A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
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.
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Ozzie the Vampire
Eric Lide
Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
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.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
The Messenger
indui
In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Angel's Orchard
Harry Bogosian
After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Monster's Garden
Ash G.
Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Novae
KaiJu
A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
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!
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
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Maybe Walky has a small follower count and leaves his notifications on. So he got a ping, looks, no like, ping again, look no like. It would explain why he didn’t know it was Lucy.
I’m guessing he had notifications turned on for likes, and got a whole bunch and when he opened it up there were either none or one. It’s a bit of a logical leap to assume it’s only one person doing that as opposed to several, but given Lucy’s statement I might have reached the same conclusion.
She’s the one always checking the heartbeat monitor, log, and security cameras in Among Us, but no one believes her when she tells everyone who the Imposter is.
Also I guess he is the male equivalent of Sal who is considered very attractive so it would logically make sense that he was too. I tend to forget about that because Walky presents himself like a trash person.
You’re not wrong, but as a rule women want a man taller than they are. There are exceptions and women willing to make them for the right man, but if ValdVin below is correct, even 5’7″ is a huge disadvantage in the dating arena.
I wouldn’t say he’s an asshole and I actively hate the guy for fun. It’s more like he’s just a lazy douche. What annoys me is that he gets attention despite the fact it’s canon that he cut his hair with meat shears. The dude doesn’t wash! He doesn’t launder his underwear and his hair smells like old meat! Maybe someone can clue me in on the appeal here cause I feel like that’s a turn off for anyone.
It’s worse in almost every way except for the significant one; his hair doesn’t smell of decaying meat.
Also a grand total of 3 girls have been attracted to him out of an entire student body, which is hardly a large sample. He readily recognized that Dorothy was really out of his league. Lucy he is uninterested in. And it’s uncertain if being garbage together is enough to base a longer term relationship on.
For comparison Malaya has attracted Marcie, Carla, and Joe. Possibly the lizard as well.
I mean we know he showers from at least 2-3 strips; altho… not enough. But when I went to school a lot of folks I knew were on a solid “1-2 times a week” schedule, so gross isn’t uncommon at some universities.
(IDK why I’m trying so hard to defend this lil’ munchkin other than a soft spot for him, but I really do think that he’d be held to higher standards by actual adults)
And even the immaturity is partly an act. Learned to survive living with his parents, I suspect.
We’ve seen him drop it and step up to be responsible any number of times. One of the reasons I like him as a character. The surface isn’t all there is. A trait for a lot of Willis’s characters.
Like, Walky screwed up with Sal. He admits that quite readily. He is working to do better. He was also in the same traumatic, emotionally abusive household and was trying to avoid it as much as possible.
But we’ve also quite noticeably seen him with Billie when she was seriously depressed, and at those times he’s been pretty damn good at the sibling thing, given how unequipped he is to deal with it.
He’s frequently immature, but I’ve seen worse from people in his age group. He’s got some weird hangups about gender, but again, not beyond normal levels for an 18-year-old guy. He has a big Gifted Kid Burnout ‘never learned to study/doesn’t know how to deal with failure/possible undiagnosed ADHD/Anxiety and avoidance spiral’ thing going on, but honestly that makes me like him MORE because I relate to him most intensely. (And I think that subplot started up as/shortly after I was sorting through my own experience there.) Honestly I also became a more avid defender of the kid BECAUSE the comments so frequently give him shit about the things I find relatable or are clearly responses to growing up in a traumatic, emotionally abusive environment. (Also that one time a couple months back where him not standing up to Leland was brought up as a point against him… the kids were all under ten, and Leland actively threatened him immediately after proving he WOULD react with violence. Seriously he’s fictional and I’m scared of Leland, if Dorothy’s transfer to Yale ever does go through we know he’s there so there’s already a villain pre-made.)
And with the Leland thing, he still basically said “I’m only saying this because he’s threatening me” in a way that any slightly aware adult should have picked up on.
Some of that (and the similar criticism of him during the various abduction fight scenes) seems to come from ideas that you’re less of a man if you’re not good at violence or at least ready to use it.
I’d also point at his willingness to break up with Dorothy because he was holding her back – that’s not self-centered immaturity.
Not gonna lie I act basically like he does on one of his better days and I do fine- “funny” and “asshole” vary by audience, he’s the former to Amber/Dorothy/Lucy and mainly the latter to Joyce
I’d say it’s the hair but he didn’t have that until now.
More seriously he attracted two women for specific reasons. Dorothy loved having a fun goofball to unwind who also showed genuine depth and compassion while Amber found someone who allowed her to feel bad about herself without rushing to fix it.
