Simple Soul's Afire

This is probably not true, but I might as well believe it, as I have more faith in John Allison than whatever an internet search would tell me.

Volume 3 of Bad Machinery, The Case of the Simple Soul, finds Tackleford beset by a series of fires over summer vacation. Unfortunately, our mystery-solving squads are less than full strength, as Jack and Shauna are now in luuuurve, and spend all their time smooching or staring into each other's eyes.

Disgusting, and yet, it opens up new avenues for investigation. In between discussing whether being dismembered is an activity better shared, Shauna and Jack discover a large, shirtless man who lives under a bridge. What sheltered existences, that they've never seen a meth addict. Jack doesn't want to interrupt his summer of luuuurve with an investigation, so Shauna passes word to Charlotte and Mildred. 

Who promptly decide what this guy needs is some spiffing up, so he can meet a nice lady. I, uh, eh, but, sigh, OK. I now see what Shauna brings to the table: she's the only one not completely bonkers. Though Mildred and Charlotte seem to get along, Mildred doesn't have the pull on Lotte that Shauna does. At least in terms of distracting her from disastrous ideas like washing a fox. Meanwhile, Sonny and Linton are, despite their best efforts, being drawn into investigating the fires by the new kid at school.

Colm, when not nicking things from the store for thrills - I assume that's what, 'for the craic' means - develops an immediate and doomed crush on Charlotte. Although he seems to get his head turned by most every woman. The French assistant, the local scandal rag writer Erin Winters. Just like a real teenage boy! I miss those confusing, hormonal days. Well, mostly I miss my hair, and my shoulder not making clicking noises when I rotate it. Also, I note here that according to Linton, Charlotte's derisive nickname is Potty Grote. Which makes me think, given childrens' desire to rhyme, her last name is pronounced "grotty,", when all this time I assumed it was "groat."

Anyway, when things aren't progressing fast enough, Colm passes the info about Troll on to the fire department. In John Allison's world, firemen are apparently what cops here in the U.S. are like: Aggro lunatics with too little supervision and too much access to dangerous implements. But it's the girls' unsuccessful attempt to send the big fella on a date that gets a full-blown mob going. This does allow Shauna and Mildred's dads to show they're sensible people who recognize the dangers of mobs, but does not help Miss Perks find a proper fella.

From there, we get a few red herrings before a last-second, out of left field reveal of the true firebug. Incidentally and totally not significant, wink-wink, this is the first story that involves Charlotte's future mystery-solving sidekick Claire. Who has a huge crush on Colm and is the daughter of the fire chief. This story demonstrates a side of her I'd not seen any evidence of in Wicked Things, so it was quite surprising seeing how she started.

Let's Do the Time Hole Crawl

And that's why they call the town "Tackleford." 

Volume 7 of Bad Machinery, The Case of the Forked Road, finds our cast in their third, and I presume final, year of schooling. Things don't seem great. Mildred's on the outs with Charlotte and Shauna because they wouldn't join the Drama Club with her, while Sonny, Linton, and Jack each fall under the terrible curse of Puberty.

These things happen quickly. Charlotte and Mildred are at each other's throats on Page 9, and BFFs again by Page 10. On Page 14, Sonny is worried about being surrounded by unknown psychopaths and needing to learn about them. Page 30, he's slump shouldered, surly, and smelly, wandering out of his room long enough to spray on some deodorant before shuffling back to his room to play video games in his undies.

To be fair, that is how I remember most of my teenage years, other than I used stick deodorant. Hey, Star Fox didn't judge me when I was helping him defeat Andross! But he was already relying on Slippy Toad, so I suppose he couldn't afford to be picky about hygiene.

Point being, the boys are largely irrelevant in this story, as they've devolved to cavemen. Or a lower form of life. Like frat boys. I assume cavemen were able to start fires some way other than lighting their own farts, not a feat I'd expect frats to manage. 

Which leaves it to the girls - in between practicing for the Drama Club's performance of Glengarry Glen Ross, quite possibly a weirder choice than Allison having Ed Gemmell as the lead in a school play version of Twin Peaks - to tease out what's going on with the odd schoolchild named Calvin (no relation), and his connection to the science teacher. Who Charlotte mostly calls "Grumpaw", so that's what I'm calling him.

This leads to a time hole in a fume cabinet, taking the girls back to 1960. Except when they return to their time, things are different. Their favorite teacher, Mr. Beckwith, is a useless drunk. His wife, antiquities expert Amy, is neither an antiquities expert or his wife. What have they done by buying too much opium-laced '60s candy?

As it turns out, the problem is actually three boys who also found the time hole and got up to no good. Their leader has straight up anime hair, much more so than Charlotte, who is one pointed described as having "manga hair," which I didn't get at all. Ollie's particular version of the curse of Puberty has led to embracing nihilism. Nothing matters, so do whatever you want. As Professor Farnsworth would say, to hell with causality!

So the girls have to try and stop Ollie and his lackeys, before they forget what the timeline they're trying to restore was even like. There's a sad bit in there about Shauna, who didn't make the initial time trip, having a boyfriend named Keith in the new timeline, who she's reluctant to lose. There's a sadder bit about why Grumpaw kept grabbing the boy from the past and enlisting him with a 'secret mission.' 

A mission that's doomed to fail. Allison's version of time travel and the ripple effects is a bit like Marvel's used to be. You can't change the past, unless you make a really BIG change. Although here it doesn't create a new timeline so much as overwrite the existing one. Then the timeline actively resists efforts to change it back.

