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Wow this is not what I expected, this is seeming more and more like Mike is not going to survive. While I have no particular attachment to Mike, I feel bad for the Amber and Ethan.
I’m curious what Ethan’s words will be, and whether he wants to say them in front of Mike’s parents.
Think of Mike as a song played on the hacked music thingy.
Is a song forever?
Heck, yeah. Mike is a fundamental essential leitmotif and a force of nature. And his nature is such that Mike won’t die unless you don’t want him to. So if Mike dies, it will be all your fault for not wanting Mike to die.
It doesn’t do any good to fake wanting him dead. Mike knows how to read a room.
She’s just assuming Mike’s dead now right? I mean nothing has changed on the Mike status for like the last three months for us readers so I can’t really get invested in the he’s dead narrative yet.
Mike has been threatening and apparently also blackmailing Blaine with knowledge about his mob job. Blaine has been talking with Lester until Lester was satisfied he knew for good what he needed to. The hospital was evacuated. Finishing Mike off would have been a matter of pinching a few tubes.It is a reasonable assumption.
Mike being dead would take Amber and Ethan out of the plot forever while they kept trying to deal with that. This ain’t Louisiana man, I ain’t buying it.
The rule was no deaths for characters which will cause prolonged grieving for the main cast. Toedad and Blaine dying will cause some drama and some grieving but not nearly to the extent of say, Ruth dying. Mike is on the fence on that, because there are at least 2 people who would grieve(not counting his family) and they’re main cast.
“You can build me up, you can tear me down;
You can try but I’m unbreakable.
You can do your best, but I’ll stand the test;
You’ll find that I’m unshakable.
When the fire’s burnt,
When the wind has blown,
When the water’s dried, you’ll still find stone;
My heart of stone…”
Ross does fit as a bit more of a fringe case than Blaine – both Becky and Joyce clearly have some Complicated emotions about him – but whether that rule was broken with Ross or will be further broken with ‘two main cast members grieving and everyone else forcibly confronted with youthful mortality’ (‘cause losing a peer hits differently even from losing a parent in that particular respect,) not sure.
(And again, Mike living does still offer new story routes Blaine and Ross didn’t… but him dying does, too.)
So this has nothing to do with the comic, but this guy shows up when I search David M Willis and I kind of think he looks like a version of Willis from an alternate universe where he got his degree in accounting. https://www.redzonerealtygroup.com/jacksonville/our-team/david-willis/
I noticed the specific style you’ve had with your Joyce avatars, where they have grey hair and orange eyes. Now that regalli mentions it with a name, I can’t help but ask if it’s a reference to something.
In the Kingdom Hearts series of video games, people basically have two parts to their being – the body and the Heart. Losing your heart creates two beings – the Heartless (made of your heart) and the Nobody (made of your body) (yes, I know it’s backwards). An especially powerful Heartless or Nobody can retain most or all of their original self’s physical appearance, often with slight differences.
The franchise’s main villain, Xehanort, possessed a younger guy at one point, but he got his butt kicked by that guy’s pissed-off soul and lost his memories. Then the amnesiac Xehanort became the apprentice to a scholar called Ansem the Wise. At some point, Xehanort committed identity theft on Ansem, then he willingly separated himself into a Heartless and Nobody. The Heartless kept the name Ansem, but the Nobody added an X and scrambled it up, renaming himself Xemnas.
Xemnas started a secret cabal called Organisation 13, with the secret goal of turning its members into clones of Xehanort. Over time, some of them started gaining Xehanort’s features, like darker skin, silver hair, gold-orange eyes, and pointed ears. Each new member also got an X scrambled into their name, as a way to track them remotely somehow.
In short, I occasionally make a Gravatar of a character’s Nobody and give them a name in the style of an Organization XIII member.
Naming’s weird, Kingdom Hearts is weird, the Organization are generally (with a handful of Explicitly Weird exceptions) treated less as distinct entities and more as The Worst Possible Version of Yourself, and – I cannot stress this one enough – Xehanort is a pretentious little shit.
Dammit, I’m attached to Mike. He buried everything under his “Extreme Asshole” camouflage in order to keep Blaine from figuring out who to strike in order to hurt Mike. Don’t you fucking kill Mike, Willis!!!
I’m gonna guess that Mike isn’t going to die, but also won’t wake up before the comic ends. I mean, the time frame of this comic in universe is incredible small so it wouldn’t be that strange for someone to be a coma for that length of time.
