John A posted:

It’s 2024! Welcome back to Steeple, let’s visit Tredregyn one last time! Much has changed in the last three months, as you will discover… but clearly, not Bob Warren’s taste in trousers.

John A posted:

Dame Elaine Stevens has been mentioned occasionally in Scary Go Round, Bad Machinery and Steeple. I think she has only ever been depicted, once, on a television screen, and do not ask me which strip contains this appearance. She’s a bit like Elaine Page, but with a bit of Montserrat Caballé, and a bit of Marje Proops. An all round entertainer, warm, witty and wise (of course).

Saoshyant posted:

Yvonmukluk posted:

Well, it's a new year and we've just ticked over to a new story in the Bad Machinery Gocomics repost, so I'm going to start posting here as well.

Let's begin.

John Campbell posted:

New storyline! The only one of the published Bad Machinery stories that isn’t “The Case of the ___”.

There was a lengthy gap, both in-comic and real-world, between the end of “Modern Men” and the beginning of “Space is the Place”. We’re picking up here more than a year after the last strip — in the late spring/early summer of the year after “Modern Men”.

The mystery kids weren’t idle in that time; they showed up on the other side of the fence in the Bobbins storyline “Into the Woods”. There’s another short Bad Machinery story called “The Big Hiatus”, which doesn’t appear here, that actually fits chronologically between “The Case of the Missing Piece” (which is the next case) and “The Case of the Severed Alliance” (which is the last one that appears here), but consists of Lottie telling Shelley Winters, in flashback, about events that allegedly occurred during the summer between “Modern Men” and “Space is the Place”. I’m not going to get into the details of “The Big Hiatus”, because they could be considered spoilers for “Missing Piece”.

“Into the Woods” was sparked off by a few events: 1) Shelley Winters moved back to Tackleford and bought a house on the edge of the forest with her big children’s book money.

2) Mildred and Neil, while out walking in the forest, discovered that devil bears do, in fact, poop in the woods. Specifically, in Tackleford Forest, where there are not supposed to be any devil bears.

3) Tim Jones, who had, in earlier New Bobbins stories, been thrown out of the mad-science-shattered rubble of his house by his wife, Riley (Ryan’s little sister), and returned to Tackleford, where he had a fling with Shelley, was now living in a shack out in the forest.

Neil arranged for Erin Winters, who’s been working for a London-based popular science magazine called New Scientist since “Unwelcome Visitor”, to come back to Tackleford to investigate the devil bears, in large part to try matchmaking her and The Boy, whom she had a crush on in school, but who doesn’t remember her because she was banished to Hell when she was 16.

Meanwhile various people had escalating encounters with devil bears, resulting in the town calling in Jasper Bloem (from “The Case of the Good Boy”) and his hunter buddies to deal with the devil bears. This brought in some other old Bobbins characters: Rich Tweedy, who was set up as a rival love interest for Erin, and Holly West, who was once Shelley’s best friend, and is now a TV journalist. They all came together in the woods with Erin, The Boy, Shelley, Tim, the devil bears, and entirely too much firepower.

Rich came out as an eco-terrorist, and got a bit mauled by bears. The Boy was hit by a stray bullet, and when Death came to collect him, Erin, who happens to be on a first-name basis with the Grim Reaper, confronted him and made a bargain — her soul for The Boy’s, to save his life, while she would return to Hell. She sent the revived Boy out of the woods, and resumed her Mordawwa form.

Meanwhile, Shelley, Tim, Holly, and Rich had a big Bobbins cast reunion at Tim’s shack, and they discovered that Tim had been working on a free energy project using a mysterious device he’d found buried in the woods, and that this was actually some sort of dimensional gateway, which was generating the devil bears.

Tim and Rich got in a fight, and Rich ended up smashing the gateway with a JCB, which didn’t close it, but rather caused it to spew forth an unending pillar of black energy. Shelley, fleeing, ran (literally) into Mordawwa, whom she recognized immediately as her sister, despite Erin now being nine feet tall with horns, blazing eyes, and “a unique sexy goblin style”. Mordawwa fixed the broken world window, but not before Rich stumbled into it and got smeared across the space-time continuum. (It’s fine. He deserved it. Really.) Everyone else fled as the woods collapsed in on themselves.

In the aftermath, Mildred was annoyed because the collapse of the forest had destroyed the rare lichens that she and Neil were looking at when they discovered the devil bear scat. Shelley convinced Tim to stop living out in the woods and doing mad science projects that produce devil bears and come live with her. The Boy built an eldritch computer in an effort to Skype Erin in Hell, and it bisected him. Mordawwa showed up at Shelley’s with her noble steed Scientist (formerly The Boy), and they had a nice sisters moment with Shelley and her nine-foot-tall demoness little sister, and Erin’s mystical senses revealed that Shelley was preggers.

