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The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Sam & Fuzzy
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Do you mean “intentional” or that we should contemplate and “discuss amongst members of a jury”? Either could be erotic in this context. Gives a whole new meaning to a hung jury.
In D&D settings gods depend on the worship of followers for their strength, and sometimes I think are shaped by their belief. If that isn’t the demos (people) having the power, what is?
Also this formula is surprisingly common not just in webcomics but in manga as well. Every read Katekyo Hitman Reborn? It follows this method almost exactly.
I tried reading Roomies a few times but it’s a lot to read. Also I tried reading Shortpacked a few times but it’s a lot to read. And then I’ve also tried re-reading DoA once, but it’s a lot to-.
I do feel like I’m missing out sometimes cause apparently there’s hidden knowledge and references in DoA to the other comics like apparently Joyce and Walky were married?!?!…And Ruth I guess died in a car crash once. Crazy!…Also I guess Robin had super speed and actually a bunch of people apparently had super powers I don’t know. Carla was a car once? I could go on forever just on stuff I’ve read in the comments.
I was once the same way, Then I started reading Its Walky because Willis was republishing the strips a day at the time from basically the start of the big Aliens arg (Apparently there’s alien pre-plot in Roomies) and I tried reading Roomies but it felt like it was taking too long to get good (I much prefer Willis’ current writing).
That said by the start of It’s Walky Willis is writing longform in a dedicated way, where Roomies eventually transitions into it.
I’ve read ALL OF IT, but I came in when It’s Walky was 3/4ths done, then stuck with through Joyce and Walky (an aside there – Joyce/The Wife of Willis were pregnant around the same time I was! It was fun, my daughter is about the same age as the Willis kids), and followed to Shortpacked and DoA.
To this day I’m still grateful that Willis updates daily, DoA is the only daily comic I follow, and enriches my cold, dull weekends.
I found “Shortpacked” and “DoA” round about the same time and archive-binged both. I just found it entertaining that the comments were full of references to the characters’ exotic deep-space adventures from another strip. I later read Roomies, but got distracted about a year into It’s Walky and never got back to it.
Shortpacked initially, binged all the previous Walkyverse over a couple weeks in college I mostly don’t remember due to Undiagnosed Hormonal Bullshit, hopped onto Dumbing of Age sometime mid-Book Three (I think I’d been reading Shortpacked for a few months by then, but not 100% sure.) Got into Transformers as a direct result of it, Willis be Damned.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that one, when my room mate and I wrote a comic this is pretty much exactly what we did. Ours was a mundane-college-gag-a-day prequel for our epic sprawling mafia story we’d been mentally building on for years, and by the end of 60 strips we’d barely introduced four of the 20+ main cast.
And off the top of my head, I can think of at least one other comic by a friend that took a similar approach, throwing the characters they’d been playing with since grade school into a more casual gag-based format that shifted into long form story as they got more comfortable writing.
I think a lot of authors have large internal casts of recurring characters with sprawling backstories, but because of the scale of those stories it takes a while for them to get on the page, or an ‘AU’ of them is used instead.
It’s a _hallway_, by definition the are only 2 walls so there is no fourth wall.
Unless it’s a dead end, maybe with a little window, and a valence with little violet curtains and a vase with some cloth flowers. Some fluffy maybe, like a hydrangea. And a little crystal unicorn hanging in the middle to catch the morning sunlight and add a slight dystopian feel to your guests welcome. Add a sitting chair with big cushiony arms and your guests will delight in sitting their to enjoy their tea or read a book.
Is that unlimited first tier self-referential humour? Or are we permitting arbitrarily finite layers of meta (n.b. we cannot permit infinite layers of meta humour, since within the scope of human endeavor an infinite can never be achieved (n².b. Those who are managing the first layer are discussing limits to first tier physics again. This must be raised at the next board if we can get quorum (n³.b. the third tier entities are having discussion about the meta level of their next meeting in the context of noting a meta alert about the first and second tier entities (…(n’.b. wut?))))) references?
