Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
Between Failures
Jackie Wohlenhaus
The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Hazy London
Scotty
A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Paranatural
Zack Morrison
Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
Demon's Mirror
Harry Bogosian
Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
Go Get a Roomie
Clover
Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Devil's Candy
Rem, Bikkuri
A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
This is Not Fiction
Nicole Mannino
What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
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!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Fireweeds Moors
Gato Iberico
A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
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.
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Monster Pulse
Magnolia Porter Siddell
Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
The Automan's Daughter
Mike Stamm
Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
[un]Divine
Ayme
A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
Sam & Fuzzy
Sam Logan
Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Caramel Corn
Potchimew
Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Real Science Adventures
Brian Clevinger
Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
BOOKMARK Click "Tag Page" to bookmark a page. When you return to the site, click "Goto Tag" to continue where you left off.
BUFFER WATCH
Comics are currently drawn and uploaded through:
[next comic, Mike’s Origin Story: in the resulting eye-stabbing battle, Blaine gives Mike a busted lip such that even when Mike IS smiling it’s like Grumpy Cat]
Calling it now? Blaine. Blaine happened. Blaine and maybe a reprise of the teacher incident, where after Mike’s attempt to help ends up hurting him, Amber’s nowhere to be found. But since Amber wouldn’t be such a mess of inadequate coping mechanisms without Blaine, I can still attribute that to Blaine as well.
I hope in the modern day, but in the past I can’t be sure. Could be Mike internalizes it the same way Amber did – I can’t fix it so why try – with maybe some ‘I want the power to hurt people because I’m tired of them hurting me,’ but for all we know there’s a fight or something coming up where Amber spells it out for him.
If Mike;s observant enough to notice both his teacher’s bias towards her and recognise what kind fo person Blaine is, as well as what to look for to get information then he’s aware enough to understand the effects of father’s abuse.
It is weird, but we had mostly figured middle school anyway. (Though the strip were these two met was misleading.) Could be a 7-12 school, but then I’d imagine the quarterback to be decently older and it’d be weird in that way. I guess the least weird way is that they go to a junior high school that places a lot of emphasis on sports.
As someone from SEC Territory I noticed nothing weird about a major middle school football team and a social hierarchy that includes it. It’s entirely possible the Midwest/Indiana specifically that’s the same way.
I’m from the Midwest and know lots of other people from other parts of the Midwest. Is it weird for a middle school to have a football team? Not at all. Is it weird for it to connect to social status? At my school and the schools I’m familiar with, yeah. “Who’s on the football team” in middle school mattered about as much as who was in any other competitive school club, including Quiz Bowl. I definitely believe it can vary by school, it’s just not something I’ve actually seen.
I’m in the ACC area, but my middle school had only 7th and 8th grades in it and no sports teams at all. The better players on my High School team were certainly well known to the entire school, but not any of the other sports even though we had baseball, tennis, track and field, soccer, lacrosse, and probably a few I’m just not remembering. If I hadn’t been on the tennis team I couldn’t have named a single other player on it, lol, and no one knew me as a tennis player that’s for sure.
They’re all 13 and under here, as the robbery has not yet happened. But I’m also curious about what you mean by “started schooling.” Do you mean starting first grade at age 5? Or starting kindergarten? Kindergarten at age five is normal, first grade at age five would be unusual if one would be five for the whole year. What state are you from?
I was thirteen at the start of my freshman year, but I turned fourteen early on.
In NYC, the cut-off for kindy is “Five by December 31 of that school year”, and accordingly, the cut-off for first grade is “Six by December 31 of that school year”. You wouldn’t be five for the whole year, no, but you might be five for 40% of it.
I wouldn’t put much weight on the “star quarterback” comment. Ethan said that, and he later admitted he didn’t even know if that were true.
But when Mike meets Blaine, the school sign says “High School,” so who knows what’s up.
It was clarified (to me, who thought the same thing as you) that the sign actually says “Junior High School,” but “Junior” is cut off by the framing. BBCC said this, referencing Patreon.
Not really. In my middle school (east coast state) we had morning announcements that would often update us on the football teams record Monday mornings. The team would be comprised mostly of kids at the school, and I even played some pick up football with some of them in the offseason. The team fed into the high school team afterwards.
The only thing that makes little sense is “Star” but maybe that’s because the QB wasn’t at my middle school so there wasn’t as much talk about him on our announcements/culture.
I think that’s the part that’s being commented on as surprising– at least, for me that is. I’ve worked in lots of middle school, and talking about the school teams in the capacity you mentioned is normal, but even when I’ve been in districts where sports is a big thing at the high school level, I haven’t seen it carry much weight in middle schools.
In my school system we had three levels of football — varsity, junior varsity, and a third level that everybody seemed to have a different name for but which was for 7th and 8th graders. So this could be 7th grade Mike dating a popular 8th grade guy.
Honestly, I have no idea how accurate any portrayal of American school’s sports culture and hierarchy is because it all seems bizarre and ridiculous from a non-American perspective. I don’t think cheerleaders were even a thing at my school.
No, they are. A) Patreon canon is they’re at Junior High and B) The robbery hasn’t happened yet, because that seems to have happened in either seventh grade or very very very early eighth grade (because Sal was sent away for five years).
“It’s possible, pig. I might be bluffing. It’s conceivable, you miserable vomitous mass, that I’m only lying here because I lack the strength to stand. Then again, perhaps I have the strength after all.
Buttercup could easily have been convicted of attempted murder or at least aggravated assault in today’s courts. She certainly threw Westley down a hill steep enough to have seriously injured or killed him. On purpose.
Yup, that’s what makes it a fun story, it’s not heroes vs villains, it’s a horrible person being thwarted by people who are moderately less horrible but much more sympathetic.
As Blaine swiftly goes from liking Mike to severely disliking Mike, the comments section swiftly goes from severely disliking Mike to liking Mike (or at least the Mike of this particular moment)
According to Ethan, he wanted to take care of her forever and keep her from falling apart and it stayed like that until he came out after their senior prom (so like 3 months-ish before the story began).
Well, it might not of worked in the direct way, indirectly it could have made Blaine so mad he acted even worse to Amber and her mother finally pushing both to the breaking point where things snapped.
We… don’t know that. It might genuinely have worked, but something like this- and with someone like Blaine- if it “worked” it would have been pretty surface level and very temporary, much more for show for all of an hour until either Blaine slips out or Mike goes home.
Long term, it could never work. But Mike is genuinely lovely here for trying.
I really don’t think Mike suffered any kind of trauma or if he did it was before moving from New York. If Blaine had assaulted Mike he’d be in jail. I think at some point he really couldn’t play the cute an innocent boy anymore and probably didn’t want to anyway.
He demonstrates that horrifying ability every now and then, yeah. Sadly it’s a very, er, humanizing trait of his- even Blaine’s level of terrible-ness won’t be immediately evident to a casual observer.
I can only speak for my personal experience (so, primarily watching customers in the U.S. department store that I work at), but I’ve seen a good handful of shitty family dynamics that a lot of people seem to just accept as normal/acceptable family behaviors.
It is, but he said it to a kid, which is generally pretty safe. Kids may notice the red flags, but it’s usually hard for them to convince adults they’re serious unless they’re really egregious.
Plus he got unlucky in that it was Mike, who isn’t quite the normal junior high kid and actually gets along with Amber. I suspect, given normal junior high dynamics and how much of an outcast Amber seems to be, most kids would have laughed and used it against her.
I thought David Willis’ Mike character was supposed to be this ultra confrontational lazy-savant, laser focused on everyone’s faults until they feel ashamed enough about them to better themselves. Even as a child.
This idea is asinine. There is literally a zero percent chance this turns out well for Amber or anyone even if we didn’t already know it doesn’t.
Walkyverse Mike was a force of nature at least as much as he was ever a character. It was very possibly abductee-based. DOA Mike is a human being, and what we’ve seen of that human being largely sucks, at least in the present.