Which unfortunately prevents the girls from simply beating Ollie and his cronies up. Too bad. I'd like to have seen if Charlotte could actually back up all her tough talk. But violence is rarely the answer in Allison's stories. Certainly not to any real problems. So that was never likely to work. Ah well. Her performance in the Alex Baldwin role in Glengarry was excellent. I think. I've never actually watched the movie. But how hard can it be to out-act Alec Baldwin?

Animal Control's Out of Its Depth on This One

My dad told me he learned as a teacher to never intercede in a fight between girls. The last time he tried, his shirt pocket got torn off and the assistant principal gave him a lot of shit for some reason. But assistant principals are known to be cocks, so that part's no surprise.

The Case of the Good Boy, the second Bad Machinery collection, again finds the boys - Linton, Jack, and Sonny - and the girls - Shauna, Charlotte, and Mildred - on seemingly unrelated paths that end up intertwining. The boys, mostly spurred on by Jack's desire to solve a "manly" mystery, investigate the rash of baby disappearances in town, which point to some great, hairy beast that lurks in the woods.

Meanwhile, Mildred guts her way through winning a rigged carny game to get a pencil said to make whatever it draws come to life. Only for her artwork to be soundly mocked by Shauna and Charlotte. Then Charlotte's attempt to demonstrate how to draw a dog shows up rummaging through Mildred's garbage. When the boys get a picture of the baby-stealer, it bears a remarkable resemblance to Mildred's attempt at drawing a dog. Clearly, Mildred's fears the pencil's power could be a Monkey's Paw situation were well-founded. Which raises the question of why she was so determined to win it. 

Also, the pencil was stolen in the confusion of the school's cricket shed being burned down. Horrors! The pencil being stolen part, not the cricket shed burning down part.

Allison mixes some of the characters into different combos this time around. Sonny and Mildred are cousins, so they hang out together at one point. Allison has Mildred seize every chance she can to do the things her parents forbid at home. Chocolate in the previous story, video games here. Charlotte spends time with Shauna's little brother, Humphrey, who she coos over and has no problems being seen in public with, unlike Shauna. One consistency, both between Shauna and Humphrey, and Jack and his old sister: the older sister wants nothing to do with the younger brother. Neither interaction is lengthy or deep, but they set up another line of connections between characters that could get used later.

Jack has a bit of a rough go this time, as he gets targeted by a bully, and screws things up with Shauna by getting so caught up in the mystery he forgets to meet her at the movies. But maybe the bullying earns him some sympathy points?

Linton's also riding Jack's ass about the Shauna thing, and between that and giving Sonny grief about being in the Naturecraft Folk (which proves useful in tracking the baby-snatcher), Linton's a pretty unlikable dick for two-thirds of this story. Jack snaps back at him - and inadvertently pushes him over a bridge - while Sonny just absorbs the snarky comments and focuses on beast hunting.

Also, Shauna and Mildred are not entirely on the same page, and Charlotte's left trying to mend fences or be the connective tissue. Something load-bearing. Mildred's issue seems to be that she feels like she's not really included, or maybe she's the third wheel. I did have the impression, reading this volume, that when either Shauna or Charlotte starting jabbing at Mildred, the other joins in. If they're jabbing at each other, Mildred usually doesn't get in on it. But Charlotte and Shauna have been friends long enough to have an entire list of things they aren't allowed to argue about - which now includes magic pencils - so it makes sense they'd have their own patterns. Which admittedly doesn't do much for Mildred's feelings of exclusion.

I don't want to let the review pass without mentioning Shauna's continued dogging of her stepdad for enjoying Velvet Underground. I have no actual knowledge or opinion about Velvet Underground, I just like that she keeps making digs at him about how bad she thinks they sound. Kids will find a weak point and exploit it ruthlessly.

The ending is strange. In some regards, it's treated as happy. Shauna's "dog", which was originally Mildred's "dog", which was what Charlotte drew, gets to go home. But I'm pretty sure the "dog" Mildred drew ate a lot of babies. Which seems horrifying, yet glossed over. Makes reuniting Archibald with his family bittersweet. Unless Allison is making some comment on parents not keeping a closer eye on their kids. Don't encourage helicopter parenting, John Allison!

The Team Needs an Exorcism

Another example of "you're not the boss of me," ending badly. 

The Case of the Team Spirit is the first collection of John Allison's Bad Machinery, released through Oni Press. The core cast - Shauna, Charlotte, Mildred, Sonny, Linton and Jack - are all starting the upper level of public school. There's a helpful glossary in the back, provided by Charlotte (which makes the accuracy questionable, but I won't know any better), that explains to a dastardly rebel descendant such as myself that UK schools are 4 through 11 and 11 through 16 (or 18), so I assume this is the latter.

This means new teachers, new uniforms - man am I glad my schools never had uniforms, so that I was only constrained by my mother's insistence I wear shirts with buttons to junior and high school, rather than t-shirts* - and new problems. Charlotte's tendency to chatter gets Shauna in trouble. Jack and Sonny find themselves hoodwinked in a football card swaps by the devious Bobby Swaps. As always, never engage in an activity with a person whose last name is a word for said activity.

While Linton, and to a lesser extent Jack and Sonny, try to figure out why the Russian oligarch who now owns the local football club seems to be having so much bad luck, Shauna and Charlotte, with the eventual assist from Mildred, try to help an elderly Russian woman who refuses to leave her home so the aforementioned oligarch can level a neighborhood and build a new stadium.

Wait, he's going to pay for the stadium himself, rather than demanding the local government fork over hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars? We need more Russian oligarchs owning sports teams here in the U.S., pronto.

