You mean Joyce’s and Dorothy’s? No, not at all. First, we don’t know if Amazi-Girl went to the protest because of them. In fact, we hae indication of the opposite, they hadn’t told anybody they went there and they didn’t take their cellphones so AG couldn’t have track them. So Amazi-Girl got involved in her own accord. It was a fortunate coincidence that she got there in time to save Joyce, but she would have been there kicking riot cops regardless. Furthermore, even after getting Joye and Dorothy to safety, AG stayed behind to help more people, and it is only after that she got hurt.
Amazi-Girls actions last chapter had very little to do with Joye and Dorothy and would likely have happened regardless.
I was thinking that she went to extra risk and stayed longer than needed because they were too busy with love dramas to evacuate promptly. I’d forgotten she’d stayed to help more protestors. So yeah, you’re right.
But it’s still their fault because the encounter with Incelerator is what got AG back into vigilantism, and that in turn caused by a chain of consequences for his bad character and life decisions, which ultimately started snowballing with Ryan’s own consequences, which started with Joyce glassing his face, and also because I’m in an absurdist mood and that logic is just coherent enough to follow while still being over 95% incoherent.
Blaming others for the malicious behaviour of villains is the height of naiveté. If bad people don’t do bad things to one person, they’ll just find another target. It is not the fault of their victims that people behave badly. At a stretch one can maybe state that a victim’s behaviour makes them a more desirable target, but it does not compel anyone to do evil.
See also: Blaming rape survivors based on their attire.
While I understand and empathize with you here, and agree *in general*, let’s not forget the simple fact that Amber is now guilty of multiple level 5 felonies, by the laws of the state of Indiana, simply for the act of assaulting multiple officers while on the line of duty.
And I don’t think that a jury is going to feel like the police was in the wrong, for two reasons. First, because everything they were armed with (to the best of our knowledge) was non-lethal weaponry. We know just how harmful “non-lethal” really is, but a jury is made up of the average person.
Secondly… Amazi-girl’s presence and assault on the police, while it was done to defend others and get them to safety, has unfortunately justified the police’s position of being that armed. Why, apparently masked assailants were attacking officers and incapacitating them as they worked to get everyone to leave in a quiet, orderly fashion. Of course the riot gear and tear gas was necessary!
-_-
That’s the advantage of a peaceful protest. When they beat you silly, gas you, and drag you to jail, they look like the monsters because you were doing nothing wrong. Unless Amazi-Girl was there to, I dunno, make sure someone about to go in a diabetic coma or something got out in time to get her insulin, her presence made things worse.
Ironically, when the real-life police chief was interviewed on why he had a sniper in Dunn Meadow, he said it was because it was his job to prepare for every eventuality and there were rumors of armed attacks, both towards and from the protesters. They went overboard because they expected resistance – resistance that only AmaziGirl was really giving them.
I don’t like it either, but that’s the world we live in. The world we live in has no room for Batgirl suddenly appearing and attacking the assailants and rescuing her friends because our world sees her as a violent repeat offender with a history of mental illness who attacked on-duty police officers as they worked to peacefully remove tresspassers who were protesting in a method that was against campus policy. And if you gagged just a little in reading that, know that I cringed the entire time while writing it.
Like it or not, Amber is, right now, is far more of a criminal than probably any of them there, including Asher. She has, almost certainly, made national news.
He also helped her dad kidnap all their friends and ultimately shares some responsibility in Mike’s death, though nobody knows that but him at present.
I legit hope that Asher is genuinely doing his best to get out of the “family business” as much as he can, just because I’d find that much more interesting than the people assuming he’s still in the bad.
I don’t think he’s still in the bad, I think he’s gonna end up abandoning his heel face turn for some reason and this will be related. I fully believe Asher is doing his hardest to get out, but like… it’s not so simple in the end.
I personally feel like Asher does genuinely want to leave his old life behind, but at the same time, he’s not willing or confident enough to sever all ties once and for all. (And in fairness, his crime family may not LET him, and the best he can do is basically just lay low and do his best not to draw attention and pray that the family doesn’t call upon him.)
But leaving that aside, I kinda suspected that this was a mob doctor last night, but I didn’t have the time to write a post calling it. XD
Look. All I’m saying is lately Asher has been very invested in AG’s activities and finding out who she is and I don’t think that’s to give her a high five. Does it matter if he feels really bad and doesn’t want to act like a gangster if he still does it anyway?
From a storytelling perspective, yes, it’s a huge bit of difference between a dude that’s happily doing mob stuff and reporting back with hopes of becoming the Don (or whatever the leader is called) someday and someone who wants to escape their family’s bad activities but is keeping his eyes open either out of instinct or chances to earn more playing cards [either out of survival instinct or what have you]. Those are two entirely different characters lol
Even if you’re not vindicated, I hope you aren’t embarrassed. Nothing wrong with not trusting a character who has been set up to be untrustworthy in several ways.
He does, but not only do I think neither Sal nor Amber/AG know that the background indicates that they’re still in Kitchen Doctor’s operating room kitchen. Kitchen Doctor almost certainly doesn’t know who she is.
Asher looks so sweet, I can’t believe this is gonna be connected to you embracing your villain arc /hj. Fr though, he’s like my favorite dude in the cast by far because of that stuff. So much story potential, I love him.
He played a part in the kidnapping, and that was a big step on the road to Dorothy’s mindset putting her square and center in the middle of the protest. So yes, he is.
… that of course means that Sal, Amber/AG, Dorothy, Joyce, and everyone else had no agency at all in this.
You know, I thought the constant glances between Asher and Amazi-girl were gonna lead up to something, didn’t realize it’d be this. And honestly, I imagine this is Asher’s attempt to atone for the kidnapping fiasco.
Okay, it’s still early in my timezone, and I legit read that originally as “the whole Sal is Attorney General thing.” Now there’s a different story entirely.
Until Asher was shown at the end i was half-convinced that Sal was essentially force activating Amazi-Girl because she felt Amazi-Girl would handle the pain better than Amber could.
What is interesting is this is all Amber today. In a parallel to the beginning of Book 15 she is the one waking up in an unexpected place having to deal with Amazi-Girls mess. Makes me wonder what AG is thinking though. What will be her reaction to have receiving help from what is likely a mob doctor?
Per earlier comment threads, “Jakey” is a guy who is viewed as acceptable because he’s ‘nice’, but is so tepid that he really has nothing to offer, either. Apparently, there’s a Tumblr thread witht the line, “I just want Jakey to die.” That’s all I know.
The original post is making fun of a cartoon that features a couple and the caption is like “tall bf and short anxious gf that can’t order her own food”, and OP captioned it “I wish these people were oppressed”. Then the OP reblogged themselves and said “stop tagging this saying shit like “me and jakey!!! 🥺”. Then there’s a final reblog that has a screenshot of a tag that says “I hope jakey dies”. The context of the meme really has nothing to do with the personality of the guy, and is more about people bringing up their boyfriends in an annoying, intrusive way
Jacob. Ethan’s roommate. It indicates that the poll respondent is attempting to whataboutism away from Theocracy (yes, that’s the official Joyce/Dorothy ship name) by ranting about Jacob/Lucy. Who are evil for reasons.
It’s from a meme about girls who bring their boyfriend up at absolutely every conversation and are really annoying about it, usually in a ‘Not all men’ kind of way. At least, that’s where I’ve seen ‘I hope jakey dies’ way.
A hundred years from now, when they’re both grey, wrinkly, and living together to avoid being forced into a nursing home, Sal will still hold this over Amber’s head. “Remember when I found you in the woods HALF-DEAD!? And had to drag your FAT ASS to Asher’s KITCHEN DOCTOR?!”
“Also, remember when I caught you in midair during a high-speed car chase and kept you from being road pizza? And pulled you into the woods so you wouldn’t get caught by cops? That’s TWICE I saved your life and freedom. So, YEAH, I think it’s your turn on chores this week!”
Okay NOW that the protest arc is officially over, I can finally call it in retrospect
*sigh*
I am dissapointed. Like I don’t even mind that Joyce x Dorothy kiss happened during the protest,
But speaking as someone personally affected by what the protest was about, really bummed that none of the cast went deep in terms of how themselves, friends and family were affected by the conflict in “”Bulmeria””, Willis had a solid opportunity but really missed it, and yeah that really made the whole protest feel like a background decoration :/
I think the reasons for that is that Bulmeria is not Gaza. Any further investment in the people involved in it would have to make it clear it’s not Gaza and show the differences. Because otherwise it’s insulting to the real event.
Protests for many causes have been important events on many college campuses for many contemporary students. I don’t think it shouldn’t have been broached and was handled respectfully without making the entire comic focus on one topic that has been a protestable issue within the past 15 years (which would have had to happen to give any one issue the focus and attention any would deserve). I think the protest arc was balanced and as others have said, the fall out will be circling back to the issues affecting characters past the main cast.
Y’know despite everything I kinda liked Robin in Shortpacked, so I didn’t really appreciate when he made a her a stand in for every terrrible Republican politician, (remember when she was Sarah Palin, oh what innocent times those were).
I don’t think it was handled respectfully because it was ultimately only included to serve as a stage for Joyce and Dorothy’s makeout. The fact that Willis is only NOW going think about tacking the subject in any detail doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. Eventually the storyline will move on and the protest will only be mentioned in occasionally, almost certainly in relation to Joyce/Dorothy. The fact that Willis has been making comics for as long as they have and STILL has these problems establishing a consistent tone is really starting to wear my patience thin. We’ve seen this with Jurassic Park references during a school shooting and 90% of anything involving Amazi-girl (did they really need to keep that element from Shortpacked), and here where it undercuts BOTH the representation of the Gaza protest and the moment between Joyce and Dorothy (who could have guessed it was a last minute story change). And it is the Gaza protest, despite using some stupid made up country as a stand-in like they’re in the Marvel universe. Bad representation is worse than no representation at all.