I am starting to think more and more (especially after this strip) that there WERE good intentions once upon a time. But note Mike is also noticeably less dickish here (blowing pretty new acquaintances off to hang out with someone else is worlds away from lying to someone to make them cry and take video of it, which is recent and UNAMBIGUOUSLY WTF TERRIBLE), and that his attempts at helping Amber are much more straightforwardly helping. And so far? They aren’t working out for Mike.
I think the shift from help to not help to active assholery was gradual and not all prompted by one thing, but trying to help Amber with her problems and it failing on every level probably contributed to it.
Betrayal isn’t exactly a way lighter a moral crime to manipulating someones feelings.
It’s already been made clear younger Mike is already quite capable of making plans and psychological analysis and manipulation, but his plans don’t have ANY planned effect to them. He’s already been quite open that he already likes gathering information about people and he’s already way more the superhuman/force of nature rather then a reactive actual person.
But back to the point, his actions have no benefit unless it’s testing, which is asinine for helping his acquaintances. Everyone knows the cause of confronting the teacher or Blaine, but no potential positive effect exists from his actions, only negative.
But this boils down to probems writing people as forces of nature instead of even pretending they are actually characters. I think the only time any Mike (sober, drunk or child) was ever written as a person was when Shortpacked drunk him admitted that he messed up with Jacob and sent him on a path of self destruction.
Betrayal’s stretching it. They ask if he’ll come hang out for Amber’s birthday. Mike says he’s busy. Ethan expresses disappointment, Amber does not, Mike points out she does not. There is the dig at them not having other friends, but neither of them seems that shaken. Later Mike’s seen hanging out in the halls with his other friend. And Mike has known these two for less than a full school year and is clearly still in the more casual school friend stage.
And I am really unconvinced that Mike is trying some kind of stealth helping people thing at any point in his trajectory this universe. How the fuck is telling Ethan ‘sure you’ll be miserable in the closet, but you’re still better off there’ helpful? What helped Ethan ultimately start accepting himself was the get-together in Walking With Dina and Danny. How about telling Amber she’s like her father? That was one of the catalyst points for Amber and AG getting dramatically worse in a very short period. Any of his attempted sabotages of Walky and Dorothy’s relationship? All of them failed spectacularly and he stopped trying, and their breakup was for an entirely different reason. If Mike really is trying to help people in the most assholeish way possible in the current strips, he’s actually gotten WORSE in his attempts because now he’s become a direct cause of harm instead.
And hehad some pretty human moments with Amber in the later parts of their arc – the strip with him right after Donna is born, for instance.
And if he was doing Dorky sabotage because he wanted them together, he sure didn’t act like that. The Pajama Jeans incident was even the opposite – a seemingly nice action designed to get them broken up because of Dorothy’s standards so Mike wouldn’t have to deal with them being couple-y around him anymore. Which is how we know the Ethan hookups are similarly malicious, combined with actual on-panel instances of him plotting this.
Mike’s an Internet Edgelord and a manipulator. Good timing sometimes, more dedication than some, but he mostly targets people who are very set in routines to begin with and the level of obsession seems pretty believable to me given the effort you see with, say, the entire concept of doxxing.
I disagree. His actions have thus far been fully within the realms of self-actualization, being tougher skinned, and dealing with issues now instead of issues growing and growing and blowing up the future. The stuff you list as Mike being the initial cause is just nonsense and you know it, they were aware of the issues long before he brought up. The only real ossue is that the ideas from Willis regarding Mike are poorly convcieved. But do you actually think Mike started the idea that Amber was saddled with her father’s habits? Seriously? She knew that already years ago. The only thing that that conversation led to was Amber being more aware of Dannys place in the relationship while she is still a wreck.
And NO. His level of obsession collecting people’s weaknesses are not even REMOTELY believablely human to anyone other then yourself by aNY standard. Seriously, who are you even trying to kid?
Also, Mike didn’t start the idea that Amber had her father’s habits. He implied that Amber was destined to follow her father’s footsteps into becoming an abuser. The only thing Amber got from her dad was her rage and a buttload of psychological issues. Outbursts of rage and snapping at people do not an abuser make. Even when her yelling at Danny got into the abusive zone, she recognized it, was horrified, and immediately stopped. How is telling someone that they’re going to become their abuser, even when it’s clear they’ll not, helpful in any conceivable way?
Even if you believe Mike is helpful to the cast, how does that justify his methods? He always leans towards the most harsh and cruel way of getting his point across, in ways that might cause the receiving end to go back further into denial. I think that undermines his intention, no matter how good they are.
The idea that Amber, or any abuse victim, is “doomed to her father’s (or insert abusive parent-figure here) habits” is, flatly, bullshit – and to say this to her face is to make the situation much worse than it already is.
Ethan has literally, AFAIK, ever had any sort of romantic contact with a person he is actually attracted too. Mike blatantly, outright told him that he is not attached to Ethan and that he wishes Ethan would find someone else to make out with because it’s unhealthy. Still, Ethan now actually knows how to kiss someone.
Making Walky cry-
Dude NEEDED to bawl his eyes out and I don’t think he has the kind of self-image that would let him to it without someone pretty much pushing him into it.
Telling Amber she’s just like her dad-
Amber is a self-destructive crazy person. The fact that this is a comic and she hasn’t killed someone else or herself yet doesn’t change that. She needed to hear it.
I’m not saying it’s IMPOSSIBLE that Mike is just a douchebag, but I do still feel that all of the worst things he’s done can still be presented as having good consequences.
I also strongly support Mike as a force of nature rather than a person.
Nope. He explicitly says in this strip that he plans to seduce Ethan to turn Danny into a whimpering mess. The makeout is part of that.
In making Walky cry, it isn’t stated when this happened, so Mike is essentially doing it for shits and giggles. And anyway, making him cry was NOT what Mike really wanted, he wanted to RECORD him crying.
Saying Amber is destined to become her dad is really, really harmful, and also bullshit. Amber has demonstrated she is very much not her father, and then Mike tells her she basically is. On what earth is it ok to tell an abuse victim they’re destined to become their abuser?
It may be just my wonky people-reading skills, but I actually interpreted the convo with Ethan about the closet completely differently? To me it more seemed like he was being sarcastic about it being a good idea and was kind of ‘wtf?’ surprised when Ethan decided to go back in the closet.
Well, he’s definitely got some level of the “observing everyone’s weakness” thing already. He commented on it in one of the first flashback strips.
It’s less clear so far how he’s using it, but it doesn’t seem as malicious as it does in the current time.
It occured to me that Ive compared David Willis to the tired tropes of Stephen King many times, hence, if one just replaces Maine with Indiana and replace Writer to Transformers Nerd, as one can basically predict how every plotline goes down as quickly as its introduced. An altered Stephen King drinking game would kill you instantly.
It just occurred to me where Mike fits in the drinking game…he’s the unexplained psychic child. While he doesn’t actually have psychic powers, he fits the role too perfectly. He can find the weaknesses of all the characters, none of his peers ever say anything about him being particularly gifted despite having advanced intelligence, and having an unexplained psychic/savant allows to create emotional resolutions that the writer can’t do with emotionally functional people. Even without SEMME superpowers, Mike is the unexplained Superhuman, who has no noted traits to hint why he has these skills besides the ability to do so.
Mike has never demonstrated super advanced intelligence. Half the time he harasses people it’s going after the low hanging fruit, and there’s plenty of emotional resolution outside of him in different plot lines.
There is nothing human or normal about Mike in any sense. He is simply a writing tool. He doesn’t need to be the cause of all emotional resolutions because if he was the DIRECT source for all of them, it wouldn’t be real. Whether it’s superhuman intelligence or superhuman focus, I honestly don’t care how you phrase his obsession with finding everyone’s weaknesses with entire notebooks of notes, recordings, fake wikis and all sorts of emotional responce needed to get people to where they need to be at a certain point in time.
