The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt

The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #1-4

by John Allison, Max Sarin (Artist)

When wildcat arson hits her new employer right where she lives, Shauna Wickle is drawn into the brutal and vindictive world of quilting, as sisterhood and community needlecraft deteriorate into internecine strife. With the promise of an end to all her financial worries, Shauna must cross enemy lines and infiltrate a cadre of 'monsters in human skin'. But they seem so nice?

Collects The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #1-#4.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Mystery, Humor, Fiction, Crime, Graphic Novels Comics

104 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2025

About the author

John Allison is the author and artist of the British webcomics Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See other authors with similar names.

Reviews

[Rod Brown]

Shauna Wickle has borrowed a boat for a solo summer adventure exploring the lengths of the canals of England, but a little accident has her mooring in a random town until she earns enough for a big repair. Her temporary job at a local quilt shop gets stressful when it seems a competing shop might be trying to drive them out of business through sabotage and Shauna offers to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Hijinks and silliness ensue.

The first book in this series stumbled by putting all the attention on the mystery and the setting, leaving little time for Shauna to have an inner life. The ratios are reversed this time, and I was more successfully entertained as I followed Shauna's investigation of the cut-throat world of craft store rivalry because I also got to see her interact with her friends from the Bad Machinery series, attempt a romantic fling, and take on some adult responsibility.

I'd welcome a third outing.


FOR REFERENCE:

Contains material originally published in single magazine form as The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #1-4.

[Joanne]

I read Volume 1 of this series a while ago, so by the time I picked this one up, I’d mostly forgotten who everyone was—especially Shauna’s circle—which made it a little harder to get invested. The quilt shop scenes were cozy and cute, but I remember enjoying the Great British Bake off baking competition setting in the earlier installment more.

That said, I’m glad I finally read it—it had been lingering on my Hoopla shelf and would’ve continued to haunt me otherwise. Overall, though, this one didn’t leave much of an impression. Mabel was cute.

[Mehsi]

A fun book though the mystery was a bit bland, but I loved the quilting war and Shauna was a hoot. Various fun characters or interesting at least, though Bryn was just meh. The art was fabulous!

And ugggghhhh those images you have to focus on or whatever and you see something, I NEVER SEEEEEEE ANYTHING. I hate those so much. That quilt SHOULD NOT HAVE WON.

[Mark Sutherland]

Cozy crime, where the mystery and consequences are mild at best but the madcap adventures and bad poetry along the way are what you're here for.

[Jillian]

This second volume in the series was a bit more of a miss for me. It still had the cozy mystery elements, but the stakes were just a little too silly, and I had trouble connecting with the characters. I liked the Great British Bake Off setting of the first volume more than the quilting competition in this one. The illustrations were fun, and I think I like the idea of it more than the execution.

Art: 4.5/5 Plot: 3/5 Writing: 4/5 My Enjoyment: 3.5/5

[Kate Adams]

I liked this second episode better than the first, possibly because I'm a quilter, but more likely because it felt like the story had a little bit more to it, that a reader could have possibly reached the same conclusion as the main character, which I find very important in a good mystery.

[Mariia]

3.4/5*

[PRL]

Just wonderful. During a barge holiday and summer romance Shauna gets dragged into the cut-throat world of quilting

[Steve]

Big John Allison fan, so always nice to step back into the bonhomie of the Tackleford world. This time we follow Shauna as she embarks on what should be a canal-boat adventure. Classic low-stakes hi jinks ensue while investigating sabotage in a pair of quilting shops, contrary to the death-themed title. Witty, but what's up with that?
Reading these stories is like spending an afternoon with an old friend sipping tea under cozy blankets. A nice respite from doom scrolling.

[Matt]

While the mystery isn't as tight as the first one and the magical whimsy wasn't as tied to the plot, this is another frothy delight, full of joyful surreal asides and winning characters amid a decent (if a little telegraphed) mystery. Did it have anything to do with the first one? I don't think so, so go in either order. But both were great reads.

[LG (A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions)]

Shauna's Uncle Jim has allowed her to borrow his boat, which she is now using to take a leisurely vacation. She lasts about three hours before her poor knowledge of knots and the distraction of a handsome young man result in great big scratches down the side of the boat.

In order to earn the money necessary to fix the boat, Shauna decides to stop for a while and work for the handsome young man's mother's quilting shop. When her new employer's electric car catches fire, the woman is convinced that the culprit is her business rival, Pat Price.

While Shauna loves investigating mysteries, this one gets her tangled up in multiple sets of loyalties. Can she figure out who the saboteur is, and also get her boat fixed?

Meh. I loved the first entry in this series. The mystery aspect was terrible, but the art was nice, the characters were quirky, and I loved The Great British Bake Off parody aspects. In this entry, we've got the great art, a few quirky characters (although only four or so are all that memorable), and I guess now we're branching off into parodying cozy mystery themes? Or something? I don't know.

Two warring quilting shops would fit right in with a cozy mystery series, but for some reason the parody aspect didn't appeal to me nearly as much this time around. And, again, the mystery was kind of terrible. I still liked the art, but Shauna and her interest in Bryn (the handsome young man) kind of annoyed me. Also, it didn't really make sense to me that the various quilting shop owners would so easily hire Shauna.

