Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
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.
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...
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
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?
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.
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
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.)
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
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!
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.
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
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.
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...
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.
Real Science Adventures
Brian Clevinger
Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
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!
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.
[un]Divine
Ayme
A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
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.
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.
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
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!
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.
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
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!
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
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!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
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.
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
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.
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!
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
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.
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.
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:
Definitely not getting that makeouts happened. They passed out, is all. Early!Joyce would’ve absolutely freaked out about sleep-snuggling with a non-related dude, and Joe knows it.
(Plus, if they’d smooched, that would be a huge plot point for Joyce, so, Joyce-smooches should not happen off-screen.)
Can’t help noticing you didn’t include Joyce in the kink assessment. Does this mean you already share the assumption that she’s the kinkiest character?
Yeah, that. Once she fully escapes the fundie worldview indoctrination she’s undergone and learned how to express any she may have, Joyce is stereotypically among the most likely to be in the running for kinkiest even if her specific kinks may end up being fairly pedestrian and tame in some regards.
I am unsure. Part of me thinks it’s just him recognizing “I fell asleep on a boy” might set her off, given the past, or maybe they kissed or something the night prior, and he’s expecting fallout from that. Those are the two extremes in this situation.
See, I’m at least 75% certain makeouts happened. Or something akin to it.
1. Joe asked “are WE going to do a morning after freakout”? If it we’re just him playing on Joyce’s neurosis, he would have said “you”. And Joe is very much not a dude who would have any real reason to freak out over a girl just falling asleep on him. The only thing to freak out over would be that he DIDNT get laid, but considering this is JOYCE and not a random girl, that wouldn’t actually be his first thought.
2. Joe specifically phrases it as a “morning after freakout”. The morning after WHAT? SOMETHING must have happened before they fell asleep to freak out over. Generally people don’t refer to the act of falling asleep, even in an awkward position, like that. Also this is Joe, so this is clearly a blatant reference to SOMETHING sex-adjacent.
3. Joyce got her first kiss yesterday. She’s also gone into something of a nihilistic spiral, especially regarding the things her religion has been holding her back from, and there was that whole thing where Becky brought up hanky-panky. Joyce’s sexual repression was super under scrutiny yesterday, and it would absolutely not surprise me if she got alone with Joe, told him about everything that happened, and then they made out but for all the wrong reasons.
Because Joyce wants to kiss boys without feeling bad about hurting people’s feelings and that is literally Joe’s whole thing. as well as Joe probably being maybe the only person at this point who won’t condescend at her about…the WHOLE situation. But instead of talking about feelings he’d probably just rather. Offer to do emotionless, sad makeouts.
(meanwhile from a Joe perspective, Joe admitting attraction to Joyce is a similar level of “giving up” to Joyce abandoning her fundie-instilled prudishness. Like, not in the grand scheme of things, but maybe in the Joyce scheme of things)
I’ve recalculated, and it’s at least three DYWs, but maybe as high as 5.36393332, plus or minus .332 DYWs. I don’t want that ship, well, until the end. And even less JoyceXWalky.
Look, Joyce was pretty sheltered before coming to university. Falling asleep on top of a dude you’re not related to is still a big thing by her old standard.
Joyce is pulling a Vegeta, right now. One of his best decisions was giving up, and it made him more powerful than ever. She’s taking a really good path, and I support it.
It might be a necessary step for her to get somewhere healthy in the end, but it’s not a good place for her now. She’s already made bad decisions that hurt her and her friends (Jacob) and she’s likely to make more.
“Giving up” in this context is not healthy for her.
Vegeta did a lot of pointlessly destructive, unhealthy stuff when he left to become a Super Saiyan. Maybe Joyce is doing it a little different, but hopefully the end result is just as good for her.
Yeah, I think it’s likely a good thing in the long run, but that’s different than where she is now being good, or even this being a good way to get there.
Vegeta also took a LOT more character development before he was even a good person. I would say his initial transformation was in fact a very bad thing for him.
