Book-A-Day 2014 #279: Bad Machinery, Vol. 2: The Case of the Good Boy by John Allison

First of all: yes final cover, as far as I've seen. Oni Press is yet another comics company that has trouble with its ONIX feed, perhaps picking up the slack as DC's once-legendary bad covers and title data has pulled itself up to the realm of just slightly outdated.

Next: Bad Machinery is one of the great webcomics of our time, one of the great mysteries series of our time, and just plain wonderful. Creator John Allison should be world-famous and beloved, with his character's faces licensed for tea-cozies and dog-leads and other vaguely British-sounding paraphernalia. That hasn't happened yet, but hope springs eternal.

Bad Machinery is being slowly collected into real-book form, with the first case coming out last year and a third promised for January of 2015. (Hit the link in the prior sentence for my review and an unabashed attempt to make you become a massive Bad Machinery fan. Or hit the link in the prior paragraph to read the strip online, which will do the trick for anyone with a functional soul.) But today we're on that second case, collected as Bad Machinery, Vol. 2: The Case of the Good Boy.

In a mid-sized fictional British city -- Tackleford, somewhere in West Yorkshire -- there is the kind of school where all of the students wear uniforms. And at that school are three boys and three girls, all around twelve years old. The girls are friends, most of the time. The boys are friends, most of the time. In between the two groups the more complicated relations of kids on the verge of puberty reign. And both groups solve mysteries, usually with somewhat supernatural underpinnings, like a sedentary British Scooby-Doo, only with added sarcasm.

I can tell you for ages that the dialogue in this book is smart and witty and deeply amusing, but you might still disbelieve me. So, instead, here's the dialogue from the bottom half of page 65, chosen because it made me chuckle at the time and think about doing this:

Mum: Shauna, because you did so well this term, we got you a present.
Shauna: What is it?
Mum: A dog!
Shauna: Are you sure? It looks mental.
Mum: Go on, Shauna, say what you think.
Shauna: I think it is going to poo like a LION. I like it maybe 63%.

This case centers on the Tackleford monster, which may be stealing local toddlers. ("DCI Mike Carver of Tackleford Police was confident that the children would be found. 'There are thousands of children in Tackleford Metropolital Borough, but only nine have vanished in the last three weeks. I've got a couple of officers keeping an eye out. They'll turn up.' ... 'We urge people not to become hysterical if they can possibly avoid it.'") And Alexander, another creature that Mildred insists is a dog. And the magic pencil that Mildred won at the local carnival. And a mash note written on pink paper with a panda sticker on it. And more than one little sibling. And the thrilling outdoor adventures and singalongs of Naturecraft Folk. Among other things.

The Case of the Good Boy is somewhat less of a mystery and more of a monster hunt than the first book, but it's just as amusing and oddball: Allison is a great cartoonist, equally deft at body language and the verbal variety. His sense of humor is British, in that understated, highly verbal way, with understated insults like stealth missiles and wit so dry it's a step beyond sarcasm. Bad Machinery is wonderful and fun, and should by no accounts be left to readers the ages of its cast.

Book-A-Day 2014 Introduction and Index

Bad Machinery, Book 8: The Case of the Modern Men by John Allison

I always ponder how far to get into history and minutia when I'm writing about, say, the eighth volume collecting a webcomic.

I mean, on the one hand I can just say go read the webcomic already, which is perfectly legitimate. But it makes for a very short post, if nothing else.

Or I can delve into the history of Bad Machinery, linking to my posts on the previous volumes (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven), talking about how it was the follow-up to creator John Allison's previous webcomic Scary-Go-Round (q.v.), and possibly even sidetracking into a discussion of the only-vaguely-related Giant Days (viz.).

It is a puzzlement.

So, instead, I'll pretend to consider both options while actually putting them both in this post, and then dive into the current book: The Case of the Modern Men, the eighth case of the Tackleford Mystery Tweens Teens. It ran in the webcomic in early-mid 2014, with the core cast clearly teenaged and (as usual for teens) somewhat less interested in solving weird external mysteries and somewhat more interested in the more fleshy mysteries of their various innamorata (which, as also is usual with teens, were sometimes each other, though, also sadly usual, never reciprocally).

This story combines French exchange students with the thrill of the Mod lifestyle, in clothing and scooters and the music of The Whom. (Allison's world is much like, but not exactly the same as, our own.) Lottie's family hosts Mimi; Little Claire's hosts Camille. Those two young women had a previous conflict which flourishes quirkily in the fertile Tackleford soil. There is a fabled scooter that may perhaps be cursed, so that every rider becomes King of the Mods and is eventually beheaded.

The Mystery Teens do not exactly try to solve the mystery as try to help their friends, to stave off a riotous Rocker-Mod conflict throughout the surrounding borough, and to foil one of those French young women in her fiendish plans. In the end, at least no one is beheaded, and there have been some kisses exchanged.

In retrospect, this (or possibly the prior story, The Case of the Forked Road) is where Bad Machinery started coming apart. Allison always sets his stories in something like real time, so his cast will inevitably grow and change -- and he tends to write about young people (tweens, teens, twenties), so they have a lot of changing to do, and can do it very quickly. So when I say "coming apart," I mean the premise -- kids solve crimes -- rather than anything on the story level.

Here they were no longer kids. After an event in this story, solving crimes had much less appeal. And that's clear from the Bad Machinery page on Allison's site: right after this case, there was a sidebar story about Lottie and Shauna called "Space Is the Place," then one more case, then another sidebar (more of a Bobbins story, actually) under the ominous title "The Big Hiatus," and then the final Bad Machinery case.

Some creators -- naming no names here -- are content to keep their characters exactly the same age, in exactly the same relationships, for decades at a time, and many of them rake in buckets of sweet, sweet syndication money. (Or the trusts established to keep their descendants from ever working again do, in some cases.) John Allison will have no truck with that, and his work is vastly stronger for it. Every Allison story is set in a moment that will not recur -- just like every moment in each of our own real lives.

So I'm sad, even re-reading half a decade later, to remember that Bad Machinery must inevitably end. But all things must inevitably end. Allison is just better at the process along the way than many others.

The Back Half of Scary Go Round by John Allison

John Allison has spent most of the past twenty years chronicling an ever-proliferating series of strange events in and around the small British town of Tackleford, somewhere in darkest Yorkshire. More impressively, he's done all of this in public, on the Internet, most days of the week, for free. And he's done it in comics form.

First up was Bobbins, which I haven't made a serious study of yet, but was in the traditional newspaper strip-comic format and focused on the staff of Tackleford's City Lights magazine, with perhaps some supernatural eruptions. After Allison closed that down around the turn of the millennium, he launched a new series with a somewhat overlapping cast of characters called Scary Go Round, which itself ended in 2009. SGR was formatted like a comics page, which made it easier to collect in book form and (possibly) allowed Allison to write more complex stories and include more of his quirky humor and details in each update. It also was clearly fantasy: characters visited Hell, were turned into zombies, and battled giant monsters to save the world. (Though Allison's offhand tone and character-based plotting turned all of those elements into something very different from what you'd expect.) That strip was entirely collected into eight volumes, though -- in the way of the webcomic -- it's also still all available online, as are Allison's other strips.

For the next round of stories, Allison switched format again, to a double-tier newspaper style, which gave him a similar number of panels per page to SGR but with a more compact feel. That strip was called Bad Machinery, and it followed up the end of SGR to focus on two "teams" of tweens at the local school, who solve mysteries in competition with each other. Allison still includes supernatural elements, but they tend to be more subdued in Machinery than they were in SGR, making his stories better controlled and more focused on characters. He also clearly designed Machinery for eventual book publication, with long story arcs that each fit cleanly into a single book. (See my reviews of the three Machinery books to date: one, two, and three.)

Allison has also made a number of related print comics in various formats over the years -- including Expecting to Fly, which appeared online first -- and there's a 2013-2015 run of Bobbins, just to confuse things even more. Since Machinery in its turn ended last year, he produced a transitional story called "Space Is the Place" (with part of the Machinery cast going to a space camp in Wales). And he's also been writing a monthly comic called Giant Days -- confusingly, this is also the title of a major SGR storyline, plus an earlier sidebar print project -- for a different art team, which may or may not have a Tackleford connection. (I haven't seen it yet, since it's only in floppy form so far.)

So Tackleford is a place that Allison knows well, and has been telling stories about in a variety of ways for a long time. It's his Yoknapatawpha County or Castle Rock -- the core of a world that extends out to many places. With that said, though, Machinery feels more focused on Tackleford than SGR did -- maybe because the main characters of Machinery were kids, and limited in their ability to go other places and do other things.