All in all, after how much I enjoyed the first volume, this was a disappointment.

Extras:

A couple character sketch pages from Max Sarin, and a larger version of the "stereogram quilt" (I still can't see the toucan on a skateboard that's supposedly hidden in the image).

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

[47Time]

The story is as PG13 as the artwork. Not bad, but also no better than a cartoon for middlegraders or a cheap teen movie. The only fun character was an old lady who couldn't care less about decorum. I suppose the story has a plot, some mystery and certainly a happy end for everyone. But since when am I a fan of happy ends? I thought it would be funnier, but no luck.

After scraping the boat her uncle intrusted to her, Shauna must get £4000 for repairs. She meets a guy named Bryn who recommends she work for his mother Daphne's shop that sells quilting stuff. Then Daphne's car is found burned to a crisp.

Daphne suspects the fire was started by Pat Price, a former employee who started her own quilting shop. Shauna has done some sleuthing in the past, so Daphne offers to pay for the boat repairs in exchange for proof that Pat was behind the car fire. Pat hires Daphne, specifically to hurt Daphne's business. Pat's store gets flooded after someone clogs the drains during the night. Pat suspects Daphne, so she sends Shauna to spy on her store.

Shauna is less sneaky than she thought. During a quilting show, the two warringcsides find the double agent. Old lady Mabel, another quilting specialist who owns a machine Daphne and Pat never got access to, decides the two should duke it out in a competition to see who is the quilting queen. Mabel decide they are both winners, so the two declare a truce. They decide to split the bill for Shauna's boat repairs.

The mystery of the burning car and clogged drain are still unsolved, though. Until Shaune realises that Bryn was behind them. His intention was to trigger the war that ended the conflict between Daphne and Pat. And nobody gets punished for it.

[Maggie Carpenter Sammeroff]

I read this because I’m trying to complete the NYPL’s Summer Bingo in order to get a free hat, and one of the squares requires you to read a graphic novel. I am not super into graphic novels, they’re hard for my brain to process. I am too easily distracted for all that to be on the page. But I want a NYPL hat, so I went to my local branch and headed to the graphic novel section. My branch’s copies of Fun Home, Maus, and Watchmen were checked out so I pushed past several Marvel comics and came across this, The Great British Bump-Off: To Kill or Be Quilt. I love a cozy mystery and I love to sew so I went with it.

And turns out, it’s super cute! I like the art style and the story was silly but fun. This barely qualifies as a mystery, like there were virtually no scenes trying to solve the mystery, but I found the rivalry fun and the setting was cute. The main character gives Elle Woods vibes, which I always enjoy, and Mabel was a delight. Not sure I’m a graphic novel convert but reading this did make me feel like a teenager on tumblr again, and as I grow ever closer to my 30th year there’s something comforting about that. I know there’s another comic with these characters in a bake off setting and if it’s available next time I’m at the library I’ll probably check it out.

[Dave Schaafsma]

I loved the fun girl roommates at uni series Giant Days by John Allison and Max Sarin, I had sampled and enjoyed Allison's Bad Machinery YA mysery/humor series, and I needed a laugh, so I picked this up at the library when I saw it. And it did the trick, I smiled a lot as Allison still lands the irrepressible satirical jokes, and Sarin creates matching art that is vibrant and kooky and fun. Madcap might be the word.

Shauna Wickle is one of the YA tecs of Bad Machinery, and so she solves a mystery here. She borrows her uncle's boat but isn't--of course--sufficiently prepared to safely take care fof it. She admits that when he was explaining nautical knots she was "being bothered by a bee," which leads to the boat getting loose, damaged and Shauna in debt. She gets a job at a quilt shop, and we are suddenly part of the brutal world of competitive quilting. Sisterhood, community needlecare? Forget it. When one quilting shop's owner's car is burned to the ground, Shauna is on the case infiltrating the underbelly of two competing quilting shoppes. Pretty fun, light, silly.

[Michel Albert]

I loved the first Great British Bump-Off series, and the follow-up, Kill or Be Quilt, doesn't have a mystery quite on par with the original (slow to come and easy to figure out), but Max Sarin's art more than makes up for it, Shauna and her world rendered in a cute Euro-style that takes Manga-like liberties as usual, but perhaps even more inventively this time. Not to say John Allison's script isn't perfectly funny and charming, because it is. And never apologizes for being so British. I think that's part of the brand. In this one, Shauna scraps a river barge and has to work in shops for the summer, falling right into a turf war between quilting stores. But there's also love in the air, coming from (or at) a rather ambivalent beat poet whose mom runs out of the shops. As usual, a large cast of distinctive characters, and a niche world rendered with sincerity and humor. Allison and Sarin could be doing this monthly and I'd be there for it.

[Norman Cook]

2026 Eisner Award finalist - Best Humor Publication

Collects The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #1-4.

