They’ll probably die quite soon
Claire is a kind soul who has space in her heart for anyone even slightly deserving. This is a rare misfire for her charm school.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
Claire is a kind soul who has space in her heart for anyone even slightly deserving. This is a rare misfire for her charm school.
Oh dang, the skeleton arms!
Beate has a skeleton with a mind of its own. But not in the same way as the Rad Bradbury story “Skeleton” (fortunately).
I guess she can’t tell it to stay in a little (locked) box somewhere.
That story! So scary and perfect.
Rad Bradbury famously wrote Fahrenheit 420.
451, I think.
Mike is riffing on my typo. 🙂
Pretty sure it was Röntgen 451 that Rad wrote.
That was X-rayted, though.
What is that riding with her up the hill??? An explanation of her mystery friend? That looks like all the negativity in the known Universe! What a burden to carry! This girl NEEDS a friend she can trust! (She does have a nice bobble!)
Even in the comic world we shouldn’t be judging young women on their bobbles!
Well Claire did and I agree!
I like big bobbles and I cannot lie
You other solvers can’t deny
That when a girl skis by with a knitted cap
And a round thing on the top
You invite her for hot chocolate and destroying her enemies
Now I’m curious as to whether this Skeleton imaginary friend is some malignant paranormal entity or is it some manifestation of the darker elements of Bea’s psyche ala Norman Osborne/Green Goblin strengthened and empowered by her loneliness and isolation.
It’s the tackleverse, it could easily be either!
Or both.
I am wondering the same. Poor Beate. If it’s a malignant separate entity, why does it already look like Lottie? (because John A wants to make the connection clear, that’s why, but there’s still a bit of room for other explanations) My guess is whether it’s possession or manifestation, when our mystery team in the present vanquishes EviLottie, we’ll see a flash of repentant Beate at the end. I’d say “a la [some trope]” here but I’m not as up on pop culture as I’d like.
It doesn’t look like Lottie. The face is only vaguely human-like.
Doppelgröte’s most iconic outfit is visually doing a lot of heavy lifting here, isn’t it.
You’re an omniscient observer. Evil Lottie doesn’t actually have Lottie’s form here, but John has drawn her as such so we can understand what is going on.
So, EviLottie’s another personality, co-existing in Beate’s body, and not in any way based on Lottie (she just took Lottie’s face to frame her)? And maybe, when Beate “comes a cropper” on the last day, it will destroy the Beate personality, leaving only a bitter, twisted, evil skeleton woman who already sees Lottie and Claire as enemies, and will doubtless blame Lottie for what’s happened?
Perhaps the history of this relationship will surface as abusive parents or a friend or sister who was not considerate and the reason for an imaginary friend (who “has her best interests at heart” but who knows no limits for punishing her when she fails.)
My guess is that Beate’s parents are emotionally distant and negligent, and largely prefer to keep her at boarding school or throw money at her problems.
Evilottie could also be some evil spirit that Bea summoned for become popular or successful. Maybe after something happened they were able to possess her.
And I just realized- panel 4- we SEE HER FACE.
I’d just like to say that panel 5 is beautifully drawn
Note- I’m not talking about Beate’s face. I mean the OTHER face, next to hers.
Protodoppelgröte was out to get me – that’s the way it seems. Panel 4 haunted all my dreams. Then I saw her face! Now I’m a believer!
All this Monkeeing around.
I-I-I-I-I’m not your stepping stone!
Did you also notice the reaching (or maybe waving “Nooo!”) skelottie arms in panel one?
Yeah, the arms in panel 1 jumped out at me immediately. I didn’t see the face in panel 4 until I had looked at it several times.
I’ve liked Beate since I first saw her and I’m dreading each new page because I don’t see any way for a happy ending in this.
Beate needs to tell her holographic best friend to piss off
What could happen to cause a parting of the ways? A disagreement?
Yes, I’m getting JoJo Rabbit flashbacks. She’s still stuck in the “Heil” phase but needs to move to “F*** OFF HITLER!”.
Oh no. It’s way worse than we all thought! Bea has an evil twin “sister” than keep her isolated because she wants her all for herself and love to bully her without any pithy. Her evilness is so strong that even Claire could do nothing.
Hot chocolate and destruction of my enemies? Claire certainly knows the way to my heart.
Another great page.
I read once for the fun and then I just admire this comic.
