Bad Machinery by John Allison for February 21, 2025

This is it — the last Bad Machinery strip. We end with the severed alliance being reforged in Claire’s fire.

The mystery kids appeared after this in the Bobbins story “Hard Yards”, where they investigated “disaster man” Tim Jones and his father (actually his daughter — it was complicated). Claire got promoted to full mystery girl. Go-Kart Conspiracy had their debut performance at the baby shower for Shelley and Tim’s new daughter, Peggy. Blossom was their drummer. Lottie attempted to veto that, but Claire’s band runs on the “one woman, one vote” principle. Claire is the one woman; she has the one vote.

After that, there was a three-part story, “Wen-Tack”/“Parents”/“The Great Unboxing”, which was… kind of Bad Machinery, but not quite. All of the mystery kids appeared in it, but only Mildred and Linton had big parts. Mostly it focused on the Wen-Tack Action Group, a group of first-years Mildred assembled to help her open the incomplete Wen-Tack road. John A. decided he didn’t like it and took it down, but has said that the events still happened.

As a result of the terrible chain of events Mildred set in motion, Griswalds lost its sixth form, and the mystery kids got scattered to different schools for the rest of their school career.

The next we saw of them, Lottie was 18 and being framed for murder in “Wicked Things”. That’s continued into the Lottie-and-Claire vehicle Solver, currently running over at badmachinery com, which at the moment seems poised for a flashback to Lottie and Claire’s international mystery-solving in their Wendlefield Girls’ High days.

Lottie and Shelley also crossed over with the Cornwall-set Steeple in “Author Unknown”, which can be found over at scarygoround com, along with the web-published Giant Days issues and some of the new Bobbins strips. Shauna, meanwhile, has her own print comics, “The Great British Bump-Off” and, out soon, “Kill or Be Quilt”.