Or been in a bathtub/paddling pool together when she pooped.
I’m not intending to ask my nearly-7 year old if she remembers her 3.5 year old sister doing this… Well, maybe if the toddler pulls this one on them at some point… 😉
I dunno, Miri, I still remember my 8 year old self jumping right on out of the wading pool when my nearly 3 year old brother was having too much fun to bother getting out to go to the bathroom and instead just let his turd float free. I think he’d prefer I didn’t remember, but that memory is pretty imprinted. I’d be prepared to wager your older child remembers too! 😂
Me and my brother bathed together until I was maybe 9 and he was 7 and the reason I began bathing alone was that he – still at that age – would poop in the water without even telling me. I’ll never forget…
To be fair, there are plenty of people in Indiana pooping themselves right now (it’s part of how deworming drugs work), though it’s far more common in states farther south.
God that Ivermectin shit is the dumbest possible twist to the anti-vaxx saga, to the point where I feel like it had to have originated as a joke or a troll that idiots started taking serious.
Like, the people who lambast people as ‘sheep’ for taking a tested and proven vaccine are literally taking a fucking dewormer meant for literal livestock that does have all the nasty side effects they think the covid jab has. If you wrote that into a story, people would laugh in your face.
There were anti-vaxxers 70 years ago (there were even newspaper comics mocking them even back then), there will probably be anti-vaxxers 70 years from now as well.
I don’t think it was really a contiguous movement pre-Wakefield. The MMR debacle kinda consolidated a bunch of fringe elements and gave them enough mainstream attention to draw in new recruits.
Even futher: The Root’s Michael Harriot has posted a thread on twitter listing antivax outbreaks in 1706, 1806, 1906, and then Wakefield in 1998 rolling on to today. Every hundred years, almost like clockwork.
Fair enough. I only read his comments after the fact. It boiled down to ‘I hear parents say they’d never forgive themselves if the child died of the vaccine – trust me, it might be the same either way.’
But those same parents would also be willing to forgive themselves if they let their child die of a virus when they could have easily prevented it with a vaccine?
Well, at the time, the vaccine DID give the patient the virus. It was just a milder form of the virus that was less likely to kill you. “Less likely” doesn’t mean impossible. So, in this case, you were gonna get the virus either way. BUT as Franklin pointed out, if they catch it naturally and die, you’d end up regretting it anyway. So he urged people to give it to their children via vaccine so it would be less likely to kill them.
And eventually a later vaccine came out that DIDN’T give you the virus and people who were vaccinating switched to that one.
Hasn’t that been a ‘thing’ in quack medicine for a while? I thought they used some household cleaner like bleach to trigger that response so they could claim they were “detoxifying” the bowels or something ridiculous.
At least the nonsense “detoxifying” foot baths just turn their water brown by rusting a steel anode.
A few years back, I stumbled across a dieting forum of some sort, dedicated to pushing a diet of literally rotten cabbage in salt water. They insisted it was a cure-all, anyone who questioned it got banned on the spot, and they were posting pictures.
[The Gross Part – Nasty Warning]
This one regular posted a photo of herself holding up some disgusting mass of cabbage and something suspiciously fleshy-looking, and said something to the effect of “I’m not sure why but this came out and I feel a weird numbness in my guts now.” And multiple people assured her it was normal and a good thing. This seems about on par with that.
There really is no floor to this fucking idiocy, and they’re dragging us all down with them. But I’m not allowed to be happy when their stupidity kills them, because it’s “bad form” or whatever.
I think it depends. I’d say ‘that Perfect Girl’ is appropriate for multiple ongoing threads in that chapter, even though Carla is the one who actually says the line.
The ironic part is that the baptism process may very well result in disassociative identities like Amber’s Amazigirl through trauma, thereby providing indoctrinators with confirmation of its effectiveness.
Where I’m coming from is that at least historically, the baptism process was supposed to destroy the soul so that a completely new one, free of sin, would be regenerated in its place. This was taken to be such a dramatic transformation experience that it was referred to as being “born-again”.
The process emphasized humiliating the individual, having them learn that they were totally helpless to break free of their sinful nature, and that only God would be able to save them from eternal torture. From there they were supposed to just wait for Jesus to come in and regenerate their souls, as nothing else would be an acceptable substitute.
To have an unbearable threat looming over one like that, without any conceivable means of escape, would likely be traumatic for the individual, especially at an early age.
This may lead to a wide diversity of both voluntary and involuntary maladaptive coping mechanisms, of which Disassociative Identity Disorder is one.
Look I’m just going to come at this honestly, can you please never talk about anything relating to mental health and its studies beyond your personal experience ever again?
Because you say shit like this all the time, and you say it with full confidence with no regard for what your words mean. You just throw shit out and anyone who has a problem with it is just expected to argue with you until the end of time because “you learn from peer review” or whatever., except you’ve never once in the months you’ve been here changed or modified the slightest belief you’ve had and certainly not since the last time you said something outrageously stupid like “well if you think the afterlife is real maybe we should just kill ourselves.”
