John Allison Books In Order

Publication Order of Bad Machinery Books

Publication Order of By Night Books

Publication Order of Giant Days Books

Publication Order of Giant Days: Charlotte Grote Books

Publication Order of Giant Days: Not On The Test Edition Books

Publication Order of Giant Days: Year One Books

Publication Order of The Great British Bump-Off Books

Publication Order of Scary Go Round Books

Publication Order of Steeple Books

John Alison is a Graphic novel and comics book author from the UK. He was born in taste and style deep in a small village in the UK and from a very early age, he was exposed to American comics. He spent years honing his massive body and mind to try to get rid of the colonial cultural infection. As an independent web-based cartoonist, he is also one of the longest continuously published artists. He started writing in the late 1990s and has been at his craft ever since. During this time, he has worked himself into various iterations and wrote several webcomics over the years starting with Bobbins before moving to write on “Scary Go Round” and Bad Machinery. He was a developer of Tackleford at a time when most of his contemporaries were being written off as past their prime. He debuted his career with the weblog Bobbins in 1998 which he admits was variable in quality. However, it was what helped him develop his craft as he tried all manner of techniques and developed his style. He felt he could do better and went on to start writing “Scary Go Round” with many of the characters from Bobbins carried over. The Elsner Award-winning author currently lives in Letchworth, Garden City. He is the author of several successful comics including Bad Machinery, By Night and Steeple, Wicked Things, and Giant Days.

Alison does not remember the first comic he read even though as a child he read a lot of DC comics that his father would often bring home. He remembers a Superman issue in which the protagonist rubbed alien pollen on his head so that he could finally go to a normal barber and get his hair cut. He needed to escape a gorilla that took a dislike to his black hair and the young author was fascinated by the story. At about six years old, he was also taken by the 1982 issue of Arion. John Alison’s interest in graphic novels and comics continued throughout his high school and college years but it was not until he was done with university that he got into writing. After finishing college, he spent months trying to find a job while living at his parents’ house. It was then that he decided to write something that he submitted to the US comic syndicates. It was from that submission that he got the motivation to start writing the “Bobbins” comic strips that he put online to great reception. He was attracted to the form of writing as strips are typically a small and manageable unit which for a person of short attention span was heaven sent. The ease of relationship with the audience and the ease of access also worked to make his works perform even better than that of his peers.

While he has recently gotten into print, he is still writing webcomics on the side just to keep his hand on the going ons in the industry. As an independent publisher, he finds value in doing everything himself, especially at a time when there is so much unpredictability in the direct market. Nonetheless, he is unlikely to come up with long-running comic similar to what he did with “Scary Go Round” since building an audience is a lot of work that he now does not have. He is now fully focused on combining the traditional format with the webcomic format and this has worked quite well for him.

John Alison’s “The Case of the Team Spirit” is set in the town of Tackleford, England where mystery is the order of the day. Mildred, Charlotte, and Shaun the lead protagonists of the series just need to help a weird and old immigrant keep her house, Sonny, Linton, and Jack need to find out the reason for the curse that seems to have afflicted the proprietor of the local football stadium. If only they stopped going at each other, they might realize that they could have a shared solution. But when one is in the first year of Grammar School, all other things fade in importance when compared to trading cards, stylish jackets, friends, football, and the fancy wife of the nerdy teacher. And when a teen has to cram all these things into their small attention spans, just where will they find the time for some good old fashioned sleuthing.

John Alison’s “The Case of the Good Boy” that is the second novel of the “Bad Machinery” series sees the British detectives come back for another adventure. Toddlers have been going missing and the authorities believe the small town of Tackleford is harboring dangerous creatures. Just outside the city limits in the woods are monstrous beast-like large creatures roaming around. And then there is Archibald who is Mildred’s new dog even though he is a very strange dog as he takes his tea out of a cup. Everything becomes very interesting when Archibald the dog disappears and the boys get an idea of the type of dangerous beast they are dealing with. Could there be a connection between the two happenings? Mildred had once won a magic pencil from a carnival and they think that too could be connected. John Allison steps up in writing some of the best amateur kid sleuths in the mold of Enid Blyton’s “Famous Five.”

“The Case of the Simple Soul” is the third novel of the “Bad Machinery” series that Allison spun from “Scary Go Round” his online webcomic strip. The premise of the novel is that there is competition between two groups of high schoolers that are a group of boys and another of girls. They cheerily and genially compete to solve tough paranormal mysteries. Just like the previous novels in the series, the story is set in a small medium-sized British town and comes with a single mystery arc, several subplots, and several side businesses. Even though there is only one mystery overarching over the entire novel, there are a ton of one-off jokes and bits that set up some hilarious scenes in the story.