Frankly, I’m still pondering much of the Jacob/Joyce thing is Jacob. Yeah, she lied to his brother. A lie he could’ve shut down in a second (and a lie that wouldn’t have flown for a second if he actually told his brother his girlfriend’s name).
He broke up with said girlfriend and shut down any chance at a relationship because of that lie. The lie he played along with.
DoA!Jacob’s kind of an ass, is what I’m saying. And he damn sure isn’t worth going through a Crisis of Faith over.
But the Crisis of Faith is the reason she did that with Jacob in the first place. The crush may have played into it beforehand, of course.
She talked about it afterwards to Dorothy. How she’d envied her strawman image of atheist’s consequenceless debauchery, but when she tried it (in a small way) it turned out people still have feelings and you still care about them.
I was thinking something along that same line. The topography of Joe’s chest is nothing at all like that of Dorothy’s…. and Joyce should certainly be able to discern the difference.
I really like the face expressions in this strip. Very much “just woke up at a sleep over” accurate.
I discovered Willis’ comics around 2007 and it has been great to see how his art and writing has evolved. Looking forward to many more years of “Damn you Willis”.
We’ll probably find out in March. All the character models for this chapter are assuming fighting game character select screen poses in their PJs. I’m taking this as a hint that there will be a big fight with the evil dads after everyone else spends the day figuring out what happened overnight.
As if we’re gonna stop asking until he finally reveals what happened to Mike. Pretty sure at least one person has brought it up for every strip so far.
He’s going to string us along with that hanging plot thread for as long as possible, all the while reading the comments feed with tented hands and an evil smirk.
So what is going to follow is: Joyce “Jacob doesn’t want me cuz I lied”
Joe “Everyone lied in that situation, if he can’t see past that to how great you are he doesn’t deserve you.”
Then Joyce feels somewhat better and moves on to a relationship where she isn’t trying to steal someone away and Joe discovers how great it can be to help people feel better about themselves.
Given that Joe was already on her case about messing with Jacob and Raidah and that it touches very close to his personal trigger, I doubt he’d be that sympathetic.
He can join Sarah and Becky and Dorothy and…. basically half the cast in the freaking-out-about-Joyce-loosing-her-idealism-oh-no-I-know-it-was-obnoxious-but-this-is-scary-shit-club.
Actually, as someone who has, in the past, used women’s crises of faith as an easy path into their pants, he probably has the most insight of anyone in the main cast into how Joyce is feeling. He knows the right things to say to get desired reactions out of this type of situation, so he probably will be able to genuinely help her through this since he has 1- been trying to turn over a new leaf and 2- has been getting closer to Joyce throughout the comic to the point of being someone she calls in a crisis.
Morning after what..?
passing out on the floor?
I mean even for joyce that freak out would be odd at this point, after the last few months.
though i could see her angry at him for being him there (considering his generalized attitude at times though she’s been phone chatting just fine so would still be a bit odd)
“So… Do you want to get off me?”
“Eh. Comfy.”
“So… Do you want to get off with me?”
“…”
“Joyce?”
“Thinking about it.”
“..!”
“Do you have your toothbrush with you? Because making out with morning breath sounds gross”
Both of them have hit lows…
And have shown improvement thanks to the other…and by rejecting that they hit the lows they are right now
I don’t ship them, at all…
But I think each others friendships is what they need to grow as people.
Flawed and sincere people with no sense of superiority ( Like Danny Or Dorothy…than less so, but he compensates with more judgmentality)
“Oh, I thought you were Dorothy.” — Joyce, dear? You really need to relate this incident to Dorothy. No matter what she says, I think that it is important that you are honest with each other in this way.
Dialogue aside, just the wake-up is uncharacteristic. I mean, Joyce wasn’t looming over someone, cheerfully saying how beautiful this day is (that Jesus made). I do like Joe and Joyce’s interactions. They bring out each others honesty.
Not necessarily ‘honesty’ as much as ‘ease’. Neither of them feel a need to be an artificial persona with each other. That’s true friendship and the only other person we see Joyce really express this with is Dorothy.
