Happy (STEEPLE concludes)
So here we are. The final Steeple page. I wrote about “finishing” the story on my Patreon at the start of the year (the post should now be unlocked). As always, I am very grateful to you for reading.
While that Patreon piece is a nice bit of writing about endings I liked, I don’t think I wrote the mechanical truth of this final, rather abrupt Steeple story – that I simply took all the remaining Steeple stories I had notes for and showed you what they were in 22 pages. Every one is a plot thread that might have played out across a “proper storyline” – Billie’s return to her parents’ house, Brian on straight street, Bob’s bookshop, the Reverend having to choose between a cosy life and his duties in Tredregyn, Tom and the Extreme Freaks, Jason’s escape, Lumsford getting her hands on the parish, the Clovis crime arc (inevitably a second crossover with Solver). A couple of years of material! Rather than just stopping dead where I was, or describe these ideas to a handful of people at conventions, I thought it might be nice to show the unused stories to you in some sort of comic form.
From Monday, the action will return to badmachinery.com for a three-part story that I can only describe as unique among my works. I hope to see you there.
I recall when Dan Slott was given very little notice that his She-Hulk was cancelled. In one issue he wrapped up all of his plotlines AND offered an explanation for all continuity-errors ever!
This final Steeple was an oddly satisfying issue. Then again, weren’t they always?
“Dan Slott”
The story of Spider-Man suing J. Jonah Jameson should have been taken SERIOUSLY, dammit!
But I digress.
I for one refuse to believe this is the last we’ll see of Tredregyn. Bobbins came back, Giant Days came back, Lottie and Shawna and Mildred came back. I’m confident Billie and Maggie will too. If not, well, it’s been great anyway!
I’m going to try to find the very first Bobbins archive, which doesn’t seem to be linked to on this site:
“Oh, well done, Holly, you’ve broken him.”
No one’s impressed that I remembered the punchline of the very first “Bobbins” strip, huh? Then again, maybe I didn’t. NEver MIND. 😉
random (subjectively) memorable lines (perfection not guaranteed) from various strips:
“That’s uncanny, Shelley, stop it.”
“Sir, for the last time, I do not own the zoo, the penguins are not mine to sell.”
“I bet if I put my hands over my ears, this sounds a lot less like crap.”
“Tim, the crow of genius often perches on the branch of madness.”
(whispering) “Shelley, teach me the nervous laugh again!’
“Ask your brother, Tim! HE’LL know!”
“Amy Chilton equals MEAN!
Cross me and you’ll feel my spleen!
I mete out vengeance without pity!
And you can’t argue, ’cause I’m pretty!”
“Tim must chase me! Chase me!”
“Give me that! Wrong picture! WRONG PICTURE!”
“Don’t do it, Fallon! Killing is wrong and weddings should be a happy time!”
“I bought an owl the other day,
Don’t know why, just seemed the way.”
“But WHY, Ginger Ninja?”
“Liberated from the yoke of childbirth!” (from one of the “Goats” crossovers)
“And is it just me or is “great big scary American girl” a lot of fun to say?”
“You mean even you don’t know [what you are]?”
{something about a manta ray}
“Beeeeeee Gooooood.” (spoken by a man in an E.T. costume)
“What? Fallon was created to end the Cold War?”
“Getting yourself committed could be perceived as UNGRATEFUL!”
“Help me, Optimus Prime! Help me!”
“Oh, sweet, sweet glorious day.”
“They can’t be back together.” (sniff) “They can’t.”
“How can any place that’s fun to say not be fun to stay at?”
You definitely deserve at least one “thumbs up” for that impressive list of knock-out quotations, so I’ve given you one (if you will pardon the expression).
Kudos, Sir. Kudos.
Thank you. 🙂
John A has accused me of hating his work. I *LOVE* his work. I’ve followed him from Bobbins to Scary Go Round to Bad Machinery to Giant Days and on and on and on. 🙂
I know you love my work, Ronald, I am sure any accusation of hatred was deeply ironic.
He writes two fatalities knowing people will have thoughts.
Also those roads must be very narrow.
only about as broad as an Arsenal jersey
Well, we don’t know FOR SURE that it’s Brian. A “cryptid”? That could literally be almost anything.
Then again, for all we know, the two fatalities were Billie and Maggie; they could’ve been just outside the pub and gotten caught up in the bloodshed. That’d wrap up a few things, all right.
They were IN the pub. As was Tom. Go back a couple of pages.
I thought it was just Tom and Maggie in the pub. I don’t recall Billie being there for the secret meeting. In any case I’m sure they got out relatively unscathed.