It takes about a third of the book for anything truly supernatural or paranormal - which I gather are regular occurrences for this bunch - to show up. Then it shifts to Linton and the other boys trying in their half-assed way to investigate curses, while the girls are more focused on helping Shauna retrieve her nice birthday jacket from a bully from her old neighborhood. Which does result in Mildred more fully entering the fold as the third girl in the crew.

I'm guessing the competition between the boys and the girls to solve these mysteries - which Jack and Shauna appear to be keeping record of in secret - is a holdover from some earlier series of Allison's. I got that feeling a lot, that these characters have mucho past history I'm only dimly aware of, and not just the boys repeated mentions of their case involving Mad Terry, which they were not supposed to speak of.

Which makes sense. Charlotte mentions their history teacher dated her older sister in uni, which, since said older sister was friends with Esther de Groot, means said dating would have taken place concurrent with events in Giant Days. And Charlotte dragged Esther along to steal holy water from a church in that book, so she's clearly been at this sort of thing for a while.

Where were we? Allison jumps the focus between the characters, letting one or the other drive events at different times. So it's Shauna's friendship with Mrs. Biscuits, and Linton's diehard Tackleford FC fandom that start things off, Shauna gets isolated for a time as Charlotte's burgeoning friendship with Mildred gets Shauna in trouble and leads to the jacket theft. Meanwhile, Jack's the one getting roped into potential crimes so a friend of his older sister's will get the boys a tour of the stadium, so they can search for hints of curses.

I feel pretty bad for Jack, who is a neurotic mess even by the standards of teenage boys. He seems very popular with his sister's friends, but clearly has no idea what to do with that or how to respond. So his mind spirals off into flights of fancy (such as his misunderstanding of what a "military-industrial complex" is) or increasing panic (see above.) 

Much of the humor is one kid saying something unexpected or bizarre. Or hurtful. Allison's pretty good at remembering teenagers will go for the jugular if the opportunity presents itself. Some of the insults in here, I wouldn't have come out of my room for a year. There's also a lot of good timing. Near the end, Shauna asks the oligarch an obviously rhetorical question, and in the next two panels, as Charlotte and Shauna debate whether Charlotte is, in fact, 'reversing his psychology,' you see Mildred thinking about something. And then in the third panel, she answers the rhetorical question, to everyone's annoyance, and my amusement.

That said, I laughed hardest at the parts involving the Russians, both Mrs. Biscuits and the oligarch. Because I read their dialogue aloud in my best Boris Badenov accent? Or maybe because a man describing, in a real effort at inspiration, how he started his fortune mining lithium with his bare hands, then upgraded to a spoon, and would just eat a little lithium whenever he felt sad, is simply hilarious to me.

* This, not coincidentally, is why I hate polo shirts and have not worn one in over two decades. I had lots of fun t-shirts, and wasn't allowed to wear a single one to school. I was never going to be cool, but dressing like a preppy dweeb when my actual approach to school was clearly apathetic slacker didn't help.

What I Bought 8/4/2025 - Part 4

I was traveling on the west side of the state last week for work. While I was at a gas station, I saw a quilt shop across the street. On the sign, beneath the name of the shop, was the tagline, "you screamed, he stopped." Read it, paused. Double-take. Spent a few seconds parsing the meaning. At least, I hope I parsed the meaning. There was only one that wasn't deeply concerning.

Batgirl #9, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (artist), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - "Batgirl Must Die"? Damn it, did DC switch editorial directions again?

Cassandra finds Bronze Tiger, living on a ranch in Montana. Cass makes the decision to arrive in full Batgirl attire, on a black stallion. Did she rent the horse dressed as Batgirl? Buy it? Did she steal the horse? The horse seems pretty OK with her, but maybe she offered it an apple. Part of Batman's teachings: always have snacks to gain the loyalty of local fauna.

Cass is there to find out about the "Jade Tiger", but as Bronze Tiger seems reluctant to talk, she starts jabbing at him. Verbally, for giving up, for hiding away, for not doing anything to help the world. His response is all his attempts to help made the world worse, so she starts jabbing at him, physically.

Which prompts a young man dressed in green to attack her. A brief fight, and the guy's revealed as Tenji Turner, the son of Bronze Tiger and Lady Shiva. So we're doing the "Surprise! Siblings!" plotline. I find it a little weird Bronze Tiger is trying to ignore the questions about the "Jade Tiger", but as soon as Tenji intervenes, he chooses to refer to him as "Jade Tiger" rather than "Tenji." If you don't want to reveal it, why use the codename she knows?

Tenji doesn't know much about either of his parents' past, certainly not the darker stuff, but he knows of Cassandra (but not that she's Batgirl, or what a Batgirl is, considering he asks if she's a 'cave ninja.') That'll have to wait, because another of the Unburied shows up, looking to kill Cassandra. And two more on their way. Which will at least give Cassandra an opportunity to put all this energy and urge to fight to good use.

Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #4, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Shauna beating that pinata like it ruined her burgeoning romance with a self-absorbed boy. 

The war between quilt stores is settled with an all-night quilting face-off, which ends in disgrace for both teams, as the old lady declares both their efforts pitiful. 'I see both teams have chosen blind panic as their theme.'

Quilts have themes? I learn something every day.

The hatchet is buried, but the car arson and shop flooding remain unsolved. The shop owners have decided they don't care, insurance will cover it, and they'll cover the cost of Shauna's boat repairs. Shauna, on the other hand, must know who's responsible. Well, if she'd read Bryn's pamphlet, she'd have known, because his submission for poetry slam was in there, and it details the whole thing.