I've been a fan of Machinery for a while, but only recently started diving back into Allison's archives. The first four SGR collections are currently unavailable to most readers in book form -- I believe ebooks are still obtainable in the UK, but not elsewhere due to a stupid recent tax law in that backwards country -- but books five through eight are still out there, most easily obtainable in the US from Topatco. And so that's how I got those books -- Great Aches, Ahoy Hoy!, Peloton, and Recklessly Yours -- and finally read a big wodge of SGR for myself.

What strikes me most about this slightly-less-formed version of Allison's world is how consistent he's been in his concerns: his stories have focused on smart, sarcastic women with a goal in mind -- Shelley Winters as the exemplar for SGR, Charlotte Grote for Machinery, with plenty of others including Amy Chilton and Dark Esther -- in a world of slightly slower, bemused men who end up along for the ride.

Unlike the Machinery books, each SGR volume collects a number of stories, adding up to about eleven months for each book. (More or less, to allow for full stories in each one.) Allison also includes notes on each storyline and some sketches and similar material at the end of each book, in the old way to entice freebie online readers to actually pay money for something.

These books, covering the strips from early 2006 through the end in late 2009, show serious growth in Allison's art style, from a cleaner version of the look he began SGR with in 2002, drawn on a computer, through a hand-drawn middle period and a brief "hand-drawn, but much bigger originals" period before settling back onto the computer. (Where I think he's stayed ever since.) The first story of Great Aches is in that early, flat-computer-color style, but everything else has a energetic hand-drawn look which well suites Allison's frenetic characters and zigzag pacing.

The stories are a bit sillier and more anarchic than Machinery, and Allison's notes make it clear that he spent this period making it up as he went along, diving into long stories without necessarily having a clear idea of how he'd get to the end. But even if the stories are somewhat shaggier and less formed, they're still Allison stories, with unlikely turns of plot and deflation always waiting in the wings. And his dialogue was whip-smart from well before this period, full of witty asides and great cross-talk that always feels plausible enough while still not conforming to the way real people ever did or would talk. (That is a good thing: people talk badly almost all of the time. Fiction is to make things better and more interesting.)

So, in conclusion: John Allison is awesome. Buy his books, read his comics, enrich him with your dollars and pounds and more exotic currencies. Start here, start with Bad Machinery, go crazy and drop all the way back to the beginning of Bobbins in 1998 to get the full John Allison experience from the beginning. It's all good. 


Note: I'm not including the usual Amazon links this time, because that's a very bad way to read and/or buy Allison's older work. You can get the Bad Machinery books there if you want, but the others are available other places more easily. And, honestly, for a webcomic you should just read a bunch of it online first -- surely we understand that by now?

Bad Machinery, Vol. 10: The Case of the Severed Alliance by John Allison

When last we left the Mystery Teens of Tackleford, at the end of The Case of the Missing Piece, they had mostly stopped solving mysteries, and two of the core girls, Lottie and Shauna, had just fallen out. That's what the title refers to for this final collection: not the supernatural menace that threatens Tackleford (which is quite real and sinister), but the break between two of the main characters.

This is the tenth and last Bad Machinery collection, The Case of the Severed Alliance. Creator John Allison has a short afterword where he says his original intention was to have one case for each term of the Mystery Tweens/Teens' seven years at school, which would have been twenty-one books. He gives a few reasons why he only made half that many stories, but I think he quietly missed the most obvious one: time. Allison is a creator whose stories take place in time. He sometimes drops back into the past - the Bobbins flashback series, for example, or, in an odd way, all of Giant Days - but time always passes in his stories, things change, and his characters grow older. The Bad Machinery stories came out about two a year, not three a year, and I think his characters just grew up, in his head, faster than he expected.

The Bad Machinery books are a creative peak for Allison - he's had several; most people are more familiar with Giant Days - with a big cast well deployed, a complex and quirky world for them to live in and explore, wonderful dialogue on every page, oddball supernatural menaces that lurk deep in the story and only emerge fully near the end, and long rambly plots full of interesting incidents and unexpected moments that all come together for bang-up finishes. These can't have been easy stories to plot, write and draw; my sense is that Allison is more of a plotter these days than a pantser, but any multiple-times-a-week comic is going to morph and change as the individual installments come out, so I don't think anything quite ended up exactly the way he expected.

In any case: this is the "teens get jobs" storyline. All six of the main cast are about 15-16 here. Lotty works at the local newspaper, partially to have a work-study arrangement (called "P&Q" here, which is some British term that I don't think is ever spelled out) [1] and partially because she is frustrated with her lack of movement in her preferred solving-mysteries-as-a-teenage career. (Yes, that is a thing in the Allisonverse, with glossy magazines and gala awards and all. See Wicked Things.) And Shauna is working for Amy Beckwith-Chilton, one of the old-time Tackleford characters, in her antiques shop, along with a young man named Romesh who Shauna found and who has a mystical ability to detect valuable antiquities among junk.

But the story is mostly about the gentrification of Tackleford: the main street is filling up with posh, expensive shops, rents are skyrocketing, houses prices are ditto, and an "Inland Marina" is being built where the kids used to swim in the local river. We also meet Sewerman General Johnson, the tough man who keeps the drains of Tackleford running, and the massive, possibly sentient, Tackleford Fatberg that he's been trying to break up. Amy and her competitors in the very Lovejoy-esque antiques trade are chasing after the fabled cursed Pearl of the Quarter, a gem of immense power that disappeared at the death of its previous owner Tommy Binks, the man who made Tackleford the modern success it is.

Oh, and there's something going on with Tackleford's sister town, Wendlefield, which is as run-down and hopeless as Tackleford is shiny and expensive.

Shauna and Lottie work opposite ends of this mystery - do they eventually come to find it is the same mystery? Are they forced to work together? Is there a shocking confrontation in a half-constructed industrial scene? Has the mystic Pearl been incorporated into some weapon that threatens the whole town? Is there a fiendish villain who must be stopped? Do all of the Mystery Teens, and their new powers and abilities - I've neglected to mention that Mildred has been learning to drive a car! - come into play at the end? Is Tackleford saved?

Reader: yes and yes and yes and yes and yes and yes and sort of.

I would not start here, if you haven't read Bad Machinery. Severed Alliance is wonderful and funny and exciting and marvelous, but it works much better if you know the characters. So find the first book, The Case of the Team Spirit, and start there. But Bad Machinery is awesome; you should read it if you haven't already. And if you read it online (it was originally on Allison's site but now lives on GoComics), it might be time to get the books and read it again.

[1] Utterly nonamusing anecdote: on a call with some Brits this past week, I realized that what Americans call an "intern" (college-age person working in a business for a limited period of time, usually tied to and providing credit for their school) is called an "apprentice" in the UK. This, I think, is a similar issue.

Bad Machinery, Vol. 7: The Case of the Forked Road by John Allison

The Mystery Tweens are solidly becoming Mystery Teens in The Case of the Forked Road, which means the boys have all seemingly lost 50 IQ points and keep punching each other for no reason. [1] So any mystery solving will be left to the girls, this time out.

Since this is a volume seven, before I go any further, there are two notes. First is that you don't need to know anything going into this book. Well, OK: these are kids in a secondary school in Tackleford, the oddest town in England. You can pick that up from the book, and it's all you need to know. Also, this is a collection of a webcomic, so you can always read as much of it as you want online.

But, if you do want to know more, let me direct you to my posts about Bad Machinery books one, two, three, four, five, and six. You may also be interested in the pre-Bad Machinery comic Scary Go Round, also set in Tackleford, which led to the comic-book format Giant Days, of which there have been several collections so far: one two three four.

The book version of The Case of the Forked Road, as usual, is slightly expanded from the webcomics version, with some pages redrawn a bit and others added to aid the flow. It also begins with a new page introducing the main characters and ends with several related old Scary Go Round pages -- both of those introduced and narrated by Charlotte Grote, Allison's current troublemaking smart-girl character (following a string of such in the past).

As usual, Allison is great at capturing speech patterns and the half-fascinated, half-oblivious attitude of teens -- the girls discover a mystery this time, in the suspicious activities of a elderly lab assistant they call "Grumpaw." But they have no idea what this guy's name is, and have to go through convolutions just to get their investigation started.