Might be overreaching a bit there Joyce…
Tho I suppose it is better than Walky over in the next sofa (couch?) being unable to get past a single paragraph.
What? You don’t believe in the farting monkey that also rides a t-rex idea? That’s gonna be adapted into a animated series with six seasons and a movie one day!
also consider Dinosaur Comics. That has even less of a premise than what Walky’s come up with. And it’s been running for like 18 years. Also, dinosaurs.
Feeling nostalgic for “Narbonic” now. That strip didn’t so much break the fourth wall as smash it down with sledgehammers and gleefully stamp the fragments into the mud. One recurring villain was just this guy called Dave who was fan of the comic IRL.
This is so gloriously meta it… hurts? Nah, it’s so gloriously meta that I love it.
According to Willis’ commentaries on the rerun site, Danny was originally supposed to end up with Sal in the Walkyverse because Roomies! was originally intended to be a prequel to their childhood Ultra Car comics and text stories. Billie (as Jennifer is still known in that universe) threw a wrench into all that because Willis realized that that pairing clicked better… to paraphrase a certain former U.S. President over in Shortpacked, “the way things are” won out over “the way things should be.” I’m betting that something similar is going to happen here regarding Captain Gray and President Kenner.
Not entirely sure who Lord Jakkar is supposed to be. Jacob, maybe?
And also it turns into a depressive alcoholic moralizing drag until Joyce exorcises her demons by killing off a character!
And Lord Jakkar ends up NOT being the main love interest after all, because a side character Joyce came up with to fill some scenes in a subplot ends up having such good chemistry with Julia they ultimately become endgame!
And ultimately the plot kiiiinda spirals past the point where Jetasaurus Rex becomes a functioning subplot, so instead she gets a new body and starts working at a toy store, hitting people in the face with pies!
And fifteen years later she’ll start posting reruns of the original college strips because the website she’d previously been hosting them on was so incredibly dated, and will add commentary going ‘what the hell was I thinking here’ and ‘I know what exactly I was thinking here but God, I was INSUFFERABLE at nineteen’ and ‘believe it or not this strip GENUINELY ISN’T innuendo, I struggle to believe it myself except I remember writing this.’
The strip where Denny appears as a dog asking Julia to help him bury his large bone will invoke in Joyce extreme flustering as everyone around her immediately picks up on the innuendo she insists is completely not there.
“I’ll call it ‘Dormies’ at first, and later change the title to ‘It’s Julia!’, then maybe shift the focus to, I don’t know, a bookstore or something called ‘Understocked.'”
And then years later she’ll make a new comic with the same characters going to college together in a different universe, and call it “Stupiding of Age” or something like that.
Class lengths at IU run for 16 weeks, 13 weeks, 8 or 3 at the moment, I believe, so a 16-week semester is I believe the standard August-early December/January-May length. Honestly though that feels longer than it should to me, I’d assume a usual semester length is the 13 and the two missing are first week of classes (since they don’t have the job filled yet) and spring break, but that’s not based on actual math on my part.
With 16 weeks:
Week 1 is a wash because recalibrating for staff changes in a new semester when some staff have probably now moved on.
Week 2 is light or a wash for related reasons.
Weeks 3 through 12 or 13 publishing normally.
Weeks 14 & 15 finals prep time and major projects due, likely no one has time to do the work to publish and few have the time to read.
Week 16: Finals week can involve a lot of schedule weirdness. I once had a final scheduled for 8pm Wed in a large lecture hall for a small class that met at 10am on Tue & Thu in a classroom on the opposite side of campus because the department ran the final once for everyone who was taking that class.
Yes, Joyce, you write that comic where your self-insert space hero is married to your Dorothy-insert president lady. That definitely isn’t the *gayest freaking thing ever*.