Like the theology shit’s just whatever to me, it’s not my beef so I don’t think I’m allowed to raise as much of a fuss I have been, but for the love of god do not try and discuss the origins of complex mental disorders with your pop psych bullshit because I can assure you are speaking with absolutely zero knowledge or authority on anything you are talking about.
Just for the record, it has been confirmed thus far that a likely cause of DID is childhood trauma.
But fine. Seeing that psychology is hardly an exact science yet and how much it’s been changing (not to mention the replicatability crisis within the field I’ve been hearing about), I shall refrain from naming specific, professionally recognized mental disorders.
After all, looking ahead, it’s unlikely that the current categories of mental disorders and their definitions and diagnostics are gonna stay relevant for very long.
😳….Liz is kind of cute- Though I got to wonder if she’s even 18 yet, and then I got to realize that I myself am 26 now and I’ve been reading Willises stuff sense I was 17.
17-year-old me stumbled on It’s Walky! around 2004, but got scared off by all the backstory. A few years later I found Shortpacked! and read it through from the beginning. I’ve been reading DoA since day 1.
[Saving Private Ryan aging sequence GIF goes here]
I’ve been reading since i was 13. It’s still kind of a pill that I’m now older than most of the cast and (hopefully) graduating in a year while they’re still first years .-.
…I think this might be the single longest gap between appearances for any character in the entire Walky-slash-Dumbi-verse. 22, almost 23 years since her sole Roomies! appearance.
Considering the way Joyce regards Sarah as the big sister she (thinks that she) never had, seeing her interact with Liz should be a lot of fun. And by “fun” I mean “there will almost certainly be tears.”
Maybe. The characters go back, but he was repurposing them for a more generic college strip. Has he ever said how much of a plan there was from the start?
Obviously the alien stuff get drawn in relatively quickly, though kind of left as unexplained weirdness until It’s Walky! got going
He said he knew in broad strokes what was going to happen up until Becky came out at least (by which point he’d come up with more, obviously), but he doesn’t work with charts or outlines or, I’d imagine, binders. And a few major changes happened early on – Dorothy wasn’t intended to become a main character. She was originally just going to dump Danny and leave and that obviously impacts plenty of that original plan.
You know I’m actually really conflicted right now. Joyce is very clearly the one most prepared for this comic gig. But I kind of think Walky should get the job. I’d definitely hire Joyce over him though. There’s no real argument to justify Walky getting it over her. Joyce has put way more thought and energy and her setup comes off way more professional. I’d never have to worry about a strip coming in on time. I don’t know.
If it’s a ‘I’m just looking to fill the slot’ position, Joyce could be very exhausting as an employee to deal with. Especially if she extends her ‘Organization’ to ‘suggestions about the rest of the paper’.
Not saying that’s the case here, but I can see it.
This is pretty much the first thing he’s actually shown a legitimate interest in pursuing beyond cartoons. Dude has no real interests beyond fast food and entertainment media. So it was kind of refreshing to actually see him put effort into something out of his own interest. There are few more characters we don’t know much about in that regard…like Joe. If he ever decides to actively work toward something beyond sex and working out I’ll be very interested.
That’s subjective though. And in fact it’s based almost entirely on what Daisy will think draws in more readers and not actually what would be more popoular because that’s impossible to know unless she decides to run some sort of readers vote competition thing which also seems like way more work than she’d want on this.
I assume there’s a website or app or something, but it would be really funny if suddenly got super real and Daisy was like “Nobody reads the newspaper.” and the whole thing is cancelled because they’re out of business.
I feel like if Walky doesn’t get the gig he’ll stop making his comic, whereas with Joyce if the newspaper won’t take her, she’ll just start self-publishing online.
Joyce’s strip will never be topical. Her characters won’t say “fuck”. If the strip, as she has designed it, doesn’t fit the paper (or the editor), the only response will be to reject it, because Joyce doesn’t look coachable.
I mean, the 3-binder-approach is probably how “Dumbing of Age” gets made, and we’re all reading it (obviously), so I’m not dissing that. Joyce’s experience might reflect Willis’s endeavours to ge a comic placed, so it’s going to be interesting to see unfold.
Same. Like, I don’t necessarily think Walky “should” get the job in-universe, but I really want to read more of Walky the Cartoonist, so I hope he gets the job.
Not that I was a college student in the 60s, but I got my drivers license in high school and they were bringing in speakers like Arthur C. Clark at the University. So that was the earliest I saw the campus paper. The last was in the late 2000s and they were still running four student strips I believe. Somewhere in there they had some kind of deal where they ran Dunesberry for a couple of years which ate up one of the student comics.
Sure, but it’s page space. Right now in their format they’ve allocated space for one comic. If they add another, they have to take space away from something else, and Daisy doesn’t seem to be very enthusiastic about comics in the paper.