For months? (Which would still put him out of the comic for like a decade, but.) After about five weeks, it starts getting… rather less likely. Not impossible, but a lot less likely.
Though especially with the head and spinal trauma implied, sooner is definitely better. (Honestly even if he wakes up before this storyline’s through I can see him being out of the strip for the foreseeable future with recovery – he’s gonna need a LOT of bedrest and a LOT of physical therapy to regain muscle functioning after that bedrest.)
IIRC there’s a time skip coming, and we don’t know how far ahead it’s going. There’s snow and winter apparel in the previews, so maybe Mike starts coming out of it in the next couple chapters.
It hasn’t been made clear what his injuries are, beyond the coma. He might not need much, if he recovers from that.
Or he could have permanent disabilities or take months recovering as you suggest. It’s been left very unclear.
Yeah, we just don’t know. There’s some implications (between ‘coma’ and ‘yeah he looked ROUGH in those flashbacks’) that there’s something but who knows if that’s a TBI or he’s broken, like, all his ribs but not piercing anything and an arm.
(Me dumdum. Posted twice. Sorry Willis, please cancel the other if needed)
I think so too.
I recall Willis writing somewhere a few years ago, answering a question why Mike didn’t show up in the story that often compared to his Walkyverse counterpart, that he had “dispersed” Mike’s assholiness across several characters in DoA and he had no need – or way – to put him in the frontline very frequently.
So in a sense, DoA Mike is not necessarily a “main character” anymore, and maybe putting him into a coma is a way to put him aside without impacting too much the main storyline.
Well, actually yes, but not until they changed the timeline to keep him from getting into politics and becoming the first foreign born US president in the narrowest election in history that was finally decided in the Supreme Court when the justices split along party lines to decide Paul was born as naturally as anyone else.
Of course changing history always has unintended consequences. So instead we got reality TV which lead to the Trump presidency, the Science Riots, and eventually to the Second Lunar Revolution. They may get around to correcting it again, but unfortunately simulations show that most of the obvious changes lead to the Time Service coming under the control of the guy with a thing for the Nazis.
Does this count as a change? Forget I said anything.
Even if he woke up, his return to school and classes is unlikely. I think we are clearing the deck. There’s no reason to see robin again. Mike looks like he has a few appearances left then he’s off to “out of frame”. Alive but not a part of the action.
Yeah, Robin at least DEFINITELY does not seem likely to have been written out entirely, though she may go back to the backburner for a while.
I could see Mike getting a Redemption Equals Death, but I do think that’ll be a waste of a good ‘hey does this actually make up for all your shit? Seriously why the fuck do you record your roommate crying?’ Callout session. There’s so much less you can grapple with on that front when the guy’s dead, so if he’s expressing actual willingness to change and realization he’s wrong… eh, I’d rather do it. Especially since Ruth’s our closest analogue, and while ‘debilitating depression, guardian abuse, and alcoholism’ doesn’t excuse her awful behavior, (I still don’t think she should be an RA but then, neither does she,) it explains it a hell of a lot more than Mike’s attempts at justifying his abuse.
I’m looking at this now and it makes a LOT of sense why narratively it’s better for Ethan to learn of this *after* already defending Mike to Danny. If it was before, yeah, Ethan would have definitely fought for Mike, but this way, not knowing and still taking his side –that’s more useful knowledge for the reader as to where they stand.
I recall Willis writing somewhere a few years ago, answering a question why Mike didn’t show up in the story that often compared to his Walkyverse counterpart, that he had “dispersed” Mike’s assholiness across several characters in DoA and he had no need – or way – to put him in the frontline very frequently.
So in a sense, DoA Mike is not necessarily a “main character” anymore, and maybe putting him into a coma is a way to put him aside without impacting too much the main storyline.
She could be a patron through the Patreon, and withdraw her support. I don’t know how much Willis depends on his supporters, but as I recall he no longer has a day job.
I suppose it would be possible to organize a Patreon union and enter into collective bargaining, but there is a word for art designed by committee and that word is seldom “masterpiece.”
Yeah I’m also not convinced that Mike’s gonna die. I think this is just Amber’s fear and guilt about her vigilantism and self-loathing boiling over…we get to see how they really feel about Mike before he comes back and they roll their eyes again.
Also Mike saying that he considered them best friends says, like…next to nothing. It’d be one thing if that happened while he was on a long slow cancer deathbed or something, but he said that in shock after a bad fall TWO DAYS AGO.
