no idea what this other comic is that John keeps alluding to, but now I’m dying to know.
Not me – it sounds awful!
It’s whatever you want it to be. This is the Choose Your Own Adventure of diss tracks.
You don’t get these kind of references in [other comic] but you *do* get them in the cinematic masterpiece Hundreds of Beavers.
Bad move. Nobody j’accuses Charlotte Grote.
So this script was finalized before episode 8 of Andor, right?
The Star Wars is not for me
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He’s got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin. His father’s a robot and he’s fucking fucked his sister. Lego. They’re all made of fucking lego.
But then how else will the Des Star be realized
“It’s quite hard to be nemeses with the centre of the universe. By definition, you’re on the periphery.”
Lottie may seem to be the center of the universe from her friends’ points of view (and her own), but we all know that the opposite poles around which the Tackleverse truly rotates are Shelley and Des.
Shelley’s the center of the universe, but Lottie is one of the supermassive black holes around which galaxies revolve.
Mr. Allison has made webcomics across four decades.
I think maybe he put a little of himself in panels 7 and 8.
It’s a ridiculous life, but I’m glad you chose it. You’ve brought a lot of humor and beauty into the world.
Frank Grimes meets Homer Simpson
This story line, and the approaching of its finale, has made me realize how much I like Lottie. I don’t think I’ve ever genuinely been worried for a comic book character.
By the way, is this whole situation inspired by Erich Kästner’s classic German children’s book “Das Doppelte Lottchen”, lit. “The doubled Little Lotte”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_and_Lottie
Come play with us, Danny…
Komm mit uns spielen, Danny… für immer, und immer, und immer…
No, that is new to me!
Is it?! I was sure you knew, because Kästner’s Lottie is an intelligent, wild, rude girl with a good heart and plenty of mischiveous energy, while her twin Luise is a quiet, studious, sensitive straight-a student and a bit of a wall flower.
If you have a few hours to spare, why not read the most recent English translation “Lisa and Lottie”? Kästner is one of the Great Children’s book authors, very funny, loving the absurd, and with a very distinct narrator’s voice, but he always takes children, their emotions and reality very seriously, for example when talking about social inequalities, bitter poverty, or, in this case, the injustice of parents deciding for their children to never know their mother or father after splitting up.
By the way, Kästner was a fascinating writer. Strong pacifist and humanist fighting against the rise of the Nazis, beautiful poet, and his adult novel “Fabian” breaks your heart.
This is such a wonderful happenstance!
Sadly, you’ll really know you punched up when you DO get cancelled…
Very j’accuz-y.
(Had to get this one out of my system. Cold water didn’t do the job.)