Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Mac Hall
Matt Boyd
The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
2 Slices
RJ Morel
After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
Slightly Damned
Chu
Rhea Snaketail returns from the dead, befriending a Demon who falls in love with an Angel. The afterlife ain't what it used to be!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
The Otherknown
Lorian Merriman
Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
Countdown to Countdown
Velinxi
Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
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In this universe he doesn’t have super powers to back him up. Dorothy could hurt him if she wasn’t so concerned about assault and battery affecting her transfer to Harvard.
I’m expecting mike to go on a bender at some point, and run around in a whirlwind of kindness, solving peoples problems and improving their self esteem. When he wakes up, he will be disgusted with himself.
Ruth’s been doing so well lately I think she deserves to treat herself. Besides, he’s not one of HER residents. His continued survival is not her responsibility
I was confused there for a moment because Pudding Head doesn’t deserve to share the first name of my favorite character of all time, but it would probably be best to dump the body in Forest quad. That way it’s outside of her jurisdiction
So first panel Dorothy tells Mike to get out and in such a way that theres no cause for confusion and Mike proceeds to ignore her request, how safe is Mike making Dorothy feel?
Cause there seem to be more than a few posters on here who like Mike for his “straight talking” so I’m curious to see if they still feel the same over his blatant boundary violations
Actually, while she started with ‘just get out’ she immediately initiated dialogue afterwards. Kinda like how some people end up saying goodbye for 20 minutes by continuing to initiate various threads of conversation between repeated utterances like ‘we should really be going’. For there to have been no cause for confusion she would have ended with ‘just get out’.
She hasn’t learned from Joyce how to deal with Mike. Don’t engage. Don’t talk to him. The whole conversation starting yesterday should have been just “No. Get out.”
It definitely doesn’t excuse his flagrant ignoring of how unwelcome he is, but “I know why you’re really here” is the sort of statement that beggars the reply it got.
Well Mike is an ass, but he’s not the one acting aggressive here, Dorothy advances on him, accuses him of ulterior motives, etc.; I don’t think Dorothy is feeling threatened. All that said yeah Mike should get the hell out
Judging by the body language, Dorothy isn’t really coming across as scared. Incredibly pissed off, yes. Overtly hostile with good reason, yes. Concerned for her safety? Not so much.
No shit. That doesn’t mean that the explicitly asked question of “how safe is Mike making Dorothy feel?” doesn’t work particularly well as a rhetorical question.
Anger is a fairly common reaction to a threat. So I wouldn’t consider going from “she seems really angry” to “she isn’t concerned for her safety” to be a particularly compelling line of reasoning
So Mike seduced Ethan to make Danny jealous… now he will seduce Dorothy to make Walky jealous?? Although I don’t think Dorothy shares Ruth & Billie’ s philosophy on hate-sex.
Mike’s focus seems to be on breaking through the delusions people hold about themselves or others. Seducing Dorothy doesn’t tell her or Walky anything they don’t know.
You do realize everyone in this comic is fictional right? Viktoria can say whatever they want about the characters as long as it doesn’t imply something stupid about the real world. They aren’t saying Mike is a good person, they’re examining his motivations.
yes, because asking someone to shut up because they disagree with you over something as trivial as why a character in a web comic is an asshole is silly. If someone was to say Blaine being abusive was okay I would be mad because it implied that being abusive was okay, but if someone was to theorize that Blaine might have had an abusive father himself, I would say that’s okay because its examining motives not excusing actions. Now if Willis was to chime in, I would go with his argument because he writes the comic, but saying that someone should not have an argument because it disagrees with yours stifles discussion and creates an echochamber.
FC never told Viktoria to shut up. They asked Viktoria to stop with the ‘breaking through delusions’ stuff because people keep posting it as a reason Mike’s not REALLY a terrible terrible person.
While I accept this is a work of fiction and the creator is attempting to be realistic, I find his attempts at realism often… disturbing. Not because of the implementation of them, but because the implementation of these attempts at realism are chosen for shock value, or dramatic tension. David Willis may have good intentions, but his entire fictional world is attempting to deal with real issues, which, at some point, someone with competence would step in. Even if someone with competence doesn’t always step in.
His motivations are pretty clearly shit. I enjoy him as a character but this constant slew of people making excuses for patently abusive behavior is disturbing to me.
It sometimes feels like Mike could murder someone and show up wearinga mask made from their skin, and there would STILL be people in the comments trying to figure out what valuable life lesson he’s trying to impart
I’d totally understand people interpreting SOME of the things he’s done as being more complex than just being an asshole, or there being arguments over HOW shitty he’s being at a given moment, but this persistent idea that he’s trying to help and somehow has such intimate knowledge of other characters that he knows what’s best for them better them is MIND BOGGLING.
I don’t think he’s trying to help the other characters in the comic. He’s obviously not being nice to them or anything. But that’s not his purpose as a character. His purpose is to both say the things that many of us feel are true about these characters, in the most painful and brutal way possible, and also to show us that even when things seem okay, disaster is always on the horizon.
Again, even when people are admitting he’s an asshole, you keep trying to ascribe some greater insight to his actions, and some higher truth to the things he says, as if his cruelty were inadvertently serving some benevolent purpose.
He’s a smug teenage edge lord, and people would be wise to just stop speaking to him entirely. Shitheads like him aren’t hard to find in real life. I don’t get why people seem to want his actions to somehow have a net positive effect.
That’s not what I’m saying! He serves no benevolent purpose, that’s not his role. His role is to be cruel, by using people’s own feelings against them, and in so doing help us as readers comprehend those feelings.
That’s just not true. If a situation is sensitive or traumatic enough, you can be just as effective at hurting people even if you’re not accurate at all.
While this may be true, this does not help the case that there are too many apologists for Mike’s behaviour and Willis’s writin. Mike is clearly the “Edgy One” and is brought in when David Willis wants to say something disturbing. Which I find particularly interesting, because despite all his other characters having distinct personalities, they are, by and large, human. It is only Mike who remains outside this realm of humanity, which leads me to worry that Mike is increasingly the Voice of the Author.
All of the characters are voices of the author. Mike is just the one who says the darkest and most cruel things in the least apologetic manner possible. Consequently he cannot be a truly human or relatable character and still make sense. Which is probably why Willis chose Mike for this role, because everyone already knows he’s an asshole who likes hurting people, so we accept it.
As this is a work of fiction, it does make sense to distinguish between talking about the motivations of people acting in the story (my take on Mike: He enjoys stirring up people and trives on the strong emotions he triggers, there is no deeper meaning to his actions) and the acts and intentions of the author.