Just because Amber’s remembering it now doesn’t mean it’s suddenly urgent. The timing’s all wrong for that. Mike doesn’t have some magical sense that it’s his time.
Lots of Thoughts about Mike. None of them make up for his calculated cruelty, his sadism in carefully figuring out just how to hurt someone and then doing it. Carla does/says things that hurt people’s feelings, but it’s not her Raisin Deter, more of a quick defense, cause she’s always on the defense.
Mike seems to be always on the attack, in a sadistic way.
And there is no need to kill him off. If someone on the hall needs to go, it’s Mary.
I think from what backstory we have gotten of Mike and the moments leading to Mike’s sacrifice, it has been implied he was trying to tough love people into building up the defenses to not care what people think, to stop relying on others and to stop revealing vulnerabilities to people that will just turn around and attack you with them, because these are lessons he learnt.
That he was trying to do to others what Blaine said he tried to do with Amber (though I don’t trust Blaine ever actually intended for Amber to stand up for herself) of ‘bettering’ people using cruelty. Which of course didn’t work because people don’t respond well to cruelty or very often get truly tougher because of it. Just because the door might be shut instead of open or have locks on it doesn’t make it a stronger door than it was, just more difficult to open up.
What am I missing? People are talking like this strip is Mike’s death knell. Why?
I read this as Amber is so freaking depressed and exhausted her brain is using Mike to beat herself up even more.
Amber doesn’t think he’s dead – “when you see him” – unless she thinks Ethan is going to kick off soon too.
Am I missing something?
Ethan, be a dear and take Amber to the psych ward, will you. She really needs help from a pro.
Ahahaha, the Psych Ward, where they can drop you in the closed section even if you arrived by your own power, voluntarily:D Then comes the Mandatory Benzo Regime!
Fun fact! When I and my ‘mates got off that Benzo regime a week later(I begged my mother to get me out), W took another week to realize two weeks had passed. Because they shut off our sense of time , you see! And conveniently kept us from remembering most of it! But we still remember feeling like we were being poisoned! And that’s because Benzos are teeming with heavy metals! Turns out you aren’t really supposed to take them for a long time, imagine that!
But no, it’s a Perfect place to go with a rare mental anomaly even most of the professionals do not understand, let Ambster and Amazo March right in, effin hell.
You may read on the internet Benzos are good for you in the long term. That’s a fucking Lie.
There are entire forums of people dedicated from recovering benzodiazepine takers. They lead to withdrawal symptoms in days. Going cold turkey is a nightmare. The “ocassionally occuring” cognitive impairment happen in basically everybody – but of course, keep people on them on years, and they won’t be in any shape to report that, again, conveniently enough.
But they are classified as safe to use and you can be forced to take them basically anywhere. Sleep tight, kids.
Go to your shrinks, the ones who actually talk to you. That’s good for you. At least their Job is to help you. Psych wards aren’t supposed to help you. They are supposed to keep you in, away from everyone else.
If someone talks about you being admitted “for your own good”, politely excuse yourself, leave the building at a brisk pace, and never come back.
All good. I had a mostly pleasant experience in outpatient at a hospital known for being as non-traumatic as possible (I was… somewhere around Ruth’s level of suicidal ideation, and actively self-harming though in non-permanent ways, so basically all options required ‘not being home alone’ and ‘far more regular therapy checkins than were practical’,) and I STILL got shit from psychiatrists who should have known better about things like ‘autism’ or ‘hey maybe you shouldn’t be prescribing an antihistamine-based anxiety medication when your patient says she has serious seasonal allergies in the fall treated by antihistamines she couldn’t take on this, and it is currently November.’ And I was lucky that there were relatively few changes to my medications, and none of them were severe. (I was also lucky in that I left at the end of the day. Even in the relatively pleasant outpatient setting, there was very little time to do things on your own instead of with a group, and I got home exhausted from that.) The loss of agency involved in even a simple, LEAST traumatic stay at a mental hospital is not something you do lightly, and AmbG would not get a simple, least traumatic stay.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to set you off. But psych is where the professionals who can help Amber are going to be.
I should have said psych *department* but the word wasn’t coming to me.
Amber needs a damn sight more than a hug and sleep.
And her mother is on my bad parents list for dismissing her problems as blood sugar. Oh, you’re having an anxiety attack returning to the place you tried to kill someone? Here, have a donut.
