About the Author

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.

Reviews

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED) - Allison is a triple threat: he plots deftly, draws confidently, and writes dead-on adolescent dialogue. Set in a grammar school in a British working-class community, this first book in his Bad Machinery series--originally published as a webcomic--has three earnest boys wing against three sharp-tongued girls to solve mysteries. The framing story concerns a Russian owner of a U.K. football (soccer) team trying to bully an elderly homeowner to sell her house; as the title hints, supernatural elements surface, too. There's plenty of cynical commentary about British consumer culture, and the students' sardonic banter provides a constant obbligato. About her mother's boyfriend's Velvet Underground albums, Shauna yawns, "It's nice that you gave some money to people just playing music for the first time." Allison's adults are sympathetically drawn, too--even the archvillain has a human side. A wry glossary "defines" British terms ("Nuffink: The way you say 'nothing' if you were dragged up rather than brought up"), but can't begin to illuminate the arcane mysteries of the British football-industrial complex; readers are on their own there. Dark, fast-paced, and riotously funny entertainment. Ages 10-up. (Mar.)