I think Willis deserves at least partially a benny because it wasn’t meant to be the Gaza protest but Bulmeria BECAUSE it was supposed to be a thing for Joyce and Dorothy. It was unfortunately just too similar.
Sadly, the horror from last year became the horror of this year (and has been a horror building for many years)
At this point I think, for better or for worse, the “consistent” part of the tone IS that “things that mirror real-life events WILL still get a bit comic-silly (Jurassic Park references, Amazi-Girl showing up) and mostly focused on the main characters here (the J/D kiss) rather than the real-life events they mirror”.
My personal expectations for long-term change are much closer to “Willis starts pulling back from the more serious real-world-alike references”, although elsewhere Willis has noted he needs to do better on representation and handling of these kind of issues.
The idea that referencing a real thing should carry the all the weight and seriousness of that real thing every time is a poor attitude for art, I dislike how endemic it’s becoming. There’s no perspective that engages equally with all topics, some times you just brush against them in passing.
Like, taken in isolation, there’s no reason to assume that Bulmeria should be particularly relevant to Muslim/MENA people. Before this last storyline, I’d assumed that Bulmeria was in Sub-Saharan Africa, or possibly Eastern Europe, somewhere near Latveria.
But the events of the comic so closely mirror not just Gaza protests, but one specific Gaza protest, which was in that specific place, on this specific campus, with specific details surrounding it that were specifically mentioned in the comic, at the specific time that the strips depicting it were being drawn, that it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Bulmeria is Gaza with the serial numbers not even filed off, but just sloppily scribbled over in crayon.
And this is confirmed by Willis trying to wedge in their most significant Muslim character who’s not an outright villain (and there’s definitely legitimate criticism to be found in the fact that that’s someone who only had 20 appearances before that), even though, again, there’s no particular reason to assume that Bulmeria has anything to do with Muslims or the Middle East, and immediately copping to the accusations of having done so badly, and acting to change the buffered comics to address that, despite the hassle involved in rescheduling the ludicrous year-long buffer.
Yeah, before this storyline Bulmeria was just ‘some far away country’ and occasionally a stand in for Ukraine. Now it’s very clearly a mirror for Gaza.
It’s been clear to me for a long while now that this protest has been a stand in for the Gaza protests that were happening at college and university campuses last year, particularly the protest at Indiana University. Sometimes “Bulmeria” is a fictional country in Willis comics, but in this case it’s a stand in for a real country. And I think Willis definitely could’ve handled this story arc better.
Writing comics with political implications a full year ahead of time is very risky. Who the hell knows what will be going on in 12 months? Especially with the current crappier crap.
I’m still waiting to see what the fallout is going to look like after the fact before I make any final conclusions on if this entire storyline was a bust or not (especially now that Asma’s been upgraded from being a background support character) and I’m incredibly grateful that Willis took to the criticisms and did some rewrites based on that, but yeah, it genuinely fucking suck seeing it play out in real time like it did.
Because it just reminded me that even when coming from a place of absolute well meaning sincerity, Islamophobic sentiment runs so deep in the western world that you can write a story taking inspiration from an active on-going genocide and it still won’t be enough to trigger any self-reflection on what internal biases you were taught that helped create those conditions to begin with. And I don’t just want to single Willis out, this is a disconnect that affects everyone who hasn’t actively been rejecting the waves of imperialist propaganda that has taken away the humanity of an entire religion, entire cultures, and entire regions of the world.
IDK It’s hard to put into words just how bad the “Bulmeria” stuff is in a way that makes criticism more helpful than uselessly guilt-inducing, but this at the root of it I think. I do think there was probably a way to have done the whole “Bulmeria” student protest (and even the tear gas kiss!) in a way that could have better captured this moment in time, but that required more care, nuance, and attention that just wasn’t there. The cat is already out of the bag, we cannot retcon the last few months of story nor is it a reasonable request to ask for so, but as we move forward I hope that anyone who’s been paying attention to the feedback uses it as a chance to take their activism beyond sympathy.
NGPZ I also just wanted to say that I feel for you deeply, and I’m incredibly sorry about everything. I pray that your loved ones will be able to make it through safely, and I hope that one day in the future, much sooner than later, their days will be filled with recovery and peace instead.
re: "it still won’t be enough to trigger any self-reflection",
yeah long before Willis, we've had ""timeless"" stories like X-Men with social commentary on racism and genocide baked into the setting from the get-go,
which was very often glossed over really only because for the longest time it was easy for the whitebred majority of readers to just ignore, so as to accommodate their need for escapism. Now and then, even with POC welcome in the commentariat kitchen, we get the classic sentiment of “please just, you know, don’t make identity politics a thing, pretty please?”
Willis has already shown his will to take initiative to listen to constructive feedback and improve his story via direct action, and will hopefully come to inspire others to move past the notion that the underlying problem in our society is one which is just gonna automatically fix itself in due time (i.e., “actively rejecting waves of imperialist propaganda”)
but of course what do we also get as a result?? “he changing it post hoc because of white guilt BLAH BLAH BLAH”
as the saying goes, “you can lead a (mostly white) bunch of horses to the rivers of social justice but you can’t force them to drink it”
and it’s at this point that I ain’t really givin the glare to Willis, I’m givin it to his audience 👀
People really do try to claim X-Men “used to be” apolitical. You know, the comic books centered on a group of characters who are all victims of legal discrimination based on their immutable identities. Magneto experienced the Holocaust first-hand and always compared discrimination against mutants to it, and of course the original stories were being penned by American Jews…
…but, you know, it didn’t get political until [insert whatever latest development has these fake nerds’ knickers in a twist this time].
yeah, it’s hella clear that Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Lieber were pouring their feelings into their stories as they witnessed the Civil Rights Movement and related movements firsthand, expressing great sympathies for brothers in the struggle for social justice they had also personally reckoned with
hell they only started doing comics in the first place because of anti-Semitic obstacles to their employment!
despite what fake (and mostly white) nerds on the internet will tell you, the personal IS political
fandoms are built with good intentions as spaces where nerds, weebs and furries can have a safely indulge in escapism and geek out without ridicule,
great problems arise when they are made to fear and paint over progressive ideas as a threat to their safety and escapism,
Imperial Propogandists largely bank on these people thinking there’s this HARD LINE excluding personal/authentic expression from some nebulous category of “”political””/””SJW stuff””, which just so happens to include your social responsibility to not be a fucking bigot 👀
It is indeed mostly my fellow white people. Whiteness is pretty insulating, affording you the ability to “not care about” politics for longer than any other privilege. And there sure a lot of us for whom “both sides suck, but the one that’s asking me to think about changing my behavior is the real enemy” is the preferred mode of political operation.
(Just got finished watching a Some More News youtube video about Joe Rogan, so that particular brand of vaguely contrarian, self-described “edgy” disaffected political opinion is top of mind.)
it’s unfortunate especially since that the progressive ideas which white nerds are made to paint over as “politics” and fear as a threat to their personal enjoyment of media, escapism, and mental health, are actually that which can HELP them with all of those, and help them live better lives
for instance there was a time not so long ago when I had a mortal fear of Dina being explicitly labeled autistic, because all my life that label had only ever been associated with really traumatic things, and given how much I related to her on a deep and personal level, well, she was my “safe” character, and for her to get the autistic label was something I perceived as a threat to this safety
but if she hadn’t been explicitly autistic like she was, I would have never had such an opportunity for deep reflection and realization, and would have never been able to truely, happily embrace this aspect of myself, or found a community where I can really be myself, or make as many great friends as I have now 🥲
indeed, Imperialists KNOW that whitebred nerds’ problems are ones which can very much be solved by progressive ideas put into practice,
which is exactly why they go out of their way to muddy the waters by peddling bigoted and white-centric versions of it so as to contribute to the notion that “both sides suck”
propogandists deliberately feed into the impression that ALL “politics” has this cult-like hostility and desire to control baked into it, period, to make it hard for politically illiterate white people to reject bigoted politics without also rejecting the progressive politics on which it’s based
to the untrained eye, progressives’ “get woke” looks very similar to internet nazis “get red pilled”
reject both of them in favor of the existing social order, or take the red pill for more street cred in a circle of self-proclaimed patriots — either is a step to the right
X-Men are kind of fascinating to me, partly just because I’m a big comics nerd who was reading them long before I able to consciously read any of it as metaphor, but also because of how the metaphor has shifted and been used differently over the decades. In the 60s, it was basically straight black civil rights. Later in the 80s when I was first reading X-Men regularly, it was broader, but definitely included homophobia (God Loves, Man Kills?) And it’s only gotten more so since.
And then there’s stuff like the “Magneto was Right” meme going around a few years ago, which gets a bit cringe these days thinking of Magneto as a Holocaust survivor trying to create a mutant homeland to ensure nothing like that will happen to his people again – regardless of what he has to do to flatscans to make that happen.