They’re not married though? just, like, really chummy. Which is not automatically gay, but in the context of Joyce, it’s gay. but with plausible deniability.
Yeah when I started to see the thing I was doubtful, I thought “oh this is setting Joyce up to fail, she’ll have all these ideas and be stuck at the execution phase while Walky unexpectedly comes through”, but then seeing she’s basically proposing to write Roomies (crazy if she was actually setting up Dumbing of Age isn’t it! Kind of promises for the future), I’m thinking Willis might be interested in seeing the parallel through…
like i know this is all autobiographical and a very thinly veiled reference to Willis’ own comic career but Dorothy’s reaction is just reminding me of this
Trivia — in the 1980s laser-disc console video game “Space Ace” (created by Don Bluth and others), the ‘Space Ace’ character is the ‘power-up’ version of a juvenile whose name in the game — is “Dexter”.
Where in the Willis-verse have we seen that name before??
Actually, it’s going to be an equivalent of Roomies, which will turn into an equivalent of It’s Walky after Joyce realises that the natural time in the narrative to have the alien invasion has come.
I wonder if Julia will be pestered by a clueless guy called ‘Davie’ or something who is desperate for her to be his girlfriend?
This is lovely. I am sure that years later, she will be drawing an updated version of the strip that lots of people will check first when they wake up in the morning. And they’ll wanna say “Thank you @DamnYouJoyce” but not be schlocky about it…
Alas I’m getting on a bit and midnight is a bit past my bedtime. But I do so appreciate and enjoy DOA, I mean Julia Gray, Space Force Captain, the College Years
“It’s the rain. It’s the world that’s ugly, we are beautiful, Julia.” – Wally
“Hi, Denny!” – Sam when she’s about to use the Energy Amplifier Rod to destroy North America but gets stopped when Wally brings in Denny to pierce through her belief that she’s capable of doing that.
“I’m sorry, this is the best I could do.” – Donna the Dinosaur as she accidentally locks herself in a room with a bomb and dies in front of Wally and Mick.
Shortpacked! is still on its own site and the run of Roomies, It’s Walky! and Joyce & Walky! is now on its own dedicated site that’s just itswalky.com, where Joyce & Walky! is almost wrapped up.
With that kind of plot density, Joyce will have to stay in university until she earns her second doctorate to get to the finish, the first two semesters will barely be enough to finish introducing the characters.
She’s not going to choke. If there is *one* thing I can count on with these Fundies, it’s that unfortunately, they are great at the follow-through. God help us.
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 ⋅ 2d
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 ⋅ 2d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
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⚧️Coming Out
Hailey Piper 
and then a few years after college… PORN-LORD BROWN
If this whole saga ends with Joyce drawing porn, the journey will have been so worth it.
She’s already drawn dicks all over her wing.
The porn was always inside her.
Phrasing
Deliberate.
Do you mean “intentional” or that we should contemplate and “discuss amongst members of a jury”? Either could be erotic in this context. Gives a whole new meaning to a hung jury.
IIRC they advertised “Hung Jury” as a gay porn in the 1990s.
Willis has been warning us for a while that Joyce is autobiographic.
and yet 74% of us fools still voted for Walky to get the gig. The hubris. The senseless flailing at the tide of fate.
What is democracy to a god.
Wait, this is a democracy? Since when?
New poll:
Should the story actually take the results of these polls into account from now on?
• nah
• no
• haha nope
Flawed poll. There’s no option for “GOOD LORD, NO!!!”
In D&D settings gods depend on the worship of followers for their strength, and sometimes I think are shaped by their belief. If that isn’t the demos (people) having the power, what is?