They do, of course, and eventually find a fantastical explanation to the question of Grumpaw and the mysterious and strangely ignorant schoolboy Calvin. And the dangers they have to deal with this time out are directly related to the stupid violence of some male classmates. (Though the cover shows that it's not the boy Mystery Teens; they stay offstage most of the time, and are useless when they're on it.)

Allison writes smart stories that wander interestingly through his story-space and gives his characters very funny, real dialogue to say on every page. And I think his stories are best when he draws them himself: his line is just as puckish and true as his writing. That makes the Bad Machinery cases the very best Allison books coming out now.

One last point: if you've complained that previous Bad Machinery volumes -- wide oblong shapes to show off the webcomic strips -- were physically problematic, then you are in luck. The Case of the Forked Road is laid out like normal comic-book-style pages, just as these strips appeared online. So you no longer have that excuse, and must, by law, buy Forked Road immediately.


[1] If you think this is some kind of sexist nonsense, my currently sixteen-year-old son can tell you a story of some of his fellow students on his recent trip to Germany and Italy. These young men got into trouble because they were throwing some "hot rocks" around -- as you do when you discover some rocks that are warmed by the sun, in a nice hotel in a foreign county -- until, inevitably, windows got broken. There are boys who avoid the Enstupiding and Masculinizing Ray of Puberty, but they are few and beleaguered, and the general effects of the ray hugely debilitating.

Book-A-Day 2014 #302: Bad Machinery, Vol. 3 by John Allison

The air of effortlessness can only be achieved with a lot of hard work and careful planning: the breeziest, lightest entertainments always require a massive effort behind the scenes to hold them up and the frothiest souffles only happen after painstaking care. It's the Ginger Rogers Effect: if you don't even notice the effort, it's only because there's twice as much effort as you'd expect to do the thing and keep you from noticing it.

John Allison's Bad Machinery comics are at that level: seemingly light, funny adventure stories, mixing teen supernatural-detecting and teen ordinary-life, with fizzy, distinctive dialogue and a madly inventive imagination and one of the best casts imaginable. (Charlotte Grote alone is a masterpiece.) Along with everything else, they manage to thread the tricky needle of continuity and standalone: the series moves forward in time and events do accumulate, but each storyline is distinct and completely wonderful on its own.

There have been seven of those stories so far, since Bad Machinery started up in 2009, all of which are still up on Allison's website to read for free with just a little clicking. And they're also starting to appear in book form this year, for those of us who prefer paper that we can stick up on a shelf. Coming early next year -- yes, I couldn't stop myself from reading it now; that's how good Allison is -- is Bad Machinery, Vol. 3: The Case of the Simple Soul, collecting that third adventure originally published in 2010-11. (You can also see my reviews of the first and second cases, from earlier this year.)

The setting is easy to describe: a minor British city, up in Yorkshire, where odd things happen but no one specifically mentions that. Our main characters are all kids, around twelve when this story begins -- it's the end of the school year that began in the first story -- Charlotte, Mildred, and Shauna are in a mostly friendly competition with Linton, Sonny, and Jack to solve mysteries. Well, that was what they were doing: Linton and Sonny, Charlotte and Mildred are somewhat at loose ends because Jack and Shauna are dating, and spending all of their time together rather than with their friends solving mysteries.

But there is a mystery to be solved, which may be about a series of mysterious arson attacks on empty barns. Or it may be about a troll-like figure Charlotte and Mildred discover living under a bridge. Or the flashy Colm, who suddenly is the third friend to Sonny and Linton without their quite understanding how. Or Tackleford's unusual fire brigade, who hate fire more than anything. Or about "Little Claire," who seems to be hanging around a lot herself. Or maybe all of those things and more.

Allison writes great quirky dialogue and fantastically fun sideways plots, and his drawing is equally distinctive and amusing to go along with it. He's a great cartoonist with wonderful material to work from, and Bad Machinery is a real joy on every single page. (Really: I will continue to plug his stories until you break down and go read them. Might as well start now.)

Book-A-Day 2014 Introduction and Index

Bad Machinery, Vol. 6: The Case of the Unwelcome Visitor by John Allison

OK, to get it out of the way up front, here are links to the previous cases of the six young people who are definitely not called the Tackleford Mystery Teens: one, two, three, four, five. Oh, and have a link to some pre-Bad Machinery collections of Scary Go Round, also set in Tackleford, and the first two volumes of the only loosely related Giant Days.

When Bad Machinery began, there was something like a loose formula: the six young people (tweens then) were investigating some local mysteries with a supernatural element, as typically the three girls dug into one odd thing and the three boys another. And then, of course, the two cases would turn out to be intertwined, and the groups would either work together or compete to solve it first. That "formula" didn't last long, as the kids kept growing up -- each book takes something like a third or half of a year -- and developed crushes and love interests (on each other at least once) and just got older and more sophisticated.

By the time of The Case of the Unwelcome Visitor, another school year has just ended with the wrap-up of the not-otherwise-chronicled "Case of the Rock Bottom," in which they fingered a local '90s alternative-band drummer for the murder of his singer (now a ghost). Shauna and Mildred and Sonny -- the relatively posh kids, which Allison doesn't say but a careful reader will have realized -- are all away for the summer at various vacation activities. Ace reporter Erin Winters is back in Tackleford and shaking up the staid local paper, the Cormorant.

And there's a strange figure appearing at night and frightening people into comatose states -- mostly the local miscreants, true. Some call him the Night Hero, some the Night Creeper. Charlotte thinks that he's her mother's new boyfriend, a boring sewer engineer who has just moved into town. (Though Charlotte's sister has also just moved back to town with her boyfriend, a dashing young doctor.) Linton's father is the new Chief of Police, and so he wants to solve the mystery to help his dad.

All of the theories are not quite right, and the story of the Night Hero/Night Creeper is more satisfyingly complicated than it seems at first. But the teens left in town, with the help of Erin, do get to the bottom of it, and save Tackleford from another bizarre supernatural thing before the story is done.

Allison told this story once in the Bad Machinery webcomic, but the book version is longer, better paced, and gorgeous -- the books are in an appealingly large format, giving his sprightly art room to breathe and work at its best. And his dialogue is as funny and spiky as ever, particularly since this story is very Charlote Grote-focused. (Allison's best characters, in each generation of his Tackleford stories, are the smart, sharp-tongued young women, from Erin to Esther DeGroot to Charlotte.)

Look, Bad Machinery is one of the great comics of our times, period. You should be reading it, if you read comics at all. I can't say it any plainer than that.

Wicked Things by John Allison, Max Sarin, and Whitney Cogar

I have to assume the plan - or maybe the hope - was that this would replicate Giant Days's success, and turn into a long-running comics series. And maybe it still will: I get the sense that the days when a publisher could say, mid-run, "hey, the numbers are great, and we're just going to keep on going with this book!" are now over, and were even basically over in 2013 when Giant Days started. So there could be another Wicked Things series: we're still in early days, since this paperback came out (checks planned posting day) last month.

Anyway, Wicked Things. It collects a six-issue series from 2020 about Charlotte "Lottie" Grote, the biggest character from writer John Allison's Bad Machinery webcomic, who also made a few appearances in his popular Giant Days comics series. He's joined here by the core end-Giant Days crew, with Max Sarin on art and Whitney Cogar on colors.

(I pause here to mention that I've seen reviews of Wicked Things issues that refer to Lottie as a fan-favorite who first appeared in Giant Days and thus afterward appeared in Bad Machinery, which betrays an essential lack of understanding that time is a thing that goes forward.)

Anyway (once again), Lottie has spent the few years since Bad Machinery ended still solving odd crimes in Tackleford, even if the rest of the Mystery Tweens gave up and went on to more normal teen lives. As this book opens, she's on her way to the gala Solver Awards in London, where's she's nominated in the Teen Detective of the Year (16-18) category. She is also accompanied by Little Claire, the only other character old fans will recognize.

And, as the reader settles in, expecting a biting satire of comics awards and related stuff, the whole story shifts: Lottie wins her award, but isn't there, because she's being framed for a murder.

Well, attempted murder. Luckily for her, the victim is alive. Unluckily for her, the victim is also in a coma, and unable to report that Lottie is not the (attempted) murderess. And one of the top coppers on the case is convinced enough by her protests of innocence - no one else is; it's a very good frame - to put her on a kind of work-release to "assist the police with their inquiries."

In this case, that means spending her nights in a kind of halfway house, locked in with a few other possibly-reformed criminals and monitored by ankle bracelet, and spending her days at the cop shop making tea and being ignored by the actual police as she spins crazy but generally-correct theories about the crimes those cops are investigating. She does remarkably little investigating of the actual murder she's accused of, possibly because Claire is digging into that (not well) and possibly because she's more excited by the other crimes the cops around her are working on.

