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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
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?
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
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...
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!
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.
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.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
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.
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.
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.
Little Tiny Things
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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?
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My favorite is students who do everything in red pen. I use a red pen. If it’s in red, they copied it from me, so they get no credit. Why don’t my students like me?
I’m confused. So you get back a test, and on it is an essay written in the student’s handwriting, and because it’s written in red you assume you wrote it?
He means he wont count their answer because red pen is a holy artifact that only teachers may wield. Its a status symbol, like a catholic rosary or a turban. You stick it in your shirt pocket and it tells people “I am a teacher. I control your social life.”
Wow, for some reason I thought Willis’s style hadn’t evolved much since starting DoA. I didn’t notice how much extra badassery was in the new comics until going back to the old ones!
Nah, I think we’ve made a bunch of progress since the beginning. Sure, we probably won’t see her disowning her religion any time soon, but it’s important that she begins to confront the contradictions in her own and/or her parents’ belief systems and come to her own conclusions on the matter.
A lot of super-religious people are Jesus first, America second. They don’t really pay much attention to American politics and rules, because they answer to a higher power than that of secular government.
Oh I know there was a joke going on, it’s just that KingMabel’s went in a completely different direction from the previous conversation. If that was the intention, my apologies for letting it go over my head.
It’s okay, but about the “talking to someone in the room” thing I’m sure Billie is half-sleep in a slight drunken haze, and Joyce was waking her up earlier to talk to her favorite rebel.
INRI = Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum — the Latin phrase meaning “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”. This is the “blasphemy” for which he was crucified; Pontius Pilate ordered this to be posted on the cross.
Joyce is so cute It’s tough standing up to your folks some times. She needs to start small. I’m enjoying how Joyce and Sal actually are friendly-ish in this world.
I didn’t think TETRIS was necessarily violent; but it is of Russian origin so if Joyce were to start playing that quite her parents would obviously think she had become a Godless COMMUNIST!!
The Dark Angels are on a tight schedule there if Exterminatus has started. Even with Terminator Armor and a Crux Rosarius I wouldn’t want to be on that planet!
I think Sal assumed Joyce would be too horrified to continue the conversation. She’s nice enough to not want Joyce’s head to explode with any more serious suggestions. (Or just doesn’t want to clean up the mess.)
Joyce has been more rebellious to her parents than Sal has. Sal is still too scared to do anything but present that catholic school girl persona to them. Joyce at least directly confronted her parents.
We’ve seen Sal interact with her parents exactly once. We don’t know the full history there.
What we do know is that Sal committed a robbery and her parents sent her away for four years in punishment, that in the present even pretending to be the good little schoolgirl that she thinks they want her to be can’t get her more attention than a few disappointed words from her father and zero acknowledgement from her mum.
Knowing Sal, it’s my guess that she’s tried to confront them before, and it didn’t go well. But we don’t know either way.
That’s not really fair to say, since Joyce and Sal were raised in entirely different circumstances. Joyce is able to confront her parents because she has confidence that no matter what happens, they will always love her; Sal, on the other hand, is fighting to keep hold of what little affection her parents have left for her. Would you risk something so important that if you failed, you believed that your parents would completely disown you? I highly doubt it.
Wouldn’t you be nervous your parents decided they couldn’t deal with you and sent you to live out-of-state at a Catholic boarding school for the rest of your dependent/underage years? Then didn’t help you move into college, didn’t visit you at college, and in every respect acted like they’d written you off.
Being isolated from your parents for the entirety of your teenage years is pretty traumatic, I’d guess.
Joyce’s rebellion was to genuinely stand up for something in which she believes, her friendship with Dorothy. Wrongheaded as they are most of the time, her parents were able to recognize that and respect it.
Sal’s “rebellion,” on the other hand, is a paint-by-numbers set of behaviors that serve no purpose other than to say “Hey, I’m a rebel.”
Sal isn’t rebelling, past her presumably cry for attention crimes in her early teen years. Notice that her motorcycle riding, leather-wearing, smoking ways are her NORMAL behaviours. When she goes to see her parents, the way she presents herself is a 180. She’s neat, she dressed conservatively, she’s smiling and friendly. How can you call her rebelling?