Not so much honesty as different sides of themselves. In different relationships, different sides of yourself come out as is natural. Joe’s the person that gets to see the more melancholic moments of Joyce because she doesn’t mind letting him take some of the burden, she doesn’t mind letting Dorothy carry some of it either. The joyful side she shows to others is still real but the melancholic side right now is also real. With some people it is easier to be straightforward because you don’t give yourself the same expectatons with everyone.
I don’t think this is so much showing different sides as her being in the midst of a crisis right now. I can’t remember her showing much joy since the thing with Jacob.
This is definitely part of a real crisis but she was also still genuinely happy to have Sarah at the party for several minutes before sliding back into her crisis and self-doubts. Joyce is definitely one of those people that can get distracted by a different emotion temporarily and come back to sadness later when less people are watching as this crisis has been slowly building and boiling in the background.
I really like Joyce and Joe’s relationship. I don’t quite want to call it a friendship, but I love the way they seem to see through to the core of each other: longing for a real connection with someone and not nearly as certain about who they themselves are as they front being. Not as certain they *like* themselves as they front being. Neither one lets the other forget it, but it’s not abusive like Mike is (was?) toward his proteges and not as obnoxious as Walky.
I’d love to see more of them together. They need to mine each other for self-actualisation epiphanies. And maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll come out of it with a real friendship.
I could possibly see some reasoning like ‘I tried boy kisses with Jacob, they were fun and I wasn’t immediately dragged down bodily to Hell nor engulfed in sulfurous flames. Joe was concerned when I hurt my foot and obviously not shy or inexperienced or unwilling, so maybe good to explore more with’
Joe always gave me ethical slut vibes. If Joyce was looking to explore sex I would argue that he would be a valuable resource.Sure he’d worry, but that would be part of why he would make the best study partner when she is in a better stage of mind.
Joe’s problem is that he doesn’t trust himself. He thinks he’ll betray and hurt any woman he gets close to, like his dad did. He tried to cope with this by just having casual sex with no emotional connection, but Joyce made him see that even that was hurting people.
He might actually be good for her, but he can’t see it and there’s already too much of an emotional connection for him to pretend she’d be just another casual sexual conquest.
They’ve both got growing to do before they’re ready.
It’s been a challenging 24 hours since Joyce decided to skip church. The whole dream destroyed with Jacob. Becky as an adult with a job, apartment and serious girl friend. And Joyce just….adrift.
Aha! That’s what it was. Ok, yeah, definitely not quite the way she would have liked it to turn out, but it looked like it was pretty toe-curling for her while it lasted.
Now I want to know the circumstances around this not being the first time Joe has had a girl wake up on him, thinking he was Dorothy!
We’ve mostly all realized that all life is quickly snuffed out by an uncaring void, and our mistake was caring about some second string bit character maybe not even important enough to be protected by the No Main Character Deaths rule. A mistake we quickly and automatically corrected into apathy when it became clear that life of worrying about who is canoodling who goes on, functioning easily whether or not he’s alive or dead. Same as ourselves when we’re gone, but we keep showing up for the mild comic distraction to help pass the time before our own inevitable death into meaninglessness.
If you go to the top of the page and click the word/link “Cast” you will be taken to a page with thumbnails of 21 characters in this webcomic — characters such as Joyce, Walky, Billy, Dina, Becky, Amber, and yes, even Mike and Joe. Missing are people such as Galasso, Faz, Alan, Azma, Ryan, Ross, Blaine, and even Joyce’s parents and various siblings.
I would say that, based on this, these 21 are the “main characters” and are covered under Willis’s “NO MAIN CHARACTER DEATH” rule. The rest had better watch their backs.
So we can actually still hope that Blaine and Ross die a horrible death.
i’m a peaceful person and all, but i have zero tolerance for domestic abuse. If perpetrators are not gonna stop their abusive behaviour and it can’t be guaranteed by inside or outside factors, the world is a safer place without them.