It does all come together in the end, more or less. (The moment where Lottie is cleared of the attempted murder seemed less than definitive to me.) Lottie's crime-fighting instincts are nearly always correct, but nearly always unheeded, which is amusing but would need to be adjusted if Wicked Things turns into an ongoing series.

And it reminded me that Allison keeps doing big action stuff - Scarygoround was full of it, and Bad Machinery measured it out more carefully in bursts at the end of each case - but not always successfully in an American floppy-comics context. (It's one of the things that I thought made his By Night, which also tries not-entirely-successfully to translate his essential Britishness to a middle-American setting, not as strong as it could have been: he's just not the guy for the big fight scene.) It works reasonably well here, but Wicked Things, if it returns, would be less slice-of-life and "bigger" than Giant Days was, so I do wonder if his current audience would be as interested.

I would love myself more Lottie Grote, especially on a regular basis, so I hope they would as well. Globe-trotting teenage detectives - or even mid-England-trotting - would be a lot of fun. Let's hope Allison, Sarin and Cogar get to do more.

Read in January

Hello, and welcome to February, the typically dreariest month of the year (if you live in my hemisphere). I don't know if this will help, but have a list of books that one random middle-aged man read last month.

Edit, in early March: OK, I'm raising the white flag, and admitting that these books won't get full posts. But I'm backfilling something about them here, so I can get them off the corner of my desk and onto shelves, where they should be. (I find my own expectations and routines are my worst enemies.)

Jillian Tamaki, SuperMutant Magic Academy (1/4)

The acclaimed webcomic collected in one book -- Tamaki was telling one story, and ended it, so this is all they'll ever be. (Until twenty years from now, when she is enticed to do SuperMutant: The Next Generation for a huge pile of money, we should all be so lucky.) If you're not sure who Tamaki is, she was half of the team on Skim and This One Summer -- and you've read (or at least heard of) those, haven't you? Also: it's a webcomic; just read some of it, and then buy the book. Simple!

It's episodic, as a webcomic will inevitably be, but that works well to show the pace of life in this vaguely Potter-influenced boarding school of oddballs and wizards and mutants and others. Tamaki has some great characters here: specific and quirky and contradictory and very much teenagers. I hope she does some other solo long-form work very soon, or at least starts up another webcomic.

(And I do have to comment that the title keeps amusing me: since I've been playing a lot of Fallout games over the past year, "Super Mutant" has a very different image in my head!)

Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, Saga, Vol. 5 (1/5)

I always have trouble reviewing a chunk of middle, and serial comics are nothing but middle. Saga isn't that bad -- I get the sense that there's an overall story arc already planned out, even if it will take three or five more years to get to the end of it -- but this particular volume is very middle-y, full of the people we already know running around in different directions at high speed to add plot complications. (This is also the book where Vaughan officially splits the party, always a bad sign in gaming or sagas.)

I'm still enjoying Saga, but this particular chunk feels closer to rote to me, as if Vaughan has some cool stuff he wants to get to, but wants to spin his wheels for a while first to make the story longer. (Which was pretty much exactly my problem with his earlier Ex Machina.) In any case, if you've been reading this, you know if you'll continue. If you haven't been, the words you want to read are my review of the first volume, which is much more apropos.

John Allison, Bad Machinery: The Case of the Lonely One (1/6)

Allison is a mad genius of comics, and everyone should read his books. Now!

OK, so you might want more than that. I guess. This is the fourth case investigated by a gaggle of British schoolkids (secondary school; they're roughly high school freshmen at this point) in Allison's odd and interesting village of Tackleford. All of the cases are vaguely supernatural, and Allison's plotting is amusingly non-linear; things wander around in what can seem an aimless manner until they all come together at the end. And his characters are wonderfully witty, with great individual voices.

For a general Allison overview, see my review of four volumes of his Scary Go Round series. For the prior Bad Machinery books -- oh, and, by the way, Allison is still getting better, so Bad Machinery is smarter and funnier and more solidly plotted than even the wonderful Scary Go Round was -- see volumes one and two and three. And then go buy everything he's ever done.

M.K. Brown, Stranger Than Life (1/8)

The good news is that this book contains most of M.K. Brown's idiosyncratic output from 1970 through 2013, which is wonderful for those of us who remember her lovely colors, quirky sense of humor, and amusingly disjointed line from the National Lampoon and other places. (And offers a great opportunity for those who don't remember her work to discover it as well.) The bad news is that there's just this one book, and that the world has not provided more opportunity for Brown to make her great comics, as it was supposed to.

(Stupid world.)

But we do have this, with single-panel cartoons and longer strips, surreal moments and comments on passing fads, strange people doing strange things strangely, all drawn in Brown's inimitable style. She's even got comments and notes throughout, explaining some of the things that can be explained.

Alex Robinson, Our Expanding Universe (1/11)

Robinson makes smart, deep graphic novels about real people that don't easily boil down to a quick Hollywood-style description -- particularly when you're trying to remember them two months later. This one is a about a group of male friends, hitting that age when the group of friends is no longer the most important thing in life, with babies on the way or already here, secrets kept, and career hiccups.

So it's like a real novel, the kind with just words, only it has pictures, too! Seriously, Robinson could have been the Nick Hornby of a world that likes a different kind of comics. He's smart and fun and accessible all at once, and makes great stories. They're just difficult to write about, particularly with my current handicaps (no time, read a while ago, etc.)

Ben Towle, Oyster War (1/12)

John Layman and Rob Guillory, Chew, Vol. 3 (1/13)

John Layman and Rob Guillory, Chew, Vol. 4 (1/14)

Walt Kelly, Pogo, Vol. 3: Evidence to the Contrary (1/14)

John Layman and Rob Guillory, Chew, Vol. 5 (1/15)

Sean McMullen, The Time Engine (1/15)

Kate Beaton, Step Aside, Pops (1/29)

Vanyda, The Building Opposite (1/20)

Lemony Snicket, "Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?" (2/22)

Mike Grell, The Complete Jon Sable Freelance, Vol. 1 (1/25)

Mike Grell, The Complete Jon Sable Freelance, Vol. 2 (1/26)

Mike Grell, The Complete Jon Sable Freelance, Vol. 3 (1/27)

Mike Grell, Jon Sable Freelance: Bloodtrail (1/29)

Charles Portis, Norwood (1/29)


There are no links yet; these books are sitting in a stack on the edge of my desk. I do hope to turn them into links sometime in the near future. But, even without links, it's a list of interesting books, which ain't nothing.

The Great British Bump-Off by John Allison and Max Sarin

John Allison's fictional world - well, mostly a fictional UK, and even there heavily mostly-Yorkshire (does that count as Midlands or the North? I'm never sure where the line is) - is big and complex, especially after thirty years of stories.

The fictional town of Tackleford was central to his webcomics from Bobbins to Scarygoround to Bad Machinery, but the last decade has seen that world expand to include a fictionalized version of Sheffield in Giant Days (with first Lissa Treiman and then Max Sarin on art), a fictional town in Cornwall in Steeple, and (less successfully to my mind, and perhaps not really in the same world) a small US town in By Night.

Allison started in that halcyon early-Internet era when you could just do a webcomic and (as I understand it) basically live on the proceeds, but that time seems to have passed: the market power of Google has driven the revenue flow of ads down massively and the subscription model for individual strips that aren't primarily about tab-a-into-slot-b never really worked. So my sense is that the Bad Machinery books were relatively successful, and Giant Days definitely a hit, but both of those stories hit their natural end. Allison has been poking around with other concepts since them - I've already mentioned Steeple, which was awesome but seems to have ended due to lack of publishing support, and By Night, which was an interesting experiment. His cast already has mixed and reshuffled across properties - one of the main characters of Giant Days had been important in Scarygoround as a teen - so several of those ideas are largely "what comes next for This Person?"

So Charlotte Grote, from Bad Machinery and a few guest turns in Giant Days, had a Wicked Things miniseries and turns up in occasional Solver stories on Allison's site. And now her compatriot in supernatural detection, Shauna Wickle, does what every young person worldwide seems to want to do these days: goes on a TV reality show.

The show is UK Bakery Tent, and the story of her time there is The Great British Bump-Off, written by Allison and drawn by Max Sarin. It was a four-issue miniseries from Dark Horse about eighteen months ago, and then collected into this one volume late in 2023.