How anyone can think than one character only in a story is the voice of the author and what this character says should be taken as gospel truth expression of who the author is, is beyond me. That’s like saying Hitchcock’s walk-on parts in his films are a more relevant expression of who he was than his directing.
I’ve written short stories where the main characters do things I thoroughly disagree with and I’m always annoyed with the people who think the characters represent my pow.
Steven Universe seems to have the same issue; Rebecca Sugar seems to have gone out of her way to make him unsympathetic in some episodes (stop wasting napkins arrghhh) and show that he can be in the wrong, and still people often assume everything he does and thinks must be The Right Thing.
By the same token, though, I feel like Mike could build and maintain an exemplary orphanage and people would call him a monster for it. People in the audience here seem to think he’s either some sort of genius savior attempting to save the cast from themselves or the human manifestation of Satan, his breath laced with toxins that slowly kill all to whom he speaks.
It’s weird to see him like this to start. In Shortpacked at least he was an asshole, but he was more like a guided missile. If he was being an asshole to someone, it was because they needed SOMEONE to call them on their bullshit. This Mike? This Mike doesn’t do that. I really liked Shortpacked Mike. I really hate Dumbing of Age Mike. He just doesn’t fit. He generally hasn’t got a good reason to say any of the destructive stuff he says beyond hurting people. I honestly hope Mike loses a couple femurs before this is over. HE is the one who needs it.
That is kinda my point tho. He is being cruel, he gets off on seeing other people being in emotional distress. But you can deal SUPER EFFECTIVE emotional distress by sticking your finger in the seeping sore instead of just poking them somewhere random.
Yeah, that’s the point of his line “can’t hurt you with something you know isn’t true”. It’s easy to read that as “So what I hurt you with is true”, but all it really means is that you don’t know it isn’t.
He’s hitting the weak points, whether they’re hidden truths or just lies your brain weasels tell you.
The trick is that his preferred method is to go after people’s insecurities and doubts, instead of any usual spiels that he knows can be rejected out of hand by his targets.
Its not that he’s laying down Hard Truths, its that he’s needling the things people can’t 100% deny out of hand, or that he knows will get the reaction he wants because there’s too much emotion involved to see whatever part is the lie for what it is. “Something you know isn’t true” is the key point of text here, which leaves him a lot more room to work with than “Things that are true”.
And that’s one of the worst outcomes of this kind of random harassing behavior. To avoid having to deal with the one asshole, people have to withdraw, lock themselves away and miss people they’d be perfectly happy to see.
Don’t lock your door. Throw Mike out.
No actually when you want to do something that DEMANDS focus, like studying, lock your damn door. Keep it open the rest of the time but when you gotta focus on studying you can’t keep on getting interrupted by anyone, be they well meaning friends or assholes.
ESPECIALLY when you just broke up with you SO to have more time to study.
Except she’s not objecting because she wanted to study, she’s objected because Mike’s being an asshole. Non-assholes can be put off with “busy now, sorry.”
Especially in a dorm, where you’ve got a roommate and can’t necessarily lock everyone out.
If you really want to study without any interruptions – go to the library or some other study area.
Except they generally don’t, because it’s accepted that those are study areas. Anyone harassing you there would be violating the social norms and likely annoy other people as well.
is there *anywhere* on that campus that people can be reliably undisturbed? this lack of privacy is one of the many things I don’t miss about being a teenager
But that’s private, there aren’t a lot of other people around to object. He can rely on politeness and social norms to keep her from immediately throwing him out.
Harassing someone in a library is more likely to draw negative attention from others around you.
Also, dorm life social norms aren’t quite the same as real world social norms.
She won’t get a degree at all if she burns out to a crisp because she worked too hard and didn’t get enough recreation. And Walky is recreation personified. She needs him.
But that’s not her problem with Walky. Nor is it like Walky was constantly dragging her off to do fun things. I’d say he was incredibly respectful of her need to study (especially for a teenage boy). Even with his own study problems, once he’d admitted them and then realized how much trouble she was having, he pushed back against her wanting to help him.
She’s not likely to find another relationship that gives her that much room. Unless she finds something completely non-serious, which again, Walky was willing to be, but she wasn’t.
This is Dorothy’s basic character flaw, I think. What she’s going to need to learn to address. And it’s visible as far back as right before she and Walky got together the first time. She’s arguing with herself that it’s self-sabotage, just a distraction she doesn’t need, then she goes and kisses him.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the resolution here isn’t going to be “I was right. Relationships are just self-sabotage. I just need the self-discipline to avoid them”. Nor of course: “Love comes first. I will abandon my goals and ambitions to find a man.”
She’ll need to find some kind of a balance.
The problem isn’t that she needs to be with Walky. The problem is that she is putting work over everything that she loves. There’s something called Karoshi, and it’s killing Japanese men. Have anyone seen Aggretsuko? Work overload and passive behavior will be her doom until she becomes assertive and takes what she wants instead of seeking romaticized goals.
Work serves Love, not the other way around. We work because we love something.
There’s no good reason she should be expected to put love first even if she has both. Morality? Certainly. Compassion? Goes without saying. Romantic love? Nah.
People seem to be pretty firmly on one side or the other in the Mike debate. He’s either an asshole out to hurt people, or he’s a smart straight talker who forces people to confront their feelings. The truth is a little bit of both. Yes he’s an asshole, and no his methods don’t help the people he’s talking to. But they’re not for their benefit. They’re for the benefit of us, the readers. There are times when we want to scream at characters when we know they’re making bad decisions. But we can’t, so Mike does it for us. Other times we think everything is fine, but really there’s tension beneath the surface, and disaster around the corner. Mike is the one who shows us that chaos is only one really bad day away. We should stop applying human motivations and reasoning to him because he doesn’t have them. He’s not the same kind of character as the others, he’s a device for the benefit of the reader.
Mike then is the Voice of the Author, and I could not a more destructive voice. Your comment would have Mike take on the mantle of being the “voice of reason” as well. And, if Mike being a manipulative asshole is the “voice of reason”, by your own assessment, then I think I’ve reached my breaking point with this nonsense.
Your rabbid defense of David Willis is… concerning. He is fallible. I am often critical of his work. I find his premise increasingly flimsy. If you wish to be somewhat realistic, then picking and choosing your moments of realism is absurd. Perhaps, I’ve outgrown, or at least tired of this comic. But, I do recall a time when David Willis himself commented on one of the comments I wrote here.
I expressed a strong distaste for his treatment of Amber’s dissociation, suggesting, that in any meaningful context, that the scenario would have been dealt with someone in a profession capacity, instead of for dramatic fodder. I spoke from a very personal position and only after a close friend of mine showed me this comic. Dozens of people swarmed to his defense with various insults. But, Mr. Willis’ person comment is something I will always remember as dismissive and ignorant.