So I went from there to “girls dig big bones” to “Joe + paleontology students?” to “wow, I can’t imagine Dina + Joe… Assuming she has her Walkyverse sexuality it does include guys even though she and Becky are SUPERCUTE and AMAZING-AWESOME together – but she and Joe..? I just can’t see it!
Loading ...
constant righteous indignation is tiring tho
Even after maxing the skill tree it still drains MP like a bongo
For context, how much MP does a bongo drain?
Depends on how long you’re playing it for.
One MP per beat. Obviously tempo varies widely with context.
It drains so much that in just a few seconds you’ll be running on MP.
Badumtish
That depends. Are we talking about an african or european bongo?
Well, I don’t know th- WAAAAAAUGH…!
Pretty sure bongos actually use LP.
If you look at panel 1 without context, you can imagine that Joyce is screaming a battle cry while power slamming Joe to the floor.
In which case, the party got really wild indeed.
wait until someone ‘shops an actual battle cry speech bubble into that panel
That I wanna see! If I could get on a PC…
Well, maybe she is.
FUS-DO-RA!
Wrong body position for a power slam. Maybe a back body drop. Or, given Joyce’s arm position, an elbow drop.
: (
Nothing is more surprising, and worrying, than a break at routine.
Morning after what, Joe? You fell asleep on the floor, fully clothed with at least Walky and Dorothy in the room.
Either nothing happened, or Joe’s kinkier than I thought.
Either he’s expecting her to freak out just from sleeping with her head on his chest…
Or makeouts may have happened?
Can’t really tell yet. Need more info.
Meh. It’s no likelier at this point than makeouts with Danny would have been the previous time.
Definitely not getting that makeouts happened. They passed out, is all. Early!Joyce would’ve absolutely freaked out about sleep-snuggling with a non-related dude, and Joe knows it.
(Plus, if they’d smooched, that would be a huge plot point for Joyce, so, Joyce-smooches should not happen off-screen.)
But I wonder what they talked about last night~
Can’t help noticing you didn’t include Joyce in the kink assessment. Does this mean you already share the assumption that she’s the kinkiest character?
I’m not 100% sure Joyce knows what kinks are in order to articulate she has them. Otherwise, yeah, I can see it.
Yeah, that. Once she fully escapes the fundie worldview indoctrination she’s undergone and learned how to express any she may have, Joyce is stereotypically among the most likely to be in the running for kinkiest even if her specific kinks may end up being fairly pedestrian and tame in some regards.
At this point, I think Joyce has trouble grasping multiple sex positions.
I am unsure. Part of me thinks it’s just him recognizing “I fell asleep on a boy” might set her off, given the past, or maybe they kissed or something the night prior, and he’s expecting fallout from that. Those are the two extremes in this situation.
See, I’m at least 75% certain makeouts happened. Or something akin to it.
1. Joe asked “are WE going to do a morning after freakout”? If it we’re just him playing on Joyce’s neurosis, he would have said “you”. And Joe is very much not a dude who would have any real reason to freak out over a girl just falling asleep on him. The only thing to freak out over would be that he DIDNT get laid, but considering this is JOYCE and not a random girl, that wouldn’t actually be his first thought.
2. Joe specifically phrases it as a “morning after freakout”. The morning after WHAT? SOMETHING must have happened before they fell asleep to freak out over. Generally people don’t refer to the act of falling asleep, even in an awkward position, like that. Also this is Joe, so this is clearly a blatant reference to SOMETHING sex-adjacent.
3. Joyce got her first kiss yesterday. She’s also gone into something of a nihilistic spiral, especially regarding the things her religion has been holding her back from, and there was that whole thing where Becky brought up hanky-panky. Joyce’s sexual repression was super under scrutiny yesterday, and it would absolutely not surprise me if she got alone with Joe, told him about everything that happened, and then they made out but for all the wrong reasons.