Walky’s demonstrably not my type so I don’t really get it myself, but it’s not like he’s got girls tripping over each other to get to him.
I’ve known some people, both male and female, who are just chronically in relationships. I don’t think there’s actually a big mystery there. That’s just how some people live their lives.
We also need several false Mike alarms, like we see someone in silhouette who looks like him, but then they get closer and it’s just someone in a a cheese hat.
Please make me believe this. I trusted Willis when he said no major characters would die. But if Mike is only technically alive, like in a coma, or is going to be alive, but no longer at the university (so out of the strip), I’m gonna call bullshit. Yes, I’d miss Mike. (Signed, a Shortpacked! reader)
I’ve been wondering since it happened if part of the reason for the time skip (beyond saving Willis from having to draw endless Halloween costumes and holiday decorations) was that this will turn out to be the length of time Mike was comatose, and one of these strips will be Amber or Ethan getting the call he woke up.
Can attest, did happen in my family, but not to a sib.
Came out a different person, personality-wise. Nice guy, just slightly not the same, just slightly different enough you could tell it wasn’t him. Looked the same, talked the same, yeah.no.
Maybe Willis is going to have Mike pull a Guy Gardner.
There was a time in Justice League Canon where head injury would cause Guy’s (One of the multiple Green Lanterns of Earth, because every other space sector gets one GL, but Earth is Special) to radically shift personality from Well Meaning (TM) asshole to what basically amounts to a sugared up 12 year old.
Both beds are on the same side of the room, and both units are visible in this strip. The other wall has the closets and the entrance to the shared half-bath.
I mean, they were never a thing unless something happened with that during the time offscreen. Attraction, kissing, heavy petting, but I don’t think they were explicitly dating.
We don’t know for sure yet about anything. We have new combos due to people wanting to move in. We have a new student too! Mike could be alive and back in school. Billie might be back and still at the other dorm. It is all up the air till the arc is done!
Why, what the kettledrum were you trying to say? I swear, communicating on the internet is hard enough without some total maracas using profanity filters to get cute with all that glockenspiel.
I think that all students think of the Cat that way, no matter their religious background. There just doesn’t seem to be anything else time-efficient to call it!
Okay, so we know Mike isn’t dead. And permanently in a coma or expelled from college seem too much like cop-out “dead but not really” for Willis. So why is he in a different dorm room?
My guess: Mike’s disabled and needs an accessible room. Which could be interesting, and would let Willis develop the character beyond his general meme status, but just feels wrong to me for some reason.
Mike might need an aid for dressing? Who knows? I mean, who knows besides DYW? He knows everything .. until he changes his mind and then he knows everything, only it’s a new thing known
Ohhhh that would be interesting.
Chronic pain/chronic injury disability rep is not something I see a lot (or ever) in webcomics, so while I wouldn’t want it shoehorned in weirdly, if it’s something Willis feels works for his future character arc and done with awareness of how those issues manifest, I am alllll for this, as someone who deals with those issues.
If that’s not where this is going though, that’s fine too! Mike is my fave character for all his faults because I found the depth added to his backstory interesting and am curious to see where he’s headed (hopefully out of the coma at least).
Psssssst! I think Lucy likes Walky! Like, like-likes him. Do you, like, think he like-likes her back? Is he all, like, oblivious-like to the fact she like-likes him? If not, does he like that she likes him, or is he, like, all annoyed-like?
Can’t speak for Indiana, but my college wanted us to clean up, remove valuables and food, empty the trash, and unplug everything before break but we could otherwise leave everything.
Wasn’t anything to unplug when I was in school. We just had to make sure all the oil lamps had their globes on them before we left. Electric lights weren’t a real thing until after I gradu… oh, I never graduated. Never mind.
My university let people stay over the winter break. It seems weird to me that they might close down because – maybe it speaks to my uni’s demographics – but some people Lived There and others (like me) did not want to “go home”.
So, Lucy has finally decided to show that she’s the Dumbingverse’s version of Roomies!Joyce? Fortunately she’s not as stalkery as her inspiration. Indeed, I think that there’s something endearing about her clear longing for Walky whilst not wanting to seem TOO eager.
So, is Walky still with Amber? Lucy nervously failing to make her case isn’t really indicative because I understood that Walky and Amber were keeping their relationship confidential to avoid problems all around.
I mean we still don’t even know if he ever regained consciousness.
