The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
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This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Blindsprings
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Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
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Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
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The Otherknown
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Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
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.
Cyanide & Happiness
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Also not to imply everything has to be original all the time, but DoA has had two separate evil dad plots that then combined into one mega evil dad team up! I think that story idea has been played to it’s maximum potential. How many times can we really go to that well? Even shaking things up with an evil mom and/or evil grandpa feels a little stale.
Even so we already have an few evil parent plotlines waiting in the background (Ruth’s grandpa and Joyce’s mom being the ones that jump to mind immediately) we don’t really need more
I’m thinking Richard’s gonna fuck up, but he’s gonna actually try to change once he does.
Joe and Amber being siblings is a fun dynamic and I don’t want it gone (and also their folks have been married like, what, two months now?) and I think them carrying it on just being friends loses the familial bond they’re making now.
More specifically to Joe’s dad, I think his failure is inevitable, he is clearly thinking that he just has to sit in a room and Not Cheat, instead of whatever it is that’s motivating him. I get the feeling he thinks of himself the way Joe thinks of him; you’re gonna fuck up and hurt people, and the longer it goes on the more it’s gonna hurt when he does. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the dude has an outright sex addiction, and we just never talk about it because “haha that can’t happen to guys, they’re just horny.”
And I think there are two wrinkles here that are gonna motivate Richard into confronting his issues. One is that I think it’ll do Joe some major good to see that he’s not doomed to do the same thing his dad has done, because even his dad isn’t doomed to it, it’s a problem to confront. Otherwise, there’s the fact that Stacy and Amber are clearly financially dependent on him in between getting sued by Ryan’s folks and paying for Amber’s tuition. Richard could cheat on Stacy and get away with it, and I think realizing that, that the woman he loves would be forced to stay with him and be trapped again in an abusive relationship, would terrify the hell out of him enough that he’d force himself to start confronting his problems.
Is there any sign that Richard is nearly that introspective about it? From what he said when Joe found out he was seeing Stacy and confronted him, he doesn’t even think he has to sit in a room and Not Cheat, he just wasn’t feeling the urge, so there’s no problem.
As far as Joe’s arc goes, I think it would be better to see Joe overcome something his father couldn’t than to overcome it because his father did. Especially since showing Richard confronting his issues properly would mean a lot of focus on him, probably without any of the main cast around.
Nah, see, I think Richard’s gonna have to confront it because the alternative (beyond him just never showing up in any capacity) is that he was totally right and he’s 100% tamed and will never betray Stacy, someone who’s financially dependent on him and can’t just leave because she feels like it and already has a rulebook for living with an abusive partner.
Remember: Joe’s problem isn’t “I just have to not cheat” it’s “I am inevitably doomed to causing the same harm my dad did,” which can be resolved in multiple ways. Joe’s never gonna cheat on Joyce, probably, but it’s the kind of character struggle that probably needs some textual struggle instead of just “and then Joe does not cheat.”
That’s why I’d think of Richard cheating on Stacy and then meaningfully confronting his issues kinda wraps a lot of stuff up. It means Richard wasn’t just totally right when he said “psh I got this,” it means Stacy doesn’t have that Sword of Damocles hanging over her head anymore, and it means Joe doesn’t have to worry about being his dad anymore, because not even his dad is doomed to it.
Maybe. I’d hate to see it though.
I’d hate to see Richard fix all his problems with less apparent effort than we’ve already seen Joe go through, especially if he cheats again. I can’t see them getting the kind of multi-chapter focus that story would deserve, since they’re background characters. And unlike the parent villain arcs, that seems like it would be more focused on them than on the kids.
Also I’d rather see Joe become not his dad on his own, rather than be doomed to be his dad, but his dad is okay really so that’s fine. And that’s the path his arc is already on.
“,going to therapy” isn’t a fix, it’s starting to fix. Joe’s never gonna cheat, so he’s already not doomed to be his dad, the problem is the constant fear that’s preventing him from being emotionally honest.
Willis is on record in the Walkyverse commentary as haaaating to write “cheating” storylines (there’s one storyline for instance that he utterly hated where while Danny doesn’t physically cheat on Billie with Sal, he sure as heck did so emotionally, and Willis hated that in retrospect—also another storyline where Walky was similarly after Joyce while in a relationship with Dina, and Willis outright said in the commentary there that “if Becky ever treats [Dina] the same way, I’m sending her straight back to Anderson”); from a meta perspective, it’s probably part of why Joyce’s relationship with Jacob crashed and burned and why Jacob broke up with Raidah immediately afterward. So I dunno if Richard will ever actually cheat on Stacy, looking at things that way.