Because Joyce wants to kiss boys without feeling bad about hurting people’s feelings and that is literally Joe’s whole thing. as well as Joe probably being maybe the only person at this point who won’t condescend at her about…the WHOLE situation. But instead of talking about feelings he’d probably just rather. Offer to do emotionless, sad makeouts.
(meanwhile from a Joe perspective, Joe admitting attraction to Joyce is a similar level of “giving up” to Joyce abandoning her fundie-instilled prudishness. Like, not in the grand scheme of things, but maybe in the Joyce scheme of things)
Whiiiiiiiich is exactly how I did NOT want this ship. Combined with still not knowing where Mike is, this is at least 3 DYWs.
I’ve recalculated, and it’s at least three DYWs, but maybe as high as 5.36393332, plus or minus .332 DYWs. I don’t want that ship, well, until the end. And even less JoyceXWalky.
Nice to know I was correct on the general scale. :3
I mean, she has kissed Ethan and Becky, though I can see where those wouldn’t count, exactly. I guess Jacob could be considered her first kiss.
She was even freaking out in the bathroom about how Ethan was her first kiss, and how she’d imagined it would have been so much different.
I think the “we” is sarcastic, not literal.
Yeah. i’m pretty sure nothing happened; worst-case scenario they made out and it didn’t go too far.
Joe knows not to underestimate the power of embarassment.
Did they….???!
We can only hope.
Unless there is a lack of pants and undies, I would say, no hanky panky.
Look, Joyce was pretty sheltered before coming to university. Falling asleep on top of a dude you’re not related to is still a big thing by her old standard.
They’re on the living room floor, so if anything happened it happened in front of everybody else who was there.
Doesn’t seem likely to me at this point in their development. Maybe in grad school.
Or their Walkyverse counterparts found them, mindwiped the lot of them, and left them as they were (except mostly dressed).
Here I thought Joyce had grown a 5 o’clock shadow.
This was surprisingly cute given recent events
*almost played ZZ Top’s “Woke Up With Wood” in response to the alt text, but thought better of it*
How about Sleeping Bag instead?
Joe:….. Wait do I count as the “giving up”? That’s honestly really insulting on both of our parts for a few reasons.
Joyce: I mean yeah but not what I meant. More that I am having a religious crisis at the moment and am…. done. I am just done. I give up.
Danny: not even in this strip and somehow managing to Dan things up.
Ooh, panel 2! I get it now.
Took me a moment to get it. I was trying to think of an instance in which Walky fell asleep on Joe.
Me too. I was holding out hope for a link but that makes more sense.
I thought Joe was the bony one. He’s even got the T-shirt.
Dina also has a bony t-shirt, FWIW.
Joe is the burly poindexter.
Joyce is pulling a Vegeta, right now. One of his best decisions was giving up, and it made him more powerful than ever. She’s taking a really good path, and I support it.
“I wanna be a super-Saiyan! I wanna I wanna I wanna!”
“Oh…that’s how you do it….”
I disagree. Very strongly.
It might be a necessary step for her to get somewhere healthy in the end, but it’s not a good place for her now. She’s already made bad decisions that hurt her and her friends (Jacob) and she’s likely to make more.
“Giving up” in this context is not healthy for her.
Vegeta did a lot of pointlessly destructive, unhealthy stuff when he left to become a Super Saiyan. Maybe Joyce is doing it a little different, but hopefully the end result is just as good for her.
Yeah, I think it’s likely a good thing in the long run, but that’s different than where she is now being good, or even this being a good way to get there.
Vegeta also took a LOT more character development before he was even a good person. I would say his initial transformation was in fact a very bad thing for him.
Frankly, I’m still pondering much of the Jacob/Joyce thing is Jacob. Yeah, she lied to his brother. A lie he could’ve shut down in a second (and a lie that wouldn’t have flown for a second if he actually told his brother his girlfriend’s name).
He broke up with said girlfriend and shut down any chance at a relationship because of that lie. The lie he played along with.
DoA!Jacob’s kind of an ass, is what I’m saying. And he damn sure isn’t worth going through a Crisis of Faith over.
