This spring, Shauna Wickle from Dark Horse Comics’ hit series The Great British Bump-Off is back to put her sleuthing skills to the test. In The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt, Shauna is heading off on a canal boat holiday, with her friends sending her off and wishing her well. But, of course, being Shauna, a vacation can’t just be a vacation as she’ll become entangled in mystery and romance and intrigue. What kind of intrigue? John Allison, writer of the first series and this sequel, isn’t spilling, but that’s part of the fun, right?

I spoke with John Allison about the world of The Great British Bump-Off, where we find the characters in Kill or Be Quilt, working with the creative team, and how Miss Marple and Poirot stories have influenced his work.

The first volume of The Great British Bump-Off was such a lovely revelation and made me rediscover my love of mysteries and sleuth stories. It’s clear that Allison has a great handle and love for whodunnits and that’s certainly reflected again in Kill or Be Quilt.

 

THE GREAT BRITISH BUMP-OFF #1 cover

 

FreakSugar: For folks who maybe didn’t catch the last miniseries, what can you tell about the world of The Great British Bump-Off?

John Allison: All they need to know from the previous miniseries is that Shauna Wickle, 20, is a reliable solver of mysteries, with a well-developed skillset from her past as a teenage sleuth. But as a habitual high achiever, she tends to push herself beyond her limits, take too much on, and come apart at the seams.

FS: Where do we find Shauna and the gang at the beginning of The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt?

JA: Shauna’s friends are waving her off on a holiday, a canal boat holiday, the most gentle and relaxing holiday possible, conducted at the lowest possible speed. The question I do not address here is why they are not going on holiday with her. The answer, I can exclusively reveal to you, is that for Shauna, holidays do not and cannot “stick” and they know this.

FS: You’re back with Max Sarin and their art is just as engaging and ebullient as the last volume—maybe more so! What is the collaboration process like between you two and the rest of the team?

JA: I love working with Max. As I am the artist on most of my work, drawing the stories is part of the process (even as I write, I am laying out panels on paper to make sure pages work) and it is hard to give up. But Max Sarin can run rings round me. Alongside the typed scripts, I send them rough breakdowns of the pages. Max has a meticulous drawing style, whereas I am pretty fast, so the idea is just to take a little of the strain and if they use nothing I sent because they have a better idea, that’s fine. Once the pages are done they go to Sammy Borras to colour and Jim Campbell to letter – both excellent professionals with deep experience. The whole team lives, or has lived, in the UK, which I think helps with a book set here.

FS: The first Great British Bump-Off tale was a ton of fun. What’s your favorite part of working on the book?

JA: For me, these are hard books to write. If something is fun, it’s not the result of me lying in a hammock eating grapes and laughing as I dash off another witticism. 88 pages isn’t very many to resolve a story with a lot of plot and a lot of characters. It’s incredibly tight. So the best part for me is seeing the artwork, that’s when I can get in the hammock because I have total faith in the team. I never have to worry about seeing a page I wrote and going “oh no no no”. It’s always “oh yes yes yes.”

FS: The newest volume is a new mystery. Do you have any favorite “whodunnit” stories?

JA: I grew up with Agatha Christie. I think I’ve read every Miss Marple and every Poirot, they’re hard coded into me. And I love the 1980s/1990s TV adaptations. They’re the peak of a certain kind of British programme-making, it’s not so much the drama as the texture, and texture is hugely important to me in world building.

 

THE GREAT BRITISH BUMP-OFF #1 variant cover

 

FS: Following up on that, is writing a mystery different from other stories you tackle? Do you approach the narrative differently?

JA: It’s just harder. To maintain any sort of intrigue requires the juggling of lots of people, objects, and potential motivations. It’s quantum, everyone is Schrödinger’s suspect; they both did and didn’t do it (whatever “it” is) until you open the box. There’s an element of problem solving in everything write, but the Shauna stories have required a lot of discipline because there’s not much room just to have characters make a whimsical digression just to build character and setting. The whimsical digressions have to have a purpose.

FS: Shauna meets Bryn in the first issue. I’m already suspicious. Should I be suspicious?

JA: Bryn seems mercurial. That can be appealing, right? But also, deeply unreliable. He’s a small-town dreamer.

FS: What are you reading right now?

JA: Werner Herzog’s autobiography, Every Man For Himself And God Against All. He has lived quite the life. Then next up is The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, an Irish author who I think is currently peerless. I try to alternate fiction and nonfiction now because I didn’t pick up a novel for a long time, which was not great.

FS: Are there any other projects you’re working on you’d like to discuss?

JA: I’m working on my webcomic, Solver, about another former teen detective (she and Shauna are both characters from my 2010s series Bad Machinery) who has set herself up as a sort of mobile agony aunt. There are some little Solver cameos in Kill or Be Quilt. It’s free to read at badmachinery.com, new pages M-W-F.

FS: If you had a final pitch for The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt, what would it be?

JA: I’m pretty sure this is the first and last monthly comic book miniseries there will ever be about quilting. No one else has dared to try this. I did. It took me a quarter century to get here. I could not do it alone. I worked with the best in the business. You owe it to yourself to – and I do not wish to understate this – witness history being made.

The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #1 goes on sale Wednesday, April 9, 2025, from Dark Horse Comics. Final order cutoff for issue #1 is Monday, March 3, 2025.

From the official issue description:

A new cozy mystery from Giant Days’ John Allison and Max Sarin following up to their hit baking murder mystery The Great British Bump-Off.

Surely there is no vacation more drama-free than a boating holiday along the sleepy canals of Yorkshire? Oh, you’d think so. Sadly, for Shauna Wickle, it’s tough to escape poisonous small-town rivalries (and sultry romantic entanglements) when travelling at a steady two to three miles per hour. And to make things worse, she’s about to find out how ruinously expensive a hastily-tied knot can be…