Funnily enough, I think infidelity as a story beat makes me that uncomfortable too. Something I’m writing right now (tldr: a fantasy story set after the cliche heroic fantasy story has ended) touches on that where the main character cheated on his wife in the backstory, and when I was cobbling the idea together it kinda started as a joke about how it’s messed up how many fantasy stories end with The Hero and The Princess getting married and ruling a country when they’re like 18, and from there the only way I could really process it as something where I could still like the hero afterwards is, for lack of a better way to put it, that the actual act of cheating on his wife wasn’t wrong, because neither of them are actually in love with each other and they were just kind of forced together because The Plot, and his actual crimes are everything else that resulted from it.
It’s kinda fun to write about! Getting into the head of someone who did an obvious wrong as a result of a worsening spiral and how they pick themselves up afterwards has been interesting for me to process as a writer, but it’s also amusing to me, personally, that the actual act of cheating on a loved one was still something I can’t bring myself to write as having happened.
Richard may be enough in the background that him cheating isn’t the same emotionally as a protagonist doing so. It’s not like Becky cheating, since Richard is already essentially on the bus away. He’s not going to cheat then hang around being a positive main character.
The fact that Joe’s dad seems really skeezy and yet there are at least 5 parents/guardians of main characters who are clearly much worse is a bit distressing.
Well… Amber and Joe’s issues with their dads do parallel each other even though Dr. Rosenthal is just philandering sexualizing asshole at his worst and not a Literal Murderer Supervillian.
They both see it as inevitable that they’ll turn up like their fathers, and that the best they can do is try and channel the Terrible Dad Quality into something more positive.
It’s just that with Amber, that Terrible Dad Quality was violence and anger and she tried to channel it into a superhero persona – a more honorable and just sort of violence.
And with Joe that Terrible Dad Quality is just horniness and he tries to channel it into a less hurtful and more respectful form of horniness by being clear about how shallow his desires is – rather than deceiving anyone and breaking their heart, like his dad did to his mom.
It’s amazing how well these two work as siblings, they’re both a lot more similar than the surface-level suggests.
These comments are actually hurtful… probably because I feel like I’m Mike.
Why bother trying, when you’ve been pigeonholed so long? Death, though stupid and honorable, still lets people like you pretend confidence long enough to say dehumanizing things.
Oh gosh, I guess since you’re speaking of a FICTIONAL character, it’s all okay….
Hmmm….No. Feelings for fictional characters are still valid and I apologize if my comment upset you.
From my perspective, Mike’s death though honorable doesn’t actually redeem him of the real harm he perpetrated on an almost everyday basis for years including possibly having a minor hand in creating the circumstances that cause Amber’s traumatic gas station incident. So I don’t miss him. I also find it curious that so many people feel like they identify with the character since he acted so blatantly antagonistic. If Mike was pigeonholed into being perceived negatively he created that himself with his actions, never really changing, and undercutting anything positive he did with his facade of amorality.
But these things don’t actually excuse my comment even though Mike is indeed a fictional character. Amber is justified in her grief. Regardless of Mike’s character he was indeed one of her first real friends and still probably one of two people she truly considered friends. I’ll try not to speak ill of him anymore for the sake of people his character resonated with, but I make no guarantees I won’t slip from time to time.
That looks like a yellow version of a shirt I bought at Walmart a couple of years ago. It was the same cut, like a turquoise blue, and had those white football stripes or whatever they’re called
I have been wondering. Is hallucinations Mike drawn in a different or older style than the rest of the characters and scenery? He seems more 2D and his color pallet and shading slightly off from the rest of the comic.
Mike gets killed and replaced by a doppelganger but then everyone just likes the new Mike better.
Incidentally, this is the plot twist of my favourite book (which I can’t name, natch, for spoiler reasons) and it’s maybe the most thoroughly disturbing thought I’ve ever had.
Because being replaced by a flawed clone that people around you sus out is kinda heartwarming in a weird way. Like you’re dead, but your absence is felt in a way that your loved ones can tell. Meanwhile a perfect copy is kinda like, okay sure, you’re acting the same so it’s fair they can’t tell.
But a replacement that’s better than you in every way and enriches the lives of your loved ones like you never could? That’s the most thorough existentialist nightmare I could possibly have.
Like the bad Civil War movie (spoiler) where the doppelganger comes back instead of her husband. When they are in court. How do you know? “Because I never loved him the way I love you.”
I find it difficult to answer the survey. If I fix it for my wife, it’s by the box. If it’s for me, I never do it the same way twice.
Kraft Mac and Cheese is a good base for mixing in all kind of things. Beans, mixed vegetables, spam and fried eggs, stewed tomatoes, picantee sauce, chili. I guess I draw the line at everything.
I’d rather have the arguments about Kraft macaroni and cheese than the arguments that are gonna happen in the comments the next time we see Joyce and Becky.
