It is nice to share
One of my favourite things about the Skelottie design is the Jack Kirby chin, which is meant to represent skull teeth. When I drew the lines on for the first time and she looked a bit like Thanos, it quite tickled me. This is the high level decision-making I am responsible for almost every day.
“You should’ve J’accused the head”
If you listen hard in the direction of Little Claire you can hear the faint ting of a dropped penny.
Poor Beate is going to be so disappointed when this is all over.
Claire can’t see the bobble because she’s not wearing her glasses, but she recognizes the turn of phrase.
Good catch! And Beate really missed a step by keeping that hat!
Any sign of her glasses in the van or the crime scene? I’ve been looking, but can’t find them.
Beate isn’t the one who’s going to be disappointed. Remember it’s the evil alternate personality who is in control. I think she won’t have time to be disappointed as the real Beate beats her. So to speak.
Nice XL thermos. Hot water to mix the bovril into?
Nobody puts Lottie in the corner!
I can think of one possible exception… Doppelgröte’s downfall will be donning the skeleton onesie instead of the seagull suit.
“If Charlotte Grote is the soft, silly girl I think she is…”
Oh Beate, BEATE. All this time, and you don’t know your quarry AT ALL.
Everyone looks soft when you’re a skeleton.
Beate/Skelottie is HARD and silly, different thing
I think by “soft and silly” she means “someone who cares about other people”. Which is, of course, neither soft nor silly, but plenty of people believe otherwise. It actually requires a lot more strength to care about others than it does to only care about yourself, since you have to be strong enough to handle what the world throws at you AND what the world throws at other people.
Your right about the Kirby look. You can see it here clearly:
https://imgur.com/a/1xHIhtr
It’s uncanny.
Is there a page where Claire hears Beate use the word “nincompoop”? I just skimmed part 3, and it’s in several thought bubbles, but she has so little actual dialogue, I couldn’t find it.
Not hear, but it’s in the “vinegar valentine” she left them.
It was in the note Beate left for Lottie and Claire. Of course, Claire doesn’t necessarily know who it was who left that note, but it at least gets her thinking about the right time and place. https://badmachinery.com/comic/a-lot-of-very-similar-haircuts/
Ah, thank you both!
Also, I can’t help but hear “Nincompoop” in a Germanic accent. Maybe that’s in pop culture only, but that might be enough to trigger Claire’s memory.
Plus, it’s said in a German accent! 🤪 duh
Ya, or ja…
Awfully rude to not offer them some of that (Tea? Bovril? Arabica?)
But of course they’re all tied-up so they wouldn’t do anything but spill it.
I would suggest they all get her to tell her awful plans. What’s wrong with sharing?
She’s 100% evil!
Eee-eevil woman! Da-ne-ne-ne-ne-nah-nah!
— ELO
“I do not have a lot of friends” … or any friends, really, what with Beate fading away and not really being friendly in the first place.
She definitely does have a funny concept of what “friends” are supposed to be.
A beautiful young lady once told me that “Friends are people you can use.”
(Our relationship didn’t go very far after that.) What about those you just appreciated and like being with? Never mentioned…
Good line for a villain.
It’s a person with a sense of entitlement that extends beyond good manners into making other people do what they want them to. Rudeness that could progress into villainy.
“How to Make Friends and Influence People” is a classic for people with that mindset, I believe. (No, I haven’t read it.)
But that book (HTMF&IP) is about being a good person and thus influencing others, who will like you because you help them and they will help you. Rudeness is disgraceful in those ideas, and not a help but a hindrance.
FYI, it’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.
Would Dean’s idea of making friends (pre-Solver) be building robots and installing LLMs?
And would Doppelgröte’s idea of winning friends be illegal gambling, where the bets are people?
“They’re my friends. I make them.”
– Sebastian in Blade Runner
Close enough. I didn’t win a cigar, but I don’t smoke anyway =)
Yes, it is, my bad.
Interestingly perhaps, the Finnish title of the book is something like “How to gain friends and become successful and influential” which sounds quite materialistic. It seems to run counter to how Glenn described the idea, but then again, this title was probably decided by the marketing dept and not by people who had actually read it.
I have a hard time figuring out if Beate is a brilliant tactician but a terrible strategist or vice versa. Key to this I also think is that unlike Lottie she seems to lack imagination and improvising techniques. Her plans only seem to work if they go to the letter.
Whereas Lottie’s pretty much the exact opposite. Her imagination is her greatest strength.
Thinking about it, her imagination and her friends are her TWO greatest strengths. So, yes, the exact opposite.
Her two strengths are her imagination and her friends… and her ruthless dedication to problem solving
Her THREE strengths are her imagination, her friends and her ruthless dedication to problem solving… and her facade of incompetence
Her strengths INCLUDE her imagination, her friends, her ruthless dedication to problem solving and her facade of incompetence… and her unique sense of style
I didn’t expect that.
Nobody expects Lottie’s inquisition! It’s one of her strengths.
Oh, bugger! Let’s start again…
Skelottie hasn’t figured out what kind of person Lottie is at all and she’s so lonely. Glenn and Claire seem surprised at how pitiful this crazy girl is. Now I hope they try to free themselves by cutting the plastic stripes with their teeth.
