Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
No End
Erli, Kromi
A queer romance about people attempting to build lives in a cold, post-apocalyptic world ravaged by hordes of undead.
Shaderunners
Alex Assan, Lin Darrow
A ragtag band of bootleggers open a speakeasy for bottled colour in the greyscale city of Ironwell.
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
All Known Alternatives
Karolina 'Kajotko' Jankiewicz
Akane has only one way to get back home: collect the 42 keys to parallel worlds. Eri and Ben are just trying to get through the summer before university. When a magical key turns up in an old spare set, all three are forced to change their plans and fast.
Hemlock
Josceline Fenton
A witch accidentally marries a monster, and now she and her familiar has to navigate life around her monstrous husband and her even more terrifying in-laws.
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i hope she’s not all “no it can’t be! he was gonna be my husband” that will cause a huge fight with sarah and im really liking the big sister/little sister dynamic they’ve got going
Yes yes yes! Faz, the fountain of ultimate wisdom can enlighten us with his bar-graph of truthiness.
“…This line represents ‘x’, where x is the amount of roofies in your system, multiplied by the measurement of the bulge in your stomach, all divided by the inverse of the likelihood of pastorson McRapist being brought on the maury show by you. “
Prodigal refers to the word “prodigy.” The “prodigal son” was basically “the talented one.” The one who was expected to “be somebody.”
A man had two sons, one of whom was expected to go on to do great things, because he was so talented/smart/whatever. The talented (or prodigal) son left home and basically learned that it doesn’t matter how gifted you are, being a success requires work. He wasted all his money and goofed off, and wound up broke and homeless.
I’m sure you know how the rest of the story goes.
tl,dr: “prodigal” does not mean “spendthrift” or “wandering.” It’s the word “prodigy” as an adjective.
Amazi-girl missed him when he mindlessly wandered into that gay bikers club, making indiscernable moaning sounds with his pants hanging off his ankles.
Oh dear. I’m no expert but I’d say this sets back any chance of a police report in one of Ryan’s orifices. I’m hoping that it all comes back to her, and not just because of that…the idea of any kind of permanent memory loss for her is actually really scary.
As I understand it, she’s just lost most of the evening. It’s retrograde, not anterograde amnesia like in Memento or Finding Nemo.
FWIW, Joyce’s memory loss probably means that any chance of prosecuting Ryan was doomed from the start, no matter what decisions Joyce, Dorothy, Billie and Sarah made after hitting him.
Her lack of going to a hospital to get her blood drawn and tested for the drug doomed her chance of being able to prosecute Ryan. Sexual assault is hard to convict, attempted sexual assault is harder, attempted sexual assault in a “date”-ish setting (they were seen talking happily earlier by a number of people) is excessively hard.
Still, there are other ways to make Ryan pay than the legal channels. As a commenter below has stated, he has a characteristic wound and an entire party’s worth of witnesses to his deeds. Even if the police are unable to act upon him, the entire campus is well aware by now that he’s a raping bastard. If he should ever return to an IU party, he WILL be recognized.
Of course, he could just hop over to another campus’ parties, but the power of electronic social networks is such that he will never be totally safe to prowl again.
What likely happened is the effects of the drug interfered with her short-term memory getting processed and stored in long-term memory. Basically the neural equivalent of not saving and letting the temp files delete. It affects the later part of the evening but shouldn’t extend past that. Unless Willis has plans for that.
When I was I didn’t remember conversations had with people starting pretty much from the moment it happened. Sane and rational conversations held with people that would provide no indication I’d just been drugged. But I still remembered everything before.
There’s actually reason to believe that some time passed between when she started sipping his drink and when the bathroom finally opened up – she complained of the delay.
“It is unfortunate for me to say, but the man you speak of drugged you and attempted to go have sex with you. However, you were saved by your friend Sarah.”
Is that any good?
Oh boy. Hate to break it to ya Joyce…… Where’s the mind wiper when you need it so we can reverse it to get her to remember. Though it’d probably be best to make her forget being at the party altogether.
I almost did too, but I was trying to figure out the easiest way to break it to her and that came up. Unfortunately, the Mind Wiper had quite a few setbacks in it so it might not work too well.