One part of the “used to be apolitical” is just that “you used to be a kid when you first read it”, but another is that those were the social issues they grew up with. That stuff was normal and they absorbed the attitudes in media like the X-Men without seeing it as radical. But the political stuff in it now isn’t normal to them, since they didn’t grow up with it.
re: “waiting to see what the fallout is going to look like after the fact”,
i mean valid, im just offering my take on it right now if only because
1. the heat of the protest action has passed
2. for something like this, i notice it’s unfortunately all too easy for a lot of readers to slip into the all too common binary of “it’s too early to form any conclusions” and “ugh are you STILL going on about that?” (-_-)
(not saying that you’re guilty of this Mowed Lawn, just taking note of this recurrent pattern where, without knowing or willing it, even well-meaning people perceive injustice as either “not happening” or “already happened”)
Totally fair! Lord knows I’ve shared enough on how I felt about this storyline the last few weeks that I didn’t want to just repeat myself without anything really substantial to say, but I do think it’s fair game to assess how that plot point worked now that the meat of it has passed, especially when those criticisms can touch on things that go beyond subjective opinions i.e what’s happening in the text diegetically.
Looking back on a few more of your comments, I feel you on feeling frustrated whenever I see a fellow reader dismiss the criticisms as overblown or extraneous, but I think making sure that I focus on using my words as a jumping off point for others to learn from helps to quell that feeling. It’s not always a feasible nor realistic strategy, and I do think sometimes you just need to tell someone that they’re dead wrong, but it does help me make sure that I’m not falling into argument holes with other internet strangers.
It would have been interesting if Willis made it more vague what the protest was about, which is the usual route that writers take to tell this sort of story (for exactly this reason). The protest *was* a backdrop, but basing it too much on actual events, especially ones that are relatively fresh in a lot of peoples’ minds, makes us unable to abstract the protest into “protest happening in the background” instead of “protest about Israel’s genocide happening”. Clearly, renaming Israel to Bulmeria wasn’t enough.
There is a certain bravery in choosing not to take the easy route, and I think it went a *lot* better than could be expected, but there’s plenty of valid criticism to be done.
The protest is over. The repercussions are just beginning – including those AG is facing literally right now for fighting back. It’s a character-driven story – Asma is clearly the character with the greatest personal stake in the protest itself, and it’s clear that she’s nervous in the aftermath. Meanwhile, Carla is having to confront her parents’ complicity, challenging her freedom to be an asshole with the privilege afforded by her parents’ enormous wealth.
I don’t think Willis missed an opportunity that would’ve been obviously better for these characters, but there may be a story you want to tell that’s different from the one he’s telling. Maybe now’s a good time to start writing that story!
Thank you for this. I’d say this is the take that most resembles mine. People are expecting geopolitical expertise and nuance from a story that was written a whole year ago! The whole point of using a fictional name was that Bulmeria serves as a stand-in for all kinds of different conflicts because these things have never not been relevant. The names gets shuffled around, but the general systemic problem of the wealthy and powerful picking on those less so, be it individuals or entire nationalities, is ultimately universal.
Had this comic been written in the 80’s, it probably would have been “about” some post-Soviet bloc country. Had it been written in the 90’s, it would have been “about” Serbia or Rwanda, and so on and so forth.
Still waiting some more fallout from the story,
BUT I think people are awaiting a strong argumentative storyline of war when… we are only here watching college freshmen and their lives.
Noone is from Bulmeria from the cast, so ALL these commenters’ arguments don’t make sense.
And yes, (newsflash) protests are big in Colleges and lives change in these protests and people have also lives outside of the protests, and yes a College webcomic CAN use protests in its storyline as events, plot point changes and background happenings.
What were people awaiting? That this would be a manifesto storyline about war and Gaza and Ukraine?
It’s art about the lives of college freshmen. Not art about a war on a faraway land.
Sheesh.
I’m now wondering if there is any fanfiction where Amber/Amazi-girl wake up in the Bat Cave, adopted by Bruce, and are just confused asf how they ended up in a comic book
This is the first mention of it, I’m sure other strips have people make fun of her for it in a descriptive way (probably sal).
I think the general assumption is that it’s supposed to be her doing a christian bale batman impersonation. She only actually started doing it when she started hanging out with danny both in and our of costume, to make it harder for him to figure out.
it probably is also a bit more intimidating now that she’s had some practice at this
since we’ve seen (heard?) her throw her voice once she’s probably somewhat good at this now given how hard she obsesses over things
I was wondering how Sal knew a doctor, this development adds things up. Will Asher tell Sal he already figured out who Amazi-Girl is or does he know that will that just agitate her?
I’ve thought, since it happened, that Asher had Blaine killed to cover his own ass. Blaine got him involved in his dipshit scheme, and might have ratted on him to the feds to get a deal. And/or ratted on him to his grandfather to get protection or something. Or threatened Asher with blackmail again for, I dunno, Blaine didn’t strike me as a great planner.
Asher killing someone to cover up stealing four years of tuition etc worth of money, that’s not great. But what if its not the woke mob after all, and Blaine was also blackmailing him over his sexuality. Killing Blaine to keep himself safe over that is a lot more reasonable. If that’s the case, it’s more likely Asher is trying to make amends, and was trying to id her to warn her.
My take is that Asher agreed to pull a fire alarm and didn’t know what it got himself in. He had Blaine killed because Blaine got him involved in a mass kidnapping and felony murder.
He protected himself but was also not happy about being used.
Like if the mobbed up cops are looking for her, tying up loose ends on who might know who was on the take. Mike shouted he knew, where other people were around.
It felt like Blaine was harassing Asher from the start, so it probably was a relief to get rid of him. I suppose it’s also possible Blaine was a co-conspirator in stealing gramps’ money, or Asher decided a dead Blaine would make a convenient scapegoat for anything amiss. I think Mike had insinuated that Blaine was stealing from the mob?
Still, Asher didn’t call in the hit until after Blaine had given him a good excuse. Did Asher need to wait for one, or did he feel responsible after people got hurt? (Or, did he knowingly let Blaine’s plans go ahead, for the disposal excuse?) Is he just a mostly ok dude who’s doing what he can to right some wrongs? Maybe he cares AND it helps him?
Dam, I got jumpscared by zombified Asher. Those eyes are unsettling. Doesn’t help that I have a crack on my phone, so it looked like he had a giant gash across his face.
Maybe the next question should be, “Who did ASHER just indebt himself to?” And actually we don’t know exactly what happened to AG. Was she shot? Beaten? Stabbed? Did she fall off the Gazabo onto a tent stake? How did she escape? Stay tuned tomorrow, same Amaza-time, same Amaza-channel…
I can see Asher indebting himself to someone for Sal as a way to try to make amends for his role in her getting caught as a teenager. I don’t think he’s going to ask anything of Sal in return.
Jaguars have terrible wiring, tons of electrical issues, and leak oil like a mother fucker. All I have to do is find a steep enough hill and I’ll be good. That AJ engine will die before I’m in any real danger.
Gonna be straight up, I’m honestly kinda shocked by the amount of people who didn’t know about the “I hope Jakey dies” meme, I really overestimated how popular that phrase was in the wider lexicon lmfao
I hadn’t heard of the meme until recently, but I’ve never used tumblr, which I guess is where it came from. I think it’s kinda weird to assume everyone is aware of a meme or a joke.
Really wanna clarify that I don’t think any lesser of anyone who didn’t know or care for it! It’s just that this particular meme has been such common shorthand in my everyday life that I kinda forgot that my experiences aren’t nearly as universal as I tend to assume they are, even when it comes to small stuff like this y’know?
It’s interesting that Asher probably the most morally complex character in this show, and yet we don’t see hardliners going on tirades about how good/evil he is. This is a serious oversight that needs to change. I’ll start.
Asher is 100% atoned and has made up for his past. He is, in many ways, a saint.
Not to start arguments back up, but that’s because whatever tf is going on with Asher is mysterious and interesting, and cheating plotlines are very boring because there’s literally only a few ways they can be resolved with regard to their main subject matter. Once a character cheats, either one party is gonna get dumped or the other, or very rarely all parties get dumped (or even rarer a polycule happens which I still think is a problematic resolution because polycules need more and better rep.)
Asher and his mob ties has like, a solid dozen very different outcomes with very different effects on the story and himself. Like, there is a universe where these decisions end with Asher dead, there are routes that Sal or AG die. Incredibly unlikely ones, but perfectly plausible ones.
Bro isn’t fighting for a relationship, or validation, or escaping expectations that only he held himself to. Bro is fighting for the very being of his soul, how many horrifyingly immoral things he is willing to tolerate, how many concessions he has to make in his morals, if he’s willing to forgo every opportunity afforded him by powerful connections or not. And he’s stolen from his own grandfather, he’s stolen from the mob. He’s called in hits. He’s participated, possibly unwillingly, in a kidnapping. He is basically the flawed protagonist of a completely different story altogether and that’s why he’s super interesting when he pops up.
[This is also why I love AG + Amber. I would read standalone books about them and also about Asher.]
(Also gonna add here that the first part about cheating plotlines being boring/not great isn’t just a me being a Relationship Paladin thing. I’ve seen more than a couple writers and producers sit down and talk about the issues with cheating plots and how they came to regret writing them because it often causes the audience to turn on the characters and the dramatic payoff wasn’t enough to undo the damage caused to the audience’s goodwill for the characters. One sitcom writer talking about it stood out a lot to me. I wanna say it was maybe Friends but I don’t think I ever heard about a real cheating subplot there.)
The “on a break” plot is probably close enough for all the same things to apply regardless of whether one personally considers it to have been cheating, so it could be Friends.
Many people have been cheated on or know someone who’s been cheated on, which may drive strong feelings about cheating. Additionally, it’s hard to think of a situation where cheating by itself enabled a good result.