Don’t think so. If you look back at the “throat-hug” strip – http://www.dumbingofage.com/comics/2013-10-24-noon.png – she’s already showing a modest amount of cleavage in the first panel, before Sal is even fully awake.
So, this is probably (along with the other Walkyverse comics), my 2nd favorite series out there. I love it.
What I most love is Joyce. I know dozens of Joyces well, personally, and am familiar with hundreds… but I know very few who have the courage to honor their parents with the strength and conviction Joyce did.
She didn’t rebel; she was given two mandates from them. The first is her Christianity, and I find it unlikely her parents ever told her anything other than “Love God first.” Joyce defended her position with Scripture, and without taking it out of context, no less. Moreover, she did it spontaneously (I *LOVED* the question mark in her Matthew citation).
Sal rebels from her parents, ineffectively. She says, “Yes,” but does “No.” Joyce says, “No,” but does “Yes.” The fact that Joyce doesn’t realize this is a part of why I love her: she is humble in spirit. If every Christian– particularly every public Christian– were like Joyce, I suspect the world would be a much, much better place. Thank you, David, for sharing her with us.
I think people are being harsh on Sal here. Joyce and her parents engaged in a dialogue. That’s a social contract, requiring mutual respect and a willingness to consider each other’s point of view. Sal’s parents just ignore her. At this point, she’s not so much rebelling as getting on with her life as best she can.
People are going to mock Joyce, but it’s hard not to respect someone who believes so sincerely in something. I like that she’s trying to make another friend, even with someone with so alien a mindset.
SPQR is an abbreviation meaning Senatus Populusque Romanus which was a Latin phrase emblazoned on the standards of the Roman legions at the time of the Roman Empire and indicating that the legions were making their conquests at the will of “The Senate and the People of Rome”.
We might have missed some part of what Jocelyne described as a “heated argument”, or Joyce thinks the parents were angry because she was. From what I could see the strongest feelings they expressed were disgust and hate at meeting someone openly Atheist.
If they rarely express anything other than love and support, though, that could have felt like a major argument to Joyce, though. I had a boss like that. Once she apologized for getting snippy in a way that wouldn’t have registered with anyone if I or anyone else in the office had done it, but on her it was really noticeable.
Based on the little prayer after first expressing disapproval of Dorothy, I think it’s pretty clear that they take the passive-aggressive approach to anger.
I understand it’s God’s unpronounceable name, translated from Hebrew where it’s spelled with four characters that sound something like “yod hud ved hod”. It may be based on a quote from God in the Bible where someone asks who he is and he says “I am what I am!” in a voice like thunder.
Which I remember mostly because it’s such a ridiculous statement. In context, it’s clear the writer is trying to convey the might and majesty and absolute divine authority of God; a self-assured claim based on its own self-evidentness. Of course God is God because God is God and you’re a fool to even think of questioning Him or His credentials. But if you don’t buy into this cult of personality God’s selling it’s the indignant, entitled, inarticulate, self-absorbed cry of an infant who assumes he’s the center of the universe to such a degree that he lacks the conceptual tools to actually explain why this should be the case when he’s called on it.
And that’s the story of one of God’s seven thousand names.
Seriously, aren’t all gods, by definition, supposedly beyond the ability of mere mortals to doubt their validity, ascertain their intents, or question their actions? And I note that like a lot of older Catholics you capitalize the pronouns referring to God (His, Him), so I wonder just which side of that fence you are on – or at least started on.
Actually, most gods in historical religions are incredibly fallible: getting into all sorts of stupid drama, being dicks for no reason, and sometimes even being called out on it by mortals. I believe Plato (or some other Greek philosopher) once said that the gods shouldn’t be revered, simply because they were all terrible people.
The Hebrew concept of a single, all powerful deity with no defining form that made no mistakes and was supposed to be viewed entirely with awe and fear was very novel for it’s time.
Personally, I subscribe to Vlad Taltos’s philosophy that when a god does something reprehensible, it’s still reprehensible.
