Webcomic / Bobbinsverse

1 Following

• Action Girl: Fallon Young works as a spy for some British secret government agency or other. Her competence is questionable, but she remains employed because of how good she looks in a catsuit.
• A Family Affair: Illeanna breaks up with Rich when he accidentally sleeps with her sister.
• Analogy Backfire: Two on this page.
• Art Evolution: Early strips were fairly crude, though even those showed talent, and the characters are recognizable. Hand-drawn until mid-2000, when he starting using Adobe Illustrator ^note likely starting on this page, though Allison did not say exactly when. The use of Illustrator notwithstanding, the art did improve over time.
• Blanket Fort: Rich gets bored at work and builds a box fort.
• The Bro Code:
  • Rich breaks the Bro Code rather hard when Tim's ex-girlfriend moves in with him immediately after they broke up.
  • Worse, we find out later that Illeanna had been sleeping with Rich before the breakup.
  Illeanna Call a cab, Rich. The fastest one they have.
• Call-Back: Tim's stalkery neighbor Vicki shows up in a later comic. But she's (mostly) helpful now.
• Christmas Episode: the arc starting here.
• Crappy Holidays: Amy is ''not'' looking forward to Christmas with her dad.
• Crossover: A crossover with Goats starts here. The corresponding Goats arc is not available online, and the provided link is thus broken, but it may be in e-book Silver Book 5 or Silver Book 6. ^note No date ranges are provided for the two e-books in question but the arc starts on 2002 Feb 08, if that helps.
• Darker and Edgier: Holly came back from her ordeal in the Himalayas with a much meaner and more cynical personality. And some mental issues.
• Deus ex Machina: Used in a tongue-in-cheek way (more than once!) when a plotline full of dangling loose ends was abruptly terminated by '80s action star Mr. T. making a sudden inexplicable appearance and simply declaring everything to be resolved. This might also qualify as a Celebrity Star or Special Guest.
• Dirty Old Man:
  • Len Pickering is a middle-aged lech. He makes frequent innuendos, endlessly flirts with attractive young women, and often ends up shirtless (or, occasionally, naked).
  • Also Bill Tweedy.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Internally, as well as compared to the later works of John Allison. The constant Art Evolution plays a big part in this, of course. Other examples are the instances of blatant Fourth Wall Breaking, or the characterization of Shelley, whose legendary quirkiness only emerged as time went by.
  • The first few strips were Gag-per-Day Webcomics. The first story arc started October 22, 1998, and most of Bobbins has been stories or arcs since then, with an occasional self-contained comic thrown in for fun.
• Fanservice:
  • Holly and Shelley dress up as Vampirella for Halloween.
  • Naked Shelley. ^note Sorry, folks — no naughty bits are shown.
  • Elliot goes to complain to his neighbor about her loud party, but is Distracted by the Sexy when she answers the door in bikini underwear.
  • Holly in a sequined bra.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Tim. While he sometimes is a Bungling Inventor, often he's actually quite good. For example, both the Teapot That Reverses Time and Unit Daisy worked unexpectedly well. ^note The Teapot works well enough that it has shown up in later series, causing problems by its very existence.
• Hive Mind: Amy's mind has been taken over by an ant queen.
• Improvised Clothes: Rachel, Tessa, and Ryan do some drunk streaking and then sleep it off near Tim's house. They come to their senses the next morning, ponder how to get back to their clothes unseen, and spot somebody assembling barrels and then leaving them unattended.
• Ignorant About Fire: Unit Daisy.
• Imaginary Friend: Holly comes back from her her ordeal in the Himalayas somewhat worse for wear, and also with a companion named Molly. Molly is, alas, a malicious sort, and turns Holly mean for a time.
• It Was All A Dream: (Starts here.) Shelley falls in love with local costumed hero The Bullet, who turns out to be Len Pickering. She is just joining him in crimefighting (wearing a skimpy outfit) when Tim wakes up from a brief trauma-induced coma, where it turns out he had dreamt it all.
  Tim: I had this dream... you two were a couple... Len was naked... Shelley was wearing a leotard!
  Len: What, you have that dream too?
• Meet the In-Laws: Tim visits Iceland and meets Illeanna's parents.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Tim and Amy.
  Amy: Tim, you're like Yogi Bear. You're loveable, but you steal people's picnic baskets.
  Tim: Will you never let me forget?
• Put on a Bus: Literally. Unit Daisy is impounded due to being an unlicensed android.
• Remaster: John touches up the colors of a few of his older comics, plus adds some commentary.
• Right Through the Wall: Multiple examples.
  • Tim can't sleep because of a neighbor's loud party, calls and demands to know why he wasn't invited.
  • Elliot has a noisy neighbor. However, his attempt to resolve the situation ends with him Distracted by the Sexy.
  • Illyanna being mean to her parents.
• Robot Girl: Unit Daisy (not to be confused with Daisy Wooton from Giant Days), built by Tim as girlfriend for a lovelorn Rich. (But things don't go as planned, and Hilarity Ensues.) Unit Daisy's Story Arc was later retold in Heavy Metal Hearts and Flowers.
• The Shangri-La: Fallon Young needs to get back into shape, and chooses her old training ground and former teacher.
• Shout-Out:
  • Gremlins (1984). Len buys a penguin from a reluctant shop owner who gives a list of conditions. Hilarity ensues.
  • Holly invokes Bloom County in this strip, including a fourth wall break.
• Show Within a Show: Rich and Illeanna are guests in Seinfeld.
• Sibling Rivalry: Tim and Van Dyke Jones.
• Stalker with a Crush: Tim's teenaged neighbor Vicky has a crush on him and threatens his girlfriend.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • Vicki, previously Tim's stalker.
  Tim: Vicki, I have a question.
  Vicki: If it's anything to do with burning fields or barns, I'm innocent. Prol'ly.
• Time Travel: Tim's future self does the Set Right What Once Went Wrong variant to avert a disaster.
  Present Tim: I've got it! I'll breed the meanest, angriest wasp ever!
  Future Tim: (appearing in a flash of light, wearing an eye-patch) Tim, about the wasp thing. Seriously, NO.