Hooray! I correctly deduced the culprit. Admittedly, I did so by judging off tropes and his general personality, but that's half of what Shauna does, and I pulled it off 3 issues earlier. Ha-ha! Point for Calvin, though Shauna, like a photo in one of those apps, is able to re-frame things so her attraction was actually her subconscious recognizing he was a hoodlum. That bit of mental buttressing complete, she's off to get the boat repaired and return to Tackleford. Bryn's left to be drawn into the pub dads' clique, the poor sod.

Either way, another Allison/Sarin adventure in the books. I know less about quilting than I do baking shows (or baking in general), but I might have enjoyed this more than the first Great British Bump-Off. Smaller cast made things easier to keep track of, and Shauna seemed to have more time to devolve into flights of whimsy and crushing despair for Max Sarin to depict marvelously. And since Shauna spent more time trying to be a double-agent for both sides, she wasn't doing as much investigating, which meant I didn't feel as bad for not being able to put together clues (because there weren't any, forensic evidence apparently not being much of a thing in the Allison oeuvre.)

What I Bought 6/30/2025 - Part 2

Earlier this week, they made us get everything off the floor at work so they could clean the carpets one night. Except they didn't show up, then told us the next day we had to move everything off the floor again because this time they were totally going to show up (a day late.) I hate people who can't keep schedules, especially where they're expecting you to help them.

Today we're looking at third issues.

Past Time #3, by Joe Harris (writer), Russell Olson (artist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - Wow, a Ronald Harris card, complete with blood spatter from his untimely death! Neato!

The Barnstormers are playing a local group of religious weirdos. One in particular is always mumbling to himself, but more critically, he's a dirty player. Throws an elbow into the face of the Barnstormers second baseman, setting off a huge brawl. During the fight, Henry finds out the guy is a vampire like him.

Henry flees the field entirely, but tracks the opposing ballplayer to a church later. They argue a bit, then fight a bit, the church gets lit on fire, and Ronald shoots the other guy in the head twice. Don't know if that's going to do the trick with a vampire - 2 shots to center mass didn't do much to Henry - but then Ronald has a heart attack of something and Henry bites him. Still, two head shots from a blind man when the entire building is burning down is pretty slick.

As the fight progresses, Mangual has reds and oranges gradually overtake the panels. Obviously, everything is on fire, but also things are being pulled out of the shadows. Henry's been trying to stay hidden, but not only has he run into another like him, the guy seems to know what Henry's been up to. Which means he might not be as safe with this traveling ballclub as he thinks.

That said, the pacing on this mini-series is all over the place. Took most of two issues to get Henry on the team, and in less than half an issue he's fighting another vampire and Ronald's dying. I don't have any idea what Harris is really going for with this book. He hasn't delved into Henry or Ronald's past, hasn't really delved into Henry being a vampire.

Henry turning Ronald without asking permission does tie into what Ronald said last issue, about Henry being willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. Now is that a vampire trait, or was that always part of Henry and his condition just gives him a greater ability to assert his will? Don't know, and don't know if we'll find out.

Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #3, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) -  The carnage of a convention can be difficult for a novice.

Shauna, still playing both sides, has to try and pull it off during Quiltfest. And in a sign of either how ill-suited she is for espionage, or how tired she is, Shauna figures it's a great idea to get both her employers table space directly across from each other. Because it'll be easier to keep tabs on them. It's also going to make it rather difficult to keep her bosses from noticing she's working for both of them.

It's the kind of mistake I'd make when I play chess. "Yes, ha ha." *notices extremely obvious mistake* "Shit, that was stupid." 

Indeed, the whole thing blows up on her about one page into the actual convention. She's about to get tarred and feathered (or whatever one does to quilt saboteurs) as the one behind all the sabotage, but she made friends with the husbands who hang out in the pub while their wives buy quilt stuff, and got the idea to speak with this mysterious Mabel. Who looks old enough to have watched Mary, Queen of Scots, get beheaded, and has buyer's remorse over some industrial grade quilting machine she bought that made everyone jealous. Plus, it made quilting too commercialized, too American.

Now see here, you can't blame all capitalism on the U.S. We just took what the various European powers were doing and did it. . .I don't want to say "better." Did it more. Yeah, we do more capitalism than everyone else (unless we've already been surpassed by China or India.)

Either way, the interpersonal connection means Mabel comes to Shauna's defense, and insists the two shopkeepers have a quilt-off, that very night, in a "loser leaves town" match. If professional wrestling taught me anything - besides how easy authority figures are to distract or trick - it's that there's always a loophole to those kinds of matches. Also, I'm still convinced Bryn is behind the initial sabotage, as part of some "statement." Just putting it on the record - again - for when I'm inevitably proved wrong next issue.

What I Bought 6/2/2025 - Part 1

I realized last weekend there are a lot of movies in my DVD collection I've watched several times, but never reviewed. Maybe they got a paragraph in those posts I used to do where I covered five movies I watched over the weekend while sitting around waiting for Alex to get off the phone, or off the can, or I wrote about some specific part of the movie, but that's it. I may try to correct that in the near-future.

For now, let's dive into May's comics, now that I've actually got them. Going to keep it simple and just write about a pair of second issues today.

Past Time #2, by Joe Harris (writer), Russell Olson (artist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - The wings have got to be some sort of violation of the rules. They're obscuring the ump's sight! Not that it matters to a blind man, are you freakin' kidding, ump? That pitch was a foot outside!