I don’t quite understand what it means by “When you see him, I’d say everything you need to” and why it causes the waterworks. Could someone explain it to me?
When someone dies, you can’t talk to them any more. Typically people want to confess their secrets to someone or let them know they are loved before they leave, as there will be no next opportunity.
What Amber is saying is that Ethan should talk to Mike and do just that; say everything he wants to have said to Mike before he dies, because Mike expected to die just before slipping into a coma.
It works the other way too. Like the scene out of “Field of Dreams” when Ray and Terence Mann (Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones) are talking in the car on the way back to Iowa: Ray: “Anyway, when I was 17, I packed my things, said something awful and left. After a while, I wanted to come home but I didn’t know how. Made it back for the funeral, though.”
Terence: “What was the awful thing you said to your father?”
Ray: “I said I could never respect a man whose hero was a criminal.”
Terence: “Who was his hero?”
Ray: “Shoeless Joe Jackson.”
Terence: “You knew he wasn’t a criminal, so why’d you say it?”
Ray: “I was 17. Son of a bongo died before I could take it back. Before I could tell him … you know.”
You can’t take back what might have been said in the heat of the moment during an argument, either.
Ahhh thanks. I was confused because when she said “I’d” it made me wonder why she would be the one saying whatever it is for Ethan, but now I realize it was a figure of speech. So she was telling him to say them. Got it.
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“give him a bag of nickels and say it’s all the moms he fucked returning their payment as a thank you for his service”
Um … okay. Kinda harsh, but then that does sound like a Mike thing to say.
This is why Willis needs to set up an upvote system. Also, toss Mike a nickle just because.
Toss a nickel to your Mikester.
O’ college of Dumbing
Maybe instead up upvotes he’ll let you give folks nickels.
Mike’s body sailing down a waterfall of nickles into the beyond.
I’m so relieved that she told Ethan (and did so quickly)
Wow this is not what I expected, this is seeming more and more like Mike is not going to survive. While I have no particular attachment to Mike, I feel bad for the Amber and Ethan.
I’m curious what Ethan’s words will be, and whether he wants to say them in front of Mike’s parents.
Think of Mike as a song played on the hacked music thingy.
Is a song forever?
Heck, yeah. Mike is a fundamental essential leitmotif and a force of nature. And his nature is such that Mike won’t die unless you don’t want him to. So if Mike dies, it will be all your fault for not wanting Mike to die.
It doesn’t do any good to fake wanting him dead. Mike knows how to read a room.
Also, he fucked your mom.
For a NICKEL!
It certainly seems as if Amber thinks Mike’s not going to survive. But Amber’s not omniscient.
What she is, in fact, is depressed and prone to thinking that anything she touches turns to shit.
Exactly.
And DESPERATELY in need of mental health support.
Amber stop making me sad.
Seriously. Oh, honey.
She’s so resigned to it, too. =(
She’s just assuming Mike’s dead now right? I mean nothing has changed on the Mike status for like the last three months for us readers so I can’t really get invested in the he’s dead narrative yet.
Mike has been threatening and apparently also blackmailing Blaine with knowledge about his mob job. Blaine has been talking with Lester until Lester was satisfied he knew for good what he needed to. The hospital was evacuated. Finishing Mike off would have been a matter of pinching a few tubes.It is a reasonable assumption.
Yes, but Blaine would absolutely never have admitted anything important about Mike to anyone else in the mob.
Mike is the Shroedinger’s cat of comic strip characters.
I thought his last words were something about bust freds.
Mike being dead would take Amber and Ethan out of the plot forever while they kept trying to deal with that. This ain’t Louisiana man, I ain’t buying it.
One of the most epic lines in the history of ERB, A+ reference
+1
Agreed, that battle left no question about who won.
Can’t we get a break from death?
Uh oh, red background
She’s replaying the flashback from the beginning of this chapter again.
I see a bad moon on the rise!
If Mike dies Danny can forget about ever talking to Ethan again.
He can also forget about ever talking to Mike again
Not necessarily. Ask Amber.
Mike dying would go against Willis’ hard rules for the comic. He will be back. ….right?!
What are his hard rules, and why didn’t they stop him from killing Toedad?