I don’t make a habit of reading, or commenting, but every so often I do. And every so often I find that Mr. Willis clearly has not changed. So, I guess I’m just a damn fool.
Of course he’s fallible, there are plenty of things I don’t like about this comic. And maybe it does sometimes go past the limits of how these real and serious issues should be treated. But if it was too cautious and too realistic then it would just be boring.
Not to drag up past arguments – though I don’t particularly remember this one, but why would Amber’s disassociation have been dealt with by a professional? I mean it would be great – anyone number of commentors have suggested therapy, but when and how would it have happened? Blaine kept her out of therapy after the robbery/stabbing. She’s not seeking it out herself and no one knows is in a position to force her, even if they wanted to.
I’m not going to claim it’s all completely realistic – she’s a superhero after all. There are certainly ways this comic shifts between at least psychological realism and a more melodramatic approach (or even action movie style sequences) that don’t work for some people. Even occasionally for me – I couldn’t take the Robin sequence seriously, even as some people were caught up in it.
I work on a university campus and reckon a lot happens around me that I’ll never know about. Realistically a lot of people with mental health problems (some quite severe) don’t get treatment for one reason or another. But in the larger context I realized that I watch shows where there is faster-than-light travel, transporters, a Kryptonian hero, sentient robots, Bruce Willis, Sentient Gems, and magical ponies. Not everything has to be perfectly realistic. Putting stories and themes in an unfamiliar or even improbable context lets ideas flow where they might not if everything is like my daily life.
So if I read you correctly, you think that Willis is a bad story teller because he needs to introduce Mike as a kind of Deus ex machina to speed things up?
I don’t agree with you.
There are actually people like Mike in the real world, much like there are Maries in the real world. I can see why people who have run into them would want to express their loathing of fictional examples.
I never said that Willis is a bad story teller, where did you get that from? I actually quite like his use of Mike. Most authors would have that kind of character/device be a good guy, but Willis has cleverly disguised his as an asshole.
I think there’s a difference between “autobiographical” and “author’s mouthpiece”.
Joyce is here to show us a fictionalized version of the journey the author went through, not to make authorial pronouncements. Most of hers would be completely against what Willis now thinks anyway.
Mind you, I don’t think Mike is particularly the author’s mouthpiece either.
So what’s he telling us here that we don’t already know? Yesterday or today?
Or for a past example, how about the time he took pictures of Walky & Dorothy in bed and talked about future use against her political ambitions? We already knew Dorothy was worried about things like that – she’d talked to Joyce about it.
What even is Mike? some sort spector that feeds of others eternal conflict until they’re force to resolve them? Because it feels like that since he just appeared out of the either to haunt her.
Meteors, nuclear bombs, and FOX News also come from the sky. Some people might argue that those are Heavenly, but society tends to give those people weird looks and a wide berth.
I can’t wait to see what happens to Mike. This comic has a long-running streak of assholes getting punched cathartically and Mike is overdue a jaw-smashing.
(I do not advocate the punching of assholes in real life except in self-defense, I just like to see it in fiction. As I have stated before, Mama needs her catharsis.)
The thing is that Mike takes being assaulted as validation of what he says about people – That we’re all basically violent, selfish assholes and it only takes a little push to rip off our masks.
And yes, I’m aware that she tried a beatdown and it ended with Mike enjoying it (guess that trait carried over from the Walkyverse; he wants a sparring partner more than anything). I just would love to see someone manage to break Mike, unbreakable as he seems.
(Also if you think that her using a Batman quote made me picture Mike as a frowning Joker, and then turned into them making out … you know me well.)
The trouble with Mike that makes people hate him is he is the most unrealistic thing in this comic. Whereas even Amazigirl has a complicated story justifying her silly existence, Mike is just an elemental (whether he is “good” or “bad” doesn’t even matter here).
He’s overdue for some humanity, and it has to be more real than what we saw in “Shortpacked” if Willis wants us to buy it. Mike is going to have to drop that frown and shed a tear if Willis wants him to fit in this story. Otherwise, he’s going to remain the odd “comic relief guy” out, and people are going to keep hating him.
The only thing unrealistic about Mike is that he’s on average more insightful than the usual IRL asshole who collects information about people to use as ammunition for their turd-on-the-picnic-table button-pushing fun. Most people like Mike settle for learning embarrassing nicknames or that one mistake ou made about whom most rational people don’t care but damn if it doesn’t feel like a world-ending fuckup once your local Mike gets hold of it.
By “realistic”, I mean dimensional. I’m not saying it’s unrealistic that he’s this big an asshole, I’m saying it’s unrealistic that he is never in any mode other than “asshole”. For Pete’s sake, he successfully shut down an internet nerd debate. Mike is and always has been in the same turf as any other cartoon character with a shtick.
Though without the focus on the alt-right’s issues. He’s not particularly fighting SJWs, political correctness, or attacking people over race or gender issues. Just targets of opportunity, IMO.
He’s more a less political internet troll. He’s definitely doing it all for the lulz.
Today’s strip? Yes. Last few months? Ohhhhoho no, she is like two fingers away from a meltdown, and I gather it just got waaay worse by breaking up with Walky.
Mike is Loki. Not the Marvel Loki who’s a greedy bastich with designs on the throne, but the orignal one, form myth, who constantly messed with everyone one and was nearly universally hated, but who also t
Loki in Norse myth actually has social skills. There are people who like him.
Loki in Norse myth is a charismatic trickster. Mike is a bully who enjoys tormenting people.
Mind you, I wouldn’t mind somebody sewing Mike’s mouth shut.
Loki in mythology *starts* that way, but by the end you have all the other gods hating him so much they tie him to a rock with venom being dripped into his eyes.
Mostly because he such an asshole who throws people’s worst moments back at them to get a petty thrill.
All that’s missing is honey-potting a horse to welch on a debt.
Mike is a collective hallucination by the entire floor-the manifestation of the hoops their brains have to constantly jump through to justify their terrible decision making.
On the even of Instrumentality, we will all see Mike.
The bar has been lowered a lot since Donald Trump. Dorothy could be president if she relaxed more and learned how to talk her opinion more publicly instead of being a silent observer like Aaron Burr.
Actually Donald Trump is pretty much the perfect example of why social networking skills is the most important skill you can have under your belt in politics.
Networking is a cool skill, but it will be Trump, Roz and Robin’s doom: if you depend on popular opinion instead of actual solutions people will stop voting for you once you show your true colors. Be a superficial liberal like Roz, or a poster girl conservative like Robin, people stop trusting you once they get tired of your speak too much & do nothing.