The rest of Bad Machinery and Bobbins all takes place during the term of Shelley’s pregnancy.

The_Other posted:

I wonder if John Campbell is also the Jim Campbell who was the letterer for the first 5 issues of Steeple?

cptn_dr posted:

A friend of mine has just binged on every volume of Giant Days, and now wants to read Bad Machinery. Our local library doesn't have all the printed Bad Machinery and also she's confined to her apartment thanks to COVID for the next week, so what's the best way to read it digitally these days? Bonus points if it includes the New Bobbins stories mentioned just upthread, but it probably won't ruin her experience if she misses them.

Yvonmukluk posted:

cptn_dr posted:

Thanks!

Also looking more closely at GoComics, I think the whole run of Bad Machinery is actually up there. I was confused and thought they took them all down and started from scratch each time they finished the run, but I guess they do actually keep them posted the whole time.

Saoshyant posted:

"Jim" is short for "James", right? But that fellow may be John James Campbell. Or it may all just be a coincidence.

Oh, and I'm not posting the cover for what Allison just put up on the Patreon, but there will be another out of nowhere crossover with a different comic book property coming out soon, one about joining in around a fire and asking about the best things in life.

John Allison posted:

This story is what we in the "comics game" call "filler".

Goblins are easier to draw than people. If I was being absolutely honest with you, the reader, with some minor adjustments I could have drawn this whole thing with Shelley and Amy, and I would not have received emails from people who said they "don't get it".

When I was young, there was a desperation not to seem that you didn't know something. Now there is a willing coalition of people admitting that they don't understand things. What happened to good old fashioned shame?

The internet is a place where a man can parade in a gold lamé bodystocking - in my day gold lamé was kept firmly behind closed doors. So I blame the internet. And TV. And "rapping music". And "hippity hop".

But I listen to feedback, and as a result I scrapped a seven-week story about a couple of elves on a golfing weekend.

So, this wasn't a very popular story with the unashamed, but I think it's a pretty good one. There are more ideas in most of these strips than I managed in a week of material in the late 1990s.

Some readers asked if the character of "The Wogun" was related in anyway to broadcasting legend Terry Wogan, mainstay of TV and radio for my entire life. And the answer is, of course not. While The Wogun and Terry Wogan do share an Irish heritage, a hairstyle, a career in broadcasting and a robust and cheerful worldview, The Wogun is green and three feet tall. Terry Wogan is six feet tall and pink.

Other readers asked if the pixie receptionist working at Goblin RTE was [qpoiler]Natalie Durand (see "Count My Toes")[/spoiler]. And I think it probably is!

"Crock of Gold" has lessons for all of us. Admittedly, not easy lessons to decipher. But if you don't come away from this story a little wiser, then I've failed both of us.

The_Other posted:

Here's the rest of the poem, from New Bobbins:


forgot about GoComics, even though it should have been obvious. Allison actually as a series of links to the start of the various Bad Machinery cases on his Scary Go Round index site.

Here's a picture from his instagram, spoiler'd just in case.

John A posted:

Who ARE these extreme freaks? Tom’s little shorts are inspired by Glenn Hoddle’s ’80s attire. Glenn and Tom have both put far too much faith in niche spiritual figures.

Saoshyant posted:

Since the Steeple website is down, Allison posted a public Patreon entry with today's page (which you could see above already) and also a few sketches, of which I'll highlight this one 'cause it's lovely and I miss those characters so much:

amigolupus posted:

Because I still say that Billie being hexed into joining the Church of Satan, getting out of it, feeling remorse for her actions and trying to atone for it would totally appeal to the Cardinal's Christian values.

Numero6 posted:

I thought Mildred was the tallest one.

amigolupus posted:

Did the church get closed down offscreen because that old bat tattled on them to the Cardinal? Because I still say that Billie being hexed into joining the Church of Satan, getting out of it, feeling remorse for her actions and trying to atone for it would totally appeal to the Cardinal's Christian values.

Rand Brittain posted:

One of my gripes with Steeple was that it's kind of unclear to what degree people accept that any of this stuff is actually going on. The biggest example of this, was, of course, the hipster witches, who have committed quite a few no-poo poo crimes using their magical powers, but nobody really seems to consider the possibility of them seeing justice either under normal-person law or supernatural-vigilante law.

Rand Brittain posted:

One of my gripes with Steeple was that it's kind of unclear to what degree people accept that any of this stuff is actually going on. The biggest example of this, was, of course, the hipster witches, who have committed quite a few no-poo poo crimes using their magical powers, but nobody really seems to consider the possibility of them seeing justice either under normal-person law or supernatural-vigilante law.