• Best Friends-in-Law: Ryan and Tim, via Ryan's sister Riley.
• Blatant Lies:
  Tim: You know, everything they tell you about babies is scare stories. Scout just slept all the time, all night long.
  Ryan: Yeah?
  Tim: Never got hungry in the least. Rarely cried, if ever.
  Ryan: That's a relief.
  Tim: Almost from the start, she'd change her own nappy. She couldn't reach the bin, so she'd just double-bag 'em and leave them by the back door.
  Ryan: I see, I see. This is a cruel joke.
  Tim: Within a couple of months she could make rudimentary sandwiches. Not deli-quality, but serviceable.
• But We Used a Condom!: Shelley and Tim conceive through carelessness; Shelley gets to find out when the fact is noticed by her sister, who as the Queen of Hell, presumably has supernatural senses. How much care they were taking is unclear, but Shelley is certainly stunned. ( She subsequently decides to keep the baby because her clock is ticking.)
• Chubby Chaser: Erin apparently prefers her men on the portly side. When Eustace is worried she will be uninterested in him because he's put on some pounds since high school, she tells him, "I like a gentleman of heft. Beef and beer lend a man weight."
• Creator Breakdown: invoked Shelley writes books for children and may at one point let her affair with Tim affect her work:
  Barry: It's called "Tibkins Makes an Awful Mistake". The change in tone is striking.
  Shelley: Basic Tibkins story. Under-fives gonna love it. Print it. Send it to the printer.
  Barry: "'I love you', said Tibkins to the vacuum cleaner. 'But we can never see each other EVER AGAIN.'"
  Shelley: Make sure the last page is just printed completely black.
• Death Is Cheap: Lampshaded by the (well, a) Grim Reaper, in a speech to Erin with regard to her and the notoriously return-prone Shelley:
  The Reaper: You! You and your SISTER ... with your LAISSEZ FAIRE attitude to the afterlife.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Alas, poor Eustace.
• Happy Ending Override: Allison is prone to tinkering with his stories and going back to stuff that seemed finished, so both happy and unhappy (and for that matter bittersweet) endings are liable to be revised later. For example, Shelley breaks up with Tim in the time between "Into The Woods" and "The Big Hiatus", citing that she doesn't want to be with a man who's blown up his life on multiple occasions, literally in one case. That said, he's still helping out with her pregnancy and will likely be around to take care of the child. Though even that ending seems to undergo some degree of revision later.
• Hope Spot: Tim appears to convince Eustace not to mess around with a literally Satanic computer the latter has cobbled together, in an attempt to get in touch with the demon Erin. Then Eustace goes and turns on the thing anyway, and, well, see Half the Man He Used to Be above.
• It Is Not Your Time: Lampshaded and denied by the (well, a) Grim Reaper. As he says, "Cliché party."
• The Matchmaker: After Eustace (re)meeting Erin and leaving a seemingly disastrous first impression, Shelley and Tim use a ruse in order to set up a second meeting between the two. And this time it goes quite well for Eustace. (Too bad though that he neglects to maintain contact with her afterwards...)
• Mighty Lumberjack: The trope is invoked, in somewhat ironic form, by Amy, to describe Tim after he's gone to live in the woods. It turns out that Shelley, always a woman with a healthy appetite for the macho, finds the image quite appealing.
• Panicky Expectant Father: Ryan.
• Series Fauxnale: Into The Woods was supposed to wrap up the franchise, but John Allison changed his mind afterwards.
• The One That Got Away: Esther, for Eustace
• Too Dumb to Live: Both Rich Tweedy and Eustace end up qualifying as examples of this. Literally.
• Waxing Lyrical: When Amy is pregnant at Christmas, Shelley describes the child as "Our own personal Jesus! Someone to hear our prayers. Someone who cares."
• Wham Episode: John Allison fills the "Into the Woods" plot-arc with several of these: Shelley and Erin personally meet again for the first time after Erin has vanished into Hell, Rich Tweedy reappears, many years after he has been fired from his job at City Limit, allegedly "so hard that he ceased to exist". And then he REALLY ceases to exist. Followed up with Erin giving up her humanity to save Eustace, Shelly and Tim cohabiting and Eustace getting himself killed anyway.