I know Toedad was an asshole, but still, look what it did to Becky
The rule was no deaths for characters which will cause prolonged grieving for the main cast. Toedad and Blaine dying will cause some drama and some grieving but not nearly to the extent of say, Ruth dying. Mike is on the fence on that, because there are at least 2 people who would grieve(not counting his family) and they’re main cast.
There is only one solution, kill everyone who would grieve a previously killed character and end the comic on a sort of Hamlet note.
“Goodnight, sweet super.”
Well I didn’t need my heart this early in the morning anyway
Who needs a heart
When a heart can be broken?
“You can build me up, you can tear me down;
You can try but I’m unbreakable.
You can do your best, but I’ll stand the test;
You’ll find that I’m unshakable.
When the fire’s burnt,
When the wind has blown,
When the water’s dried, you’ll still find stone;
My heart of stone…”
Wipes the dust off the hacked muzak and puts on Blondies “Heart of Glass” (apropos of nothing of course:-) )
I think at the beginning of the previous arc Willis said he’d be breaking hard rules.
Ross does fit as a bit more of a fringe case than Blaine – both Becky and Joyce clearly have some Complicated emotions about him – but whether that rule was broken with Ross or will be further broken with ‘two main cast members grieving and everyone else forcibly confronted with youthful mortality’ (‘cause losing a peer hits differently even from losing a parent in that particular respect,) not sure.
(And again, Mike living does still offer new story routes Blaine and Ross didn’t… but him dying does, too.)
I do hope he lives. I’d much rather see Mike dealing with the consequences of his realization than getting away with a redemptive death.
Same.
So this has nothing to do with the comic, but this guy shows up when I search David M Willis and I kind of think he looks like a version of Willis from an alternate universe where he got his degree in accounting. https://www.redzonerealtygroup.com/jacksonville/our-team/david-willis/
Looks like Willie’s Nobody. Let’s call ’em Vaxdid.
… Did you make a Ruthanort avatar just for this comment? Because if so, I love you for it.
Oh, I made this about a year ago. I also have a few Joyce ones.
I noticed the specific style you’ve had with your Joyce avatars, where they have grey hair and orange eyes. Now that regalli mentions it with a name, I can’t help but ask if it’s a reference to something.
KINGDOM HEART SPOILERS
In the Kingdom Hearts series of video games, people basically have two parts to their being – the body and the Heart. Losing your heart creates two beings – the Heartless (made of your heart) and the Nobody (made of your body) (yes, I know it’s backwards). An especially powerful Heartless or Nobody can retain most or all of their original self’s physical appearance, often with slight differences.
The franchise’s main villain, Xehanort, possessed a younger guy at one point, but he got his butt kicked by that guy’s pissed-off soul and lost his memories. Then the amnesiac Xehanort became the apprentice to a scholar called Ansem the Wise. At some point, Xehanort committed identity theft on Ansem, then he willingly separated himself into a Heartless and Nobody. The Heartless kept the name Ansem, but the Nobody added an X and scrambled it up, renaming himself Xemnas.
Xemnas started a secret cabal called Organisation 13, with the secret goal of turning its members into clones of Xehanort. Over time, some of them started gaining Xehanort’s features, like darker skin, silver hair, gold-orange eyes, and pointed ears. Each new member also got an X scrambled into their name, as a way to track them remotely somehow.
In short, I occasionally make a Gravatar of a character’s Nobody and give them a name in the style of an Organization XIII member.
Wait! He called it Organization 13 instead of Negativeland?
Naming’s weird, Kingdom Hearts is weird, the Organization are generally (with a handful of Explicitly Weird exceptions) treated less as distinct entities and more as The Worst Possible Version of Yourself, and – I cannot stress this one enough – Xehanort is a pretentious little shit.
Thanks for explaining
and sorry for responding this late
Not to be confused with David Wills of the group NEGATIVLAND.
https://uglyradio.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/radio-lost-and-found-for-042816/
I can’t handle watery-eyes Ethan in the last panel (or watching Amber cry)
There’s no sensation to compare with this,
Suspended animation, a state of bliss.
Can’t keep my mind from the circling sky…
Just an earth bound cryptic guy.
Guess what video I have to find before bed now….
Sorry, didn’t intent to do that.
There’s a video?
Those are lyrics from a Mike Oldfield track. I didn’t know there is a video.
It’s a Pink Floyd song – “Learning to Fly”, off of A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly.
Dammit, I’m attached to Mike. He buried everything under his “Extreme Asshole” camouflage in order to keep Blaine from figuring out who to strike in order to hurt Mike. Don’t you fucking kill Mike, Willis!!!