And pretty much all gods are dicks. I have trouble thinking of any exceptions at all; Yahweh certainly isn’t it. He’s notable mainly for the followers that insist that when He does something reprehensible, it’s just because He loves us so much, why do we keep making Him hurt us? He doesn’t want to have to hurt us, just sometimes we make Him so angry…
The Greek gods were universally dicks, and unapologetic about it, because They’re gods, whatcha gonna do about it? Athena’s one of the better of the lot, and even She turned Arachne into a spider for the sin of claiming to be a better weaver than Her and being able to back it up.
Baldr’s the least dickish god I can think of, and He’s dead.
Hesphaetus. That poor guy was born ugly (possibly because all the greek gods were a bunch of inbreds) so they threw him down a mountain. He’s still the smartest of the bunch (see above brackeds; inbreeding).
Even Hephaestus had his moments: dude got a bit rapey with Athena when she rejected his advances one time, but she fortunately kicked his ass (incidentally, Heph “letting off some steam” after the incident indirectly caused the birth of king Ericthonus of Athens).
Hestia is probably the best of the bunch, as she was just a sweet old lady who wisely avoided getting involved in anything on Olympus.
Quetzalcoatl is probably one of the nicest gods I can name, even if he was from one of the least pleasant religions.
Thor isn’t that bad, at least if you’re a human. (Zeus help you if you’re a troll.) He may be careless with his thunderbolts and really not very bright, but he’s loyal and honest and kind to those weaker than him. Which is everyone. God of strength, thunder, rain and – according to a few of the stories – “friendship with humans”. Depending on which stories you read he’s either Loki’s half brother or blood rite nephew, but either way there has to be something deeply incorruptible about him to still be a good guy with that influence in his family.
Also I think he could only lift Mjölnr as long as he’s pure of heart, or maybe that’s just in the Marvel comics.
Thank you for asking. I’m a Humanist; I’m on the side of humanity over gods. Although I try to not tell anyone what to think, and so I like to keep my opinions to myself when discussing religion. Probably more than I need.
And I capitalize the pronouns for God only when I describe how the authors of the bible see him. I think it makes a nice subtle contrast between the two viewpoints represented in my post, but then I may be the only one who enjoys uselessly playing with grammar that way.
That “aren’t you proud of me” part may just be a joke, but if it’s not, Joyce is kind of overestimating her relationship to Sal! They did get along fine in the past, with Sal agreeing to do a thing Joyce wanted her to do, but she kind of wanted to do that anyway and Joyce just gave her the persistent push. This isn’t unusual, though, and so probably insignificant.
“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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Wow, what a rebel.
Joyce’s next rebellious act: buy a motorcycle.
No, she’s going to not do her homework.
On purpose.
Next step:
Do her math exam in pen. A green pen.
My favorite is students who do everything in red pen. I use a red pen. If it’s in red, they copied it from me, so they get no credit. Why don’t my students like me?
Never has anyone’s Mike Gravatar been more appropriate.
Cuz they are students :p
I’m confused. So you get back a test, and on it is an essay written in the student’s handwriting, and because it’s written in red you assume you wrote it?
If so: study typography.
Everyone’s handwriting will become illegible by comparison. Problem solved.
He means he wont count their answer because red pen is a holy artifact that only teachers may wield. Its a status symbol, like a catholic rosary or a turban. You stick it in your shirt pocket and it tells people “I am a teacher. I control your social life.”
Here’s a radical concept: You can buy pens in other colors too.
I suggest a hot pink glitter pen and a note that this is what happens when you use red.
Then everyone will use red, because HOT PINK GLITTER PEN!!!
On the back of a motorcycle.
She’s going to convince the professor to give her an extension on homework using bible verses.
Nah, she’s too timid for a motorcycle. A scooter, however….
Joyce on a scooter would be AMAZING.
much reble
so dangerous
wow much no complacency
Wow. I feel like we’ve gone all the way back to the beginning of the series.
1 step forward and 600 steps back.
To be more specific, we’ve gone back to the 9th comic. I counted.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/high/
That’s exactly the one I was thinking of, but I couldn’t have been bothered to look for it.
