Bad Machinery Guests (2010)
I used to do a guest week once or twice a year to give myself a break. It was very much a part of the currency of 2000s webcomics, a nice community thing. You'd pay it back with a guest strip down the line. By the time I started work on Bad Machinery, the old connections and friendships were about to dissipate - the scene was starting to change, and people were getting older, with greater responsibilities. To all things a season, etc! Also, I did not have the goose to do guest strips for other people any more. I found it very hard**. So these pages from 2010 were my penultimate callout for guests, but my goodness, what a selection. The standard is incredibly high and the names are frequently famous... and if they are not, they should have been.
Credits:
Philippa Rice
Emily Ryan
Jamie Littler
Tom Siddell
Warwick Johnson Cadwell
Dan Berry
Konrad Koko Okonski
Chris Hastings (w) and Anthony Clark (a)
Joel Jessup (w) and Weebl (a)
Rebecca Head
Jonathan Edwards
Barnaby Ward
There's a smaller (but equally fun) batch of guest Bad Machineries from 2011 that I will share next week.
** The great irony now is that if you are one of my unfortunate friends in 2025, you will sometimes receive "guest strips" when you do not want them, comic pages so appalling in nature that you will probably want to leave the industry.
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As a footnote, these guest strips were followed immediately by the first ever page of Giant Days. Monday to Friday! Oh, to recover that zip.
Comments (23)
the world needs more Humphrey comics!
What an era
God, I was there for these. What a reminder. Thank you for posting! I always loved guest weeks in the old webcomic days.
I remember these. So nice to revisit them!
I love them all!
I love Philippa Rice! Her new novel is great. My kids love reading My Cardboard Life books together. (When they are a little older we'll get into Bad Machinery...)
She's a one-off creator - incredible talent.
I didn’t see these at the time, so did not realise that what was missing from my life was Hastings/Clark doing the perfect Humphrey story. COMPLETE AT LAST
I know, right!
What a treat! A few names I haven't thought of for a while (Barnaby Ward!)
Barnaby still does art, he's on Insta and still makes good stuff.
Back in the old days I attempted to recover many a zip, using various methods, but often to no avail. After I lost two or three zips I finally gave up, and spent the at the time comparative fortune necessary for a CD-R writer. Which is probably why I'm so zipless nowadays.
You heard the click of death, my friend, it comes to us all
As a latecomer I'm really glad for the opportunity to see these! Thank you for unearthing them.
I remember these very fondly! Especially the Tetris one and the where Humphry gets the magic pencil!
I remember everyone of these
"...comic pages so appalling in nature that you will probably want to leave the industry." But enough about Rule 34 Fan Art.
Oh man, I've been looking for that page by Tom Siddell for *ages* - I remembered it had something to do with hair, but I couldn't remember if it was something you did for him or he did for you. Great to see it again!
It's somehow an extremely good John Allison riff while still being extremely Tom. :-)
Some of these are rather very good. Trying to match up the unsigned ones was an exercise in futility though. It also appears the 2008-2012 era seems to be the golden days of web comics as a whole. I've wondered this before, and I have found nothing to disprove it yet, but, that young naive era was murdered by the advent of social media.
I’d say that webcomics are still really big today, but I do agree with John’s sentiment from last year’s QNA that the landscape the medium has on big social media apps has become too “memetic” in terms of how they’re structured.
I remember some of these!
It’s really interesting seeing these community efforts, both from a creative and historical sense. Do you plan on uploading the Scary Go Round guest strips here later down the line?