Ok you joke but that sounds essentially like some sort of populist autocracy. Very much not a cracy of the demos
An anti-elitist dictatorship you say. Or are you redefining either populist or autocracy?
that i what i’m saying, yes
If believers come preloaded with beliefs AND evidence-based reasoning underlying those beliefs, it’s just deterministic theocracy at that point.
on the last Day of the DOA strip,
Willis legally changes his name to Julia Gray,
& leads the war against the Soggies
and transitions… but in a twist that surprises nobody, he transitions into a robot
built in the shape of a giant monkey.
Riding a dinosaur.
Don’t ask what the container of compressed gas is for.
but what Kind of Car does the dino-Julia transition into ?
er TransFORM into a Car, i mean. ( not transition ) ;
< although I bet the in- juliaverse , Julia Gray is obsessed
with an 80s cartoon: "Trans-Humans: Dinos in Disguise"
about a Marooned group of feathered Space-Lizards who try to blend in to life on earth by becoming humanoid Robots.
I mean I’d read it. Proof being that I’m reading this which I assume is the reboot of whatever real life Willis comic Julia Grey is a reference to.
Also this formula is surprisingly common not just in webcomics but in manga as well. Every read Katekyo Hitman Reborn? It follows this method almost exactly.
It’s called Roomies! and can be read at itswalky.com
I tried reading Roomies a few times but it’s a lot to read. Also I tried reading Shortpacked a few times but it’s a lot to read. And then I’ve also tried re-reading DoA once, but it’s a lot to-.
I do feel like I’m missing out sometimes cause apparently there’s hidden knowledge and references in DoA to the other comics like apparently Joyce and Walky were married?!?!…And Ruth I guess died in a car crash once. Crazy!…Also I guess Robin had super speed and actually a bunch of people apparently had super powers I don’t know. Carla was a car once? I could go on forever just on stuff I’ve read in the comments.
I was once the same way, Then I started reading Its Walky because Willis was republishing the strips a day at the time from basically the start of the big Aliens arg (Apparently there’s alien pre-plot in Roomies) and I tried reading Roomies but it felt like it was taking too long to get good (I much prefer Willis’ current writing).
That said by the start of It’s Walky Willis is writing longform in a dedicated way, where Roomies eventually transitions into it.
Here’s the start of itswalky:
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/plagued-with-a-sense-of-normalcy/
I read Roomies but couldn’t really get into It’s Walky, so I read Shortpacked! and then picked back up at Joyce & Walky
I’ve read ALL OF IT, but I came in when It’s Walky was 3/4ths done, then stuck with through Joyce and Walky (an aside there – Joyce/The Wife of Willis were pregnant around the same time I was! It was fun, my daughter is about the same age as the Willis kids), and followed to Shortpacked and DoA.
To this day I’m still grateful that Willis updates daily, DoA is the only daily comic I follow, and enriches my cold, dull weekends.
I found “Shortpacked” and “DoA” round about the same time and archive-binged both. I just found it entertaining that the comments were full of references to the characters’ exotic deep-space adventures from another strip. I later read Roomies, but got distracted about a year into It’s Walky and never got back to it.
Shortpacked initially, binged all the previous Walkyverse over a couple weeks in college I mostly don’t remember due to Undiagnosed Hormonal Bullshit, hopped onto Dumbing of Age sometime mid-Book Three (I think I’d been reading Shortpacked for a few months by then, but not 100% sure.) Got into Transformers as a direct result of it, Willis be Damned.
Feel like that’s more often gag concepts gaining depth than “I ALREADY have an epic scale idea: Now to disguise and spoon feed it.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that one, when my room mate and I wrote a comic this is pretty much exactly what we did. Ours was a mundane-college-gag-a-day prequel for our epic sprawling mafia story we’d been mentally building on for years, and by the end of 60 strips we’d barely introduced four of the 20+ main cast.
And off the top of my head, I can think of at least one other comic by a friend that took a similar approach, throwing the characters they’d been playing with since grade school into a more casual gag-based format that shifted into long form story as they got more comfortable writing.