Presumably he is not dead, but he could still be in a coma in the hospital. (I hope not, Mike is my favorite character for all his faults)
I keep seeing people mention Billie in the comments. I didn’t read them yesterday, but like… I was under the impression Ruth was just talking about people leaving the dorm itself, not like, vanishing from the university all together. And, you know, Ruth’s reaction being more like, disgruntled because the events that made the floor “Loose Billie” are not a good time to remember…
Lucy… worries me…
Even given the wackiness of the DOAverse against our own plagueverse, she rings all sorts of warning bells. Could be just me, I MAY have a humour deficiency about smiling persistent stalkers who won’t take a blatant hint.
Bed and table cleared out isn’t the greatest of signs. My best (and least doom-saying) guess is that, following the duress of October, Mike’s skipping a semester for recuperation. That probably means Walky’s gettin’ a new room-mate at some point, though who or when is tough to say.
And I won’t lie, Lucy kinda reminds me of how I used to be as a kid – seein’ someone was back and immediately wanting to hang out with ’em without givin’ ’em time to breathe first. I’m way more restrained in that regard now (eg folks logging onto chat clients), but I can see why folks might be a li’l tense about Lucy’s eagerness to chat. Though it is interesting how Walky’s more focused on the empty bed and desk than the sudden visitor.
Though even if Mike has recovered, he likely missed the rest of the last semester, which would be sufficient reason to have taken all his stuff home. Especially if they weren’t sure at the time.
So the second shadow to the right wasn’t Roze.
And damn you Willis! How could you put the Lucy-Reveal behind the $5-Paywall? (No, you won’t get me to increase my pledge this easy )
I’m glad to see Lucy added to the official cast. I hope she’ll be more than just the straight man. She’s less neurotic, compulsive and violent than the others but she has a sense of humor and her deadpan acceptance of wildly implausible people like Joyce, Billie, Ruth, Dina and all the others whose emotional default settings are redlined to begin with.
So . . . the only thing that will make me not roll my eyes until they pop out their sockets is if they’re already together. At which point the eyes will stop just short of ejection.
So maybe Mike unofficially moved to make room for Lucy? That used to happen all the time when I was in school… the fact that Ruth bragged about not losing anyone in the whole debacle, and the fact that Billie’s both “lost” and “evasive,” makes me think that he’s neither dead nor disenrolled.
Raen, I took Ruth to mean out of her residents, specifically. And I know Billie wasn’t her resident, but she used to be on that floor and would still be considered part of the group by some, and also since she was with Ruth, that makes her part of the group even if she lived elsewhere. But that’s just my interpretation, I could be completely wrong.
Billie was one of Ruth’s residents before she got moved to Forest. I think Ruth and Dorothy work with different definitions of ‘lost’: Ruth’s is ‘dropped out of college’ (which only applies to Agatha’s roommate) while Dorothy’s is ‘moved from the floor’ (which also applies to Billie).
So, there was much talk about everyone’s favorite inanimate character, Blowjob Cat. (NB: I mentioned BJC to other friends, who call it “Surprise Anal Cat”; tomato/fellatio :-p ) But, at no point did the talk come to, “How the fark did they drive by BJC on the way to Forest/Read?!” BJC is located at the corner of 7th and Rogers St – which is a minor thruway at best (2 lane w/lots of stop signs), while those two dorms are on the east side of campus – between 7th and 3rd Streets, but not accessible via 7th because of the fact that 7th is closed off at the Auditorium. So, while it’s feasible that if the Walkertons were coming from north of Bloomington, they could have gotten off I-69 and decided to take surface streets to get to the dorm, which would have put them on Rogers St, but if they were coming from the south, they likely would have taken 3rd/Atwater across town, and not gone out of the way just to give a nod to BJC.
Sorry; just realized that made me seem like a total D’yacht local…especially since a more plausible explanation is that they passed 7th/Rogers on their way to 6th Street, home of our fabulous local comic shop, Vintage Phoenix. (Come back and see us, Dave! )
Optimus Prime broke down and cried on the set of "Transformers" (2007) due to the extensive use of green screen filming. He reportedly said, "This is not why I became an actor."
“I’m just going to say it, shame on any of us who throws a trans child under the bus for thinking they’re going to get elected. That child deserves our support. Don’t worry about the pollsters calling it distractions, because we need to be the party of human dignity.”