As you can guess from the title, the show here is a version of "The Great British Bake-Off," and there is...a murder! Well, an attempted murder, at least. And The Show Must Go On, so someone has to solve the murder - and that will be Shauna, if she has anything to say about it. (With the aid of two of her fellow contestants - the nana and the quirky guy.)

There's a fairly large cast - a dozen contestants/suspects, the hosts of the show, and a couple of production people as well - and all of them except Shauna are new Allisonian creations. Even though Shauna is officially "the quirky one," I have to say they're all quirky, in amusing and entertaining ways - each, as I've implied, cast by this show to be a "type" and to fill a specific role.

(One member of the cast, who works in IT, has a complex model of all of the types with detailed predictions about how long each will last in the competition.)

Shauna runs around, trying to balance high-pressure baking competition with also high-pressure  snooping, hindered by the fact that most of the contestants don't know the truth about "the accident." But she is a John Allison heroine, with endless reserves of energy (and sass, though that seems too American a word in this context) and so of course she does solve the mystery in the end, and succeeds in not being eliminated in the first week.

The book ends with the equivalent of the credits sequence explaining everyone's fate in later life - "later life" here meaning "the rest of the competition." Like everything else Allisonian, it is quirky and specific and a lot of fun.

I don't know if we're going to get more Shauna Wickle stories - this seems awfully like a one-off, unless she turns into the kind of "influencer" whose career is going on reality shows - but it's an amusing Allison romp with great energetic Sarin art, so anyone jonesing for more Giant Days (or something not too far from it) should be very happy.

Book-A-Day 2014 #173: Bad Machinery, Vol. 1 by John Allison

The great divide in serial short comics -- whether delivered by newspaper or web -- is between serial and gag-a-day. No one seriously disputes this: most strips fall on one side or the other. Mary Worth is a serial strip; Family Circus is gag-a-day.

The corollary to this is that the best strips -- the longest-remembered, the most honored, the most beloved by the audience -- are the special few that run straight down that line, doing both and doing both well. From Gasoline Alley and Thimble Theater to Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, these are the bulk of the most-honored strips, the ones we love the most.

John Allison's Bad Machinery is that good, and in exactly that way: it's riotously funny, with crackerjack dialogue and realistic-but-hilarious situations; and it's structured as a series of mysteries solved by the pre-teen main characters -- and, as is typical for twelve-year-olds, the three girls are in competition with the three boys for most mysteries solved. (Allison's drawing is also wonderfully animated -- his kids are enthusiastic and grumpy and depressed and sullen, all in their body language.)

What's it like? OK: imagine Scooby Doo without the dog, age down all the kids five years, throw in a few extra kids to make up for it, and toss them into a British public school.

Well maybe not. All right: take Harry Potter Year One, get rid of the magic and depressing orphan stuff, triple the number of girls, add a black kid, and give their mysteries a little more variety. (Spoiler! It's Voldemort! Every damn time!)

Bad Machinery Vol. 1: The Case of the Team Spirit is the first collection of Allison's webcomic. (Yes, you can read it all for free online, and I do suggest you start there, and only buy this book when you can't stop your chortling.) The girls are trying to help out an old woman, "Mrs. Biscuits," whose home is standing in the way of progress building a huge stadium for the local football (soccer) club. The boys are investigating the mysterious curse on the Russian owner of that very same club. Who! Will! Win!

Seriously, Allison writes some of the best smart-arse teen dialogue I've ever seen, and his stories live up to that dialogue. And his drawing is possibly even better than that. For anyone who likes stories in comics form, about kids, with mysteries and the supernatural (or any two of those aspects), this is exactly what you didn't know what you were looking for.

Book-A-Day 2014 Introduction and Index

Bad Machinery, Vol. 9: The Case of the Missing Piece by John Allison

I like all of John Allison's comics: let me make that clear. Giant Days is wonderful, I really hope Wicked Things wasn't a one-off, and my main complaint with By Night is that he's too British to do an American-set story really convincingly.

But I love Allison in particular as a cartoonist. Like a lot of comics creators, he's just better when he's drawing his own material: he knows the jokes and characters, and probably adjusts things while drawing to make it all just that bit better. It's not that there's anything wrong with other artists; they just don't live in John Allison's head.

And so his webcomics have been the purest and best of his works: the most Allisonian, the funniest, with the most intricate plots and great character details. (And I say this while still avonding his currently-running Steeple because I haven't read the published-as-floppies beginning yet.) Bobbins and Scarygoround saw him get better and better over more than a decade, but Bad Machinery hit when he was already fully himself: I'd call it the first Allison work that was mature and entirely successful from the beginning.

Of course it's over now; Allison writes about people who live in time, and his stories usually have those people at a specific time in their lives. (Typically young enough to do crazy things, just getting old enough to know they shouldn't: late teens to mid-twenties most of the time, with some variation on either end.)

The Case of the Missing Piece is the ninth of ten Bad Machinery stories - I recall there were some uncollected bits, especially at the end, but Allison is currently upgrading his main site, so the extensive archives (including story details) are down at the moment. See my post on the eighth volume for some context, and then dig back further to volumes one to seven, and even to Scarygoround, for an unnecessarily large amount of context.

The series started out being about a group of kids at a local British school in the fictional city of Tackleford. (I think it was a "public" school, meaning not run by the government, but it seems to be more "competitive and moderately good" than "ultra-posh," for other Americans trying to set their expectations. More like the decent parochial school in your town, if you have one, than like Choate, where one of my college buddies went.) There were three girls and three boys, all tweens, and they solved mysteries: sometimes together, but more often competitively. Those mysteries often had a vaguely supernatural component; Allison's stories are generally realistic but he's not finnicky about consensus reality if it gets in the way of a fun story.

By this point, it's several years later, and they've mostly stopped solving mysteries actively. It's something they talk about, and vaguely think about doing again, like that sport you gave up last year because it interfered with your other activities. This book is not about a mystery, exactly.

Shauna is at the center: her mother is getting married to her long-term boyfriend (this is mostly a good thing, but a cause of change and stress), her older brother Darren has just gotten out of prison, she may finally get a chance to meet her father, and she's taken it upon herself to befriend Blossom Cooper, a frighteningly large and dangerous girl of their year. But Linton is mopey about never having had a girlfriend, Claire is going through her own love convolutions, with a boyfriend breaking up with her because his family is returning to Ireland (though not as quickly as the reader would expect), and the rest of the cast (especially Charlotte, who can always be counted on to barge in) circle around the main action. Oh, and the veteran teacher who handled discipline for the school is out after a health crisis, and there's a new face with new, modern ways. (Quote: "I don't do 'bollocking,' Linton. I thought maybe we could listen to some music...just rap about what's going on with you. Do you like the Beetles?")

All of those things stew around and with each other over the course of about an academic term, and it all comes to a head at Shauna's mother's wedding, as things do. Well, that's only about the halfway point of the book - the first major crisis. There will be more.

A lot of Allison's best works are about people realizing they're not who they used to be and that they need to rethink what they want and what they should be doing. This, like the end of Giant Days, is one of those stories. It's smart and witty and full of colorful characters, it's amusing and thoughtful and drawn with an energetic line.

Again, pure Allison is the best Allison. This is pure; this is one of his best. And he's one of the best. QED.

Read in May

I am only one month behind as I write this, which is the best in nearly six months. I won't trot out my usual excuses here, since they tire me and you don't care. But, just in case it amuses or enlightens anyone, here are some thoughts and/or links to thoughts about books I read in the merry month of May:


Ian Tregillis, The Mechanical (5/3)


Bruce Eric Kaplan, I Was a Child (5/4)

Tim Powers, Medusa's Web (5/11)


Charles Stross, The Annihilation Score (5/18)


Sonny Liew, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (5/19)


John Allison, Bad Machinery, Vol. 5: The Case of the Fire Inside (5/21)

I've spent a lot of time here writing about the joys of John Allison comics -- the first three volumes of this series, some collections of its predecessor Scarygoround, and his floppy comics series Giant Days with Lissa Treiman -- so I think I might not need to repeat myself hugely this time out. But, still: Allison makes great comics, funny and dramatic, with great naturalistic stories, quirky supernatural elements, distinctive and amusing characters, and absolutely cracking dialogue.

