An unclaimed treasure
I can’t not colour a VW Beetle yellow. Just as I can’t not make a small businessman in my comics slightly shady.
STEEPLE – A Scary Go Round Comic
by John Allison
I can’t not colour a VW Beetle yellow. Just as I can’t not make a small businessman in my comics slightly shady.
You underrate yourself, John. You do very well at making them *extremely* shady.
Nothing at all ominous about this.
It’s Stephen King’s Christine!!!
Beat me too it 😀
We were *that* close to this being a lost episode of the Herbie franchise…
how could he resist herbie? Or herbie’s younger cousin?
They can’t find a VIN because Mr. Diesel didn’t want to appear in this Fast installment.
“Fast and Furious XIII – Steeplechase!”
I’m loooking forward to Slow & Steady, the 57th installment, in which Vin Diesel, Jason Statham and the Rock break out of the retirement home to take on a gang of international terrorists led by Tom Holland and Bella Ramsay.
My god I would watch the heck out of this
You sound like someone who’s seen and enjoyed Bubba Ho-Tep.
After all these years I still cannot fathom why I like Bubba Ho-Tep so much…
“Steeplechase”? Vin Diesel takes on the Charing Cross Hunt? 😉
There’s summat special about driving an old V-Dub Bug. Always gave me this feeling, though mibbe that’s just because I could watch the road through the holes beneath my feet.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KGXgCuTCrj8
My dad’s bug had holes in the running board too! Even better than looking out the window. Looks like the rev is sadly going with a Daewoo instead.
When I was a mere yout’ my dad, for some reason (he was a good salesman; that might have been the answer) had his boss’ car – a VW bug – for an afternoon. We took rides in it and said rides were rather bumpy. Thus, me, my brother and my sisters all started to refer to bugs as “Bumpy Boss Cars”.
That’s great. Congratulations, you have delighted me.
Lordy that takes me back to my very first car, a VW bug with heavily perforated floor.
My dad (RIP) had a ’63 VW Pickup with holes in the floor. I bet that thing would be worth a _fourtune_ now. I have no idea what he did with it or his ’64 bug or my mom’s ’71 bus. _sigh_
The shop’s meticulous lettering on “Special Corner” speaks to the care with which they restore and renew every vehicle they sell. (i.e. very, very little)
i sense a shenanigan
Should’ve brought Mags, she gives a good shade-piercing stare. (Housemate went car-shopping with me, when the sales guy asked who she was, she stated fact: “I’m an accountant.” All the paperwork faffing immediately stopped and we were done and on the way home in 15 minutes.)
You did not disappoint. There is a flapping air man on the lot.
Visible on each of the past 3 pages (counting this one)!
If I may “well ackshully” the creator on his own comics… Esther’s Beetle was black. Her dark powers can overcome the “every VW Bug is secretly Bumblebee” effect, apparently.
This is DEFINITELY a trap! His manager probably is one of Penrose’s enemies and that car is programmed for destroy him.
This is a Tredregyn car dealership. There need be no reason for this car to be haunted!
Is that a SATURN?
Oh man, this is gonna drive me nuts. I’ve known a few people with this exact car…
Is it a Hellman Imp?
I believe another comment further down (https://steeple.church/comic/an-unclaimed-treasure/#comment-16375) suggests it’s a HYUNDAI AXE’NT
I believe the car in question is a flagship model of the Generic Car Company LLC
I fear the Rev is about to be taken for a ride, so to speak.
I beg to differ John, the owner of Pixey Garage is beyond shady, and I’m willing to bet that he is the Devil’s true emissary in Tredregyn and not Tom Pendennis.
“Treffry, Treffry… Wasn’t that the family of six that disappeared without a trace on the Night Of A Thousand Unexplained Flashing Lights And Loud Chthonic Moaning?”
That shady car salesman has a manager?!?!!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?
I don’t think any car salesman actually has a manager… they just slip away, have a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and come back shaking their head sadly.
The manager is probably a ventriloquist’s dummy which Si keeps in a cupboard and which allows him to talk to himself when a difficult decision has to be made. Works for me anyway.
“Let me go ask my partner” works even if there isn’t a partner
This wouldn’t be a remake of Lafferty’s Corgi Drove His Car Through Hell, would it?
That’s not lustre, that’s totally a sinister *aura*!
It feels like he is describing a dodgy clapped out shitbox of a car, but the £6000 price tag suggests otherwise
The high price tag is to throw you off balance and paradoxically make you *more* likely to purchase the dodgy clapped out shitbox of a car.
The manager wears several flat caps, stacked on top of his head.
Reminds me of a children’s story: https://www.capsforsale.org/
I can still see that poor guy shaking his fist at the monkeys!
How do we know his head is not, in fact, flat? The name Lord Ditwit Flathead the Excessive comes to mind… 😉
The Flatheads of Zork, for all their Quendor-ravaging ways, at least had a certain sense of style and panache.
I think this guy is just a fathead.
I’m calling it right now- the floppy tube man is the manager.
My uncle was a priest: he retired recently. When I was a kid he drove a green Pontiac Firebird, the cockpit of which was littered with Bruce Springsteen tapes and there was a toggle switch on the center console that said Rocket Launcher.
