Sounds dreamy, son
It’s all gone Barry Windsor-Smith for Glenn again. I’m not sure which of the friends is responsible for this (imaginary) happening, but it’s happened before. Yes Lottie has turned into a Jocasta style robot but also I am thinking of the villain’s sister in Superman III. There’s hardly a week when I don’t think about Superman III.
That’s probably just from the marker fumes, Claire.
This page is so beautiful! Gleen’s robotic vision is crazy and awesome. It’s so funny to see him and Claire having a scene so overly dramatic to become comical, then Lottie that seems to be letting them have their fun while she thinks about the important things.
I’ve been waiting for Claire and Glimm to tussle, tho’ this wasn’t quite how I pictured it.
The fact that the sound effect is literally “tussle” is a perfect example of the daily genius of this comic.
I keep interpreting the line on the wall as a speech balloon tail, so it seems like Claire’s derrière is demanding the tussling.
think the age difference is just enough that glenn and claire have never really considered each other as viable partners… and then running a small business together a. makes dating a bad idea and b. makes them more likely to be annoyed at each other. and we shant forget that glenn is a massive dork. but i guess being mutually annoying is how some people Get There… and the past two pages both claire and lottie have gotten kinda handsy with him lol. not all touching has to be sexual ofc, its kinda lotties whole way
and and then on a narrative level glenn/claire (glare) would be a whole complicating element when rn this seems like lotties story. idk if she and glenn have really reconciled! she asked for forgiveness at the end of 100% cuddles and glenn said zip! probably thats gonna get handled first
This page must have taken forever to draw! Wow!
Wow! This page is amazing! I immediately flashed back to that earlier panel.
Yes, Glenn! Harness the Automated One-man Band!
Superman III is the first thing I thought of when viewing this page. And I love that Robo-Lottie still has the floofy hair.
Same. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid but it haunts me.
Same. One of those “I want to look away but I can’t” moments in film.
Kirby-vibes. Nice.
Plot twist – Glorm builds his solving node and it accidentally throws Jack back though time!
Did Ygln somehow just finish a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder? That’s some baaaad onions!
At last! DARK GLURM!!!!
Or maybe just “Gloom”.
always write a scoping document first, glam
No time! Tussle fast and break things!
Break things and move fast!
Move breakfast and things!
Uh, you know things aren’t good when Glenn goes all Kirby/Windsor-Smith-esque! I especially love the encroaching cybernetic details threatening to consume Lottie and Claire. And evil Pilate cults! Where oh, where are we going with this?!
No Glenn! No doing a Richard Pryor from Superman III! That didn’t go well for the Office Space guys either!
Is that a poop emoji on Gurnt’s shirt? Does it signal his deep respect for Sir Patrick Stewart?
That’s Jobby. https://badmachinery.com/comic/2022-04-20/
This is the madness of a man who forgot what happened the last time he invented an algorithm.
And “Dean can help.” Good heavens. The man *was* in on the ground floor of crowdsourced, plagiaristic gibberish, I suppose…
While we’re talking about this, actually, a thought came to me while taking my constitutional yesterday. I am a regular attendee of the “gentleman’s club.” An enthusiast of unpopular music. A former teacher and committed misanthrope. Perhaps, also, cursed with a Bad Personality. It takes something out of one to step into a shaft of light, piercing the autumn clouds, and recognise oneself in Dean Thompson, but this is the revelation my unforgiving gods have granted me.
So his initial hallucinogenic vision has Lottie immobilized? That’s unencouraging. Except to Claire, I suppose. 😐
That forced-robot-conversion scene in Superman III absolutely terrified me as a child, and still comes up in dreams sometimes. I haven’t tried to rewatch it in about 30 years.
It bugged me a bit as a kid too! It was quite harsh, but then that movie went to some dark places. Fortunately Richard Pryor was there to add levity.
nooo glen don’t become a NFT
“don’t become a” (checks Google) “Non-Fungible Token”? I’m lacking context here. I don’t even know what “fungible” means. (checks Google) Oh, wait, now I do.
Normal For Tackleford. Given that he’s hanging around Lottie and Claire, it’s probably too late for the poor boy.
Incidentally, if you have a problem, and someone says, “We’ll solve this with blockchain!”, you should immediately set them on fire.
They’re not in Tackleford, though. As far as I’m aware, Glenn was only in Tackleford very briefly.
I’m kind of glad that the blockchain craze is mostly over, this was a clear example of a solution in search of a problem if there ever was. The downside is that it was replaced by an AI craze, which is just about the same thing, but more dangerous. Like those AI-written books about foraging for mushrooms that have sent people to the hospital.
OpenAI has released an AI-powered automatic speech transcription program — one of the few things which AI has been traditionally pretty decent at — which has brought the magic of generative AI to speech transcription, inserting entirely new passages of its own creation into the text it is transcribing. Saw one example where a transcript that started about some kids trying to make an umbrella suddenly invented knives for their hands and added a mass murder to the mix.
Several hospitals have been using it to transcribe doctor-patient conversations for medical records. The software deletes the original audio files once it has done its thing, because of course it does (for “privacy” reasons)
AI: Taking already-solved problems and un-solving them
“Superman 4: The quest for peace” has bugged me for more than 3 decades, with Superman’s “Rebuild the great wall of China” vision.
Why has he never used this super power before or since!?
How often does it come up that you need to rebuild the Great Wall of China?
His imaginary high-tech lair reminds me of the long ago League of Enemies, who had a real one. I wonder if they’ve found a new enemy now that Tim is dead.
I think the League of Enemies now functionally only exist as a crown green bowling team
Yes, I’ve noticed that you have a habit of tossing away some of your best concepts. It’s (I) subjective and (II) your prerogative, of course. 🙂
What are the concepts you think I threw away too soon? Remember that for nearly two decades there were no comments under the comics. I had very little idea what people liked and didn’t like.