Because I could not stop for Death –
She kindly stopped for me –
The Ski lift held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly rose – she knew no haste
And I had put away
My Fondue and my Glühwein too,
For her need to ski –
To be sung to the tune of the theme from ‘Gilligan’s Island’.
Or ‘The Yellow Rose Of Texas’?
Well, that would seem to conclusively settle the issue of Beate’s Significant Other’s corporeal existence
I’m definitely starting to lean towards ‘might not actually be real’.
This is the Tackleverse. We STILL don’t know.
At first I missed the “not” and read it as “‘might actually be real'” and thought, “Yeah, that scans.”
Solver has been lower on the magical realism scale than some of the other comics, but it’s not entirely absent — the Waterman, Hettie’s ungulate-hurling ability — and we did earlier in the story get a reminder that the mystery kids have dealt with fantastical foes before.
I wouldn’t count Hettie’s ungulate-hurling, personally. I think that’s just an example of the physical laws of the Tackleverse differing from those we have in our own world.
I mean, there’s comic exaggeration, and then there’s hurling a quarter-ton of venison out of human ken.
(The stag’s expression still makes me crack up every time I look at it.)
We also saw the strong man in Circus Windows hurling both Lottie and Mildew over great distances (though the later solo-Lottie toss was his more striking toss, in my memory – it was days before she even landed). He and Hettie are just a breed apart from the rest of us mortals.
Wow, John. Bravo. This is an amazing series of panels. The whole story coming into focus so elegantly.
Skelottie on the T-bar in that last frame. Smashing.
All those videos John had to watch on T‑bars and yet it’s still drawn wrong, with everybody *sitting* on it. I feel now like being deliberately teased!
Signed, a T‑bar lover.
I know it’s more of a lean. I tried.
You know Fortnums do spring hampers…
Shhh! Quiet, you!
How is one supposed to ride one of those things?
Looks very uncomfortable to sit on.
Yeah, I could look it up, but I just had knee surgery this morning and the lazy sauce hasn’t worn off yet.
You stand on your skis, one prong of the T-bar hooks behind your bum and pulls you forward (the rope and T don’t point up, they point diagonally forward). Ideally you have someone on the other side to balance it out–unless you are a snowboarder, then you have to go solo with it hooked between your legs and you’re always being pulled diagonally and if you lose it, you’ve got to trudge down to the bottom and start again. Given Lottie’s lack of skill, I suspect she’s stuck on chair lift runs only.
Rival, enemy, potato, potato
Love the “TROMP-TROMP” walk-up in the 1st panel. It reminds me of Mildred’s approach to Ryan and Amy when they were at the farmer’s market.
Mildred had five TROMPs. But then, she could be so extreme at times.
You know what she’s like.
A dangerous nutter!
“AND?”
I think it’s also an excellent use of onomaopoetia for the sound of walking through snow.
Whoops bad spelling
– onomatopoiea, that ‘t’ got moved around
ontrompopoiea
That’s the sound of this opera… https://youtu.be/5Rj2GnhGr9A?feature=shared
Snow squeaks not like a mouse but like snow when you step on it.
Snow squeaks at 10 F and below. Or -12.222 C and below.
This is heartbreaking.
My first thought was “Oh no, she’s well and truly schizophrenic, poor thing!!”. I’ve read some accounts of people whose schizophrenic hallucinations take over in exactly this way.
But I’d certainly prefer for it to be an actual external evil spirit that could – eventually – be exorcised by Lottie & co.
Agree. A “Killer Bob” situation would be very interesting to see.
“Snow; slide with me!”
I do like a big bobble. I got my wife to make me a nice bobbled beanie. It was very kind of her – I can’t do it myself because I spent my crafts classes mainly being sent out of the door by the teacher who couldn’t be arsed to work out who was making noise so just singled out one student in each class as the designated troublemaker to be sent outside.
It was gym class where I was making trouble, dammit!
A psychotherapist can help you with your pom-pom obsession, or bobblephilia
Your resentment against a particular teacher is just something we all go through. There is no cure, although Bad Machinery is the best treatment
is that Darth Vader?
He’s back
In bobble form
SOMEHOW HE RETURNED
It boggles my mind how Skelottie’s speech bubble resembles Bee’s bobble. Was it intentional or not? Well, another one of John’s mysteries!
So you’re boggled by the bobble bubble?
Bobblesmacked!
It’s puffy but not Bobbley!