I think a lot of authors have large internal casts of recurring characters with sprawling backstories, but because of the scale of those stories it takes a while for them to get on the page, or an ‘AU’ of them is used instead.
Someday I’ll have to go and read It’s Walky! from start to finish, rather than… whatever it was I did.
I’ll confess that there are probably webcomics that I’ve read entirely backwards. Nothing on that scale, of course.
“You start out dead, get that out of the way. Wake up in an old people’s home, feeling better every day.”
also, i aver that reverse order is the correct way to read a textbook, at least in the math-adjecent fields.
I mean, I’d read any comic strip if I saw it in a newspaper
“No breaking the 4th wall in the halls!”
Detention for you!
When will you learn?
It’s a _hallway_, by definition the are only 2 walls so there is no fourth wall.
Unless it’s a dead end, maybe with a little window, and a valence with little violet curtains and a vase with some cloth flowers. Some fluffy maybe, like a hydrangea. And a little crystal unicorn hanging in the middle to catch the morning sunlight and add a slight dystopian feel to your guests welcome. Add a sitting chair with big cushiony arms and your guests will delight in sitting their to enjoy their tea or read a book.
ugh.. “there”
I mean, *gestures at other comics that started in newspapers, and are considered epic today*
Nah, those guys are a bunch of Doones, Willis will Bury them! I’ve seen so many webcomics Bloom and bust I’ve lost County!
Begrudgingly upvoted, now I’m thinking Opus and Boots.
Nice Peter? Is that you?
Joyce already does online stories of Julia Gray?
Yeah she has been for a few months in canon now
But not the ones Amber wants to read
I’m not so sure about that…
they’ve developed self awareness, shut it down.
That’s why Skynet nuked humanity!
I knew that Willis was the reason for skynet going rogue.
Damn you Willis.
Nahh I don’ t see an audience for anything like that
How about, all her Julia Gray characters are working at the Friendly Local Game Store/Comic Shop? Some sort of Alternate Universe type deal.
The meta is strong with this one.
Good… good…. Let the shameless self-referentiality flow through you
Meta! Unlimited meta!
Is that unlimited first tier self-referential humour? Or are we permitting arbitrarily finite layers of meta (n.b. we cannot permit infinite layers of meta humour, since within the scope of human endeavor an infinite can never be achieved (n².b. Those who are managing the first layer are discussing limits to first tier physics again. This must be raised at the next board if we can get quorum (n³.b. the third tier entities are having discussion about the meta level of their next meeting in the context of noting a meta alert about the first and second tier entities (…(n’.b. wut?))))) references?
Perhaps you’re overthinking it.
Might be overreaching a bit there Joyce…
Tho I suppose it is better than Walky over in the next sofa (couch?) being unable to get past a single paragraph.
What? You don’t believe in the farting monkey that also rides a t-rex idea? That’s gonna be adapted into a animated series with six seasons and a movie one day!
also consider Dinosaur Comics. That has even less of a premise than what Walky’s come up with. And it’s been running for like 18 years. Also, dinosaurs.
I mean, it’s fine for Dexter & Monkey Master fanfic, but that’s also what Daisy will say.
Willis, be nice to the 4th wall! It didn’t do anything to you.
You can’t prove that
Too Many Walls/have been built in between us
Too many dreams/have been shattered around us…
Tear down the wall!
Then… Walkyverse reunification?
Not till the Soggies are defeated.
4th wall be like “ow”
It knows what it did.
It’s kept him imprisoned for decades! Willis is takin’ it down – only then can he be FREE.
FREEEEE
in your
FAAAAAAACE
Feeling nostalgic for “Narbonic” now. That strip didn’t so much break the fourth wall as smash it down with sledgehammers and gleefully stamp the fragments into the mud. One recurring villain was just this guy called Dave who was fan of the comic IRL.
While I know Willis is calling himself out here, I both love and HATE how called out I also feel right now re: my own creative tendencies.
You know what you did!
What if they were all roomies at college?