Certainly Tom was immediately adjacent to Ground Zero at the time, having abandoned Maggie and Bille to go drink with the cable installers, leaving Maggie and Bille behind a hefty round table in a back corner of the pub. Quite a defensible position, unless they chose to sally forth in an attempt to calm the savage beast (something with which they may have been familiar, of course)
Maybe you missed a page, then. Maggie brought Billie along as her “secret weapon”. Tom was not happy to see her.
I looked back two strips ago, and lo and behold there she was. Thanks.
Congratulations! Because they dribble out over the weeks I’m always amazed in hindsight at the sheer quantity of your work, and this has been an epic to be proud of. I’ve come to love these fools. Onwards to Conan!
Lee Trenhela wears a lot of hats on Cornwall Live (as most reporters do in local media).
He’s had a busy day, for sure.
Absolutely standard for Reach media. And he probably secretly lives in Plymouth and does the Herald, sorry, Plymouth Live site as well.
Lee Trewela is real! And lives in Cornwall for sure.
He’s now the Local Democracy Reporter for Cornwall, employed by Reach but funded by the BBC to cover local politics.
And a Tre- name, very Cornish.
learning that lee trewhala is real has startled me even more than when michael jackson appeared as a character in scarygoround. just where does reality end and the bobbinsverse begin? the line appears ever murkier
I thought he was the Erin Winters of Tredregyn!
I was kinda wondering what the story behind this story was when I read it on Patreon – definitely a bit different. I think it meshes surprisingly well, though it feels like P1 of an at least two part finale. Perhaps the second part would be something like – the reverend finds out about how everything has gone to crap since he left and he finds his motivation to come back. (You’ll have to forgive my meagre imagination here).
Whatever happens to these storylines tho, I’m excited to continue to read whatever you put out.
Certainly David is on the mark in one sense – there are far more comments on the A30 story than the others.
Also, is Shelly indicating support for Ukraine with her nail polish? I suppose that means the invasion happened in the Bobbinsverse, too.
I’m wondering if there’s some kind of Narbonic-style reality blindness in effect, where everyone can see the A30 story, though only a few can make out the last paragraph that explains that the cream spill was allegedly caused by a group of teens being irresponsible with a magic pencil, but to most people the other articles look like they’re about local council budget deliberations or some such.
The merfolk story probably looks something like this: “Live: Huge emergency response involving police crews and coastguard helicopter” – that’s an actual Cornwall Live headline I found just now, though I couldn’t find how many comments it had garnered. (perhaps I need to be on a mobile device to see that?)
Or maybe that’s just what my reality blindness is telling me the headline says.
We haven’t seen much (some, but not much) of the merfolk over the years. They must have noticed that Penrose was gone.
There went the neighborhood. Literally.
“Oh, THANK You, Reverend! Thank You so BLOODY much!”
At the same time, in my head it hits me that a Magic Pencil is probably something that, in his current state, the Reverend feels isn’t worth getting worked up over.
“It’s an awful lot of effort” you might say
Proper western support, as I understand it, usually inadvertently inverts the flag. To be fair, it’s the first time most of them have even heard that there was such a place (now, do ‘Azerbaijan’!)
I always remember it as blue sky at the top, over a field.
On that note, I’m sure Shelley could take on Putin single handedly.
She even has friends in PR Robotania who are no doubt eager to avoid the yoke of their old Soviet masters
Oh, Shelley. She’s always the best, now just extremely worried about the future. Let’s hope Billie, Maggie and Tom survived. Dunno about seing the story in a some way. For me this last page looks like the last episode of the second season of “Twin Peaks”. I would like to see the next chapter, even if that means waiting 25 years.
Yeah, that gum we like has to come back in fashion eventually, right?
“Meanwhile…”
Well, that’s harsh.
A big question, of course, is whether the A30 was covered in jam before the cream spill.
In any case, there was a jam AFTER the spill.
I suspect the A30 is no stranger to jam, though I may have the slightly biased view of someone whose main experience of it was trying to get out of Cornwall on the weekend after the 1999 solar eclipse.
Oh we were in that jam too! It gave us lots of time to admire the West Country countryside, though.
This is the first time I recall ever seeing the f-word in one of your comics. Fitting that it would be Shelly who blurts it out twice.
This has been… well, a fairly unsatisfying ending to a very enjoyable series. So much material & potential left unrealized. On one hand, seemingly a literary statement that ‘nothing ever ends’ as a famous naked blue man once quipped – on the other hand, an inevitable second crossover with Solver certainly looks…er, inevitable. If for no other reason than to find out who those two fatalities were. [And that was just mean, outright cruel, sir!]
As always, looking forward as to what will come next, which sounds at this juncture like I’m a glutton for punishment, doesn’t it?
You may have missed Shelley convincing Len Pickering to let her assist in repelling Stella Chilton. She’s a sweary little minx. I’d point you to the strip in question but haven’t a clue how.
