Artistic temperament
It’s easy to see what the difference between Maggie Warren and Charlotte Grote is. About 12 inches. Mrs Clovis reckons all Japanese cartoons are perverted. She thinks Yo Kai Watch is a major corrupting influence. She’s never watched it, but she’s sure.
Goth solidarity.
I feel like we need Esther thrown into the mix, gothish triumvirate.
The world might not be able to stand such concentrated awesomeness.
Perhaps it could if Daisy came along too, to mitigate the gothic awesomeness.
Maggie is younger and stronger.
Mrs. Clovis is older and tougher.
One woman exits the door. Two women enter.
Mrs Clovis has nothing to lose and a lot of fighting experiences. Maggie has no possibilities.
This is probably the third or fourth (or may more…th?) time I’ve left a comment that basically says “I like Lottie’s face”, but she always has such great expressions going on. Also Maggie’s face in the final panel is EXCELLENT. As is Mrs Clovis’ fox based tea excuse “shat it all out” indeed. Oh and “quite the spunk”.
I love this page, is what I am saying.
Personally I am beyond smitten with the comment “If there’s one thing that never goes out of fashion, it’s dying in olden times.”
Only from the unique mind of John Allison. Pure fox-shat gold.
My favourite touch on this page is the eyes/expression of Maggie’s belt buckle. Look at the way it follows Charlotte & Clovis at the appropriate moments! Thanks John.
The vicar’s wife? Lottie’s deductive power is too strong! She can now understand desires only with a glance and making very marginal errors. Like, non the wife, but very interested in having intimate moments with him. They meet in the most natural way. Yet, it’s so amazing how charming this is ♡. How similar and totally different their clothes are. The meeting between two very strong personalities ♡!
Thank you! It was a page that felt important, I had to get it right.
Maybe fox-shat tea is actually a sought-after luxury item? Sort of like the coffee beans that pass through a civet’s digestive tract.
Mrs Clovis’ has been down Truro in that specialist tea shop again, come back with Fox Shit
Agh. Errant apostrophe.
Great Prog Rock band name.
Fox-Shat Tea or Errant Apostrophe’?
I believe Charlotte was described as “six feet tall” when she went off to “big school”, though.
I’m mentally revisiting the multiverse since BM trying to recall when it became apparent that Lottie was a short little pistol when she got older. Can’t.
Explicit call out in Wicked Things: “Do you really think a five foot tall teenage girl overpowered a Japanese master detective on her own?” (and cover on the trade paperback has mug shot style height lines)
As a small female myself, I’ve always felt an affinity with Charlotte. Small, with a tendency to curves.
I appreciate the link to a Yo Kai Watch clip for those of us uninitiated in the sport of watching yo-kais.
Uh oh. It looks like Lottie’s run afoul of Mrs Clovis.
Doesn’t everyone?
Not sure if it’s that she’s run afoul or just that Mrs. Clovis initially views every newcomer with mutual suspicion.
Mrs C definitely thinks of herself as a gatekeeper.
That’s WHY she ran afoul of her, I suspect, but it’s still running afoul.
Oh gods. Kid’s anime is the worst. Next you’ll be linking to some Hamtaro or Kamichu!
(Okay, I’ll admit that Kamichu! was kinda cute.)
These are my three nominees for The Furies, should those positions ever open up.
Certainly Lottie and Mrs Clovis. Maybe replace Maggie with Erin.
“I imagine they must be quite the spunk.”
“they”? I get that “nowadays” both men and women can be Vicars — Google just confirmed that for me — and thus Lottie isn’t taking it for granted that the Vicar’s a man, hence the use of “they”, but if it comes to that, why does Lottie apparently start by taking it for granted that Maggie herself isn’t the Vicar? Is it that Maggie’s outfit steps outside the parameters of what’s acceptable for even an off-duty Vicar to wear, and thus being dressed like that means that Maggie “can’t” possibly be the Vicar? Seriously, I’m just trying to understand. 😐
Ronald, does Maggie look like any vicar – that has ever existed – to you? She’s got a skull for a belt and tattoos of three eyes on her. Lottie makes a best guess, a best guess phrased to set a stranger – one who might potentially interfere with her investigation – on the back foot.
There’s also a degree of historical analogy, I imagine. Tattoos + glamour = respectable but cool authority figure’s wife. Maggie is like Xtreme Amy.
I was going to note that Maggie doesn’t have a dog collar. But that’s probably merely due to unusual restraint on her part.
(Or used for unusual restraint.)