I don’t agree. Nothing Mike’s puzzled out or done really seems so impossible to me, especially since, again, half the time he just reaches for the low hanging fruit. And it’s not always helpful – what, exactly, did making Walky cry thinking Dexter and Monkey Master was cancelled help?
I agree with you BBCC. I almost commented earlier as well that I have no idea where they got the idea that Mike was lazy or a savant. He is not superhuman, he is just a particularly meticulous edgelord and an abusive friend. We’ve even seen him ask if people are afraid of spiders and admitting that his notes have gaps to Dorothy. On a few occasions it could be argued as an attempt to help… but usually he sends them straight down a path through denial brambles and further pain, not to immediate improvement.
Mike is a bully. That’s it. He’s not some asshole sage who is secretly trying to help people and even if he were he’d still be a shit human being because there’s no legitimate reason to couch advice in abuse and harassment. He’s just a regular asshole who enjoys making the people around him suffer for his own amusement.
Mike you’ve got an impressive heart and courage greater than your foresight underneath that asshole exterior but, I have to wonder where this is going to go downhill. This is mostly par for the course for what was expected out of Mike’s backstory, there has to be something that sticks out as the obvious red warning lights, right?
I’m guessing it’s this right here, where he picks a fight that we all know is out of his league. I’m assuming the fallout of this is what breaks him and fills him with the selfish, apathetic cynicism that will come to define him.
I get the feeling that Mike is always been this way. It’s just that he doesn’t hide his asshole nature when he got older. There was no underlying incident that changes his outlook.
Blaine realized killing him would be too easy to trace back to him. I mean, 13, you can’t drive, so he probably had someone drop him off at the house, Amber and Ethan would expect him to at least say something before leaving . . . his dissapearance would be noticed quickly.
Man, so the convenience store stabbing, Blaine and Stacy separating, Ethan coming out, and Amber creating Amazi-Girl all happened in the timespan of about 4-5 years.
Yeah, that really splits out into 2 sections. The stabbing and divorce at 13.
Ethan coming out and all the real time stuff in the last 6 months or so.
It’s not quite clear when Amazi-Girl was created. I don’t think she saw much exposure before college – though Ethan knew of her. The roots go back to Blaine and the robbery of course.
Ethan coming out is probably closer to 3 or 4 months. He did so to Amber immediately after their senior prom, when they were going to have sex. He stopped them because he knew he couldn’t make Amber happy the way she wanted. After that he came out more broadly. Senior prom is usually early May-ish and it’s mid-October. The strip began in late August, so around three months before the strip starts, 4 and a half months now.
Heck, widen the view by another year (so 6 years, specifically) and you can include everything that’s happened in the comic so far and, given the comic’s pacing, plenty more storylines worth of stress yet to come.
I have someone close in my life who had a lot of traumatic experiences happen to them in their junior high years. And while things are better now they are still dealing with the way those events molded who they are now.
Its is a lot for one person and sometimes life feels like it needs to kick someone hard for a certain period of time and let a lot of awful rain down all at once. Idk it feels familiar to see so much trauma in Amber’s life. Like not similar but just the quantity in that short length of time.
Middle school sucks. Like, my middle school years weren’t even particularly traumatic, and they were still traumatic. The last few months of eighth grade in particular were a suck-fest.
Oh, no, I meant BLAINE’S funeral strips over in Shortpacked!, where he died a couple years before the strip ended. It was great. Mike wore a party hat, and Amber got to tell his corpse how much he sucked and had failed say destroying her.
Speaking of which, anyone know where that collage someone assembled by combining Dumbing of Age flashbacks with the Shortpacked! funereal strips went off to?
When I was a kid, I was always into situations with adults like this (I’m quiet and love to people watch)… it rarely turned out well…especially, if I guessed the situation correctly.(but I would have been berated by my parents for going through ANY adult’s stuff).
Mike may hate nerd stuff, but he hates more people that are assholier than him. Just like Godzilla is the king of monsters and will defend his turf, Mike is the king of jerks and will defend his friends.
I don’t think Mike has gone full asshole yet at this point in the flashbacks. Though I’m betting this encounter with Blaine here contributes to it considerably.
Honestly I see Mike as Chaotic Good, with a heavy emphasis on the chaos. Most of his actions up to this point have been about unsettling characters who’ve accepted a certain status quo. Sure, that status quo may exist as a protective measure, and he may even cause hurt in the process, but I suspect for the most part he does genuinely care about the welfare of people around him.
Ah yes, concocting an elaborate scheme to trick Walky into thinking Dexter and Monkey Master was cancelled until he started crying in his sleep (and then recording it and showing it to Walky’s fellow classmates), or telling Walky that Billie was eaten by a bear, or buying Walky pajama jeans so Dorothy would break up with him, or insulting Walky in class (a class which Mike himself wasn’t even supposed to be in!), were all just for Walky’s own welfare. Gotcha. /s
How is Mike Lawful in any way, shape or form? He’s clearly Chaotic. And probably Chaotic Neutral, imo. He seems to be pretty distressed when the balance between Good and Evil is off to either side.
I’m sorry Mike, but you’re letting on to the fact that you care about someone who only cares about himself. I have no doubt that he may cave for now, but blackmail is a stopgap unless you can get two solid pieces that’ll affect different aspects of their life.
And if he doesn’t cave?
He knows you’re a problem and he has control over someone you give a shit about…
“Planning”? If she was planning, she’d know that a clerk behind bulletproof glass won’t be scared of a knife. I bet she was planning to do something, but specifically robbing a convenience store was spur of the moment once she got the knife.
That whole situation reeked of spur of the moment (or very recent) desperation. I’m guessing something drastic, neglect wise, happened in the Walkerton house before that.
I can’t imagine Linda or Charles giving their daughter a knife. It goes against their image of perfect, achieving upper middle class family-ness. And I doubt Marcie’d have the money.
“This is blackmail. I trust that you’re smart enough to realise this as I don’t have the patience or empathy to deal with friends who have had a close family member thrown in prison.”
Mike needs to be careful here. Like a weasel, I’m sure that Blaine is very dangerous when cornered.
Just purely FWIW, I’m still predicting that a Mike/Amber/Ethan triad is the end point for their mutual arc. It might even have been what Mike was aiming for in these blue flashbacks.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad that Blaine is just a regular, run of the mill abuser. If he was somebody like a crime boss, this is the exact point where Blaine’d be going, “I like this kid, but he’s too smart, AND smartmouthed for his own good. Take him out back and put a bullet in his skull.”
We don’t know that he isn’t a crime boss. Joe’s dad said he had “mob connections”, and that’s how Faz was born in the other universe – Yuri was the daughter of a member of the Korean Mafia.
The actual words used were ‘mob stooge’ so I’d say he’s likely not very high up. He’s not the guy ordering kids taken out back and shot, he’s the guy buying that guy’s coffee.
Actually this may tie to the “construction business” in the Patreon flashback with Yuri.
Maybe he really is just a stooge – not in the mob, but running a construction business and taking payoffs/laundering money, etc. (hiding bodies in the foundations).
A thought has occured to me but, are any of those pieces of paper a cause for divorce?
It just seems like if mike did eventually do s ok mthing with those and it led to a divorce amber at the time mightve had a less than positive reaction… at least if mike had been hoping to achieve a positive reaction.. idk… could be a stretch.
Even if Mike13 doesn’t understand what he’s looking at in the receipts, he sure as hell understands what he’s looking at in Blaine’s facial expression change from panels 3 to 4.
Of course, we already know how this ends: Blaine ISN’T nicer to his daughter and those receipts make their way to the hands of someone who most certainly understands what they’re looking at on them (possibly as repercussion of store robbery incident), which is why Blaine is in financial difficulties now. He also gets his ass kicked 10 ways from Sunday, so hey, guess he should’ve taken Mike’s advice.