But the Crisis of Faith is the reason she did that with Jacob in the first place. The crush may have played into it beforehand, of course.
She talked about it afterwards to Dorothy. How she’d envied her strawman image of atheist’s consequenceless debauchery, but when she tried it (in a small way) it turned out people still have feelings and you still care about them.
“Oh Dorothy. You have such a manly chest.” – Joyce, apparently
“such fine stubble”
I was thinking something along that same line. The topography of Joe’s chest is nothing at all like that of Dorothy’s…. and Joyce should certainly be able to discern the difference.
Ok………. I want this to happen now? What even..
Joe in the last panel: “Well, maybe don’t.”
Okay… these two *are* going to end up together, don’t they?
Yep. It’s the inevitable way for them to travel from pole to pole in their character arcs.
Not yet, though. Not until the end.
They get together right after graduation… which at this pace will be three weeks after the heat death of the universe
Hello, indifference.
Then again, all of us wonder why Joyce did not sleep with Dorothy, either.
Joe seems concerned in the final panel, admittedly with fair cause.
I really like the face expressions in this strip. Very much “just woke up at a sleep over” accurate.
I discovered Willis’ comics around 2007 and it has been great to see how his art and writing has evolved. Looking forward to many more years of “Damn you Willis”.
aw
ok, I didn’t see that one coming.
(yeah, yeah. “That’s what Joe said”, I know)
Someone needs therapy. Might be me.
Joyce’s depression is so big that she isn’t repeating a stereotypical trope. She needs to get professional help.
hehe. bonier
i for one would welcome our bonier dorothy here
c’mon joyce you know you love her
I see what you’re doing Willis, trying to see how many comics you can post before we stop asking WHAT HAPPENED TO MIKE
We’ll probably find out in March. All the character models for this chapter are assuming fighting game character select screen poses in their PJs. I’m taking this as a hint that there will be a big fight with the evil dads after everyone else spends the day figuring out what happened overnight.
As if we’re gonna stop asking until he finally reveals what happened to Mike. Pretty sure at least one person has brought it up for every strip so far.
He’s going to string us along with that hanging plot thread for as long as possible, all the while reading the comments feed with tented hands and an evil smirk.
Willis, with tented fingers:
AAAHHHaaa,…ummmmm…ohhhh!…. umhmmm.
Oh! Umhmmm,… muwahahahahahahahahahahahHahahH!!
Cough, cough, ack, thbhbhbhb.
MMmmmmmm…..
Oh, I see, Joe. When you’re self-destructive it’s fine, but when Joyce is …
Yeah. No; that IS worse. Carry on.
So what is going to follow is: Joyce “Jacob doesn’t want me cuz I lied”
Joe “Everyone lied in that situation, if he can’t see past that to how great you are he doesn’t deserve you.”
Then Joyce feels somewhat better and moves on to a relationship where she isn’t trying to steal someone away and Joe discovers how great it can be to help people feel better about themselves.
Estimated RL duration of described arc: Five years.
Given that Joe was already on her case about messing with Jacob and Raidah and that it touches very close to his personal trigger, I doubt he’d be that sympathetic.
Well, he might be more mad at the man in the situation. His Dad was the cheater after all.
Yeah but it’s not uncommon for kids to blame their dad’s mistress in a situation like that too
Well, I could’ve saved my post and said “THIS.”
It took me a while to realise Joe meant Danny when he said “surprisingly, not the first time I’ve heard that waking up”
That makes sense. I was wondering. Thank you.
Does that mean Danny was cuddling Joe in his sleep thinking he was his girlfriend at one point
I assume the first time Joe heard it, it was Danny who said it.
That’s my assumption too.
Oh Joyce! You’ve done it now! Joe won’t dare leave you alone today after hearing that!
He can join Sarah and Becky and Dorothy and…. basically half the cast in the freaking-out-about-Joyce-loosing-her-idealism-oh-no-I-know-it-was-obnoxious-but-this-is-scary-shit-club.
