Imagine beans on fire
A new story begins! Fortified by her adventures amongst clowns and the Cornish, Charlotte Grote is back to a level of pep and vitality that we haven’t seen in several years. This surely bodes well for the coming tale.
Comics will run on a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule for the next 7 weeks.
Mike? Have we met Mike before? I don’t remember someone in Lottie’s Mom’s life the last few times we saw her. Should be an intriguing Family Evening.
Mike was Erin and Shelley’s old partner at the Tackleford Cormorant newspaper, the one who became the host to the odcurzacz – the sky walnut villain who ate hope – and started dating Lottie’s mum after case Case Of The Unwelcome Visitor.
I consider that story to be one of The Englishman’s finest hours.
…a case so fine, I apparently said it twice. Sorry for the typo.
Oh, it’s that Mike. I somehow don’t remember the two of them getting together – I’ll have to look it up in my books.
It was suggested in the penultimate strip of “Severed Alliance”.
GOKART CONSPIRACY
Ah, thanks!
It was also pretty much shown in “The Great Unboxing” (at least, Mike was in the Grote household there for no discernible other reason, so…).
Mike Savage. He appeared in the original Scary Go Round comics as well, when he and Shelley had to cover the Great Tackleford Fair, and he got drunk in the middle of the day and stung nearly to death by Lorcan Sproat’s giant bee.
Savage, eh? Hm, doesn’t ring a bell.
He’s relocated to Vandenberg.
I do want to thank you for raising the question, as now I’m reading The Case Of The Unwelcome Visitor over again. 😀
God, just one of the finest comics ever written.
A brilliant starting place for anyone who wants to drop right in the middle of the Bobbinsverse continuity.
We don’t deserve so fine a start after the last one. John, please make sure you rest yourself.
The previous story was Giant Days x Batman, and now we have Bad Machinery x Princess Anne!
(though I’m guessing her highness won’t be a recurring character in this story)
More’s the pity. I had an embarrasing raft of jokes about the question of whether or not the Windsors are in the British public domain at this point, which would probably have infuriated the Crown no end. xD
Honestly, my impressions of English cuisine are largely described by ‘imagine beans on fire’.
That’s only the taste sensation evoked by an imperfectly aged British steak.
I still don’t know what “English cuisine” really is. Much of it seems to come from other parts of the isles, like Cornish Pasties. I like Pasties.
Cornwall is joined onto (and a county of) England, it’s not an island, no matter how much it might wish it was…
If it weren’t for that pesky bit of land near Bude that’s joined to Devon…
Cornwall: Unsuccessfully seeking an independent identity from the rest of England since the time of King Mark
A high-school teacher from Cornwall asked us what the distance between London and Cornwall was.
His answer, 400 years.
English cuisine is, of course, Chicken Tikka Masala
Isn’t that technically Scottish?
So. What’s Fray Bentos?
Just the mention of that tasty tinned pie is giving me the meaty abdabs
At least it didn’t give you the meat sweats.
We were once so famous for our roast beef that the French called us «les rosbifs».
That’s what the French chefs called Gareth Blackstock when he went to Paris for a cooking competition!
The entire area of Britain that was conquered by teh Normans during the Norman Conquest is considered “England” whether the people there at the time spoke English or not. So, Cornwall, where the people spoke Cornish, was conquered by the Normans at that time, and is therefor considered part of England, but Wales and Scotland were NOT conquered by the Normans at that time, so they’re NOT considered part of England, even though they both came under English rule later.
THREEDOM!
So nice to see Lottie so happy and her hair style is really cute. ♡. But I’ve mixed feelings about knowing that her mother is with Mike in a serious relationship. But if she’s happy, good for her.
Lottie’s hair gives me such envy. I’ve been trying to achieve that glorious a bun for ten years. NEVER successful.
My ex could do it, but she had a LOT of hair
I feel like in panel 4, we can clearly see what it does to a person, to have been on the receiving end of an entire lifetime’s worth of Charlotte-sass. My respect for Karen Grote knows no bounds.