I’m gonna guess that Mike isn’t going to die, but also won’t wake up before the comic ends. I mean, the time frame of this comic in universe is incredible small so it wouldn’t be that strange for someone to be a coma for that length of time.
For a few weeks? Not out of the question.
For months? (Which would still put him out of the comic for like a decade, but.) After about five weeks, it starts getting… rather less likely. Not impossible, but a lot less likely.
Though especially with the head and spinal trauma implied, sooner is definitely better. (Honestly even if he wakes up before this storyline’s through I can see him being out of the strip for the foreseeable future with recovery – he’s gonna need a LOT of bedrest and a LOT of physical therapy to regain muscle functioning after that bedrest.)
IIRC there’s a time skip coming, and we don’t know how far ahead it’s going. There’s snow and winter apparel in the previews, so maybe Mike starts coming out of it in the next couple chapters.
It hasn’t been made clear what his injuries are, beyond the coma. He might not need much, if he recovers from that.
Or he could have permanent disabilities or take months recovering as you suggest. It’s been left very unclear.
Yeah, we just don’t know. There’s some implications (between ‘coma’ and ‘yeah he looked ROUGH in those flashbacks’) that there’s something but who knows if that’s a TBI or he’s broken, like, all his ribs but not piercing anything and an arm.
(Me dumdum. Posted twice. Sorry Willis, please cancel the other if needed)
I think so too.
I recall Willis writing somewhere a few years ago, answering a question why Mike didn’t show up in the story that often compared to his Walkyverse counterpart, that he had “dispersed” Mike’s assholiness across several characters in DoA and he had no need – or way – to put him in the frontline very frequently.
So in a sense, DoA Mike is not necessarily a “main character” anymore, and maybe putting him into a coma is a way to put him aside without impacting too much the main storyline.
So, instead of under a bus, Willis threw Mike off a fire escape.
So the fire escape was really
(A) a bus
(B) the Walrus
(C) a truck.
Trick question. The answer is (D)
(D) The rain that falls into every life.
The walrus was Paul, so that can’t be it.
Is Paul dead?
Well, actually yes, but not until they changed the timeline to keep him from getting into politics and becoming the first foreign born US president in the narrowest election in history that was finally decided in the Supreme Court when the justices split along party lines to decide Paul was born as naturally as anyone else.
Of course changing history always has unintended consequences. So instead we got reality TV which lead to the Trump presidency, the Science Riots, and eventually to the Second Lunar Revolution. They may get around to correcting it again, but unfortunately simulations show that most of the obvious changes lead to the Time Service coming under the control of the guy with a thing for the Nazis.
Does this count as a change? Forget I said anything.
Not party lines. John/Paul lines.
It’s possible the goofy alcoholic rapist rage-addict chose Pete Best.
Even if he woke up, his return to school and classes is unlikely. I think we are clearing the deck. There’s no reason to see robin again. Mike looks like he has a few appearances left then he’s off to “out of frame”. Alive but not a part of the action.
I guess it’s possible. Not fond of it.
Mike’s had his biggest bit character development ever. He’s more interesting than he’s ever been. Why write him out now?
Robin’s still in the middle of her character arc. Plenty of reason to see her again.
Yeah, Robin at least DEFINITELY does not seem likely to have been written out entirely, though she may go back to the backburner for a while.
I could see Mike getting a Redemption Equals Death, but I do think that’ll be a waste of a good ‘hey does this actually make up for all your shit? Seriously why the fuck do you record your roommate crying?’ Callout session. There’s so much less you can grapple with on that front when the guy’s dead, so if he’s expressing actual willingness to change and realization he’s wrong… eh, I’d rather do it. Especially since Ruth’s our closest analogue, and while ‘debilitating depression, guardian abuse, and alcoholism’ doesn’t excuse her awful behavior, (I still don’t think she should be an RA but then, neither does she,) it explains it a hell of a lot more than Mike’s attempts at justifying his abuse.
Love this page and the teary eyed expressions…
I’m looking at this now and it makes a LOT of sense why narratively it’s better for Ethan to learn of this *after* already defending Mike to Danny. If it was before, yeah, Ethan would have definitely fought for Mike, but this way, not knowing and still taking his side –that’s more useful knowledge for the reader as to where they stand.
I think so too.