Actually, as someone who has, in the past, used women’s crises of faith as an easy path into their pants, he probably has the most insight of anyone in the main cast into how Joyce is feeling. He knows the right things to say to get desired reactions out of this type of situation, so he probably will be able to genuinely help her through this since he has 1- been trying to turn over a new leaf and 2- has been getting closer to Joyce throughout the comic to the point of being someone she calls in a crisis.
Joyce Performs A Sleeping-With-A-Guy-And-Not-Freaking-Out-Afterwards: A Dumbing of Age Hanky-Panquique
Morning after what..?
passing out on the floor?
I mean even for joyce that freak out would be odd at this point, after the last few months.
though i could see her angry at him for being him there (considering his generalized attitude at times though she’s been phone chatting just fine so would still be a bit odd)
Confirmation that the floor is indeed perfectly chaste?
I love how she’s still using him as a pillow.
“So… Do you want to get off me?”
“Eh. Comfy.”
“So… Do you want to get off with me?”
“…”
“Joyce?”
“Thinking about it.”
“..!”
“Do you have your toothbrush with you? Because making out with morning breath sounds gross”
Both of them have hit lows…
And have shown improvement thanks to the other…and by rejecting that they hit the lows they are right now
I don’t ship them, at all…
But I think each others friendships is what they need to grow as people.
Flawed and sincere people with no sense of superiority ( Like Danny Or Dorothy…than less so, but he compensates with more judgmentality)
“Oh, I thought you were Dorothy.” — Joyce, dear? You really need to relate this incident to Dorothy. No matter what she says, I think that it is important that you are honest with each other in this way.
Dialogue aside, just the wake-up is uncharacteristic. I mean, Joyce wasn’t looming over someone, cheerfully saying how beautiful this day is (that Jesus made). I do like Joe and Joyce’s interactions. They bring out each others honesty.
Not necessarily ‘honesty’ as much as ‘ease’. Neither of them feel a need to be an artificial persona with each other. That’s true friendship and the only other person we see Joyce really express this with is Dorothy.
Not so much honesty as different sides of themselves. In different relationships, different sides of yourself come out as is natural. Joe’s the person that gets to see the more melancholic moments of Joyce because she doesn’t mind letting him take some of the burden, she doesn’t mind letting Dorothy carry some of it either. The joyful side she shows to others is still real but the melancholic side right now is also real. With some people it is easier to be straightforward because you don’t give yourself the same expectatons with everyone.
I don’t think this is so much showing different sides as her being in the midst of a crisis right now. I can’t remember her showing much joy since the thing with Jacob.
This is definitely part of a real crisis but she was also still genuinely happy to have Sarah at the party for several minutes before sliding back into her crisis and self-doubts. Joyce is definitely one of those people that can get distracted by a different emotion temporarily and come back to sadness later when less people are watching as this crisis has been slowly building and boiling in the background.
I really like Joyce and Joe’s relationship. I don’t quite want to call it a friendship, but I love the way they seem to see through to the core of each other: longing for a real connection with someone and not nearly as certain about who they themselves are as they front being. Not as certain they *like* themselves as they front being. Neither one lets the other forget it, but it’s not abusive like Mike is (was?) toward his proteges and not as obnoxious as Walky.
I’d love to see more of them together. They need to mine each other for self-actualisation epiphanies. And maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll come out of it with a real friendship.
Just thinking back to when she took that nap with Ethan, same fully-clothedness.
Ten bucks says Joe realizes that Joyce giving up is such a big moment and talks to her about it.
Nobody spoil it for me.
Would taking your 10 bucks count as spoiling it?
I could possibly see some reasoning like ‘I tried boy kisses with Jacob, they were fun and I wasn’t immediately dragged down bodily to Hell nor engulfed in sulfurous flames. Joe was concerned when I hurt my foot and obviously not shy or inexperienced or unwilling, so maybe good to explore more with’
I’m not actually sure Joe would be willing. He’d be concerned about him inevitably hurting her.