Every once in a while I realize that Willis got me super tense and full of dread over Joyce having a furious, idealogical fight with her childhood best friend, while off to the side Amber just keeps heading towards an eventual bar conversation where she says “Yeah, when I was in college I wrestled with multiple personalities, almost got shot a couple times, had frequent vivid hallucinations – it was a rough time.”
Still holding on to hope that Mike’s in witness protection and is going to come back one day once everything’s blown over and start screwing with people again.
Man, it can’t just be coincidence that just about everything in Amber’s life seems to be blue and yellow. Y’know, the colors of the *Warner* Bros. logo? I dunno, maybe it’s a coincidence.
Amber, you absolutely need to talk to someone who is equipped to help manage your trauma and other mental health problems. I’m honestly hesitant to say talk to a therapist or counselor because I feel like someone like that might try to forcefully institutionalize her and she DEFINITELY doesn’t need something as traumatic as that added to her already considerable pile of mental baggage.
I’m not saying that in-patient mental health treatment isn’t helpful at all, but it is quite an intense experience and being forced to undergo that when you don’t want to can be quite traumatizing. Not to mention, with Amber’s self-destructive spiral where she doesn’t believe she deserves anything good, being forced into an environment where you are treated as a danger to yourself (and potentially others) while being constantly monitored would most likely just add to it and make things worse
Because it’s her fault that she enraged him enough to go fight Wamuu alone, whereupon he was able to still Wamuu’s ring with his dying act and pass it on to Amber so she could cure herself of the poison the Pillar Men infected her with.
Amber has known Mike for years, familiarity can breed comfort even when we’re talking about the douchiest of edgelords. We’ve just seen that she does think that at least some of his…. antics were funny.
And he used to be one of her only friends, she probably always hoped that he hang around her and Ethan out of some sense of affection and not just because they were fun to mess with. His last actions and last words to Amazi-Girl confirmed that hope – and now she’s inclined to look at all of their past interactions through a more positive light.
Yeah, but she didn’t really *have* any interactions with him.
Like, not even in the flashbacks. Maybe like we’re supposed to ‘know’ they’re old palsbut like nothing up until the Mike-drop suggests he’s special to her.
Amber can’t so much as sustain a conversation with a character who *isn’t* an irony-choked edge lord with zero concept of emotional safety. You’re gonna tell me she willingly hung out with Mike *frequently* in this timescale?
They…literally were in class together? Like having an interaction isn’t the same thing as hanging out or having a conversation. But Mike went to Amber’s birthday party, so Amber must have invited him. Mike tried to stand up for Amber to the teacher that one time.
Like I don’t see why you need some concrete proof that they were CLOSE or SPECIAL to each other. What they were was familiar. Mike was a long-time familiar presence that Amber had grown used to being around. Ethan was probably personally closer to Mike to be certain, but when you’re simply around someone long enough you get to know them, and the fact that they are a familiar known quantity is comforting, however much of an asshole Mike may have been. And that’s why Amber misses him. That’s all there is to it.
Also literally just search for strips tagged with both mike and amber. You will see plenty of them interacting. Willingly! Being friends! Familiar! Just kind of spending time together! Sure, in ‘present-day’ most of their interactions ended with amber getting pissed at him, but like. Come on.
Codependence. He was abusive and manipulative and worked his way into her life. She’d distanced herself from him, but hadn’t really come to terms with how toxic he’d been to her before he died. It’s not uncommon for abuse survivors to remain attached to their abusers, especially if they never get the chance to properly process the complex emotions.
And of course he died saving her, which means she can’t even start to address the negatives, and makes it feel like her fault, which plays directly into her other issues.
I still kinda wish we could’ve seen a redemption arc for this universe’s Mike, instead of him dying. Though I guess I prefer the other universe Mike more.
I mean sacrificing yourself to help stop active criminals whose intent was to kidnap and possibly murder their way through abusing religion and the church peoples easily lead gullibility is a pretty big redemption act in my book.
Even Mike knew he was gonna most likely die but he was taking Blaine down as much as possible with him. And in the long run he sorta did, with dick dad bring hospitalized and unable to dodge the mob anymore.
It is, but it’s the cheapest easiest kind of redemption arc, since the character just gets to die and not have to deal with any actual growth or change. One big dramatic gesture and everyone has to be sad you’re gone. (Which helps keep them from processing the damage you did before.)
I mean, I get why Willis did it, as much as I would have liked to see Mike struggle with his revelation. He’d lose most of his Mikeness in the process and this is more interesting for other more major characters.
Nah, redemption by death is cheap and i resent the original star wars trilogy for making it so popular. I don’t think it was really meant to be a redemption here either. I’m still kinda sour that we didn’t get the slow uphill climb of Mike trying to be a better person
Don’t forget that he deliberately lured Amazi-Girl into that fight, while having an obvious feasible alternative of calling the police. Mike died failing to let Amber and Amazi-girl out of a trap that he set for them.