I recall Willis writing somewhere a few years ago, answering a question why Mike didn’t show up in the story that often compared to his Walkyverse counterpart, that he had “dispersed” Mike’s assholiness across several characters in DoA and he had no need – or way – to put him in the frontline very frequently.
So in a sense, DoA Mike is not necessarily a “main character” anymore, and maybe putting him into a coma is a way to put him aside without impacting too much the main storyline.
Don’t you dare write out Mike
Or what?
This comic is a.gift from Willis, but to the extent we are invested in it, we are at his mercy.
She could be a patron through the Patreon, and withdraw her support. I don’t know how much Willis depends on his supporters, but as I recall he no longer has a day job.
I suppose it would be possible to organize a Patreon union and enter into collective bargaining, but there is a word for art designed by committee and that word is seldom “masterpiece.”
Trust the Willis.
{Cue evil laughter}
thats so Buffy
That’s what Head Mike is for.
(Amber got Head Mike, Ethan got Mike head.)
Seems fair.
Please don’t encourage the Willis by telling him not to do it.
Yeah I’m also not convinced that Mike’s gonna die. I think this is just Amber’s fear and guilt about her vigilantism and self-loathing boiling over…we get to see how they really feel about Mike before he comes back and they roll their eyes again.
Also Mike saying that he considered them best friends says, like…next to nothing. It’d be one thing if that happened while he was on a long slow cancer deathbed or something, but he said that in shock after a bad fall TWO DAYS AGO.
Just because Amber’s remembering it now doesn’t mean it’s suddenly urgent. The timing’s all wrong for that. Mike doesn’t have some magical sense that it’s his time.
Lots of Thoughts about Mike. None of them make up for his calculated cruelty, his sadism in carefully figuring out just how to hurt someone and then doing it. Carla does/says things that hurt people’s feelings, but it’s not her Raisin Deter, more of a quick defense, cause she’s always on the defense.
Mike seems to be always on the attack, in a sadistic way.
And there is no need to kill him off. If someone on the hall needs to go, it’s Mary.
Carla has mega reasons to be defensive. I get Carla, I get Mary, I don’t get Mike.
I think from what backstory we have gotten of Mike and the moments leading to Mike’s sacrifice, it has been implied he was trying to tough love people into building up the defenses to not care what people think, to stop relying on others and to stop revealing vulnerabilities to people that will just turn around and attack you with them, because these are lessons he learnt.
That he was trying to do to others what Blaine said he tried to do with Amber (though I don’t trust Blaine ever actually intended for Amber to stand up for herself) of ‘bettering’ people using cruelty. Which of course didn’t work because people don’t respond well to cruelty or very often get truly tougher because of it. Just because the door might be shut instead of open or have locks on it doesn’t make it a stronger door than it was, just more difficult to open up.
The upshot is Walky would pass the semester if Mike died.
Those are the rules!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/included/
What am I missing? People are talking like this strip is Mike’s death knell. Why?
I read this as Amber is so freaking depressed and exhausted her brain is using Mike to beat herself up even more.
Amber doesn’t think he’s dead – “when you see him” – unless she thinks Ethan is going to kick off soon too.
Am I missing something?
Ethan, be a dear and take Amber to the psych ward, will you. She really needs help from a pro.
I’m reading it as, he might not die, but he might not recover from that coma either. Certainly not in the timeframe of this comic.
Fuck the psych ward. That girl needs a good meal and a hug.
And a solid 8-10 hours of sleep. She looks like she still hasn’t slept since trying to deprive Amazi-Girl of her time in the driver’s seat.
“I swear, most of your problems can be traced to low blood sugar.” – Stacy
Not the pysch ward, but definitely serious therapy.
Ahahaha, the Psych Ward, where they can drop you in the closed section even if you arrived by your own power, voluntarily:D Then comes the Mandatory Benzo Regime!
Fun fact! When I and my ‘mates got off that Benzo regime a week later(I begged my mother to get me out), W took another week to realize two weeks had passed. Because they shut off our sense of time , you see! And conveniently kept us from remembering most of it! But we still remember feeling like we were being poisoned! And that’s because Benzos are teeming with heavy metals! Turns out you aren’t really supposed to take them for a long time, imagine that!
But no, it’s a Perfect place to go with a rare mental anomaly even most of the professionals do not understand, let Ambster and Amazo March right in, effin hell.
You may read on the internet Benzos are good for you in the long term. That’s a fucking Lie.
