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John Campbell Free
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- about 5 hours ago on Bad Machinery
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about 9 hours ago
on Bad Machinery
Actually, this got directly addressed in a “So Where Is Erin Winters?” strip:
ERIN: “Do we have souls again now, then?”
THE BOY (making igloo): “I don’t know how to test for that.”
ERIN: “Hm. Okay. Would you stab up a kitten?”
THE BOY: “Even while I was a hell-horse, I wouldn’t have stabbed up a kitten.”
ERIN: “I thought this was going to be WARM. Worst igloo.”
THE BOY: “I don’t think you EVER had a soul, Erin.”
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about 13 hours ago
on Bad Machinery
I believe she’s implying that she’s going to sue Erin for unlawful termination. I don’t think she’s going to get much traction on that, considering that she was never actually employed there in the first place.
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about 13 hours ago
on Bad Machinery
Presumably? We never get any actual indication of how Erin and The Boy escaped Hell — “So Where Is Erin Winters?” just opens with them crawling out of a cave on Svalbard, with Erin in an ill-fitting Mordawwa outfit and The Boy in a floppy blue horse costume. But they both seem to be fully alive and mortal again. Erin actually attempted to go Mordawwa in “End of the Road”, and couldn’t.
Maybe she demanded a refund after The Boy got himself killed the second time.
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about 17 hours ago
on Bad Machinery
I don’t think she actually has anything in particular against Lottie. This is just what passes for affection with Erin. She did spend much of her teenage years reigning in Hell, and she was naturally pissy even before that, which stood her in good stead when it came time to defeat Robot Hitler and seize the Bone Throne with nothing more than schoolgirl pluck.
When Erin got sucked into Hell, everyone on Earth forgot that she’d ever existed. There was a really heartbreaking strip shortly after that incident where Shelley and Amy came across a framed photo of Erin, and concluded that it must be a picture that came with the frame. When she first returned to Earth, people still couldn’t even remember she was there unless they were actually looking at her. Though this faded over time, we still see some of it in her first appearance in Bad Machinery, way back in “Team Spirit”, where Ryan, who’s known Erin since she was a small child and was there when she got sucked into Hell, can’t remember her name that she’s literally just said.
(This is why she hadn’t attempted to reconnect with her actual family, and was making do with Mike, who didn’t know her before. But when she finally ran into Shelley in “Into the Woods”, Shelley recognized her, despite that she was in full Mordawwa guise, like nine feet tall with horns and blazing eyes.)
Anyway, her little revenge for this was deliberately getting other people’s names wrong in her articles. Erin taking credit for the mystery kids’ work and getting their names wrong is where most of the animosity comes from.
This also isn’t the end of things with them. There’s a deleted strip that would have appeared between this one and tomorrow’s that gets more into it, and then follow-up from that. I was going to transcribe the missing strip, but, after posting two epic-length comments already, I decided to save it for when we get to the follow-up strip.
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1 day ago
on Bad Machinery
At some point after “Into the Woods”, Mordawwa and Scientist faced a rebellion in Hell in the Mordawwa one-shot “Kill It Before It Grow”. After that, they escaped Hell again, by means unknown, and returned to Earth, emerging on Svalbard, in mortal form again, where they were rescued from wendigos by Goblin Santa Claus, who sent them back to Tackleford, in the story “So Where Is Erin Winters?”
They ended up in a weird forgotten space behind the supermarket, where Mad Terry’s mum collected forgotten characters, in the very strange story, “End of the Road”. With help from Mad Terry and the other forgotten characters, they escaped and returned to Tackleford proper.
Erin reappeared in the parallel Bobbins storyline “Hard Yards” shortly before the beginning of “Severed Alliance” — Lottie went over to Shelley’s house the day before “Severed Alliance” began, and she just missed Erin leaving — but given that she spent time editing the Packet before reappearing, she must have actually been back on Earth for a while before she got around to checking in with her sister.
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1 day ago
on Bad Machinery
Mike’s, rather justifiably, kind of behind on his Erin news. Last he knew, she’d parleyed her Night Creeper reporting in “Unwelcome Visitor” into a better job at The New Scientist, a London-based popular science magazine. She came back to Tackleford to visit over the holidays in the “Bobbins Now” strips between “Forked Road” and “Modern Men”, because Mike was the closest thing she had to family — because when she was 16 everyone on Earth forgot that she’d ever existed, after she was sucked into Hell, where she fought her way to the Bone Throne and for the next three or so years reigned as Mordawwa, Queen of the Underworld, before returning to Earth at some point before Giant Days #3.
While she was visiting, she reconnected with her high-school crush, Eustace “The Boy” Boyce, whom she remembered, though, like everyone else, he couldn’t remember her. The Boy was, at the time, working with Neil at the university.
Later, in the autumn between “Space is the Place” and “Modern Men”, she came back to Tackleford again to investigate some devil bear sign that Neil and Mildred had discovered, in the Bobbins story “Into the Woods”, and Neil conspired to set Erin and The Boy up. The devil bear issue came to a head in the woods with Erin, The Boy, the devil bears, Jasper Bloem and a bunch of other hunters, Erin’s sister Shelley and her baby-daddy Tim, and some of the other old Bobbins characters. The Boy got hit by a stray bullet, and Erin, who happens to be on first-name terms with the Grim Reaper, ended up trading her soul for his to save his life. She was forced to resume her Mordawwa form and return to Hell, though not before reconnecting with her sister and fixing the devil bear problem.
The Boy later ended up getting himself killed trying to Skype Erin in Hell, and joined her more directly, as her noble steed, the hell-horse Scientist. “Into the Woods” ended with Scientist and Mordawwa visiting Shelley and informing her she was pregnant.
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2 days ago
on Bad Machinery
Nah, he’ll just find some time friendlier to wearing flannel and not being able to play your instrument.
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4 days ago
on Bad Machinery
C’mon, Mildew, we all saw the hearts shooting out of your head. And if you’re looking to get in on this “teen joy” thing, Jack is probably too fragile for this approach.
All it takes is a little flooding to turn “MIFLIN” into “FUN”.
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5 days ago
on Bad Machinery
Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude.
That is the car in question in the background of the first panel. You may recall from when they were first investigating him that Hugh lives just around the corner from Mildred.
Apparently Mildred was quite taken with her stolen car (or it was quite taken by her), because she’s currently driving the electric version, a Nissan Leaf, even in the same light blue.
Jack is much too delicate for Mildred.