Hin2estly I can see ghost mike staying with Amber her whole life. Anybody that that close to you whether good or bad never fully leaves.
One of my friends I was good with died almost 3 years ago and even nowadays, I still catch myself believing that he never died. I’ll be doing something or see things connected to things we used to do and be like “Man I need to call (x) and let him know of this shit!” Sometimes I’ll have my phone out and be trying to find his number and then it hits.
Amber went through a lot worse than me or really a lot of people her age or older. And argubly Mike’s death was the last bit of strain holding any semblance of normalcy for her together. Her superhero actions inadvertently led to his death. I really don’t see the girl ever being able to let go of Mike enough for the phantom to fade. Not until she gets old and memory loss possibly sets in.
Yes, I’ve been brokenhearted
Blue since the day we parted
Why, why, did I ever let you go tackle my dad off the edge of a building in a half-failed murder-suicide
Dang it! This was Dumbing Day 2022 and I missed it. This was a very stressful day for me (work deadlines) and it wasn’t even on my radar. Oh well. See you around January 18 next year.
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oh no the feels
12:04! Congratulations on a new best since the latest server time jug-shuffle!
If they do switch problems does that mean Joe will start seeing someone about whom he feels guilty everywhere he go-hey wait a minute!
Does he get an evil dad as opposed to just kind of a dick sometimes dad?
Petition for Joe’s dad to turn evil, but maintain his friendly demeanor.
Joe: When you said we were moving somewhere warm, I pictured Cali.
Dr. Rosenthal: This volcano lair was a bargain! We’ll save so much on heating!
This comic does not need any more evil parents, we’re already past capacity
Also not to imply everything has to be original all the time, but DoA has had two separate evil dad plots that then combined into one mega evil dad team up! I think that story idea has been played to it’s maximum potential. How many times can we really go to that well? Even shaking things up with an evil mom and/or evil grandpa feels a little stale.
We have two evil grandpas and at least one dot five evil moms waiting in the wings already!
Ruth has an evil grandpa. Ruth’s boy’s dad is pretty evil, too, IIRC. (Can’t remember boy’s name except skeezy Math TA.)
Dargon Chesterfield is a Bond villain
Even so we already have an few evil parent plotlines waiting in the background (Ruth’s grandpa and Joyce’s mom being the ones that jump to mind immediately) we don’t really need more
So, is hat the end game? Joyce’s nervous breakdown when her Mom marries Ruth’s Grandpa, ‘Sir’?
Well, we have two holes in our lineup now. Some of our bad dads have… retired permanently.
I want it to be a subversion where, other than the philandering, Joe’s dad is a good person who’s metier happens to be supervillainy.
I’m thinking Richard’s gonna fuck up, but he’s gonna actually try to change once he does.
Joe and Amber being siblings is a fun dynamic and I don’t want it gone (and also their folks have been married like, what, two months now?) and I think them carrying it on just being friends loses the familial bond they’re making now.
More specifically to Joe’s dad, I think his failure is inevitable, he is clearly thinking that he just has to sit in a room and Not Cheat, instead of whatever it is that’s motivating him. I get the feeling he thinks of himself the way Joe thinks of him; you’re gonna fuck up and hurt people, and the longer it goes on the more it’s gonna hurt when he does. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the dude has an outright sex addiction, and we just never talk about it because “haha that can’t happen to guys, they’re just horny.”
And I think there are two wrinkles here that are gonna motivate Richard into confronting his issues. One is that I think it’ll do Joe some major good to see that he’s not doomed to do the same thing his dad has done, because even his dad isn’t doomed to it, it’s a problem to confront. Otherwise, there’s the fact that Stacy and Amber are clearly financially dependent on him in between getting sued by Ryan’s folks and paying for Amber’s tuition. Richard could cheat on Stacy and get away with it, and I think realizing that, that the woman he loves would be forced to stay with him and be trapped again in an abusive relationship, would terrify the hell out of him enough that he’d force himself to start confronting his problems.
Is there any sign that Richard is nearly that introspective about it? From what he said when Joe found out he was seeing Stacy and confronted him, he doesn’t even think he has to sit in a room and Not Cheat, he just wasn’t feeling the urge, so there’s no problem.
As far as Joe’s arc goes, I think it would be better to see Joe overcome something his father couldn’t than to overcome it because his father did. Especially since showing Richard confronting his issues properly would mean a lot of focus on him, probably without any of the main cast around.
