Bad Machinery by John Allison for February 17, 2025

Mike’s, rather justifiably, kind of behind on his Erin news. Last he knew, she’d parleyed her Night Creeper reporting in “Unwelcome Visitor” into a better job at The New Scientist, a London-based popular science magazine. She came back to Tackleford to visit over the holidays in the “Bobbins Now” strips between “Forked Road” and “Modern Men”, because Mike was the closest thing she had to family — because when she was 16 everyone on Earth forgot that she’d ever existed, after she was sucked into Hell, where she fought her way to the Bone Throne and for the next three or so years reigned as Mordawwa, Queen of the Underworld, before returning to Earth at some point before Giant Days #3.

While she was visiting, she reconnected with her high-school crush, Eustace “The Boy” Boyce, whom she remembered, though, like everyone else, he couldn’t remember her. The Boy was, at the time, working with Neil at the university.

Later, in the autumn between “Space is the Place” and “Modern Men”, she came back to Tackleford again to investigate some devil bear sign that Neil and Mildred had discovered, in the Bobbins story “Into the Woods”, and Neil conspired to set Erin and The Boy up. The devil bear issue came to a head in the woods with Erin, The Boy, the devil bears, Jasper Bloem and a bunch of other hunters, Erin’s sister Shelley and her baby-daddy Tim, and some of the other old Bobbins characters. The Boy got hit by a stray bullet, and Erin, who happens to be on first-name terms with the Grim Reaper, ended up trading her soul for his to save his life. She was forced to resume her Mordawwa form and return to Hell, though not before reconnecting with her sister and fixing the devil bear problem.

The Boy later ended up getting himself killed trying to Skype Erin in Hell, and joined her more directly, as her noble steed, the hell-horse Scientist. “Into the Woods” ended with Scientist and Mordawwa visiting Shelley and informing her she was pregnant.