I’ve only ever gotten one comp copy, and I didn’t even write anything
My friend did movie reviews, but legally cannot obtain a license, so I’d drive him to movies (sometimes before they were officially out) and get to watch them with him for free
One time he gave me a copy of the thing his review was in
I mean I’m pretty sure that’s generally not how writing for a newspaper works, given that there’s a certain expectation that the news be, you know, new.
depends on if she’s in charge of ‘current events’ rather than ‘op eds’ though there could be ppl she’s scheduled/interviewed weeks before the article goes up, depends on how relevant it is to campus life
We gonna get some Joyce and Malaya and Mary interactions? They’re the art people in this comic. Although that life drawing teacher is a hack and I will die on that hill!
I don’t think the comic gig was advertised well it was word to mouth. Walky only heard about it from sitting in on Jen’s meeting and Joyce only knew from Walky so I don’t other student artistic or not know enough to be salty about it.
maybe she’s not interested in art as a career b/c it’d be too ‘hippie’-ish for her?
but yueah i can’t imagine her doing anything not too preachy or repressed lust like with her bf and that halloween ‘display’
Some comics forget to tell a joke, don’t they. I can think of another one I see in the paper. All ill disguised snark and “clever” references… that is… somehow… not actually humorous or a joke. I’m thinking of Mary as a cartoonist. *shudder*
And don’t you DARE alter the boomer humor formula, or else you’re going to get so many letters to the editor and whiny online comments complaining you made it “w o k e” while dancing around what their definition of the word actually is.
Heaven help you if you make the art more complex than Hi and Lois…
I don’t read newspaper comics as often as I used to, mainly because I don’t read the newspapers that much anymore. But when I do, I usually check the comics first, and at least half the comics in my local newspaper don’t really bother to do more than the lamest of jokes. And most of them don’t have very interesting storylines either.
I disagree. Admittedly we’ve only seen him a couple of times very briefly so it’s not much to critic his teaching methods but he never offers any instruction. Mary clearly needs some fundamental instruction, but he just keeps saying “good job” which will just cause her to stagnate. The same goes for Malaya who is far more technically skilled than Mary but he just offers her praise instead of criticism or instruction. That’s not how you teach people to draw. Malaya has actually taught Mary more about drawing than he has!
It really looks to me like he just walks around looking at drawings and spouting vaguely artistic nonsense instead of instruction. Like maybe teaching Mary about the planes of the face which is a very simple entry level technique for drawing faces, but no. I guess dude’s name is Hyde but it really should be clown. I hope he does better when/if we see him again.
My experience with life drawing courses often had the bulk of the instruction up front with deconstruction towards the end. Often in the middle she or he would wander through the class occasionally offering comments/guidance to students. Usually offering more concrete guidance to those who asked or were visibly struggling. Generally if a student was resistant to input they tended to let them be, with more pointed advice on completion or end of class.
We’ve not seen anything but him interacting with a student, Mary, who seems determined to keep to a stylized look and not open to change. And with Malaya who seems to have an excellent grasp of this course thus the instructor says something positive and leaves any specific nitpiks to the critique section.
Honestly we have not seen enough to tell if he’s good or bad at his job.
Taking another look at the first linked comic. I would say he seems to be using a nonconfrontational way of saying please be open to trying something outside your comfort zone.
Makes me wonder if he has had a lot of anime kids who had negative experience with teachers shitting on their prefered style. He could be trying to find a way to finesse Mary expanding her range without provoking a compllete shut down or discouraging her inher first year.
Your take is fairer than mine. It just bothers me cause when I started art school I drew much like Mary does. She probably just copied or memorized her favorite “How to draw manga” book in middle/high school like I did. When I went to art college and had my first life drawing class I learned and improved a lot because my teachers actually taught me how to draw. So Mr. Hyde just saying “good job” kinda triggers me when he could be doing more. I’d be the same artist I was ten years ago if he was my teacher.
Fair point. I may be biased from the community college art courses I took
I will note that the drawing and composition courses were more like how you describe your experience.
Also a lot of my art classes had a wide mix of ages, experience and course levels within the room. Which is a very different flavor of interaction than my other classes with people my age. In addition to rarely having the same art teacher except in life drawing classes.