“does Maggie look like any vicar – that has ever existed – to you?”
Well, AFAIK I’ve never even caught sight of a Vicar in real life so I’m really not one to say. 😉
I presume that, off-hours, Vicars (whether men or women) have a lot more latitude about what they’re “allowed” to wear, and dress code standards change every day.
Plus, I’d imagine that, in Steeple, the Goth look is reasonably common as sort of a “middle ground” between Satanism and non-Satanism.
Besides, wouldn’t Lottie presuming, or pretending to presume, that Maggie is the Vicar be considered flattering by Maggie?
But whatever. Thanks for responding. 🙂
I could help noticing Maggie’s thighs were staring at me……
Lack of a Roman collar would be one clue.
Okay, I didn’t know that Vicars were required to wear collars even when off-duty and in “civilian” clothes. My bad.
If Charlotte hadn’t referred to Maggie’s theoretical Vicar spouse as “they,” it would never have occurred to me that women could BE Vicars in the first place. I thought it was a men-only job like Catholic priest. Heck, I’m a United Statesian, you’re lucky I even recognized the word. 😉
Dibley has a female vicar.
It is like Lottie just met the polar opposite of Little Clare.
And I know we talk of Lottie & Shelley or Lottie & Xhauna or Des & Anyone, but THIS is clearly the most dangerous pairing every conceived.
I think you’ll enjoy Lottie and Maggie’s dynamic when it kicks in.
A fair point JumJum but I wouldn’t dismiss Clare out of hand, I’d say she holds her own in the subtly-yet-dangerously-unhinged stakes. As we may find out at some point, if the final panel of Circus Windows was anything to go by…
Still no Shauna? Has she been permanently been written out? Shauna hitting it off with Maggie would have been fun
I have no new stories for Shauna or any of the old Bad Machinery crowd that you haven’t seen since the end of the series right now. They’re all doing fine without us.
Maggie’s torn jeans introduces an acceptable use of the phrase “eyes down here”.
Have we ever seen these eyes before? I was shocked!
Yes, in https://steeple.church/comic/time-to-go-home/ for example.
Well if I found today’s page shocking…
…you must have blocked that one out of your memory.
They mysteriously disappeared at the end of Secret Sentai and through all of Christmas with Clovis.
Surely The Old Rectory implies a house that isn’t actually the rectory any more?
The answer to this question is good enough that it has to go in the comic at some point and not in replies. There is a reason for it.
Oooh, intrigued now.
Can o’ Murk anybody?
Funnily enough, just this weekend a friend of mine was saying that her parents had forbidden her to watch any and all anime works when she was growing up, because they’d heard about how %@$#ed up Neon Genesis Evangelion is and assumed all Japanese cartoons were like that.
I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be odd that Mrs. Clovis describes a college-age woman as a “little girl.”
Lottie’s short. From a distance, she may well have looked like a little girl to Mrs Clovis.
And the barman in the Vic was actually surprised that she had valid ID, and that was at much closer range.
Imagine what these people would think of Claire!
Anyone a generation or more younger might be referred to as a child. Lottie is young enough to be Clovis’ granddaughter.
Prediction: Lottie and Clovis will be getting along famously by the time this is over.
They are in some ways two of a crotchety kind. They can bond.
You know, it’s funny, but Mrs. Clovis is one of the few characters that I “hear” in my head with a UK accent. My brain assigns most of the rest of them a US accent by default, until a particularly British phrase or two makes their location starkly obvious. (“Well, I never did,” for example.)
Well, their *nationality*, I should say, not their location. Their *location* feels quite British.
Trying to get all the appropriate regional accents sorted out in my head can be quite tricky. Most of the Tackleford characters including Lottie and shelley should have Yorkshire accents. I don’t really know the Cornish accent well, though it is related to other west country accents (think “talk like a pirate day”). I think of Billie as having a well-heeled RP accent that stands out a mile.
Shelley will code-switch to moderately posh RP except when drunk in the company of Tacklefordians. Lottie will snark in a fairly mild West Yorks but drift into Jafaican when she feels it appropriate to sound like a young person. Billie will have extremely neutral English teacher approved RP overlaid over faint echoes of somewhere nondescript like Northampton or Swindon.
For Cornish accents I would recommend that the reader investigate the YouTube output of Kernow King (who also wrote and appeared in the film Bait that came out the other year).
The hag, the mistress, and the virgin. The Bodb has assembled.
To be fair, she may also have caught wind of Di Gi Charat.
Also, if it were coffee that passed through a fox, it might be a delicacy.