Shelley, Esther and Lottie have been having a ten-year battle to deliver the most grisly puns in my comics. Arguably Esther cleared the field in Giant Days, but that comic was set up for mirth. Shelley remains the old, wise master.
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There are some very odd dynamics playing out around this table. After a series of very complicated pages involving some quite difficult mental gymnastics for a merely middling artist, this one was a simpler proposition. I do have to do a little diagram when people are round a table, to keep them in the correct positions. It’s easy to get yourself in trouble, fast. There’s nothing special about panel 2 but I think it might be a personal favourite. One more page to go!
Well, there we go. Friendships made, issues resolved, worries flopping around at the bottom of the sea. For now. We probably haven’t seen the back of human-merman unholy chimeras. That was a new thing. Lottie and Shelley will now return to their respective corners of the Scary Go Round Cinematic Universe. Both have new stories in the works, keep an eye out for The Great British Bump-Off and NEMS pt 2: Darkest Timeline – most likely next year. A new Steeple story, picking up from “Christmas With Clovis”, will start on Monday.
A new, 4-part story, CLOTTED CRIME, starts on Monday. Part 1 is called “Brassic”. In 88 pages (plus 3 more covers) we should know if I got this one right. This cover image is by Julia Madrigal (GIANT DAYS, LUMBERJANES etc), commissioned thanks to the support of my Patreon subscribers. Check out her wonderful cartooning on Instagram.
Ho ho, the ole switcheroo! Thank goodness for the Women’s Institute. If you’re not from the UK, “jammy” is another way of saying “lucky”.
Maggie has really softened up Mrs Clovis. Mrs C. doesn’t let people in easily, but she’s truly taken the town’s most painted jezebel to her heart.
At last, a glimpse of Mrs Clovis’ secret heart. A treat we can all enjoy. I suppose Clotted Crime is to Guernseyman as Midsummer Murders is to Bergerac. Here’s a closer look at those DVDs. Cool to see that Peter Jurasik was a featured player in Guernseyman from series 3 on. He gets star billing for the movie, as is richly deserved by one of the great underrated character actors of his day.
Our attention turns to Bilinda Baker, who continues to develop a healthy and respectful relationship with Magus Tom Pendennis. He’s on particularly coquettish form this evening.
In Christmas With Clovis we established that Pixy Garage is somewhere you should never visit. The arcade game that the proprietor (probably called “Les”) is leaning against is called Space Junk (1986) and its attract mode features a garbled digitised voice saying “WATCH WHO YOU’RE CALLING SPACE JUNK, METEOR MOUTH” every 90 seconds.