• Advertised Extra: Ryan and Erin both appear on the cast page despite being recurring characters at best while Holly has yet to be added.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Amy is revealed to be 17 when she starts working at City Limit. She turns 18 at the beginning of "The Trouble With Bruno".
• Continuity Nod:
  • Ryan is wearing his Captain America shirt from Bobbins and early Scary Go Round.
  • Shelley's Parents, who previously showed up in Bobbins NOW and Expecting To Fly appear.
  • Linton's brother Paul shows up in Erin's class.
  • Ryan's still working at the Pea Cannery job he got at the end of Expecting To Fly.
• Darkest Hour: Happens in "The Big Explosion". A drunk Rich reveals to Len that Amy's been ghostwriting Shelley's sex column, resulting in Amy getting fired, Shelley getting demoted into a spiraling depression and Amy fearing she's about to get sent back to her mother.
• The Dreaded: Bruno outright scares Ryan, Tim and Rich.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Shelley's Boyfriend Bruno. She's the only one who truly likes him, with everyone else being repulsed, annoyed, or scared by him, if not some combination of all three.
  • Rich also has shades of this: The rest of the group tolerate him, but most of them don't really seem to like him, to the point that Amy wonders why Tim hangs around with him.
• Get Out!: Len's reaction to Rich making a sexist comment.
• The Ghost: Shelley's boyfriend Bruno for the first few arcs. He finally appears in the flesh in "The Trouble With Bruno".
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Shelley and Amy, Shelley and Holly, and Tim and Ryan.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Tim's reaction to Bruno is one of abject terror, in direct contrast to his normal suave attitude.
• Out of Focus: Ryan in the first three arcs. He gets a bit more screen time in "The Trouble With Bruno".
• Retcon: By the truckload thanks to Continuity Drift.
  • Ryan is present from the get go despite only moving to town recently late into the original Bobbins, in line with Expecting To Fly making him, Shelley and Tim childhood friends.
  • Shelley and Amy's friendship starts a lot sooner.
  • Bruno and Shelley met in University rather than High School.
  • Bruno looks entirely different and how he meets Holly is an entirely new scenario.
• Sequel Series: To Expecting To Fly.
• Ship Tease: Rich has a crush on Amy while Amy flirts with Tim in the final strip of "Sex and the City Limit".
• Shirtless Scene: Rich takes his shirt off during "The Trouble With Bruno".
• Tranquil Fury: How Tim deals with Rich after Rich drunkenly tells Len about Amy ghostwriting Shelley's sex column.
• Troll: Erin's "Report" which is her and Paul listing off the topics for Shelley's sex column.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Rich gets this a lot...
  • Ryan tears into him for getting Amy drunk.
  • Tim frequently tears into him over his crush on Amy.
  • See Get Out! above.
  • After Tim finds out Shelley's secret got out, he gives Rich this for not only letting it slip but not owning up to it and trying to fix the problem.