There is that, fortunately it means the best person for the position gets the job (as it should be) and Walky can start learning that he doesn’t get everything he wants
She found out about it from Walky, but she’s clearly passionate about it for her own reasons. Note that she already had characters and plot stuff in mind, while Walky quickly brainstormed a fairly simple comic in a few days.
On the other hand, while she’s clearly put a lot of thought and depth into it, does she have it in a form that works for a daily comic? It could be the first months of her grand plan are exposition and set up with the pay off coming far down the road.
Especially when looking at something like a daily comic strip, epic ambitions aren’t always superior. A simple daily gag strip may be limiting in the end, but at least it works on a daily basis.
Speaking of comic strips – this IS one. Does the comic job open more character and story possibilities for Walky or Joyce? To me, it seems like something that would, character wise, benefit Walky more. It gives him something to do, he can try to become a more responsible and committed person, etc. Joyce already has so many story hooks going – new atheism, the Jocelyn shoe could drop soon, her parents divorcing, a romance with Joe, whatever’s gonna go on with Sarah’s sister, her tiptoeing around Becky, etc. The only thing Walky has going on right now is his relationship with Lucy and his issues with his parents. Maaaybe something with Mike will come up.
I must confess, I started reading DoA around two years ago, shortly before the uh, “Mike drop.” I never read anything from the Walkyverse so I miss out on a lot of the in-jokes and stuff. But I get the impression that Willis often brings in underutilized characters and does completely new stuff with them, yeah?
Like, everyone seemed to be thinking Booster is a new addition, but apparently they used to be a stick or some shit? That’s like, wild man.
There are a bunch of jokes and references like that.
Carla’s Walkyverse counterpart is Ultra Car, an artificial intelligence that was originally a red SUV, then a red hatchback, before she finally got a humanoid chassis (which Carla’s character design draws from heavily). She’s also one of the first characters, created back in grade school.
Joyce’s indifference about Danny is a running gag because back in the Walkyverse she and Sal fought over him as a love interest.
Barb, the bartender at Galasso’s, was buried in the background layer of an old con poster.
And that’s just what’s in the comic, never mind all the references we pull in the comments like “act with integrity” and “best I could do”.
All the old comics are up on itswalky.com, but there are a lot of them. Joyce’s comics are basically a parody/pastiche of Roomies!, but the actual “secret government entity full of superpowered humans fighting aliens” story gets underway with It’s Walky!.
Though there’s connections to the “secret government entity full of superpowered humans fighting aliens” story fairly early on in Roomies!. That do quite a bit to set up some of the stuff that happens later.
I’ve read quite a bit of the old comics, I think all the way through Roomies and started on It’s Walky. So I do get some of the jokes now, but the plots from the other verse just aren’t very clear in my brain because a) I started reading this first and b) a lot of that early art isn’t as engaging. Not trying to be mean, I’m sure he knows.
The calm before the storm. Sarah will surely be devastated by her sister visit. She seems so positive and happy… there’s no way Liz won’t change the perception of Sarah that everyone has! I really hope Joyce will get the job. But it’s easier for a newspaper to pick up a one-day gag strip than one with a long history going on day after day.
I’ve only had Liz for a comic strip but if anything ever happened to her I would forget the ending of this brooklyn 99 meme because its too early in the morning.
Does the chapter title refer to anything but that Night Ranger song?
I’m older than Willis, and remember this song when it was new. Let’s just say that for some of us, time has not improved it. (And that’s not because I had some Catholic schooling and knew Christian girls and have been agnostic for a long time. It’s just a bleh song.)
Chances of Joyce getting a little jealous of Liz: high
Chances of Joyce and Liz ultimately becoming very good friends after said jealousy subsides: also high
Chances of Sarah getting annoyed at this: already happening
Can’t be! Sarah’s a SOPHOMORE! (Not that that stopped Howard from showing up for Ruth but that was apparently for the Big Game/socially acceptable excuse to get away from Clint.)
Yup! Look, Grandpa! I’m going to watch a Sport! That’s suitably masculine, right? Oh, hey and this could double as college scouting! Super responsible, right? Right?
A college which you already donate way too much money to, and therefore deem ‘acceptable!’ (A college where, ultimately and in spite of herself, Ruth’s gained too many allies for Howard to be as unsupported as Clint would want when he inevitably does go there, even if it’s not until after Ruth graduates. Joyce has stared down scarier men than you, ‘Sir’.)
Are your talking about Hyperforce, or Battle for the Grid, or something newer? Because aside from that show and the miniatures/dice game, no I did not. :0
Nevermind, found it. There’s eighty bucks I didn’t necessarily need to spend, but also eighty bucks I can’t spend on booze. Thank you very much for the tip!
Assuming you mean Willis, I’d imagine about 500 emails were sent within minutes of that thing getting announced, if they didn’t already have a notification set. Or actually, probably it happened either way.