Whether Willis intended for us to do so or not, I find tonight’s strip very sad. I’ve a feeling Joyce will never quite be the same again after Sarah tells her what the “nice pastor’s boy” was up to. ;__;
On the other hand, she seems to have recovered just fine after Joe’s betrayal of her expectations. So maybe she’ll write Ryan off as another ‘Mr Wrong’ and move straight on to the next Mr Right.
Joe didn’t really do anything actually *evil*, though. She also went into the date knowing he’s Jewish and the idea that she would convert him.
If you’re as naive as Joyce, learning that people can outright lie to you (Joe didn’t, Ryan did) about being good in order to take advantage of you in one of the worst ways… that’s kind of earth shattering.
I’m just saying I can see it going either way – especially since she doesn’t actually remember the betrayal. She could still be shattered by the second-hand account, but alternatively she could fail to internalize it and, after a troubled morning/day/week, fall back into her usual mindset.
>.>
<.<
This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system. This was only a test. If there'd been a real emergency, it'd be something like "HELP HELPUS PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL HUMANITY!! NO NO NO!!"
Joyce had been handling herself really well up until a**hole made his rush at her and Sarah showed him the error of his ways..so to speak.
Joyce may just come through this better than Sarah thinks she will. She was attacked, she fought back, friends helped her. Now all they have to do is ‘find’ the ‘body’ that crawled away…
I’m kind of surprised she says “that doesn’t sound like me.” Again, from everything we’ve seen of her, here and in the Walkyverse, since she’s female, she’s probably had “A HEATHEN WILL RAPE YOU” drilled into her brain, and as casually as she broke the glass on his face, I doubt it would be beyond the realm of her sober mind.
Joyce probably doesn’t acknowledge that “rage Joyce” is part of her personality. If you asked her, she probably would fail to recall that she personally participated in beating Joe – the whole evening’s failure would undoubtedly be his own doing.
He was drugged too. Also, coincidentally, he’s got scars like someone attacked him with a broken bottle. Also, he looks just like the guy who drugged you. But the nice pastor boy went back home. Yeah.
I know that it was mostly hinted that Joyce was going to be okay.
But today i finally let a huge ‘phew’ seeing her really ok after the whole ordeal.
Damn you Willis for taking 1 1/2 week to show her.
Okay, on one hand, if real world logic applies here, he’s not going to get arrested or prosecuted. On the other, by now the entire campus knows what he did. He’s got obvious facial lacerations, internal contusions, broken bones, etc. He’d better get used to severe injuries, because I don’t see this campus letting him off easy.
Which will go nowhere once the police get a look at those guileless baby blues and the other witnesses turn it into a he said/she said. If Ryan’s smart, he’ll realize his best bet is just to let this fade into obscurity.
Of course, if Ryan were smart, he wouldn’t have done this or lost his temper in the first place, so who knows?
Seriously! If he’d just stayed calm for five minutes longer, he would have had a happy fun evening and got away scot free. That is literally all it would have taken.
Unfortunately, even Joyce’s big blue eyes might not help her. Joyce didn’t go to the police or the hospital when it happened. She doesn’t remember Ryan drugging her, and can’t prove it was him who did it, particularly when the party has such a big group of people there. Sarah, who saved Joyce, is the only one who saw Ryan assaulting her, and then she proceeded to beat the crap out of him with a baseball bat. People saw Sarah do this, but didn’t see Ryan do anything. Because the girls didn’t take immediate action and go to the proper authorities, there is now no evidence that Ryan actual did anything to Joyce. Unless they can find evidence, Ryan could easily get off scott-free unfortunately.
Ugh… this is so sad. And I really worry about what the aftermath of this is going to be. Particularly since they never went to the hospital or called the police.
Wait – how does Sarah know that Joyce is talking about Ryan? She didn’t discuss his upbringing with him before she beaned him, nor did any of the rest of our heroes. For all Sarah knows Joyce could be talking about somebody else.