Can priests be cool? Yes. Yes they can.
But did he spend all night fighting sea monsters?
I had that same toggle switch in my 72 Dodge Dart, only the label said “Death Ray”. Oh. and it had a fake cell-phone antenna glued on to the back windshield.
The timing and placement of that demonic wiggly guy is *chef’s kiss* perfecto. IT’S THE DEVIL LOOKING OVER HIS SHOULDER, GET IT??
My thoughts exactly.
wow accent?
(Salesman walks over to the inflatable tube guy. We can’t hear what they’re saying, and can only hear the salesman, but the conversation is growing increasingly heated. Finally the salesman throws his cap to the ground, yells “Then I quit!” and storms off. And SCENE.)
So I work in the American auto insurance industry.
Him calling it a “VIN Number” is a very much a normal thing.
However it -Drives me fricken INSANE- because of how redundant that is.
How does “Vehicle Identification Number Number” sound?
And lacking one is pretty sketch too. But if the… I don’t remember if the UK uses an overall national system for vehicle registration or bases it in a local or regional system (Here in the US we base things on a State level with every state having it’s own Department of Transportation, and this their own DMV database. You register your vehicle with your state), but I can’t imagine there isn’t a system for grey market or custom vehicles where you could petition the department/ministry/whatever for a provisional VIN to register it. I can’t imagine the property & casualty insurance system over there is different enough though, that an insurer would insure it without a VIN to give info to build a risk profile for it though. Over here, you’d have to find a local, small scale insurance company for that. Then again, the Anglican Church operates at a national level so Imagine maybe they have some sort of business risk insurance system for their clergy? I can’t imagine they make every parish(wait do Anglicans call it that?) pay for their own insurance like WE would… do they?
Jeez, I really am a nerd for insurance. I’ve been doing it for 7 years THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS HELP.
I love this. I’m the man who said “Detective Comics Comics” until DC Comics changed its name to just “DC”.
I’m a damnable weirdo, friend. But yea, I may not be a master even of our dialect of English on my side of the pond, but I certainly try my best and get annoyed when folks don’t.
Well, I just saw a Federal Express Express truck drive by, but I don’t think they are going to change.
Also divvying up the states for Insurance purposes makes sense in respect to understanding the various regions for risk and how they’re unique in conditions makes sense. I mean once you get past the obvious scam that the industry is overall with how it conducts business. (Yes I know. Woman’s gotta eat though and I only transact and manage it. I don’t sell or do claims). But our own “50 small countries” idiocy becomes a bureaucratic nightmare because since every damn state has their own system for vehicle registration and they put the onus of keeping that registration up to date and changed over to new places on the citizen, people forget and then get mad at US because we didn’t magically, telepathically know they YOU KNOW WHAT I DIDN’T COME HERE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT IDIOT PEOPLE Sorry I’ll stop.
On the other hand, I do NOT want to pay anything that they are paying in California, nor do I want to be part of their system(s) of anything, at any time. iirc registration rules are often the way they are because states have different taxes and regulatory structures… this is because the US basically is 50 little countries. In MD for example, there are car related taxes that they want to make you pay even if you bought a car in another state. To be honest I think it’s rather odd that their are businesses that are allowed to operate in multiple states, it’s a bit fishy imo
Is your network interface card card working? Did the automatic teller machine machine accept your personal identification number number?
Thankfully, being grumpy about stuff like that is about as bad as my OCD ever gets.
I am sorry to hear that you have OCD disorder.
Hey man doing it on purpose like that just makes me chuckle.
I realize I’m also assuming that liability is mandatory in the UK. I suspect it probably is, at least.
Also clear something up for me if anyone doesn’t mind? If memory serves, you guys use Lines through your numeral Zeros to denote them from the latter O, yea? And thusly will use Os in your VINs? Or is that just a dumb myth I’ve been telling my customers as a fun little factoid to break the ice?
Zeroes with lines through them is an old computer thing, goes with fanfold paper and green and black screens, not a specifically UK thing although some people may understand it.
We are legally required to carry third-party liability insurance for any car (usually for a named driver or drivers, all of whose riskinesses are assessed, so adding your teenage learner multiplies the cost by about 5, and then goes up further if they pass the test). Most people have more extensive cover than that, though, at least covering fire and theft.
Yea. yea I should have pointed out that I figured it was related to the older display/printing method for computer displays. Which was due to limits in GUI displays and fonts at the time. Because there were no fonts.
But yea, it certainly sounds like it’s very similar. I’d argue that costs being paid in are clearly overblown for the sake of pure profit, but the reality is that younger drivers, especially teenagers, are indeed a greater risk statistically. If only due to inexperience and their brains being less mature, etc etc. The company I work for actually does not charge anything for Learners, but that is very much not the norm.
Well, it rhymes with “PIN Number” that way
Can’t use the ATM machine without one.
How long ago is this story placed in the time stream, is Thatcher still PM? The car prices seem so low.
They’re used cars. In some cases, very used.
I live in Massachusetts, so it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he could have been out fighting sea monsters.
Estate sale? If anything had happened to Jonathan and Sarah Treffry, surely we would have heard. But, yes, they have quite the barn.