Read IT'S THE NINETIES, GET USED TO IT in full, now
Here's a new comic for you. It's a "pilot" for something new. You can think of it as both a prequel and a sequel. It features characters old and new. Let me know if you enjoyed it. Your PDF is linked under the cover image.
There are some fun twists in here for long-time readers so please avoid putting them in the comments.
Comments (88)
Love it! When’s the next one?!?
somehow completely missed this before
OMG! I forgot this was in my To-Be-Read folder. I want ... no I NEED more of this!!
I really, really enjoyed this! Looking forward to more. :)
I finally had time to catch up on this and it was fantastic. I hope you continue it, since I think I was scarred by that "To Be Continued" out of nowhere.
Now that I.T.N.G.U.T.I has been fully publicly released, what would you say has been the most rewarding part to developing this specific story?
As someone who has never got over the 1990s, I saved this to read as a treat and it didn't disappoint! A delight
oh my word... my entire mid-life crisis over the past years have more or less centered around a very similar notion
I'm excited about this one. I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that "If crazy people were in short supply, we'd have to pay them to shout at us" may be my favorite line from anything ever.
I really enjoyed that. My memory is pretty hazy about which characters I should recognise, but if I just treat this as my first "Tackleford etc" story then it still works well.
Amazing pilot! If I have any say in the matter ITNGUTI has been commissioned for a full series.
Fantastic stuff as always, John. Love the intriguing hooks in the plot and the fact that somehow you've managed to make *Shelley* a grounding character in the centre of Jack's crisis!
I’d managed to forget that style of sideburns that Andy’s sporting ever existed but it is truly perfect hair casting
My sensible friends took Pascal from the electrical engineering department in college (early eighties). For some god-awful reason I took APL from the civil engineering department. Actually maybe was a good prep for Matlab.
I don't usually like time travel stuff. Too many plot holes. Either you can change nothing, in which case being there is too much, or there is some limited amount you can do, but who makes the rules? JA has made this bug into a feature. Ossum!
Hey. I just clicked like on my own statement. I shouldn't be able to do that, should I?
Please, sir, may we have some more?
Intriguing!
So much good stuff, but Paolo’s hair especially.
Really hope Jack doesn't get hit on by his mum.
Oh my god this is amazing. The fact I was studying computer science in 1997 does not bias my opinion.
Itnguti is a genius level code name. Thank you!
Love it! "Endeavour" broke me!
Poor Bartleby. Great story, John! Raised my heart rate.
I love time travel conspiracies. Looking forward to the rest
No notes. Can’t wait to read more!
Count me in for more of this! Loved it.
Well NOW you've done it (Again!) Blimey, a prize on every page. A new dimension? You must be Flibba-Jub-HOHO about this. Congrats!
I read this last night and had a great time. I like how it seems to be a synthesis of a lot of your past work while at the same time absolutely being something new. And more people should be talking about your lettering choices! The new font (Mangamaster, I think?) complements your current style perfectly.
Absolutely compelling. Sped through this at an embarrassing clip. You have achieved full New Hollywood.
That’s a compliment, by the way.
This is all kinds of awesome. I was in the uni in the 90s myself, took one class about programming in Modula-2 and decided it was good that I was a humanities student. (I tried to get to computer science but failed.)
I really enjoyed that! Excited to read more.
this is really good! i know a lot of people already said this but i wanted you see one more person saying this. really good!
Oh my that was quite good indeed. So plotty and gripping! My entrails keen for more!
LOVE. IT.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love it! 1997! Poor Jack lost Shelley. That's cuz it's before street-by-street directions courtesy of JANG DANG DEN receivers and Flaboogle Maps.
90's Jack is well into their Scottish 90's pop :) I was lucky enough to see Belle and Sebastian play in Melbourne this very yesterday, and Teenage Fanclub earlier in the year! Also, the CS books are bang-on - I learned Pascal at uni in that era, also
Punch cards certainly existed and were in use, but they were recognizably old tech in 1997. If I had been asked to use them in my CS degree I would have doubted my university's commitment to funding a competitive CS department.
Ah, an excellent start! Hope to see more of this in the future. (Or the past?)
Just a few pages in and I love it already!!