Funny enough, my position at that game studio was gonna be creative assistant and involve helping design / flesh out characters, including an ADHD autistic girl.
I can’t speak for what Willis means but to my knowledge “front-butt” is an anatomy mistake where you attach the torso to the legs improperly making it hard to know if the character is standing forward or backward thus potentially having a butt on the front. Or maybe it’s a reference to Futurama.
You can find it in the first strip but I think the second strip is better. Both Danny and Joe potentially suffer from front butt….maybe. I can’t pretend to know what Willis specifically means when they use “front-butt” there are many different ways to describe art mistakes.
It’s also the simple inclusion of a horizontal line at the bottom of the front crotch area. I find it’s usually done by artists who are a little nervous of drawing creases around the crotch area that could be interpreted as male genitalia but still end up sketching a line to show the difference between the hip area and the legs (creating a front butt!).
I believe front butt is a reference to how Joyce draws a human female’s breasts. Considering Joyce draws similarly to how Willis used to, I’m guessing this strip is a critique from Willis about his own artwork.
Listen, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is to french lesbian drama what the video linked above is to internet silliness: iconic, layered, re-watchable, even better when stoned, and very, very sexy. (god, that moose.)
Calling it now: Joyce is now going to sign up for a life drawing class without knowing what it is, and is in for one heck of a first day. If we’re lucky, we will see t h e f a c e.
Did we skip a week or two of Joyce comics while Amber was aggressively making sure Booster didn’t become her own friend? Did Joyce get her medication and some therapy? Is this comic going to start progressing faster now, week by week instead of minute by minute? 😱
reading your fanfiction is already making me way more familiar with one nerd-ass franchise than i’d ever planned to be. i have to draw the line somewhere.
Now Joyce seems to be OK. How many time has s passed from the morning? Life drawing class are a great idea! Can’t wait to see Joyce between Mary and Malaya’s competition. Mary could try to take her to her side and Malaya could be forced to do something. I like this possibility!
Totally not based on any criticism Willis may or may not have received early in his career (or ongoing – Because will complain about everything), I’m sure 😛
Damn, I miss life drawing so much. I had to stop it because pandemics, but now I have no time anymore.
And the sessions that offer life drawing are so far… but I really miss these, they give a real opportunity to improve drawing by observation .
last panel made me realize just how similar joyce and dorothy’s haircuts are. if dorothy doesn’t keepon top of haircuts they will be the same in a few months
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me getting comp copies of things I worked on and already bought bc idk how things work
I do a lot of proofreading and copyediting and to this day I don’t know how they decide what comp copies I do and do not qualify for.
I’m trying to recall if I ever got a comp copy of anything.
I’ve only ever gotten one comp copy, and I didn’t even write anything
My friend did movie reviews, but legally cannot obtain a license, so I’d drive him to movies (sometimes before they were officially out) and get to watch them with him for free
One time he gave me a copy of the thing his review was in
Technically, part of the revenue is yours, so you get a slight “out of one pocket and into the other” discount if you think about it.
If you think about it yes, but if you keep thinking about it no
How many articles did you write for it ? 😮
She has a bigger buffer than Joyce.
I mean I’m pretty sure that’s generally not how writing for a newspaper works, given that there’s a certain expectation that the news be, you know, new.
Dorothy is organized and plans ahead. She has her stories all mapped out and ready to go up to the day she is elected President.
Does it count as Mary Sue fan fiction if you’re using your own name?
Sometimes you write the article for something before it happens. Obituaries in particular.
And sometimes you take more drastic measures
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
KEENER DEFEATS DESANTO
AMERICANS SEND MAN INTO SPACE AHEAD OF USSR!
DEEZ FEETS!
Peter Parker made a living that way for years.
depends on if she’s in charge of ‘current events’ rather than ‘op eds’ though there could be ppl she’s scheduled/interviewed weeks before the article goes up, depends on how relevant it is to campus life
Dorothy has a whole scrapbook of articles about the time she was kidnapped.
It’s super healthy.
oh fuck i’d actually believe that.
She does, but I think she calls it a “dossier.”
Hollywood taught me that’s not a warning sign unless you’re pinning them up to the wall and connecting them with string.