Back in 1925, Ronald, shakes off the beating he got last issue, while Henry disposes of the bodies, then has to dispose of the person he tried leaving dead in the cornfield last issue. Amazing that the sun was apparently well up in the sky, yet no one saw him stake a man shuffling down the sidewalk while literally smoking in the sunlight.

Henry hitches a ride under the train the ballclub takes to Des Moines, and that night, the team's rightfielder gets injured when one of the bulbs for the field lights bursts as he's chasing a fly ball. I think the flash blinds him and that somehow makes him trip over his own feet and break a leg, but I don't love how Olson draws it.

He adds these little dirty yellow things in the air around the light as it bursts, which makes me think it's actual glass, then draws more of them around Coombs' face in the next two panels. I think it's supposed to be like he's seeing spots, but I thought at first that he was getting showered with broken glass.

Either way, Coombs is out and here's Henry, passing himself off as Ronald's friends (while messing with his mind) and touting his ballplaying days from college (which we hear about in a brief flashback, but we don't see him play.) Ronald's apparently a heck of a pitcher, even blind, but not against a guy with vampire speed and reflexes, so Henry's got himself a night job. And all it took was sabotaging that light. How exactly he sabotaged it so it would explode when Coombs was looking up at it, which would only happen on a ball hit over his head, versus it exploding during the 98% of the game Coombs is either watching the pitcher and the infield, batting, or in the dugout, I don't know. Point is, Henry does whatever it takes to get what he wants. Is that a vamp thing, or a Henry thing, that's unclear.

Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #2, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I know the tight spandex is a classic lady spy look, but I feel for an activity like that, a Spy vs. Spy reference might have been more appropriate.

Shauna's new boss just found her car burned up. She suspects a former employee-turned-competitor, and offers to pay for Shauna's boat repairs if Shauna will prove Pat set the fire. Pretend to be fired here, apply there, get the dirt. Simple, except for the part where I've not seen a John Allison character yet I thought had any capacity for subterfuge or deception. They are all, in their own ways, horrible actors and liars.

Before Shauna gets to the espionage, she's got to find a corsage. I mean, a reason to get the brooding Bryn interested in her to the point she could need a corsage. I mean, whatever. . .she wants to jump him. Or be jumped by him, but he's too busy being deep and soulful about the injustices of the world. Which he solves by keying peoples' cars. Look, man, just say you're antisocial

Shauna finally visits the other store, gets hired by badmouthing the competition, and returns for her first day of work to find someone clogged the drains to flood the store. Clogged them with quilt wadding, like you can get at the other store! So now Pat asks Shauna to play spy for her, on the other store. Again, this is absolutely not something I believe she can accomplish successfully, but so it goes.

I feel like all signs point to Bryn, as part of some attempt at a "statement" by trying to crash the local quilting economy. Wreck the stores, customers gone, husbands forced to find something else to do besides sit at the pub while their wives shop, something something revolution? Seems too obvious, but unless it's this mysterious "Mabel", I've not got any other suspects.

What I Bought 4/18/2025 - Part 2

The guy unhappy with the guy he let operate under his permit is now unhappy with how I'm attempting to resolve his problem. I mean, I knew he would be, but he's also been griping about wanting the guy gone for over a year, and I've been telling him for over a year I can't break the contract between the two of them, but he keeps griping, so I've taken the one option I am allowed by regulation to take. And he could avert it if he really wanted, but he doesn't.

Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma #1, by Ram V (writer), Anand RK and Jackson Guice (artists), Mike Spicer (colorist), Aditya Bidikar (letterer) - Mitch Shelly's found himself in a Spirograph dimension.

In reality, Mitch has tried to step away from a life of heroics, settling in with a family and living out his remaining years. He sneaks off his deathbed to die in the woods, and resurrects as a young man again, with the same symbol he's got on his back on the cover.

He's got some power pertaining to time, and that means he's about to get sucked into something big. Someone claiming to be another Mitch Shelly arrives to prepare this Mitch to face some creature that will end the universe. RK draws it as almost angelic in shape, but with a hole in the middle and made of seemingly a bunch of intestines and scaffolding.

Turns out, Mitch is responsible for this, and we're flung into a flashback to 1945, where he was a prisoner of the Japanese army. (Ram V uses the old bit about Hitler using the Spear of Destiny to keep superheroes at bay, so much can be killed and return, but he doesn't get any powers. Which seems inconsistent, without even getting into the notion the Spear is extending its power to the opposite side of the globe.) It looks like, with the war winding down, the commandant of the camp called for a feast, which included killing and eating soldiers. Like Mitch.

Basically, Hitler died and the Spear stopped working as Mitch's corpse was both being immolated, and his organs being eaten by that commandant, and so the guy got some kind of ability. Enough to survive Mitch resurrecting with flame powers and burning Rabaul to the ground, anyway.

I don't know, I thought the deal with Mitch Shelly was, everybody kept thinking he was Vandal Savage's foe, the Immortal Man, but he was actually something entirely different. But I haven't read the first series in years, and aside from having the artist, Jackson Guice, draw the intro page, I have no idea how much Ram V's following that versus the New 52 version, or something else entirely. Or if he's using anything beyond the basic concept of "guy gets new power every time he dies."

The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #1, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I thought the English were supposed to be good at boats.

Shauna's getting to borrow her uncles narrowboat to travel the English canals. She gets as far as Barton-on-Wendle, before a shoddy job of mooring, results in extensive - and expensive - damage. Now she needs the job to gets the moneys to fix the boat, or she's sunk.

