I spent a good portion of this past Sunday reading John Allison comics. I started the day finishing a story in which Shauna Wickle (the protagonist of this week’s Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #4) uncovers the plot to exploit child labor enacted by two exhausted extraterrestrials and their onion-based schoolboy, Lem. I went on, in turn, to read some Scary Go Round stories, a handful of one-shots, and assorted Bobbinses.
I topped the afternoon off with this concluding issue of Kill or Be Quilt, and while the preceding reading has never been necessary to enjoy Allison’s Dark Horse miniseries (or his BOOM! Studios opus, Giant Days), there is a bit of nerd-obsessive joy that comes from that deep refresher of quote-unquote “continuity”. In the forward to his Bobbins collection A Magical Pink Being, Allison decries the reliance on continuity, however much he sometimes leans into it: stories should be accessible to readers from the jump without having to know any of the decades-long history of his universe (which has inspired a minutia-filled, fan-run wiki).
Dark Horse
Indeed, you don’t even have to read the first The Great British Bump-Off volume to enjoy Kill or Be Quilt; the entire mystery is self-sufficient without knowing that Shauna has only recently solved a series of murders at a televised baking competition. Her general good-willed nosiness is reason enough to explain her commitment to this series’ quilt-centered arson and general property damage. She is, simply, a good and curious person; that she has been so since before her teens is irrelevant.
Regardless, Allison and artist Max Sarin drop in a little bit of that vast continuity for us old heads: Kill or Be Quilt both begins and ends with appearances from Shauna’s long-time mystery-solving mates Charlotte, Claire, and Mildred. It is, quite frankly, just enough of a treat to keep the most asinine continuity hunters sated (but only just). Readers who haven’t spent decades with the characters can have, at the very least, the association of Charlotte Grote’s own Wicked Things series to hook them in deeper.
Dark Horse
That’s the danger, of course: Kill or Be Quilt is too much of a delight not to beg for further experiences, with either Shauna herself or with either John Allison’s quirky, devastating one-off comedic jabs or with Max Sarin’s indelible, pitch-perfect artwork. Despite there being decades of related comic ephemera, a lot of it isn’t readily available: one has to equip themselves for a lot of self-driven deep-dives, (very encouraged) Patreon support, and daily returns to the central webcomic. It isn’t a simple prospect, especially for the young readers the books are most effectively targeting.
Thankfully, the team’s work together has been consistent (and consistently in print). If we can expect any more Great British Bump-Off stories as solid as these first two series – or any work featuring these related characters – then we can hope for this curiosity to be extended, sated, satisfied. (For Giant Days fans, there’s a Conan the Barbarian-flavored parody featuring those characters going on right now).
As always, the end of one of these stories is only a reason to keep wanting more. That’s both a great place to be for its creators and, perhaps, a daunting one.