There are entire forums of people dedicated from recovering benzodiazepine takers. They lead to withdrawal symptoms in days. Going cold turkey is a nightmare. The “ocassionally occuring” cognitive impairment happen in basically everybody – but of course, keep people on them on years, and they won’t be in any shape to report that, again, conveniently enough.
But they are classified as safe to use and you can be forced to take them basically anywhere. Sleep tight, kids.
Go to your shrinks, the ones who actually talk to you. That’s good for you. At least their Job is to help you. Psych wards aren’t supposed to help you. They are supposed to keep you in, away from everyone else.
If someone talks about you being admitted “for your own good”, politely excuse yourself, leave the building at a brisk pace, and never come back.
Sorry the grammar is all over the place in this second one. I got a bit too agitated to proofread.
All good. I had a mostly pleasant experience in outpatient at a hospital known for being as non-traumatic as possible (I was… somewhere around Ruth’s level of suicidal ideation, and actively self-harming though in non-permanent ways, so basically all options required ‘not being home alone’ and ‘far more regular therapy checkins than were practical’,) and I STILL got shit from psychiatrists who should have known better about things like ‘autism’ or ‘hey maybe you shouldn’t be prescribing an antihistamine-based anxiety medication when your patient says she has serious seasonal allergies in the fall treated by antihistamines she couldn’t take on this, and it is currently November.’ And I was lucky that there were relatively few changes to my medications, and none of them were severe. (I was also lucky in that I left at the end of the day. Even in the relatively pleasant outpatient setting, there was very little time to do things on your own instead of with a group, and I got home exhausted from that.) The loss of agency involved in even a simple, LEAST traumatic stay at a mental hospital is not something you do lightly, and AmbG would not get a simple, least traumatic stay.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to set you off. But psych is where the professionals who can help Amber are going to be.
I should have said psych *department* but the word wasn’t coming to me.
Amber needs a damn sight more than a hug and sleep.
And her mother is on my bad parents list for dismissing her problems as blood sugar. Oh, you’re having an anxiety attack returning to the place you tried to kill someone? Here, have a donut.
One Day they are going to cancel A Yransformers ,
and Every character Will die, Blake 7 style .
Toss up whether Final dialogue will be ” I did it for Johnny”
or
“i dont like Mondays ” , plays in the background
When they are cancelled and dead and come back as mutant zombies, will they be the Xformers?
“I did it for the Mondays.”
I don’t quite understand what it means by “When you see him, I’d say everything you need to” and why it causes the waterworks. Could someone explain it to me?
When someone dies, you can’t talk to them any more. Typically people want to confess their secrets to someone or let them know they are loved before they leave, as there will be no next opportunity.
What Amber is saying is that Ethan should talk to Mike and do just that; say everything he wants to have said to Mike before he dies, because Mike expected to die just before slipping into a coma.
It works the other way too. Like the scene out of “Field of Dreams” when Ray and Terence Mann (Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones) are talking in the car on the way back to Iowa:
Ray: “Anyway, when I was 17, I packed my things, said something awful and left. After a while, I wanted to come home but I didn’t know how. Made it back for the funeral, though.”
Terence: “What was the awful thing you said to your father?”
Ray: “I said I could never respect a man whose hero was a criminal.”
Terence: “Who was his hero?”
Ray: “Shoeless Joe Jackson.”
Terence: “You knew he wasn’t a criminal, so why’d you say it?”
Ray: “I was 17. Son of a bongo died before I could take it back. Before I could tell him … you know.”
You can’t take back what might have been said in the heat of the moment during an argument, either.
Ahhh thanks. I was confused because when she said “I’d” it made me wonder why she would be the one saying whatever it is for Ethan, but now I realize it was a figure of speech. So she was telling him to say them. Got it.
Amber is suffering too much. I hope Walky and Sarah will be able to help her. Especially Walky. But is so difficult. Sigh.
Foreshadowing?
Ethan’s gonna tell Mike he loves him is my guess.
Don’t do that. Are you trying to wake him up before Joyce gets a chance to visit?
Amber, remember that There’s at least a 5% chance Mike was fucking with you, to keep your hopes up. Seems a Mike thing to do.
He says 5%, but that’s only to keep your hopes up.
5% chance. And a nickel is 5 cents, and is 5% of a dollar.
Mike’s gonna be OK. The numbers don’t lie.
I would like to say something funny.
…
I can’t think of anything.
**sigh**