This should be pretty easy to explain, actually. Just mention how Joe was also theoretically religious (being from a jewish family and all) but turned out to be kind of a sleeze, then show her that “powers of ten” video and explain that this guy was basically the entire universe if Joe is planet earth.
This should be pretty easy to explain, actually. Just mention how Joe was also theoretically religious (being from a jewish family and all) but turned out to be kind of a sleeze, then show her that “powers of ten” video and explain that this guy was basically the entire universe if Joe is planet earth.
So far in this storyline, only Amber, Walky, and Sarah have been confirmed to be wearing pants. Dina, Mike, and Joyce (and Sal) could easily have been wearing underwear or less in the shots seen so far. And Walkywas only confirmed to be pantsed when he left his bedroom; his status while talking to Mike and browsing womens’ clothing online was unknown.
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This could take some explaining. Where’s a chalkboard when you need it?
Sarah’s got some ‘splainin’ to do…
Some serious ‘splaining. Serious Joeing ‘splaining.
We need Faz here to explain it all.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
i hope she’s not all “no it can’t be! he was gonna be my husband” that will cause a huge fight with sarah and im really liking the big sister/little sister dynamic they’ve got going
Yes yes yes! Faz, the fountain of ultimate wisdom can enlighten us with his bar-graph of truthiness.
“…This line represents ‘x’, where x is the amount of roofies in your system, multiplied by the measurement of the bulge in your stomach, all divided by the inverse of the likelihood of pastorson McRapist being brought on the maury show by you. “
Forget Faz, bring in Clarissa, please!
As in she who explains it all?
Robin’s campaign office
Where a scandal is about to break out…
Now she has the same hand as the scout
Noooooo Joyce.
“He wasn’t hurt was he?? I would just DIE if he was!! D= “
“because i’d neeeeeeeever do anything violent” *cough cough* Joe *cough cough*
not that i dont totally think ryan deserved that and so much more.
Poor Joyce
But does she remember being queen of the drunks? She can’t forget her people.
Or “big sister”?
That was while she was asleep. She wasn’t aware of anything at that point.
Yeah, “sis” can lead the drunks in her place…
“do you have anymore of that delicious sprite?”
IT WAS TERRIBLE SIERRA MIST. THE DEVIL’S DRINK.
She only drinks drugged Sierra Mist! Not that weak stuff!
It’s going to be fun for me to watch, at least.
…that’s probably not a good sign.
What is the religious equivalent to falling off the wagon called?
Heretic?
Turning plowshares into swords?
Going prodigal?
Compared to what she did to ryan’s face, which was “going ape$#!+”
Prodigal actually doesn’t mean what most people thinks it means.
A person who spends money in a recklessly extravagant way?
Prodigal refers to the word “prodigy.” The “prodigal son” was basically “the talented one.” The one who was expected to “be somebody.”
A man had two sons, one of whom was expected to go on to do great things, because he was so talented/smart/whatever. The talented (or prodigal) son left home and basically learned that it doesn’t matter how gifted you are, being a success requires work. He wasted all his money and goofed off, and wound up broke and homeless.
I’m sure you know how the rest of the story goes.
tl,dr: “prodigal” does not mean “spendthrift” or “wandering.” It’s the word “prodigy” as an adjective.
According to the OED, you’re about as wrong as wrong gets.
Origin of PRODIGAL
Latin prodigus, from prodigere to drive away, squander, from pro-, prod- forth + agere to drive — more at pro-, agent
Wandering, right? Lost? Something like that?
I think it’s universally called a bruise, and possible fractures. How high off the ground is this wagon?
That got a laugh out of me. Well done.
Schism?
Mormon?
Being a holy roller?
Apostasy.
I believe most would call it backsliding.
A wagon? I’LL STEAL IT! NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!
That makes you the pro from Dover, boy.
“What is backsliding? Religious colloquialisms for $400 Alex.”
Lets get ryan in on this.
“Losing my religion”?
Doubting.
Lapse, actually. As in “a lapsed catholic.”
Nobody has seen him since.
State Troopers are preparing to search lake monroe.
Amazi-girl missed him when he mindlessly wandered into that gay bikers club, making indiscernable moaning sounds with his pants hanging off his ankles.
