Trauma
Ladies, we can’t leave this plot thread dangling. Oh, if ONLY they knew anyone who could resolve such a situation.
STEEPLE – A Scary Go Round Comic
by John Allison
Ladies, we can’t leave this plot thread dangling. Oh, if ONLY they knew anyone who could resolve such a situation.
This is a job for Pieni Lepakko!
Let’s hope Penrose and Shelley will be able to convince her to investigate again.
“Syyttää!” really packs a punch.
(google translate doing the heavy lifting here)
Close enough: the first person form – J’accuse! – would be “Syytän!”. But all forms do have a drawn-out vowel similar to the French “u”.
OH MY GOD WHY 😀 It’s all good, it’s all good. Might have woken up the neighbours with my laughter.
I’m sure they know a lot(tie) of people who fit that description, right?
Yay!
The answer is obvious… Desmond Fishman PI Ft. Robert Cop!
This is… a sort of funny torture for a reader and I totally love it! But is the not remembered individual too into the mysteries able to investigate again? Dunno who Mrs Clovis is shielding and why, but this makes me like her more and more. She’s so cool in the third panel!
Maybe someone whose chibi form is in the hood ornament?
I hadn’t noticed that! Well spotted! I think that’s Minichibilottie’s first “out-of-Solver” appearance!
Gotta admit I missed that, too!
That’s just what the Missan badge looks like on a 2010 Nicra in the Tackleverse
It’s been previously mentioned that Billie’s car is a Fiat 500.
John Allison has declared it so, by authorial Fiat.
I am STARING at it and all I see is a very buff hamster in a hoodie. I came to the comments to ask who it is but, uh… evidently I ruined these eyes with reading.
Hmmm. The car badge on its nose might have a clue as to who they could turn to!
Of course, they could visit the Reverend at his new digs. I think they could supply the requisite tec!
Someone who’s a… SOLVER, if you will.
They’d need someone who’s the GReatest of Oll Time Ever!
I’m just glad the tiny leaves in the wind are back. I was worried for a awhile there…
I’m going to be so angry when Clovis is revealed to be some supernatural creature and it turns out there were clues on every page this whole time.
She is actually the chibi-Lotties we’ve been seeing everywhere
Don’t you mean Chibi Vampirellas?
(I just read that story yesterday.)
But she’s BEEN to Tredregyn once, hasn’t she had enough of mer persons and Cornish weirdness?
Indeed. There’s Tackleford weird and then there’s Tredregyn weird. Which one is more unfathomably weird and dangerous, I’m not certain.
This is looking like some kind of Allison Singularity (I think I had an EP of hers in the 90s)
I really wish Chemikal Underground would put her old stuff up on Bandcamp
Wait, is that what’s following the end of Steeple? A new series with Lottie solving crime in Tredregyn?
There are new comics scheduled over at badmachinery.com. But unless Charlotte has developed mighty thews since we saw her last, I don’t think she’ll be making an appearance. (Zebus might get a cameo.)
Conan?! Ok color me curious.
That color is puce.
“Puce” and “mauve” are my favorite color names. Then again, there is always “mauvy-puce”.
Ral Partha used to have a paint color called “Mind Flayer Mauve”.
I am now imagining the might female warrior, Red Shelly
Well… There are pages called “The cunning of redhairs” and “Your doe eyes”.
I think Lottie is too tied to Tackleford to make spend extended time in Tredregyn.
In the last several stories she starred in, Lottie was operating out of Sheffield, not Tackleford, though.
Ah, good point. I think Sheffield’s big enough for Lottie. Her last trip to London I think left a bad impression to put it mildly.
I’m still really, really hoping that one day John will complete “Wicked Things”. It was a great story. Will we never find out who tried to murder Miyamoto-San”?
I asked if we could finish it with a 44-page special as part of the Giant Days Kickstarter. No dice.
Dang!
Boo…
Sad to know.
I had been understanding this comment as implying it was never solved.
https://badmachinery.com/comic/so-i-dont-forget-where-im-from/
it hasn’t been. A “Part 2”, I assume, would be a new story in which it is solved.
I’m holding out for an incestuous crossover implosion with D.I. Renwick.
I had a dream about Steeple a couple of days ago, although I don’t usually dream about webcomics.
In the dream, the comic had ended, but not only had absolutely none of the dangling plot threads been resolved, but new questions had been raised that were also left unresolved, basically leaving every character on a major cliffhanger.
The consensus in the comments to the last strip was that this must mean John did plan to continue the story in some form after all, but there was no agreement regarding what that form would be (and John himself remained silent on the matter).
I just had one too!
In my dream, it was a slightly different Steeple universe – I was Ultimate Billie Baker, if you will, and having a genuine but inconsistent Magickal awakening as I was invited to the Church of Satan by Tom and Brian.