The post is still locked 🙁
Now unlocked!
Thank you, so it is. It sure has a lottie in it! And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Goodbye Steeple. I really liked you.
Well, it looks like the funds earmarked for deconsecrating the church can be diverted to some other project.
Like repairing it.
I remain disappointed that Bishop Bergerac and his saucy harlot, Lorraine, weren’t actually depicted in flagrant post-coital merman carnage
Ah, like a slimy briny version of the Pompeii lovers!
I, too, would have liked to see the brutal ambition of those two receive a comeuppance!
I’m heartbroken that this is the end — so much potential, lost! 🙁
RJF called this almost to a T yesterday. Credit where it’s due.
Welp, Its been fun, but I need them to remain happy, so I guess I can never read another comic.
LOL The same person writing all three stories with different job titles
See the comments up the page. He’s a real reporter, and like many small market reporters, he covers several beats.
On the one hand, John, I think you’ve pulled off this final Steeple story incredibly well. Somehow, it hasn’t felt rushed (just unfinished), and, most importantly, the characterizations have all been spot on- even in the two cases where it looked as if major personality changes may have occurred, by a page or two later, it was clear that these were still the same characters we know and love (in fact, I think Billie’s more herself now than we’ve ever seen her before, if that makes sense. So does Maggie, come to think of it). On the other hand, seeing these bits of stories that will never fully be told makes me want to read those stories, even more than I already did. These tantalizing glimpses of what might have been… I will miss this series so much. I feel as if the main characters are my friends, and I’m going to miss all of them- yes, even Tom. I would never trust him, but I will miss him. Thank you so much for giving us this series. It’s been amazing.
Thanks Alaric. It wasn’t how I wanted to end the series – obviously, but more of a creative conversation with the audience. I knew some people wouldn’t like me throwing down all the cards at once, but at least it was something different!
I concur. Frankly I like these MCU-esque low-key cliffhangers throughout the Bobbinsverse.
Steeple, surprisingly, quickly turned into my favorite series of yours that I’d read. Thank you.
so, how many of Shelley’s relationships are founded on/maintained by lies? seems like most of them.
Congratulations, and thanks as always for sharing your stories John. Now then, will you not have a cup of tea?
Go on. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on. ❤️
Are you a Winner?
This is so good on a “true-to-life” level, so very very good!
would it be crass to ask about Gareth? someone mentioned him yesterday and now i’m curious.
He’s fine.
Gareth/Maserati OTP.
They’ll have a little baby Fiat.
I have read the final issue weeks ago via Patreon, and I wasn’t pleased then, and I’m honestly still not pleased now re-reading it slower as it’s publicly released.
I know this sort of ending was the norm back in the SGR era, but this one feels rather unexpected and actually mean from the “modern” Allison who also penned the ending of By Night and Giant Days. Nothing is concluded here and everyone ended up in way worse situation than before.
Poor Brian is turned into a murderer and the bloody witches who caused this and other incidents got away scot-free. All this other setup, only to be thrown out, including all that mess with Jason that went nowhere.
These are all characters people were enjoying, and even if you return to them at a much later future, much of this setup is very likely not going to be picked again. It’s a weird choice, honestly. Mentioning the final book of Moomins, while that one is structured in a way that may also seem like a strange choice at a glance, it never felt Tove Jansson had actual contempt for her characters. At any point. And I can’t say the same about some of your work lately.
After Solver unofficially ended on a sore note, too, I really hoped Steeple would stick the landing.
I’m going to hang around for the Conan story, but I think after that I’m legit done with the Patreon.
I had to stop Steeple, Ivo. I can only draw one comic at a time and the publisher didn’t want any more. I drew 110 pages they didn’t want, for the readers. I could just have done no more and never said anything to the loyal readers, just left them hanging, but how is that better? You can imagine disdain on my part onto the characters if you like but to me that just feels like a projection of your disappointment in how the story turned out. I did as much Steeple as I could, then when I couldn’t do any more, I told you everything I would have done.
If you don’t want to contribute to the Patreon, don’t. I hate to think of someone supporting something they don’t enjoy. But I am genuinely doing my best. My 2022 and 2023 were very hard years, for reasons way beyond my control, and I kept working when I probably shouldn’t have. If that showed up in my comics and spoiled them for you, I am sorry. I was genuinely doing my best.
I don’t think anyone finds the end of Steeple, arguably one of your best stories, if not the best, “satisfactory”. It simply was an impossible task to address all the parallel and tangent story lines to any kind of pleasing resolution within a handful of pages.
But you did make your intentions and reasons clear well before this last chapter started, and gave fair warning.