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A NEW
CHALLENGERCHARACTER APPEARS!Sarah has seen ALL THE SHIT
Depending on how many years apart, Sarah may literally have seen Liz poop herself.
Or been in a bathtub/paddling pool together when she pooped.
I’m not intending to ask my nearly-7 year old if she remembers her 3.5 year old sister doing this… Well, maybe if the toddler pulls this one on them at some point… 😉
I dunno, Miri, I still remember my 8 year old self jumping right on out of the wading pool when my nearly 3 year old brother was having too much fun to bother getting out to go to the bathroom and instead just let his turd float free. I think he’d prefer I didn’t remember, but that memory is pretty imprinted. I’d be prepared to wager your older child remembers too! 😂
Me and my brother bathed together until I was maybe 9 and he was 7 and the reason I began bathing alone was that he – still at that age – would poop in the water without even telling me. I’ll never forget…
To be fair, there are plenty of people in Indiana pooping themselves right now (it’s part of how deworming drugs work), though it’s far more common in states farther south.
I’m just saying that there are plenty of young adults considering Depends right now.
God that Ivermectin shit is the dumbest possible twist to the anti-vaxx saga, to the point where I feel like it had to have originated as a joke or a troll that idiots started taking serious.
Like, the people who lambast people as ‘sheep’ for taking a tested and proven vaccine are literally taking a fucking dewormer meant for literal livestock that does have all the nasty side effects they think the covid jab has. If you wrote that into a story, people would laugh in your face.
Do you think there are gonna BE any anti-vaxxers left after this pandemic is over?
Yeah. Less of them perhaps, but this sort of social contagion is durable.
There were anti-vaxxers 70 years ago (there were even newspaper comics mocking them even back then), there will probably be anti-vaxxers 70 years from now as well.
I don’t think it was really a contiguous movement pre-Wakefield. The MMR debacle kinda consolidated a bunch of fringe elements and gave them enough mainstream attention to draw in new recruits.
Even futher: The Root’s Michael Harriot has posted a thread on twitter listing antivax outbreaks in 1706, 1806, 1906, and then Wakefield in 1998 rolling on to today. Every hundred years, almost like clockwork.
They’ve been around as long as we’ve had vaccines. Benjamin Franklin argued with them.
* Benjamin Franklin was one. Until his son died of smallpox and he changed his mind.
Fair enough. I only read his comments after the fact. It boiled down to ‘I hear parents say they’d never forgive themselves if the child died of the vaccine – trust me, it might be the same either way.’
But those same parents would also be willing to forgive themselves if they let their child die of a virus when they could have easily prevented it with a vaccine?
” WELCOME TO THE DAMNED HUMAN RACE! “
— Mark Twain
Well, at the time, the vaccine DID give the patient the virus. It was just a milder form of the virus that was less likely to kill you. “Less likely” doesn’t mean impossible. So, in this case, you were gonna get the virus either way. BUT as Franklin pointed out, if they catch it naturally and die, you’d end up regretting it anyway. So he urged people to give it to their children via vaccine so it would be less likely to kill them.
And eventually a later vaccine came out that DIDN’T give you the virus and people who were vaccinating switched to that one.
ooo, that’s cool to know!
I thought Ivermectin was that burgh in Scotland?
And the people taking the dewormer are most likely the same people who made a huge deal out of like 10 kids eating Tide pods a few years ago…
This might not be entirely a bad thing – people do say these antivax types are full of shit, so maybe a little emptying would be beneficial.
They’re also shedding parts of their intestines, Jesus.
And they’re convinced that the strips of their intestines they are pooping out are worms. That it’s a good thing that one should do more of.
Hasn’t that been a ‘thing’ in quack medicine for a while? I thought they used some household cleaner like bleach to trigger that response so they could claim they were “detoxifying” the bowels or something ridiculous.
At least the nonsense “detoxifying” foot baths just turn their water brown by rusting a steel anode.
A few years back, I stumbled across a dieting forum of some sort, dedicated to pushing a diet of literally rotten cabbage in salt water. They insisted it was a cure-all, anyone who questioned it got banned on the spot, and they were posting pictures.
[The Gross Part – Nasty Warning]
This one regular posted a photo of herself holding up some disgusting mass of cabbage and something suspiciously fleshy-looking, and said something to the effect of “I’m not sure why but this came out and I feel a weird numbness in my guts now.” And multiple people assured her it was normal and a good thing. This seems about on par with that.
There really is no floor to this fucking idiocy, and they’re dragging us all down with them. But I’m not allowed to be happy when their stupidity kills them, because it’s “bad form” or whatever.
PLAYER 2 READY
Are we finally gonna learn something about Sarah!!???!!!
I mean, we know the name of her vibrator, what more is there?
That her Nana gave her a vibrator?
We’ve learned plenty about Sarah. But now we get to learn *more*.
Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!
Storms are brewing in her eyes.
Well, no time is a good time for goodbyes, y’know.
Well…. if Willis wants Liz to remain true to form, tonight’s comic would be a *great* time for goodbyes.