Wow, for some reason I thought Willis’s style hadn’t evolved much since starting DoA. I didn’t notice how much extra badassery was in the new comics until going back to the old ones!
Nah, I think we’ve made a bunch of progress since the beginning. Sure, we probably won’t see her disowning her religion any time soon, but it’s important that she begins to confront the contradictions in her own and/or her parents’ belief systems and come to her own conclusions on the matter.
Shouldn’t it be an eagle riding a mermaid, you know, ‘Merica!
It’s Joyce. It should be a pony riding another pony.
Wait…
all riding a motorcycle.
The Bill of Rights punching out the Gettysburg Address.
No it should be a cross. Or 7 of them. I hear girls with several crosses are really friendly
Only few believe in the MEGACROSS.
An eagle riding a mermaid riding Sonic the Hedgehog, all of whom are genuflecting before a cross and weeping.
A lot of super-religious people are Jesus first, America second. They don’t really pay much attention to American politics and rules, because they answer to a higher power than that of secular government.
A mermaid would have trouble staying on a flying eagle, but tattoos were never much for logic.
Huh, maybe Billie isn’t there?
Maybe nobody is there. Maybe Joyce was talking to JESUS.
Strange. In my Christian denomination, Jesus isn’t a half-black rebel with boobs….
But I’m open to convert…
That would certainly be interesting, but that’s not what I meant. We were talking about last comic, where Joyce was apparently talking to someone.
And KingMabel was making a joke, it happens sometimes. Don’t worry about it, you’ll get used to it after a while.
Oh I know there was a joke going on, it’s just that KingMabel’s went in a completely different direction from the previous conversation. If that was the intention, my apologies for letting it go over my head.
It’s okay, but about the “talking to someone in the room” thing I’m sure Billie is half-sleep in a slight drunken haze, and Joyce was waking her up earlier to talk to her favorite rebel.
She’s also under Sal’s covers. They were cuddling.
Sal nuzzled up to Billie in her sleep. She was too scared to move.
Major slippage there Joyce.
Not really, she’s still herself. It would be weirder if she renounced her faith as soon as she rebelled against her parents. Less healthy, probably.
The healthy part is debatable, but her doing that would make absolutely no sense, so yeah it would be weirder.
Baby steps.
Prove it.
Show me your heart!
As in the Aztec sense? Sounds messy, and unsanitary.
The Thuggee way is somewhat cleaner, though it takes a bit.
Joyce should be the new face of the Rule Abiding Rebel.
She’s a rebel with a cause. Her cause? Rebellion.
Rebel Rebel!
you’ve torn your dress
Your face is a mess.
I read this in the Hamburgler’s voice.
You’ve ruined that song for me. Or made it more awesome, I’m not entirely sure.
She just doesn’t get it does she?
Yeah, Sal totally missed the point there.
God bless you, Joyce. God bless you to Heaven.
Amen sir!
Not “INRI?”
INRI = Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum — the Latin phrase meaning “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”. This is the “blasphemy” for which he was crucified; Pontius Pilate ordered this to be posted on the cross.
Could the english translation be “Jesus Nasasaurus Rex” please?
That still has a bit of Latin in it. A full translation would be: Jesus, king of the Nazareth lizards.
Joyce is so cute
It’s tough standing up to your folks some times. She needs to start small. I’m enjoying how Joyce and Sal actually are friendly-ish in this world.
…Willis, you know you have to put that design on a shirt, right? Or at least on Dumblr?
A topless sal design? Only if we get topless Walky shirts.
I don’t like dudes but we gotta keep it fair.
Tastefully topless, covering her chest with her motorcycle gloves.
I’d buy that for a dollar.
I know, right? The comments here can be totes sexist.
How do topless shirts work? Wouldn’t that be a shoulderpiece with a miniskirt?
Nope, she doesn’t. Oy vey! But give her time; maybe she will.
Quick everyone! Join Joyce in an impromptu breast exam for tumors!
Nope. Nothing but my obscene man-boobs…
:C…
Here. Have a bro. It gives you all the support that moobs require. You’ll feel better, I promise.