Minnesota Star Tribune@startribune.com ⋅ 1d
Gov. Tim Walz is doubling down on trans rights — and criticizing members of his party who are retreating — at a time when the issue has become a political lightning rod nationally and back home in Minnesota.
they managed to get the arms and thighs to be different grays, which I wasn't sure they'd be able to do, the way the mold's set up
though maybe they're just producing a lot of extra thighs and/or arms in the wrong colors and throwing those away, i dunno
Minnesota Star Tribune @startribune.com ⋅ 1d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 1d
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Mike just loaded up on invisible supplies over the break
yeah
got them from Wonder Woman’s plane
Lucy could tell you all about it I bet
…
who the fuck pays so much attention to Twitter as to see liking and unliking like that, it’s like watching a festering swamp of shit and bile
Maybe Walky has a small follower count and leaves his notifications on. So he got a ping, looks, no like, ping again, look no like. It would explain why he didn’t know it was Lucy.
Wait that’s what that means when I get a notification but it seems like nothing’s changed?
Yes, Lucy is cyberstalking you.
It’s the only logical explanation.
I’m guessing he had notifications turned on for likes, and got a whole bunch and when he opened it up there were either none or one. It’s a bit of a logical leap to assume it’s only one person doing that as opposed to several, but given Lucy’s statement I might have reached the same conclusion.
She’s the one always checking the heartbeat monitor, log, and security cameras in Among Us, but no one believes her when she tells everyone who the Imposter is.
Was the other option listen attentively to what his mother was saying at the time?
I mean Ruth did say she only lost one person and it wasn’t Mike. Though she did forget Billy.
But did she like it?
Also, *varies my step duration*
Ah, so Lucy is to Joyce as Walky is to Dorothy.
I’d say more Lucy is to Walky what Joyce is to Dorothy
You’re assuming that Walky can muster the effort to calculate things.
Well, he’s still here, so it’s likely he passed that math test.
It sounds like the sort of easy calculation he could do effortlessly in his head cause he’s such a smart boy.
i believe that to be an identical statement.
But… Wally and Dorothy used to be romantically entangled…
Walky. Goddam autocorrect.
Hey, you could have an automangle like mine that changes Walky to Sally.
Too late, now we all know you’re Alice.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/wally/
Alice and Wally – now all we need is Dilbert.
Fuck that, Scott Adams is a dick.
Or, taking it all the way back, Lucy : R!Joyce :: Walky : R!Danny
That one actually makes sense.
Is that allowed?
I rushed through the reading and thought Lucy said Walky tweeted out a picture of him getting a blowjob and she got overstimulated.
I don’t understand how Walky casually attracts women but uh…respect I guess? Personally it’s just another reason for me to hate him but still…respect.
Casual confidence also helps, I think. Which he at least sometimes projects to people he doesn’t know.
Yeah people underestimate how effective the veneer of confidence can be. Whether it’s actual confidence or blunt obliviousness.
Also I guess he is the male equivalent of Sal who is considered very attractive so it would logically make sense that he was too. I tend to forget about that because Walky presents himself like a trash person.
Except he’s no taller than his sister and I’ve always assumed he’s kind of short.
short and attractive can both be true
You’re not wrong, but as a rule women want a man taller than they are. There are exceptions and women willing to make them for the right man, but if ValdVin below is correct, even 5’7″ is a huge disadvantage in the dating arena.
Amber once referred to him as 5’7″.
Of course, he said right back that he had a bottom like a playground ball: Round, supple, and makes that hollow toing sound when it hits asphalt.
It does make somewhat more sense with his foxy new hairstyle.
Assholes that attract people by just existing is a serious annoying trope.
He’s not an asshole, just because he attracts people? He’s funny, nice, laid back and confident. It’s attractive.
I wouldn’t say he’s an asshole and I actively hate the guy for fun. It’s more like he’s just a lazy douche. What annoys me is that he gets attention despite the fact it’s canon that he cut his hair with meat shears. The dude doesn’t wash! He doesn’t launder his underwear and his hair smells like old meat! Maybe someone can clue me in on the appeal here cause I feel like that’s a turn off for anyone.
For what it’s worth, Linda probably does wash the kitchen shears, so they didn’t smell of anything when he used them.
The alt text for that strip would say otherwise.
The meat shears are washed after every use. Walky did not wash them after cutting his hair, hence the next meat she uses it on will be hairy.
That’s worse in almost every way.
If I could like comments you woulda just earned one.
I don’t disagree.
It’s worse in almost every way except for the significant one; his hair doesn’t smell of decaying meat.
Also a grand total of 3 girls have been attracted to him out of an entire student body, which is hardly a large sample. He readily recognized that Dorothy was really out of his league. Lucy he is uninterested in. And it’s uncertain if being garbage together is enough to base a longer term relationship on.
For comparison Malaya has attracted Marcie, Carla, and Joe. Possibly the lizard as well.
Linda will blame Sal when she finds her kitchen shears full of hair clippings.