I don’t think it’s the store robbery that’s causing all the financial difficulties. What’s more likely for Blaine’s background, is that he’s cheating on Amber’s mom with Faz’s mom, and, assuming he’s a salesman or contractor, he’s trying to mask all the money he’s spending on her and his own luxuries as part of his business expenses.
More likely, Blaine is self-employed, and like friends and I have seen in the consulting world, failing small home businesses run by one person are often propped up by the spouse until they wind up in bankruptcy and divorce court. In at least one case my friend worked for, the husband had taken out a second and third mortgage on their home, maxed out their credit cards, while the wife wined and dined deadbeat customers while she couldn’t manage the business’ cash.
This would also fit the “macho” persona of Blaine: he needs to feel like the provider, but he doesn’t have the discipline to manage a business. Instead of just quitting and getting a job as an employee somewhere, he tries to stick it out, though. The legal trouble they get into later on doesn’t help, but there’s personal liability insurance for that.
I might not have explained myself clearly: I think Blaine is in no financial difficulties at the time of this strip. I think he’s cooking all the books to make more money than he legally should. I think his treatment of Amber after the store robbery prompts Mike to make sure someone responsible for that sort of stuff gets wind of Blaine’s book-cooking, and THAT’S why he ends up in his current financial issues.
Sidenote: At least he CLAIMS to have financial issues, though that may just be a way to turn Faz and his mom against Amber, while still spending all the money he wants, including cheating on her. Her meaning Faz’s mom, not Amber.
This seems more like a transitional stage between nice Mike and current Mike. I think after trying to be civil with the teacher failed, he decided to start playing dirty. When blackmail doesn’t work(Blaine is still a dick) he steps up his game. The more Mike does these kinds of thing the more he likes it. He still schemes to help others, but he also starts schemeing for his own enjoyment.
I like the detail that Blaine was deliberately trying to show up late. “I didn’t miss it? Damn, missing my daughter’s birthday was the best one I’d come up with in days…”
I’m beginning to think the main lesson Mike takes away from all this is to only choose targets that are either incapable or disinclined to physically check him when he mouths off.
Tl;dr the metamorphosis isn’t the breaking of Mr. Warner, only his becoming a craven punkass.
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
Hot Toys Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 1/6 Scale Darth Vader Deluxe ($495) & Standard ($315) is up for preorder at Sideshow - shrsl.com/4wcx6 #ad
If you preorder make sure to hit the Exclusive versions since they include a commemorative plaque and cost the same.
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?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 20h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
Loading ...
Mike’s gonna Mike
[next comic, Mike’s Origin Story: in the resulting eye-stabbing battle, Blaine gives Mike a busted lip such that even when Mike IS smiling it’s like Grumpy Cat]
Yeah, I don’t think he’s gonna take your advice
“Be… NICE? To my KIDS?
Why, is someone recording this?”
That’s not advice; that is blackmail.
Those receipts are evidence of Blaine’s wrongdoings. (The exact extent of which I’m less certain of.)
Oh, shit.
This is totally gonna end in a way that won’t result in Mike getting his ass handed to him!
It’ll all end in tears. And sadly, they won’t be Blaine’s.
Yeah they’ll be mine.
Tears of joy right? Since Blaine is getting his ass handed to him in the divorce from Stacy now that she has solid evidence of his infidelities?
O-OKAY, MIKE, SURE. GO FOR THE NUCLEAR OPTION, WHY NOT!?
(Aha, 13 years old, good to know)
The age of arrogance ^^’
I knew everything at 13; I guess Mike did too!
Then took an arrow to the knee.
The whole world changed.
Times are tough.
Anybody want a peanut?
Well this can’t possibly backfire.
Nope, everything’s going to go completely swimmingly.
Nothing bad has ever happened in this, the most drama-free webcomic.
Well…Mike’s still alive…
Sorry, can’t swim when you’re wearing concrete shoes.
Y’know what I take it back. Kid mike ISN’T actually secretly a massive douche.
…still want to know what happened to him between then and now.
Calling it now? Blaine. Blaine happened. Blaine and maybe a reprise of the teacher incident, where after Mike’s attempt to help ends up hurting him, Amber’s nowhere to be found. But since Amber wouldn’t be such a mess of inadequate coping mechanisms without Blaine, I can still attribute that to Blaine as well.
I think now Mike understands why Amber bails.
I hope in the modern day, but in the past I can’t be sure. Could be Mike internalizes it the same way Amber did – I can’t fix it so why try – with maybe some ‘I want the power to hurt people because I’m tired of them hurting me,’ but for all we know there’s a fight or something coming up where Amber spells it out for him.
If Mike;s observant enough to notice both his teacher’s bias towards her and recognise what kind fo person Blaine is, as well as what to look for to get information then he’s aware enough to understand the effects of father’s abuse.
Probably a good call. There’s nothing like repeatedly seeing what a shitty place the world is to turn a young man all cynical, after all.
Mike Begins. Followed by the acclaimed The Dark Mike.
The Dark Mike Rises on the other hand sounds like Mike and Ethan’s Slipshine.
oh my god
Count on Ethan to make his pornography debut into a Batman reference.
it was inevitable, it’s hard to work Transformers into sexual references without it getting a bit too weird or nonsensical…
I hope Willis is jotting this title down right now on his to-do list for Slipshines.
baby mike blackmailing amber’s dad………………….. thanks willis for my life (altho this can’t possibly end well)
Huh, so they’re thirteen. That makes Mike’s comment about the star quarterback a bit back then a bit… weirder.
It is weird, but we had mostly figured middle school anyway. (Though the strip were these two met was misleading.) Could be a 7-12 school, but then I’d imagine the quarterback to be decently older and it’d be weird in that way. I guess the least weird way is that they go to a junior high school that places a lot of emphasis on sports.
As someone from SEC Territory I noticed nothing weird about a major middle school football team and a social hierarchy that includes it. It’s entirely possible the Midwest/Indiana specifically that’s the same way.
I’m from the Midwest and know lots of other people from other parts of the Midwest. Is it weird for a middle school to have a football team? Not at all. Is it weird for it to connect to social status? At my school and the schools I’m familiar with, yeah. “Who’s on the football team” in middle school mattered about as much as who was in any other competitive school club, including Quiz Bowl. I definitely believe it can vary by school, it’s just not something I’ve actually seen.
I’m in the ACC area, but my middle school had only 7th and 8th grades in it and no sports teams at all. The better players on my High School team were certainly well known to the entire school, but not any of the other sports even though we had baseball, tennis, track and field, soccer, lacrosse, and probably a few I’m just not remembering. If I hadn’t been on the tennis team I couldn’t have named a single other player on it, lol, and no one knew me as a tennis player that’s for sure.
It’s also possible that Mike started schooling at 5, which would make him a freshman in high school.
Source: I was born in july and was basically a year younger than everyone else in every class.
They’re all 13 and under here, as the robbery has not yet happened. But I’m also curious about what you mean by “started schooling.” Do you mean starting first grade at age 5? Or starting kindergarten? Kindergarten at age five is normal, first grade at age five would be unusual if one would be five for the whole year. What state are you from?
I was thirteen at the start of my freshman year, but I turned fourteen early on.
In NYC, the cut-off for kindy is “Five by December 31 of that school year”, and accordingly, the cut-off for first grade is “Six by December 31 of that school year”. You wouldn’t be five for the whole year, no, but you might be five for 40% of it.
I wouldn’t put much weight on the “star quarterback” comment. Ethan said that, and he later admitted he didn’t even know if that were true.
But when Mike meets Blaine, the school sign says “High School,” so who knows what’s up.
It was clarified (to me, who thought the same thing as you) that the sign actually says “Junior High School,” but “Junior” is cut off by the framing. BBCC said this, referencing Patreon.