As the title suggests, this is the fifth collection of his current major webcomic Bad Machinery -- available to read for free online, in the traditional webcomics manner. In this one, the six mystery teens are getting a bit older and starting to look with interest at the opposite sex (well, most of them). In particular, Mildred is taken with a very loutish young man, and Sonny meets a new girl who might as well have come right out of the sea. Various amusing and interesting things happen for a while, which I would not dream of spoiling, and there's a great ending as well. Read it online if you don't believe me -- or, better yet, buy Allison's books.

Haruki Murakami, Wind/Pinball: Two Novels (5/24)

Bill Pronzini, Son of Gun in Cheek (5/27)

Bad writing is eternal. Much of it is just tedious and wretched, but some of it is entertainingly bad. And a few intrepid souls have spent time in the bad-writing mines to bring out nuggets of singular horribleness for the rest of us to admire. One such soul is Bill Pronzini; this is his second book of snippets of lousy mystery writing, after (obviously) Gun in Cheek.

I read both of the Gun books back in the '90s, but lost my copies in the great flood of '11. The only good thing about losing books in a flood is that you have an excuse to re-buy and re-read them, which is why I got back to Son of recently.

Obviously, nothing in here is good, strictly speaking. But almost all of it is very entertainingly bad, and some of it is so bizarrely wretched that it's a kind of demented poetry. You probably have to like detective fiction at least a little to enjoy this, and you definitely have to enjoy reading bad writing (rather than cringing at it, or feeling bad for the horrible writers). But if you fit those categories, this and its predecessor are wonderful.


Next up is June, which I originally thought could get done during my week of vacation at the beginning of July. (SPOILER ALERT: It is now Friday, July 8 as I write this, and only just finished May.) June will come along...sometime.

Book-A-Day 2014 Post-Mortem

I finally managed to do a Book-A-Day that exactly matched a given year, after two more idiosyncratic prior runs here. (2006-2007 was 200 days, roughly September-February. 2010-2011 was exactly a year, but began in early February.)

The first time out, I had a Post-Mortem, to corral everything into categories. I think I was too exhausted in February 2011 to do that the second time, but this Book-A-Day ends in the middle of an epic end-of-year vacation, when I have nothing but time and nervous energy.

So here's how those books break down, for anyone as fascinated with tidy little categories as I am. Note that some of these are arguable cases, but this is how I score 'em. This post may also be most useful for people who only want to read in a particular category at the moment, and so happy hunting to them.

Fiction: Fantasy & SF (16, 4.4%)

• London Falling by Paul Cornell
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman 
• The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
• The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
• The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkowski
• Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
• The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White
• Something More Than Night by Ian Tregillis
• The Madonna and the Starship by James Morrow
• The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross
• The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde
• The Eye of Zoltar by Jasper Fforde
• Hawk by Steven Brust
• A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
• Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones
• The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud

There was a time when I "read" -- sometimes just the first fifty pages, the last fifty pages, and a skim of the bits in between -- two to four books in this category every single week. I vaguely miss that: at least, I miss the books I made time to read all of, not the shelf-fillers that I skimmed so I could sell them myself.

Fiction: Mystery & Thriller (2, 0.5%)

• The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons by Lawrence Block
• The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black

I haven't read giant piles of books in this category for a long, long time, but two is awfully low for a whole year.

Fiction: Mainstream (10, 2.7%)

• The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman
• Galahad at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse
• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
• Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker
• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
• Dancing in the Dark by Janet Hobhouse
• The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuaine
• Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks
• Cathedral by Raymond Carver 

Not bad, considering I'm only getting through about one "real" prose book a week on average. This should rise in the coming year, since the Vintage Contemporaries project is ongoing; I'm reading at least one book a month in this vague category.

Non-Fiction: Narrative (22, 6.0%)

• Uncle Boris in the Yukon by Daniel Pinkwater
• One Summer by Bill Bryson
• How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff
• Levels of Life by Julian Barnes
• The Revised Vault of Walt by Jim Korkis
• Ten Years in the Tub by Nick Hornby
• How About Never -- Is Never Good For You?: My Life In Cartoons by Bob Mankoff
• Reflections: On the Magic of Writing by Diana Wynne Jones
• Blood Will Out by Walter Kirn
• The Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson
• The Baby Boom by P.J. O'Rourke
• Dance of the Reptiles by Carl Hiaasen
• The Imperial Way by Paul Theroux with photos by Steve McCurry
• You Can Date Boys When You're Forty by Dave Barry
• My American Revolution by Robert Sullivan
• Is That a Fact? by Dr. Joe Schwarcz
• Flash Boys by Michael Lewis
• Coyote V. Acme by Ian Frazier
• What Were They Thinking? by Bruce Felton
• A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett
• The Getaway Car by Donald E. Westlake
• Underfoot in Show Business by Helene Hanff

This is a fairly vague category: everything basically true that's meant to be read through as a book. And it's very varied, with a lot of collections of miscellaneous stuff. My reading could clearly be substantially more serious than it is -- but it probably won't move too far in that direction.

Non-Fiction: Lists & Frivolities (10, 2.7%)

• An Uncommon Scold edited by Abby Adams 
• The Literary Companion edited by Emma Jones
• The Economist Book of Business Quotations edited by Bill Ridgers
• Good Advice from Bad People by Zac Bissonnette
• The Bathroom LOL Book compiled by Jack Kreismer
• Wretched Writing by Ross and Kathryn Petras
• The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2015 by Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa
• Frommer's EasyGuide to Walt Disney World and Orlando 2014
• The Compleat Ankh-Morpork City Guide by Terry Pratchett and the Discworld Emporium
• Overheard in New York by S. Morgan Friedman and Michael Malice

These are mostly books for a particular purpose, and that purpose in most cases is wasting time in the smallest room in the house. I used to read poetry books there; maybe I'll go back to that at some point.

Comics: Strip & Panel Collections (38, 10.4%)

• American Elf by James Kochalka
• You're All Just Jealous of My Jet Pack by Tom Gauld
• Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
• Menage a 3, Vol. 1 by Gisele Lagace and David Lumsdon
• The Amazing Cynicalman, Vol. 2 by Matt Feazell
• Heck by Zander Cannon
• Menage a 3, Vol. 2 by Gisele Lagace and David Lumsdon
• Menage a 3, Vol. 3 by Gisele Lagace and David Lumsdon
• The Complete Peanuts, 1987 to 1988 by Charles M. Schulz
• The World of Charles Addams
• Young Lovecraft, Vol. 1 by Jose Oliver and Bartolo Torres
• The Bojeffries Saga by Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse
• Pearls Falls Fast by Stephan Pastis
• I Love Led Zeppelin by Ellen Forney
• Bad Machinery, Vol. 1: The Case of the Team Spirit by John Allison
• Crater XV by Kevin Cannon
• Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories by Ben Katchor
• Feiffer: The Collected Works, Vol. 1: Clifford by Jules Feiffer
• Willie & Joe: The WWII Years by Bill Mauldin
• Booth Again! by George Booth
• Ray and Joe: The Story of a Man and His Dead Friend by Charles Rodrigues
• Penny Arcade, Vol. 3: The WarSun Prophecies by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulic
• ..I'm Pretty Sure I've Got My Death-Ray in Here Somewhere! by Sam Hurt
• Young Lovecraft, Vol. 2 by Jose Oliver and Bartolo Torres
• Betsy and Me by Jack Cole
• Attitude Featuring Andy Singer "No Exit" 
• What Fools These Mortals Be: The Story of Puck by Michael Alexander Kahn and Richard Samuel West
• Amphigorey Too by Edward Gorey
• Bad Machinery, Vol. 2: The Case of the Good Boy by John Allison
• Alone Forever by Liz Prince
• The Potpourrific Great Big Grab Bag of Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley
• Bad Machinery, Vol. 3: The Case of the Simple Soul by John Allison
• Omnibooth by George Booth
• Diesel Sweeties: There Is a Cat on the Internet! by R Stevens
• Soppy by Philippa Rice
• Strong Female Protagonist, Book One by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag
• Strip Joint by Carol Lay
• The World of George Price    

The first of several comics categories; this one corrals books that collect work that originally appeared elsewhere and is mostly in individual strip (or panel) form. "Elsewhere" is vague enough to cover both print and digital; I don't make a strong distinction between distribution media, since I mostly like to read traditional strips that translate well to book publication. (And not Scott McCloud-esque infinite canvases.)