It’s not a bro, it’s a manssiere!
You and I shall have words at the Festivus pole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsyE2rCW71o
I hope Jesus remembered to use a sterile needle.
No worries man, the J-Man is awesome with tattooing the heart. Love his work.
LOL
How can you dislike either of them?
Now,…Is Billie going to resolve her TA issues?
What TA issues? Not enough kissing?
That her roommate is banging their TA instead of her?
Baby steps.
Joyce’s next step in her rebellious phase is to STAY UP PAST MIDNIGHT.
She’ll totally show up 5 minutes late for her classes and play violent video games!!!!
And then she’ll do THIS!
OMfG
She’ll start out stealing songs, then she’ll be robbing liquor stores and selling crack and running over school kids with her car!
It’s a slippery slope.
She’s selling crack WHILE she’s running over the kids.
Whoa, five-years-ago Sweetheart looks so different.
Violent video games…like TETRIS.
I didn’t think TETRIS was necessarily violent; but it is of Russian origin so if Joyce were to start playing that quite her parents would obviously think she had become a Godless COMMUNIST!!
Now, Joyce. To be more of a rebel, you must be sal and sleep topless. But remember you need to buy some gloves, and never take them off.
yes..either mickey mouse or michael jackson inspired…
Two rebels sighted in the dorm room. Ordering bombardment. Hold the Imperial Guard on stand-by.
For the Emperor.
One of them is what the locals call a “Walkerton”
Commence Exterminatus. The Emperor Protects.
On of them is a Fallen, call in the Dark Angels
Ah, shit. We need Primus for this one.
The Dark Angels are on a tight schedule there if Exterminatus has started. Even with Terminator Armor and a Crux Rosarius I wouldn’t want to be on that planet!
HERESY
Wow, Jesus does some awesome tatoo work.
She could get a fish symbol tattooed on her left boob to seal the deal….just saying.
.. Really… this is the funniest DOA Ever.
LOL at Sal. She thinks that getting a tattoo is an act of rebellion.
Calling it an act of rebellion sounds better than calling it an act of douchebaggery.
It can be, it’s just not an effective act of rebellion.
I think Sal assumed Joyce would be too horrified to continue the conversation. She’s nice enough to not want Joyce’s head to explode with any more serious suggestions. (Or just doesn’t want to clean up the mess.)
The tat Jesus gave her says ” Love others like I love you. P.S. Dinosaurs totally had feathers.”
Oh Joyce
Tattoo’s on the heart are expensive, not to mention painful.
Joyce has been more rebellious to her parents than Sal has. Sal is still too scared to do anything but present that catholic school girl persona to them. Joyce at least directly confronted her parents.
We’ve seen Sal interact with her parents exactly once. We don’t know the full history there.
What we do know is that Sal committed a robbery and her parents sent her away for four years in punishment, that in the present even pretending to be the good little schoolgirl that she thinks they want her to be can’t get her more attention than a few disappointed words from her father and zero acknowledgement from her mum.
Knowing Sal, it’s my guess that she’s tried to confront them before, and it didn’t go well. But we don’t know either way.
Joyce’s method of rebellion is the kind that actually works, strangely enough.
I know, right? Sal acts tough, but she’s cowardly when it matters.
That’s not really fair to say, since Joyce and Sal were raised in entirely different circumstances. Joyce is able to confront her parents because she has confidence that no matter what happens, they will always love her; Sal, on the other hand, is fighting to keep hold of what little affection her parents have left for her. Would you risk something so important that if you failed, you believed that your parents would completely disown you? I highly doubt it.
It’s not particularly important if it requires living a lie.
Maybe not to you.
Wouldn’t you be nervous your parents decided they couldn’t deal with you and sent you to live out-of-state at a Catholic boarding school for the rest of your dependent/underage years? Then didn’t help you move into college, didn’t visit you at college, and in every respect acted like they’d written you off.
Being isolated from your parents for the entirety of your teenage years is pretty traumatic, I’d guess.
They’re shit parents, who cares what they think at this point? They’re not worth groveling over.