(Can we vote on that as a bonus strip?)
which is why I was baffled what Walky thought telling Sal he washed his hands afterward would reassure her of.
I mean we know he showers from at least 2-3 strips; altho… not enough. But when I went to school a lot of folks I knew were on a solid “1-2 times a week” schedule, so gross isn’t uncommon at some universities.
(IDK why I’m trying so hard to defend this lil’ munchkin other than a soft spot for him, but I really do think that he’d be held to higher standards by actual adults)
It’s not uncommon, especially among freshmen. Not sure why.
I also suspect that Walky exaggerates his grossness for comedic effect, though some of it is certainly real.
I was attracted to a smelly dude for a while, when I was younger. It was just to where it was primal but not FUNK. Like, natural Axe body spray.
My *husband* washes every day though, that’s MUCH better on my increased sensitivity
He’s immature, sure, but he’s not an asshole.
And even the immaturity is partly an act. Learned to survive living with his parents, I suspect.
We’ve seen him drop it and step up to be responsible any number of times. One of the reasons I like him as a character. The surface isn’t all there is. A trait for a lot of Willis’s characters.
Like, Walky screwed up with Sal. He admits that quite readily. He is working to do better. He was also in the same traumatic, emotionally abusive household and was trying to avoid it as much as possible.
But we’ve also quite noticeably seen him with Billie when she was seriously depressed, and at those times he’s been pretty damn good at the sibling thing, given how unequipped he is to deal with it.
He’s frequently immature, but I’ve seen worse from people in his age group. He’s got some weird hangups about gender, but again, not beyond normal levels for an 18-year-old guy. He has a big Gifted Kid Burnout ‘never learned to study/doesn’t know how to deal with failure/possible undiagnosed ADHD/Anxiety and avoidance spiral’ thing going on, but honestly that makes me like him MORE because I relate to him most intensely. (And I think that subplot started up as/shortly after I was sorting through my own experience there.) Honestly I also became a more avid defender of the kid BECAUSE the comments so frequently give him shit about the things I find relatable or are clearly responses to growing up in a traumatic, emotionally abusive environment. (Also that one time a couple months back where him not standing up to Leland was brought up as a point against him… the kids were all under ten, and Leland actively threatened him immediately after proving he WOULD react with violence. Seriously he’s fictional and I’m scared of Leland, if Dorothy’s transfer to Yale ever does go through we know he’s there so there’s already a villain pre-made.)
And with the Leland thing, he still basically said “I’m only saying this because he’s threatening me” in a way that any slightly aware adult should have picked up on.
Some of that (and the similar criticism of him during the various abduction fight scenes) seems to come from ideas that you’re less of a man if you’re not good at violence or at least ready to use it.
I’d also point at his willingness to break up with Dorothy because he was holding her back – that’s not self-centered immaturity.
Not gonna lie I act basically like he does on one of his better days and I do fine- “funny” and “asshole” vary by audience, he’s the former to Amber/Dorothy/Lucy and mainly the latter to Joyce
Linda and Charles are terrible people with good genes.
I don’t hate him, but I would find him as annoying as hell IRL.
I don’t hate Walky, but I do wish I had even half his ability to attract women without even trying.
I’d say it’s the hair but he didn’t have that until now.
More seriously he attracted two women for specific reasons. Dorothy loved having a fun goofball to unwind who also showed genuine depth and compassion while Amber found someone who allowed her to feel bad about herself without rushing to fix it.
Walky’s demonstrably not my type so I don’t really get it myself, but it’s not like he’s got girls tripping over each other to get to him.
yeah, he’s no Danny 1.0.
Danny’s Hat Energy transformed into Walky’s Haircut Energy.
nah, I mean Roomies Danny, who was inexplicably desired by several of the female cast despite lacking any real personality.
I’ve known some people, both male and female, who are just chronically in relationships. I don’t think there’s actually a big mystery there. That’s just how some people live their lives.
You make relationships sound like a disease.
Not disagreeing with you, though.
His skin IS just like smooth caramel…
As soon as he recognizes his power, it will go away. It’s like Wiley Coyote walking off a cliff and not looking down for a second.
Is that Mike’s bed?
I guess corpses don’t need sheets.
Yes. It doesn’t look lived in. I am dreading…
Second to worst case scenario, he’s still in a coma.
Or maybe he woke up between the passing months and is recuperating until he’s well enough to go back to university.
After that serious an injury and being in a coma that long, he probably needs a lot of physical therapy.
Not that long, but several days in a coma might mean he has some brain damage or have problems walking or with his memory or something.
Oh yes, definitely physical therapy to regain his motor functions.