Very few people, comparatively, know someone mobbed up or who’s been murdered etc. And Asher himself has helped demonstrate that sometimes a murder can be perceived as a good/moral act (given we are now rid of Blaine).
idk, literally every time he shows up for literally any reason, even just to say hi there are like 5 people who feel incesced to frame 0 type “i don’t trust him” so i’d say theres plenty to go around on that front
When considering Asher’s moral character, I would like to submit to the council that Asher has an inkling on who AG might be, and is completely aware of how devastated his boyfriend would be if something bad were to happen to her. He might not have needed much convincing. Though he absolutely will milk it for everything it is worth.
Considering the last we saw of those two interacting, they were drunkenly arguing re Asher’s responsibility for Sal ending up in a school in Tennessee, it’s not bad at all
I’m kind of wondering what kind of stomach wound would let the patient be capable of grabbing her things and getting up to walk away, as Sal just instructed Amber to do, immediately after surgery.
I was so confused at first, could Sal just summon AG like that? Then I saw the blush marks and Amber tag and realized she’s just doing the voice.
So Asher connection is confirmed. I wonder if this will be the return of Frosty. Every now and then I think about him, and way back when I thought that he was going to be the cause of Joyce struggling with infidelity. Obviously that didn’t happen, so what if it was just a “hey he was here that one time” and/or showing that he’s actually a good dude seeing that the girls needed some help to get home safely.
Who is Frosty? When did Joyce struggle with infidelity? When Joyce and Dorothy were drunk wasn’t it Amazigirl that escorted them home safely. I don’t know; it’s been a while since I read that last one and my mind could be making stuff up.
Frosty was the guy in the bar who was either hitting on Joyce/Dorothy or genuinly offering a no-strings lift and Joyce threatened to glass him (he had frosted tips in his hair hence the nickname).
Ah thank you for the link. I could have sworn Joyce originally told Frosty to “bounce your eyes”, and then when she was on the toilet the next day she started to say the same thing to Joe but then changed her phrasing mid-sentence. So that was why I thought back then that maybe Frosty would return, and Joyce would have subconsciously been thinking about him for. While.
re: Panel 1. Sal has an amazingly nuanced and sympathetic understanding of Amber/Amazi-Girl’s psyche, especially considering they’re responsible for Sal’s loss of dexterity. She’s the Fonzie of DoA!
I would love to see what happened between Sal meeting with Amber and Amazi Girl wakes up in Kitchen Doctor’s place of shady business.
Sal: Asher! Ah need help, quick!
Asher: You need my help? What makes you think (sees Amazi Girl, masked again, in bad shape) – oh shit! What happened?
Sal: Never mind that! You know someone who can help?
Asher: Yeah. I’ll get ahold of him. Get in the car, be right with you
Convo between Asher and Kitchen Doc, translated from Korean:
Doc, it’s Asher. Hate to bug you but we got a bloody problem.
Asher this had better not be one of your gangster friends. Your grandfather doesn’t pay me nearly enough for that shit.
It’s Amazi Girl.
Jeezus! That superhero girl from the university? You’re going to need a lot of money for that.
No problem, Doc. On my way.
Y’know, as far as Paladin posterchilds go, I’ll definitely take the guy who removed Blaine from the picture over some others. Lawful Evil is still Lawful.
so amazigirl is probably going to assume asher’s involved with the mob, right? even if everyone gets the fuck out right now and she doesn’t technically know she operates on superhero logic
which means she’ll figure he could have been involved with the kidnapping but not necessarily that he was
Off: Joyce and Dorothy finally smooching, I fixed my car and our fascist genocide-pedo-former-brazilian-president Jair Bolsonaro was arrested for trying a coup after last election. Yes, I’m happy.
I like how this comic is 90% comedy-of-errors and then every once in a while suddenly it’s someone with cartoon-level disassociative identity disorder visiting a mob doctor.
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oh no she asked for a solid from ASHER
*looks at current storyline title*
0-0 >~<
T-T “I just know something BAD is gonna happen”
Yeah, the story-line title got a lot more ominous one Amazi-Girl, Sal and Asher entered the picture.
Like, I was expecting it to refer to Joyce and Dorothy, where the consequences for the ‘crime’ is much lower stakes.
Isn’t this situation, and everything that follows, a subset of the consequences for said “crime”?
You mean Joyce’s and Dorothy’s? No, not at all. First, we don’t know if Amazi-Girl went to the protest because of them. In fact, we hae indication of the opposite, they hadn’t told anybody they went there and they didn’t take their cellphones so AG couldn’t have track them. So Amazi-Girl got involved in her own accord. It was a fortunate coincidence that she got there in time to save Joyce, but she would have been there kicking riot cops regardless. Furthermore, even after getting Joye and Dorothy to safety, AG stayed behind to help more people, and it is only after that she got hurt.
Amazi-Girls actions last chapter had very little to do with Joye and Dorothy and would likely have happened regardless.
I was thinking that she went to extra risk and stayed longer than needed because they were too busy with love dramas to evacuate promptly. I’d forgotten she’d stayed to help more protestors. So yeah, you’re right.
But it’s still their fault because the encounter with Incelerator is what got AG back into vigilantism, and that in turn caused by a chain of consequences for his bad character and life decisions, which ultimately started snowballing with Ryan’s own consequences, which started with Joyce glassing his face, and also because I’m in an absurdist mood and that logic is just coherent enough to follow while still being over 95% incoherent.
Blaming others for the malicious behaviour of villains is the height of naiveté. If bad people don’t do bad things to one person, they’ll just find another target. It is not the fault of their victims that people behave badly. At a stretch one can maybe state that a victim’s behaviour makes them a more desirable target, but it does not compel anyone to do evil.
See also: Blaming rape survivors based on their attire.
Please read the last sentence of the person you replied to. They acknowledged the absurdity.
While I understand and empathize with you here, and agree *in general*, let’s not forget the simple fact that Amber is now guilty of multiple level 5 felonies, by the laws of the state of Indiana, simply for the act of assaulting multiple officers while on the line of duty.
And I don’t think that a jury is going to feel like the police was in the wrong, for two reasons. First, because everything they were armed with (to the best of our knowledge) was non-lethal weaponry. We know just how harmful “non-lethal” really is, but a jury is made up of the average person.
Secondly… Amazi-girl’s presence and assault on the police, while it was done to defend others and get them to safety, has unfortunately justified the police’s position of being that armed. Why, apparently masked assailants were attacking officers and incapacitating them as they worked to get everyone to leave in a quiet, orderly fashion. Of course the riot gear and tear gas was necessary!
-_-
That’s the advantage of a peaceful protest. When they beat you silly, gas you, and drag you to jail, they look like the monsters because you were doing nothing wrong. Unless Amazi-Girl was there to, I dunno, make sure someone about to go in a diabetic coma or something got out in time to get her insulin, her presence made things worse.
Ironically, when the real-life police chief was interviewed on why he had a sniper in Dunn Meadow, he said it was because it was his job to prepare for every eventuality and there were rumors of armed attacks, both towards and from the protesters. They went overboard because they expected resistance – resistance that only AmaziGirl was really giving them.
I don’t like it either, but that’s the world we live in. The world we live in has no room for Batgirl suddenly appearing and attacking the assailants and rescuing her friends because our world sees her as a violent repeat offender with a history of mental illness who attacked on-duty police officers as they worked to peacefully remove tresspassers who were protesting in a method that was against campus policy. And if you gagged just a little in reading that, know that I cringed the entire time while writing it.
Like it or not, Amber is, right now, is far more of a criminal than probably any of them there, including Asher. She has, almost certainly, made national news.
Yup. There is no way the protest organizers would have wanted that. There’s a time and a place for black bloc work, but this wasn’t it.
According to one of the patreon strips, Asma agrees.
First you say Amazi-girl is there, then you complain Dorothy isn’t involved???
I mean Asher still kinda owed her one for the convenience store thing, didn’t he? Am I forgetting something?
He also helped her dad kidnap all their friends and ultimately shares some responsibility in Mike’s death, though nobody knows that but him at present.
Her dad blackmailed him into indirectly helping with the kidnapping.
Wondering if Blaine knew about Asher liking guys, and perhaps threatening to reveal the same to Mafioso Asher’s Grandpa?
That’s what I’ve assumed since Asher’s attraction to guys was revealed.
OMG, I just realized,
“be gay, do crimes” very well also applies to Asher, don’t it?
Yeah, I still don’t trust him.
Asher is super sus.
I legit hope that Asher is genuinely doing his best to get out of the “family business” as much as he can, just because I’d find that much more interesting than the people assuming he’s still in the bad.
I don’t think he’s still in the bad, I think he’s gonna end up abandoning his heel face turn for some reason and this will be related. I fully believe Asher is doing his hardest to get out, but like… it’s not so simple in the end.
I personally feel like Asher does genuinely want to leave his old life behind, but at the same time, he’s not willing or confident enough to sever all ties once and for all. (And in fairness, his crime family may not LET him, and the best he can do is basically just lay low and do his best not to draw attention and pray that the family doesn’t call upon him.)
But leaving that aside, I kinda suspected that this was a mob doctor last night, but I didn’t have the time to write a post calling it. XD
See also: The Godfather.
Look. All I’m saying is lately Asher has been very invested in AG’s activities and finding out who she is and I don’t think that’s to give her a high five. Does it matter if he feels really bad and doesn’t want to act like a gangster if he still does it anyway?