Dorothy can’t be president after all the shit that has happened in recent years, but she can do something better, like being a social entrepreneur, a diplomat, a judge, a lawmaker, or the owner of an anime themed restaurant.
Of course love is more important than work, Dorothy! And I am not talking about a random college romance. I am talking about love to your neighbor, love to your family, love to your friends, love to your hobbies, love to life, love to anime. Nobody loves work. The only reason people work is because it is a necessary step to get their goals, be them altruistic or selfish. Even making webcomics is a tedious work, and the reason it’s done is because of the love of the author towards the end result that looks beautiful.
I may be in the minority but I truelly love mike. I went through a period in my life where I was actually that cartoonishly dickish. My mental health and a med I probably should have never been on threw me into some bad paranoia which had me in a mindset that nobody could be trusted so it was better to make everyone hate me then to risk friends.
I really love natural born assholes. Especially truthful ones. I’ve never been able to muster that kind of spite and viciousness when in a stable mental place
Me if I ever see Tony Hawk: Hey you’re Tony Hawk the famous skateboarder. That’s right I recognise you. Won’t be able to get any content out of this will you, you piece of shit
How to read all 28 issues of my Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane run on Marvel Unlimited:
1: The first four issues were published as the miniseries "Mary Jane."
www.marvel.com/comics/serie...
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 1d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 12d
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so Mike’s goal in life is to die painfully, I see
*To die gloriously (painfully)
I’m just remembering bravehart now lol
no regrets!
ACT WITH INTEGRITY!
Mike’s a Klingon at heart.
Romulan, maybe? His attacks are all psychological instead of physical…
In this universe he doesn’t have super powers to back him up. Dorothy could hurt him if she wasn’t so concerned about assault and battery affecting her transfer to Harvard.
Yale. She’s a Yale girl.
Good thing she focused on getting into an Ivy League school named after a slave trader. Image is important when you are running for president…
Apt use of both the law and the known social limits of the people around is essentially a super power.
It is a good day to die….
When you know the reasons why…
At least the man has no delusions as to the outcome of his machinations.
Resolve like that in a man so young is rare.
Mike:”WITNESS ME!”
Amber: “MEDIOCRE!”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/interrogation/
RIP Mike’s femurs.
That’s the idea.
Also SNAP Mike’s femurs and CRUNCH Mike’s femurs.
Those are perfect nicknames for them, beats the old “lefty” and “righty”
No no no no – those Femurs need to be whole and hearty so that one can perform a Neil Peart Drum Solo upon the rest of his skeletal structure.
Fourth panel: that might be the nicest thing Mike has ever said.
Nicest thing said while sober, that is.
Still don’t know if he’s like that in this universe.
He knows we want to find out, so he doesn’t drink.
i choose to believe that in this universe it’s a glorious surprise just waiting for him todiscover.
I’m expecting mike to go on a bender at some point, and run around in a whirlwind of kindness, solving peoples problems and improving their self esteem. When he wakes up, he will be disgusted with himself.
Hmm. I think he’d probably just shrug and see if there was some way he could use this as a new and inventive form of cruelty.
They say the Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
And now I know, I know that it’s true…
Yeah, that cartilage is a lot tougher than people realize. Femurs are not easily ripped out.
Ruth’s been doing so well lately I think she deserves to treat herself. Besides, he’s not one of HER residents. His continued survival is not her responsibility
That should be her alibi when Chloe asks.
I was confused there for a moment because Pudding Head doesn’t deserve to share the first name of my favorite character of all time, but it would probably be best to dump the body in Forest quad. That way it’s outside of her jurisdiction
What if Mike is just genuinely suicidal and trying as hard as he can to make someone kill him?
If he was he would love pushing someone to murder that he might even change his mind.
…when you put it that way, it kind of seems like she ought to find the most ineffectual man she can.
…jackpot!
**gives Mike the Klingon salute**
Qapla!
Remember to hold open his eyes and warn the great battle in the sky that he is coming!
And then Ruth stuck his femurs onto a plaque and put it on her wall. It makes for a great conversation piece.
And his head in between like a good old Jolly Roger
The legendary skull and mikebones
I wasn’t really expecting this to keep going after the last strip, so this ought to be interesting.
Sorta excited for a Mike/Ruth interaction. I wonder what will unfold.
Mike after Ruth folds him and shoves him through the mail slot.
So first panel Dorothy tells Mike to get out and in such a way that theres no cause for confusion and Mike proceeds to ignore her request, how safe is Mike making Dorothy feel?
is that even a necessary question? Mike isn’t a good person.
Cause there seem to be more than a few posters on here who like Mike for his “straight talking” so I’m curious to see if they still feel the same over his blatant boundary violations
It’s especially a problem that Mike is doing this to someone who was just stalked and nearly stabbed.
Mike is a terrible person, and that makes for entertaining character interactions in this fictional comic strip.
Mike has no boundaries. He’sa force of nature.
Actually, while she started with ‘just get out’ she immediately initiated dialogue afterwards. Kinda like how some people end up saying goodbye for 20 minutes by continuing to initiate various threads of conversation between repeated utterances like ‘we should really be going’. For there to have been no cause for confusion she would have ended with ‘just get out’.
She hasn’t learned from Joyce how to deal with Mike. Don’t engage. Don’t talk to him. The whole conversation starting yesterday should have been just “No. Get out.”
It definitely doesn’t excuse his flagrant ignoring of how unwelcome he is, but “I know why you’re really here” is the sort of statement that beggars the reply it got.
Well Mike is an ass, but he’s not the one acting aggressive here, Dorothy advances on him, accuses him of ulterior motives, etc.; I don’t think Dorothy is feeling threatened. All that said yeah Mike should get the hell out
Mike is in Dorothy’s room to get her goat and that’s not aggression?
Nah, he’s there to get *Walky’s* goat. Getting Dorothy’s goat is just a bonus prize.
Well if he left immediately and ended the conversation immediately it would be a pretty boring comic strip.
Judging by the body language, Dorothy isn’t really coming across as scared. Incredibly pissed off, yes. Overtly hostile with good reason, yes. Concerned for her safety? Not so much.
Dorothy shouldn’t have to be afraid for her safety for people to listen when she tells them in no uncertain terms to get out.
^This right here^
No shit. That doesn’t mean that the explicitly asked question of “how safe is Mike making Dorothy feel?” doesn’t work particularly well as a rhetorical question.
Oh, I see! Yes, that’s fair. Sorry about that.
Anger is a fairly common reaction to a threat. So I wouldn’t consider going from “she seems really angry” to “she isn’t concerned for her safety” to be a particularly compelling line of reasoning
Go ahead Mike. Put on your routine for Ruth, and break a leg.