After the requisite nervous breakdown, rendered beautifully by Sarin, a local poet - sporting Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil 4 hair, true sign of a goober - helps her out. His mother owns a quilting supply shop, and needs someone who can make tea, make change, and put stuff in a bag, presumably without burning down the store. Shauna can almost certainly do those things!

I especially like that, when the confidence fades and desperation sets in, Sarin goes back to Shauna turning into a drippy, massive tear, as she did during her earlier breakdown. She's one road hazard away from complete mental collapse at all times, just like me!

The issue ends with someone lighting the car of the shop owner on fire. Or perhaps cars in England spontaneously combust often. Did England embrace the Ford Pinto as the peak of automotive design? I certainly hope not, they could at least go for a tempo. There's an '80s car that can. . .almost certainly get you up a small hill faster than a walking pace!

As you can see, the appearance of more Allison/Sarin comics has put me in a fine mood. Until that next road hazard, then I'm down like an old factory being demolished for hipster coffee bars and overpriced loft apartments.

Saturday Splash Page #123

 

"Under the Boardwalk," in Steeple #8, by John Allison (writer/artist/letterer) and Sammy Borras (color artist)

This entry in John Allison's ongoing attempt to give me an even more skewed (albeit more positive) impression of England than Midsomer Murders has starts with Bilinda (or Billie) Baker's appointment as the new curate to the church in Tredregyn (which I am never able to spell without double-checking first).

Unfortunately, the Reverend Penrose is less interested in tending to his flocks' spiritual concerns, and more focused on cleaving the skulls of the wannabe Swamp Things that keep emerging from the sea. She does make a fast friend in Maggie Warren, except Maggie is a member of the local Satanist church. Well, opposites attract, or so 9 million fanfic writers keep telling me.

Or maybe opposites keep each other at a distance where their opposing polarities and gravitational pulls are in equilibrium, resulting in a dance around a barycenter, because Billie switches to the Satanists, while Maggie ends up staying in the rectory and sort of taking on curate duties for Penrose, although his housekeeper Mrs. Clovis handles most of it.

There's a mixture of shorter plots while more longterm arcs build in the background. Penrose may be dealing with increasing attacks of the creatures from the deep one week, a bunch of horny witches holding a convention the next, or some doofuses wanting to install wind turbines as a way to commune with God.

Meanwhile, you've got Penrose slowly crumbling under the guilt of the death of Billie's predecessor, two rival Satanist churches - one Billie's part of, and another run by Maggie's scumbag British lord of a father - circling like vultures. Maggie's trying to sort out what kind of person she is and wants to be, while Billie's adapting to the reality of praying to Belial and the risks that entails. It's great when it gets you money to pay rent, but there's always consequences for such things.

More supernatural bent to the plots or no, Allison still ends most pages with some clever line or dry comment. His art isn't overly detailed, but when he needs to emphasize the opulence of a room, or the sleaziness of a "sesh gremlin", he can do it. He keeps the characters on-model, but again, exaggerates as needed. If Billie and Maggie are really hungover, he can skew the proportions or angles on their surroundings, or play up Penrose's size and grim visage when he's doing his "avenger of the night" stuff.

Laughter Counts as a Higher Power, Right?

Look, lady. You can't do that with your own work. It takes the fun away from the fans with too much time on our, I mean, their hands.

The 3rd volume of John Allison's Steeple, subtitled "That's the Spirit!", covers a lot of ground, mixing between silly one-off adventures and stories that are setting things up for future developments. Billie is still a priestess in the local Satanist church, while Maggie is living in Billie's old place alongside the reverend, though I doubt Maggie is considered a curate.

After the two leads manage to keep a drunken enabler of a foul spirit from ruining Christmas with Mrs. Clovis (the reverend's housekeeper/caretaker), it's time for a crossover. Shelly Winters, who Esther helped get into publishing children's books in the pages of Giant Days, shows up in Tredregyn for a book signing and is abducted by creatures of the deep who regard one of her books as holy writ for the raising of their dark god. Shelly's emergency contact is Charlotte Grote, the top teen detective (ages 15-18) from Wicked Things, who teams up with the Billie and Reverend Penrose to locate Shelly.

Mostly, it's Charlotte being befuddled about what is going on with this town, which is a nice alternative perspective. Even Billie seemed to adapt rather quickly, although her levels of good cheer are probably acting like beer goggles. Although it's funny in itself that switching to Satanism hasn't altered her fundamental personality. She explains to Charlotte that her thing, so far as Satanism goes, is non-judgmental humanist community outreach and I think I just broke out in hives. Or maybe that's poison ivy.

It's all over relatively quickly and with no harm done, so long as the crap Shelly scribbled won't actually raise an elder god. Never can tell with those things. Guest stars having successfully survived and larked off to whatever story Allison next uses them in, he turns to the question of Billie's drained bank account. A prayer to Baphomet gets Tredregyn used as the setting for what seems very much like Midsomer Murders after a big and unexpected storm wrecks Devon. Certainly Midsomer Murders matches Penrose's description of all the priests being milksops or murderers, although with the history of religious conflict in England I'm hardly surprised. Either knuckle under to the shift in churches or getting to killin' in the name of your God, right?

In the midst of that, Penrose has to deal with some sort of shaggy creature laying eggs underneath the docks, while Maggie's father invites her home for a celebration. Of the two, the dad is a much bigger problem, and looks set to be one moving forward. He might serve as a focus to unite the disparate forces in town against him, except the Reverend Tom of the local Satanist church is making his own plans that will probably mess with Penrose but good. 