Joyce’s rebellion was to genuinely stand up for something in which she believes, her friendship with Dorothy. Wrongheaded as they are most of the time, her parents were able to recognize that and respect it.
Sal’s “rebellion,” on the other hand, is a paint-by-numbers set of behaviors that serve no purpose other than to say “Hey, I’m a rebel.”
Sal isn’t rebelling, past her presumably cry for attention crimes in her early teen years. Notice that her motorcycle riding, leather-wearing, smoking ways are her NORMAL behaviours. When she goes to see her parents, the way she presents herself is a 180. She’s neat, she dressed conservatively, she’s smiling and friendly. How can you call her rebelling?
She’s rebelling against their idea that she’s a … rebel?
I just realized the irony that Joyce stood up to her parents and Sal didn’t.
…whoa.
CALL THE PAPERS!
Joyce had something to fight for or lose, Sal didn’t. Different situations.
Also Joyce was already on good terms with her parents and had lived with them up to four weeks ago. Sal’s parents barely acknowledged her.
I would argue it’s harder to stand up to people you would normally get along with. There’s more to lose by taking a risk.
Sal could have had dignity.
careful Joyce was chocked for waking Sal up, you don’t want to upset her… do you
I can’t upset her because she’s a fictional character.
Oh, Joyce, I’ve a suggestion for that heart tattoo. “Do not back up. Severe tire damage.”
I made a character in Skyrim named Joyce who vaguely resembles her. She’s the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood and a Vampire Lord.
THIS IS WHAT REBELLING AGAINST YOUR PARENTS DOES!
I dunno about a tattoo, but Joyce should totally get a motorcycle.
http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii125/chels922/imaloner.jpg
Joyce is a female Peewee Herman…seems legit
A tattoo on one’s heart would be pretty hardcore. Also, possibly fatal.
Hey, at least Joyce is taking baby steps. Baby’s first rebellion.
And no one puts Baby in a figurative corner.
“you see this tatoo right here? Jesus made it”
She had to get it on the inside or her Dad would totally kill her! She had to get *wasted* ’cause it hurt like eight bongoes on a bongo boat!
Has no one else noticed Joyce has a whole nother button unbuttoned on her shirt today? And that there’s a micrometer of cleavage showing?
She IS a rebel.
It doesn’t seem more unbuttoned to previous comics.
Maybe Willis is just drawing her with more detail?
Different shirt; she’s normally in short sleeves.
And she has been shown with a small amount of cleavage; check this version of Joyce that appeared on the most recent cast poster. Joyce was also displaying a similar amount of cleavage when she wore the yellow dress on the pizza date with Joe and Mike.
It does lolk more unbuttoned to me.
Hubba hubba!
if Joyce is an autobiographical character, does that mean I am attracted to Willis?
Yes, especially compared to http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/high/
It could just have come undone from the throat hug.
Don’t think so. If you look back at the “throat-hug” strip – http://www.dumbingofage.com/comics/2013-10-24-noon.png – she’s already showing a modest amount of cleavage in the first panel, before Sal is even fully awake.
Oh that reminds me: what on earth does Sal sound like? I can never pin down her accent.
Give me a famous voice for a point of reference if nothing else
She sounds a bit like an older Applejack to me.
Back in the day Sal was supposed to sound like Andie MacDowell, I believe.
Wait, does Sal or Billie sleep in the top bunk?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/white-2/
Both?
Judging from a few panels there are two weird unibunk things with beds over desks. See page 2. So both of them, I guess.
My friends had a room like that in college, and I had a bed like that. They’re called loft beds.
This bed design is throughout the comic.
This is a very clear example, that for some reason, stuck in my mind:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/goodmorning/
So, this is probably (along with the other Walkyverse comics), my 2nd favorite series out there. I love it.
What I most love is Joyce. I know dozens of Joyces well, personally, and am familiar with hundreds… but I know very few who have the courage to honor their parents with the strength and conviction Joyce did.
