Ryan will be back in September, but we won’t be here to see it. There are only a couple strips left in “The Case of the Missing Piece”, and after this there’s only “The Case of the Severed Alliance”, which picks up a few days after “Missing Piece”, and is set entirely during the summer break.
But there was another storyline after “Severed Alliance”. I’ve usually been calling it “The Great Unboxing”, which was the last third of it. John Allison seems to prefer “Wen-Tack”, which was the first third. Nobody calls it “Parents”, which was the middle bit.
It was only kind of a Bad Machinery case. All of the mystery kids were in it — including Claire, who’ll get promoted to full mystery girl in the Bobbins story “Hard Yards” — but only Mildred and Linton had big parts. It followed the two of them and the Wen-Tack Action Group, a group of first-years — Tom Grendel, Sunita Sengupta (Romesh’s little sister), Georgia Cheeseman, and Zebus, Warrior Child (I’m not sure if Zebus is his first name, his last name, or his only name) — who Mildred assembled to help her get the Wen-Tack link road opened. It includes one of my all-time favorite Allison lines: “Mildred! The terrible chain of events you set in motion is on TV!”
But John Allison decided he didn’t like it and ended up taking it down. It wasn’t available anywhere for a long while, but he recently gave in and put up a PDF up on Dropbox, though the URL is ugly enough that I’m not going to even try to get it past the censorbot.
But in any case, “Parents” covered a parents’ night at Griswalds’, and it was established that not only did Ryan come back, he came back as deputy head. Mrs Lord became the new headmistress. I’m not sure, but I think Spink took over Knott’s job. There was a very satisfying encounter between Lottie and Spink where she praised his impression of Mr Knott and bribed him with a Caramac.
Also, “Things are going to change,” is a callback to the last Scary Go Round page. Ryan, Amy, Desmond Fishman, and Comrade Bat (Ryan’s pet bat, who we met briefly in flashback in “Forked Road”) were seeing Shelley Winters off as she left Tackleford for London and a job at the Ministry of History (as documented in Destroy History, which is now back up at the scarygoround site).
RYAN: “So what happens now?”
AMY: “Well, I suppose… things are going to change.”
However, that page was itself a callback to an earlier SGR storyline, “The Child”, in which a strange hairless child telling people, “Things are going to change,” caused havoc in Tackleford. Sarah was actually the first person to encounter the Child. Lottie and Shauna later had a run-in with what may have been the same child, who was now calling himself Poh and blackmailing the other children into being his friends/slaves. That was when we first met the mystery boys, and the rivalry between them and Lottie and Shauna began.
What ever 16 days ago
One of the few things worse than thinking of a perfect rejoinder way too late.
John Campbell 16 days ago
Ryan will be back in September, but we won’t be here to see it. There are only a couple strips left in “The Case of the Missing Piece”, and after this there’s only “The Case of the Severed Alliance”, which picks up a few days after “Missing Piece”, and is set entirely during the summer break.
But there was another storyline after “Severed Alliance”. I’ve usually been calling it “The Great Unboxing”, which was the last third of it. John Allison seems to prefer “Wen-Tack”, which was the first third. Nobody calls it “Parents”, which was the middle bit.
It was only kind of a Bad Machinery case. All of the mystery kids were in it — including Claire, who’ll get promoted to full mystery girl in the Bobbins story “Hard Yards” — but only Mildred and Linton had big parts. It followed the two of them and the Wen-Tack Action Group, a group of first-years — Tom Grendel, Sunita Sengupta (Romesh’s little sister), Georgia Cheeseman, and Zebus, Warrior Child (I’m not sure if Zebus is his first name, his last name, or his only name) — who Mildred assembled to help her get the Wen-Tack link road opened. It includes one of my all-time favorite Allison lines: “Mildred! The terrible chain of events you set in motion is on TV!”
But John Allison decided he didn’t like it and ended up taking it down. It wasn’t available anywhere for a long while, but he recently gave in and put up a PDF up on Dropbox, though the URL is ugly enough that I’m not going to even try to get it past the censorbot.
But in any case, “Parents” covered a parents’ night at Griswalds’, and it was established that not only did Ryan come back, he came back as deputy head. Mrs Lord became the new headmistress. I’m not sure, but I think Spink took over Knott’s job. There was a very satisfying encounter between Lottie and Spink where she praised his impression of Mr Knott and bribed him with a Caramac.
John Campbell 16 days ago
Also, “Things are going to change,” is a callback to the last Scary Go Round page. Ryan, Amy, Desmond Fishman, and Comrade Bat (Ryan’s pet bat, who we met briefly in flashback in “Forked Road”) were seeing Shelley Winters off as she left Tackleford for London and a job at the Ministry of History (as documented in Destroy History, which is now back up at the scarygoround site).
RYAN: “So what happens now?”
AMY: “Well, I suppose… things are going to change.”
However, that page was itself a callback to an earlier SGR storyline, “The Child”, in which a strange hairless child telling people, “Things are going to change,” caused havoc in Tackleford. Sarah was actually the first person to encounter the Child. Lottie and Shauna later had a run-in with what may have been the same child, who was now calling himself Poh and blackmailing the other children into being his friends/slaves. That was when we first met the mystery boys, and the rivalry between them and Lottie and Shauna began.
GaryCooper 15 days ago
The girls have their sunnies on. Summer has begun.
willie_mctell 15 days ago
Mrs Lord as Head. Possibilities are endless.
Aladar30 Premium Member 15 days ago
I think that good teachers like Ryan only exist in fictional stories.