I believe all of us readers wish this story would go on further, for years to come, as there’s obviously plenty pf plot material… but it’s your work, and your craft, and we have to respect your need to set a limit and do what you can for your readers, while taking care of yourself.
I am grateful for the enjoyment I get from your stories, and I appreciate your attempt (and warnings!) at providing some sort of closure.
Like everyone else, I hope some day we can see more of these wonderful characters, but meanwhile, thanks for the fun ride!
Well said.
I can honestly say I am satisfied with this ending in the sense that it leaves a lingering longing. I want to read more of it, but I’m OK with this as a stopping point. A story you forget about after it ends is hardly worth the reading; such a sorry story is not Steeple.
I’m so glad you chose this route, and not some contrived, rushed tidying job. (Ever watched a TV series where you can tell the producers discovered they weren’t getting renewed, and started forcing hasty resolutions to major plot arcs? No, thank you.) You’ve left the door open to revisiting these characters, and introducing these heightened new complications felt partly like an affectionate wink to all of us.
And for everyone who would have liked to see how things turn out for all of these characters, there’s a pretty big silver lining. One of the things that storytelling choices do is to kill possibilities: when a character does *this*, a whole universe of imagined *thats* instantly dies. I’ll be idly mulling those possibilities — what happens when Penrose finds out what Shelley’s been keeping from him? what’s Jason up to? can even demonic power hope to prevail against the economic tide sweeping away independent booksellers? — for a long time to come.
Thank you for Steeple and introducing us to the wonderful residents of Tredregyn. Til we meet them again.
John,
I had forgotten your original statement of intent and was drawn in by the extent to which you managed to create continuity within (at least sets of) these pages, as well as plentiful foreshadowing. I don’t care whether that was purposeful: you may have reached a point where it Just Happens, you can’t help it.
Speaking as a composer, your audience — each individually — are going to have expectations and there are three things you must not do: satisfy too many of those expectations, or too few, or any of them in a predictable manner. For your job, which you do, is not to tell stories: it is to shed (at least a bit of) new light on what storytelling is. Most of your competitors’ work is formulaic and exactly predictable: yours, never. It therefore does not matter whether they go on, but it matters a great deal that you do.
I am replying to your reply to a comment that was a category error and couched in terms so wounding as hardly to be accidental. I have not gotten my share of bad reviews, and certainly never one like this. Someone needs to think, not about what storytelling is, but what it can be. Meanwhile you have important work to do and most of us count each morsel thereof as one of the blessing of Earth. Onward!
John it is generally clear how thoughtful and hard-working you are. What you make is not mere entertainment, it is art, because you have the intent to challenge your own methods to accomplish specific goals. This may, at times, startle some people, as art can and perhaps should. At the very least when the readers saw a Twin Peaks tattoo early on they might have suspected that the story would take its own course. Thank you for always trying your best.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a rough time of it. And I genuinely appreciate all of the work you did here.
I for one am pathetically grateful that you did what you did.
I enjoy your artwork, characters, storylines and delightful linguistic machinations so much that I would grovel and shamelessly beg for ANYTHING that you were prepared to grace us with.
Please do not ever stop.
How do you know the witches got away scot-free? Maybe they were the two casualties. Just because we didn’t see them doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
(I wonder why more people seem upset about the witches escaping punishment than about Bob Warren.)
Belial and all his little imps will feast on the tortured soul of Bob Warren eventually.
He’ll get his.
Many years ago we used to use a medical set of initials for people who were (ahem, *koff*) “not quite as others were” – NFN. It meant, “Normal For Norfolk”. (Sadly, these initials and other similar ones have long been discarded as inappropriate).
It’s nice to see that some news headlines are “Normal for Cornwall”.
Zambianflix, the most distracting streaming service available!
It quite surprises me this is the genuine conclusion of STEEPLE, given how little is actually resolved for all of the characters. Life goes on indeed, yet we remain at the precipice for great events unfolding across Tredegyne. I hope this is not the last we see of this town and its residents.
Oh well, still, excited as ever for new Bad Machinery! Following along always
In one of your recent Q&A answers John, you mentioned that you’d never quite got together the right project or the impetus for a full-on graphic novel. Here’s an idea – what about one day taking all these Steeple loose ends that you’ve teased in this story, and telling them in full, so the expanded version of the conclusion to Steeple is the full length graphic novel project. I’d buy three copies.
It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for. Or something.
Thanks for the Cornish stories, John A! Now let’s see some mighty thews!
I have enjoyed reading Steeple, and am sad to see it go. The internet is never a particularly good place for critical discussion, and a comments section even less so, but here goes – I didn’t particularly care for the ending. Solely in my own opinion, it seems like the equivalent of “Rocks fall, everyone dies”.
I hope that we’ll see the characters again somewhere down the line, but I look forward to your next work.