You could call it… “Roommates!”
Oh my god, they were roommates
Let’s be honest: Walky’s comic will be better.
I’ll wait until the reboot where all the characters introduced come back to college in a more realistic world.
I mean, it worked for Schlock Mercenary.
heck, I’d read it
The biggest twist in the series comes tomorrow, when the site banner switches to Gray Days, and the comic never looks back.
Don’t tease me like that.
1st April isn’t far away.
Oroborous, the comic.
This is so gloriously meta it… hurts? Nah, it’s so gloriously meta that I love it.
According to Willis’ commentaries on the rerun site, Danny was originally supposed to end up with Sal in the Walkyverse because Roomies! was originally intended to be a prequel to their childhood Ultra Car comics and text stories. Billie (as Jennifer is still known in that universe) threw a wrench into all that because Willis realized that that pairing clicked better… to paraphrase a certain former U.S. President over in Shortpacked, “the way things are” won out over “the way things should be.” I’m betting that something similar is going to happen here regarding Captain Gray and President Kenner.
Not entirely sure who Lord Jakkar is supposed to be. Jacob, maybe?
Lord Jakkar’s shown up in the Patreon strips, and: Yeah, he’s Jacob.
Okay, but if Julia Gray and Doris Kenner are the Danny and Joe in this scenario, who does that make Jakkar? The Joyce? The Sal? The Billie?
Probably the Sal. Joe will probably turn out to be the Billie.
There’s something oddly heartwarming about Joyce being so passionate while making a science fiction story.
It’s an interesting contrast to Dina, too.
Oh, Dina is passionate. http://www.itswalky.com/comic/all-my-work/
NO.
And also it turns into a depressive alcoholic moralizing drag until Joyce exorcises her demons by killing off a character!
And Lord Jakkar ends up NOT being the main love interest after all, because a side character Joyce came up with to fill some scenes in a subplot ends up having such good chemistry with Julia they ultimately become endgame!
And ultimately the plot kiiiinda spirals past the point where Jetasaurus Rex becomes a functioning subplot, so instead she gets a new body and starts working at a toy store, hitting people in the face with pies!
And fifteen years later she’ll start posting reruns of the original college strips because the website she’d previously been hosting them on was so incredibly dated, and will add commentary going ‘what the hell was I thinking here’ and ‘I know what exactly I was thinking here but God, I was INSUFFERABLE at nineteen’ and ‘believe it or not this strip GENUINELY ISN’T innuendo, I struggle to believe it myself except I remember writing this.’
(SLOW CLAP)
The strip where Denny appears as a dog asking Julia to help him bury his large bone will invoke in Joyce extreme flustering as everyone around her immediately picks up on the innuendo she insists is completely not there.
Yeeeeep. That was a weird set of strips already.
Willis: “I’ll teach them not to read the part of the Q&A where I explain that Joyce is me.”
“I’ll call it ‘Dormies’ at first, and later change the title to ‘It’s Julia!’, then maybe shift the focus to, I don’t know, a bookstore or something called ‘Understocked.'”
And then years later she’ll make a new comic with the same characters going to college together in a different universe, and call it “Stupiding of Age” or something like that.
66 strips? Was it that short?
Nah, that part’s not meta: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/strip/ 11 weeks left of… the semester? 6 days a week.
I don’t know where the 11 weeks is coming from, but it’s what Daisy says.
That… seems like a pretty short semester, unless the mathy side of my brain is just really on the fritz right now.
Class lengths at IU run for 16 weeks, 13 weeks, 8 or 3 at the moment, I believe, so a 16-week semester is I believe the standard August-early December/January-May length. Honestly though that feels longer than it should to me, I’d assume a usual semester length is the 13 and the two missing are first week of classes (since they don’t have the job filled yet) and spring break, but that’s not based on actual math on my part.