Just a leg?
The other will follow as appendages are forcefully inserted into nether regions.
Coming to Slipshine; Mike and Dorothy Pound Each Other in the Most Epic of Hatefu- okay I’ll see myself out now.
So Mike seduced Ethan to make Danny jealous… now he will seduce Dorothy to make Walky jealous?? Although I don’t think Dorothy shares Ruth & Billie’ s philosophy on hate-sex.
Mike’s focus seems to be on breaking through the delusions people hold about themselves or others. Seducing Dorothy doesn’t tell her or Walky anything they don’t know.
Which delusions was he “breaking through” by talking shit about someone whose girlfriend was just put on suicide watch exactly?
Stop this. Please. He’s just an asshole who enjoys needling people
You do realize everyone in this comic is fictional right? Viktoria can say whatever they want about the characters as long as it doesn’t imply something stupid about the real world. They aren’t saying Mike is a good person, they’re examining his motivations.
Ooh, “it’s just fiction”! One more square and I’ll have BINGO.
yes, because asking someone to shut up because they disagree with you over something as trivial as why a character in a web comic is an asshole is silly. If someone was to say Blaine being abusive was okay I would be mad because it implied that being abusive was okay, but if someone was to theorize that Blaine might have had an abusive father himself, I would say that’s okay because its examining motives not excusing actions. Now if Willis was to chime in, I would go with his argument because he writes the comic, but saying that someone should not have an argument because it disagrees with yours stifles discussion and creates an echochamber.
FC never told Viktoria to shut up. They asked Viktoria to stop with the ‘breaking through delusions’ stuff because people keep posting it as a reason Mike’s not REALLY a terrible terrible person.
Yeah that’s fair, perhaps I took “stop this. please” to mean something different than intended.
While I accept this is a work of fiction and the creator is attempting to be realistic, I find his attempts at realism often… disturbing. Not because of the implementation of them, but because the implementation of these attempts at realism are chosen for shock value, or dramatic tension. David Willis may have good intentions, but his entire fictional world is attempting to deal with real issues, which, at some point, someone with competence would step in. Even if someone with competence doesn’t always step in.
His motivations are pretty clearly shit. I enjoy him as a character but this constant slew of people making excuses for patently abusive behavior is disturbing to me.
It sometimes feels like Mike could murder someone and show up wearinga mask made from their skin, and there would STILL be people in the comments trying to figure out what valuable life lesson he’s trying to impart
I’d totally understand people interpreting SOME of the things he’s done as being more complex than just being an asshole, or there being arguments over HOW shitty he’s being at a given moment, but this persistent idea that he’s trying to help and somehow has such intimate knowledge of other characters that he knows what’s best for them better them is MIND BOGGLING.
I don’t think he’s trying to help the other characters in the comic. He’s obviously not being nice to them or anything. But that’s not his purpose as a character. His purpose is to both say the things that many of us feel are true about these characters, in the most painful and brutal way possible, and also to show us that even when things seem okay, disaster is always on the horizon.
Again, even when people are admitting he’s an asshole, you keep trying to ascribe some greater insight to his actions, and some higher truth to the things he says, as if his cruelty were inadvertently serving some benevolent purpose.
He’s a smug teenage edge lord, and people would be wise to just stop speaking to him entirely. Shitheads like him aren’t hard to find in real life. I don’t get why people seem to want his actions to somehow have a net positive effect.
That’s not what I’m saying! He serves no benevolent purpose, that’s not his role. His role is to be cruel, by using people’s own feelings against them, and in so doing help us as readers comprehend those feelings.
I’d argue Mike’s not always or even often accurate in the feelings he’s using against the others though.
If they were not at least a little accurate, then they would not be nearly so effective.
That’s just not true. If a situation is sensitive or traumatic enough, you can be just as effective at hurting people even if you’re not accurate at all.
We’ll have to agree to disagree I guess.
While this may be true, this does not help the case that there are too many apologists for Mike’s behaviour and Willis’s writin. Mike is clearly the “Edgy One” and is brought in when David Willis wants to say something disturbing. Which I find particularly interesting, because despite all his other characters having distinct personalities, they are, by and large, human. It is only Mike who remains outside this realm of humanity, which leads me to worry that Mike is increasingly the Voice of the Author.
All of the characters are voices of the author. Mike is just the one who says the darkest and most cruel things in the least apologetic manner possible. Consequently he cannot be a truly human or relatable character and still make sense. Which is probably why Willis chose Mike for this role, because everyone already knows he’s an asshole who likes hurting people, so we accept it.
As this is a work of fiction, it does make sense to distinguish between talking about the motivations of people acting in the story (my take on Mike: He enjoys stirring up people and trives on the strong emotions he triggers, there is no deeper meaning to his actions) and the acts and intentions of the author.
How anyone can think than one character only in a story is the voice of the author and what this character says should be taken as gospel truth expression of who the author is, is beyond me. That’s like saying Hitchcock’s walk-on parts in his films are a more relevant expression of who he was than his directing.
I’ve written short stories where the main characters do things I thoroughly disagree with and I’m always annoyed with the people who think the characters represent my pow.
Steven Universe seems to have the same issue; Rebecca Sugar seems to have gone out of her way to make him unsympathetic in some episodes (stop wasting napkins arrghhh) and show that he can be in the wrong, and still people often assume everything he does and thinks must be The Right Thing.
By the same token, though, I feel like Mike could build and maintain an exemplary orphanage and people would call him a monster for it. People in the audience here seem to think he’s either some sort of genius savior attempting to save the cast from themselves or the human manifestation of Satan, his breath laced with toxins that slowly kill all to whom he speaks.
It’s weird to see him like this to start. In Shortpacked at least he was an asshole, but he was more like a guided missile. If he was being an asshole to someone, it was because they needed SOMEONE to call them on their bullshit. This Mike? This Mike doesn’t do that. I really liked Shortpacked Mike. I really hate Dumbing of Age Mike. He just doesn’t fit. He generally hasn’t got a good reason to say any of the destructive stuff he says beyond hurting people. I honestly hope Mike loses a couple femurs before this is over. HE is the one who needs it.
What hurts more tho,? Being needled about some random shit? Or being needled in JUST the right place that you can’t refute because it is true?
Being needled in a sore spot. A point of trauma, fear of insecurity. The fact that it fucking hurts does not make it some “deep truth” he’s exposing.
It’s not insightful. It’s not brave or blunt or confrontational. It’s just cruel
That is kinda my point tho. He is being cruel, he gets off on seeing other people being in emotional distress. But you can deal SUPER EFFECTIVE emotional distress by sticking your finger in the seeping sore instead of just poking them somewhere random.
and her point is that some teenager being unable to refute it doesn’t make it true.