Not really. In my middle school (east coast state) we had morning announcements that would often update us on the football teams record Monday mornings. The team would be comprised mostly of kids at the school, and I even played some pick up football with some of them in the offseason. The team fed into the high school team afterwards.
The only thing that makes little sense is “Star” but maybe that’s because the QB wasn’t at my middle school so there wasn’t as much talk about him on our announcements/culture.
I think that’s the part that’s being commented on as surprising– at least, for me that is. I’ve worked in lots of middle school, and talking about the school teams in the capacity you mentioned is normal, but even when I’ve been in districts where sports is a big thing at the high school level, I haven’t seen it carry much weight in middle schools.
In my school system we had three levels of football — varsity, junior varsity, and a third level that everybody seemed to have a different name for but which was for 7th and 8th graders. So this could be 7th grade Mike dating a popular 8th grade guy.
Honestly, I have no idea how accurate any portrayal of American school’s sports culture and hierarchy is because it all seems bizarre and ridiculous from a non-American perspective. I don’t think cheerleaders were even a thing at my school.
I was a high school freshman (9th grade) when I hit 13. They don’t have to be in middle school.
No, they are. A) Patreon canon is they’re at Junior High and B) The robbery hasn’t happened yet, because that seems to have happened in either seventh grade or very very very early eighth grade (because Sal was sent away for five years).
“It’s possible, pig. I might be bluffing. It’s conceivable, you miserable vomitous mass, that I’m only lying here because I lack the strength to stand. Then again, perhaps I have the strength after all.
Drop. Your. Sword.”
If mike hadnt grown up to be mike he mightve made a good westley. Such a good line to reference in this scenario.
Westley was a pirate and murderer, he was just nice to the main cast of the movie.
Every member of the main cast except Buttercup was a murderer or would be murderer.
Buttercup could easily have been convicted of attempted murder or at least aggravated assault in today’s courts. She certainly threw Westley down a hill steep enough to have seriously injured or killed him. On purpose.
I think that would count as self defense, but fine. Every member of the main cast was a murderer or would be murderer.
I don’t know if Fezzik has ever actually killed anyone, or wanted to.
I guess it depends on whether he’s ever actually ripped someone’s arms off, on orders or otherwise.
Yup, that’s what makes it a fun story, it’s not heroes vs villains, it’s a horrible person being thwarted by people who are moderately less horrible but much more sympathetic.
In the book, at least, the Dread Pirate Roberts was too dread to have to kill anyone.
Pirate, sure. Murderer? IF the victims were bluffed to surrender, who did he murder?
Yeah now you see that’s your first mistake Blaine your not supposed to like him, tread lightly.
If I were Mike, I’d have a hard time not puking in panel 3.
I don’t think this goes well for Mike, but he’s a kid and I like that he’s trying.
‘I like you, Mike. You’re a funny guy. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.”
As Blaine swiftly goes from liking Mike to severely disliking Mike, the comments section swiftly goes from severely disliking Mike to liking Mike (or at least the Mike of this particular moment)
Compared to Blaine, Mike is as nice as his parents are.
Everybody gets temporary good guy status while they’re trying to kill Hitler — even Stalin.
Not Stalin.
The Allies thought so durring WWII.
The enemy of my enemy and all that.
We know this didn’t work. And we know Mike’s personality changed for the worse. These two things may be connected.
Hmm everything changed for Amber when she had that run in with Sal, I wonder what her interactions were like with Ethan after that.
Well…
According to Ethan, he wanted to take care of her forever and keep her from falling apart and it stayed like that until he came out after their senior prom (so like 3 months-ish before the story began).
Well, it might not of worked in the direct way, indirectly it could have made Blaine so mad he acted even worse to Amber and her mother finally pushing both to the breaking point where things snapped.
We… don’t know that. It might genuinely have worked, but something like this- and with someone like Blaine- if it “worked” it would have been pretty surface level and very temporary, much more for show for all of an hour until either Blaine slips out or Mike goes home.
Long term, it could never work. But Mike is genuinely lovely here for trying.
I *should* be worried, but last panel Mike’s expression is perfect
Money$ Too Tight to Mention
I can’t get an extension
Money$ Too Tight To Mention
I don’t qualify for my pension…
It’s surprising that half a decade later Blaine isn’t in jail as a result of an “anonymous source” revealing his crimes to the relevant agencies.
Mike forgot to take pictures because he didn’t have a camera phone, just a flip phone for making emergency calls.
I really don’t think Mike suffered any kind of trauma or if he did it was before moving from New York. If Blaine had assaulted Mike he’d be in jail. I think at some point he really couldn’t play the cute an innocent boy anymore and probably didn’t want to anyway.
Psychological trauma is technically possible. I have no doubt Blaine knows how to leave scars without a physical mark.
Huh. In the first panel, Blaine looks almost normal
He demonstrates that horrifying ability every now and then, yeah. Sadly it’s a very, er, humanizing trait of his- even Blaine’s level of terrible-ness won’t be immediately evident to a casual observer.
Like most abusers, Blaine is an expert at looking fine in front of other people so that no one will suspect that he’s anything else.
He told one of his child’s classmates that she looks like a potato. That’s a whopping red flag, even on a first meeting.
It… it really should be.
I can only speak for my personal experience (so, primarily watching customers in the U.S. department store that I work at), but I’ve seen a good handful of shitty family dynamics that a lot of people seem to just accept as normal/acceptable family behaviors.
It is, but he said it to a kid, which is generally pretty safe. Kids may notice the red flags, but it’s usually hard for them to convince adults they’re serious unless they’re really egregious.
Plus he got unlucky in that it was Mike, who isn’t quite the normal junior high kid and actually gets along with Amber. I suspect, given normal junior high dynamics and how much of an outcast Amber seems to be, most kids would have laughed and used it against her.
Its red flag, but this is a webcomic. My stepfather pulled off normal to everyone, EVEN MY MOTHER, until he lost his temper in front of others.
His facade never slipped. Relatives thought we were lying because we wanted our dad.
I can laugh about it now. My best friend did then :\
There are no women around for him to treat with contempt.
That’s the Mike we’ve come to recognize. None of that smiling BS!
I thought David Willis’ Mike character was supposed to be this ultra confrontational lazy-savant, laser focused on everyone’s faults until they feel ashamed enough about them to better themselves. Even as a child.
This idea is asinine. There is literally a zero percent chance this turns out well for Amber or anyone even if we didn’t already know it doesn’t.
The idea Mike’s even remotely trying to help and is some sort of savant has always been controversial at best.
Even if he is now (which I personally doubt), he’s a kid here. He probably hasn’t developed that sense yet.
Walkyverse Mike was a force of nature at least as much as he was ever a character. It was very possibly abductee-based. DOA Mike is a human being, and what we’ve seen of that human being largely sucks, at least in the present.
I am starting to think more and more (especially after this strip) that there WERE good intentions once upon a time. But note Mike is also noticeably less dickish here (blowing pretty new acquaintances off to hang out with someone else is worlds away from lying to someone to make them cry and take video of it, which is recent and UNAMBIGUOUSLY WTF TERRIBLE), and that his attempts at helping Amber are much more straightforwardly helping. And so far? They aren’t working out for Mike.
I think the shift from help to not help to active assholery was gradual and not all prompted by one thing, but trying to help Amber with her problems and it failing on every level probably contributed to it.
Betrayal isn’t exactly a way lighter a moral crime to manipulating someones feelings.
It’s already been made clear younger Mike is already quite capable of making plans and psychological analysis and manipulation, but his plans don’t have ANY planned effect to them. He’s already been quite open that he already likes gathering information about people and he’s already way more the superhuman/force of nature rather then a reactive actual person.
But back to the point, his actions have no benefit unless it’s testing, which is asinine for helping his acquaintances. Everyone knows the cause of confronting the teacher or Blaine, but no potential positive effect exists from his actions, only negative.