She didn’t rebel; she was given two mandates from them. The first is her Christianity, and I find it unlikely her parents ever told her anything other than “Love God first.” Joyce defended her position with Scripture, and without taking it out of context, no less. Moreover, she did it spontaneously (I *LOVED* the question mark in her Matthew citation).
Sal rebels from her parents, ineffectively. She says, “Yes,” but does “No.” Joyce says, “No,” but does “Yes.” The fact that Joyce doesn’t realize this is a part of why I love her: she is humble in spirit. If every Christian– particularly every public Christian– were like Joyce, I suspect the world would be a much, much better place. Thank you, David, for sharing her with us.
Word, yo.
I think people are being harsh on Sal here. Joyce and her parents engaged in a dialogue. That’s a social contract, requiring mutual respect and a willingness to consider each other’s point of view. Sal’s parents just ignore her. At this point, she’s not so much rebelling as getting on with her life as best she can.
I like you Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ. — Gandhi
People are going to mock Joyce, but it’s hard not to respect someone who believes so sincerely in something. I like that she’s trying to make another friend, even with someone with so alien a mindset.
Little known fact, Sal’s first tattoo was “SPQR” superimposed over a lion riding a shark. On her femur.
SPQR? What’s that stand for she-bruh?
SPQR is an abbreviation meaning Senatus Populusque Romanus which was a Latin phrase emblazoned on the standards of the Roman legions at the time of the Roman Empire and indicating that the legions were making their conquests at the will of “The Senate and the People of Rome”.
And on the members of the roman version of Camp Half-Blood in the Lost Hero series.
A DAGGER. ON MY FACE. THEN BARBED WIRE. AROUND MY THROAT.
Sal does NOT approve.
When did Joyce’s parents get angry? They were clearly disappointed, but they never seemed to be angry with her.
We might have missed some part of what Jocelyne described as a “heated argument”, or Joyce thinks the parents were angry because she was. From what I could see the strongest feelings they expressed were disgust and hate at meeting someone openly Atheist.
If they rarely express anything other than love and support, though, that could have felt like a major argument to Joyce, though. I had a boss like that. Once she apologized for getting snippy in a way that wouldn’t have registered with anyone if I or anyone else in the office had done it, but on her it was really noticeable.
The Brown’s are thoroughly judgemental, but they’re not misanthropic. They like people and want the best for them.
Based on the little prayer after first expressing disapproval of Dorothy, I think it’s pretty clear that they take the passive-aggressive approach to anger.
Boy howdy!
That hovertext made no sense yet I laughed my ass off anyway.
YHWH is the tetragrammaton. The classical rendering of Yahweh without those pesky latin vowels.
I understand it’s God’s unpronounceable name, translated from Hebrew where it’s spelled with four characters that sound something like “yod hud ved hod”. It may be based on a quote from God in the Bible where someone asks who he is and he says “I am what I am!” in a voice like thunder.
Which I remember mostly because it’s such a ridiculous statement. In context, it’s clear the writer is trying to convey the might and majesty and absolute divine authority of God; a self-assured claim based on its own self-evidentness. Of course God is God because God is God and you’re a fool to even think of questioning Him or His credentials. But if you don’t buy into this cult of personality God’s selling it’s the indignant, entitled, inarticulate, self-absorbed cry of an infant who assumes he’s the center of the universe to such a degree that he lacks the conceptual tools to actually explain why this should be the case when he’s called on it.
And that’s the story of one of God’s seven thousand names.
It’s funnier if you imagine it in Bugs Bunny’s voice.
“Eh, I yam what I yam. What’s up, doc?”
I imagined it in Popeye’s voice, actually. Well, when I don’t imagine it in the voice of Donald Hayne.
And I imagine it in the voice of James Earl Jones.
Or maybe Dennis Haysbert (the All-State guy).
Seriously, aren’t all gods, by definition, supposedly beyond the ability of mere mortals to doubt their validity, ascertain their intents, or question their actions? And I note that like a lot of older Catholics you capitalize the pronouns referring to God (His, Him), so I wonder just which side of that fence you are on – or at least started on.