But that’s to read the last page as if it ended with the words “THE END”. Having enjoyed Steeple, the idea is that having been given all the plot threads I had, unresolved, you can try to extrapolate out how I would have resolved them. The answers are all in there. It’s pretty unlikely that, if it existed, the next page is the bodies of all your favourite characters in the morgue.
OR IS IT
STEEPLE ISSUE 21
“OOPSY DAISY”
PAGE 1
PANEL 1: The morgue. Billie, Maggie and Tom are all on slabs, they are dead, covered in blood. It is clear there will be no laughs in this issue.
MEDICAL EXAMINER: They are dead now, Billie, Maggie and Tom. Mauled by Brian.
MEDICAL EXAMINER 2: Yes and Brian is also dead shot by a sharpshooter
Panel 2: A merry green boy enters the morgue holding a bottle of ketchup. He is wearing a mayoral chain.
DES FISHMAN: Hey you guys is this the sausage shop? Also I am the new Mayor of Tredregyn!!!
Panel 3: Billie sits up. Still covered in blood.
BILLIE: Guys I was just knocked out from when I fell, knocking over the condiments! This blood is ketchup!
Panel 4: Tom sits up
TOM: I hate ketchup! Disguises the taste of my eggs!
Panel 5: Maggie now sits up.
MAGGIE: Tom cover your death boner!!!!
etc
Now *this* is the content I come here to read!
Actually, perversely perhaps, this does give a sense of satisfaction!
In case anyone’s wondering, yes, a death boner is a real thing. Really. Look it up.
Why do I keep opening these doors?
IIRC, Waiting for Godot made passing reference to death boners so Beckett basically left the door ajar.
I actually shed a few tears. I will deeply miss this bunch.
It’s where Mandrake roots come from, after all
Did the sharpshooter use a silver bullet?
The sharpshooter used a snooker cue stick… but scratched Brian, so he walks in on Panel 6.
My sincere thanks for your in-depth response. To reiterate, my opinion is just that, an opinion, and from the feedback here not one that most of your readers (at least those who comment) share. I meant and mean no offense.
To your points, you mentioned that you’ve given us the hanging plot threads and asked us to try and extrapolate a resolution, and note that it’s unlikely that you’d kill favorite characters. I can only note that sometimes Zombie Shelley eats the 90% of the brain that no one uses, and sometimes Ryan’s new French girlfriend gets blown up, or Erin Winters gets trapped in hell and erased from memory, or Eustace is cut in half by a demonic computer, etc. On occasion, you have quite abruptly done some pretty brutal things to your characters. Sometimes you revisit them afterwards, even bringing them back from the dead (metaphorically or actually), but you did kill them first.
Also, the way in which you’ve shared the unresolved plots seems like it has an effect on the unresolved plots. If you’d just provided a list, then extrapolation of how you’d usually work through the plots seems more feasible. With the narrative setup and everything hitting at once, various characters appear effectively “off the board” for involvement in one or another crisis – seemingly complicating matters beyond what you might have done. These are of course your story lines, and their reality is your plaything (ie, you can resolve them however you wish). But as a matter of extrapolation it seems complicated.
Regardless, please let me thank you again for your response and apologize profusely if I gave offense. While I’m sad the conclusion wasn’t to my taste, I’m glad that others did enjoy it, and I look forward eagerly to your next work.
A giant two-pronged monster apocalypse and no-one cares because it’s Cornwall. In fact, even fewer care because it’s North Cornwall, and the Unitary Council doesn’t give a shit about anything east of St. Austell. At least it’s realistic.
Perhaps it’s fitting that Steeple closes with mayhem and chaos (and all their relatives) running amok in the Steeple-sphere. We could mourn the loose ends swaying in the always-deviant winds of Tredegyne (and that is okay, because that means John created characters and a universe we cared about). We can also imagine that, even after we leave the last page, things carry on as they have and events continue to work themselves into a tizzy until the beyond-our-imagination happens to bring about a short settling of things before more stuff happens.
I salute John for giving us this great ride and I look forward to popping over to Bad Machinery next week to see what’s happening there.
Oh man, this being the last page hit me like a train I wasn’t expecting to come from the other direction.
Mostly because I’d found this an immensely enjoyable comic series & was fully invested in all the major characters (the only exception being Jason, perhaps).
I do understand leaving it all on cliffhangers, now I’ve read your outlines, comments and explanations. If the choice is to leave it blowing in the wind or to bury it, at least in the wind it might come back down again.
Here’s hoping this isn’t the last we see of this lot. Thank you John, for going above and beyond in creating these stories for the great characters and world you’d created. It must have been difficult to have it nixed, very much appreciate the extra effort you went into with all this.
John, thank you for sharing this with us.