It feels like Allison's building to Penrose realizing he's got to be an inspirational figure to the townsfolk, rather than skulking about in the shadows punching mermen. Essentially the lesson Robert Pattinson's version of Bruce Wayne had to learn in that recent The Batman movie. Either that or Penrose steps away from the church and Billie unites both churches with her as vicar/high priestess/whatever you'd call an Anglican Satanist.

Allison's writing is much better than that movie's, however. Certainly funnier. His pages almost always end with some gag or visual joke, and more of them land than not. Whether that's Billie leveraging her being announced as a "priestess to watch" in Sex Magick magazine, or the "sesh gremlin" disliking feeling judged when the girls rebuff his offer of another drink.

What I Bought 7/28/2023 - Part 1

I didn't manage to get everything from July. A couple of books I couldn't find, and there was no copy of Moon Knight for a price I was willing to pay. Maybe I'll find them next month. Of the six I did find, they kindly break out into neat categories, so let's start with a couple that are wrapping up.

The Great British Bump-Off #4, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Look, it's a nice cake, but it's not that nice.

The contestants present their movie themed cakes, although the one guy made Downton Abbey. Isn't that  TV show? What should be grounds for immediate disqualification, is not. Corruption amongst the judges! Corruption most foul! Eh, what am I saying? It's a fake baking show, who gives a turkey? Shauna's just about got the mystery solved, but she might also be about to get eliminated.

A fortunately timed protest saves her, and she lays the whole thing out. I guess it makes sense. As much as any other answer would. At any rate, props to Sarin and Borras for making the most visually interesting, "detective explains everything" scene I've ever seen. The expressiveness of the characters, the swirl of hearts following Shauna's fingers, the shift in posture of one of the guilty parties when the jig is truly up.

We even get a chase scene I would never have expected, plus the phrase, "Cake Jail is no picnic." And while none of Shauna, Sunil, or Maisie win, we find out on the last page they took a vacation to Switzerland together and had a good time. Proving the real Bakery Tent prize was the potential friends they kept from getting murdered along the way.

So, this was nice. Not my favorite thing Allison has written, but nice. I never particularly felt like I was drawn into the mystery, that Allison wanted the reader to try and solve it, but it was funny, even though I know next to nothing about baking or cooking competition shows. And I love Sarin's art, so all good.

Hellcat #5, by Christopher Cantwell (writer), Alex Lins (artist), Kj Diaz (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - The cover says, "After Pacheco", but I have no idea what Carlos Pacheco cover Pere Perez is supposed to be homaging here.

Let's get this over with, I got an appointment with a bottle of turpentine to blot this from my memory.

Patsy didn't kill the Stupidly Named Love Interest. She saved him from Blackheart, but he used the door-thing, saw Patsy as she "really" is, went nuts, and killed himself. Rick Sheridan knows this because. . . the Imaginator recorded it, but it's busted, so I don't know. Sleepwalker stopped hiding this info from him, I guess. He lets Patsy read it from his mind, she freaks, blasts Daimon into the sea. Daimon doesn't show up again, nor is there any sort of resolution of that in this comic. Just shuffles off to Buffalo.

Rick convinces her to walk through the door thing, and she turns back into a human again, but she's out of it. Rick watches over her, Hedy uses a spell to exorcise Patsy's mother's ghost from her home, which. . .seems like something you would discuss before doing unilaterally. At the very end, Patsy puts on the costume, still appearing to be out of it. She keeps muttering, "Good. Bad." then continuing in internal monologue, "Who's to say?" Which makes it seem like she probably shouldn't be leaping around rooftops.

Also, it happens one page (albeit an indeterminate amount of time) after She-Hulk and Stark ask Rick to watch over Patsy. Great job, Rick!

Oooooooooooooof. This thing is just a mess. The door shows your true form (and Demon Hellcat is still a boring design.) But it doesn't show your true form, because people are different things and Patsy's too locked into binary thinking. Or it's because "Hell is lies." In which case it wouldn't be a "True-Form Door," would it? Hedy banishing Patsy's mother's while Patsy's lost in her own head, why? Because Patsy was never going to do it herself? No closure or any sort of conclusion between mother and daughter (granted we've seen that 40 times over the decades)?

Oh, and we're told Daimon and Blackheart probably just lost interest in Patsy because she appears broken. That's this mini-series in a nutshell. Too much stuff, so Cantwell just chucks some of it in the trash at the end. Because he either didn't have a better plan when he included it, or he's shit at pacing and didn't leave himself enough room.

What I Bought 6/30/2023

It seems Twitter now expects you to have an account, or log in with some other account you have, to even look at it. Which means that's it for me reading those 8 or 9 people I would check on a couple of times a day. Probably for the best.

There were only two books left over from June for me, and they arrived Friday, so let's get to those.

The Great British Bump-Off #3, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - For every batter-laden finger you point at yourself, nine other fingers are also pointing at you. Is that how that saying goes?

Turns out Neal did survive the poisoning, but may never be pretty enough to appear on TV again. The tox report says he ingested Deadly Nightshade. So Shauna has some sort of clue, but has also attracted the ire of Maisie. Who fortunately only suspects her of trying to sabotage the others in a show of gamesmanship, not attempted murder, and fails to gain any adherents to her theory. I especially like that Will thinks he knows what's going on because he sees the patterns of contestants on baking shows. Careful Will, I've been led astray by the tropes more than once in trying to solve mysteries!