Looks like we just discovered the identity of the Sister Christian!
Well, one at least.
This could be a [iconic example of title that could refer to multiple things] situation where the title has multiple potential meanings.
Has that also happened with other chapters?
I think it depends. I’d say ‘that Perfect Girl’ is appropriate for multiple ongoing threads in that chapter, even though Carla is the one who actually says the line.
“Sister, Christian roommate. Christian roommate, sister. Introductions done.”
But Sarah knows that her roommate is no longer a Christian. Maybe Liz is a Christian?
Sarah also knows Joyce is in the closet and you don’t out people who don’t want to be out.
Nah, the storyline will be about Amber becoming a born-again Christian. This is just a decoy.
The ironic part is that the baptism process may very well result in disassociative identities like Amber’s Amazigirl through trauma, thereby providing indoctrinators with confirmation of its effectiveness.
Are you suggesting that baptism causes Dissociative Identity Disorder?
Like, I know I’ve gone off on you a lot, but this just seems like it’s not up for interpretation. What the hell are you saying?
Where I’m coming from is that at least historically, the baptism process was supposed to destroy the soul so that a completely new one, free of sin, would be regenerated in its place. This was taken to be such a dramatic transformation experience that it was referred to as being “born-again”.
The process emphasized humiliating the individual, having them learn that they were totally helpless to break free of their sinful nature, and that only God would be able to save them from eternal torture. From there they were supposed to just wait for Jesus to come in and regenerate their souls, as nothing else would be an acceptable substitute.
To have an unbearable threat looming over one like that, without any conceivable means of escape, would likely be traumatic for the individual, especially at an early age.
This may lead to a wide diversity of both voluntary and involuntary maladaptive coping mechanisms, of which Disassociative Identity Disorder is one.
Look I’m just going to come at this honestly, can you please never talk about anything relating to mental health and its studies beyond your personal experience ever again?
Because you say shit like this all the time, and you say it with full confidence with no regard for what your words mean. You just throw shit out and anyone who has a problem with it is just expected to argue with you until the end of time because “you learn from peer review” or whatever., except you’ve never once in the months you’ve been here changed or modified the slightest belief you’ve had and certainly not since the last time you said something outrageously stupid like “well if you think the afterlife is real maybe we should just kill ourselves.”
Like the theology shit’s just whatever to me, it’s not my beef so I don’t think I’m allowed to raise as much of a fuss I have been, but for the love of god do not try and discuss the origins of complex mental disorders with your pop psych bullshit because I can assure you are speaking with absolutely zero knowledge or authority on anything you are talking about.
cosigned
Just for the record, it has been confirmed thus far that a likely cause of DID is childhood trauma.
But fine. Seeing that psychology is hardly an exact science yet and how much it’s been changing (not to mention the replicatability crisis within the field I’ve been hearing about), I shall refrain from naming specific, professionally recognized mental disorders.
After all, looking ahead, it’s unlikely that the current categories of mental disorders and their definitions and diagnostics are gonna stay relevant for very long.
(Amazi-Girl voice): She’s Sarah.
😳….Liz is kind of cute- Though I got to wonder if she’s even 18 yet, and then I got to realize that I myself am 26 now and I’ve been reading Willises stuff sense I was 17.
I wonder if the cross eyed look is intentional.
I think it’s 2D shorthand for the character looking straight ahead.
or having a part-time gig over at Dragonball-Z
Been reading this comic since I was a hs senior in 2010 so I get ya.
I didn’t get into DoA until after my final disastrous attempt at uni, but I also graduated high school in 2010 so when Sal’s new haircut was unfurled…
Same except a year off. 17-27.
Good, so I’m not the only one who think Liz is cute.
17-year-old me stumbled on It’s Walky! around 2004, but got scared off by all the backstory. A few years later I found Shortpacked! and read it through from the beginning. I’ve been reading DoA since day 1.
[Saving Private Ryan aging sequence GIF goes here]
I’ve been reading since i was 13. It’s still kind of a pill that I’m now older than most of the cast and (hopefully) graduating in a year while they’re still first years .-.
26 here! But I didn’t get into reading Willis comics until late in the game — 2018, or 3 years ago.
Hank: Joyce, your major is Early Childhood Education, why are you saying you need 10 years of schooling?
Joyce: Because I’ve got at least another six volu- I mean I really want to do post-grad studies!
Okay, I’m very on board with this storyline.
I like Liz’s design.
Wait till you see the design for her boyfriend, Jimmy Wilso.
n.
I thought his name was Jon.
…I was joking when I predicted this, but I’m not disappointed!
…I think this might be the single longest gap between appearances for any character in the entire Walky-slash-Dumbi-verse. 22, almost 23 years since her sole Roomies! appearance.
Considering the way Joyce regards Sarah as the big sister she (thinks that she) never had, seeing her interact with Liz should be a lot of fun. And by “fun” I mean “there will almost certainly be tears.”