No one ever saw him again.
Who said it was Amazi-girl?
Dude, HE was the rapist. Why you gotta make homosexual bikers into rapists to punish him? That’s messed up…
As messed up as kicking a man while he’s down with a scar in god knows where?
Oh dear. I’m no expert but I’d say this sets back any chance of a police report in one of Ryan’s orifices. I’m hoping that it all comes back to her, and not just because of that…the idea of any kind of permanent memory loss for her is actually really scary.
As I understand it, she’s just lost most of the evening. It’s retrograde, not anterograde amnesia like in Memento or Finding Nemo.
FWIW, Joyce’s memory loss probably means that any chance of prosecuting Ryan was doomed from the start, no matter what decisions Joyce, Dorothy, Billie and Sarah made after hitting him.
Blurry amnesia?
Her lack of going to a hospital to get her blood drawn and tested for the drug doomed her chance of being able to prosecute Ryan. Sexual assault is hard to convict, attempted sexual assault is harder, attempted sexual assault in a “date”-ish setting (they were seen talking happily earlier by a number of people) is excessively hard.
DING-DING-DING! We have a winner!
Still, there are other ways to make Ryan pay than the legal channels. As a commenter below has stated, he has a characteristic wound and an entire party’s worth of witnesses to his deeds. Even if the police are unable to act upon him, the entire campus is well aware by now that he’s a raping bastard. If he should ever return to an IU party, he WILL be recognized.
Of course, he could just hop over to another campus’ parties, but the power of electronic social networks is such that he will never be totally safe to prowl again.
Whew…well, that makes things simpler…
…now they just have to castrate him.
Oh god, more memory loss for Joyce?
Joyce has dealt with more cases of amnesia than the cast of Smallville.
A show she doesn’t recall watching, by the way.
Which makes Joyce luckier then the some. I wish I could forget most of Smallville.
That was in another comicverse, guys… remember what David so politely asked us.
To stop claiming that Ethan is gay?
I loved the blur! But why did he look so much like clark kent?
And now she’s gonna fall in looooove with walky. which will create a weird triangle what with dorothy being in the picture…
What likely happened is the effects of the drug interfered with her short-term memory getting processed and stored in long-term memory. Basically the neural equivalent of not saving and letting the temp files delete. It affects the later part of the evening but shouldn’t extend past that. Unless Willis has plans for that.
I’m actually surprised she doesn’t remember Ryan shouting. When my gf was drugged she could remember a few minutes after the event.
When I was I didn’t remember conversations had with people starting pretty much from the moment it happened. Sane and rational conversations held with people that would provide no indication I’d just been drugged. But I still remembered everything before.
There’s actually reason to believe that some time passed between when she started sipping his drink and when the bathroom finally opened up – she complained of the delay.
Bat credit card.
Dont.Tempt.Me.
Are you trying to make things worse?
Ice puns would be making things worse….
Ice puns wouldn’t stand a snowflake in hell’s chance in today’s comments.
Ice-ee what you did there.
Cool it, you guys.
JUst chill out everyone.
No, if you’re Denny O’Neill, it just doesn’t get worse than the Bat credit card.
“welllll, other than the gash on his face and broken ribs….”
Look on the bright side, Sarah. After your little confession, at least you don’t have to deal with “You like me! You really, really like me!”
Uh oh, this can’t be good.
We need someone with great understanding, maturity and sensitivity to talk to Joyce about last night, unfortunately Mike isn’t around.
He’s off Joeing your mom. For a nickel.
In her faaaaaaaace…or her Faaaaaaaaz!
With no paaaaants.
But with his penis.
“It is unfortunate for me to say, but the man you speak of drugged you and attempted to go have sex with you. However, you were saved by your friend Sarah.”
Is that any good?
Oh man, that just made me laugh out loud. I feel like such a bad person. How dare I laugh at Sarah’s exasperation.
This will get interesting. Maybe Amazi-Girl can help
Oh boy. Hate to break it to ya Joyce…… Where’s the mind wiper when you need it so we can reverse it to get her to remember. Though it’d probably be best to make her forget being at the party altogether.
