Recent Comments

1. about 4 hours ago on Bad Machinery

   The plot of “Into the Woods” was kicked off by Mildred and Neal finding devil bear stool in the woods.

2. 1 day ago on Bad Machinery

   Those appear to be Alvar Aalto Model 60 stacking stools, which are notable enough to have their own Wikipedia page.

3. 1 day ago on Bad Machinery

   Ryan did eventually find his independent woman covered in childish scribble who would stay the course.

   Actually, he’d already found her, but she didn’t have the scribble yet. Those were originally a Shelley idea that Shelley herself backed out of. Possibly she was, even then, plotting to fulfill her own prophecy. Shelley was also the one who pushed Amy and Ryan together at the end of SGR…

4. 3 days ago on Bad Machinery

   She’s a class act, and also she has a top mystery girl on staff.

5. 4 days ago on Bad Machinery

   We’ve seen both Billy and Charlie before, at the storage auction when they were testing Romesh’s powers, and in the pub when Amy was chasing leads. I don’t think we’ve seen Billy’s partner-in-crime before, and I don’t believe she ever gets a name.

6. 5 days ago on Bad Machinery

   Before this flashback, Lottie had received four notes from Shauna. We never actually saw the fourth one, because Lottie caught Shauna delivering it, and so we got this story she’s currently telling instead of the text of the note.

   We only see two of the notes from this end. I think this was the second one Lottie got, which she received in the October 28th strip, which read, “Follow the money — a friend”. It did not refer to her as an alabaster idiot, pallid dingbat, deranged black metal girl scout, gender-swap Death Note, or chibi Vampirella.

   But it might be the third one, received November 1st, which advised her to “Look at Wendlefield”. We didn’t see the literal text of that one, so it might have used any number of epithets. Though that might have tipped her off as to who was sending them.

7. 8 days ago on Bad Machinery

   I want to say that it’s because of the way I’ve condensed it down to fit into a comment here, but, frankly, adding more detail just makes it seem more insane. All I can say is it made sense at the time.

   SGR just generally had a higher weirdness quotient than even early Bad Machinery, and Bad Machinery‘s has dropped over time. The magical realism stuff is still there even into Solver, but it’s a lot more subtle by this point than it was at the beginning of the comic.

8. 8 days ago on Bad Machinery

   Ryan may be busy on the other side of the Bobbins/Bad Machinery fence. There was a long Bobbins storyline, “Hard Yards”, that ran parallel to the last several Bad Machinery cases, beginning before “Space is the Place” and ending after “Severed Alliance”.

   As I mentioned above, Ryan’s childhood best friend, Tim Jones, married Ryan’s little sister, Riley. Thanks in part to Riley’s interference, Tim lost a mad science contest and was exiled to Wales. Early in the New Bobbins strips, Tim, after a visit back to Tackleford, got back into mad science, and ended up blowing up their house in Wales (actually it was their daughter Scout tampering with Tim’s invention, but Tim took the blame to protect her, reminiscent of something Ryan did for Tim once, in the incident that resulted in Mr Knott’s eyepatch). Riley threw him out of the rubble of their house, and he came back to Tackleford, where he ended up hooking up with and knocking up Shelley Winters, who had also recently returned to Tackleford.

   So currently Ryan is in the position of trying to play Switzerland in between his childhood best friend; his little sister and his niece, who have now also returned to Tackleford and are staying with Ma Beckwith; Amy’s best friend, who was actually Ryan’s friend first, and who has frankly been a better friend to him than Tim ever was, whom Tim has impregnated; and his father, the King of Tramps, who has also come back to Tackleford seeking retribution on the guy who did his little girl wrong.

   Also, due to upheavals at Griswalds in the last case, Ryan is the new deputy head there (Mrs Lord is the new headmistress), and probably has stuff to do to get ready for the autumn term (British summer breaks are not as long as American).

   Also he has a toddler. Walt’s about 20 months old now.

   So, yeah, Ryan has some stuff on his plate.

9. 8 days ago on Bad Machinery

   That appears to be Mayor James Mayor in the upper right with Tommy and Stan. Mayor Mayor was mayor for much of Scary Go Round, until he was defeated in an election by Tim Jones, Ryan’s brother-in-law and childhood friend.

   Tim later lost a mad science duel to rival Dai Davies, after his girlfriend (later wife) Riley, Ryan’s little sister, sabotaged his effort, and Davies cheated, and so Tim was exiled to Wales, while Davies took over as mayor.

   Shortly thereafter, the mad science formula Davies had invented and used on himself caused him to revert to atavism, and Mayor took over the office again.

   Mayor Mayor then had a stress-related psychotic break at the Tackleford fair, and, as the superhero “Kid Democrat”, teamed up with a high-on-jam Shelley Winters and an extremely-drunk Mike Savage to rescue Amy from a yokel riding a giant bee. Mike defeated the bee by being stung through the chest, which he survived only because he was so drunk that biology got confused, Shelley got fired from her job at the Cormorant, which she’d foisted off on Amy anyway while she sampled jams, and Mayor Mayor got removed from office again, after which Tackleford was forbidden from having any more mayors.

   Tommy’s death, seven years ago, would have been early in the gap between SGR and Bad Machinery.

10. 9 days ago on Bad Machinery

    I’m pretty sure the Endless Gyratory cannot function by any known laws of traffic or topology. Presumably it’s actually some sort of occult glyph seared into the living earth by the passage of vehicles through it, like the Pattern or the M25 motorway.

    In the apocryphal story “Wen-Tack”, Mildred will get annoyed at how long it takes to get to Wendlefield, and assemble the Wen-Tack Action Group, consisting of herself, Linton, Romesh’s little sister Sunita (who made a brief appearance earlier in this case), and three other first-years — Tom Grendel, Georgia Cheeseman, and Zebus, Warrior Child — to open the Wen-Tack relief road by leveraging the power of the Internet and Linton’s unboxing hobby.

    They’re ultimately successful, but the terrible chain of events Mildred sets in motion results in the breakup of the mystery team, as the changes in school catchment areas from the new road cost Griswalds its sixth form, and the kids are scattered to other schools in the area, with Lottie and Claire going one way, Mildred and Shauna another, and the boys still another. By the beginning of Solver, Lottie’s besties with Claire, but barely in contact with Mildred, and getting her news of Shauna through Mildred.