It’s been at least a year since I last mentioned John Allison, so I’m going to have to remedy that. It is always fun when a creator you’ve been following for close to two decades is still putting out work that feels completely and uniquely their own, but whose style has remained consistent over all that time. Considering he’s been working with a rotating cast of characters for as long as I’ve been reading, it does make sense that he would know them so well. And that’s just as apparent with the series by him, Max Sarin, Sammy Borras, and Jim Campbell: The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or be Quilt.

After solving an attempted murder in the UK Bakery Tent, Shauna Wickle deserves a vacation. Borrowing her uncle’s boat for a canal holiday, Shauna ends up in Barton-on Wendle and immediately proceeds to gouge out a chunk of the boat’s side whilst trying to impress a boy. And when the bill of repair comes out to £4000, her lazy holiday becomes a working summer as she needs to pay up before returning back to her home in Tackleford and the potential fury of a wronged uncle. It’s here that we’re introduced to Canalside Crafts, Stitch Pickings, and the rivalry between the two shops on the eve of Quiltfest that has led to burnt cars and flooded shops. Shauna, playing double-agent for both stores to get the money to repair the ship, is more concerned with figuring out the mystery behind why a quilting rivalry would escalate to violence than the quilts themselves. 

What’s always stood out about Allison’s writing, from Scary-Go-Round through Giant Days and into these shorter series like Wicked Things and The Great British Bump-Off is how he’s able to convey stakes. Even when involving imminent peril and the supernatural, there’s always some aspect of the characters or plot to help keep us grounded. There’s a certain summer movie practicality to getting a job to pay off the damage caused to a relative’s vehicle before snowballing into a rivalry between two craft stores. Small stakes ballooning into something more gives the story that forward momentum that keeps it from just being about a single plot thread while allowing the story to take on the absurdities and melodramas that make a comic all the more fun. Even with a burning car, we can’t help but enjoy an all-night quilt-off.

The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt is the kind of sequel series that shows we can have many more stories with Shauna traveling around England and stumbling into mysteries. With each four-issue miniseries, we get more of Allison’s stories, but even more of Sarin, Borras, and Campbell’s work, which brings the story together further. It’s difficult to imagine this world and these characters without everyone on the art side heightening that drama just enough to tip it right into that absurd side of a good comedy comic. 

Get excited. Get stitching.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, 651, & 674) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.