Nah, see, I think Richard’s gonna have to confront it because the alternative (beyond him just never showing up in any capacity) is that he was totally right and he’s 100% tamed and will never betray Stacy, someone who’s financially dependent on him and can’t just leave because she feels like it and already has a rulebook for living with an abusive partner.
Remember: Joe’s problem isn’t “I just have to not cheat” it’s “I am inevitably doomed to causing the same harm my dad did,” which can be resolved in multiple ways. Joe’s never gonna cheat on Joyce, probably, but it’s the kind of character struggle that probably needs some textual struggle instead of just “and then Joe does not cheat.”
That’s why I’d think of Richard cheating on Stacy and then meaningfully confronting his issues kinda wraps a lot of stuff up. It means Richard wasn’t just totally right when he said “psh I got this,” it means Stacy doesn’t have that Sword of Damocles hanging over her head anymore, and it means Joe doesn’t have to worry about being his dad anymore, because not even his dad is doomed to it.
Maybe. I’d hate to see it though.
I’d hate to see Richard fix all his problems with less apparent effort than we’ve already seen Joe go through, especially if he cheats again. I can’t see them getting the kind of multi-chapter focus that story would deserve, since they’re background characters. And unlike the parent villain arcs, that seems like it would be more focused on them than on the kids.
Also I’d rather see Joe become not his dad on his own, rather than be doomed to be his dad, but his dad is okay really so that’s fine. And that’s the path his arc is already on.
“,going to therapy” isn’t a fix, it’s starting to fix. Joe’s never gonna cheat, so he’s already not doomed to be his dad, the problem is the constant fear that’s preventing him from being emotionally honest.
Willis is on record in the Walkyverse commentary as haaaating to write “cheating” storylines (there’s one storyline for instance that he utterly hated where while Danny doesn’t physically cheat on Billie with Sal, he sure as heck did so emotionally, and Willis hated that in retrospect—also another storyline where Walky was similarly after Joyce while in a relationship with Dina, and Willis outright said in the commentary there that “if Becky ever treats [Dina] the same way, I’m sending her straight back to Anderson”); from a meta perspective, it’s probably part of why Joyce’s relationship with Jacob crashed and burned and why Jacob broke up with Raidah immediately afterward. So I dunno if Richard will ever actually cheat on Stacy, looking at things that way.
Funnily enough, I think infidelity as a story beat makes me that uncomfortable too. Something I’m writing right now (tldr: a fantasy story set after the cliche heroic fantasy story has ended) touches on that where the main character cheated on his wife in the backstory, and when I was cobbling the idea together it kinda started as a joke about how it’s messed up how many fantasy stories end with The Hero and The Princess getting married and ruling a country when they’re like 18, and from there the only way I could really process it as something where I could still like the hero afterwards is, for lack of a better way to put it, that the actual act of cheating on his wife wasn’t wrong, because neither of them are actually in love with each other and they were just kind of forced together because The Plot, and his actual crimes are everything else that resulted from it.
It’s kinda fun to write about! Getting into the head of someone who did an obvious wrong as a result of a worsening spiral and how they pick themselves up afterwards has been interesting for me to process as a writer, but it’s also amusing to me, personally, that the actual act of cheating on a loved one was still something I can’t bring myself to write as having happened.
Richard may be enough in the background that him cheating isn’t the same emotionally as a protagonist doing so. It’s not like Becky cheating, since Richard is already essentially on the bus away. He’s not going to cheat then hang around being a positive main character.
Galasso?
So Joe’s dad is Galasso?
Like The Crimson Claw?
https://supervillainous.spiderforest.com/comic/comic-1-work-and-family/
(yes he is also a jerk)
Thank you, so very, very, much for sharing this!
The fact that Joe’s dad seems really skeezy and yet there are at least 5 parents/guardians of main characters who are clearly much worse is a bit distressing.
So, did the League of Evil need to raise money for this cell phone bill?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMXXxxewDHQ
Well… Amber and Joe’s issues with their dads do parallel each other even though Dr. Rosenthal is just philandering sexualizing asshole at his worst and not a Literal Murderer Supervillian.
They both see it as inevitable that they’ll turn up like their fathers, and that the best they can do is try and channel the Terrible Dad Quality into something more positive.
It’s just that with Amber, that Terrible Dad Quality was violence and anger and she tried to channel it into a superhero persona – a more honorable and just sort of violence.
And with Joe that Terrible Dad Quality is just horniness and he tries to channel it into a less hurtful and more respectful form of horniness by being clear about how shallow his desires is – rather than deceiving anyone and breaking their heart, like his dad did to his mom.
It’s amazing how well these two work as siblings, they’re both a lot more similar than the surface-level suggests.
So Joe gets phantom Liz who is always just leaving?
I vote for this!
Hmm. well I guess someone has to…like statistically speaking.
Give her some time, she’ll heal eventually.