Comics: Floppy Collections (71, 19.5%)

• Watchmen by Moore and Gibbons and Before Watchmen by various (5 volumes)
• Johnny Hiro: The Skills to Pay the Bills by Fred Chao
• Bandette, Vol. 1: Presto! by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover
• Gumby's Spring Specials by Bob Burden, Steve Purcell, and Arthur Adams
• Cursed Pirate Girl (Vol. 1) by Jeremy A. Bastian
• The Ghastly Ones and Other Fiendish Frolics by Richard Sala
• DC Comics: The Sequential Art of Amanda Conner
• The Complete Peanuts, 1989 to 1990 by Charles M. Schulz
• Sex Criminals, Vol. 1 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
• Girl Crazy by Gilbert Hernandez
• Drawn Together by Aline and R. Crumb
• Hellboy in Hell: The Descent by Mike Mignola
• Queen of the Black Black by Megan Kelso
• Art d'Ecco by Andrew and Roger Langridge
• The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius by Judd Winick
• Black Cat Crossing by Richard Sala
• The Fish Police, Vol. 1 by Steve Moncuse
• Zoot Suite by Andrew and Roger Langridge
• Welcome to the Dahl House by Ken Dahl
• The Irredeemable Ant-Man by Robert Kirkman, Phil Hester, and Andre Parks
• Skin Deep by Charles Burns
• iZombie, Vol. 1 by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred
• The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy by Stan Sakai  
• Fatima: The Blood Spinners by Gilbert Hernandez
• The Little Man by Chester Brown
• The Shadow: Blood and Judgment by Howard Chaykin
• Milk and Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad! by Evan Dorkin
• Tales of the Fear Agent by various
• Dead Boy Detectives, Vol. 1: Schoolboy Terrors by Toby Litt and Mark Buckingham
• Black Science, Vol. 1: How to Fall Forever by Rick Remender, Matteo Scalera, and Dean White
• Miracleman, Vol. 1: A Dream of Flying by Alan Moore, Garry Leach, and Alan Davis
• Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
• Love's Not a Three Dollar Fare by Terry LaBan
  
• Chew, Vol. 1: Taster's Choice by John Layman and Rob Guillory
• Rocket Girl, Vol. 1: Times Squared by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder
• The Auteur, Book One: President's Day by Rick Spears and James Callahan
• Rocky & Bullwinkle, Vol. 1 by Mark Evanier and Roger Langridge
• I Kill Giants by Joe and JM Kim Niimura
• Hellboy, Vol. 12: The Storm & The Fury by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo
• Itty Bitty Hellboy by Art Baltazar and Franco
• B.P.R.D.: 1948 by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Max Fiumara
• Lobster Johnson, Vol. 2: The Burning Hand by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Tonci Zonjic
• Abe Sapien, Vol. 2: The Devil Does Not Jest by Mike Mignola, et. al.
• Minimum Wage, Book Two by Bob Fingerman
• Special Forces by Kyle Baker
• Apocalypse Nerd by Peter Bagge
• Welcome to Tranquility by Gail Simone and Neil Googe
• The Best of Milligan and McCarthy by Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy
• RASL by Jeff Smith
• The Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler and Mike Mayhew
• Mind MGMT, Vol. 1 by Matt Kindt
• The Shadow Master Series, Vol. 1 by Andrew Helfer and Bill Sienkiewicz
• Let Us Be/Perfectly Clear by Paul Hornschemeier
• Thirteen "Going On Eighteen" by John Stanley with Tony Tallarico  
• Fables, Vol. 15 & 16 by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, et. al.
• Chew, Vol. 2 by John Layman and Rob Guillory
• Saga, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples 
• Trillium by Jeff Lemire
• B.P.R.D.: Hell On Earth, Vols. 1-3 by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis, and Tyler Crook
• Jack of Fables: Vols. 8 & 9 by Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Tony Akins, and Andrew Pepoy
• Minimum Wage, Vol. 1: Focus on the Strange by Bob Fingerman
• Finder: Talisman by Carla Speed McNeil 
• Cinderella: Fables Are Forever by Chris Roberson and Shawn McManus
• Concrete Park, Vol. 1: You Send Me by Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander
• B.P.R.D.: Being Human by Mike Mignola, et.al.
• The Squidder by Ben Templesmith
• The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 1: The Faust Act by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
• Undertow, Vol. 1: Boatman's Call by Steve Orlando and Artyom Trakhanov
• The Complete Multiple Warheads, Vol. 1 by Brandon Graham
• Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
• Satellite Sam, Vol. 1: The Lonesome Death of Satellite Sam by Matt Fraction and Howard Chaykin

And these are comics reprinted from individual issues, more or less -- I may have forgotten nitpicking details of publication of some of these several dozen books, so my categories are not to be taken as gospel. This tends to be the more traditional comic-shop end of the comics industry, though, which is something worth marking off as its own thing.

Comics: Originals in Book Form (106, 29.0%)

• The Hive by Charles Burns
• Marble Season by Gilbert Hernandez
• Crogan's Loyalty by Chris Schweizer
• The Elwell Enigma by Rick Geary
• Make Me a Woman by Vanessa Davis
• How to Fake a Moon Landing by Darryl Cunningham
• Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks
• Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff
• Aesthetics: A Memoir by Ivan Brunetti
• Bad Houses by Sara Ryan and Carla Speed McNeil
• Genius by Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen
• Boxers and Saints (2 volumes) by Gene Luen Yang
• The Advance Team by Will Pfeiffer and Germain Torres
• Giants Beware! by Jorge Rosado and Rafael Aguirre
• Americus by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill
• We Can Fix It! by Jess Fink
• Madison Square Tragedy by Rick Geary
• Taxes, the Tea Party, and Those Revolting Rebels by Stan Mack
• Upside Down by Jesse Smart Smiley
• Battling Boy by Paul Pope
• Everything Is Going to Be Okay by Bruce Eric Kaplan
• A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached
• Daisy Kutter: The Last Train by Kazu Kibuishi
• The Rime of the Modern Mariner by Nick Hayes
• Recess Pieces by Bob Fingerman
• NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette by Nathan W. Pyle
• Explorer: The Lost Islands edited by Kazu Kibuishi
• The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg
• Three Fingers by Rich Koslowski
• Aphrodite: Goddess of Love by George O'Connor
• The Pro by Garth Ennis, Amanda Conner, and Jimmy Palmiotti
• Mush! Sled Dogs With Issues by Glenn Eichler and Joe Infurnari
• The Complete Don Quixote by Cervantes; adapted by Woodrow Davis
• Red Eye, Black Eye by K. Thor Jensen
• Happy! by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson
• Woman Rebel by Peter Bagge
• This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki
• Zita the Spacegirl (3 volumes) by Ben Hatke
• Liar's Kiss by Eric Skillman and Jhomar Soriano
• The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long, Jim Demonakos, and Nate Powell
• Richard Stark's Parker: Slayground by Darwyn Cooke
• Creature Tech by Doug Ten Napel
• Dogs and Water by Anders Nilsen
• Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
• JLA: Earth 2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
• Chester 5000 XYV by Jess Fink
• Andre the Giant by Box Brown
• Monster on the Hill by Rob Harrell
• Hellboy: The Midnight Circus by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo
• New School by Dash Shaw
• The Stratford Zoo Midnight Revue Presents Hamlet by Ian Lender and Zach Giallongo
• All Star by Jesse Lonergan
• At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft; adapted by I.N.J. Culbard
• Picture This by Lynda Barry
• The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew
• Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
• The Property by Rutu Modan 
• Batman: Hong Kong by Doug Moench and Tony Wong
• Ringworld: The Graphic Novel, Part One by Robert Mandell and Sean Lam
• Spiral-Bound by Aaron Renier
• The Voyeurs by Gabrielle Bell
• Blue by Pat Grant
• Celluloid by Dave McKean
• The Undertaking of Lily Chen by Danica Novgorodoff
• The Wrenchies by Farel Dalrymple
• Nobrow 9: It's Oh So Quiet edited by Sam Arthur, Alex Spiro, and Ben Newman
• An Age of License by Lucy Knisley
• The Rise of Aurora West by Paul Pope, JT Petty, and David Rubin 
• Sisters by Raina Telgemeier
• Amulet, Vol. 6: Escape from Lucien by Kazu Kibuishi
• The People Inside by Ray Fawkes
• In Real Life by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang
• The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys by Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Becky Cloonan
• Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley
• Archer Coe: "The Thousand Natural Shocks" by Jamie S. Rich and Dan Christensen
• Fran by Jim Woodring
• August Moon by Diana Thung
• I Was the Cat by Paul Tobin and Benjamin Dewey
• Lost Dogs by Jeff Lemire
• Bumperhead by Gilbert Hernandez
• Tomboy by Liz Prince
• Pistolwhip by Matt Kindt and Jason Hall
• The Best American Comics 2014 edited by Scott McCloud
• Howl: A Graphic Novel by Allen Ginsberg and Eric Drooker
• Grandville Noel by Bryan Talbot
• Henni by Miss Lasko-Gross
• Kinski by Gabriel Hardman
• Escape from "Special" by Miss Lasko-Gross
• Cypher by Brad Teare
• The Truth Is a Cave In the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell  
• The Dumbest Idea Ever! by Jimmy Gownley
• Shackelton: Antarctic Odyssey by Nick Bertozzi
• Through the Woods by Emily Carroll 
• The Wolf Gift: The Graphic Novel by Anne Rice and Ashley Marie Witter
• Jane, The Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault 
• The Graveyard Book, Vols. 1 and 2 by Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell, and various artists 
• Hearts of Gold by Milt Gross 
• A Most Imperfect Union by Ilan Stavans and Lalo Alcaraz 
• The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks and Caanan White 
• Loverboys by Gilbert Hernandez
• The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins
• Sugar Skull by Charles Burns 
• Bumf, Vol. 1 by Joe Sacco
• The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis 
• Ricky Rouse Has a Gun by Jorg Tittel and John Aggs 
• Here by Richard McGuire 