Yeah, that’s the point of his line “can’t hurt you with something you know isn’t true”. It’s easy to read that as “So what I hurt you with is true”, but all it really means is that you don’t know it isn’t.
He’s hitting the weak points, whether they’re hidden truths or just lies your brain weasels tell you.
Also, don’t put words in my mouth, I never said he was “insightful, brave, blunt or confrontational”
No, his focus is on pissing people off and hurting them in any way he can.
The trick is that his preferred method is to go after people’s insecurities and doubts, instead of any usual spiels that he knows can be rejected out of hand by his targets.
Its not that he’s laying down Hard Truths, its that he’s needling the things people can’t 100% deny out of hand, or that he knows will get the reaction he wants because there’s too much emotion involved to see whatever part is the lie for what it is. “Something you know isn’t true” is the key point of text here, which leaves him a lot more room to work with than “Things that are true”.
Which actually makes him a bigger asshole, even.
YES, exactly!
Mike’s the worst.
I love him.
Daaaaamn, Mike has a quad!
Perhaps today IS a good day to die!
Next time you wanna study, lock your door, Dorothy.
And that’s one of the worst outcomes of this kind of random harassing behavior. To avoid having to deal with the one asshole, people have to withdraw, lock themselves away and miss people they’d be perfectly happy to see.
Don’t lock your door. Throw Mike out.
No actually when you want to do something that DEMANDS focus, like studying, lock your damn door. Keep it open the rest of the time but when you gotta focus on studying you can’t keep on getting interrupted by anyone, be they well meaning friends or assholes.
ESPECIALLY when you just broke up with you SO to have more time to study.
Except she’s not objecting because she wanted to study, she’s objected because Mike’s being an asshole. Non-assholes can be put off with “busy now, sorry.”
Especially in a dorm, where you’ve got a roommate and can’t necessarily lock everyone out.
If you really want to study without any interruptions – go to the library or some other study area.
That seems worse to me. The library and/or study hall are, you know, open. Anyone can come up to you and interrupt you.
Except they generally don’t, because it’s accepted that those are study areas. Anyone harassing you there would be violating the social norms and likely annoy other people as well.
As if that stops Mike. The first week, he was beating Joe in a restaurant.
See! Mike does have redeeming values.
*cough*privacy chairs*cough*
is there *anywhere* on that campus that people can be reliably undisturbed? this lack of privacy is one of the many things I don’t miss about being a teenager
It’s also generally accepted that you can’t just walk into people’s homes uninvited, like Mike is doing here.
But that’s private, there aren’t a lot of other people around to object. He can rely on politeness and social norms to keep her from immediately throwing him out.
Harassing someone in a library is more likely to draw negative attention from others around you.
Also, dorm life social norms aren’t quite the same as real world social norms.
You called it Dorothy! But seriously, you don’t choose between love and work, you need both! Love first though.
Love ain’t gonna land her that degree.
She won’t get a degree at all if she burns out to a crisp because she worked too hard and didn’t get enough recreation. And Walky is recreation personified. She needs him.
Ehh, “need” is a strong word. She’d benefit from a little more fun, sure, but he ain’t the only source on campus.
Just the most obvious one, the one she’s in love with…
If what she needs is a little fun, then being in love with fun personified is not the answer. There’s such a thing as too much of a good thing.
She’s doesn’t need a little fun, she needs a lot of it. She’s work personified, so she needs fun personified to balance it out.
But that’s not her problem with Walky. Nor is it like Walky was constantly dragging her off to do fun things. I’d say he was incredibly respectful of her need to study (especially for a teenage boy). Even with his own study problems, once he’d admitted them and then realized how much trouble she was having, he pushed back against her wanting to help him.
She’s not likely to find another relationship that gives her that much room. Unless she finds something completely non-serious, which again, Walky was willing to be, but she wasn’t.
This is Dorothy’s basic character flaw, I think. What she’s going to need to learn to address. And it’s visible as far back as right before she and Walky got together the first time. She’s arguing with herself that it’s self-sabotage, just a distraction she doesn’t need, then she goes and kisses him.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the resolution here isn’t going to be “I was right. Relationships are just self-sabotage. I just need the self-discipline to avoid them”. Nor of course: “Love comes first. I will abandon my goals and ambitions to find a man.”
She’ll need to find some kind of a balance.
The problem isn’t that she needs to be with Walky. The problem is that she is putting work over everything that she loves. There’s something called Karoshi, and it’s killing Japanese men. Have anyone seen Aggretsuko? Work overload and passive behavior will be her doom until she becomes assertive and takes what she wants instead of seeking romaticized goals.
Work serves Love, not the other way around. We work because we love something.
Friends are just as good, and Joyce at least is more than willing to fill that need.
Just say what you actually mean, “I SHIP JOYCEXDOROTHY”, it is faster.
Joyce is firmly straight, and I’m pretty sure so is Dorothy. I don’t ship straight girls with each other.
So ship as in friendship?
She doesn’t need Walky she needs a healthy work/life balance that isn’t going to lead to a sleep deprivation induced breakdown.
There’s no good reason she should be expected to put love first even if she has both. Morality? Certainly. Compassion? Goes without saying. Romantic love? Nah.
First as in chronology.
Ahhh, I see! My mistake.
I thought Ruth didn’t do the threatening to remove peoples’ femurs thing anymore, though I bet she’d make an exception for Mike.
Yeah I think she’ll lose her self control from an encounter with Mike.
… good enough.
I wish I could post the gif of Jon Steward eating popcorn here, pretty much how I am feeling right now.
Here’s your Jon Stewart popcorn GIF.
Thank you.
People seem to be pretty firmly on one side or the other in the Mike debate. He’s either an asshole out to hurt people, or he’s a smart straight talker who forces people to confront their feelings. The truth is a little bit of both. Yes he’s an asshole, and no his methods don’t help the people he’s talking to. But they’re not for their benefit. They’re for the benefit of us, the readers. There are times when we want to scream at characters when we know they’re making bad decisions. But we can’t, so Mike does it for us. Other times we think everything is fine, but really there’s tension beneath the surface, and disaster around the corner. Mike is the one who shows us that chaos is only one really bad day away. We should stop applying human motivations and reasoning to him because he doesn’t have them. He’s not the same kind of character as the others, he’s a device for the benefit of the reader.
Mike then is the Voice of the Author, and I could not a more destructive voice. Your comment would have Mike take on the mantle of being the “voice of reason” as well. And, if Mike being a manipulative asshole is the “voice of reason”, by your own assessment, then I think I’ve reached my breaking point with this nonsense.