Oh dang. Good catch, thought this was a brand-new character!
She might as well be.
It’s been so long since her last appearance that I forgot she existed in the Walkyverse.
Well then, I hadn’t seen that coming but I am not too sure that I have anything against it either. Sarah always took me for an only child.
Sarah assume you were an only child? Was she wrong? And this is key, the most important, do your kid siblings play together?
So, when Sarah said her Nana got her a vibrator, now I’m all “this isn’t a weird family tradition, is it?”
Don’t shame others! Shame!
Um.
Oh hey, I don’t think I knew Sarah had a sister. That’s cool!
Also I really hope this doesn’t mean Jocelyne isn’t one of the focuses in this chapter 🙁To be fair, Liz had all of exactly one appearance in the Walkyverse…back in the Roomies! era.
YAY! Hi, Liz!
Genuinely curious if Willis was a Walky or a Joyce when he first pitched his college newspaper comic, as far as how planned out stuff was.
Definitely a Joyce. Some of these characters go back to like, him in kindergarten.
Maybe. The characters go back, but he was repurposing them for a more generic college strip. Has he ever said how much of a plan there was from the start?
Obviously the alien stuff get drawn in relatively quickly, though kind of left as unexplained weirdness until It’s Walky! got going
Yes, this is why I have hopes for the rooms at the end of the hall.
He said he knew in broad strokes what was going to happen up until Becky came out at least (by which point he’d come up with more, obviously), but he doesn’t work with charts or outlines or, I’d imagine, binders. And a few major changes happened early on – Dorothy wasn’t intended to become a main character. She was originally just going to dump Danny and leave and that obviously impacts plenty of that original plan.
I was thinking of his original plans with Roomies! when he started it as a college strip.
I’d quite Abed, but Sarah seems to need no help reacting to this.
Liz seems like an interesting character.
You know I’m actually really conflicted right now. Joyce is very clearly the one most prepared for this comic gig. But I kind of think Walky should get the job. I’d definitely hire Joyce over him though. There’s no real argument to justify Walky getting it over her. Joyce has put way more thought and energy and her setup comes off way more professional. I’d never have to worry about a strip coming in on time. I don’t know.
Just out of curiosity, why do you think Walky should get the job?
If it’s a ‘I’m just looking to fill the slot’ position, Joyce could be very exhausting as an employee to deal with. Especially if she extends her ‘Organization’ to ‘suggestions about the rest of the paper’.
Not saying that’s the case here, but I can see it.
This is pretty much the first thing he’s actually shown a legitimate interest in pursuing beyond cartoons. Dude has no real interests beyond fast food and entertainment media. So it was kind of refreshing to actually see him put effort into something out of his own interest. There are few more characters we don’t know much about in that regard…like Joe. If he ever decides to actively work toward something beyond sex and working out I’ll be very interested.
Like being a decent, supportive friend to Joyce?
How long is he going to be interested in doing it when he finds out it takes effort?
…Wait Joe? Did you miss the entire last chapter?
I’m assuming Sirksome meant ‘working towards something’ as in professional/academic/hobby type pursuits, not necessarily personal ones.
Easy decision really, which one isn’t going to let you down. Which one is ready to go. Which one is prepared.
Joyce wins hands down
Which one will draw more readers is the main criterion.
That’s subjective though. And in fact it’s based almost entirely on what Daisy will think draws in more readers and not actually what would be more popoular because that’s impossible to know unless she decides to run some sort of readers vote competition thing which also seems like way more work than she’d want on this.
Walky will draw plenty of readers. All of them being kicked.
That and meeting the deadline
it’s a college newspaper in [CURRENT YEAR]. I don’t think any comic is going to draw in readers
I assume there’s a website or app or something, but it would be really funny if suddenly got super real and Daisy was like “Nobody reads the newspaper.” and the whole thing is cancelled because they’re out of business.
It’s a college paper. It never had readers.
Sounds like the kind of crappy excuse someone gives an incompetent person to become a manager instead of a competent one tbh.
I feel like if Walky doesn’t get the gig he’ll stop making his comic, whereas with Joyce if the newspaper won’t take her, she’ll just start self-publishing online.
But who’s going to read comics that are exclusively distributed online?
Joyce’s strip will never be topical. Her characters won’t say “fuck”. If the strip, as she has designed it, doesn’t fit the paper (or the editor), the only response will be to reject it, because Joyce doesn’t look coachable.
I mean, the 3-binder-approach is probably how “Dumbing of Age” gets made, and we’re all reading it (obviously), so I’m not dissing that. Joyce’s experience might reflect Willis’s endeavours to ge a comic placed, so it’s going to be interesting to see unfold.
Same. Like, I don’t necessarily think Walky “should” get the job in-universe, but I really want to read more of Walky the Cartoonist, so I hope he gets the job.
My college was running four comics back in the 60s. I kind of doubt two comic strips would break the bank.