But this boils down to probems writing people as forces of nature instead of even pretending they are actually characters. I think the only time any Mike (sober, drunk or child) was ever written as a person was when Shortpacked drunk him admitted that he messed up with Jacob and sent him on a path of self destruction.
Betrayal’s stretching it. They ask if he’ll come hang out for Amber’s birthday. Mike says he’s busy. Ethan expresses disappointment, Amber does not, Mike points out she does not. There is the dig at them not having other friends, but neither of them seems that shaken. Later Mike’s seen hanging out in the halls with his other friend. And Mike has known these two for less than a full school year and is clearly still in the more casual school friend stage.
And I am really unconvinced that Mike is trying some kind of stealth helping people thing at any point in his trajectory this universe. How the fuck is telling Ethan ‘sure you’ll be miserable in the closet, but you’re still better off there’ helpful? What helped Ethan ultimately start accepting himself was the get-together in Walking With Dina and Danny. How about telling Amber she’s like her father? That was one of the catalyst points for Amber and AG getting dramatically worse in a very short period. Any of his attempted sabotages of Walky and Dorothy’s relationship? All of them failed spectacularly and he stopped trying, and their breakup was for an entirely different reason. If Mike really is trying to help people in the most assholeish way possible in the current strips, he’s actually gotten WORSE in his attempts because now he’s become a direct cause of harm instead.
And hehad some pretty human moments with Amber in the later parts of their arc – the strip with him right after Donna is born, for instance.
And if he was doing Dorky sabotage because he wanted them together, he sure didn’t act like that. The Pajama Jeans incident was even the opposite – a seemingly nice action designed to get them broken up because of Dorothy’s standards so Mike wouldn’t have to deal with them being couple-y around him anymore. Which is how we know the Ethan hookups are similarly malicious, combined with actual on-panel instances of him plotting this.
Mike’s an Internet Edgelord and a manipulator. Good timing sometimes, more dedication than some, but he mostly targets people who are very set in routines to begin with and the level of obsession seems pretty believable to me given the effort you see with, say, the entire concept of doxxing.
I disagree. His actions have thus far been fully within the realms of self-actualization, being tougher skinned, and dealing with issues now instead of issues growing and growing and blowing up the future. The stuff you list as Mike being the initial cause is just nonsense and you know it, they were aware of the issues long before he brought up. The only real ossue is that the ideas from Willis regarding Mike are poorly convcieved. But do you actually think Mike started the idea that Amber was saddled with her father’s habits? Seriously? She knew that already years ago. The only thing that that conversation led to was Amber being more aware of Dannys place in the relationship while she is still a wreck.
And NO. His level of obsession collecting people’s weaknesses are not even REMOTELY believablely human to anyone other then yourself by aNY standard. Seriously, who are you even trying to kid?
Really. Mike is NOT a helpful character. For every nudge from him that helps his “friends” realize truths about themselves, there’s an action that is completely unhelpful, with him being an ass for no reason. How is manipulating Walky to believe that his favourite comic was cancelled simply to get him to cry and then RECORD it helping him self-actualize? How is rubbing salt into the wounds of Dorothy and Walky helping them to be “tougher skinned”? How is framing Dorothy as a passive-aggressive nag to sabotage her and Walky’s relationship helping them? How is seducing Ethan to turn Danny into a “jealous, whimpering mess” helpful in any way?
Also, Mike didn’t start the idea that Amber had her father’s habits. He implied that Amber was destined to follow her father’s footsteps into becoming an abuser. The only thing Amber got from her dad was her rage and a buttload of psychological issues. Outbursts of rage and snapping at people do not an abuser make. Even when her yelling at Danny got into the abusive zone, she recognized it, was horrified, and immediately stopped. How is telling someone that they’re going to become their abuser, even when it’s clear they’ll not, helpful in any conceivable way?
Even if you believe Mike is helpful to the cast, how does that justify his methods? He always leans towards the most harsh and cruel way of getting his point across, in ways that might cause the receiving end to go back further into denial. I think that undermines his intention, no matter how good they are.
The idea that Amber, or any abuse victim, is “doomed to her father’s (or insert abusive parent-figure here) habits” is, flatly, bullshit – and to say this to her face is to make the situation much worse than it already is.
Making out with Ethan-
Ethan has literally, AFAIK, ever had any sort of romantic contact with a person he is actually attracted too. Mike blatantly, outright told him that he is not attached to Ethan and that he wishes Ethan would find someone else to make out with because it’s unhealthy. Still, Ethan now actually knows how to kiss someone.
Making Walky cry-
Dude NEEDED to bawl his eyes out and I don’t think he has the kind of self-image that would let him to it without someone pretty much pushing him into it.
Telling Amber she’s just like her dad-
Amber is a self-destructive crazy person. The fact that this is a comic and she hasn’t killed someone else or herself yet doesn’t change that. She needed to hear it.
I’m not saying it’s IMPOSSIBLE that Mike is just a douchebag, but I do still feel that all of the worst things he’s done can still be presented as having good consequences.
I also strongly support Mike as a force of nature rather than a person.
Nope. He explicitly says in this strip that he plans to seduce Ethan to turn Danny into a whimpering mess. The makeout is part of that.
In making Walky cry, it isn’t stated when this happened, so Mike is essentially doing it for shits and giggles. And anyway, making him cry was NOT what Mike really wanted, he wanted to RECORD him crying.
Saying Amber is destined to become her dad is really, really harmful, and also bullshit. Amber has demonstrated she is very much not her father, and then Mike tells her she basically is. On what earth is it ok to tell an abuse victim they’re destined to become their abuser?
That just reminded me how absolutely precious Donna is. Dang, she’s gotta be like 6 years old over in the Walkyverse.
It may be just my wonky people-reading skills, but I actually interpreted the convo with Ethan about the closet completely differently? To me it more seemed like he was being sarcastic about it being a good idea and was kind of ‘wtf?’ surprised when Ethan decided to go back in the closet.
This isn’t the case for all Mike stuff though.
Yeah, it seemed pretty obvious Mike was being sarcastic and his reaction when Ethan actually goes for it backs that up.
Well, he’s definitely got some level of the “observing everyone’s weakness” thing already. He commented on it in one of the first flashback strips.
It’s less clear so far how he’s using it, but it doesn’t seem as malicious as it does in the current time.
It occured to me that Ive compared David Willis to the tired tropes of Stephen King many times, hence, if one just replaces Maine with Indiana and replace Writer to Transformers Nerd, as one can basically predict how every plotline goes down as quickly as its introduced. An altered Stephen King drinking game would kill you instantly.
It just occurred to me where Mike fits in the drinking game…he’s the unexplained psychic child. While he doesn’t actually have psychic powers, he fits the role too perfectly. He can find the weaknesses of all the characters, none of his peers ever say anything about him being particularly gifted despite having advanced intelligence, and having an unexplained psychic/savant allows to create emotional resolutions that the writer can’t do with emotionally functional people. Even without SEMME superpowers, Mike is the unexplained Superhuman, who has no noted traits to hint why he has these skills besides the ability to do so.
Mike has never demonstrated super advanced intelligence. Half the time he harasses people it’s going after the low hanging fruit, and there’s plenty of emotional resolution outside of him in different plot lines.
There is nothing human or normal about Mike in any sense. He is simply a writing tool. He doesn’t need to be the cause of all emotional resolutions because if he was the DIRECT source for all of them, it wouldn’t be real. Whether it’s superhuman intelligence or superhuman focus, I honestly don’t care how you phrase his obsession with finding everyone’s weaknesses with entire notebooks of notes, recordings, fake wikis and all sorts of emotional responce needed to get people to where they need to be at a certain point in time.
I don’t agree. Nothing Mike’s puzzled out or done really seems so impossible to me, especially since, again, half the time he just reaches for the low hanging fruit. And it’s not always helpful – what, exactly, did making Walky cry thinking Dexter and Monkey Master was cancelled help?