Well, I wasn’t prepared for a test. 😉
The League of Enemies; the deal when the main S-G-R cast gathered supernatural animals for Mother Shipton (I forget why); Unit Daisy; the insinuation that Sonny is gay; NINJAS!; Fallon’s back story (who did she work for and where has she been? {♫ “the old moon asked the three…” ♫}it’s a whimsical aside!) and “side-stories” (i.e. what she was doing between stays in Tackleford); the deal with that one member of the, uh, second-generation Mystery Kid whose parents were evidently from another era/dimension; the idea of Tredgyn being even more full of ghosties and ghoulies and so forth than Tackleford is (my apologies, but that was not the impression I received); and I’m sure there were others — I have trouble remembering all the concepts you’ve KEPT 🙂 — but those are the only ones I’m recalling on the spur of the moment off the top of my head.
You DID ask. 😉
This reminds me something I’ve merely *wondered* about now and then: If I can find the relevant strip, I’d like to learn if, at Shelley’s, uh, intro party for her daughter Peggy (where Tim proposed to Shelley), a jagged shape is supposed to be furniture or a robot attendee. Thanks for your time. Take care.
This is now nested so deep that I can’t answer in reply, so hopefully you’ll se this. A lot of the stories you mention were improvised picaresques with no clear destination and they petered out. The Unit Daisy story was completely redone for a book for Keenspot in 2004 or so – Heavy Metal Hearts and Flowers. I find “sexy robot” stuff a bit embarrassing in retrospect. It was an experiment.
Sonny’s sexuality I found I had nothing to say about. It didn’t seem to matter in the great scheme of things, I have no lived experience to share there (which was becoming increasingly important to readers at the time), and god knows if you want queer indie comics in 2024, there plenty to go at without my ham-fistedly adding to the library.
I like that it turned out that Sonny was into boys, and it made no difference whatsoever. Just one strip of:
Linton: “Hey, Sonny, anything you want to talk about?”
Sonny: “Nah, I’m good.”
Linton: “Okay, so, seems like I made out with Blossom. Halp!”
I keep waiting for someone to ask “When did Tim die?” Funny you should ask. IIRC Mr. Allison mentioned it in a response to a comment during “Steeple”‘s “Author Unknown” storyline: “Tim is dead [due to circumstances I don’t recall]. This is canon.” Or words to that effect. It was something the typical reader might not remember or even have noticed, hence me expecting the question. I was going to include a link but the Comments sections haven’t been preserved in the “Steeple” archives. At least, not in the archives I located and consulted; there may be others elsewhere on the internet.
Since John loves it when we hold him to obscure bits of “canon” that he has better things to do than to worry about, it’s on the Wayback Machine: he blew himself up.
My impression is that “canon” for John generally means “until I have a better idea”, or “until I’m struck by inspiration that contradicts this”.
There’s always room for improvement.
or maybe the canon is what Tim used to blow himself up
I do worry about some of the classic commenters we’ve lost since then. Fabian Wiggers! leecachu! I hope they’re okay.
Rats, that Wayback Machine link won’t show me the comic image, just the text. Tried a couple of different browsers.
Here’s that comic in the current Solver archive, without the comments: The obvious question.
I’ve only just realised who Dean is. Facepalm. To be fair I’ve only just got to that bit of Giant Days 😂
I can’t remember all of Mr. Allison’s characters. Which is fortunate for him, since if I did, I might be bugging him to bring back This, That, or The Other character. 😉
His role in Giant Days is important. A Desmond Fishman “for the people” if you like.
With marginally more redeemability than our fishy friend. Probably.
At the very least, marginally more self-awareness.
Lottie, I’m not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I built the Big Solving Node thirty-five minutes ago.
But can Glenn catch a bullet?
Certainly!
The question is, can Glim survive catching a bullet?
Why is Lottie wearing Aquaman’s jumper? Also, I bloody love Superman III.
You may remember Lottie’s empathy for sea creatures from Author Unknown. A clue to her undersea heritage? https://badmachinery.com/comic/2021-07-12/
IIRC the color’s closer to Aqualad’s jumper than Aquaman’s, but I don’t remember if Aqualad’s shirt had scales or not.
Robo-Lottie and “Sounds dreamy, son” really got me
John, your skills at thwipping continue to amaze me.
I had to look up Tower Pilates but having seen it I can confirm that it is definitely a cult. Where do I sign up?
Everything reminds me of her
I love the all-seeing eye at the center of Grim’s fever dream. And Robot Lottie, of course.
The whole setup looks very audio-centric. I see lots of quarter-inch jacks plugged in.
(Big O’s system seemed to involve a lot of prehensile quarter-inch jacks — is it the future?)
It’s only just occurred to me that the intercom “BUZZZZZZZ” is acting as a buzzkill to Glenn’s orgy of buzzwords.
Wonderful creatures, bees. Their wrath is majestic.
“Harness the future now” is a great inspirational marketing slogan. Glenn should copyright it if it’s not already been dibbed. On the other hand perhaps words like Tomorrow and Future are getting a bit passe. The Future is so Yesterday don’t you think?
Pretty sure short phrases like “Harness the future now” cannot be copyrighted… but they can be trademarked (and thus still dibs’d).
Could that be Dean on the Intercom?
Given the title of the nest page, I doubt it.
“There’s hardly a week when I don’t think about Superman III.”
Now I officially feel sorry for you. Your certificate is in the mail.
Very proud to have understood that Jocasta reference.
I love Jocasta’s big metal hair. Great design.
A bit late now, but I thought I’d say I recognised the Machine Man 2020 wiggly cable elements immediately and I appreciated them greatly.