From a storytelling perspective, yes, it’s a huge bit of difference between a dude that’s happily doing mob stuff and reporting back with hopes of becoming the Don (or whatever the leader is called) someday and someone who wants to escape their family’s bad activities but is keeping his eyes open either out of instinct or chances to earn more playing cards [either out of survival instinct or what have you]. Those are two entirely different characters lol
Actualy this strip somewhat recontectualizes that. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/money-2/
You know, when I saw Asher appear in today’s strip, I was like, “Sirksome’s gonna say something about not trusting him. Lo and behold.
One day I will either be vindicated or incredibly embarrassed. Willis has an opportunity to do something incredibly funny either way.
Even if you’re not vindicated, I hope you aren’t embarrassed. Nothing wrong with not trusting a character who has been set up to be untrustworthy in several ways.
amber are you okay
are you okay amber
Given that she asked Sal to tell her, I’m guessing Amber doesn’t really know at the moment.
So she came to in a bad way
it was Sunday, what a black day
oops meant to reply to the other reply
No, she’s been hit by, she’s been hit by, police brutality.
OW!
+1
*A-G moonwalks out of the room
*Asher, Kitchen Doc, and Sal just stare
Well kind of a rough night at work but I guess I’m ok
Gonn be a great topic for pillow talk with Ethan
Oh, this is gonna be GOOD.
Asher hahaah oh wow
anyway Asher knows Amber is Amazi Girl, you are not really fooling anyone
He does, but not only do I think neither Sal nor Amber/AG know that the background indicates that they’re still in Kitchen Doctor’s
operating roomkitchen. Kitchen Doctor almost certainly doesn’t know who she is.Kitchen doctor is in the corner desperately trying to figure out how his life suddenly involved a real life superhero lol
“Thats me in the corner, figuring out where this superhero came from”
“I knew patching up gangsters would lead me to no good”
Yeah that was what I was expecting, unfortunately.
Amazi-Girl the anti-hero arc?
Asher looks so sweet, I can’t believe this is gonna be connected to you embracing your villain arc /hj. Fr though, he’s like my favorite dude in the cast by far because of that stuff. So much story potential, I love him.
Asher’s your fav? Hmmmmm…very suspicious. 🤨
What a twast
Asher isn’t responsible for this in the first place??
He played a part in the kidnapping, and that was a big step on the road to Dorothy’s mindset putting her square and center in the middle of the protest. So yes, he is.
… that of course means that Sal, Amber/AG, Dorothy, Joyce, and everyone else had no agency at all in this.
See I thought it was because he was the one who got Sal involved in holding up gas stations which led to Amber’s issues becoming as bad as they are.
That’s the more sensible way to blame Asher and therefore less funny.
Bo unless i missed Asher joining the riot police.
Blaine blackmailed him into pulling the fire alarm.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/want/
You know, I thought the constant glances between Asher and Amazi-girl were gonna lead up to something, didn’t realize it’d be this. And honestly, I imagine this is Asher’s attempt to atone for the kidnapping fiasco.
Ok, so I could emotionally handle Dorothy cuckolding Joe. But Amazi-Girl cuckolding Danny…..
Ok no it would be too funny. Amazi-Sal new insane otp.
Is it really new? I feel like people have probably been shipping those two for literal years now.
Ya know, this is making it difficult to continue with the whole Sal-is-A-G thing.
(i mean, they could be talking to themselves right now in some sort of halucidnation or whatev)
((which explains why asher looks so concerned))
Okay, it’s still early in my timezone, and I legit read that originally as “the whole Sal is Attorney General thing.” Now there’s a different story entirely.
SAL FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL
SLOGAN: “Ah’ll Hit Pam Bondi With a Truck for Integrity, No Regrets”
I’m in. There a kickstarter for her campaign fund?
Bless this post.
You’re not dreaming big enough… Amber/Sal/Danny throuple.
Poor Sal. She is being forced into a situation where her kindness outshines her badass veneer.
“Got caught giving a fuck. Embarrassing.”
Second time she’s done the combat-medical-extraction thing for A-G. Got a pattern here.
Who had their money on Mafia Doctor? You called it.
I feel like most people didp
We were many. 😀
From the tags, it looks like this is Amber putting on the Amazi-Girl voice, but still in charge of the body.
I think you’re right. There are blush marks under the mask which indicates Amber.
It’s also kind of the point of what’s happening in the first panel.
Until Asher was shown at the end i was half-convinced that Sal was essentially force activating Amazi-Girl because she felt Amazi-Girl would handle the pain better than Amber could.
Might have been both. “Hey, A-G, if you can hear me, get out here. If not, then you other person, this is a strong hint to fake it.”
Oh, right, new book, new relationship scramble.
Sal has an Asher on her shoulder instead of an angel and devil, and honestly that explains a lot.
Asher: So how about that prick’s face when he saw the giant sucking stomach wound?
What is interesting is this is all Amber today. In a parallel to the beginning of Book 15 she is the one waking up in an unexpected place having to deal with Amazi-Girls mess. Makes me wonder what AG is thinking though. What will be her reaction to have receiving help from what is likely a mob doctor?
Regarding the poll, who is Jakey?
Per earlier comment threads, “Jakey” is a guy who is viewed as acceptable because he’s ‘nice’, but is so tepid that he really has nothing to offer, either. Apparently, there’s a Tumblr thread witht the line, “I just want Jakey to die.” That’s all I know.
The original post is making fun of a cartoon that features a couple and the caption is like “tall bf and short anxious gf that can’t order her own food”, and OP captioned it “I wish these people were oppressed”. Then the OP reblogged themselves and said “stop tagging this saying shit like “me and jakey!!! 🥺”. Then there’s a final reblog that has a screenshot of a tag that says “I hope jakey dies”. The context of the meme really has nothing to do with the personality of the guy, and is more about people bringing up their boyfriends in an annoying, intrusive way
slang for boyfriend
Jakey is joe and or walky
Jakey is the meme of the perfect boyfriend thats kind of bland
so i was right slang for boyfriend
also slang for joe/walky 🙂
Jacob. Ethan’s roommate. It indicates that the poll respondent is attempting to whataboutism away from Theocracy (yes, that’s the official Joyce/Dorothy ship name) by ranting about Jacob/Lucy. Who are evil for reasons.
Jakey is your female friend’s useless boyfriend, who you want to see dead because she deserves better.
Is he a good slightly boring boyfriend or is he useless? I feel that’s a very important distinction. Boring != bad, useless is.
Language is an ambiguous tool.
love that there is 3 profs here
It’s from a meme about girls who bring their boyfriend up at absolutely every conversation and are really annoying about it, usually in a ‘Not all men’ kind of way. At least, that’s where I’ve seen ‘I hope jakey dies’ way.
Vote for my heart, my achey Jakey heart
Well, this doesn’t expand the list of people who know about AG, since Asher already saw the uniform.
A hundred years from now, when they’re both grey, wrinkly, and living together to avoid being forced into a nursing home, Sal will still hold this over Amber’s head. “Remember when I found you in the woods HALF-DEAD!? And had to drag your FAT ASS to Asher’s KITCHEN DOCTOR?!”
…Actually, her ass is pretty toned, at this point.
Big, but all muscle. I think it’s been established. Amber just looks soft.
Everyone has a fat ass when being dragged unconscious through the woods in the dead of night.
“Also, remember when I caught you in midair during a high-speed car chase and kept you from being road pizza? And pulled you into the woods so you wouldn’t get caught by cops? That’s TWICE I saved your life and freedom. So, YEAH, I think it’s your turn on chores this week!”
Okay NOW that the protest arc is officially over, I can finally call it in retrospect
*sigh*
I am dissapointed. Like I don’t even mind that Joyce x Dorothy kiss happened during the protest,
But speaking as someone personally affected by what the protest was about, really bummed that none of the cast went deep in terms of how themselves, friends and family were affected by the conflict in “”Bulmeria””, Willis had a solid opportunity but really missed it, and yeah that really made the whole protest feel like a background decoration :/
I’m hoping that we get more in the fallout from the protest
I think the reasons for that is that Bulmeria is not Gaza. Any further investment in the people involved in it would have to make it clear it’s not Gaza and show the differences. Because otherwise it’s insulting to the real event.
Maybe that’s one of the many reason why Willis shouldn’t have done it in the first place.
What’s done is done.
Willis has admitted fault and will be amending this very storyline with fallout from the protest antics, which is something.
Don’t do the bit if you can’t COMMIT!
Protests for many causes have been important events on many college campuses for many contemporary students. I don’t think it shouldn’t have been broached and was handled respectfully without making the entire comic focus on one topic that has been a protestable issue within the past 15 years (which would have had to happen to give any one issue the focus and attention any would deserve). I think the protest arc was balanced and as others have said, the fall out will be circling back to the issues affecting characters past the main cast.
I feel it’s a bit like Robin and the Trump jokes that unfortunately tainted her by association with a monster.
Y’know despite everything I kinda liked Robin in Shortpacked, so I didn’t really appreciate when he made a her a stand in for every terrrible Republican politician, (remember when she was Sarah Palin, oh what innocent times those were).
I don’t think it was handled respectfully because it was ultimately only included to serve as a stage for Joyce and Dorothy’s makeout. The fact that Willis is only NOW going think about tacking the subject in any detail doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. Eventually the storyline will move on and the protest will only be mentioned in occasionally, almost certainly in relation to Joyce/Dorothy. The fact that Willis has been making comics for as long as they have and STILL has these problems establishing a consistent tone is really starting to wear my patience thin. We’ve seen this with Jurassic Park references during a school shooting and 90% of anything involving Amazi-girl (did they really need to keep that element from Shortpacked), and here where it undercuts BOTH the representation of the Gaza protest and the moment between Joyce and Dorothy (who could have guessed it was a last minute story change). And it is the Gaza protest, despite using some stupid made up country as a stand-in like they’re in the Marvel universe. Bad representation is worse than no representation at all.