These characters are all extensions of Willis in one way or another. Mike serves a purpose just like the rest of them, though it is different.
Your rabbid defense of David Willis is… concerning. He is fallible. I am often critical of his work. I find his premise increasingly flimsy. If you wish to be somewhat realistic, then picking and choosing your moments of realism is absurd. Perhaps, I’ve outgrown, or at least tired of this comic. But, I do recall a time when David Willis himself commented on one of the comments I wrote here.
I expressed a strong distaste for his treatment of Amber’s dissociation, suggesting, that in any meaningful context, that the scenario would have been dealt with someone in a profession capacity, instead of for dramatic fodder. I spoke from a very personal position and only after a close friend of mine showed me this comic. Dozens of people swarmed to his defense with various insults. But, Mr. Willis’ person comment is something I will always remember as dismissive and ignorant.
I don’t make a habit of reading, or commenting, but every so often I do. And every so often I find that Mr. Willis clearly has not changed. So, I guess I’m just a damn fool.
Of course he’s fallible, there are plenty of things I don’t like about this comic. And maybe it does sometimes go past the limits of how these real and serious issues should be treated. But if it was too cautious and too realistic then it would just be boring.
Not to drag up past arguments – though I don’t particularly remember this one, but why would Amber’s disassociation have been dealt with by a professional? I mean it would be great – anyone number of commentors have suggested therapy, but when and how would it have happened? Blaine kept her out of therapy after the robbery/stabbing. She’s not seeking it out herself and no one knows is in a position to force her, even if they wanted to.
I’m not going to claim it’s all completely realistic – she’s a superhero after all. There are certainly ways this comic shifts between at least psychological realism and a more melodramatic approach (or even action movie style sequences) that don’t work for some people. Even occasionally for me – I couldn’t take the Robin sequence seriously, even as some people were caught up in it.
I work on a university campus and reckon a lot happens around me that I’ll never know about. Realistically a lot of people with mental health problems (some quite severe) don’t get treatment for one reason or another. But in the larger context I realized that I watch shows where there is faster-than-light travel, transporters, a Kryptonian hero, sentient robots, Bruce Willis, Sentient Gems, and magical ponies. Not everything has to be perfectly realistic. Putting stories and themes in an unfamiliar or even improbable context lets ideas flow where they might not if everything is like my daily life.
So if I read you correctly, you think that Willis is a bad story teller because he needs to introduce Mike as a kind of Deus ex machina to speed things up?
I don’t agree with you.
There are actually people like Mike in the real world, much like there are Maries in the real world. I can see why people who have run into them would want to express their loathing of fictional examples.
I never said that Willis is a bad story teller, where did you get that from? I actually quite like his use of Mike. Most authors would have that kind of character/device be a good guy, but Willis has cleverly disguised his as an asshole.
No, you didn’t. Sorry I didn’t make it clear. That is actually my opinion if you´re right. I think using author mouth pieces is a cop-out.
You ARE aware that Joyce is literally Young Willis mouthpiece, right? He’s stated several times that much of her is autobigoraphical.
I think there’s a difference between “autobiographical” and “author’s mouthpiece”.
Joyce is here to show us a fictionalized version of the journey the author went through, not to make authorial pronouncements. Most of hers would be completely against what Willis now thinks anyway.
Mind you, I don’t think Mike is particularly the author’s mouthpiece either.
So what’s he telling us here that we don’t already know? Yesterday or today?
Or for a past example, how about the time he took pictures of Walky & Dorothy in bed and talked about future use against her political ambitions? We already knew Dorothy was worried about things like that – she’d talked to Joyce about it.
A meeting with Ruth is the perfect prescription for Mike.
I want to see it now.
What even is Mike? some sort spector that feeds of others eternal conflict until they’re force to resolve them? Because it feels like that since he just appeared out of the either to haunt her.
the ether refers to the upper sky, are you saying Mike came from Heaven?
The devil also fell from Heaven I could be saying that too, but really what even is Mike.
My favorite pickup line is “did it hurt when you fell from Heaven because…die unholy demon!”
this may explain why I don’t get dates.
Meteors, nuclear bombs, and FOX News also come from the sky. Some people might argue that those are Heavenly, but society tends to give those people weird looks and a wide berth.
He’s just an asshole edgelord white boy. They’re a dime a dozen not some eldritch being.
His hair disagrees with that statement.
It’s been firmly established that Mike isn’t a dime a dozen, but only a nickle.
His hair is proof that DoA has some fantasy elements.
Bah, hovertext. Mike will live without his femurs, just to spite you.
“No Punch…”
Mike uses Seduction.
It backfires horribly and his mangled corpse is never found
Ruth uses “ACHILLES!!” and Mike is found in the dorm… and the one next to it… and all around it.
Mike needs a swift kick to the nads.
Then this:
Knowing him he might be wearing Protective
helps when you close the tag
Mike just fuck off
Seriously
I can’t wait to see what happens to Mike. This comic has a long-running streak of assholes getting punched cathartically and Mike is overdue a jaw-smashing.
(I do not advocate the punching of assholes in real life except in self-defense, I just like to see it in fiction. As I have stated before, Mama needs her catharsis.)
The thing is that Mike takes being assaulted as validation of what he says about people – That we’re all basically violent, selfish assholes and it only takes a little push to rip off our masks.
Yeah, you’re right. The best way to get to him would be through Amazi-Girl, who knows her superheroes well enough to know what would break him is:
“What are you trying to prove? That deep down inside, everyone else is as ugl as you? You’re ALONE.”
And yes, I’m aware that she tried a beatdown and it ended with Mike enjoying it (guess that trait carried over from the Walkyverse; he wants a sparring partner more than anything). I just would love to see someone manage to break Mike, unbreakable as he seems.
(Also if you think that her using a Batman quote made me picture Mike as a frowning Joker, and then turned into them making out … you know me well.)
The trouble with Mike that makes people hate him is he is the most unrealistic thing in this comic. Whereas even Amazigirl has a complicated story justifying her silly existence, Mike is just an elemental (whether he is “good” or “bad” doesn’t even matter here).
He’s overdue for some humanity, and it has to be more real than what we saw in “Shortpacked” if Willis wants us to buy it. Mike is going to have to drop that frown and shed a tear if Willis wants him to fit in this story. Otherwise, he’s going to remain the odd “comic relief guy” out, and people are going to keep hating him.
The only thing unrealistic about Mike is that he’s on average more insightful than the usual IRL asshole who collects information about people to use as ammunition for their turd-on-the-picnic-table button-pushing fun. Most people like Mike settle for learning embarrassing nicknames or that one mistake ou made about whom most rational people don’t care but damn if it doesn’t feel like a world-ending fuckup once your local Mike gets hold of it.