• All Just a Dream: Shelley believes so when she wakes up, but is quickly disabused of the idea.
• Angst? What Angst?: invokedDespite Shelley's fears, 12-year-old Lottie takes the bloody murder scene in her stride and immediately starts looking for the killer. She explains with a diagram that her "extreme love of mysteries" protects her "delicate lady-brain" from horror.
  Shelley: This isn't normal for a girl your age. I'm going to freak out for both of us.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In fact, Lottie claims her extreme love of mysteries protects her delicate lady-brain from "deth", "horror", "blood" and "accidental willy sighting".
• The Big Board: Used by Lottie for explanatory purposes.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Bad mobile phone reception because of the storm and the mansion's remoteness prevents anyone calling the police. Lottie and Shelley manage to call them after solving the mystery, surprising everyone by finding a landline — hidden in a cupboard because no-one uses it any more.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: A habitual problem of Lottie's when she's in her mystery-solving flow. She even cheerfully lampshades when she manages to go an entire interrogation without doing this.
  Lottie: LEVEL UP!
• I Have to Iron My Dog: Derek attempting to get out of a long rant.
• J'accuse!: Lottie can radiate accusation; it’s depicted like Spider-Man’s Spidey-sense. She uses the words aloud once the truth is out.
• One-Liner: Judy facing down the competition.
  Shelley: Make a note, Charlotte. That was a zinger of the old school.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Played straight as a Scenery Censor; however, it evidently fails in-universe as Lottie later mentions her "accidental willy sighting"
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title refers to Murder, She Wrote, of course.
• Right Through the Wall:
  Lottie: What do you think they were doing? Moving furniture?
  Shelley: Um, yes. Feng shui is very important.
• Snowed-In: A plot-driving issue.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The "cover" splash panel originally described Murder, She Writes as "A Shelley Winters story", but Shelley appears to have passed out of the Competence Zone, and mostly takes a back seat to Lottie's investigating.
• Start to Corpse: the "corpse clock" is lampshaded in The Rant.
• Summation Gathering: Like in any self-respecting Closed Circle murder mystery.

• The Alleged Car: Shelly bought her transport for her tour off eBay. It breaks down, leaving her stranded in town for the plot.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In this case, the "whatever" turns out to be vampire moths.
• Attack of the Town Festival: The basic plot.
• Big Black Out: Required to make the plot work — and, it's clear, caused by the giant moths.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The moths.
• Bilingual Bonus/Foreshadowing/Meaningful Name: "Mariposa" is Spanish for "Butterfly".
• Bratty Half-Pint: Mariposa.
• Cassandra Truth/Ignored Expert: Stock horror stuff, but see Twist Ending below.
• Eagle Land: Shelley attempts a Rousing Speech based very literally on this. It kind of works, but doesn't make the guy who can't shoot straight any more competent.
• Everybody Lives: A one-month-later epilogue shows that everyone who seemingly died during the story is in fact still alive, though quite seriously chewed up and in one case surely brain damaged. Presumably the moths are slow eaters and not excessively hungry.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: Shelley is compulsively frivolous.
  Terrified Secondary Character: I don't want to end up MANGLED BY INSECTS.
  Shelley: Excellent band name!
• Guns Are Worthless: A single juvenile moth is dispatched with shotguns, but other than that... yeah. Not helped by the fact that the guy with the gun in later scenes seems to be a terrible shot.
• Kill It with Fire: Or rather, A Large Pile of Fireworks.
• Macabre Moth Motif: Some early hints (and the cover art) suggest that this trope might be in play, though once the giant vampire moths show up — fairly soon — it turns out that they are an actual Moth Menace.
• Moth Menace: The threat turns out to be giant vampire moths.
• Parent with New Paramour: Mariposa is violently opposed to this idea.
• Shout-Out: The title and general theme are clearly homages to the classic '50's monster-movie Them!. Plus, as noted, every Attack of the Town Festival movie ever made.
• Terror at Make-Out Point: Kind of inevitable, really.
• Title Drop: See Shout-Out above.
• Twist Ending: It turns out that Everybody Lives, although rather the worse for wear in some cases and Saul is a Mad Scientist who was responsible for the attack in the first place. Also a case of The Bad Guy Wins, as Saul is elected the new mayor.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Shelley finds a large supply of mothballs, which repel the moths and allow the humans time to set up the Kill It with Fire trap.