These comments are actually hurtful… probably because I feel like I’m Mike.
Why bother trying, when you’ve been pigeonholed so long? Death, though stupid and honorable, still lets people like you pretend confidence long enough to say dehumanizing things.
Oh gosh, I guess since you’re speaking of a FICTIONAL character, it’s all okay….
Hmmm….No. Feelings for fictional characters are still valid and I apologize if my comment upset you.
From my perspective, Mike’s death though honorable doesn’t actually redeem him of the real harm he perpetrated on an almost everyday basis for years including possibly having a minor hand in creating the circumstances that cause Amber’s traumatic gas station incident. So I don’t miss him. I also find it curious that so many people feel like they identify with the character since he acted so blatantly antagonistic. If Mike was pigeonholed into being perceived negatively he created that himself with his actions, never really changing, and undercutting anything positive he did with his facade of amorality.
But these things don’t actually excuse my comment even though Mike is indeed a fictional character. Amber is justified in her grief. Regardless of Mike’s character he was indeed one of her first real friends and still probably one of two people she truly considered friends. I’ll try not to speak ill of him anymore for the sake of people his character resonated with, but I make no guarantees I won’t slip from time to time.
Ah, the feels. I think they are called that, anyway.
Too bad Amber’s shirt isn’t real. It looks hella comfy.
That looks like a yellow version of a shirt I bought at Walmart a couple of years ago. It was the same cut, like a turquoise blue, and had those white football stripes or whatever they’re called
Please tell me they also had a yellow version!!!
Not Close, but sorta kinda?
I have been wondering. Is hallucinations Mike drawn in a different or older style than the rest of the characters and scenery? He seems more 2D and his color pallet and shading slightly off from the rest of the comic.
If you miss Mike, remember: Don’t pull, squeeze.
So THAT’S how Danny finally killed Mike in his bed
It seems unlikely Mike was in Danny’s bed. Are you sure you don’t mean his mom’s bed?
Mike thought doin’ it in Danny’s bed would add the perfect middle-finger finale
Also don’t forget to adjust for wind and distance.
Yes, that’s it, Amber… now let the tears flow…
Hopefully it won’t be a heart-ache hurricane.
I sure hope at least one other person around here get’s that reference, otherwise imma feel hella awkward :\
No, it’ll just be a seven-year ache.
As I’ve probably said before, I’d be fine having 2 or 3 phantom Mikes than face my own hallucination.
Although I do wonder how long it would take to get used to the change.
She’s finally starting to process her grief, and wow was I not prepared for the gut punch
If they combine their problems, would we get Mike with a triangle smile, or Joyce with Mike’s hair?
Joyce with Mike’s hair would be unstoppable
Mike with Joyce’s triangular smile would be scarier.
Mike with a smile is scary in general.
Yes. (I didn’t even have to click through, I still remember.)
and here comes the breakdown that she’s been trying so hard to avoid, but so desperately needs to have.
Yup. She’s been fighting to keep it together, but really needs the catharsis of falling apart.
She also needs to talk this through with another actual person who can relate, but he’s too busy grimdarking it up to do that right now.
Gotta say, I like how Willis always draws post-Mike without shadows to give him that very unreal appearance.
There are shadows on his neck, just under his chin. There’s a shadow where his arm bends.
I see a heavy outline for his chin, but nothing where his arm bends. He’s also not making any indentation crease lines in the mattress like Amber is.
Rendering Brain!Mike in flat shading that fits the space works better to me than drawing him as a ghostly apparition would.
It’s really clever, especially since it’s subtle enough that you might not pick up on it when you first read through
See if you look just the same after you’re dead.
Well most people look pretty unrecognizable after being dead for a few months so he’s doing pretty good
She couldn’t even hallucinate him to be comfortable? He looks like a plank. Or maybe this is what he gets for dying.
“He’s not even a real brother.”
Can confirm. I’ve checked and he’s not black.
You think Amber’s related to Goku Black?
I mean, it MIGHT be possible…
Mike gets killed and replaced by a doppelganger but then everyone just likes the new Mike better.
Incidentally, this is the plot twist of my favourite book (which I can’t name, natch, for spoiler reasons) and it’s maybe the most thoroughly disturbing thought I’ve ever had.
Because being replaced by a flawed clone that people around you sus out is kinda heartwarming in a weird way. Like you’re dead, but your absence is felt in a way that your loved ones can tell. Meanwhile a perfect copy is kinda like, okay sure, you’re acting the same so it’s fair they can’t tell.
But a replacement that’s better than you in every way and enriches the lives of your loved ones like you never could? That’s the most thorough existentialist nightmare I could possibly have.
Like the bad Civil War movie (spoiler) where the doppelganger comes back instead of her husband. When they are in court. How do you know? “Because I never loved him the way I love you.”