Actually, most gods in historical religions are incredibly fallible: getting into all sorts of stupid drama, being dicks for no reason, and sometimes even being called out on it by mortals. I believe Plato (or some other Greek philosopher) once said that the gods shouldn’t be revered, simply because they were all terrible people.
The Hebrew concept of a single, all powerful deity with no defining form that made no mistakes and was supposed to be viewed entirely with awe and fear was very novel for it’s time.
Personally, I subscribe to Vlad Taltos’s philosophy that when a god does something reprehensible, it’s still reprehensible.
And pretty much all gods are dicks. I have trouble thinking of any exceptions at all; Yahweh certainly isn’t it. He’s notable mainly for the followers that insist that when He does something reprehensible, it’s just because He loves us so much, why do we keep making Him hurt us? He doesn’t want to have to hurt us, just sometimes we make Him so angry…
The Greek gods were universally dicks, and unapologetic about it, because They’re gods, whatcha gonna do about it? Athena’s one of the better of the lot, and even She turned Arachne into a spider for the sin of claiming to be a better weaver than Her and being able to back it up.
Baldr’s the least dickish god I can think of, and He’s dead.
Hesphaetus. That poor guy was born ugly (possibly because all the greek gods were a bunch of inbreds) so they threw him down a mountain. He’s still the smartest of the bunch (see above brackeds; inbreeding).
Even Hephaestus had his moments: dude got a bit rapey with Athena when she rejected his advances one time, but she fortunately kicked his ass (incidentally, Heph “letting off some steam” after the incident indirectly caused the birth of king Ericthonus of Athens).
Hestia is probably the best of the bunch, as she was just a sweet old lady who wisely avoided getting involved in anything on Olympus.
Quetzalcoatl is probably one of the nicest gods I can name, even if he was from one of the least pleasant religions.
Thor isn’t that bad, at least if you’re a human. (Zeus help you if you’re a troll.) He may be careless with his thunderbolts and really not very bright, but he’s loyal and honest and kind to those weaker than him. Which is everyone. God of strength, thunder, rain and – according to a few of the stories – “friendship with humans”. Depending on which stories you read he’s either Loki’s half brother or blood rite nephew, but either way there has to be something deeply incorruptible about him to still be a good guy with that influence in his family.
Also I think he could only lift Mjölnr as long as he’s pure of heart, or maybe that’s just in the Marvel comics.
Thank you for asking. I’m a Humanist; I’m on the side of humanity over gods. Although I try to not tell anyone what to think, and so I like to keep my opinions to myself when discussing religion. Probably more than I need.
And I capitalize the pronouns for God only when I describe how the authors of the bible see him. I think it makes a nice subtle contrast between the two viewpoints represented in my post, but then I may be the only one who enjoys uselessly playing with grammar that way.
God means never having to explain why you’re the center of the universe.
“Your Hearth Will Hemorrhage”
You have William Hartnell?
I didn’t know JC was down with the first Doctor.
Neither of them got on that well with the Romans!
I don’t know, One didn’t have that much trouble getting along with the Romans. You could even say they got along like a house on fire.
“You think you’re tough cos you had a little tattoo done? I’VE been tattooed on my internal organs by a living God!”
I bet the heart surgeon was surprised when he saw that.
This comic gave me 983 flashbacks to my childhood.
That “aren’t you proud of me” part may just be a joke, but if it’s not, Joyce is kind of overestimating her relationship to Sal! They did get along fine in the past, with Sal agreeing to do a thing Joyce wanted her to do, but she kind of wanted to do that anyway and Joyce just gave her the persistent push. This isn’t unusual, though, and so probably insignificant.
We shall see, I”m just excited to have two of my favorite characters in the same panel ^^
Oh, Joyce…bless. You’re just so gosh-darn naive, and it’s just ADORABLE.
I’ve said it before and I say it again: you can’t hate Joyce! It’s impossible!
Joyce’s next act as a rebel is to pay for a meal and tip much less than 20%
That’s not rebellion; that’s college economics.
Rampage!
Mike’s heart tattoo would be your mom superimposed over his dick.
Holy shit she took me seriously, you still have a little ways to go!
That sounds rather ghoulish