I agree with you BBCC. I almost commented earlier as well that I have no idea where they got the idea that Mike was lazy or a savant. He is not superhuman, he is just a particularly meticulous edgelord and an abusive friend. We’ve even seen him ask if people are afraid of spiders and admitting that his notes have gaps to Dorothy. On a few occasions it could be argued as an attempt to help… but usually he sends them straight down a path through denial brambles and further pain, not to immediate improvement.
Mike is a bully. That’s it. He’s not some asshole sage who is secretly trying to help people and even if he were he’d still be a shit human being because there’s no legitimate reason to couch advice in abuse and harassment. He’s just a regular asshole who enjoys making the people around him suffer for his own amusement.
Yes, you are completely correct. Mike is a bully who is attempting to make Blaine suffer entirely for his own amusement.
As far as I’m concerned the jury’s still out on flashback Mike. This could be development that leads to his current full edgelord status.
For modern Mike, Emily’s spot on.
Mike you’ve got an impressive heart and courage greater than your foresight underneath that asshole exterior but, I have to wonder where this is going to go downhill. This is mostly par for the course for what was expected out of Mike’s backstory, there has to be something that sticks out as the obvious red warning lights, right?
I’m guessing it’s this right here, where he picks a fight that we all know is out of his league. I’m assuming the fallout of this is what breaks him and fills him with the selfish, apathetic cynicism that will come to define him.
I get the feeling that Mike is always been this way. It’s just that he doesn’t hide his asshole nature when he got older. There was no underlying incident that changes his outlook.
so how is Mike alive in the present?
Maybe he has just enough black mail on him
Blaine realized killing him would be too easy to trace back to him. I mean, 13, you can’t drive, so he probably had someone drop him off at the house, Amber and Ethan would expect him to at least say something before leaving . . . his dissapearance would be noticed quickly.
Man, so the convenience store stabbing, Blaine and Stacy separating, Ethan coming out, and Amber creating Amazi-Girl all happened in the timespan of about 4-5 years.
That’s a LOT of stress for one person to take.
The stabbing and divorce were both at 13. So, yeah, vicious year.
Yeah, that really splits out into 2 sections. The stabbing and divorce at 13.
Ethan coming out and all the real time stuff in the last 6 months or so.
It’s not quite clear when Amazi-Girl was created. I don’t think she saw much exposure before college – though Ethan knew of her. The roots go back to Blaine and the robbery of course.
Ethan coming out is probably closer to 3 or 4 months. He did so to Amber immediately after their senior prom, when they were going to have sex. He stopped them because he knew he couldn’t make Amber happy the way she wanted. After that he came out more broadly. Senior prom is usually early May-ish and it’s mid-October. The strip began in late August, so around three months before the strip starts, 4 and a half months now.
Heck, widen the view by another year (so 6 years, specifically) and you can include everything that’s happened in the comic so far and, given the comic’s pacing, plenty more storylines worth of stress yet to come.
I have someone close in my life who had a lot of traumatic experiences happen to them in their junior high years. And while things are better now they are still dealing with the way those events molded who they are now.
Its is a lot for one person and sometimes life feels like it needs to kick someone hard for a certain period of time and let a lot of awful rain down all at once. Idk it feels familiar to see so much trauma in Amber’s life. Like not similar but just the quantity in that short length of time.
Middle school sucks. Like, my middle school years weren’t even particularly traumatic, and they were still traumatic. The last few months of eighth grade in particular were a suck-fest.
Life really doesn’t have any sense of pacing at all, does it?
Mike. Mike. You are so far out of your league here right now.
Time to comfort myself with the funeral strips again, I guess!
You are right on the first part, but you can’t be on the second, right? He makes it to College!
…
I really hope you aren’t right on the second one in any capacity.
Oh, no, I meant BLAINE’S funeral strips over in Shortpacked!, where he died a couple years before the strip ended. It was great. Mike wore a party hat, and Amber got to tell his corpse how much he sucked and had failed say destroying her.
Speaking of which, anyone know where that collage someone assembled by combining Dumbing of Age flashbacks with the Shortpacked! funereal strips went off to?
Wasn’t in the comments on Blaine’s last tag. Maybe Tumblr? I say, no longer actually using Tumblr.
They probably mean Blaine’s funeral in Shortpacked!
Holy shit Mike, well played.
But you’re right. you’re only 13.
I’m worried for you.
*close-up on Mike’s eyes, framed by black letterbox*
*close-up on O’Malley’s eyes, framed by black letterbox*
*tense musical sting*
“FIGHT!!”
Suddenly I’m getting Frieza saga flashbacks.
Blaine wishes he were a hundredth as terrifying as Freeza.
Repeatedly stab someone in the eye? Well Blaine’s there. He could be the volunteer.
I vote younger-Dagon.
When I was a kid, I was always into situations with adults like this (I’m quiet and love to people watch)… it rarely turned out well…especially, if I guessed the situation correctly.(but I would have been berated by my parents for going through ANY adult’s stuff).
holy fucking shit. kid-mike doesn’t play the long game. kid-mike goes for the jugular.
Mike really takes a lot of risks in life, doesn’t he?
He did before he discovered punching down instead of up at least
Mike may hate nerd stuff, but he hates more people that are assholier than him. Just like Godzilla is the king of monsters and will defend his turf, Mike is the king of jerks and will defend his friends.
I don’t think Mike has gone full asshole yet at this point in the flashbacks. Though I’m betting this encounter with Blaine here contributes to it considerably.
Weird, I thought forensic accounting was a nerd thing. Transformers is more of a geek thing.
So what’s a dork thing?
Puns.
Does that mean that you hold in your hand a way to unlock a secret passage to the Pun Room from which all puns are generated?
A door-key?
13 year old Mike is awesome.
This is not going to end well for Mike is it?
Mike: Lawful Neutral
13-year-old Mike, maybe. Present-day Mike is more Neutral Evil.
Does anyone else get confused by the midpoint of both axes being called “neutral”? I get it, certainly, but I wish one of them was a different word.
Honestly I see Mike as Chaotic Good, with a heavy emphasis on the chaos. Most of his actions up to this point have been about unsettling characters who’ve accepted a certain status quo. Sure, that status quo may exist as a protective measure, and he may even cause hurt in the process, but I suspect for the most part he does genuinely care about the welfare of people around him.
His “Help” sure ain’t pretty, though.
Ah yes, concocting an elaborate scheme to trick Walky into thinking Dexter and Monkey Master was cancelled until he started crying in his sleep (and then recording it and showing it to Walky’s fellow classmates), or telling Walky that Billie was eaten by a bear, or buying Walky pajama jeans so Dorothy would break up with him, or insulting Walky in class (a class which Mike himself wasn’t even supposed to be in!), were all just for Walky’s own welfare. Gotcha. /s
How is Mike Lawful in any way, shape or form? He’s clearly Chaotic. And probably Chaotic Neutral, imo. He seems to be pretty distressed when the balance between Good and Evil is off to either side.
Blaine and Mike have yet to meet again in the present on campus. Is a revisit imminent?
We do know that Blaine was having Faz gather dirt on Amber for him “yesterday” (in-universe present time, that is).
I’m sorry Mike, but you’re letting on to the fact that you care about someone who only cares about himself. I have no doubt that he may cave for now, but blackmail is a stopgap unless you can get two solid pieces that’ll affect different aspects of their life.
And if he doesn’t cave?
He knows you’re a problem and he has control over someone you give a shit about…
Elsewhere in the Dumbiverse Sal is planning to hold up a convenience store…
“Planning”? If she was planning, she’d know that a clerk behind bulletproof glass won’t be scared of a knife. I bet she was planning to do something, but specifically robbing a convenience store was spur of the moment once she got the knife.