I think Willis deserves at least partially a benny because it wasn’t meant to be the Gaza protest but Bulmeria BECAUSE it was supposed to be a thing for Joyce and Dorothy. It was unfortunately just too similar.
Sadly, the horror from last year became the horror of this year (and has been a horror building for many years)
At this point I think, for better or for worse, the “consistent” part of the tone IS that “things that mirror real-life events WILL still get a bit comic-silly (Jurassic Park references, Amazi-Girl showing up) and mostly focused on the main characters here (the J/D kiss) rather than the real-life events they mirror”.
My personal expectations for long-term change are much closer to “Willis starts pulling back from the more serious real-world-alike references”, although elsewhere Willis has noted he needs to do better on representation and handling of these kind of issues.
The idea that referencing a real thing should carry the all the weight and seriousness of that real thing every time is a poor attitude for art, I dislike how endemic it’s becoming. There’s no perspective that engages equally with all topics, some times you just brush against them in passing.
Sure. But this was a bad way to brush past this in passing, and Willis has said as much.
The thing is, it is.
Like, taken in isolation, there’s no reason to assume that Bulmeria should be particularly relevant to Muslim/MENA people. Before this last storyline, I’d assumed that Bulmeria was in Sub-Saharan Africa, or possibly Eastern Europe, somewhere near Latveria.
But the events of the comic so closely mirror not just Gaza protests, but one specific Gaza protest, which was in that specific place, on this specific campus, with specific details surrounding it that were specifically mentioned in the comic, at the specific time that the strips depicting it were being drawn, that it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Bulmeria is Gaza with the serial numbers not even filed off, but just sloppily scribbled over in crayon.
And this is confirmed by Willis trying to wedge in their most significant Muslim character who’s not an outright villain (and there’s definitely legitimate criticism to be found in the fact that that’s someone who only had 20 appearances before that), even though, again, there’s no particular reason to assume that Bulmeria has anything to do with Muslims or the Middle East, and immediately copping to the accusations of having done so badly, and acting to change the buffered comics to address that, despite the hassle involved in rescheduling the ludicrous year-long buffer.
Yeah, before this storyline Bulmeria was just ‘some far away country’ and occasionally a stand in for Ukraine. Now it’s very clearly a mirror for Gaza.
I mean, it’s still those things.
But Gaza dwarfs all of them.
It’s been clear to me for a long while now that this protest has been a stand in for the Gaza protests that were happening at college and university campuses last year, particularly the protest at Indiana University. Sometimes “Bulmeria” is a fictional country in Willis comics, but in this case it’s a stand in for a real country. And I think Willis definitely could’ve handled this story arc better.
Writing comics with political implications a full year ahead of time is very risky. Who the hell knows what will be going on in 12 months? Especially with the current crappier crap.
I’m still waiting to see what the fallout is going to look like after the fact before I make any final conclusions on if this entire storyline was a bust or not (especially now that Asma’s been upgraded from being a background support character) and I’m incredibly grateful that Willis took to the criticisms and did some rewrites based on that, but yeah, it genuinely fucking suck seeing it play out in real time like it did.
Because it just reminded me that even when coming from a place of absolute well meaning sincerity, Islamophobic sentiment runs so deep in the western world that you can write a story taking inspiration from an active on-going genocide and it still won’t be enough to trigger any self-reflection on what internal biases you were taught that helped create those conditions to begin with. And I don’t just want to single Willis out, this is a disconnect that affects everyone who hasn’t actively been rejecting the waves of imperialist propaganda that has taken away the humanity of an entire religion, entire cultures, and entire regions of the world.
IDK It’s hard to put into words just how bad the “Bulmeria” stuff is in a way that makes criticism more helpful than uselessly guilt-inducing, but this at the root of it I think. I do think there was probably a way to have done the whole “Bulmeria” student protest (and even the tear gas kiss!) in a way that could have better captured this moment in time, but that required more care, nuance, and attention that just wasn’t there. The cat is already out of the bag, we cannot retcon the last few months of story nor is it a reasonable request to ask for so, but as we move forward I hope that anyone who’s been paying attention to the feedback uses it as a chance to take their activism beyond sympathy.
NGPZ I also just wanted to say that I feel for you deeply, and I’m incredibly sorry about everything. I pray that your loved ones will be able to make it through safely, and I hope that one day in the future, much sooner than later, their days will be filled with recovery and peace instead.
Same here. I’m sorry, NGPZ.
This, all of this, one million times.
awe, much appreciated all ya >~<
re: "it still won’t be enough to trigger any self-reflection",
yeah long before Willis, we've had ""timeless"" stories like X-Men with social commentary on racism and genocide baked into the setting from the get-go,
which was very often glossed over really only because for the longest time it was easy for the whitebred majority of readers to just ignore, so as to accommodate their need for escapism. Now and then, even with POC welcome in the commentariat kitchen, we get the classic sentiment of “please just, you know, don’t make identity politics a thing, pretty please?”
Willis has already shown his will to take initiative to listen to constructive feedback and improve his story via direct action, and will hopefully come to inspire others to move past the notion that the underlying problem in our society is one which is just gonna automatically fix itself in due time (i.e., “actively rejecting waves of imperialist propaganda”)
but of course what do we also get as a result?? “he changing it post hoc because of white guilt BLAH BLAH BLAH”
as the saying goes, “you can lead a (mostly white) bunch of horses to the rivers of social justice but you can’t force them to drink it”
and it’s at this point that I ain’t really givin the glare to Willis, I’m givin it to his audience 👀
People really do try to claim X-Men “used to be” apolitical. You know, the comic books centered on a group of characters who are all victims of legal discrimination based on their immutable identities. Magneto experienced the Holocaust first-hand and always compared discrimination against mutants to it, and of course the original stories were being penned by American Jews…
…but, you know, it didn’t get political until [insert whatever latest development has these fake nerds’ knickers in a twist this time].
(Also: hugs. 🙁 )
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽🫂
yeah, it’s hella clear that Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Lieber were pouring their feelings into their stories as they witnessed the Civil Rights Movement and related movements firsthand, expressing great sympathies for brothers in the struggle for social justice they had also personally reckoned with
hell they only started doing comics in the first place because of anti-Semitic obstacles to their employment!
despite what fake (and mostly white) nerds on the internet will tell you, the personal IS political
fandoms are built with good intentions as spaces where nerds, weebs and furries can have a safely indulge in escapism and geek out without ridicule,
great problems arise when they are made to fear and paint over progressive ideas as a threat to their safety and escapism,
Imperial Propogandists largely bank on these people thinking there’s this HARD LINE excluding personal/authentic expression from some nebulous category of “”political””/””SJW stuff””, which just so happens to include your social responsibility to not be a fucking bigot 👀
It is indeed mostly my fellow white people. Whiteness is pretty insulating, affording you the ability to “not care about” politics for longer than any other privilege. And there sure a lot of us for whom “both sides suck, but the one that’s asking me to think about changing my behavior is the real enemy” is the preferred mode of political operation.
(Just got finished watching a Some More News youtube video about Joe Rogan, so that particular brand of vaguely contrarian, self-described “edgy” disaffected political opinion is top of mind.)
But yeah, everything you said. 🙂
it’s unfortunate especially since that the progressive ideas which white nerds are made to paint over as “politics” and fear as a threat to their personal enjoyment of media, escapism, and mental health, are actually that which can HELP them with all of those, and help them live better lives
for instance there was a time not so long ago when I had a mortal fear of Dina being explicitly labeled autistic, because all my life that label had only ever been associated with really traumatic things, and given how much I related to her on a deep and personal level, well, she was my “safe” character, and for her to get the autistic label was something I perceived as a threat to this safety
but if she hadn’t been explicitly autistic like she was, I would have never had such an opportunity for deep reflection and realization, and would have never been able to truely, happily embrace this aspect of myself, or found a community where I can really be myself, or make as many great friends as I have now 🥲
just so we don’t get too off topic,
indeed, Imperialists KNOW that whitebred nerds’ problems are ones which can very much be solved by progressive ideas put into practice,
which is exactly why they go out of their way to muddy the waters by peddling bigoted and white-centric versions of it so as to contribute to the notion that “both sides suck”
propogandists deliberately feed into the impression that ALL “politics” has this cult-like hostility and desire to control baked into it, period, to make it hard for politically illiterate white people to reject bigoted politics without also rejecting the progressive politics on which it’s based
to the untrained eye, progressives’ “get woke” looks very similar to internet nazis “get red pilled”
reject both of them in favor of the existing social order, or take the red pill for more street cred in a circle of self-proclaimed patriots — either is a step to the right
X-Men are kind of fascinating to me, partly just because I’m a big comics nerd who was reading them long before I able to consciously read any of it as metaphor, but also because of how the metaphor has shifted and been used differently over the decades. In the 60s, it was basically straight black civil rights. Later in the 80s when I was first reading X-Men regularly, it was broader, but definitely included homophobia (God Loves, Man Kills?) And it’s only gotten more so since.
And then there’s stuff like the “Magneto was Right” meme going around a few years ago, which gets a bit cringe these days thinking of Magneto as a Holocaust survivor trying to create a mutant homeland to ensure nothing like that will happen to his people again – regardless of what he has to do to flatscans to make that happen.