• The '90s: Playing Tetris on her Game Boy is one of Shelley's favorite leisure activities, and Ryan considers Doom to be the peak of computer game realism.
• Call-Forward:
  • Fans of Scary Go Round know of course that Erin Winters will end up spending some time in hell. This is alluded to whenever Erin appears.
  • Some of John Allison's end-of-the-year music reviews have been penned in-universe by Shelley. It turns out that she was already compiling personal music hit lists when she was still in school.
• Casanova Wannabe: Surprisingly, Tim turns out to to have been one in his teenage years.
• Chekhov's Gun: The first conversation Tim and Ryan have in this story is about some Kurosawa movies Tim has been taping for Ryan. At the end of the story, Ryan decides to act after the samurai ethics conveyed in this movies, and takes all the blame in order to protect Tim from any negative consequences the accident with his contraption might have caused for him.
• Dark and Troubled Past: This story reveals that the generally rather cheery Cloudcuckoolander Shelley Winters had to cope with the suicide of her best friend during her teen years.
• Eyepatch of Power: We learn why Mr. Knott is wearing one in Bad Machinery.
• Important Haircut: Starting out with rather long hair, at the end of the story (and the beginning of his life after leaving school) Ryan gets a hair cut and now looks much more like he does as an adult in Scary Go Round.
• Prequel: To Bobbins, Scary Go Round, and via Mr. Knott also to Bad Machinery.
• The Matchmaker: Mr. Knott encourages Ryan to befriend Shelley, and in the end it turns out that he had the same conversation with Shelley about Ryan. It is unclear though if his insistence about abstaining from behavior that "might inspire a nocturnal manipulation" was sincere or an attempt at Reverse Psychology.
• Rube Goldberg Device: Tim builds one in order to teach Ryan physics. An unplanned side-effect though is that it pokes out one of Mr. Knott's eyes.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Shelley's speech to Ryan's father is rather short, but turns out to be quite effective:
  Shelley: I don't know how one of the kindest people I have ever met came out of human garbage like you.

• Big Damn Heroes: Science saves Mordawwa at the climax.
• Bittersweet Ending: Science saves Mordawwa from death, The Sheriff turns out to be alive, but now Mordawwa and co are thrust into a civil war in Hell.
• Blood Knight: Mordawwa's former general, before the Sheriff took his job. It's what convinces him to go to war with her.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mordawwa.
• The Dragon: The Sheriff to Mordawaa
• Driven to Suicide: Mordawwa due to the Sheriff's death. Science snaps her out of it as does finding his Supposed killer.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: While still a comedy, the story is a fantastical comedy set in hell versus John Allison's normal preference for Mundane Fantastic mixed with Slice of Life.
• Ms. Fanservice: Mordawwa spends most of the story in rather skimpy outfits.
• Sequel Series: Follows up on what happens to Erin and Eustace after Bobbins NOW!
• Xanatos Gambit: The Sheriff's murder... was caused by Mordawwa's former General's second-in-command to start a war and leave his superior with the blame, so he'd have no choice but to wage the war anyways.