They should know how to easily get out of those tie-wraps. If they survive this ordeal it might become something they find out, to avoid this sort of situation again.
In this case, it’s usually not wise to free yourself until you’ve determined you can make a clean break. Otherwise the next restraints will be doubled.
Being closed-up inside a van (then freeing themselves from those restraints) the 3 of them could easily take her down when she opened the back again (and then tie her up instead!)
I believe she left her thermos inside the van. Scalding water is a great weapon.
Then maybe Beatevilottie might need yet another face!
Chekhov’s Bovril?
Unfortunately, this would require that she stand still long enough to be doused with scalding water.
Also the skull compact which presumably contains sharp shards of mirror glass (currently in flatpack form) useful for cutting zip ties
…and skin too if not assembled correctly
All you have to do is flip that little tab holding the tie closed with a tiny lever. Those very small flat-blade screwdrivers are good at that, but anything flat that fits in that place where the tab is to pop it out of place will unravel the tie.
Including the free end of another zip tie.
I think she actually has understood Lottie — it’s just that she sees Lottie’s (and all) compassion as a foolish weakness. It’s one of the things Beate had to kill in herself to beacome (typo accidental but fortuitous, so it stays) Skelottie.
She’ll share her plans, but not her coffee on a clearly chilly rainy day… RUDE!
I guess it isn’t that nice to share.
She’s enjoying their discomfort. It must give her a warm glow of accomplishment.
I’m worried – how much longer can their bladders hold out?
This is obviously a part of her Evil Plan! She’s just not telling them, but allowing them to figure it out for themselves. (Insert Evil Laugh here!)
That’s actually Step #1 in her plan.
In which case not offering the coffee/bovril/whatever is yet another mistake
Plus, they already have hangovers! Revenge is so sweet for her!
In a Jeeves and Wooster story. Bertie suddenly finds himself in a fake engagement.
As you do.
His not-mother-in-law is not happy
“She referred to you as a ‘nincompoop’.”
“One wonders where she picks up such expressions!”
“Oh, it’s probably literary. She knows a lot of literary people!”
Am I so transparent
Such would seem the case.
Your opacity is somewhat lacking, true.
I’ve found turning off the alpha channel does a good job of restoring opacity.
That reminds me, I really should pick up some brunost!
Glem’s narrowed eyes are oddly the part that stands out most on this page for me. We really don’t see this sort of expression on him basically ever.
It’s Sekret Sleuth talk, if they were spies, there would be Sekret Codes involved at this point.
I should have known John would be the one to finally give the perfect explanation of why villains explain their plans to heroes.
Having more ego (and the need to show it off) than sense isn’t just the usual explanation for megalomaniac supervillain types? Pride cometh before the fall and all that.
But yes, John’s twist on the formula is very charming to read, even if I’ve never had any problem believing that most other villains with the same sort of character flaw would share their plans out of overconfidence and a NEED to explain exactly how extraordinarily “intelligent” they are.
Syndrome, to Mr Incredible:
“You got me monologging!”
Yeah, it’s from a cartoon. Sorry that I can’t be more literary.
So what if you used The Incredibles?
It’s a good example.
It is also reminiscent of a Skrull chin, well known duplicates….
Skrulls being another Kirby invention, natch
Thanos WASN’T invented by Jack Kirby, though. In fact, I don’t think Kirby ever drew him. He was invented by Jim Starlin.
I was thinking of Darkseid, not Thanos. Though I think Thanos is a pastiche of Darkseid.
I think the grammar is more of a giveaway than the word choice
Rather jagged teeth (panel 5). Looks like the reconstructive surgery didn’t extend to dental work.
It’s showing her ferocity, not her actual dental structures.
Must be something like that, because her teeth look normal in the 3rd panel.
Wish I could do that.
I suppose that must be why her eyes go all funny in that panel as well.
Anime girls are known to have sharp teeth when being fierce. I do not know if Beate is secretly an anime girl (bishoujo.)
As others have noted, it shows her emotional state, not physical reality. Vide Susan in Giant Days, especially the ones drawn by Mr. A.
Isn’t that Dean’s knee in the lower left of the last panel? Seems to be moving, as though he’s working on a way to get out of the ties. Clair’s left elbow seems to be doing the same.
Even if Charlotte does everything that Evillottie “asks”, Evillottie can have no intention of letting Claire, Glenn and Dean just go free. They are witnesses. They must DIE!
Or go and live in a forest forever
But, you know, without the hassle of wrestling for beers
This is why I expect some kind of intended murder-suicide thing. Since Beate did kill (presumably?) Miyamoto-san, she’s got a taste for blood. She doesn’t expect Lottie to actually self-cancel, she expects her to try to save her friends and kill her in the process. After that…
I still think she intended to frame Lottie for assault, not murder, and accidentally used a bit too much force, hospitalizing Myamoto and eventually leading to his death. But I suppose we’ll find out. And she did try to kill Claire.
Brunost. I’ve never ever tasted that Norwegian cheese, although we do have black brie in France. But substituting brunost to nincompoop seems an interesting alternative…
Claire associates the two words because she encountered them one after the other. First, last panel here… https://badmachinery.com/comic/interpol-had-missed-a-trick/
And then, 4th panel over here: https://badmachinery.com/comic/a-lot-of-very-similar-haircuts/