Also possible that he went home to convalesce for a few months and he took all his stuff with him and he hasn’t yet arrived.
Given all the ominous signs we keep seeing, there’s only one possible conclusion: Mike is just fine, and he’ll walk in right when we least expect it.
AFTER we’ve seen Carla, Joe, Malaya, Dina, Amber and half a dozen other characters first.
We also need several false Mike alarms, like we see someone in silhouette who looks like him, but then they get closer and it’s just someone in a a cheese hat.
This isn’t Madison. What are the odds?
I saw one in Chicago nice. At Komisky, go figure? I can’t do the math in that one.
Please make me believe this. I trusted Willis when he said no major characters would die. But if Mike is only technically alive, like in a coma, or is going to be alive, but no longer at the university (so out of the strip), I’m gonna call bullshit. Yes, I’d miss Mike. (Signed, a Shortpacked! reader)
I’ve been wondering since it happened if part of the reason for the time skip (beyond saving Willis from having to draw endless Halloween costumes and holiday decorations) was that this will turn out to be the length of time Mike was comatose, and one of these strips will be Amber or Ethan getting the call he woke up.
Or maybe Mike is only alive in Amber’s head.
Can anything good come out of a three-month coma??
Can attest, did happen in my family, but not to a sib.
Came out a different person, personality-wise. Nice guy, just slightly not the same, just slightly different enough you could tell it wasn’t him. Looked the same, talked the same, yeah.no.
Maybe Willis is going to have Mike pull a Guy Gardner.
There was a time in Justice League Canon where head injury would cause Guy’s (One of the multiple Green Lanterns of Earth, because every other space sector gets one GL, but Earth is Special) to radically shift personality from Well Meaning (TM) asshole to what basically amounts to a sugared up 12 year old.
Drunk Mike.
YES! Post-head-trauma Mike is DoA’s Drunk Mike! If that’s his silhouette that hasn’t been revealed yet, maybe his hair is different now too.
Mike Classic can live on as Amber’s internal voice of doubt.
I’m here for this.
Awwww! Hi Lucy!
Lucy is cute … err …creepy … err … cute … err … no, I meant creepy … err … wait no, cute is definitely the correct word *hard to decide*
She can be both.
An adorable stalker.
Walky seems like he’s just kinda… done with caring.
Parents can have that effect.
I’m thinking he and Amber broke up or something.
He seems like he’s going through something.
He and Mike clearly had a big fight and now he moved his stuff to the exact opposite side of the room that is just off camera.
Both beds are on the same side of the room, and both units are visible in this strip. The other wall has the closets and the entrance to the shared half-bath.
Ah, then Mike clearly moved into the bathroom. That’s why Walky’s glum, he needs to go potty.
I mean, they were never a thing unless something happened with that during the time offscreen. Attraction, kissing, heavy petting, but I don’t think they were explicitly dating.
WAIT
What’s Blowjob Cat?!?!??!!?!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/border/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/blowjob-cat/
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/892604984088551424?s=20
Whereas I was confused by the idea that there are readers who haven’t been reading Willis’ comics for two decades.
FIRST BILLIE AND NOW MIKE?!!!! YOU ARE A MEAN ONE, MR. WILLIS!
We don’t know for sure yet about anything. We have new combos due to people wanting to move in. We have a new student too! Mike could be alive and back in school. Billie might be back and still at the other dorm. It is all up the air till the arc is done!
You’re a mean one, Mr. Willis
Your heart’s an empty peg
Your brain is full of Soggies
You’ve got Go-Bots in your soul
Mr. Willlllll-IS
I forsee the whole gang gathered together and then “I’M BACK bongoES!” Mike bursts into the room.
That was an odd swear filter I thought it turn B into–––– or random characters.
Why, what the kettledrum were you trying to say? I swear, communicating on the internet is hard enough without some total maracas using profanity filters to get cute with all that glockenspiel.
*rimshot*
I am en-snared by your percussive cymbal-lism. Would you be a bell and drum up some more? Do you think others will chime in?
I’m guessing, “I’M BACK [female dog]S!”
Yes, it’s probably a reference to Dragonball Z Abridged.
She’s got it bad.
I don’t blame her; that new hairstyle makes Walky hard to resist.
I weirdly am surprised she said “blowjob cat” without a stutter to Walky
I think that all students think of the Cat that way, no matter their religious background. There just doesn’t seem to be anything else time-efficient to call it!
It’s clearly labeled on all the University maps.
Okay, so we know Mike isn’t dead. And permanently in a coma or expelled from college seem too much like cop-out “dead but not really” for Willis. So why is he in a different dorm room?