That whole situation reeked of spur of the moment (or very recent) desperation. I’m guessing something drastic, neglect wise, happened in the Walkerton house before that.
This would be pretty exaggerated, but my first thought was them forgetting Sal’s birthday.
You know, while remembering Walky’s.
Maybe not her birthday but it’s definitely possible they forgot about her or left her out of something important.
maybe the knife was her birthday present, in contrast to Walky’s receiving something far more opulent
I can’t imagine Linda or Charles giving their daughter a knife. It goes against their image of perfect, achieving upper middle class family-ness. And I doubt Marcie’d have the money.
Ooh, yeah. Unless they were born on both sides of midnight, that one would sting…
My theory is still that she needed the money to help out Marcie in some way or another.
It makes sense in a way, but I’d really rather have it be more of just the acting out screw up than something with noble motivations.
I think the character’s growth is better that way.
Marcie lost her voice when they were 12. I think it’s already too late on that score. So it’d have to be helping with something else.
How is that whole “nicer to your daughter”-thing working out for you, Blaine?
Also, fudge you, Blaine.
..uuuh.
“This is blackmail. I trust that you’re smart enough to realise this as I don’t have the patience or empathy to deal with friends who have had a close family member thrown in prison.”
Mike needs to be careful here. Like a weasel, I’m sure that Blaine is very dangerous when cornered.
Is that common weasel knowledge?
It’s a common Mustelidae knowledge. It’s just that much more surprising given how small weasels are.
Yes. Weasels are quite aware of how dangerous Blaine is when cornered.
Angry eyebrows! Well, more like stern eyebrows.
This is glorious. I wish it was going to work out better, but… this is glorious.
Hell, yes. This is why I love Mike. Young!Mike is now officially my favorite character.
I don’t think 13-year-old Mike is equipped to stop Blaine. Now that Mike is older, hmm, if he decided to do go after him now, …
…. okay, I’m officially calling my “Mike is crushing on Blaine” theory dead.
Good.
…You had that as a theory at one point?
Though to be fair, with evidence it did seem kinda plausible
Not dead or implausible at all. This is just Mike’s advanced foreplay.
Or not.
Just purely FWIW, I’m still predicting that a Mike/Amber/Ethan triad is the end point for their mutual arc. It might even have been what Mike was aiming for in these blue flashbacks.
Didn’t turn out so well :/
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad that Blaine is just a regular, run of the mill abuser. If he was somebody like a crime boss, this is the exact point where Blaine’d be going, “I like this kid, but he’s too smart, AND smartmouthed for his own good. Take him out back and put a bullet in his skull.”
FWIW, it occurs to me that Mike knows his mark well enough, even at this young age, to know which buttons to push and when.
We don’t know that he isn’t a crime boss. Joe’s dad said he had “mob connections”, and that’s how Faz was born in the other universe – Yuri was the daughter of a member of the Korean Mafia.
The actual words used were ‘mob stooge’ so I’d say he’s likely not very high up. He’s not the guy ordering kids taken out back and shot, he’s the guy buying that guy’s coffee.
Actually this may tie to the “construction business” in the Patreon flashback with Yuri.
Maybe he really is just a stooge – not in the mob, but running a construction business and taking payoffs/laundering money, etc. (hiding bodies in the foundations).
That would also make a lot of sense.
IIRC, aren’t a lot of construction companies in some regions owned by the mob? No reason why it can’t be both.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m thinking. Just that he’s more owned by the mob than an actual mobster himself.
And probably banging their daughters still, yeah (since we know he was cheating on Stacey, though HOPEFULLY not with Yuri).
yup
I know there’s 0 chance I’m the first to say this but THE ASSHOLE WE NEED!
A thought has occured to me but, are any of those pieces of paper a cause for divorce?
It just seems like if mike did eventually do s ok mthing with those and it led to a divorce amber at the time mightve had a less than positive reaction… at least if mike had been hoping to achieve a positive reaction.. idk… could be a stretch.
oh noooooooo
Mike is starting to look more and more like a non-violent (well that one episode with Joe aside) Dexter…
My sister is 13 years old right now and I can confirm this is how 13 year olds behave.
WHY does Mike have to take the longest way around just to do something decent? Why not just be decent instead of projecting it at everyone?
Why, Willis?
Because Mike.
This was Mike when he thought he could use his powers for good. Then he reailed it wasn’t worth it.
Even if Mike13 doesn’t understand what he’s looking at in the receipts, he sure as hell understands what he’s looking at in Blaine’s facial expression change from panels 3 to 4.
Of course, we already know how this ends: Blaine ISN’T nicer to his daughter and those receipts make their way to the hands of someone who most certainly understands what they’re looking at on them (possibly as repercussion of store robbery incident), which is why Blaine is in financial difficulties now. He also gets his ass kicked 10 ways from Sunday, so hey, guess he should’ve taken Mike’s advice.
I don’t think it’s the store robbery that’s causing all the financial difficulties. What’s more likely for Blaine’s background, is that he’s cheating on Amber’s mom with Faz’s mom, and, assuming he’s a salesman or contractor, he’s trying to mask all the money he’s spending on her and his own luxuries as part of his business expenses.
More likely, Blaine is self-employed, and like friends and I have seen in the consulting world, failing small home businesses run by one person are often propped up by the spouse until they wind up in bankruptcy and divorce court. In at least one case my friend worked for, the husband had taken out a second and third mortgage on their home, maxed out their credit cards, while the wife wined and dined deadbeat customers while she couldn’t manage the business’ cash.
This would also fit the “macho” persona of Blaine: he needs to feel like the provider, but he doesn’t have the discipline to manage a business. Instead of just quitting and getting a job as an employee somewhere, he tries to stick it out, though. The legal trouble they get into later on doesn’t help, but there’s personal liability insurance for that.
I might not have explained myself clearly: I think Blaine is in no financial difficulties at the time of this strip. I think he’s cooking all the books to make more money than he legally should. I think his treatment of Amber after the store robbery prompts Mike to make sure someone responsible for that sort of stuff gets wind of Blaine’s book-cooking, and THAT’S why he ends up in his current financial issues.
Sidenote: At least he CLAIMS to have financial issues, though that may just be a way to turn Faz and his mom against Amber, while still spending all the money he wants, including cheating on her. Her meaning Faz’s mom, not Amber.
Per Richard, as apparently learned from Stacey, he’s not a salesman or a small businessman, but “an actual mob stooge”.
Blaine “I like you kid”
*A few seconds later*
Maybe not so much
Mike is trying to do a really decent thing here, what turned him into current Mike?
This seems more like a transitional stage between nice Mike and current Mike. I think after trying to be civil with the teacher failed, he decided to start playing dirty. When blackmail doesn’t work(Blaine is still a dick) he steps up his game. The more Mike does these kinds of thing the more he likes it. He still schemes to help others, but he also starts schemeing for his own enjoyment.
Oh I completely get this is transitional, I just want to know what was the impetus for his current level of edge-lord dickitude.
These flashbacks of “nice” Mike are great
why is the dumblrofage tumblr down? Did Willis delete it?
https://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/
Young Mike makes his next move in his master plan to step by step engineer the creation of Amazigirl.
Next we see him talking Sal into robbing a convenience store that Blaine just happens to stop at with the kids.
I like the detail that Blaine was deliberately trying to show up late. “I didn’t miss it? Damn, missing my daughter’s birthday was the best one I’d come up with in days…”
Yeah, that look on his face when he says ‘I didn’t miss it?’ is positively infuriating.
I’m beginning to think the main lesson Mike takes away from all this is to only choose targets that are either incapable or disinclined to physically check him when he mouths off.
Tl;dr the metamorphosis isn’t the breaking of Mr. Warner, only his becoming a craven punkass.
I dunno, if this mike is anything like in the Martian invasion….
God I do love Mike.
Suddenly, I like Mike a lot more.
Mike: Origins