Also, is Conan: The Blood Egg what David picks to watch?
In purely metatextual terms, it might be what he dreams after falling asleep watching Conan
I hadn’t planned out any expectation of what the end of this episode should be like, so I’m happy to be delighted by what you’ve given us. Life goes on, in Cornwall and elsewhere, some people change and some are dead (as Barbara Comyns might have said) — we can follow where the plot threads might have led it’s all good.
Thank you for this, John, and for everything up till now, and for what is to come! — your work has been a bright spark in my life for a fair old while, and long may it remain so.
It’s sort of like the end of Infinite Jest, where you have to extrapolate the unfinished plotlines and deduce the ending for yourself. (Or so I’m told, I’ve never read it).
I for one, like what you’ve done here. Amusing, provocative, unconventional, fascinating.
“A 1000+ page novel, well that will take a long time to read, plenty of room to fit all the complete story arcs you could ever wish for I suppose!”
“Ok, at the point where most novels end there’s a lot going on here and he’s still got 700 pages to tie all this up, no problem!”
“Well ok, into the final third and there’s not much sign of these arcs resolving yet, but he’s still got 300 pages to tie it all up, I’m sure it’ll be great!”
“900 pages down, 100 to go, ok, it’s been a slog but I’m looking forward to seeing how it all ties up!”
“50 pages to go, ok, any minute now, it’s got to start tying together…”
“10 pages to go, I’m beginning to think he’s not actually going to tie anything up here.”
After reading the end you have to go back to the beginning, which made no sense the first time through but now seems to tie up a few of those loose ends. It’s a nice trick!
Just to add to the chorus of thanks – it’s been great.
Of course, we’d all love more from Steeple, but it’s your baby, John, and you’ve been giving it to us free, FFS. To demand more would be greedy. And ungrateful.
Good luck with whatever comes next – you deserve some financial security, at the very least.
I was unaware that Dark Horse flaked on you, that Steeple came to an end because they were no longer interested in publishing it. Honestly, though, one should’ve known. Not the first time [nor probably the last] that DH bailed on something worthwhile in favor of cranking out reams of shite.
If it makes you feel one iota better about the situation, I stopped submitting proposals to them after receiving a letter back that basically said ‘This is really good, but our audience are dummies that read comic books, so we’ll pass.’ Not exactly what they said, but distilled to it’s core, exactly what they meant.
Have you ever considered Image? Out of everyone these days, they seem to be the only big-name publisher still taking chances, still providing some diversity. Just a thought.
Speaking of Conan, I’m reminded how absolutely terrible the DH reprinted collections of the Thomas/Windsor-Smith Conan’s were, clearly re-colored by a myopic chimpanzee on acid. If you should ever want to read them [and you should] go for the originals.
I will have a new series out from Dark Horse later this year!
As I understand it, Image’s thing is that it’s all creator-owned – if Image publishes your story, you get to keep your copyrights and all your stories and characters remain yours to do with as you please. However, the upshot is you get paid bobbins (ho-ho). Which is fair enough if you just want to get your passion project out there, but if you need to pay this bills you have to seek another berth.
Smith’s BONE was with Image for a long time in my yute. My impression is that for a western comic artist to become a mangaka he either needs to move to Japan or accept an arrangement like that. In retrospect, I’m glad Smith did, it was good to see the story as he envisioned it.
If you sell a shedload based on your name, Image is a good place for your series. But there’s no promotion, no editor, effectively no budget, you do everything yourself up to printing. If you’re not a heavy hitter in an era when it’s almost impossible to get an indie series off the ground in the Direct Market, and even things that do well get cut short early, Image isn’t a great fit.
I appreciate that the cast of Steeple got their news from the CornwallLive website. When you were writing adventures in Tackleford there were polygonal kings, onion aliens, and winged sextants, and those were all humdrum, commonplace normalities that anyone could accept – but the notion that the populace of a modern provincial English town got their news not one but TWO local newspapers was so utterly ludicrous that it drove the stories beyond authentic realism and into disbelieving fantasy!
But wait… https://cornwallreports.co.uk/lee-trewhela-quits-cornwall-live/
In my usual “Oh – NOW I think to mention it!” moment, would you be interested in trying some kind of crowdfunding effort to raise the ducats to publish another volume of Steeple? Even start with Volume 4 (this one, if I am correct).
I can’t draw my comics and run a Kickstarter myself. it’s like having a second job – and a stressful one.
Hi! Is it ever explained how David knows Shelley?
They first met back in Author Unknown. You can find that story on Select a Chapter, under this page.
There’s a whole special dealing with Shelley and David, drawn by GIANT DAYS’ Max Sarin – Reverend In Love, available through the Patreon or my Gumroad.