Wonderful!
I think this demands continuation and conclusion, I am hooked
Jack! My boy is back!
Ah, so you've decided to get back into horror. This is genuinely the most disturbing thing you've ever written; excited to see where this goes.
More! please.
This is so good! I'm dying to read more!
Oh, this is fantastic. I always felt like Jack had at least one really good story left in him and I'm so excited to see it was this one.
Gosh! I hope this is as much fun to write as it was to read. I was not expecting to see Jack again. This whole situation has me suitably intrigued. Please do continue.
Oh man, this is a trip!! I've been wanting to see more 90s adventures of teen Shelley! Really strong 90s BritPop vibes throughout!
JOY!
(1.5 minutes after opening it) OH MY GOD
John Allison is the best writer in England! Call me a liar if you dare!
You're a liar! John Allison is the best IN THE WORLD>
I enjoyed this immensely.
This is brilliant! I’m going to upgrade my membership.
I have to wait a month for more!?! This is why I never read the PDF... I'm so onboard for more of this
That was very good! Cheers!
Well done! I'm intrigued.
This is awesome! Looking forward to more.
John, this is what I love about you as an artist, and the barmy-as-hell world you've created. I'm never sad when you step away from a character or plot line or even whole series, because I know they'll come back in some way I don't expect. You'll produce some THING I didn't know I needed until I had it.
Wonderful
Marvellous stuff - I look forward to the rest. Got to page 18 panel 1 and thought “that’s the Kilburn Building!” Showed it to my partner (a Manchester grad who’s unfamiliar with your oeuvre) and she pointed out that the logo on the student card made that obvious (although she thinks that Manchester was still using the old red tower logo in 97 rather than the newer purple logotype). Not sure if Manchester was still using Pascal as their first language at that point (professional interest: I run the CS programme in Southampton, and have worked with Manchester - I know that we’d stopped using it by 1997), but that’s a hair too fine for even me to split.
That said, as ane fule kno Ben Bishop wrote the original Zambian SuperOS in Pascal, so it’s entirely fitting that Manchester teaches it.
Thank you, i love it. Please have some particular appreciation of the period-appropriate brownish lipstick that Shelley's wearing. Oh Jack, the dearest soft lad, however did this come about?
Just seeing that shade of lipstick transports me back. Then I remember I'm here and now and my heart breaks a little.
Well, that made my day, my week, my month, and even my year (to stick in an appropriately '90s mindset). Keep on, John!
He'll be there for you....
"If there was money in poppycock, you'd be comfortably off" is a line only you could have written. Very excited about where this is going.
JA stories tend to have at least one line that sticks with you forever
I liked the reference to pascal as i did that in college. I also liked the frank sidebottom reference. But most of all I enjoyed the story. I’m looking forward to the next issue.
Always good to see you back at it. I want a full series more and more with each panel.
Yes. Consider this pilot qualified to fly. As per expectations. I don't know either, that one needs some more time in the 'shop I believe.
Classic John story and illustrations. What a brilliant Friday this is shaping out to be.
It's rad! No, wait, that was the '80s? I lived through those years but it's like looking back through a telephoto lens: everything gets compressed in the distance. Cheers for getting it right, John. I hope Andy finds, dunno, a girlfriend in Canada to focus on as he outgrows his lad hormones.
Sweet Jack!! How I have missed him!
I enjoyed it. I believe I'd enjoy more.
A story that doubles as both Shelley’s own giant days and a time traveling Bad Machinery follow-up is very intriguing to me. Looking forward to where this goes.
This is great. Also I'm amused/appreciative there is a UTIs reference given its acronym.
I work hard at this stuff
I'm so excited about everything this implies.
Ahhh absolutely brilliant! So many delicious twists and mysteries. Twisteries.
This is awesome!! Super excited to see how it goes! Love the idea of Jack in the 90s!!
BTW, it was the moment you switched fonts that made me absolutely love this.
My favorite 90s as well!
Oh my god, a prequel and a sequel! Time is a flat circle, etc! Paused after the J.F. reveal. I’m so excited to read this on a larger screen.
I love the 1990s! It's my favorite 90s! (Suck it, Victorians.)