Praise the everlasting king
Billie certainly has some powers. Who else could get Reverend Penrose to sniff a tailpipe? It’s no one’s idea of a good time.
STEEPLE – A Scary Go Round Comic
by John Allison
Billie certainly has some powers. Who else could get Reverend Penrose to sniff a tailpipe? It’s no one’s idea of a good time.
I’m not surprised by the tailpipe sniffing. Reverend Penrose has demonstrated many a time that he’s not afraid to get his hands, etc. dirty.
Also, that looks like a bag of chips they’re eating, when I might expect them to have a packet of crisps.
This has been discussed several times. “Kettle chips”.
The opposite situation happens with what we in the US would normally always call “fries” (what you would normally call “chips” in the UK). They are called “fries” here in every context EXCEPT when they are served in proximity to fried seafood, where they magically become “chips”. (As in “fish & chips”, “prawns & chips”, etc.) I’ve always assumed this was because there was some point in the past when Americans thought of fish & chips as a British thing, but nowadays it’s more just a “seaside tourist town” thing.
I can repeat my comment from the last page “Suddenly, the title of the next page makes sense”, and it still applies!
Yes, but about 2 1/2 weeks hence are we going to learn about haters of evil daffodils or the evil ones who hate daffodils? At this point either possibility seems plausible (though I would have to put money on the latter if I were forced to make a bet).
My money is on evil daffodils who (which?) are full of hatred. Otherwise there would be hyphens, no? “Evil daffodil-haters” or “Evil-daffodil haters”?
Also, “daffodil” becomes a very strange word if you say it too many times.
Yes, it starts to sound like a not-too-bright character from Lord of the Rings.
How is “daffodil” spelt in the original Welsh? Trick question: there would be a range of answers, but all longer than thirteen letters and containing at least one ‘h’ and two ‘y’s.
The word “daffodil” doesn’t come from Welsh.
(Seriously, I’m glad these two are finally having this conversation.)
The one answer I’m pretty sure the reverend is NOT expecting is “a cursed vacuum cleaner made me do it.”
Alas, I don’t think she actually knows that, does she? It’s knowledge readers have that neither Maggie nor Billie possess, IIRC
Should… should one of us tell them?
If I were in that situation, I think I would want someone to tell me.
If only we could send her a text message!
…
This is what the internet needs – an app which can pass messages between people in our world and those in other perhaps-slightly-more-fictional worlds.
Maybe we could ask someone from Cats Laughing to talk to Kitty Pryde, and then Kitty could phase over to Solver and have Lottie get in touch with Billie.
Well, except Lottie’s gone AWOL from Solver. This is clearly the only problem with this proposal.
The vision was just the last straw. As a young girl Billie had the reputation of being a tattler who enjoyed speaking ill of others (she was The Poison Queen of Milton Keynes) and she decided to become a priest because she thought she wasn’t a good person. The doubts started when the wind turbines had generated that weird sanctified energy, but she wasn’t been touched by it. Then the doubt grew when the three supreme witches showed to be really interested in her and her evil potential and then, she REALLY enjoyed the sabbat.
I think the vacuum cleaner was just one of several factors.
Super Freaky.
The kind you don’t take home to mother.
You know, if Penrose would accept Maggie’s offer of Communion with his Archbishop, while Billie sings from her hymnal, and the Rev worships at Billie’s alter, Eucharist assured that they’d all be speaking in tongues right quick.
LOOK REV CAN WE JUST GET BACK TO THE WHOLE DEMONIC CAR THING BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO HAVE THIS CONVO JUST NOW
Just a nitpick, the adjective for the denomination is “Anglicanism”. An anglicism is an expression peculiar to the English.
I think what Billie means is that English doesn’t even have the words for how freaky she wants to be.
Those are nouns, not adjectives.
I have remedied this now, thank you!
If I recall correctly, Billie said that “she was called” to Join TCOS. If that’s the case is it possible that Billie is on instructions from much much higher up than the Archbishop of Canterbury?
IIRC Billie was credited with saving Maggie’s soul, so there may have been a quid-pro-quo element to that deal. Also, boils on the backside can cut both ways as Tom’s reaction to the Ringo Starr play-in-a-day singalong looked as if he was gluteally troubled.
(No, I’m not just using nested replies for the sheer joy of it. Or maybe I am…)
Digging back through the archive reminded me.
Don’t forget that Billie still has saintly hands (https://steeple.church/comic/a-little-peace/) but has multiple talents in the other direction (https://steeple.church/comic/munus-hic-iuvat-insanire/) (albeit with the aim of Snoopy protection).
I’m still finding I can’t do a 5th nested reply. I can’t remember whether that was always true or not.
