Scary Go Round

Scary Go Round

characters from left to right: Shelley, Amy and Erin
Author(s) John Allison
Website http://www.scarygoround.com/
Current status / schedule Ended
Launch date 2002-06-04[1]
End date 2009-09-11[2]
Genre(s) Paranormal, comedy
Preceded by Bobbins 1998-09-21 to 2002-06-03
Followed by Bad Machinery 2009-09-21 to present

Scary Go Round was a 2002 webcomic set in the fictional West Yorkshire[3] town of Tackleford, England, and written by John Allison. Scary Go Round was named one of the best webcomics of 2004 by The Webcomics Examiner. The Sunday Times describes it as "postmodern Brit horror" that is "subtle and stylishly drawn, with a bold cartoon edge".[4] The Morning Star has called it "brilliant, bonkers" and "the best British strip that I've yet found".[5] Scary Go Round won the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards in 2003 for Outstanding Original Digital Art, in 2005 and in 2007 for Outstanding Comic.

Scary Go Round started on 4 June 2002 as part of Modern Tales, roughly following on from Allison's previous comic, Bobbins. It featured bizarre happenings, a "quirky cast",[6] strange creatures, parallel universes, zombies, time travel, reincarnation, "and random spots of tea". Initially set as the lives of the barmaids Tessa and Rachel, it soon came to focus on another set of characters entirely. Amy Chilton, one of the core characters to succeed Tessa and Rachel, successfully made the transition from the author's 17-year-old scribblings, through the Bobbins era, and into Scary Go Round. Shelley Winters, another of the characters who made the transition from Bobbins, also featured heavily throughout the webcomic.

Scary Go Round ended on 11 September 2009. It was followed by a new strip, Bad Machinery, with elements in common with Scary Go Round, similar to its own transition from Bobbins.

History

John Allison started hand drawing and scanning the original Bobbins webcomic on 21 September 1998 up until mid 2000 when he changed to computer drawing with Adobe Illustrator.[7][8] Stephen Gerding described Bobbins as "kind of like "Friends", or "Coupling" with an office atmosphere, and John noted his later episodes got very bizarre and this, beginning in 2002, led to the supernatural tone of Scary Go Round."[7]

In a blog post dated 9 July 2009 Allison announced Scary Go Round would be ending in September 2009. It was replaced by Bad Machinery, a new strip with elements in common with SGR, similar to its transition from Bobbins.[9]

Style and influences

Though Scary Go Round does feature ongoing character arcs, and initially featured a lot of light horror content — influenced by print comic Scream!, J. Otto Seibold, Pete Fowler, Chris Sale, James Kochalka and Shag[7] – it is primarily a comedy; however, it is not a joke comic of the classic setup-punchline format. Its quirky sense of humor manifests primarily in the characters' distinctive dialogue.[7][10]

Stylistic changes

A page of September 2006.

From its inception in 2002 until August 2005, Scary Go Round was drawn in Adobe Illustrator. During that period Allison changed the style at least twice.[10] Some readers were upset when Allison killed off a major character,[11] and he admitted that this was a mistake and that he had since moved towards "ambient excitement" rather than shock.[12] Notable shifts in art style during this period include:

On 28 August 2005, Allison switched to hand-drawn art. This period lasted until the return of Illustrator on 17 November 2005. The characters' Illustrator-drawn faces were quite different from the August versions, having become harder-edged and less attractive due a professed lack of time.[13]

Hand-drawn art returned permanently on 17 April 2006. Notable shifts in art style during the contemporary hand-drawn period include:

Characters

Scary Go Round focuses on two overlapping but nevertheless distinct casts of characters: a set of bohemian twentysomethings and a group of uniform-wearing students at Tackleford Grammar school.[15]

Current major characters

Adults
Teenagers

Former major characters

Adults
Erin Winters
Teenagers

Collected editions

Spin Off Publications

The Giant Days book is a completely different story from the online chapter of the same name, although it shares the same protagonist (Esther de Groot).

Notes

  1. "Mo/Tu/Th/Fr Comic by John Allison". Scary Go Round. 4 June 2002. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
  2. "Post a Comment On: A hundred dance moves per minute". Retrieved 2009-08-12.
  3. "Monday-Friday Comic by John Allison". Scary Go Round. 16 February 2009. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
  4. O'Brien, Danny (26 February 2006). "Site test: The tooniverse explodes". The Sunday Times. p. 27. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
  5. Eagle, James (6 May 2006). "Wired: James Eagle looks at what the net has to offer in the form of comic strips". Morning Star.
  6. Warmoth
  7. 1 2 3 4 Stephen Gerding (29 September 2004). "SCARY-GO-ROUND: A John Allison Interview". Kung Fu Rodeo. Retrieved 2009-12-23.
  8. Leah Fitzgerald (1 March 2003). "Scary Go Chat: An online interview with John Allison by Leah Fitzgerald". comixtalk.com. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
  9. John Allison (9 July 2009). "The end, the beginning". SGRBlogspot. Blogspot. Retrieved 6 August 2009.
  10. 1 2 Whitney
  11. thunderchunky
  12. Tama Leaver
  13. "Mo/Tu/Th/Fr Comic by John Allison". Scary Go Round. 17 November 2005. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
  14. Allison, John. "Scary Go Round :: About the comic". Retrieved 2009-09-11.
  15. "Scary Go Round :: The Cast". Retrieved 2009-07-09.
  16. Allison, John (6 April 2008). "A hundred dance moves per minute: The magic hour". Retrieved 2009-09-11.
  17. 1 2 3 "SCARY GO ROUND T-SHIRTS, COMIC BOOKS". Archived from the original on 29 May 2005.

References

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