Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Bad Machinery Vol 2: The Case of the Good Boy, Comics, entertainment, John Allison, oni press, webcomics

Bad Machinery Vol 2: The Case of the Good Boy – Taking Silliness For A Walk

By Ed Saul

I have a little sister – the littlest! – who is madly obsessed with Just William. Most especially with the audiobook recordings read by the sublime Martin Jarvis, but also with William's adventures in other media. Like all of my family members, she's also heavily into comics, and has a similar fan-love for Calvin and Hobbes, among many others. And of course she has a fascination with Cryptozoology – don't all children?

Bad Machinery Vol. 2: The Case of the Good Boy, from Oni Press, came out too late for me to give it to her as a birthday present. This is the only fault I can find with it.

The story follows the six intensely likeable child detectives of Tackleford in capturing one strange hairy beast from the edges of mythology and adopting another. Like other arcs in the webcomic of the same name (as our delightful friends at Wikipedia might put it), it has an underlying theme or two that should resonate with all children and post-children – caring for a pet, most obviously, but also dealing with bullies, acting brave, and the proper use of limitless power. I can certainly think of one or two mad events that might have occurred if I attained a magic pencil in my tweens.

It's collecting a story-arc from the webcomic, which makes me think of Warren Ellis, back when he was writing Freakangels, describe his amusement at people deliberately avoiding reading free web-content so that they could avoid spoiling what would happen in the next print edition that collected all of the pages at once. Hence one could say that John Allison is writing for exactly the right market; not every kid in the world has a smartphone or free use of a computer to browse webpages for hours at a time, but most if not all of them live within close proximity to a good bookshop.

The Case of the Good Boy is the second volume of Bad Machinery, though Allison has been doing this long enough that he might be recognized as a National Treasure in a decade or so, if anyone starts to treat comics as a medium with the same amount of prestige and recognition as film. It's a pleasure to see how, even having now established his own unique 'style' of comic writing and drawing (inspiring the likes of Questionable Content among others), it continues to subtly evolve and redefine itself as he moves ever on.

The humor of the story is a plus as well. The characters' one-liners feel very natural for their age and setting, and the absurdity of the plot balances it out. There are even some laugh-out loud lines there, though of course your mileage may vary. The book edition also has a nice balance of print-only content for your buck; beautiful full-page filler panels and some nice monster bios at the back.

It's a good read for any small children you may know, and also a good read for any adults when their kids are in bed. There's something for everyone – especially if you like dogs.

The beast in Ed Saul is caged by frail and fragile bars. Restless by day, and by night rants and rages at the stars. God help the beast in Ed. Or maybe just read his blog, http://aboxofbones.com, or write to him at edsaul.writer@icloud.com.

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