My guess: Mike’s disabled and needs an accessible room. Which could be interesting, and would let Willis develop the character beyond his general meme status, but just feels wrong to me for some reason.
Mike might need an aid for dressing? Who knows? I mean, who knows besides DYW? He knows everything .. until he changes his mind and then he knows everything, only it’s a new thing known
Errrrrr —- Aide, I mean. Spellcheck is an example or A.S. Or artificial stupidity
Ohhhh that would be interesting.
Chronic pain/chronic injury disability rep is not something I see a lot (or ever) in webcomics, so while I wouldn’t want it shoehorned in weirdly, if it’s something Willis feels works for his future character arc and done with awareness of how those issues manifest, I am alllll for this, as someone who deals with those issues.
If that’s not where this is going though, that’s fine too! Mike is my fave character for all his faults because I found the depth added to his backstory interesting and am curious to see where he’s headed (hopefully out of the coma at least).
Alternately, Walky just got here and happened to arrive before Mike.
I really didn’t think of this. This would be such an interesting way to take Mike’s character.
i’m envisioning a Star Trek goatee universe anti-Professor X. I’m… not hating it.
Psssssst! I think Lucy likes Walky! Like, like-likes him. Do you, like, think he like-likes her back? Is he all, like, oblivious-like to the fact she like-likes him? If not, does he like that she likes him, or is he, like, all annoyed-like?
I suspect that Walky isn’t in the right headspace to be thinking about this, assuming that he isn’t still technically with Amber and Maizie.
are they dating now ? ARE THEY DATING NOW ?
Yes, Mike and Walky are dating, but don’t tell anyone or they can’t be roommates.
Do students at Indiana get to keep their stuff in dorms over break? It’s been a while, but I remember having to move out completely before Christmas.
I’m surprised by this too. Back in my day, we weren’t even guaranteed to have the same rooms as before.
Can’t speak for Indiana, but my college wanted us to clean up, remove valuables and food, empty the trash, and unplug everything before break but we could otherwise leave everything.
Wasn’t anything to unplug when I was in school. We just had to make sure all the oil lamps had their globes on them before we left. Electric lights weren’t a real thing until after I gradu… oh, I never graduated. Never mind.
Yeah, back in my day we could leave things in the dorms over winter break. Same rooms – unless you were deliberately trying to move.
I did lose a roommate over break once though. He failed out.
My university let people stay over the winter break. It seems weird to me that they might close down because – maybe it speaks to my uni’s demographics – but some people Lived There and others (like me) did not want to “go home”.
Hmm, hopefully Walky and Lucy will have a conversation that clarifies Billie’s status.
Methinks Mike is still recovering.
Or at least in no shape to climb up into a loft bed.
you know what? Shipped.
So, Lucy has finally decided to show that she’s the Dumbingverse’s version of Roomies!Joyce? Fortunately she’s not as stalkery as her inspiration. Indeed, I think that there’s something endearing about her clear longing for Walky whilst not wanting to seem TOO eager.
So, is Walky still with Amber? Lucy nervously failing to make her case isn’t really indicative because I understood that Walky and Amber were keeping their relationship confidential to avoid problems all around.
this timejump feels unearned and artificial.
reading this feels like im cheating and we are going to go back to October.
oof billie mysteriously gone, mike mysteriously gone… I know mike’s not dead but is he in rehab for THIS long? oh man I am so worried ;_; ;_;
I mean we still don’t even know if he ever regained consciousness.
Presumably he is not dead, but he could still be in a coma in the hospital. (I hope not, Mike is my favorite character for all his faults)
There was a 50% chance he would move stuff in before Walky, based on my equally distributed ignorance. It’s too soon to panic.
I keep seeing people mention Billie in the comments. I didn’t read them yesterday, but like… I was under the impression Ruth was just talking about people leaving the dorm itself, not like, vanishing from the university all together. And, you know, Ruth’s reaction being more like, disgruntled because the events that made the floor “Loose Billie” are not a good time to remember…
There was an earlier comment from Walky about Billie being “elusive”. So something might be up.
She cut her hair and has mixed feelings of regret about it. She’s hiding in her room because five-foot-long extensions are on backorder.
Gee Lucy, I don’t think you’re making it obvious enough how you feel about Walky.
Though now that I think about it, some guys really are so oblivious that they won’t realize a girl likes them even after she tells them so.
Maybe she needs ‘I’- and ‘U’-Pins, she can attache to her jacket, to spell it out for him.
I think Lucy is in the word on her jacket.
No, it’s ‘LOVE’.
Please don’t have killed Mike.
