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John Campbell Free
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- about 3 hours ago on Bad Machinery
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6 days ago
on Bad Machinery
Wow, Walt’s in the spider-eating phase already. They grow up so fast.
(Walt’s about a year and a half old now. He was born during the winter break in the kids’ third year. It’s now August between their fourth and fifth years.)
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7 days ago
on Bad Machinery
To be fair, Blossom is kind of terrible.
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8 days ago
on Bad Machinery
Given that Shauna was barred from being the big-haired swim queen of year 4 after winning a 5-on-2 fight from the short end of the odds, while Lottie was, as Claire recently informed us, “proper last” in school cross-country… in Shauna’s boots, I’d be feeling pretty good about my chances.
If it weren’t for that accursed Hirst Street paving stone…
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9 days ago
on Bad Machinery
It’s Chekhov’s accursed sulphurous-jelly-oozing Hirst Street paving stone!
This was originally posted as a single-row strip. The top row is new.
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10 days ago
on Bad Machinery
The “Death to the Monkey Mayor” headline on the framed issue of the Cormorant may be a reference to Tackleford’s penultimate mayor, Dai Davies, who assumed the office after defeating the incumbent, Tim Jones, in a mad science duel, which he won by creating a formula that turned him into an enormous ape-man.
Dai was in turn removed from office after regressing to atavism, and, due to a quirk in Tackleford’s bylaws, Tim’s predecessor, James Mayor, resumed the office. Mayor Mayor was himself removed from office after completely losing his mind at the Tackleford fair and teaming up with an extremely drunk Mike Savage and a high-on-jam Shelley Winters to rescue Amy from a yokel riding a giant bee, which Mike defeated by being stung through the chest, which he survived only because he was so drunk that biology assumed that he was already dead. After that, Tackleford was barred from having any more mayors.
Erin ended up accidentally drinking a dose of Dai Davies’ formula that Shelley had stolen, which turned her into an enormous glamorous Amazon. She did not regress to atavism, but her new appearance did draw the attention of the 200-year-old occultist who was serving as headmaster of Griswald’s, which led directly to her marriage, exile to Hell, and widowing, in rapid succession.
Or maybe Tackleford had an actual monkey for a mayor at some point. NFT.
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13 days ago
on Bad Machinery
This is “He no longer calls for sacrifice” guy’s house.
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14 days ago
on Bad Machinery
15. It’s early August; her 16th birthday is September 1st.
Don’t worry about Mildred. She’s in control of this situation, which is not what it might appear to be. Or possibly even what flash Chris from ad sales might think it is.
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15 days ago
on Bad Machinery
To save everyone some eyestrain, the interesting bits of the tiny text read:
“STANISLAUS ZDOZNY PRESIDENT, TCoC
Stan has been a prominent voice in the city as a senior board member at Percy Import Export and Tackleford City Football Club. He"
Percy Import Export is part of Hamilton Percy’s business empire, along with Percy Peas, home of the fart signal, among other ventures. Tackleford City Football Club, of course, the kids investigated way back in “The Case of the Team Spirit”. Stan doesn’t seem to appear in that case, though Hamilton Percy himself does. He’s looking pretty good for a guy who had part of his brain eaten by Zombie Shelley Winters.
“HUGH MORTIMER TREASURER, TCoC
Mortimer and Sons Jewellers have been a fixture on our High Street since 1903, and continue to offer the most diverse range of"
Hugh, of course, was revealed in the CoC meeting to be in charge of “‘special projects’”, which apparently involves calls for sacrifice. Not at all ominous!
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17 days ago
on Bad Machinery
It’s actually vox populi, Latin for “voice of the people”. You may recall from back in “The Case of the Simple Soul” that Lottie was thought not to be “Latin class material”.
Lottie will eventually investigate how those circus posters get into the windows of the closed shops, in the aptly named story “Circus Windows”.
That’s Esther de Groot and Eustace “The Boy” Boyce over Tommy Binks’ shoulder in the last panel. That would put that panel late in Scary Go Round, because the Esther/The Boy relationship didn’t survive the second issue of Giant Days.
That relationship started when Esther won the love triangle between her, The Boy, and Erin Winters. That ended up leading to Erin’s marriage and exile to Hell, because Esther had been Bob Crowley’s first choice for the “virgin bride” role in the ritual to open the gate to Hell, but she’d recently made herself ineligible for the part with The Boy in a caravan in Wales, while Erin had, due to accidentally consuming a mad-science formula, turned into an eye-catchingly giant glamorous Amazon.
The print series Giant Days, which fits into the three-year gap between Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery, follows Esther off to university in Sheffield.
We’ve seen Esther in flashback before — she was hanging out with Sarah in the strips where we found out about Lottie’s dad.
Though we haven’t seen more of The Boy than a couple of background cameos, for much of Bad Machinery, he was doing doctoral work with Neil at the university, and Mildred, who had a crush on him, would go by and hassle him. Until the Bobbins story “Into the Woods”, where Erin came back to town, The Boy (who had forgotten she ever existed when she was exiled to Hell) reconnected with her, and then promptly got himself killed. Erin sacrificed her soul to save his life and was forced to resume her Mordawwa form and return to Hell. Then The Boy got himself killed again while trying to Skype her with an eldritch computer, and joined her in Hell more directly, as her faithful steed, the hell-horse Scientist.
At some point between “Into the Woods” and “The Big Hiatus”, Mordawwa and Scientist returned to Earth, with their human forms restored. The Boy is currently living as his “cousin” “Jacxon”. Erin… more about her later.