But is he heavy?
I don’t think I fully processed Mike being Dead till this strip, and it hurts like a fresh wound.
you and Amber both.
Would some (old) art of them cheer you up?
Mike is a force of nature and even dead cannot be destroyed.
Stupid ghost friends, making us confront our problems.
I find it difficult to answer the survey. If I fix it for my wife, it’s by the box. If it’s for me, I never do it the same way twice.
Kraft Mac and Cheese is a good base for mixing in all kind of things. Beans, mixed vegetables, spam and fried eggs, stewed tomatoes, picantee sauce, chili. I guess I draw the line at everything.
Yeah I wish it had more options. I mean come on >:C
We do Old Bay in my household! My partner’s from Maryland.
Well… things could be worse.
People could still be talking about Kraft macaroni.
Would you have anything against hotdog toppings as an alternative?
Didn’t we talk about hotdog toppings like a few days ago? I remember talking about Texas Hots briefly.
I couldn’t think of anything else at the moment. Neurotic me!
What about burgers?
Time to break out my 20 paragraph essay on why diced ham and Sriracha is the best topping for Mac and cheese
I’d rather have the arguments about Kraft macaroni and cheese than the arguments that are gonna happen in the comments the next time we see Joyce and Becky.
*the arguments about religion and the like that is.
I can’t decide if ghost Mike disappearing forever would be the nicest thing he could do for Amber or the cruelest thing he could do to her
Which naturally means it would be the most in character thing for him to do
(I don’t think that’s going to happen right now, just musing out loud)
He missed your mom for a nickel.
Wait, I did that wrong…
awwww
I guess Joe ended up speeding up certain realizations for her after all.
Oh she’s known she misses Mike this entire time.
But now she’s admitting it to herself.
Every once in a while I realize that Willis got me super tense and full of dread over Joyce having a furious, idealogical fight with her childhood best friend, while off to the side Amber just keeps heading towards an eventual bar conversation where she says “Yeah, when I was in college I wrestled with multiple personalities, almost got shot a couple times, had frequent vivid hallucinations – it was a rough time.”
Feely feels.
yeah, I was not prepared for this.
This really hits feels when you remember they were married in short packed
Still holding on to hope that Mike’s in witness protection and is going to come back one day once everything’s blown over and start screwing with people again.
Man, it can’t just be coincidence that just about everything in Amber’s life seems to be blue and yellow. Y’know, the colors of the *Warner* Bros. logo? I dunno, maybe it’s a coincidence.
I’m fairly certain those are just her favorite colors… her amazi-suit was yellow and blue long before Mike died.
Amber, you absolutely need to talk to someone who is equipped to help manage your trauma and other mental health problems. I’m honestly hesitant to say talk to a therapist or counselor because I feel like someone like that might try to forcefully institutionalize her and she DEFINITELY doesn’t need something as traumatic as that added to her already considerable pile of mental baggage.
I’m not saying that in-patient mental health treatment isn’t helpful at all, but it is quite an intense experience and being forced to undergo that when you don’t want to can be quite traumatizing. Not to mention, with Amber’s self-destructive spiral where she doesn’t believe she deserves anything good, being forced into an environment where you are treated as a danger to yourself (and potentially others) while being constantly monitored would most likely just add to it and make things worse
Has Amber finally acknowledged that her friend is dead, she misses him so much but she is almost ready to let him go?
Mike might not be your real brother, but he is a real Bro.
I MEANT JOE! Damn it! just delete this comment. I ruined it.
Question.
Why does she miss Mike, exactly?
Because it’s her fault that she enraged him enough to go fight Wamuu alone, whereupon he was able to still Wamuu’s ring with his dying act and pass it on to Amber so she could cure herself of the poison the Pillar Men infected her with.
That’s honestly pretty close to what happened, huh.
Inertia.
Amber has known Mike for years, familiarity can breed comfort even when we’re talking about the douchiest of edgelords. We’ve just seen that she does think that at least some of his…. antics were funny.
And he used to be one of her only friends, she probably always hoped that he hang around her and Ethan out of some sense of affection and not just because they were fun to mess with. His last actions and last words to Amazi-Girl confirmed that hope – and now she’s inclined to look at all of their past interactions through a more positive light.
Yeah, but she didn’t really *have* any interactions with him.
Like, not even in the flashbacks. Maybe like we’re supposed to ‘know’ they’re old palsbut like nothing up until the Mike-drop suggests he’s special to her.
What on earth are you talking about? They had plenty of interactions, even flashbacks.
Bullshit. I demand to be proved wrong.
Amber can’t so much as sustain a conversation with a character who *isn’t* an irony-choked edge lord with zero concept of emotional safety. You’re gonna tell me she willingly hung out with Mike *frequently* in this timescale?