Ok, I’ve looked back at the previous two strips, and given that Billie and Maggie were seated in the back chairs of the pub after Tom blew them off, I’d say their chances of survival (even minimal injury) are quite high. As for the two fatalities and the eight others injured, I’d say mostly likely it was everyone in Brian’s immediately vicinity for the scratchathon. Unfortunately Tom looked like he was quite close to Brian, so he might be among the most severe casualties.
Noooooo!!! TOM!!!
Pipe down. Even if he’s dead, it just means he’ll wind up in Hell. Probably the best thing for his career at this point, really.
He’ll feel right at home, no?
I’m worried about the girl (I forget her name), who was part of Brian’s crew who started off as kind of the leader of the town delinquents back in the first series.
I just looked it up in vol. 1 – it’s Dani.
As for the two fatalities, the Sesh Gremlin might be one, and maybe the old witch?
Can’t imagine that even a werewolf can harm a Sesh Gremlin
A not-quite-werewolf can certainly hurl a Sesh Gremlin into the rafters, as Brian did in “The Silvery Moon” (and John’s answer to one of the comments on that page confirms that that is, indeed, the Sesh Gremlin, even though we hadn’t officially met him yet at the time). https://steeple.church/comic/as-barmy-as-the-rest-of-us/
Thank you for Steeple, John. It’s a pity it had to end in this abbreviated and cliffhanging fashion, but such are the vagaries of the comics world. But onwards to other things.
This reminds me of Firefly and its follow-up film, Serenity. It ended too soon and the final episode could not touch on everything… but I loved what I got. And I loved all of Steeple, too.
Shelley and David apparently being a Thing is enough to blow away any other consideration. Perhaps I am in denial.
That said, this being dependent on whatever some… “publisher” thinks for our stories to continue seems like a backslide to the bad old days, I thought we invented webcomics to get past all that twaddle.
That said, I’m signing up to your patreon, something I should’ve done years ago but it has taken me a while to realize I’m no longer poor as a rat and can now afford such luxuries as artistic “patroneage”
Also Lottie AND Conan?? Eeeeee
The money from print publishing, and foreign reprint rights, is important. If I want to have any kind of comfort in old age, basically! The webcomic boom was great but my generation’s part in it was so, so long ago.
wow. you are a mad bastard, but this was kind of art. an infinite panel gutter to misquote Scott McCloud. i’m stuck in a lurch.
This was an amazing run! I wish they’d continue to pick up the print version (and I know you do too, Jon A. They should have), but I look forward to the next thing and the next. And wishing you all the best!
Thanks, John! Steeple has been great, and I’m sorry it’s over – BUT – onwards to Conan! Just keep them coming, please.
Ending the series on no less than eight cliffhangers is legendary. Needs to go in the history books. Personally, I like the sense of momentum as if the stories are exploding out in all directions and will carry on long after.
This has real “last scene of Angel” vibes and I love it. Headcanons firing and, based on what happened with Bad Machinery, Scary Go Round, Bobbins, etc., a few of these people might show up again – but only if there’s a story worth telling.
Also, John, your evil scheme of “asking us to exchange money for goods and services” has succeeded. I’m off to buy Reverend in Love to find out why Shelley’s not off having babies with Tim.
Okay, that half-explained things. Is there a story that covers what happened with Tim? I’ll buy the issue if that’s a thing.
Good read though. Well worth it.
I just can’t bear that character any more. Writing him is depressing! I am sure he screwed up his relationship with Shelley like he screwed up everything else.
I, ah… agree. Yeah. Shelley leveled up. And I get the fun mental image of David and Ryan trying to find something to talk about while on a double-date with Amy and Shelley.
Now Riley and Sewerman General Johnson, that’s my ship.
Anyway, thanks for another great series and thanks for again ending things while they’re fresh. Nothing worse than a writer who’s clearly bored with their subject matter. That way lies Marmaduke.
I think Ryan and Penrose would get on. There would be a wobbly introduction but they’re both humble men in public service roles!
Ryan gets along with almost everyone.
I’m not sure I entirely see how the bit with the REDACTED was his fault… but hey, if you say so.
A few years back, you stated that Tim is dead, and you declared that to be canon.
Of course, IIRC, Shelley herself was dead for a while, so…
addendum:
Ah, here we are. Word for word.
John A
13/07/2021, 7:42 pm | Reply
I killed Tim off panel, he blew himself up, this is canon.
I found a couple of these comments so infuriating that I began warming up the ol’ delts, reflexively preparing to deliver some “persuasive rebuttals” (haymakers with extra sauce). But I soon realized that my limited upper-body strength would be better spent on poking Patreon’s “Upgrade Your Membership” button. If you feel — as I do — that you will miss these 2D people in a 3D way, I ask you to consider the virtues of that button, dear comment reader.