RED string
We gonna get some Joyce and Malaya and Mary interactions? They’re the art people in this comic. Although that life drawing teacher is a hack and I will die on that hill!
lol i wonder how many other art students would be salty that a non art major got the ‘job’ but i dunno how many electives joyce would’ve signed up for
I don’t think the comic gig was advertised well it was word to mouth. Walky only heard about it from sitting in on Jen’s meeting and Joyce only knew from Walky so I don’t other student artistic or not know enough to be salty about it.
Well none of them actually signed up for the gig so they can’t complain
Huh, wonder why Mary has never tried to draw a comic for the paper. Maybe it frowns on anime and/or evangelical sermons.
maybe she’s not interested in art as a career b/c it’d be too ‘hippie’-ish for her?
but yueah i can’t imagine her doing anything not too preachy or repressed lust like with her bf and that halloween ‘display’
Mary will probably become a right wing political cartoonist with a bunch of twitter followers for her reactionary comics about President Keener.
Mary is going to be Jack Chick for the 21st century.
Mary will become the Ben Garrison of her Generation.
Mary, the anime Ben Garrison! That sounds so awful I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t happen!
Mary probably has a webcomic that’s basically Anime Mallard Fillmore.
Oops, she forgot to tell a joke. (︶︹︺)
Some comics forget to tell a joke, don’t they. I can think of another one I see in the paper. All ill disguised snark and “clever” references… that is… somehow… not actually humorous or a joke. I’m thinking of Mary as a cartoonist. *shudder*
Pretty sure I got disillusioned with newspaper comics at the age of 12 for this reason.
Here’s a strip example:
-crab sounds angry
-fish asks crab “Why are you angry?”
-crab says “It’s an election year.”
A newspaper editor somewhere decided that was a moneymaker.
And don’t you DARE alter the boomer humor formula, or else you’re going to get so many letters to the editor and whiny online comments complaining you made it “w o k e” while dancing around what their definition of the word actually is.
Heaven help you if you make the art more complex than Hi and Lois…
Absolutely destroying Sherman’s Lagoon here today aren’t we? 😛
Don’t worry, it deserves it.
I don’t read newspaper comics as often as I used to, mainly because I don’t read the newspapers that much anymore. But when I do, I usually check the comics first, and at least half the comics in my local newspaper don’t really bother to do more than the lamest of jokes. And most of them don’t have very interesting storylines either.
Idk he seemed a decent sort for teaching a life drawing class.
I disagree. Admittedly we’ve only seen him a couple of times very briefly so it’s not much to critic his teaching methods but he never offers any instruction. Mary clearly needs some fundamental instruction, but he just keeps saying “good job” which will just cause her to stagnate. The same goes for Malaya who is far more technically skilled than Mary but he just offers her praise instead of criticism or instruction. That’s not how you teach people to draw. Malaya has actually taught Mary more about drawing than he has!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/wrest/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/contours/
It really looks to me like he just walks around looking at drawings and spouting vaguely artistic nonsense instead of instruction. Like maybe teaching Mary about the planes of the face which is a very simple entry level technique for drawing faces, but no. I guess dude’s name is Hyde but it really should be clown. I hope he does better when/if we see him again.
My experience with life drawing courses often had the bulk of the instruction up front with deconstruction towards the end. Often in the middle she or he would wander through the class occasionally offering comments/guidance to students. Usually offering more concrete guidance to those who asked or were visibly struggling. Generally if a student was resistant to input they tended to let them be, with more pointed advice on completion or end of class.
We’ve not seen anything but him interacting with a student, Mary, who seems determined to keep to a stylized look and not open to change. And with Malaya who seems to have an excellent grasp of this course thus the instructor says something positive and leaves any specific nitpiks to the critique section.
Honestly we have not seen enough to tell if he’s good or bad at his job.
Taking another look at the first linked comic. I would say he seems to be using a nonconfrontational way of saying please be open to trying something outside your comfort zone.
Makes me wonder if he has had a lot of anime kids who had negative experience with teachers shitting on their prefered style. He could be trying to find a way to finesse Mary expanding her range without provoking a compllete shut down or discouraging her inher first year.
pure speculation.