Joe always gave me ethical slut vibes. If Joyce was looking to explore sex I would argue that he would be a valuable resource.Sure he’d worry, but that would be part of why he would make the best study partner when she is in a better stage of mind.
Joe’s problem is that he doesn’t trust himself. He thinks he’ll betray and hurt any woman he gets close to, like his dad did. He tried to cope with this by just having casual sex with no emotional connection, but Joyce made him see that even that was hurting people.
He might actually be good for her, but he can’t see it and there’s already too much of an emotional connection for him to pretend she’d be just another casual sexual conquest.
They’ve both got growing to do before they’re ready.
It’s been a challenging 24 hours since Joyce decided to skip church. The whole dream destroyed with Jacob. Becky as an adult with a job, apartment and serious girl friend. And Joyce just….adrift.
Joyce has grow up so much. But she’s so sad. I kinda hope she and Joe start to speak about this feeling. Their conversations are always good.
“You said you were done with conversations about feelings.”
“Yeah, well… I think I got one more in me.”
oh my heart
Good
Joyce is broken.
Wel, she may think she is. But I think just below the surface she is still Joyce, with all that implies both good and bad.
Giving up, or realizing that it is not worth the energy you put into it, and moving on? There is a distinct difference, between the two.
In Joyce’s case, judging by her statements earlier in the party, “giving up”.
Would anyone post a link to Joyce’s kiss? I’m a filthy casual of this comic and I can’t remember what happened with Joyce punching her K-Card.
Here, and the strip after: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/rushed/
Aha! That’s what it was. Ok, yeah, definitely not quite the way she would have liked it to turn out, but it looked like it was pretty toe-curling for her while it lasted.
Now I want to know the circumstances around this not being the first time Joe has had a girl wake up on him, thinking he was Dorothy!
I think he’s probably talking about Danny.
Can’t help but notice fewer mentions on this page so:
MIKE WHERE’S MIKE IS MIKE OKAY
There. Just bolstering the numbers.
We’ve mostly all realized that all life is quickly snuffed out by an uncaring void, and our mistake was caring about some second string bit character maybe not even important enough to be protected by the No Main Character Deaths rule. A mistake we quickly and automatically corrected into apathy when it became clear that life of worrying about who is canoodling who goes on, functioning easily whether or not he’s alive or dead. Same as ourselves when we’re gone, but we keep showing up for the mild comic distraction to help pass the time before our own inevitable death into meaninglessness.
eat arby’s
RE: Main characters vs supporting characters
If you go to the top of the page and click the word/link “Cast” you will be taken to a page with thumbnails of 21 characters in this webcomic — characters such as Joyce, Walky, Billy, Dina, Becky, Amber, and yes, even Mike and Joe. Missing are people such as Galasso, Faz, Alan, Azma, Ryan, Ross, Blaine, and even Joyce’s parents and various siblings.
I would say that, based on this, these 21 are the “main characters” and are covered under Willis’s “NO MAIN CHARACTER DEATH” rule. The rest had better watch their backs.
So we can actually still hope that Blaine and Ross die a horrible death.
i’m a peaceful person and all, but i have zero tolerance for domestic abuse. If perpetrators are not gonna stop their abusive behaviour and it can’t be guaranteed by inside or outside factors, the world is a safer place without them.
hey, is mike dead? just wonderin’
It doesn’t matter, did the lesbians ‘lick each other’s envelopes’.
Haha bonier… boner
Maybe Joe is was less buff than he looks, it’s just all large, wide bones in there
So I went from there to “girls dig big bones” to “Joe + paleontology students?” to “wow, I can’t imagine Dina + Joe… Assuming she has her Walkyverse sexuality it does include guys even though she and Becky are SUPERCUTE and AMAZING-AWESOME together – but she and Joe..? I just can’t see it!
…
…
…
…
That’s fine, take your time
…
…
…
Just admit you feel confortable there, not moving an’ all.
Now this same conversation tomorrow but with Walky and the pizza box.