They…literally were in class together? Like having an interaction isn’t the same thing as hanging out or having a conversation. But Mike went to Amber’s birthday party, so Amber must have invited him. Mike tried to stand up for Amber to the teacher that one time.
Like I don’t see why you need some concrete proof that they were CLOSE or SPECIAL to each other. What they were was familiar. Mike was a long-time familiar presence that Amber had grown used to being around. Ethan was probably personally closer to Mike to be certain, but when you’re simply around someone long enough you get to know them, and the fact that they are a familiar known quantity is comforting, however much of an asshole Mike may have been. And that’s why Amber misses him. That’s all there is to it.
Also literally just search for strips tagged with both mike and amber. You will see plenty of them interacting. Willingly! Being friends! Familiar! Just kind of spending time together! Sure, in ‘present-day’ most of their interactions ended with amber getting pissed at him, but like. Come on.
Codependence. He was abusive and manipulative and worked his way into her life. She’d distanced herself from him, but hadn’t really come to terms with how toxic he’d been to her before he died. It’s not uncommon for abuse survivors to remain attached to their abusers, especially if they never get the chance to properly process the complex emotions.
And of course he died saving her, which means she can’t even start to address the negatives, and makes it feel like her fault, which plays directly into her other issues.
That’s what happens when your friend dies
So just my brain that went “now kiss” (though admittedly this was partly to avoid sad-feels)?
She’d have to go enroll in a pottery class, or maybe light a candle or something.
Anyone else still hoping for witness protection Mike?
This strip is very good but im struggling to look away from the string of dots that make up ghost mike’s hairline.
I still kinda wish we could’ve seen a redemption arc for this universe’s Mike, instead of him dying. Though I guess I prefer the other universe Mike more.
I mean sacrificing yourself to help stop active criminals whose intent was to kidnap and possibly murder their way through abusing religion and the church peoples easily lead gullibility is a pretty big redemption act in my book.
Even Mike knew he was gonna most likely die but he was taking Blaine down as much as possible with him. And in the long run he sorta did, with dick dad bring hospitalized and unable to dodge the mob anymore.
Mike realized he was an asshole and tried to undo what he’d done.
He just failed.
It is, but it’s the cheapest easiest kind of redemption arc, since the character just gets to die and not have to deal with any actual growth or change. One big dramatic gesture and everyone has to be sad you’re gone. (Which helps keep them from processing the damage you did before.)
I mean, I get why Willis did it, as much as I would have liked to see Mike struggle with his revelation. He’d lose most of his Mikeness in the process and this is more interesting for other more major characters.
Nah, redemption by death is cheap and i resent the original star wars trilogy for making it so popular. I don’t think it was really meant to be a redemption here either. I’m still kinda sour that we didn’t get the slow uphill climb of Mike trying to be a better person
Don’t forget that he deliberately lured Amazi-Girl into that fight, while having an obvious feasible alternative of calling the police. Mike died failing to let Amber and Amazi-girl out of a trap that he set for them.
Hard same.
Hin2estly I can see ghost mike staying with Amber her whole life. Anybody that that close to you whether good or bad never fully leaves.
One of my friends I was good with died almost 3 years ago and even nowadays, I still catch myself believing that he never died. I’ll be doing something or see things connected to things we used to do and be like “Man I need to call (x) and let him know of this shit!” Sometimes I’ll have my phone out and be trying to find his number and then it hits.
Amber went through a lot worse than me or really a lot of people her age or older. And argubly Mike’s death was the last bit of strain holding any semblance of normalcy for her together. Her superhero actions inadvertently led to his death. I really don’t see the girl ever being able to let go of Mike enough for the phantom to fade. Not until she gets old and memory loss possibly sets in.
This is so not the point, but as someone who was fat and dated in college, I’m super jealous of the width of Amber’s bed.
Ghost Mike can hang off the edge more comfortably than a corporeal human. It does look wide for a college bed though.
i hate it when i know what the real version of a cartoon face looks like that isnt fair
Reminds me of when Peter finds Uncle Ben on the ground outside the library.
Oh shit my dream from yesterday was prophetic. I was amber all along
something changed
the facade begins to crack
No shit Hallucination Mike, ya want her to say it?
Yes, I’ve been brokenhearted
Blue since the day we parted
Why, why, did I ever let you
gotackle my dad off the edge of a building in a half-failed murder-suicideDang it! This was Dumbing Day 2022 and I missed it. This was a very stressful day for me (work deadlines) and it wasn’t even on my radar. Oh well. See you around January 18 next year.
It was even a very special Dumbing Day, because it even occurred on the same day of the week (Friday) as the storyline. Dang it!
That was supposed to be a link to here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/wireframe/#comment-1518624