Oh, geez, the mind wiper. I totally missed THAT little parallel.
I almost did too, but I was trying to figure out the easiest way to break it to her and that came up. Unfortunately, the Mind Wiper had quite a few setbacks in it so it might not work too well.
That depends on the perspective, Sarah.
Call me slow on the uptake, but I’m getting that de ja vu feeling…
Not again!
“Losing your faith” or “apostasy,” depending on how hard you do it.
This was supposed to go under the thread about falling off religious wagons.
Normally, you sit the victim down when giving them bad news. Looks like Sarah needs to sit down instead. (With something strong after.)
Poor girl =/
No he’s not fine, Joyce. He’s probably in the hospital judging by how bad Sarah beat the tar out of him.
To say nothing of the massive cut Joyce herself inflicted on him.
A huge scar over the face–inflicted by the protagonist–gives him great possibility to become the strip’s cloaked/masked supervillain.
Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease let that culminate in a massive fight across campus between him and Amazi-girl in which many buildings are destroyed.
He can go all Phantom of the Opera with a mask over half his face. =P
Whether Willis intended for us to do so or not, I find tonight’s strip very sad. I’ve a feeling Joyce will never quite be the same again after Sarah tells her what the “nice pastor’s boy” was up to. ;__;
agreed
On the other hand, she seems to have recovered just fine after Joe’s betrayal of her expectations. So maybe she’ll write Ryan off as another ‘Mr Wrong’ and move straight on to the next Mr Right.
Joe didn’t really do anything actually *evil*, though. She also went into the date knowing he’s Jewish and the idea that she would convert him.
If you’re as naive as Joyce, learning that people can outright lie to you (Joe didn’t, Ryan did) about being good in order to take advantage of you in one of the worst ways… that’s kind of earth shattering.
I’m just saying I can see it going either way – especially since she doesn’t actually remember the betrayal. She could still be shattered by the second-hand account, but alternatively she could fail to internalize it and, after a troubled morning/day/week, fall back into her usual mindset.
Hmm, that’s true…
What I fear is that she’ll refuse to believe Sarah. *crosses fingers in fervent hope that this isn’t the case*
“He’s probably fine, he just got a gash in the face, as well as some blunt head trauma. HINT HINT.”
Ah I see what you did there… For a nickel.
Oh and it seems the the f word has been replaced with “Joe;” well met Mr.Willis very well met.
Wait, what? Does it really? Fuck.
>.>
<.<
This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system. This was only a test. If there'd been a real emergency, it'd be something like "HELP HELPUS PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL HUMANITY!! NO NO NO!!"
Thank you.
Wait, really? Motherjoe-er.
Joyce had been handling herself really well up until a**hole made his rush at her and Sarah showed him the error of his ways..so to speak.
Joyce may just come through this better than Sarah thinks she will. She was attacked, she fought back, friends helped her. Now all they have to do is ‘find’ the ‘body’ that crawled away…
I’m kind of surprised she says “that doesn’t sound like me.” Again, from everything we’ve seen of her, here and in the Walkyverse, since she’s female, she’s probably had “A HEATHEN WILL RAPE YOU” drilled into her brain, and as casually as she broke the glass on his face, I doubt it would be beyond the realm of her sober mind.
So what you’re saying is that Joyce was not herself when she broke the glass on Ryan’s face?
She was possessed!
Joyce probably doesn’t acknowledge that “rage Joyce” is part of her personality. If you asked her, she probably would fail to recall that she personally participated in beating Joe – the whole evening’s failure would undoubtedly be his own doing.
This.
He was drugged too. Also, coincidentally, he’s got scars like someone attacked him with a broken bottle. Also, he looks just like the guy who drugged you. But the nice pastor boy went back home. Yeah.
Imaginary panel 6:
Sarah: “Actually, he died before the party. The rapist killed him and wore his skin to lure you into having sex.”
Joyce makes a face like the “Scream” painting.
Really loving this dynamic between Joyce and Sarah. ^_^ Can’t wait to see more.
And yes, Joyce. He went home…to KINGDOM COME! MWAHAHAH! >:D
And this is one of the reasons they should have called for an ambulance.