Not that I was a college student in the 60s, but I got my drivers license in high school and they were bringing in speakers like Arthur C. Clark at the University. So that was the earliest I saw the campus paper. The last was in the late 2000s and they were still running four student strips I believe. Somewhere in there they had some kind of deal where they ran Dunesberry for a couple of years which ate up one of the student comics.
Sure, but it’s page space. Right now in their format they’ve allocated space for one comic. If they add another, they have to take space away from something else, and Daisy doesn’t seem to be very enthusiastic about comics in the paper.
There were four last semester so I’m guessing people graduated and Daisy wanted to use the space for more ads.
In honor of the occasion, I here present Liz Clinton’s only appearance in the entire Walkyverse.
Seems to have been aged up a few years, also (understandably) made less of a Sarah clone in terms of visuals.
Joyce: I’m sorry, the position of Little Sis has already been filled. Bye! *triangle smile as she slams the door*
Take your pretend upvote.
+1
Not having any idea of how college newspapers work I’d hire Joyce also this new storyline looks a lot better than the Walkys a slob storyline
I also predict Joyce getting the job, but it’s got more to do with Daisy’s unquenchable thirst as opposed to any other criteria.
There is that, fortunately it means the best person for the position gets the job (as it should be) and Walky can start learning that he doesn’t get everything he wants
*re-reads past posts* Nah, don’t ask me about reggae. All I know about that came from PBS and maybe NPR’s Fresh Air program.
Red Red Wine.
Technically pop-reggae, but still.
Not a bad one. I include UB40’s version on my “Re-Decade” playlist.
Sarah always struck me as an only child, mostly because of the whole “Big Sis/Little Sis” thing.
Things are gonna get weird.
Oh, I’m betting things will get very awkward.
Sarah gives off very “bigger sister who had to grow up too fast” vibes to me.
Oh Sarah, I fucking love you and your attitude. Teach me your ways. Then I’ll ask Carla how to improve, which probably entails being more like her.
Man I’m going to be sad if Joyce doesn’t get the job she just tried/worked at it way harder than Walky.
didn’t she only want it because Walky wanted it and she thought she’d be better at it than him?
She’s put in the effort though
she’s just porting her friend fic from text to comic strip. Walky came up with an original idea that even Joyce thought was good.
Joyce can show she can put weeks (months) of strips together, how long can Walky sustain a gag a day
It’s literally a gag every day.
yeah, every day. I hope Walky gets it because it feels like Joyce just wants to take something he wanted from him.
She found out about it from Walky, but she’s clearly passionate about it for her own reasons. Note that she already had characters and plot stuff in mind, while Walky quickly brainstormed a fairly simple comic in a few days.
Maybe she could just post it as a webcomic???
On the other hand, while she’s clearly put a lot of thought and depth into it, does she have it in a form that works for a daily comic? It could be the first months of her grand plan are exposition and set up with the pay off coming far down the road.
Especially when looking at something like a daily comic strip, epic ambitions aren’t always superior. A simple daily gag strip may be limiting in the end, but at least it works on a daily basis.
The strips we actually saw were awful, too. She put a lot of work into it but this is a girl who’s had limited exposure to comics and popular media.
Speaking of comic strips – this IS one. Does the comic job open more character and story possibilities for Walky or Joyce? To me, it seems like something that would, character wise, benefit Walky more. It gives him something to do, he can try to become a more responsible and committed person, etc. Joyce already has so many story hooks going – new atheism, the Jocelyn shoe could drop soon, her parents divorcing, a romance with Joe, whatever’s gonna go on with Sarah’s sister, her tiptoeing around Becky, etc. The only thing Walky has going on right now is his relationship with Lucy and his issues with his parents. Maaaybe something with Mike will come up.
exactly, there’s so much going on with Joyce. Walky should have something.
She cute <3
Oh definitely. 😍
Is Liz a totally new character who wasn’t in the other ‘verse?
She had a grand total of one appearance in the original continuity.
So, effectively yes.
So, yes and no?
I must confess, I started reading DoA around two years ago, shortly before the uh, “Mike drop.” I never read anything from the Walkyverse so I miss out on a lot of the in-jokes and stuff. But I get the impression that Willis often brings in underutilized characters and does completely new stuff with them, yeah?
Like, everyone seemed to be thinking Booster is a new addition, but apparently they used to be a stick or some shit? That’s like, wild man.
Yeah, Willis brings in lots of older folks, and occasionally concepts (like the Power Booster Rod that seems to have inspired Booster).
There are a bunch of jokes and references like that.
Carla’s Walkyverse counterpart is Ultra Car, an artificial intelligence that was originally a red SUV, then a red hatchback, before she finally got a humanoid chassis (which Carla’s character design draws from heavily). She’s also one of the first characters, created back in grade school.
Joyce’s indifference about Danny is a running gag because back in the Walkyverse she and Sal fought over him as a love interest.
Barb, the bartender at Galasso’s, was buried in the background layer of an old con poster.