Your take is fairer than mine. It just bothers me cause when I started art school I drew much like Mary does. She probably just copied or memorized her favorite “How to draw manga” book in middle/high school like I did. When I went to art college and had my first life drawing class I learned and improved a lot because my teachers actually taught me how to draw. So Mr. Hyde just saying “good job” kinda triggers me when he could be doing more. I’d be the same artist I was ten years ago if he was my teacher.
Fair point. I may be biased from the community college art courses I took
I will note that the drawing and composition courses were more like how you describe your experience.
Also a lot of my art classes had a wide mix of ages, experience and course levels within the room. Which is a very different flavor of interaction than my other classes with people my age. In addition to rarely having the same art teacher except in life drawing classes.
…… oh no.
you’re right.
We’re getting Atheist Joyce v. Mary.
Can’t wait to see them battle! 😈
Funny enough, my position at that game studio was gonna be creative assistant and involve helping design / flesh out characters, including an ADHD autistic girl.
The timing couldn’t be more perfect. 😑
Oh well. Self employment it is!
Wait, I thought you had gotten the job, what happened?
Had to lay me off because of budget reasons and stupid European labor laws. 😮💨
Joyce is too damn cute here.
Her art will improve with practice, as will her storytelling, but the life drawing can’t hurt.
…Mostly because I want more Malaya and Mary shenanigans. More Malaya in general tbh. They’re an unmitigated delight.
Yesssss well, only slightly mitigated by the hecklers from the comment bleachers
Shush hecklers, start your own comment thread
Joyce can’t hide the blushing in Panel 3 behind a newspaper, no matter how hard she tries
I hope we get a bunch of Julia Gray strips showing the gradual evolution of Joyce’s art style. Gimme that sweet overly-dithered airbrushing, and those lens flares inexplicably centered just above a man’s right buttcheek.
I wonder if young-Willis feels called out?
This entire strip is young-Willis calling himself out.
Just what exactly is a “front-butt” 😂
That’s what I was going to ask. Is it a medical condition—perhaps a form of elephantiasis?
I can’t speak for what Willis means but to my knowledge “front-butt” is an anatomy mistake where you attach the torso to the legs improperly making it hard to know if the character is standing forward or backward thus potentially having a butt on the front. Or maybe it’s a reference to Futurama.
Thanks for this! I don’t suppose anyone can point at a Roomies! strip with front-butt?
You can find it in the first strip but I think the second strip is better. Both Danny and Joe potentially suffer from front butt….maybe. I can’t pretend to know what Willis specifically means when they use “front-butt” there are many different ways to describe art mistakes.
Well I sure hope that’s what Dorothy meant because I’ve only heard it as a juvenile euphemism for a persons lady bits.
Same here, I was wondering if we were getting the Ding Dong Bandit’s revenge or something.
It’s also the simple inclusion of a horizontal line at the bottom of the front crotch area. I find it’s usually done by artists who are a little nervous of drawing creases around the crotch area that could be interpreted as male genitalia but still end up sketching a line to show the difference between the hip area and the legs (creating a front butt!).
Good updated example here.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/walkypedia/images/5/55/Roomies1cover.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/180?cb=20140322205247
Only two comics published and Joyce already suffers from Butts Disease.
I usually hear it to mean when butt/leg fat bunches up in front of someone’s waist.
I believe front butt is a reference to how Joyce draws a human female’s breasts. Considering Joyce draws similarly to how Willis used to, I’m guessing this strip is a critique from Willis about his own artwork.
I, too, was of the opinion that it referred to cleavage.
It’s when you have butts disease, but in the front.
VAGINA.
Vulva, actually.
True.
I’m wondering that too.
check the crotch on joyce in the august 1997 image: https://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/image/661976909975044096
Ha ha thanks 😆
I love Joyce’s smile in panel one. So cute.
yeh
really throughout the entire strip but particularly panel one 😀
Also Joyce is surprisingly cheerful for someone who was last seen in bloody agony.
I know right?? I keep thinking I must have missed a beat cos last we saw her she was definitely laying on her stomach and not standing up grinning.
That was two whole scene jumps ago. Ancient history.
entire minutes have elapsed! who even remembers!
I dunno. When I first published Joyce’s Nightmare, the ecstasy rush kinda overridden any pain I was feeling at the moment.
Same basic principle is probably at play here. 😉
I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Danny’s shoe still hasn’t come down?