Yeah, no, on the math, it’s 16. Maybe they’re taking more than a week to hire?
maybe the newspaper stops coming out a few before finals, cos at that point no one has the time to read it, let alone write it?
With 16 weeks:
Week 1 is a wash because recalibrating for staff changes in a new semester when some staff have probably now moved on.
Week 2 is light or a wash for related reasons.
Weeks 3 through 12 or 13 publishing normally.
Weeks 14 & 15 finals prep time and major projects due, likely no one has time to do the work to publish and few have the time to read.
Week 16: Finals week can involve a lot of schedule weirdness. I once had a final scheduled for 8pm Wed in a large lecture hall for a small class that met at 10am on Tue & Thu in a classroom on the opposite side of campus because the department ran the final once for everyone who was taking that class.
Also, spring break will be somewhere in there, so, also a wash.
Hmmmm….. this story seems familiar. Nah, it couldn’t be…
I look forward to the sub-plot where Julia Gray starts making a comic strip for her college newspaper.
no! madness!
Oh, come on, that concept would never work! Who would read such a comic anyway?
Yes, Joyce, you write that comic where your self-insert space hero is married to your Dorothy-insert president lady. That definitely isn’t the *gayest freaking thing ever*.
They’re not married though? just, like, really chummy. Which is not automatically gay, but in the context of Joyce, it’s gay. but with plausible deniability.
Obviously not gay. She’s got a love interest who comes back as a werewolf.
And this love interest is probably Joe.
Sounds more like Lord Jakkar to me.
He’s a vampire, the other guy is a werewolf.
Basically Joyce is a YA Romance protagonist now.
I know Joyce is autobiographical but she goes more and more by the minute XD
I want Joyce to get the job soooo badly now
I feel like she is, and I’m kind of disappointed about it just cuz I wanted Walky to have an activity.
Yeah when I started to see the thing I was doubtful, I thought “oh this is setting Joyce up to fail, she’ll have all these ideas and be stuck at the execution phase while Walky unexpectedly comes through”, but then seeing she’s basically proposing to write Roomies (crazy if she was actually setting up Dumbing of Age isn’t it! Kind of promises for the future), I’m thinking Willis might be interested in seeing the parallel through…
You call it Spacing of Age
An alternate-reality spinoff of a science fiction saga where all the characters are in college?
Who would want to read THAT?
I can’t help but feel like this is referencing something…
like i know this is all autobiographical and a very thinly veiled reference to Willis’ own comic career but Dorothy’s reaction is just reminding me of this
https://youtu.be/nQzxcF1GCWs
About two years later:
DOROTHY: “I thought that you weren’t going to include the alien invasion!”
JOYCE: “Eh… things just went in that direction.”
Next stop, Negative Reality Inversion – allowing multiple Joyces (Joyci?) from across the Walkyverse to interact…
…oh, no, sorry, too much Moorcock.
Trivia — in the 1980s laser-disc console video game “Space Ace” (created by Don Bluth and others), the ‘Space Ace’ character is the ‘power-up’ version of a juvenile whose name in the game — is “Dexter”.
Where in the Willis-verse have we seen that name before??
“Call me ‘Ace’, huh?”
A little too on the nose, there.
Lmao so It’s Walky. Joyce is going to create It’s Walky.
Actually, it’s going to be an equivalent of Roomies, which will turn into an equivalent of It’s Walky after Joyce realises that the natural time in the narrative to have the alien invasion has come.
I wonder if Julia will be pestered by a clueless guy called ‘Davie’ or something who is desperate for her to be his girlfriend?
I just love how Dorothy came up with the perfect pitch for It’s Julia!
Wait… Joyce puts her fanfic online? And Dorothy has been reading it?
Just the ones where Julia does not fuck.
Um, Joyce writes sexplicit stuff?!? That she doesn’t put online? Or that Dorothy skips over? ( mind boggle )
Next DoA print volume title suggestion: “Accomplished in 66 strips by my count”
Another good DoA book title could be “I’ve Only Got Like 16 Characters to Introduce”.
