The lost lamb
Maggie’s dad is quite the figure. I tried to merge all three classic Top Gear hosts into one man. Colours by Sammy Borras
Maggie’s dad is quite the figure. I tried to merge all three classic Top Gear hosts into one man. Colours by Sammy Borras
Oh wow….I hope they find the buffet.
If anything productive happens at that party, that’ll be it.
Is it more evil for the buffet to be an excess of sumptuous food, or a disappointment of soggy quiche and cheap sandwiches going stale?
Personally I’d promise everyone an amazing dinner, then fill it so full of gluten and allergens that no-one could actually find anything they could eat. E.g. All the vegetarian food would be served with a cube of ham on a cocktail stick touching it.
I suspect its well catered, but it has some kind of strange menu. Like all carrots. Everyone gets liver cancer!
Oh, Maggie’s face in panel five. Oh Maggie.
Poor girl. She’s still bleeding.
Good thing she has a friend who’s quick on the uptake
Oh, Billie. You never just *open* the door with the giant pitchfork on it.
Billie’s life is just a series of bad decisions.
In all fairness to Billie, thinking that a door with a fork on it was the dining room is completely logical.
It’s the trident thing from earlier in the story!
Yes. but Billie doesn’t know that.
The readers know what it is, but Billie wasn’t there when Tom and Brian had their encounter with Trident. (She and Maggie did pass by the Trident pavilion later, but they clearly weren’t paying much attention to their surroundings at the time.)
Probably assumed, quite reasonably, that someone had set up a small Maseratti dealership in a tent there
And speaking of Top Gear hosts, could it be Wilson as in Quentin
Also, Bob Warren in panel 1 is a figure of evil par excellence.
There’s a charisma there, a dangerous sort of conventionally worldly and luxurious charm, that seems as if it could make him far more dangerous than Tom Pendennis could ever be.
John couldn’t have drawn a character that screams “WANKER!” any louder than this.
Although if he did, “WANKER!” would have been deftly spelled out in the background — maybe the steam rising from the (thus-far theoretical) buffet forming the characters.
He’s a wanker no doubt – insofar as I can deduce context from here across the pond. (We don’t really have the Top Gear thing over here, as our motorsport-obsessed “wankers” watch NASCAR instead.)
But it seems to me that he may be a very dangerous kind of wanker, the kind that other wankers idolize on television and build movements around.
I have to say, this story is gripping stuff either way!
I’m not sure I want to know what it takes to traumatize someone who’s been living with Tom and Brian for, what, weeks? months?
And, yeah, that blouse is not “some” cleavage. That is all the cleavage.
Axe-level cleavage. The Reverend would be proud.
John, you did a bang-up job with the character design – as soon as I saw Bob in the first panel, I thought “Wasn’t he on Top Gear?” before I scrolled and saw your note.
I’ll also note that he vaguely reminds me of a villainous David Warner.
Hm, what could old Bob be involved with that would freak out a novice of the Church of Satan?
Oh. Oh no. Tell me Maggie’s dad hasn’t fallen in with… the NFT crowd.
I am genuinely unsure whether you mean “Non-Fungible Token” or “Normal For Tackleford”.
An art that isn’t an art that you sell without selling but burn down a rainforest to do so DOES seem like the sort of thing that Tim Jones would have invented. Briefly.
I mean, yes, doomsday-ish, but not quite enough so.
Oh man that’s why this guy looks so familiar lmao.
Trident! It doesn’t just freshen your breath!
I saw Maggie’s Dad and thought “as played by Julian Sands”!
Billie sure does know how to wear a purple pantsuit.
Mostly by virtue of what she isn’t wearing under it….
To be fair, Bob Warren’s shirt opening is almost identical.
Nah, Bob just has a few buttons undone like he thinks he’s playing John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Billie appears to be relying entirely on having her blouse tucked into her trousers.
I… don’t think that was a dining room.
Or it was of the kind where humans are placed on the table rather than at the table.
Family pic in the … parlour? sitting room?
And somebody else rocking purple. Foreshadowing, your sign of quality literature.
Taking a closer look at that picture… Does Maggie have a little brother? Where was he when she and Sarah were “standing by” Bob?
I fear we will see Little Brother soon; he will be a fifteen year old Mini-Me who idolises and emulates Dad partly as a coping mechanism and partly because he was too small at the time and has been fed Bob’s “side of the story” ever since
Maggie’s dad seeshers daughter after years, hugs her and then runs off to talk to a friend. Also, Maggie’s dad has become a Dilf, plus, again, Billie was traumatized by something happening in that room!?! People at that party seem to be completely drunk or worse. It all seems so dangerous!!!
It is clear that Bob Warren is now Living His Best Life!
Pater Warren has apparently become hug-adjacent since Maggie last saw him. No good will come from it, I am certain.
Yep, all Top Gear hosts rolled into one sounds about right for Bob Warren. I was going to say a twisted combo of Richard Branson and Nick Cave.
Panel #4: I now want to hurt that man.
Me too.
Panel 1 alone filled me with an instinctive urge to punch the dude in the junk.
That is almost *exactly* what I thought when I saw him, so good job John.
For some reason I “heard” Malcom McDowell’s voice when he spoke.
Same here. Either Malcolm McDowell or Richard E. Grant.
“I tried to merge all three classic Top Gear hosts into one man.”
What a terrifying thought!
QUICK! Play Genesis and one-third of him will punch out the other two
For U.S. readers of a certain age, Bob in panel one reminds me of Don Imus, minus the cowboy hat.
I -thought- I recognized the wild mane of James May. What room dud Billie discover? Orgy room? Satanic macrame room?
Very Tony Blair that Bob Warren.
I’m very excited to have New Labour commenting on the comics! I assume this is one of Peter Mandelson’s sockpuppet accounts.
Maggie is dressed a fig.
Mind the wasps.
Billie: No food, but I DID find us both some brain bleach! Drink up!
Maggie and Billie: *dook* *dook* *dook*
No, remember: Be like Lottie! Sip, don’t dook!
Especially brain bleach. Potent stuff, that.
I’m getting a Hellfire Club vibe here. With Maggie as Mrs Peel (which may just be some left-over hormones from my teenage years).
Also see the episode Honey for the Prince for Mrs Peel in a yummy Persian dancer outfit.
Also The Girl from Auntie, where Mrs Peel is captured coming home from a suspicious party where she was wearing nothing more than a translucent body stocking and feathers. She is locked up in a giant bird cage.
*Homer Simpson drool*
Mrs. Peel was enough to supply a man enough teenage hormones to last well past senility.
Daddy’s a trifle manic. In the first frame it also appears that he may be wearing an incontinence nappy.
Well, at least Maggie got a hug out of it.
(I find it unlikely that he’ll hug the old rogue Wilson too…)
He reminds me more of DC Comics’ Captain Boomerang than anyone else. Not the movie version, the real one.