When Tom tried to soak me for my gigantic first “rent” check to the Church, I as Billie had a lovely time showing him that I – unlike Tom – could genuinely fly and channel magickal energy, flying around him in full view of many of his parishioners, dousing him in magick and humiliating him before pretending to shoot off to the Moon like a powerful paragon. In reality, I didn’t have nearly the power to go that far – but still had plenty of power to shoot off into the sky and to try to fool Tom after utterly humiliating him, hoping he didn’t realize I wasn’t quite as powerful as I pretended to be.
It was absolutely invigorating. Becoming an avatar of magickal power, then making a fool out of Tom Pendennis and humiliating him for genuinely trying to hurt people was every bit as satisfying as it ever has been in the strip!
As I commented on the previous page, this story made its way into my dreams, as well (and I don’t usually dream about webcomics, either). In my dream, it turned out that Mrs Clovis had been possessed by some evil entity, which had actually committed the murder, and we were trying to figure out how to banish it. I’m afraid I don’t remember much more than that.
Deus ex Grote!
Grote ex Machina
Deus Grote Machina?
Deus Grote Machina!
I’m hearing this as a sort of Gregorian chant.
DE US GRO TÉ MACH I NAAAA
-WHAM!-
Surely you mean a GreGrotian chant, sir.
All this Grote speculation aside, can we all agree that Billie has THE best raincoat?
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Lottie! Lottie! Lottie!
A heaping helping of grote clusters for everyone.
Bran and Bran! Now with Grote clusters!
(adjacent to this complete breakfast)
Eh, they’ll figure it out eventually.
Given that Maggie appears to be making a call already in that last panel…
I think that’s the increasingly popular “scrolling without inspiration” face
I interpret the whole panel as “we both know exactly who we’re talking about, but we’re pretending we don’t.”
To clarify, I interpret Billie’s lines as essentially translating to “We need to call Lottie,” and Maggie’s line as translating to “Already dialing her.” (Do people still say “dialing”?) I can’t imagine Billie saying the “Somebody almost TOO into them” line without knowing exactly who she was talking about. I could see Shelley doing that, but despite everything, Billie and Maggie strike me as being a bit more… “normal”, maybe?… than Shelley.
Not only do people say “dialing”, they also “hang up” their cell phones.
And we are still asked if we want to save files on our computers by being shown a floppy disc icon.
To me, the “dialing” thing is a lot weirder, though. I’m old enough that when I was a kid most phones still had dials, but by the time I was in high school dials on phones were increasingly rare- most phones had buttons. The term “to dial a phone number” should have been obsolete before most people even had cell phones OR floppy disks.
The weird one to me is that people still call the act of recording digital video on a smartphone “filming”, and (at least here in the US) they call the recorded video “footage”.
Do we still say “The phone is ringing”?
To be fair, a LOT of people still use the “phone ringing” ring tone.
Almost everyone I know still “tapes” TV programmes to their digital recorders, even people born long after VHSes were purged from British homes.
A few notes regarding the mystery here:
1. If the ghost that possessed Maggie was Dick Clovis, then he specifically blamed his death on a “murderous harpy.” Meaning the murderer was likely a woman.
2. While Maggie is likely right that Mrs. Clovis isn’t the type to repress memories, that doesn’t rule out other factors — e.g. magic, alcohol, that horrible cologne they found in her bathroom — that might be messing with her ability to recall.
3. But if Mrs. Clovis *is* shielding someone, she presumably must actually care about the murderer. That eliminates people she’d likely hate, like Maggie’s grandmother.
My best guess right now? A time-traveling Maggie executed Dick to prevent him from harming Mrs. Clovis. It couldn’t be Billie, the only other woman Mrs. Clovis might want to protect, since the ghost didn’t see the “harpy” in the room (not realizing that he was in fact *possessing* said harpy at the time.) Mrs. Clovis presumably can’t remember the full details due to Time Weirdness, as experienced by Calvin and the mystery girls during that one Bad Machinery storyline. And what details she can recall she’s unlikely to want to share, given that she wants to protect Maggie in the present day.
the crescendo continues to uild
By the way, my guess as to who the true killer is? A time-traveling Maggie, who probably executed Mr. Clovis to protect Mrs. Clovis somehow. You heard it here first.
Hmm. Time travel?…
No time travel, eh? All right, Allison. I’ll hold my tongue for now. 😁
“I’m drawing a blank.”
*cue boss music*
IF ONLY SUCH A PERSON EXISTED IN THIS “LITERARY UNIVERSE” AS IT WERE
YYYYYYEEEEEESSSSSSSS
I love it when a plot thread resolves BY BEING TIED INTO ANOTHER ONE.
It’s like knitting all your sweaters together so you never have to leave one in the house.
But no one else will ever forget your arse, Maggie Warren.
As is her intention, I’m sure.
ooh, ooh! I know! it’s .. it’s …… gaahhhh! plop.
Arrrggghh! Just when they were about to reveal the name!
It’s pretty obvious that it’s Mad Terry.