Bad Machinery Vol. 6

Born in a hidden village deep within the British Alps, John Allison came into this world a respectable baby with style and taste. Having been exposed to American comics at an early age, he spent decades honing his keen mind and his massive body in order to burn out this colonial cultural infection. One of the longest continuously publishing independent web-based cartoonists, John has plied his trade since the late nineties moving from Bobbins to Scary Go Round to Bad Machinery, developing the deeply weird world of Tackleford long after many of his fellow artists were ground into dust and bones by Time Itself. He has only once shed a single tear, but you only meet Sergio Aragon's for the first time once. John resides in Letchworth Garden City, England, and is known to his fellow villagers only as He Who Has Conquered.

"In the conversation about young superheroes, John Allison should be rightup in there with the very best writers and artists that comics has to offer. Ithink I've recommended every volume of Bad Machinery as part of 'Best ComicsEver' thus far, but there's a dashed good reason - it's a blinding good comic.Six schoolchildren somehow fall into parts of a mystery in each volume,bickerin' and banterin' it fierce before eventually somehow winding things uptogether and solving the problem - which sometimes turns out to have been'ghosts'. In volume 4, we get to see a new boy come to school, who seems a bitlonely, a bit weird, but who one day becomes everybody's best friend. Only oneof Allison's hexad see through this veil: Shauna, the one with the mostcommon-sense and conscience in her head. But really, the mysteries in BadMachinery take a firm second place to the more interesting part of any HardyBoys or Nancy Drew-style story: the characters. These are such fun, recognisablecharacters, who feel like kids, act like kids, make mistakes like kids and thensolve supernatural mysteries. Er... like kids. Give his site a look, and see howquickly the whole thing wins you over." - Comics Alliance