Lucy… worries me…
Even given the wackiness of the DOAverse against our own plagueverse, she rings all sorts of warning bells. Could be just me, I MAY have a humour deficiency about smiling persistent stalkers who won’t take a blatant hint.
Maybe I missed something, but did Walky tell her to eff off at some point?
Not that I recall, no.
At least she’s honest about it. Would have been easy to play off as just a coincidence.
Bed and table cleared out isn’t the greatest of signs. My best (and least doom-saying) guess is that, following the duress of October, Mike’s skipping a semester for recuperation. That probably means Walky’s gettin’ a new room-mate at some point, though who or when is tough to say.
And I won’t lie, Lucy kinda reminds me of how I used to be as a kid – seein’ someone was back and immediately wanting to hang out with ’em without givin’ ’em time to breathe first. I’m way more restrained in that regard now (eg folks logging onto chat clients), but I can see why folks might be a li’l tense about Lucy’s eagerness to chat. Though it is interesting how Walky’s more focused on the empty bed and desk than the sudden visitor.
Though even if Mike has recovered, he likely missed the rest of the last semester, which would be sufficient reason to have taken all his stuff home. Especially if they weren’t sure at the time.
So the second shadow to the right wasn’t Roze.
)
And damn you Willis! How could you put the Lucy-Reveal behind the $5-Paywall? (No, you won’t get me to increase my pledge this easy
Just realized that all the reveals started behind that paywall a day early before I could see them. So I like to take back the ‘damn you’.
Lucky… a fan or a stalker?
Yes.
I’m glad to see Lucy added to the official cast. I hope she’ll be more than just the straight man. She’s less neurotic, compulsive and violent than the others but she has a sense of humor and her deadpan acceptance of wildly implausible people like Joyce, Billie, Ruth, Dina and all the others whose emotional default settings are redlined to begin with.
So . . . the only thing that will make me not roll my eyes until they pop out their sockets is if they’re already together. At which point the eyes will stop just short of ejection.
The biggest crime is that Blowjob Cat isn’t tagged in this comic.
So maybe Mike unofficially moved to make room for Lucy? That used to happen all the time when I was in school… the fact that Ruth bragged about not losing anyone in the whole debacle, and the fact that Billie’s both “lost” and “evasive,” makes me think that he’s neither dead nor disenrolled.
Raen, I took Ruth to mean out of her residents, specifically. And I know Billie wasn’t her resident, but she used to be on that floor and would still be considered part of the group by some, and also since she was with Ruth, that makes her part of the group even if she lived elsewhere. But that’s just my interpretation, I could be completely wrong.
Billie was one of Ruth’s residents before she got moved to Forest. I think Ruth and Dorothy work with different definitions of ‘lost’: Ruth’s is ‘dropped out of college’ (which only applies to Agatha’s roommate) while Dorothy’s is ‘moved from the floor’ (which also applies to Billie).
Isn’t Mike outside her jurisdiction?
Yeah, she’s the RA for the third floor of the women’s wing.
I can barely remember a time when I didn’t know about Blowjob Cat. But then I can’t remember what or if I had breakfast.
Lucy makes a move
Just another two weeks of being cockteased until we get some actual answers. Gotta hold tight until then.
Oh! I’d been so sure Lucy’s figure was Roz in a hat. I’d forgotten about Lucy when I was making my guesses.
Lucy, stop sniffing around Amber’s boytoy.
ARE Walky and Amber a couple? Last we knew, several months ago in-universe, they were kinda a big non-committal sorta.
So, there was much talk about everyone’s favorite inanimate character, Blowjob Cat. (NB: I mentioned BJC to other friends, who call it “Surprise Anal Cat”; tomato/fellatio :-p ) But, at no point did the talk come to, “How the fark did they drive by BJC on the way to Forest/Read?!” BJC is located at the corner of 7th and Rogers St – which is a minor thruway at best (2 lane w/lots of stop signs), while those two dorms are on the east side of campus – between 7th and 3rd Streets, but not accessible via 7th because of the fact that 7th is closed off at the Auditorium. So, while it’s feasible that if the Walkertons were coming from north of Bloomington, they could have gotten off I-69 and decided to take surface streets to get to the dorm, which would have put them on Rogers St, but if they were coming from the south, they likely would have taken 3rd/Atwater across town, and not gone out of the way just to give a nod to BJC.
Sorry; just realized that made me seem like a total D’yacht local…especially since a more plausible explanation is that they passed 7th/Rogers on their way to 6th Street, home of our fabulous local comic shop, Vintage Phoenix.
(Come back and see us, Dave! 
)