One part of the “used to be apolitical” is just that “you used to be a kid when you first read it”, but another is that those were the social issues they grew up with. That stuff was normal and they absorbed the attitudes in media like the X-Men without seeing it as radical. But the political stuff in it now isn’t normal to them, since they didn’t grow up with it.
I’m also joining the “I’m sorry” chore, and I agree 100% with you.
re: “waiting to see what the fallout is going to look like after the fact”,
i mean valid, im just offering my take on it right now if only because
1. the heat of the protest action has passed
2. for something like this, i notice it’s unfortunately all too easy for a lot of readers to slip into the all too common binary of “it’s too early to form any conclusions” and “ugh are you STILL going on about that?” (-_-)
(not saying that you’re guilty of this Mowed Lawn, just taking note of this recurrent pattern where, without knowing or willing it, even well-meaning people perceive injustice as either “not happening” or “already happened”)
Totally fair! Lord knows I’ve shared enough on how I felt about this storyline the last few weeks that I didn’t want to just repeat myself without anything really substantial to say, but I do think it’s fair game to assess how that plot point worked now that the meat of it has passed, especially when those criticisms can touch on things that go beyond subjective opinions i.e what’s happening in the text diegetically.
Looking back on a few more of your comments, I feel you on feeling frustrated whenever I see a fellow reader dismiss the criticisms as overblown or extraneous, but I think making sure that I focus on using my words as a jumping off point for others to learn from helps to quell that feeling. It’s not always a feasible nor realistic strategy, and I do think sometimes you just need to tell someone that they’re dead wrong, but it does help me make sure that I’m not falling into argument holes with other internet strangers.
It would have been interesting if Willis made it more vague what the protest was about, which is the usual route that writers take to tell this sort of story (for exactly this reason). The protest *was* a backdrop, but basing it too much on actual events, especially ones that are relatively fresh in a lot of peoples’ minds, makes us unable to abstract the protest into “protest happening in the background” instead of “protest about Israel’s genocide happening”. Clearly, renaming Israel to Bulmeria wasn’t enough.
There is a certain bravery in choosing not to take the easy route, and I think it went a *lot* better than could be expected, but there’s plenty of valid criticism to be done.
I thought Palestine was Bulmeria?
Part of the reason I wanted more info was because it’s apparently a Civil War not a war between two nations.
I think you’re right? I would have to go through old comics to know for sure though and I’m not gonna do that.
Not if Mary’s “Bulmeria has a right to defend itself” sign is to be believed.
Along with “Bulmerian missiles are equipped with Ruttech systems”
And Asma’s sign, seen more clearly in a Patreon strip “No $ for Bulmerian War Crimes”
So if it’s NOT a civil war….who is genociding who?
Maybe Bulmeria is like Yugoslavia and one province is killing the other
The protest is over. The repercussions are just beginning – including those AG is facing literally right now for fighting back. It’s a character-driven story – Asma is clearly the character with the greatest personal stake in the protest itself, and it’s clear that she’s nervous in the aftermath. Meanwhile, Carla is having to confront her parents’ complicity, challenging her freedom to be an asshole with the privilege afforded by her parents’ enormous wealth.
I don’t think Willis missed an opportunity that would’ve been obviously better for these characters, but there may be a story you want to tell that’s different from the one he’s telling. Maybe now’s a good time to start writing that story!
Thank you for this. I’d say this is the take that most resembles mine. People are expecting geopolitical expertise and nuance from a story that was written a whole year ago! The whole point of using a fictional name was that Bulmeria serves as a stand-in for all kinds of different conflicts because these things have never not been relevant. The names gets shuffled around, but the general systemic problem of the wealthy and powerful picking on those less so, be it individuals or entire nationalities, is ultimately universal.
Had this comic been written in the 80’s, it probably would have been “about” some post-Soviet bloc country. Had it been written in the 90’s, it would have been “about” Serbia or Rwanda, and so on and so forth.
Still waiting some more fallout from the story,
BUT I think people are awaiting a strong argumentative storyline of war when… we are only here watching college freshmen and their lives.
Noone is from Bulmeria from the cast, so ALL these commenters’ arguments don’t make sense.
And yes, (newsflash) protests are big in Colleges and lives change in these protests and people have also lives outside of the protests, and yes a College webcomic CAN use protests in its storyline as events, plot point changes and background happenings.
What were people awaiting? That this would be a manifesto storyline about war and Gaza and Ukraine?
It’s art about the lives of college freshmen. Not art about a war on a faraway land.
Sheesh.
The mob scion coming in clutch!
The Fixer; the Street Doc; the Street Sam; the Nethacker/Solo multiclass. A well-balanced cyberpunk team!
I’m now wondering if there is any fanfiction where Amber/Amazi-girl wake up in the Bat Cave, adopted by Bruce, and are just confused asf how they ended up in a comic book
Anesthesia dream bonus comic when?
Please ;A;
It’s an isekai, Bullet-san subbed in for Truck-kun.
….so it was him after all
1000 points to the people who predicted Sal would have to rely on Asher!
The alteration of the speech bubble makes me wonder how Amazi Girl’s voice differs from Amber. Guess I gotta use my imagination.
Amber : Joan Cusack in Toys
Amazi girl: Joan Cusack in Addams Family Values.
amazi-girl joan cusack in grosse point blank (love that movie, kickass soundtrack)
Gross-point Blank is a hidden gem
Christian Bale batman.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/03-the-first-step-towards-recovery/voice/
This is the first mention of it, I’m sure other strips have people make fun of her for it in a descriptive way (probably sal).
I think the general assumption is that it’s supposed to be her doing a christian bale batman impersonation. She only actually started doing it when she started hanging out with danny both in and our of costume, to make it harder for him to figure out.
it probably is also a bit more intimidating now that she’s had some practice at this
since we’ve seen (heard?) her throw her voice once she’s probably somewhat good at this now given how hard she obsesses over things
comes with nearly a decade of experience with him
Oh blood and bloody ashes. 😐
Asher what in the name of the gods are you wearing
Uh, the future, obliviously. That or the 1980’s. Its hard to tell.
that looks like it could be a shirt from the Goodfellas wardrobe
i voted ‘i hope jakey dies’ mostly because i feel like thats been dorothy AND joyce’s internal monologues the entire time the other has had a partner
Ok it’s making more sense now that someone explained the meme.
Clearly we need an enemies to lovers YA novel about Amazi-Girl and Asher.
He can be FOX DUDE, classy cat burglar.
He better get a skin tight suit.
That is not where I thought that first sentence was going.
Where did you see it going?
🙂
I was wondering how Sal knew a doctor, this development adds things up. Will Asher tell Sal he already figured out who Amazi-Girl is or does he know that will that just agitate her?
I’ve thought, since it happened, that Asher had Blaine killed to cover his own ass. Blaine got him involved in his dipshit scheme, and might have ratted on him to the feds to get a deal. And/or ratted on him to his grandfather to get protection or something. Or threatened Asher with blackmail again for, I dunno, Blaine didn’t strike me as a great planner.
Asher told Sal he stole from his grandfather, and Blaine was a launderer so it could make sense he noticed. But Blaine doesn’t actually say that, just that he can make Asher’s grandfather more disappointed in him.
Asher killing someone to cover up stealing four years of tuition etc worth of money, that’s not great. But what if its not the woke mob after all, and Blaine was also blackmailing him over his sexuality. Killing Blaine to keep himself safe over that is a lot more reasonable. If that’s the case, it’s more likely Asher is trying to make amends, and was trying to id her to warn her.
My take is that Asher agreed to pull a fire alarm and didn’t know what it got himself in. He had Blaine killed because Blaine got him involved in a mass kidnapping and felony murder.
He protected himself but was also not happy about being used.
Warn her of what?
Like if the mobbed up cops are looking for her, tying up loose ends on who might know who was on the take. Mike shouted he knew, where other people were around.
It felt like Blaine was harassing Asher from the start, so it probably was a relief to get rid of him. I suppose it’s also possible Blaine was a co-conspirator in stealing gramps’ money, or Asher decided a dead Blaine would make a convenient scapegoat for anything amiss. I think Mike had insinuated that Blaine was stealing from the mob?
Still, Asher didn’t call in the hit until after Blaine had given him a good excuse. Did Asher need to wait for one, or did he feel responsible after people got hurt? (Or, did he knowingly let Blaine’s plans go ahead, for the disposal excuse?) Is he just a mostly ok dude who’s doing what he can to right some wrongs? Maybe he cares AND it helps him?
fuck.
I guess it makes sense that Asher knows a kitchen doctor.
Sal knows what surgery glue tastes like now.
Dam, I got jumpscared by zombified Asher. Those eyes are unsettling. Doesn’t help that I have a crack on my phone, so it looked like he had a giant gash across his face.
Maybe the next question should be, “Who did ASHER just indebt himself to?” And actually we don’t know exactly what happened to AG. Was she shot? Beaten? Stabbed? Did she fall off the Gazabo onto a tent stake? How did she escape? Stay tuned tomorrow, same Amaza-time, same Amaza-channel…
I can see Asher indebting himself to someone for Sal as a way to try to make amends for his role in her getting caught as a teenager. I don’t think he’s going to ask anything of Sal in return.
He probably paid in cash, but hopefully he knows which kitchen docs can be trusted not to share gossip with his family.
That’s it I’m starting some Amazi-Girl/Sal slashfic and no one can stop me
What about a jaguar could that stop you?