I know that it was mostly hinted that Joyce was going to be okay.
But today i finally let a huge ‘phew’ seeing her really ok after the whole ordeal.
Damn you Willis for taking 1 1/2 week to show her.
Is panel 2 the only time we’ve ever seen Sarah without angry eyes?
No… when she was watching over Joyce in bed, she wasn’t wearing them.
Okay, on one hand, if real world logic applies here, he’s not going to get arrested or prosecuted. On the other, by now the entire campus knows what he did. He’s got obvious facial lacerations, internal contusions, broken bones, etc. He’d better get used to severe injuries, because I don’t see this campus letting him off easy.
Assuming, of course, he’s a student. I don’t recall if he was or not. I don’t believe he is
and now joyce is reminding me of aunt may from the 90s cartoon. always calling every supervillain she casually meets “a nice young man”.
…
…….
In his FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE?
And I’m the Head Alien. Must have been the inclusion of ‘Lord’.
Time for SOUL CRUSH.
It’s bad enough already that her masturbating hand is injured, she doesn’t need more bad news.
Just means she has to cross-train. It’s not that hard to do…
…and Ryan files a police report saying she got drunk and assaulted him.
That’s what I fear.
Which will go nowhere once the police get a look at those guileless baby blues and the other witnesses turn it into a he said/she said. If Ryan’s smart, he’ll realize his best bet is just to let this fade into obscurity.
Of course, if Ryan were smart, he wouldn’t have done this or lost his temper in the first place, so who knows?
Seriously! If he’d just stayed calm for five minutes longer, he would have had a happy fun evening and got away scot free. That is literally all it would have taken.
Isn’t that a joyous thought?
Unfortunately, even Joyce’s big blue eyes might not help her. Joyce didn’t go to the police or the hospital when it happened. She doesn’t remember Ryan drugging her, and can’t prove it was him who did it, particularly when the party has such a big group of people there. Sarah, who saved Joyce, is the only one who saw Ryan assaulting her, and then she proceeded to beat the crap out of him with a baseball bat. People saw Sarah do this, but didn’t see Ryan do anything. Because the girls didn’t take immediate action and go to the proper authorities, there is now no evidence that Ryan actual did anything to Joyce. Unless they can find evidence, Ryan could easily get off scott-free unfortunately.
Ugh… this is so sad. And I really worry about what the aftermath of this is going to be. Particularly since they never went to the hospital or called the police.
Whoooooooo, boy, no matter how Sarah tries to approach this, it is going to be awkward.
The pastor’s son is dead, he was killed by Darth Ryan.
Wait – how does Sarah know that Joyce is talking about Ryan? She didn’t discuss his upbringing with him before she beaned him, nor did any of the rest of our heroes. For all Sarah knows Joyce could be talking about somebody else.
She was around in the comic where Joyce was accusing him of not being a pastor’s son. Presumably she overheard.
I was always under the impression that a cup was either a unit of measurement or a small liquid container not made of glass.
This should be pretty easy to explain, actually. Just mention how Joe was also theoretically religious (being from a jewish family and all) but turned out to be kind of a sleeze, then show her that “powers of ten” video and explain that this guy was basically the entire universe if Joe is planet earth.
This should be pretty easy to explain, actually. Just mention how Joe was also theoretically religious (being from a jewish family and all) but turned out to be kind of a sleeze, then show her that “powers of ten” video and explain that this guy was basically the entire universe if Joe is planet earth.
Soooo…Joyce isn’t wearing pants either?
Pants not necessary.
So far in this storyline, only Amber, Walky, and Sarah have been confirmed to be wearing pants. Dina, Mike, and Joyce (and Sal) could easily have been wearing underwear or less in the shots seen so far. And Walkywas only confirmed to be pantsed when he left his bedroom; his status while talking to Mike and browsing womens’ clothing online was unknown.
Just so you know!
Oh God, poor Joyce. And poor Sarah for having to explain it.
…nope, it’s not.
“Then I heard a human voice coming from between the banks of the Ulai. It called out, “Gabriel, enable this person to understand the vision.””
Daniel 8:16