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Billie seeks the aid of the demon Baphomet when she needs money, and — being basically selfless — asks for good things to happen to the rest of the village as well. One storm that wrecks every part of Cornwall except Tredregyn later, things start getting strange.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Why Brian instantly takes to Billie joining the Church of Satan.
• Brown Note: Invoked; Brian is searching for it, but Billie thinks he's looking in vain.
• Chainmail Bikini: Maggie discusses making herself a suit of "holy battle armour" in which "almost my entire arse will be on show, but tastefully". Mrs Clovis looks so shocked at the sketches she can't even tell Maggie off.
• Church of Happyology: "Trident" is a seemingly cult-like movement which is in competition with both the Church of England and the Church of Satan, targets people working in media, and offers "free mind evaluations".
• Dark and Troubled Past: Billie, prior to joining the Church as an overcorrection. Inverted with Maggie, who was a frustrated Soapbox Sadie before joining the other Church. Confessing these backstories to one another is what convinces them both to convert.
• Fish People: The most common category of monster which Penrose has to deal with are scaly "mermen" which emerge from the sea by night. They may not be quite as evil as he assumes, but some of them do cause trouble.
• Foreshadowing: In one of the print comics, Brian warns Mrs Clovis not to bother with some new-age witches (Clotilde and Ludmilla, as it turns out), because he went to them once and they "only did half a job". Later on, an online strip reveals he was trying to get them to cure his lycanthropy.
• Hot for Preacher: Maggie towards Penrose. According to Mrs Clovis (who may be projecting somewhat...), he gets this from a lot of his female parishioners.
• No Ending: When Allison concluded that the strip was no longer viable, with no publisher interested in printing it, he had a whole bunch of plotlines still in reserve. Rather than finish with some kind of rushed ending or lose those ideas entirely, he ran a series of strips that set each of them up, then left things there, on the principle that fans would thus have at least have some access to his ideas. The effect was something of a Downer Ending for some readers as many of those set-ups involved the town and most of the characters in danger, in prison, or out of work; at best, this became a wide-open case of "And the Adventure Continues".
• Odd Friendship: Billie and Maggie. They start off a Church of England curate and a Satanist, and later on swap places, but their friendship is a constant.
• Show Within a Show: Clotted Crime is a Sunday evening TV mystery series with a bit of a Cozy Mystery aspect and similarities to Midsomer Murders but set in Cornwall. Mrs Clovis and, more surprisingly, Maggie, are big fans; Penrose despises it, calling it “churchsploitation”, because any vicars who appear in it are milksops or murderers, or both. After a hurricane devastates every other village in Cornwall, the production comes to Tredregyn to shoot some episodes.
• Soapbox Sadie: Maggie's surprising Mysterious Past before she decided she was getting nowhere fixing the world and may as well enjoy herself in the Church of Satan.
• Spinoff Sendoff: Allison says he considered starting Steeple with one of these but rejected the idea. The first major crossover, designed to introduce newer readers to the strip, is in "Author Unknown" when Shelley comes to Tredregyn on a book tour and goes missing, and Lottie comes to investigate.
• Spooky Séance: When they get a chance, Clotilde and Ludmilla insist that Maggie should run a séance, saying that she was known for these things when they were at school together. Strangely, although the supernatural is definitely real in the setting, and Clotilde and Ludmilla are genuine, active witches, Maggie is very clear that her séances are actually fake; she has studied the sort of stage magic tricks that Victorian fake mediums used. Apparently, everyone treats these events as pure theatre. However, shortly after the séance begins, Maggie is possessed by a (rather disturbing) supernatural effect.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: A supernatural variety in the Sesh Gremlin.
  Maggie: He's a cursed soul, a social vampire. He attaches himself to a group of drinkers, and won't leave unless they can pry him free. He slowly dominates conversation, bending the party to his will. [...] Here's the kicker: if the session lasts 24 hours... you become a sesh gremlin too.
• The Three Faces of Eve: Billie is the naive maiden, Maggie the seductress and Mrs Clovis the domestic "wife" (although given her age, acerbity, and the mysterious absence of her husband, there's some overlap with the Crone).
• Town with a Dark Secret: Tredregyn is a parody of this trope, being a pleasant-seeming fishing village which turns out to be infested with monsters and (basically fairly amiable) Satanists. When Charlotte is trying to find out what happened to Shelley there, she hits the problem that everyone looks like a suspect.

• Bizarrchitecture: When Claire and Lottie attempt to prepare Glenn for their home town of Tackleford, the video they show him shows that the place features "over 100 follies — many of them geometrically impossible", and indeed at least one of them was evidently inspired by the work of M.C. Escher.
• Comic-Book Time: The whole Bobbinsverse runs on comic book time, but the point is acknowledged when, in a comic appearing in 2026, Lottie and Claire show Glenn a video relating to events that occurred in Scary-Go-Round in the early 2000s or so.
  Glenn: "Tackleford, City on the Move"? When is this from from? The 1970s?
  Lottie: Err 15 years ago? It's hard to tell exactly? Maybe? Don't Worry. It's timeless.
• Frame-Up: Beate, Lottie's unknown Doppelgänger, uses this tactic against her more than once.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Little Claire unloads some weapons-grade contempt on the psychotic Lottie impersonator when the latter seeks an excuse for some Evil Gloating.
• Surgical Impersonation: Charlotte turns out to have an unknown enemy who has had plastic surgery to look like her, facilitating some evil Frame-Up plots.
• Unknown Rival: It is eventually revealed in flashback that Lottie and Claire had a rival they didn't even know about when conducting an investigation in Switzerland. This comes back to bite them hard.

