Recent Comments

1. about 5 hours ago on Bad Machinery

   Five years. Since Shauna was 10, shortly before the start of the comic.

2. about 13 hours ago on Bad Machinery

   Unfortunately, compound interest is not Darren’s friend.

3. about 15 hours ago on Bad Machinery

   Darren Wickle, ladies and gentlemen.

   Not just in “fashion”, but in “fashion” in Wendlefield. I think that’s cruel and unusual punishment.

   He has more hair than he did last time we saw him.

4. 1 day ago on Bad Machinery

   Possibly a confusing code-word, as Lottie’s sister Sarah works, non-euphemistically, in fashion. (I don’t think this is ever actually established in-comic anywhere; John Allison mentioned it in a comment over on Solver.) Current-era Lottie takes advantage of her connections to supply her fabulous wardrobe.

   So, yeah, Shauna has an older brother. Half-brother, really. He hasn’t appeared in Bad Machinery because he’s been in “fashion” since before the beginning of the comic, but he appeared in Scary Go Round, in the storyline “The Estate” — before Shauna or Lottie did, actually.

   In “The Estate”, Desmond Fishman ran away from home, due to a misunderstanding involving Ryan and Sarah’s “noisy night ways”, and ended up wandering down onto the Swarbrick, the council estate where Shauna grew up, and getting roughed up by the gang of thugs Darren was hanging with. Darren took Des back to their place to recover, which is when we first met Shauna. Shauna invited Lottie over to see “the biggest frog in England or the world”, and this ended up with Ella discovering Des and hatching a scheme to pretend he was her son to make money from the tabloids, which fell apart when it resulted in Shelley and Amy finding out where Des was and showing up to take him back home. Shauna still holds a grudge against Shelley over that. Lottie, on the other hand, knows Shelley through her sister, and Shelley’s become a mentor to her.

   We’ll actually get the closest thing Shelley gets to an appearance in the published Bad Machinery later in this case.

5. 3 days ago on Bad Machinery

   I think Mildred has the best dad, actually. But Jack’s is pretty cool, for what little we see of him. (These two panels are the sum total of his appearances in Bad Machinery.)

   No one can resist puppy dog eyes from a Little Claire who’s so down that she’s bringing her own rainstorm with her.

6. 3 days ago on Bad Machinery

   As we learned back in “Modern Men”, Jack’s dad is a hairdresser. This is the first time we’ve actually seen him. His second appearance won’t be for another five years, in “Circus Windows”.

   Lottie and Claire’s friendship has developed quite a bit since “Lonely One”, when Lottie was dreading six years of sitting next to Little Claire.

7. 4 days ago on Bad Machinery

   A “skip” is what we in America would call a dumpster. A “pram” is a baby carriage. Blossom is calling Shauna trash who is likely to become a teenage mother.

   The boy Blossom took off Shauna in second year was Corky. At the end of “The Case of the Lonely One”, Blossom convinced him that Shauna only wanted him to sit with them so they could make fun of him.

   We never met Jane Wibberly, EROTIC AUSTRALIAN.

   The Kobayashi Maru is a no-win scenario that Starfleet Academy puts cadets through as method of judging their character. Kirk famously beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario by cheating — he reprogrammed the simulator to allow him to win, justifying this by saying that he doesn’t believe in no-win scenarios. Shauna has wriggled out of Blossom’s no-win scenario by preemptively acknowledging everything that Blossom could possibly use as ammunition against her.

8. 5 days ago on Bad Machinery

   He doesn’t mean that. But that doesn’t really help either of them.

   Claire and Colm had been together since the end of “The Case of the Simple Soul”, which was almost four years ago, or approximately 2.5 eternities in grammar-school years.

9. 8 days ago on Bad Machinery

   This was covered back in “Team Spirit”, Sonny. Zebra is fine creature to admire, but if you ride the zebra, she ends up crashing a satellite in the middle of your football pitch.

10. 8 days ago on Bad Machinery

    Six or eight years, I think. I don’t recall Darren’s actual age being established anywhere, but he was already a teen when we first met him in Scary Go Round (before we met Shauna, actually). Definitely more than a month and ten days, anyway.