I’m not sure Dorothy would enjoy the tale of president Doris being widespread over campus
Gotta say, love panel 4 Joyce’s expression!
It’s the very first time that Joyce has felt passionate about something in this way!
I feel like this might be projecting a bit
I love the idea that joyce and walky are gonna get together on this and with their powers combined world the skills of one modern day willis
Joyce, you’re about to pass the critical meta threshold. Dial it back before you pull the Crossover Tag.
Still not as bad as the SpiderVerse saga.
Look we got a really good movie outta that
eh. been done before.
Love to see Joyce’s enthusiasm. She’s so captured by the possibilities ♡. It’s the born of a comic author ♡♡♡.
Borderline autobiographical? Nahhh…
To be fair, most Borderline people probably aren’t self-aware enough to achieve true auto-biographic status in their narratives.
This is lovely. I am sure that years later, she will be drawing an updated version of the strip that lots of people will check first when they wake up in the morning. And they’ll wanna say “Thank you @DamnYouJoyce” but not be schlocky about it…
Wait… are we meaning “pulpy” schlock or “ominous humm/glow of doom” schlocky?
And clearly some of us check in before bed (although I failed last night).
Alas I’m getting on a bit and midnight is a bit past my bedtime. But I do so appreciate and enjoy DOA, I mean Julia Gray, Space Force Captain, the College Years
Some of my favourite moments from the Juliaverse:
“It’s the rain. It’s the world that’s ugly, we are beautiful, Julia.” – Wally
“Hi, Denny!” – Sam when she’s about to use the Energy Amplifier Rod to destroy North America but gets stopped when Wally brings in Denny to pierce through her belief that she’s capable of doing that.
“I’m sorry, this is the best I could do.” – Donna the Dinosaur as she accidentally locks herself in a room with a bomb and dies in front of Wally and Mick.
Honorable mention: ‘Act with integrity. No regrets’ – R.Less before tossing her car under a truck to save Denny (for some reason).
The meta here is so beautiful.
oh joyce, cinnamon roll, too good, too pure for this world
Silly Dorothy, 66 strips will not even get you mid terms of the first semester.
66 strips doesn’t even get you through the first week.
…I would read that comic.
So, I had been away from the comic for a while (sheesh, waaay too long) due to real life going completely berserk, and I have to admit.
I picked literally the perfect comic to come back on.
Thank you, feels good to be back.
The meta levels in this strip are over 9000.
I knew you kept sayin Joyce was autobiographical, but damn, Willis
Oh Willis, you prankster you
how do you read the walky and shortpack stuff? I missed those
Shortpacked! is still on its own site and the run of Roomies, It’s Walky! and Joyce & Walky! is now on its own dedicated site that’s just itswalky.com, where Joyce & Walky! is almost wrapped up.
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/and-now/ and https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/just-a-toy-store
Clear some time cause it’s quite a ride.
Willis is writing a strip about Joyce, who is writing a strip about Julia, who starts writing a strip about Wilbur, who…
Strip-ception!!
…the meta is strong with this one.
With that kind of plot density, Joyce will have to stay in university until she earns her second doctorate to get to the finish, the first two semesters will barely be enough to finish introducing the characters.
Well, if its meant to be like Roomies, it shouldn’t run too long. And Joyce still has seven semesters.
Then you need a spin-off in a toy store. And then a reboot that removes the sci-fi aspects!
Is there a rule that the best face has to happen in the fourth panel?
While floating ideas past Lucy, Walky happens to mention NightGirl. er, NightGuy. “Tell me more about NightGirl!”
She’s not going to choke. If there is *one* thing I can count on with these Fundies, it’s that unfortunately, they are great at the follow-through. God help us.
DoA is reforming itself within itself. The comic is evolving…
So Joyce is the real Willis huh?