Bad Machinery by John Allison for May 20, 2022

Don’t worry, Claire. In five or six years, your friendship with Lottie will have grown to the point that, at the slightest hint that you’re in distress, she’ll drop everything and rush half the length of Britain to your aid.

And make fun of you.

Don’t tit about with Little Claire, especially if you have any flammable outbuildings.

C’mon Sonny. Handwriting is really overrated.

Originally two strips, but in the opposite order (i.e., the second row of panels was the first strip, and the top row followed that). Actually makes more sense this way, as it doesn’t transition away from the classroom to Claire and Lottie outside the school, only to go back to Sonny and “Ellen” still in the classroom they were in for the previous strip, only to (in the next strip) go back outside again. (The pacing could have still worked, if Sonny had stayed behind with Ellen while other students left the class, but the flow is better this way, I think.)

Ellen has blotted her copybook…

What is Lottie doing in panel 5? Photographing a turd on the ground?

Ellen (Selkie) does appear to have command of the Queen’s English, but yet can’t write. Or maybe the brogue is so thick everyone thinks she is Scottish, or is so mangled that they think she is Welch.

Just think of it as the flaw that makes the masterpiece, Sonny.

Wow! A Little Claire sighting! My day is made.

Oh My God… Ellen has gimlet eyes.

She’ll fit right in.

Had trouble with “gothip” for a second.

Note below, “Captain Satan king of detectives” 1938