You know where she got that streak of gray hair from. It is named CHARLOTTE.
I enjoy your comments here Stacy ^_^
It’s good to see Lottie back in full form.
Her top reminds me of Jack the Plaid from Zebra Girl.
That “PIN” is going to figure prominently in this story. I just feel it.
Checkov’s “PIN”, as it were.
Or “Chekhov”, if I’d bothered to double-check…
Double-Chekhov?
Chekhov and Matehov.
I wonder who was the first to dare stenciling in flat fabric patterns that way.
I know I saw it in Understanding Comics. It must have been frightening to dare, once.
I lose my nerve doing it and end up following an arm after a few pages. It doesn’t always look right. I’m sure Understanding Comics is what started me doing it.
That or Curse of Monkey Island?
I hear many times the reasons why there are so few very cool fabric patterns in comics/animations is they are “downright evil to draw”
Twoface lost his plaid in BtAS for this reason
I noticed it immediately and LOVE it. I love that move. For a second I thought it was a sheet of yellow graph paper!
Brings me back to Apple II adventure games, and MacPaint days. I don’t think that Rotate was a thing yet let alone models. I like it.
I like that look. It reminds me of those pictures we did as kids made by cutting out pieces of fabric and sticking them to a board. You could end up with a landscape where the hills and fields are a green tartan and the sky is blue with stripes.
Omg I remember that too! Now I want to go have a craft day.
Morris did it in Lucky Luke as early as 1946 and I’d be surprised if this was the first time somebody did it.
I am looking forward to any story which is titled as a French verbal infinitive
And we’re already off to a great start.
Beans on fire.
Rolling down the roaaaaaad.
We’ll notify the next of kin…
Obviously this takes place on a Monday, as the recumbent Garfield plushie in panels 2 and 3 can attest.
I do wonder if we’ll see Shauna this time around
Or Shauxna, or Xhauna, or however they’re spelling it.
Gotta respect the Bun.
That Princess Anne photo gave me the biggest delight (and laugh) of the day. (Sorry Princess Anne.)
HRH is actually wearing a helmet with integrated Radar Dome.
I’m trying to sort out the significance of the plushies on the shelf in the background…
Consistency. We already saw them in Circus Windows. https://badmachinery.com/comic/get-a-perm/
True, but I feel I should know that octopus/brain thing from somewhere.
This Lottie is much better than Goth Lottie, and it is not just a matter of affect. It is because “Goth” is a pose (like “aesthete”) and adopting any pose requires shutting out, preemptively, areas of perspective. That is what The Solver cannot do.
I mean, her first words here are in French – the true solver understands that there is no ‘no pose’, and works around the pose they have.
It’s not a pose; it’s a stance. As in martial arts, you take the stance that best lets you handle what’s in front of you. Lottie’s learned over the years a good variety of them, and her friends have others that she’s not good at, like Mildred playing the ingenue in “Circus Windows” and “Severed Alliance”.
In her last few storylines, she’s been pushed onto unfamiliar ground and has had to take new stances, so we keep seeing her skittish or uncertain until she finds her feet and takes control. (And this isn’t even new… I just re-read “The Great Unboxing” last night, because Brian brought it up above, and was struck by the difference between her handling of Mr. Spink in that story, and her first engagement with him back in “The Lonely One”, which just re-ran on GoComics. I bet next time she encounters Tom, he’ll be the one on the back foot.)
But this here is ground that she’s literally at home on.
I call shenanigans. I have been within bowing distance of HRH (the Chancellor) on two occasions (both during the Albert Hall era cattlemarket-style ceremonies). No bun was visible! However, I have to confess sincere admiration for her ability to smile non-stop for hours.
I too have been in the presence of HRH, she came to our school! The bun was her 1970s look. Obviously in the early 80s she flipped the style and went for a massive bouff at the front, a jawn she employs to this day.
Lottie’s answer to the man-bun: the Anne-bun.