• Aerith and Bob: Most of the characters have at least slightly fantasy-inflected names such as "Astir" or "Orzabal". Then there is the titular protagonist, Susan.
• Arranged Marriage: Astir was required to marry Orzabal by her father. She ran away, apparently before the union was even consummated.
• Barbarian Hero: Susan has a big sword which she uses to solve most problems, along with a leather-and-furs outfit, a surly attitude, and a tendency to live life to the full.
• Blood Knight: Susan is a mercenary swordswoman who seems to enjoy her work a little too much — though perhaps with a hint of the Knight Templar. When hired as a village's sheriff, she kills every miscreant in sight, including her deputy, who was taking bribes. Subsequently, traveling through monster-infested woods, she vents her annoyance at being sacked as sheriff by killing a lot of monsters.
• Brainless Beauty: Astir comes across as even more of an idiot than her model in the main Bobbinsverse (though she does talk her way round some peasants), and everyone comments on her good looks.
• The Brute: Orzabal the Intense is described by his unwilling wife as a "Massive Bastard", both figuratively and literally, and nobody who sees him disagrees.
• Burly Blacksmith: Actually largely averted by the nameless Smith in this story. He's by no means feeble, but (being based on McGraw of the main Bobbinsverse) he's more wiry than burly, and is clearly more of a skilled and versatile craftsman than a hefty hammer-wielder.
• Enchanted Forest: The Grey Forest is a sinister and notoriously dangerous, monster-infested place.
• Expy: All of the major characters are based on figures from the Bobbinsverse:
  • Astir: Esther de Groot.
  • Daisie: Daisy Wooton.
  • Orzabal the Intense: Super Derek (a running joke figure who periodically shows up on Bobbinsverse cast pages and suchlike, despite never actually appearing in any story).
  • The Smith: McGraw.
  • Susan: Susan Ptolemy.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: On her first appearance, Astir demonstrates the problems of a swirly, sexy dress in a tangled woodland at night.
  Astir: I am entangled in the brambles by my impractical vetements!!
• Magic Music: Daisie works magic by playing music. Unfortunately, her enchanted lute has been broken in the course of some heroic deed before the story begins, forcing her to resort to using a small magic whistle, which only enables her to cast minor illusions and small enchantments. The plot begins with her setting out to find a replacement lute.
• Spikes of Villainy: Orzabal's helmet has a pair of gratuitous spiky horns. Otherwise, his armour is surprisingly light on actual spikes, but generally fits the sword-and-sorcery villain pattern, featuring a substantial pair of pauldrons in the form of skull faces.
• Unrequited Love: The Smith seemingly has some kind of feelings for Daisie, who doesn't return them but unknowingly takes advantage of him by dragging him off on a dangerous quest. This doesn't stop him having a very active fling with Susan, who appreciates his charms.
• Villains Want Mercy: When Susan gets the better of Orzabal, he begs unsuccessfully for mercy.
  Susan: It would be charity indeed to give that of which you have none at all. Let me check my reserves, sir. Hmmm.