Ohhh, so that’s where the chapter title comes in. I was expecting some focus on Malaya and Mary, but Joyce will likely join their class anyway.
All I learned from my comic art class was drawing ears better… EARS. And the head sphere, of course. It’s vital to how you’d draw anything else.
This is why to this day, I am somehow better at landscapes than human figures.
I wonder how they enroll in classes.
the painter in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” says something about how important it is to get the ears right i seem to recall.
Maybe draw landscapes… with ears?
Feels like it’d have been more important to put the fire out.
To which she’d probably answer with a frencher and more dignified version of,
“Don’t you wanna know how we keep startin’ fires??!”
Listen, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is to french lesbian drama what the video linked above is to internet silliness: iconic, layered, re-watchable, even better when stoned, and very, very sexy. (god, that moose.)
Calling it now: Joyce is now going to sign up for a life drawing class without knowing what it is, and is in for one heck of a first day. If we’re lucky, we will see t h e f a c e.
Oooh, that didn’t format well. I did not mean for that to look like one word.
We knew what you meant.
I call Joe as the life model! 😄
Oooh, self-burn! Those are rare
The Poll is a trick question. Clearly Superion was a socialist collective.
Did we skip a week or two of Joyce comics while Amber was aggressively making sure Booster didn’t become her own friend? Did Joyce get her medication and some therapy? Is this comic going to start progressing faster now, week by week instead of minute by minute? 😱
I mean, I do love seeing them happy here.
Why get therapy when you remember today is the day when your comic gets printed in the campus paper? Think of the DOPAMINE HIT!
Oh dang I was gonna comment about the Keen/Keener pun before I read the mouseover text!
Well I guess I commented about it anyways.
Where’s the option in the poll “What’s an Aerialbot?”?
Seconded. Call me out-of-touch but I have been lost on this since it was mentioned.
It’s a type of Transformer. 😛
oh, ok. What’s a Transf… jk i don’t want to know
(like i know-ish, they’re all called like Hypercrush and Galaxotron and they’re probably kinda campy and retro, also toys, i’m cool thx)
“I will never learn what a Transformer is. Never ever.”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/pretended/
reading your fanfiction is already making me way more familiar with one nerd-ass franchise than i’d ever planned to be. i have to draw the line somewhere.
Oh, milu, milu, milu.
We’re ALL nerd-asses here.
look i keep getting obsessed with things no one here cares about, let me have my petty symbolic rebellion lol
Ah. I was never big on Transformers. I should add that to my “You Need To Watch” list. I’ve missed out on a lot of media growing up. 😨
Thirded
Now Joyce seems to be OK. How many time has s passed from the morning? Life drawing class are a great idea! Can’t wait to see Joyce between Mary and Malaya’s competition. Mary could try to take her to her side and Malaya could be forced to do something. I like this possibility!
Totally not based on any criticism Willis may or may not have received early in his career (or ongoing – Because will complain about everything), I’m sure 😛
Just two strips is a bit short to evaluate character work, no?
Joyce is gonna get dinged for drawing nostrils.
her education was so screwed up, she has no idea what orifices do or don’t exist in actual human smh
wait wait wait! Is this a . . . meta critique?
It’s like reading the damnyouwillis twitter!
Dorothy probably grabs and reads the paper anyway, regardless of her own contributions. This should come as no suprise to Joyce.
Brave of you to assume that Dorothy doesn’t write an article for EVERY ISSUE.
last time we saw these two, Joyce was unkindly Dorothy to crawl out of her ass. I feel like we missed something
*unkindly telling Dorothy
I like the implication that there’s a polite way to tell someone to crawl out of your ass, like “Madam, kindly remove yourself from my rectum.”
“Madam, kindly remove yourself from my rectum.”
Perfection ^.^
Damn, I miss life drawing so much. I had to stop it because pandemics, but now I have no time anymore.
And the sessions that offer life drawing are so far… but I really miss these, they give a real opportunity to improve drawing by observation .
last panel made me realize just how similar joyce and dorothy’s haircuts are. if dorothy doesn’t keepon top of haircuts they will be the same in a few months
… this is how Joyce first sees a naked dude*, isn’t it?
(* in person, not on the internet)
Joe pulls a Marcie?
Does she mean she draws chests like butts or…
Aaaaah, ship fuel, finally.