On to the baking. Today's challenge is to represent your favorite movie in a cake. Assuming I could bake, how would I do that for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? Three flavors, each which combine nicely with one of the others, but are explosive when used as a trio. Shauna has another horrible experience with the soul-draining harpy of a judge, in a 9-panel page where a black ooze slowly drips over the panels as you progress down the page, and the color gradually shifts to all purple and black. Poor girl, she's never going to survive long enough to solve this.

Or maybe she will, because Titus eats some stuff at his station that turns out to be Deadly Nightshade. That's two attempted murders, but no one has died yet, so Shauna's still doing better than DCI Barnaby on Midsomer Murders.

Grit N Gears #2, by Angel Fuentes (writer), Nahuel SB (artist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - It's hard to tell, but that's actually a floating Inquisition-type structure, not a creepy castle.

The Reverend whose church was attacked by Razorfist starts a crusade to have production of self-aware automatons banned, and all existing self-aware automatons murdered. Sorry, I mean destroyed. With the United States caving to the whims of Christian dipshits (as usual), Ranger ONE's in a bad spot. he returns to his creator for repairs, she sends him away as a threat to her and her family. Nahuel starts the argument with panels that are close up on her face and distant from Ranger ONE, then flips that when she sends him away.

Even on the run for his life, ONE won't kill the men pursuing him. The reverend dances around the possible significance of this, vis-a-vis the automatons not being a monolithic block, but ultimately skitters away, worldview still firmly in place. Meanwhile, the daughter of ONE's creator has lung cancer and desperate to save her, she puts her daughter's consciousness in a little automaton, which she asked ONE to protect last issue. Which he, entirely reasonably in my opinion, refused.

Which brings us to the present, where mother and daughter are attacked by an automaton bandit called La Tortuga, who shoots her and kidnaps the girl to disassemble. I think. His dialogue is in Spanish and I that's basically what Google Translate gave me. Although it keeps insisting La Tortuga is referring to her as a boy, so I don't know if that's intentional or a pronoun goof on someone's part. 

Fuentes established the girl hasn't spoken or made any sound since her mind was transferred, but her mother's death gets her screaming. That's enough to get ONE to act, and that's where it leaves off. Mangual keeps the scream running across the top of the panels for the last five pages, growing in size as ONE gets closer, shrinking as he falls further behind.

So two pages in, we have most of the backstory, a sense of the enemies ONE's got, plus the additional problem of this little kid. It feels like a lot for 4 remaining issues, given the pace so far, but a couple of the problems' resolutions will probably tie together (stopping Razorfist helping the reverend's heart grow three sizes or something to that effect.)

Random Back Issues #107 - Giant Days: As Time Goes By #1

Well, it's only been two months since we last looked at Giant Days, but that's fine. Always time for that series, even if this was the conclusion of the book.

A year after graduation, Esther's working as an editorial assistant at a publishing house, and generally being taken advantage of by two completely awful women, both named Cressida. The constant dumping of their work on her desk has caused Esther to experience burnout on a severe scale. Worse, as she explains to equally depressed cog in the financial machine Ed Gemmel, she's missed ten weekend get-togethers with Daisy and Susan in a row.

As for those two, things are going much better. Daisy enjoys her work as, well, I'd be inclined to think she's working as a civic engineer, trying to prevent a famous footballers weird mausoleum from falling in on itself, but maybe that's standard archaeology work. She's also still dating Saffron, the girl with too much hair she met her last year in school.

Susan's working at the hospital, not getting to use a bone saw nearly as much as she'd like, while McGraw works at the key store and hopes for an engineering job offer to come in. Or does he?

Susan, in an attempt to update McGraw's desktop wallpaper to a sexy image of her, finds out he's been getting job offers in other towns and turning them down. She confronts him in her usually tactful manner, by which I mean she calls him, 'phenomenally stupid' while projecting an aura of flames. Only orange-yellow flames though, nothing too hot.

That's what Esther walks in on, so the weekend is off to a roaring start. Their evening of fun is on the upswing, until the Cressidas show up, having tracked Esther by her phone. Esther demonstrates her typical inability to brush off people she perceives as popular even if they're dicks, to Susan's complete disgust. She storms out, Daisy caught in her wake, and Esther ends up alone at some horrible jazz show after the Cressidas abandon her there.

Which makes for an awkward breakfast the next morning. Susan's her typical acerbic self, Daisy is polite, but to the point that the Cressidas suck, and Esther runs into the rain before tearfully admitting she's lonely, but didn't want to drag her friends down with her. What are friends for, if not to be torn apart in the maelstrom of your personal issues? Anyway, Susan demands a showdown and the Cressidas turn out to be. . .

I don't know what the fuck that is. Some hideous, energy-sucking, body-snatching wraith thing. Whatever it is, it's no weak against British public transportation. Susan ducks in the key store long enough to affirm she loves McGraw and wants him to pursue job opportunities, even if they take him elsewhere. In return, she gets a key. A big skeleton key. Cool. Random quest rewards are the best!

Esther and Daisy are hiding in line at the post office, counting on the Cressidas inability to cut the line. or maybe they're repelled by old people. Whichever. This time, combined with the ready availability of Post-It notes, has given Daisy the beginnings of a plan, missing just one key ingredient.

Yes, the key opens the footballer's mausoleum, and his ghost sucks the wraiths into some other dimension. The day is saved! Now all Esther has to do is explain to her boss what happened to the top executive assistants. I smell promotion! Or I smell smoke because she took Susan's advice to commit arson.

{4th longbox, 192nd comic. Giant Days: As Time Goes By #1, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer)}