5 levels was always the limit I set… except when I accidentally turned it off.
Wot, the Queen?
I don’t know. I keep thinking about this scene from Secret Sentai. https://steeple.church/comic/bwaak/
That would be my suspicions as well.
Tom is not a boil on Billie’s backside. He’s at least TWO boils. Two and a HALF.
He could still be one boil, if it is broken open, infected, and weeping pus.
Tom is a boil who *wishes* he was…. oh, never mind.
I don’t think it’s to my credit that my first mental response to “Who could get the Reverend to sniff a tailpipe? was “Oh God, hopefully not Tom.”
Even as a lifelong atheist there are still some hymns which cheer and move me. Perhaps the devil doesn’t have all the best tunes after all.
I still catch myself singing “Lord Of The Dance” now and then.
Lord of the dance settee?
I agree with others that this conversation is one of the best things to come out of the current storyline. However, looking at the other comments, I’m wondering whether I’ve missed/forgotten an important plot point somewhere.
As I recall, there was some kind of Rapture-ish event, where lots of people were being lifted up towards Heaven. Maggie was lifted, which is why she rejoined the Anglican church; Billie had her feet firmly on the ground (anchoring Maggie) which is why she left Christianity.
Where does the cursed vacuum cleaner fit into this?
Two witches had placed a curse on the vacuum cleaner to give Mrs Clovis a vision with the devil calling her to be his messenger. But the vacuum cleaner had been used by Billie, who at the time already had doubts about her vocation or being a good person.
The hipster witches didn’t specifically hope to turn Clovis to the worship of the devil. They felt like she was being overworked and underappreciated by what they assumed was the patriarchy of the Anglican church. The curse was only intended to make the recipient doubt her calling, but when Billie picked up the vacuum, it made her doubt *her* calling instead – and possibly activated what may have been a prior claim her vision of Satan claimed to have on her soul.
I wrote that such a long time ago and the plot point is kind of lost to time but my feeling was that Billie had a lot of work to do to get right for rapture, whereas Maggie has always operated out of a certain purity of motive. Billie had a teenage phase as the “poison queen of Milton Keynes”. She’s a complicated person!
Also worth saying that the early issues of Steeple are the comic in a very protean form. There’s a lot of “first thought, best thought” and not a lot of editing goes on, which is why my series tend to get better the equivalent of 15, 20 issues in.
They’re all complicated people. That’s one of the reasons I love Steeple so much. And as far as I’m concerned, the series started out good, and has only gotten better and better as it’s gone along.
To be honest, I’m still hoping some of those Vol. 1 callbacks reappear – I never got out of the habit of wondering if Billie has some destiny yet in the Rev’s long war against the deep, or if the hipster witches’ curse threw Billie off her true path or put her on it.
Without wishing to issue spoilers. provided I don’t die in a terrible accident, you will get your wish on some of these matters.
You are an international treasure, Mr. Allison.
I’ve been waiting for this talk between Billie and Penrose since the end of the initial printed miniseries! Penrose is right, Billie’s conversion don’t make any sense. But maybe there’s something more than a hypnotic vision behind it? Maybe Billie really feels the call of evil? Since her arrival in the church of Satan, she had moments where she appears ruthless and calculating. I hope there will be further progress for her in this story and that she will seriously respond to Penrose.
She’s also a-okay with the orgies.
I think it took her a little while to get there, though.
BUT she does not intend to be notorious for her snoopy!
A couple of the stupider kids in my senior school started sniffing exhaust fumes. They’d put a hanky over a car exhaust with an elastic band then lie with the noses up against it when the car was running. These were the same kids who found a load of syringes then went around trying to inject water into other kids and who stole the spark light fixtures from some gas stoves and started zapping other kids with them surreptitiously.
The most surprising thing about them both being dead now is that it happened later rather than sooner.
Shockingly, a lot of the crazy idiots I knew in high school are still alive and doing okay. On the other hand, I just got back from seeing a friend from high school who was pretty sane and safe. He’s dying of colon cancer. Another close friend from back then with whom I myself shared some shenanigans was doing very well up until a few years ago, when at 50 he had a brain tumor removed. It was wrapped around his optic nerve, and now he’s 100% blind in one eye and 80% blind in the other.
Permanent brain injury is like a high that lasts forever! (shudder)
Looks like next week’s a “page every day” week, to wrap up part 1 (with part 2’s cover presumably being next Friday’s page). So don’t forget to check every day.
Yay! Those page-every-day weeks are like little Christmases every time.
Billie is so obviously not a spy that everyone would automatically assume she is a spy.
My dad was in the CIA. I know whereof I speak.
I feel like this is a conversation a long time coming.