And that’s just what’s in the comic, never mind all the references we pull in the comments like “act with integrity” and “best I could do”.
All the old comics are up on itswalky.com, but there are a lot of them. Joyce’s comics are basically a parody/pastiche of Roomies!, but the actual “secret government entity full of superpowered humans fighting aliens” story gets underway with It’s Walky!.
Though there’s connections to the “secret government entity full of superpowered humans fighting aliens” story fairly early on in Roomies!. That do quite a bit to set up some of the stuff that happens later.
I’ve read quite a bit of the old comics, I think all the way through Roomies and started on It’s Walky. So I do get some of the jokes now, but the plots from the other verse just aren’t very clear in my brain because a) I started reading this first and b) a lot of that early art isn’t as engaging. Not trying to be mean, I’m sure he knows.
Sarah has a Sister! I can’t wait for her to be the happy person Joyce sees so much of herself in and for Sarah to then possibly get envious.
Ooh, lore time.
You mean Liz is evil and wants to take over Sarah’s role in the comic?
Trust Data, not Lore.
You went in a direction I was most definitely not expecting. Good job.
OMG
WHUUUUT?
Ooh, pretty.
I was never 100% sure if Sarah’s hair was supposed to locs or twists or curls but I think I can rule out curls.
Pleasedontbetheevilpromiscuousdarkskinnedtrope
I kinda got the impression her hair style shifted over the time jump, not just in length.
Good save, Sarah.
I love Sarah. If Carla didn’t exist, she’d be the best thing in this strip.
No way, Sarah’s sister??? I never thought we’d see Liz!
Is Sarah paraphrasing Thufir Hawat? It seems like Willis is looking for the Dune movie, too…
Her role in the Walkyverse is so minor that I thought she was a brand-new character for a second, LOL.
if we learned anything from diary of a wimpy kid walky is going to land the cartoonist job
Haha, I don’t get it
I am so excited for Sarah Story!
The calm before the storm. Sarah will surely be devastated by her sister visit. She seems so positive and happy… there’s no way Liz won’t change the perception of Sarah that everyone has! I really hope Joyce will get the job. But it’s easier for a newspaper to pick up a one-day gag strip than one with a long history going on day after day.
Who ever win, it will be a version of willis who win.
She is so cute I love her immediately
I’ve only had Liz for a comic strip but if anything ever happened to her I would forget the ending of this brooklyn 99 meme because its too early in the morning.
“…kill everyone in this room and then myself.” I may not have the exact quote.
Joyce has competition
Does the chapter title refer to anything but that Night Ranger song?
I’m older than Willis, and remember this song when it was new. Let’s just say that for some of us, time has not improved it. (And that’s not because I had some Catholic schooling and knew Christian girls and have been agnostic for a long time. It’s just a bleh song.)
Gosh I freaking love Sarah. She’s so pretty! ♥
Poor Sarah, trapped between two sunshines.
[Professor-Farnsworth-ah-beuh-wah.wav]
Chances of Joyce getting a little jealous of Liz: high
Chances of Joyce and Liz ultimately becoming very good friends after said jealousy subsides: also high
Chances of Sarah getting annoyed at this: already happening
And I can’t WAIT.
NEW CHARACTER!
I was not prepared:)
This is not the sister we were all expecting.
*Sarah looks at calendar*
Are we having ANOTHER Freshman Family Weekend??
Can’t be! Sarah’s a SOPHOMORE! (Not that that stopped Howard from showing up for Ruth but that was apparently for the Big Game/socially acceptable excuse to get away from Clint.)
Yup! Look, Grandpa! I’m going to watch a Sport! That’s suitably masculine, right? Oh, hey and this could double as college scouting! Super responsible, right? Right?
A college which you already donate way too much money to, and therefore deem ‘acceptable!’ (A college where, ultimately and in spite of herself, Ruth’s gained too many allies for Howard to be as unsupported as Clint would want when he inevitably does go there, even if it’s not until after Ruth graduates. Joyce has stared down scarier men than you, ‘Sir’.)
Willis, did you know there’s a Transformers TTRPG?
Delicious Taffy, did you know there’s a Power Rangers TTRPG?
Are your talking about Hyperforce, or Battle for the Grid, or something newer? Because aside from that show and the miniatures/dice game, no I did not. :0
Nevermind, found it. There’s eighty bucks I didn’t necessarily need to spend, but also eighty bucks I can’t spend on booze. Thank you very much for the tip!
I’d be surprised if he didn’t
Assuming you mean Willis, I’d imagine about 500 emails were sent within minutes of that thing getting announced, if they didn’t already have a notification set. Or actually, probably it happened either way.
Omg so cute
(Still hope we get Jocelyn this storyline but i love Liz already)
Sarah’s not wrong on this one. I like her ability to deal with nearly anything, even living with a freshman.
Sarah’s given 17, to date. Joyce, on the other hand, gives no fucks.
is that….. a lesbian sweater