• The '40s: Shelley's first mission sends her back to 1940s Hollywood, where she has some trouble fitting in, and an encounter with Hedy Lamarr.
• The '60s: The setting of the second, longer, multi-part storyline, "NEMS".
• Apocalypse How: The Ministry eventually realises that the "Beatles Anomaly" is likely to cause some kind of temporal catastrophe; details are unclear, but allegedly, "the concept of next year would cease to exist", suggesting metaphysical annihilation.
• Cliffhanger: The last page of the NEMS storyline ends with a hint that Esther and Shelley may be about to be blown up by a bomb planted by Cilla. This seems to be John Allison playing games with the readers, as he has said that he will not be returning to Destroy History for some time, if ever.
• Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: The Ministry of History is financed by exploitation of the rules of compound interest. Which is just as well, given that its technology is insanely expensive to run.
• Don't Ask: When instructed to report its current status, Nemulon-1 replies with a rather terrifying variation on this stock response:
  Nemulon-1: WHEN YOU ASK SOMEONE HOW THEY'RE DOING... PRAY THEY NEVER TELL YOU THE TRUTH.
• Frame-Up: Esther prevents Cilla flying to America (knowing that if she is on the plane, it will crash) by planting some reefers in her bag and then calling the police.
• Godzilla Threshold: The threat of the "Beatles Anomaly" is serious enough for the Ministry to send an untested nuclear-powered killer robot into the past to try and fix the problem.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When Nemulon-13 engulfs the self-destructing Nemulon-1 to prevent the potential ensuing collapse of reality, this proves to be terminally heroic.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Cilla Black was a 1960s British pop singer and later TV presenter who was, at worst, popular more for her stage personality than her singing talent and reputed to be difficult to deal with off-camera. In Destroy History, she has ruthlessly sabotaged the careers of The Beatles to ensure and amplify her own success, potentially causing damage to the fabric of time in the process.
• Hollywood Heart Attack: A nameless Ministry of History agent suffers a classic heart attack in Liverpool in 1962. Too much strenuous activity gets him.
• How They Treat the Help: Cilla's personality is established beyond doubt by how she treats Esther and various service workers. She's a Mean Boss.
• It Will Never Catch On: A time agent visiting early '60s Liverpool hints to the young Cilla Black that The Beatles may be very successful one day. She is very doubtful, however.
• Jumping on a Grenade: When the insane Nemulon-1 self-destructs in a way that threatens to collapse spacetime, Nemulon-13 engulfs and contains the explosion. Nemulon-13 claims to have been designed to do this, but it is nonetheless extremely dangerous for him.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Agents of the Ministry of History have all memories of their missions and the Ministry's secrets wiped when they leave the job. (Though in later episodes, Shelley seems to remember everything about the Ministry after she has left.)
• Monochrome Past: Scenes in the "NEMS" storyline set in the 1960s are depicted (almost) entirely in black and white.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: An unusual instance occurs when a visitor to the Cavern Club in 1962 Liverpool leaves his hat in the cloakroom. The hat has glowing pink-red eyes, emphasised by the fact that they are almost the only colour feature on an otherwise black-and-white page. This shows that it is a disguised Nemulon robot, which becomes the cause of the temporal problems ensuing.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Esther's mission to the '60s is to deal with the "Beatles Problem", which was caused by a rogue Nemulon robot, and which threatens the structure of time itself.
• Splash of Color: The monochrome 1960s scenes in the "NEMS" storylines are relieved by colour year numbers - and by the Red Eyes of disguised Nemulon robots.
• Time Police: The comic is something of a deconstruction or parody of the trope; the Ministry of History function as time police, but operate as a rather shambolic and under-resourced British government department.
• Time Travel: It turns out that the British Government has time travel, though it may be limited to the Ministry of History. (Earlier Bobbinsverse stories have also featured time travel, but using apparently different technologies.) Fortunately, they seem to be using it responsibly (if you ignore the whole "sending untrained agents back into the past without even a proper mission briefing" part), to prevent paradoxes and disasters (even if they do sometimes accidentally cause the disasters they have to prevent).
• Young Future Famous People: Some scenes in the "NEMS" storyline feature The Beatles and Cilla Black before they became famous. One strip also features an appearance by what appears to be a young Michael Caine (addressed by his given name of "Maurice"), but he would already have been a famous film actor by that date.

"Erin Winters and the Bone Throne (of Bones)" and "Erin Winters and the Great Fiery Elevator":

• Accidentally Beneficial Attack: Erin tricks the demon Xaffej into "scorning" her, which he does, forgetting that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" — said fury manifesting as fire breath.
• Briar Patching: "I bet you couldn't even... scorn me."
• Hellevator: You can ride it straight back to Earth, if you can get past Xaffej the Indefatigable.
• Hell Has New Management: How did Erin get out? She took the place over and ruled for three years before getting bored with power.
• Interquel: Takes place between the end of Erin's time in Scary Go Round and her time in Sheffield, explaining how she escaped hell.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Robot Hitler is King of Hell.

IT’S THE NINETIES, GET USED TO IT:

• The '90s: The period setting of the comic.
• Deteriorates into Gibberish: Whenever Jack tries to talk about his knowledge of the future, his speech instantly becomes gibberish, to his frustration. Apparently, something is actively stopping him from causing Temporal Paradoxes.
• Mad Oracle: When Jack ventures out, a crazy old homeless woman points at him and yells that he "doesn't fit" and "doesn't belong". Apparently she has somehow sensed that he is out of place in this period.