Jaguars have terrible wiring, tons of electrical issues, and leak oil like a mother fucker. All I have to do is find a steep enough hill and I’ll be good. That AJ engine will die before I’m in any real danger.
Also I’m too gay and powerful.
What about an angry mom with a slipper?
I invite her over for a luncheon. I am making lasagna. The price of entry is to be polite and try out some boardgames.
And any well-maintained classic Jaguar would be 100% into Amazi-girl/Sal fic, those XJ12s had some good taste.
Gonna be straight up, I’m honestly kinda shocked by the amount of people who didn’t know about the “I hope Jakey dies” meme, I really overestimated how popular that phrase was in the wider lexicon lmfao
Some of us were unfamiliar with the meme, but understood its use just fine from context.
I hadn’t heard of the meme until recently, but I’ve never used tumblr, which I guess is where it came from. I think it’s kinda weird to assume everyone is aware of a meme or a joke.
Really wanna clarify that I don’t think any lesser of anyone who didn’t know or care for it! It’s just that this particular meme has been such common shorthand in my everyday life that I kinda forgot that my experiences aren’t nearly as universal as I tend to assume they are, even when it comes to small stuff like this y’know?
*squeeeeeee* More Sal and Asher interaction! Presumably! I’m hoping!
Glad Amber is okay but I’m a little nervous AG’s not here right now.
It’s interesting that Asher probably the most morally complex character in this show, and yet we don’t see hardliners going on tirades about how good/evil he is. This is a serious oversight that needs to change. I’ll start.
Asher is 100% atoned and has made up for his past. He is, in many ways, a saint.
Not to start arguments back up, but that’s because whatever tf is going on with Asher is mysterious and interesting, and cheating plotlines are very boring because there’s literally only a few ways they can be resolved with regard to their main subject matter. Once a character cheats, either one party is gonna get dumped or the other, or very rarely all parties get dumped (or even rarer a polycule happens which I still think is a problematic resolution because polycules need more and better rep.)
Asher and his mob ties has like, a solid dozen very different outcomes with very different effects on the story and himself. Like, there is a universe where these decisions end with Asher dead, there are routes that Sal or AG die. Incredibly unlikely ones, but perfectly plausible ones.
Bro isn’t fighting for a relationship, or validation, or escaping expectations that only he held himself to. Bro is fighting for the very being of his soul, how many horrifyingly immoral things he is willing to tolerate, how many concessions he has to make in his morals, if he’s willing to forgo every opportunity afforded him by powerful connections or not. And he’s stolen from his own grandfather, he’s stolen from the mob. He’s called in hits. He’s participated, possibly unwillingly, in a kidnapping. He is basically the flawed protagonist of a completely different story altogether and that’s why he’s super interesting when he pops up.
[This is also why I love AG + Amber. I would read standalone books about them and also about Asher.]
(Also gonna add here that the first part about cheating plotlines being boring/not great isn’t just a me being a Relationship Paladin thing. I’ve seen more than a couple writers and producers sit down and talk about the issues with cheating plots and how they came to regret writing them because it often causes the audience to turn on the characters and the dramatic payoff wasn’t enough to undo the damage caused to the audience’s goodwill for the characters. One sitcom writer talking about it stood out a lot to me. I wanna say it was maybe Friends but I don’t think I ever heard about a real cheating subplot there.)
The “on a break” plot is probably close enough for all the same things to apply regardless of whether one personally considers it to have been cheating, so it could be Friends.
To piggyback my own conclusion about it:
Many people have been cheated on or know someone who’s been cheated on, which may drive strong feelings about cheating. Additionally, it’s hard to think of a situation where cheating by itself enabled a good result.
Very few people, comparatively, know someone mobbed up or who’s been murdered etc. And Asher himself has helped demonstrate that sometimes a murder can be perceived as a good/moral act (given we are now rid of Blaine).
idk, literally every time he shows up for literally any reason, even just to say hi there are like 5 people who feel incesced to frame 0 type “i don’t trust him” so i’d say theres plenty to go around on that front
When considering Asher’s moral character, I would like to submit to the council that Asher has an inkling on who AG might be, and is completely aware of how devastated his boyfriend would be if something bad were to happen to her. He might not have needed much convincing. Though he absolutely will milk it for everything it is worth.
aw, it’s a totally not awkward reunion!
Considering the last we saw of those two interacting, they were drunkenly arguing re Asher’s responsibility for Sal ending up in a school in Tennessee, it’s not bad at all
I first read Asher’s eyes as horror-film glowing 😱
Not sure if that is the read, or not.
One strip with mentions of Asher, favor owed, lack of paper trail for cops, and surgical glue! Very efficient.
“Surgical glue and antibiotics” sounds more and more to me like “knife fight with Incelerator” rather than “shot by a cop”, too.
Of course, I have to admit that part of my belief there is driven by the idea that would be the far more interesting storyline.
Any wound on the gut sounds like the sort of thing you don’t solve without intestinal stitches, which amateurs cannot be trusted to do.
I’m kind of wondering what kind of stomach wound would let the patient be capable of grabbing her things and getting up to walk away, as Sal just instructed Amber to do, immediately after surgery.
(Abdominal wound. Correction.)
The mostly-superficial kind, I suspect.
(not to harp, but the kind you’d get in a knife fight with an amateur-hour supervillain)
I was so confused at first, could Sal just summon AG like that? Then I saw the blush marks and Amber tag and realized she’s just doing the voice.
So Asher connection is confirmed. I wonder if this will be the return of Frosty. Every now and then I think about him, and way back when I thought that he was going to be the cause of Joyce struggling with infidelity. Obviously that didn’t happen, so what if it was just a “hey he was here that one time” and/or showing that he’s actually a good dude seeing that the girls needed some help to get home safely.
Who is Frosty? When did Joyce struggle with infidelity? When Joyce and Dorothy were drunk wasn’t it Amazigirl that escorted them home safely. I don’t know; it’s been a while since I read that last one and my mind could be making stuff up.
Frosty was the guy in the bar who was either hitting on Joyce/Dorothy or genuinly offering a no-strings lift and Joyce threatened to glass him (he had frosted tips in his hair hence the nickname).
There’s no “either”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/03-trystin-in-the-wind/frosty/
Joyce’s threat -> “Whoa, whoa, just trying to be nice!”
Dorothy saying they have boyfriends -> “Oh, okay, bye.”
You’re quite right, I didn’t check back on the strip and misremembered the vibe.
🙂
Ah thank you for the link. I could have sworn Joyce originally told Frosty to “bounce your eyes”, and then when she was on the toilet the next day she started to say the same thing to Joe but then changed her phrasing mid-sentence. So that was why I thought back then that maybe Frosty would return, and Joyce would have subconsciously been thinking about him for. While.
“Sal, you command a wealth of knowledge pertaining to terrible and horrific things.”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/allergies/
re: Panel 1. Sal has an amazingly nuanced and sympathetic understanding of Amber/Amazi-Girl’s psyche, especially considering they’re responsible for Sal’s loss of dexterity. She’s the Fonzie of DoA!
It’s been a while since these two got involved in shady shit again, i really like their dynamic
Come to think of it, Kitchen Doctor COULD be Korean
I would love to see what happened between Sal meeting with Amber and Amazi Girl wakes up in Kitchen Doctor’s place of shady business.
Sal: Asher! Ah need help, quick!
Asher: You need my help? What makes you think (sees Amazi Girl, masked again, in bad shape) – oh shit! What happened?
Sal: Never mind that! You know someone who can help?
Asher: Yeah. I’ll get ahold of him. Get in the car, be right with you
Convo between Asher and Kitchen Doc, translated from Korean:
Doc, it’s Asher. Hate to bug you but we got a bloody problem.
Asher this had better not be one of your gangster friends. Your grandfather doesn’t pay me nearly enough for that shit.
It’s Amazi Girl.
Jeezus! That superhero girl from the university? You’re going to need a lot of money for that.
No problem, Doc. On my way.
Asher is, in fact, the paladin poster child of what to do when you kiss someone while being in a relationship with another.
Yup. He had class.
i do not remember him going to billie and telling her it was over, he just stopped talking to her
Asher immediately telling Billie about what happened
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/01-everybodys-looking-for-nothing/serious-2/
Billie pretty directly telling Asher that he isn’t actually her boyfriend.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/stockmarket/
thank y9u for finding those, i had forgetten about both events.
Y’know, as far as Paladin posterchilds go, I’ll definitely take the guy who removed Blaine from the picture over some others. Lawful Evil is still Lawful.
“Lawful Evil is still Lawful” is a WILD take.
Okay so Asher is absolutely going to put two and two together right? There’s no way he doesn’t.
I’m pretty sure he already knows about Amazi-girl.
so amazigirl is probably going to assume asher’s involved with the mob, right? even if everyone gets the fuck out right now and she doesn’t technically know she operates on superhero logic
which means she’ll figure he could have been involved with the kidnapping but not necessarily that he was
Off: Joyce and Dorothy finally smooching, I fixed my car and our fascist genocide-pedo-former-brazilian-president Jair Bolsonaro was arrested for trying a coup after last election. Yes, I’m happy.
you lucky o3o
Oh dang, Bolsonaro is actually facing consequences? Wish we could get that to happen to our fascist genocide-pedo-current-united-states president.
I like how this comic is 90% comedy-of-errors and then every once in a while suddenly it’s someone with cartoon-level disassociative identity disorder visiting a mob doctor.
I smile at this comment 😃
At least Asher looks genuinely concerned.