This is a fun little cozy mystery where the mystery is really the least important part of the story. It is primarily a charming and often humorous character study of the (mostly) women of a small English town who are obsessed with quilting. Our protagonist, Shauna, only wants a part-time job to pay for the accidental damage she did to her uncle's boat, but instead she gets embroiled in the egos and feuding between two rival quilt shops. Will she be able to bring these ladies together, and more importantly, will she find romance with the cute bad-boy poet she just met? Max Sarin provides bold, cartoony artwork that fits the tone of the book.

[Alex Sarll]

Given The Great British Bump-Off was set around a TV cooking competition, I naturally assumed this sequel would include a TV sewing competition. But no! And hurrah for that, because I really do dislike competitive TV*, even in fiction. Instead, Shauna tries to take a canal-boat holiday, only to find herself mired in the feud between two fabric shops in a picturesque little town. Allison's weird way with words, Sarin's super-expressive figures and gift for cartoon atmosphere...the mystery itself is bobbins, but even that, and the way it's flipped around, reassures me that the Giant Days team are back on form.

*Except Taskmaster, obviously.

[Steven]

I'll always turn up for a John Allison comic! In his follow-up to The Great British Bump-Off, Shauna infiltrates the high-stakes world of quilting to solve a new cozy mystery. I definitely enjoyed the cameos by Shauna's friends from series past; though, I wish we'd gotten to know the supporting craft shop characters a bit better. This is one area that I thought the previous volume handled better. Here's hoping there's more in store...

[Chris Lemmerman]

There hasn't been a John Allison/Max Sarin comic yet that I haven't adored, and Kill Or Be Quilt certainly doesn't buck the trend. Allison's brand of humour vibes with mine perfectly, and he and Sarin are the perfect one-two punch to make the jokes land and the characters all pop off the page with personality.

In fact, the mystery itself almost takes second fiddle to the characters here, which is amusing given how it was the driving force in the previous book. Either way - more of these please.

[Abigail Pankau]

Shauna has borrowed her uncle’s boat for a summer holiday, but a mishap with knots while trying to impress a boy has left the side horribly scraped up. Shauna takes a job at a local quilt shop to help pay for repairs, but a suspicious car fire means Shauna is soon hired to find out if the rival quilt shop is behind the arson. Will she be able to find the culprit? Or will it kick off a quilting war?

Super fun & short graphic novel mystery. Lots of exaggerated, ridiculous fun and a short mystery. Cute, quick read.

[scarlettraces]

For some reason which I am too lazy to articulate, this was so much better than the first in the series. I think the cameos by the Tackleford gang helped, also the incomplete limerick made me laugh like a loon.

[Full disclosure, I loved Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery and have liked the collaborations less, although Giant Days got pretty damn good. Plots are always less important than the character interactions and the comedy gold, so I could care less about whether "the mystery is a bit lacking" - there you go!]

[Jack Bates]

I enjoyed this a lot more than the original Bump Off! A good story, it's got Lottie and Claire and Mildred in it (albeit briefly) and there's more room for Shauna to be Shauna. I still prefer Allison's own drawings, but Max Sarin's are pretty great and this has a lovely bouncey shiny feel that I really enjoyed.

Shauna's on holiday in her uncle's narrowboat. She's not far from home (canals are slow) but still manages to get caught up in a mystery when she meets a Bad Boy Poet (red flags ahoy) and the feuding owners of the two rival quilt shops in a charming little mill town.

[Dan]

The second volume of this Bad Machinery comic spin-off! From the creators of Giant Days! This time Baking is replaced by Sewing. I enjoyed this but prefer the original 'mystery kids' era of Bad Machinery, because it suited my sense of humour more. Am I just old now? ;-) Regardless, it's still a good read.

[Ya Boi Be Reading]

Compared to the previous the mystery is far weaker (and a bit easy to tell imo). Don't come in expecting a mystery. If you like the subplot of the baking show in the first series you’ll like this one since the mystery is sidelined for the quilting and slice of life stuff. That part is good but nothing too spectacular for me. The Giant Days creators do a great job of creating a cozy and intimate atmosphere though it is a bit weaker here than in Giant Days. I enjoy how each character feels like a real person. Every person, especially the middle-aged quilters, all feel like a real-life type of person with just a touch of caricature to really sell you on them in the limited page count you have with them all.

[Clint]

Nothing from Allison and Sarin has quite recaptured the magic of Giant Days for me since that series ended, but this is realistically pretty close to an early volume of GD, before its cast was as built out and beloved. I know several of the characters here are Bad Machinery regulars, but I’d love to see Sarin drawing stories for them more regularly than a one-off miniseries every now and then.

[Sesana]

Shauna is a delight, and the quilt shop war is exactly the kind of medium level stakes that give a dash of suspense without much consequence. Bryn is a drag on the entire book, quite frankly, but I could deal with him.

[Arend]

Love the humor, and the art was just perfect. But the mystery was a dud for me.

[Carol Tilley]

3.5

[Kaitlyn Whitten]

3.5🌟

A cute, short read.

[Eric]

improves on its scattered and frantic predecessor with a cleaner, streamlined, cozy mystery and some fun characters. A low stakes little snack