(And if you’re a dyspeptic demi-human who dares denigrate the artist who endured Herculean and entirely optional labors in order to scatter a few more pearls in your path … know that I am praying for you. Lumsford style.)
First thought – damn. Banner day for Lee Trewhela.
Second, despite the loss of life and limb, it does go to show just how necessary the Reverend’s work was. Seems to me like the Church of England — if not England in general — is about to learn exactly why you need a church in Tredregyn…
Third, that looks like Shelley’s “oooh, okay, I better make some calls” face. But who to, I wonder? Lottie’s more of a detective than a mer-person wrangler…
Fourth — ooh, hey! Does this mean we might get to see the Rev in Tackleford going forward?! Wouldn’t that be quite the thing to see…
Fifth, no way is this the last we’ll see of Billie and Maggie.
And sixth — thank you for all of this! Very glad I was able to catch up with Steeple before the end. Looking forward to seeing what your next phase brings!
My sense is that Shelley is going into the kitchen for a very hard THINK.
Maybe it’s time for new Super Crisis Quests! What sort of team would Shelley assemble now?
I recognize that phrase but I’m not sure I remember what it means. 😐
Sad to see Steeple go, but more than anything: thanks for taking us along the ride, John.
Now, am I just slow or has Billie and the Reverend being a thing not been a thing before this page?
Nevermind. Apparently I’m just a sloppy reader.
I mentioned in a comment last month that I had had a dream one night in which Steeple had ended without resolving any of the dangling plot threads, leaving every character in a cliffhanger. At the time, I thought this was just a ridiculous dream; I never suspected it would actually come true.
(I am a Patreon subscriber and could have read the whole story on Patreon before the end was posted to the site, but I didn’t; I never read ahead on Patreon, partially to avoid spoiling the story for myself and because I prefer seeing it unfold day by day, and partly because I am very lazy.)
This is not meant as a complaint about the way you ended Steeple; I’ve read the other comments and I understand why you did this the way you did. Mostly I just wanted to express my alarm at the fact I was apparently given the gift of oneiric prophecy. I’ll have to watch my other dreams very carefully; if others start also coming true there may be cause to worry. (Although the magnitude of that worry would depend on which dreams in particular come true.)
Alun it is very exciting to hear from a soothsayer!
So, exactly what is Shelley and Penrose’s relationship supposed to be here? And does it allow him to still be a reverend? Seriously, I’m not sure about the rules for this religion.
My understanding is that clerical types in the Church of England have no celibacy requirement at all (the same with the Episcopal Church in the US, which is basically the American branch of the Anglican Church). Even in Catholicism, celibacy in the priesthood isn’t actually officially a religious doctrine- it’s more of an administrative rule, as I understand it.
Next up after Conan: collaboration with Lee Trewhela on a TacklefordLive fictionalized news site?
In this continuity / point in time, does Shelly have a kiddo fathered by Ryan’s sister’s husband? Does Penrose even like youths?
See the Steeple “Reverend In Love” special for answers to all these questions https://scarygoround.gumroad.com/l/umfxtl?layout=profile!
(reading “Bad Machinery” for the first time in years)
DAMN, this is good stuff. 🙂
(“Steeple” is too, of course.)
Can’t locate Scary-Go-Round” as of yet, though. Darn.
Per Wikipedia: “As of 2021, the scarygoround.com site no longer hosts the Scary Go Round comics.”
So a certain amount of confusion is unavoidable. The phrase “Super Crisis Quests” (which I still don’t remember what means) yields little. Sigh. Maybe I’ll be smarter tomorrow. 😐
Great work, my man. Looking forward to all your future projects.
I had the privilege of living just outside of Boscastle for many years, and I still am lucky enough to call the locality “home”. It has been a rare treat to see North Cornwall in comic form, and to enjoy pleasingly familiar references pop up from time to time (the A30 saga being one of them…) I’m sad to hear that you didn’t get the green-light to continue this series – I think your strongest yet – but remain grateful for what you did do. With hope we get to see some vignettes of these characters in the years ahead.
Sad, this just leaves me very sad at the great stories left untold.
….and disappointed with Dark Horse.
This is a BRILLIANT finale!
Hats off to You, Sir, for having the guts to pull it off.
Well, I said I wasn’t going to be happy, and I was right.
I loved it, I hated it, that was brilliant work.
You’re a master of your craft John. You deserve to be feted and lauded and finacially compensated as one of the true greats of the UK comics scene.
Can’t wait to see what you do next. And thanks to my woefully lax attitude to keeping up with my RSS reader I don’t actually have to wait because you’ve already started to put it out there.
what happens when the comics end? surly life goes on, still imaginary. but not illustrated. woe.