Mike is realistic he’s just also incredibly boring much like his real life counterparts.
By “realistic”, I mean dimensional. I’m not saying it’s unrealistic that he’s this big an asshole, I’m saying it’s unrealistic that he is never in any mode other than “asshole”. For Pete’s sake, he successfully shut down an internet nerd debate. Mike is and always has been in the same turf as any other cartoon character with a shtick.
Like Robin, Mike is a character that suffers from the real world as Robin is a typical Republican politician.
Mike is the Alt-Right.
Though without the focus on the alt-right’s issues. He’s not particularly fighting SJWs, political correctness, or attacking people over race or gender issues. Just targets of opportunity, IMO.
He’s more a less political internet troll. He’s definitely doing it all for the lulz.
Whoa! I think that Dorothy is dipping her toes in Lake Meltdown here!
Why can’t a cute character show up in a comic without people asking about her feet?
Hey, that’s tame for the Internet!
…what?
Are you projecting? He is talking about her getting close to a meltdown, the “toes” part was incidental to that.
You’re one of those people who constantly says “it’s impossible to read someone’s tone on the internet”, aren’t you?
I dunno about you, but it is really hard for me to do IRL, online is just impossible.
She’s having a perfectly natural reaction to someone being a shit to her and refusing to leave. Not really a meltdown
Today’s strip? Yes. Last few months? Ohhhhoho no, she is like two fingers away from a meltdown, and I gather it just got waaay worse by breaking up with Walky.
“sudden femur removal”
ahahahahahahaha
Mike is Loki. Not the Marvel Loki who’s a greedy bastich with designs on the throne, but the orignal one, form myth, who constantly messed with everyone one and was nearly universally hated, but who also t
Now that’s just wrong.
Loki in Norse myth actually has social skills. There are people who like him.
Loki in Norse myth is a charismatic trickster. Mike is a bully who enjoys tormenting people.
Mind you, I wouldn’t mind somebody sewing Mike’s mouth shut.
Loki in mythology *starts* that way, but by the end you have all the other gods hating him so much they tie him to a rock with venom being dripped into his eyes.
Mostly because he such an asshole who throws people’s worst moments back at them to get a petty thrill.
All that’s missing is honey-potting a horse to welch on a debt.
People like Mike.
Okay they just find him very attractive.
I wouldn’t miss Mike if he disappeared or died, nor would I miss the inevitable arguments in the comments section about him. *drinks fizz contentedly*
Do you think Mike would be upset if I were to compare him to The Dark Knight’s Joker? Because he kinda is, but just shittier and less violent.
yay, Persepolis poster
Dorothy did say it was her favourite movie in one of the early strips.
Wonder what a redemption path for Mike would look like. Probably not a taste of his own medicine, but I’m open to the idea…
Mike is a collective hallucination by the entire floor-the manifestation of the hoops their brains have to constantly jump through to justify their terrible decision making.
On the even of Instrumentality, we will all see Mike.
Dorothy, if Mike wanted to destroy you then he’d just say you’ll never be President because you don’t have any networking skills. At all.
The bar has been lowered a lot since Donald Trump. Dorothy could be president if she relaxed more and learned how to talk her opinion more publicly instead of being a silent observer like Aaron Burr.
Dorothy is an atheist woman in America, so I’m gonna go with 0 chances for the foreseeable future.
Why is it that atheists and women have it hard in politics? Right, right wing evangelism and fear of communism.
Well, general sexism covers the woman part too.
Imagine if Hillary Clinton had children from 3 different partners. The bar’s only been lowered for some.
And it’s easy for an atheist to be elected. All you have to do it pretend to be Christian.
I imagine Dorothy as a bit like Lisa Simpson. “Well, I’ll just explain why we have to raise taxes for the greater good.”
*The White House is burned down*
To be honest, taxes don’t need to be raised or cut. You just need to stop investing in military invasions.
That too.
But we also need to raise taxes on the top few percent. It’s one of the only ways to keep money circulating instead of accumulating at the top.
Actually Donald Trump is pretty much the perfect example of why social networking skills is the most important skill you can have under your belt in politics.
Dorothy has a severe problem that people would prefer to vote for a gladhand like Robin or Roz than someone with actual skill.
Plus deal making and compromise is pretty much an absolute necessity for someone who wants to win by playing party politics.
Dot seems surprisingly naive that democracy functions as a meritocracy even when confronted by Robin.
Networking is a cool skill, but it will be Trump, Roz and Robin’s doom: if you depend on popular opinion instead of actual solutions people will stop voting for you once you show your true colors. Be a superficial liberal like Roz, or a poster girl conservative like Robin, people stop trusting you once they get tired of your speak too much & do nothing.
Dorothy can’t be president after all the shit that has happened in recent years, but she can do something better, like being a social entrepreneur, a diplomat, a judge, a lawmaker, or the owner of an anime themed restaurant.
“SEE YA ON THE FLIP SIDE!” *cries*
Not your finest hour, Dot, but Lincoln suffered setbacks too.
You’d best start believin’ in rom coms Me Swan. You’re in one!
(But it is nice to see a story with this attitude. Most tv and movies assume everybody has to pair off with someone)
I’m not sure the story has this attitude. Dorothy is not the Voice of the Author either.
mike @-ing everyone in the comments yesterday
I don’t know how I keep forgetting he has no fucks to give.
Of course love is more important than work, Dorothy! And I am not talking about a random college romance. I am talking about love to your neighbor, love to your family, love to your friends, love to your hobbies, love to life, love to anime. Nobody loves work. The only reason people work is because it is a necessary step to get their goals, be them altruistic or selfish. Even making webcomics is a tedious work, and the reason it’s done is because of the love of the author towards the end result that looks beautiful.
Joyce? That’s an interesting handle.
Usually Mike doesn’t get to me but now I’m kinda of annoyed lmao
In his will he leaves everyone’s mother a nickel.
Must… resist… urge… to make Borderlands reference…
The Persepolis poster makes me smile. Remember when this comic first started and that movie was still kind of relevant?
It now came out when Dorothy was ~7.
Not that teens can’t like old movies.
I may be in the minority but I truelly love mike. I went through a period in my life where I was actually that cartoonishly dickish. My mental health and a med I probably should have never been on threw me into some bad paranoia which had me in a mindset that nobody could be trusted so it was better to make everyone hate me then to risk friends.
I really love natural born assholes. Especially truthful ones. I’ve never been able to muster that kind of spite and viciousness when in a stable mental place