The very largest category, unsurprisingly: I like comics, and I like reading things in book form, and I like my stories to be shaped to a particular purpose rather than grown like Topsy or just allowed to wander from one fight-scene to another. There is a lot of good stuff here: 2014 was a strong year for book-shaped comics.

Comics: Translated From Japanese (and other Asian languages) (47, 12.9%)

• Pink by Kiyoko Okazaki
• Tropic of the Sea by Satoshi Kon
• Helter Skelter by Kiyoko Okazaki
• Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, Vol. 3 by Satoko Kiyuduki
• Blood Cross, Vol. 1 by Shiwo Komeyama
• Sickness Unto Death, Vol. 1 by Hikaru Asada and Takahiro Seguchi
• From the New World, Vol. 2 by Yusuke Kishi and Toru Oikawa 
• Wolfsmund, Vol. 3 by Mitsuhita Kuji
• Sakuran by Moyoco Anno
• No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular, Vols. 1 and 2 by Nico Tanigawa
• Stargazing Dog by Takashi Murakami
• Inu X Boku, Vols. 1 and 2 by Cocoa Fujiwara
• Insufficient Direction by Moyocco Anno
• Sunny, Vol. 1 by Taiyo Matsumoto
• No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!, Vol. 3 by Nico Tanigawa
• Inu X Boku SS, Vol. 3 by Cocoa Fujiwara
• Bloody Cross, Vol. 2 by Shiwo Komeyama
• Triage X, Vols. 1-5 by Shouji Sato
• Sunny, Vol. 2 by Taiyo Matsumoto
• What Did You Eat Yesterday?, Vol. 1 by Fumi Yoshinaga
• No Longer Human (3 volumes) by Usamaru Furuya
• La Quinta Camera by Natsume Ono
• Wolf Children Ame and Yuki by Mamoru Hosoda and Yu
• Bloody Cross, Vol. 3 by Shiwo Komeyama
• Triage X, Vol. 6 by Shouji Sato
• Princess Knight (2 volumes) by Osamu Tezuka
• Cardfight!! Vanguard, Vol. 1 by Akira Itou
• Cromartie High School, Vol. 2 by Eiji Honaka
• High School DxD, Vol. 1 by Hiroji Mishima
• Is This a Zombie?, Vols. 1-7 by Sacchi
• In Clothes Called Fat by Moyoco Anno
• Fallen Words by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
• Is This a Zombie?, Vol. 8 by Sacchi 
• Triage X, Vol. 7 by Shouji Sato
• No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys's Fault I'm Not Popular!, Vol. 4 by Nico Tanigawa
• Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators
• Sorako by Takayuki Fujimura
• Barakamon, Vol. 1 by Satsuki Yoshino
• No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!, Vol. 5 by Nico Tanigawa
• Ubel Blatt, Vol. 0 by Etorouji Shiono
• Alive by Hajime Taguchi
• Void's Enigmatic Mansion, Vol. 1 by JiEun Ha and HeeEun Kim
• Good-bye Geist by Ryo Hanada
• VS Aliens by Yu Suzuki
• Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki
• Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga, Vol. 1
• Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano 

This year I ended up mostly reading manga rather than manhwa or manhua, probably because that's where the big conveyor belt is aimed for the North American market. It's a mixed bag of crowd-pleasers and more artsy stuff; my personal taste tends to aim to the artsy, but the others can be fun as well. (Blatant fanservice, in particular, can be very amusing.)

Comics: Translated From French (and other European languages) (28, 7.7%)

• Lost Cat by Jason 
  
• Sandcastle by Frederik Peeters and Pierre Oscar Levy
• The Initiates by Etienne Davodeau
• Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet
• A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting by Guy Delisle
• Goddam This War! by Tardi
• Last Days of an Immortal by Gwen de Bonneval and Fabien Vehlmann
• Isle of 100,000 Graves by Vehlmann and Jason
• Bubbles and Gondola by Renaud Dillies
• Monster Christmas by Lewis Trondheim
• Blue Is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh
• Ralph Azham, Vol. 1 by Lewis Trondheim
• The Sky Over the Louvre by Bernar Yslaire and Jean-Claude Carriere
• Hey, Wait... by Jason
• Sshhhhh! by Jason
• The Iron Wagon by Jason
• Harum Scarum by Lewis Trondheim
• The Hoodoodad by Lewis Trondheim
• The Adventures of Herge by Jose-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental, and Stanislas Bartelemy; translated by Helge Dasher
• How the World Was by Emmanuel Guibert
• The Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, Vol. 1 by Jacques Tardi
• Paul Joins the Scouts by Michel Rabagliati
• Athos in America by Jason
• Isaac The Pirate, Vol. 1 by Christophe Blain
• Bigfoot by Pascal Girard
• Blacksad: Amarillo by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido
• Beauty by Kerascoet and Hubert
• Weapons of Mass Diplomacy by Abel Lanzac and Christophe Blain

This is almost all what I called "artsy stuff" above, and mostly from continental Europe. (There are a few books from Francophone Canada, but my sense is that community looks to France and Belgium for a model much more than they look domestically or to the USA, so it feels reasonable to lump them in here.) That said, some artsiness works better than others, and several of these books -- Blacksad, Isaac the Pirate, Adele Blanc-Sec, etc. -- are explicitly in adventure-story modes.  

Art Books (8, 2.2%)

• Blown Covers by Francoise Mouly
• We Are Indie Toys! by Louis Bou
• How Are You Feeling? by David Shrigley
• I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me by Trevor Paglen
• One Eye by Charles Burns
• The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme by Joe Sacco 
• Everybody Dies by Ken Tanaka and David Ury  
• Co-Mix by Art Spiegelman 

A vague category, yes, but it's basically things that exist to be art themselves or to showcase previous art. Some of them are physically too small to really be "coffee-table books," but that's another decent way of corralling them.

Books for Children of Various Ages (6, 1.6%)

• Odd Duck by Cecil Castellucci and Sara Varon
• Jedi Academy by Jeffrey Brown
• Monsters Eat Whiny Children by Bruce Eric Kaplan
• Star Wars: Jedi Academy: Return of the Padawan by Jeffrey Brown
• Hansel and Gretel by Neil Gaiman and Lorenzo Mattotti
• 29 Myths on the Swinster Pharmacy by Lemony Snicket and Lisa Brown

Not including novels for pre-adults, which I treated as plain novels in the above categories. (That line is so fuzzy that I don't believe it makes sense to patrol it in one's own reading. For bookstore categories and suggested-reading lists, definitely: age bands can be very useful in helping people find books they will appreciate and enjoy.) Another very mixed bag of stuff.

Playscripts (1, 0.3%)

• The Underpants by Carl Sternheim and Steve Martin 

No poetry this year, so this is as odd as I got.

It came out to a total of 392 books reviewed, in 365 daily posts. I hope, if you made it to this post, that it at least introduced you to one book that you liked.

Any time I do a Book-A-Day run, it inevitably is dominated by comics and art, since those are the books that can be read consistently in a single day. But I think I hit a decent balance this year, even if I didn't dig into any really long or complex books. (I semi-abandoned Paul Theroux's travelogue Dark Star Safari around the end of October, because it was going so slowly -- I hope to get back to it in 2015.)