Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
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.
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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!
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Isa, Meg
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Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
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After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
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Hmm, people seem strangely intent on voting for Dina and Becky in the “people we’ll see more of next year” poll. Wonder why that would be.
Plus Mike, of course.
We don’t get enough Mike in this strip! Mike is one of those characters that just makes things happen. He’s insulting, rude, and brash, but genuinely cares about pretty much everyone he meets.
Mike is my favorite character and I really hope we get to see a lot more of him.
Yeah, you can get it back as soon as the truck reaches the impound lot with it. You know. Assuming no line at the counter, and a certain amount of funds at your disposal.
–There was a time when we got towed every damned time we parked in downtown Vancouver. Their parking regulations are ridiculous and poorly-labelled.
You’re meaning Vancouver, BC, right? You can’t park for ten minutes without “OH SHIT MY CAR IS BEING TOWED.” I don’t own a car anymore now because of that. Gave it to my older brother.
If he has kidnapped Dina, she’s probably not in the back seat or she’d still be trying to attack him, which means if she is kidnapped she is probably in the trunk…
You know things are fucked up when I’m really just hoping she’s knocked out in the woods.
If Dina is anything like me, she probably went through a phase where she read survival manuals that would only be useful in specific situations. Given that Toedad lacked rope and prep time, even if Dina got shoved in the trunk she’d be able to go for the emergency trunk release and pull a Dilophosaurus with a packet of cafeteria salsa.
I SOOO want that to be true. “And as you can see I have your [racist and homophobic slur] hostage, so if you excuse me while I twirl my mustaches…” *Toedad opens the trunk* “…we see that the trunk is empty. Where is that little…” *Dina let’s go of trunk lid, Salsa spits ToeDad and goes for the throat*
Dina, while jumping on his head “THIS REPRESENTATION OF DILOPHOSAURUS IS NOT SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE, BUTTHOLE”
Or kick out a brake light. It’s pretty easy to do from the interior of a trunk, and usually doing that and sticking a hand out of the back is enough to get someone to call the police.
Her teeth were serrated. She’s pretty clearly shown herself to be some sort of superpowered mimic octopus, what with her camouflage and shapeshifting skills. At this point, the chances that putting cuffs on Dina will encumber her are about the same as the chances that she will eat them.
I bet the next strip is him just walking out of the car with a gun pointing a gun at Dina saying, “Becky get in the car or some bad might just happen to your pour little pokemon girl”
Pretty sure someone whipping out a gun on a college campus will get noticed now that some kids get shot every other week these days. I live in Wisconsin; we ride around with deer rifles (illegally) in the back window of pickup trucks. That doesn’t mean we expect to whip it out on a college campus and not draw a lot of unhappy attention and the campus and city police.
With any luck, that person in the background a few days ago called the police, and there’s a BOLO for a guy who looks like a toe, driving a green coupe, who attempted to abduct two college-age women before pulling a rifle on them.
Now I’m half hoping he remembered to pick it up just because I’m that afraid of Ruth somehow getting ahold of it (especially given how her most recent preview is going).
I was worried as soon as they went into the woods that he would lose the gun and thus be less of an obvious target for the police. Though now that he’s (probably) got a college kid in his trunk he’ll be arrested, gun or no gun.
Though I hadn’t thought of the possibility that someone else would take the gun. Hopefully Dina reports that he had one and it’s in the woods. Doubt anyone would find it before the police do in that case.
Sadly, it’s not unreasonable (in his twisted ass religious worldview) for him to suspect that her “close friend Joyce” is patient zero on this whole “lesbian delusion”. Like, ah, of course, the one who first confused her on the roles of men and women. Separate her from that one and the healing can truly begin.
I was wondering if someone would make this conclusion besides me. I’d be worried that Ross will talk to Joyce’s parents and convince them they need to be worried about her enough to pull her out of IU.
Please tell me he’s stupid enough to have brought the gun with him and will be waving it around in full view of the public long enough to summon his overdue asskicking.
But the RA or Amazi-girl isn’t going to investigate what the heck Becky is doing on campus in the first place, the cops (especially the campus police) probably would.
“Visiting my long-time childhood friend whom I’ve been promising I’d visit since we left for college like, only a month ago?”
Not illegal to be homeless; not illegal to visit for a few days. And right now it has only been a few days.
The police aren’t likely to investigate why Becky’s there; she isn’t breaking any laws in doing so and her presence is entirely plausible and (until now) has been non-disruptive.
Somehow Ross strikes to me as the kind of man that would have sex with other men all while being 100% in denial about the fact that, 1: it is sex and, 2: it is homosexual sex.
Amber broke Blaine’s ribs a couple weeks ago in comic time. Unless those hospital previews happen to bring us close to him, he’s not coming back for a WHILE.
FYI, this is in reference to the prospect of Blaine and Ross hooking up. I’d love to see some dude on dude action in this comic, but …. not those two dudes.
Let’s look at this logically. There are basically three posibilities. Ross has Dana in his car. Ross left to pursue Becky and Dana just let him go. Ross left Dana in no condition to try to interfere with his pursuit of Becky.
Which of those three possibilities are you hoping for and which is most likely?
I suppose using words to achieve a favorable outcome is still out of the question, but I still hope Joyce pulls it off. It might buu some time, at least.
that’s a point. maybe by not having his gun on him and nowhere to be found he doesn’t get arrested? on the other hand, I really don’t want a checkovs gun situation on our hands
I’m conflicted about it. On one hand, if he forgot the gun then he can’t shoot anybody. While on the other hand, the police could potentially let him go because he doesn’t have the gun people claimed he had.
The type of person who brings their gun to a confrontation with their runaway daughter “just in case” is not the type of person who leaves said gun behind.
Him having a gun didn’t keep Dana from attacking him and slowing his pursuit of Becky. Without the gun, she wouldn’t let him go after Becky without attacking him again unless she couldn’t. Careful what you wish for.
Okay, Joyce, now’s the moment. Lie to him and tell him you haven’t seen her. As long as you dumped all your points in Bluff, you’ve got a chance.
But seriously, that last panel face on Becky is heart-breaking. That’s the face of someone who is quickly running out of all their options and sunny optimism. She’s like five more terrible things away from having a minor collapse.
What makes it even worse? We know for a fact that Joyce is in the midst of a brutal trigger attack. Joyce is fully seeing the sea of Ryans and is probably also suffering the physical flashbacks of it all given how she has been rubbing her wrist this story arc since Walky left. She’s just trying to desperately shove it aside to manage crisis intervention with Becky in the same way that Becky is trying to downplay her own fear.
They are both so incredibly emotionally vulnerable and there is no chance that Toedad isn’t about to open up a whole fresh can of traumas (I mean, assuming he took his gun with him, that alone should be enough to ensure a whole new set of traumatic flashbacks).
Considering that you can’t spend more than level+3 skill points on a skill and she’s still working on her education, I’d be surprised if her skill cap was above 7 even for class skills. I’m not sure what her class is, but I suspect Bluff would be cross-class. (Cleric and Barbarian seem like the closest things to fitting matches in core materials.)
Nope, not even considering it.
I don’t want to fit someone as naively idealistic as Joyce into the Imperium. She’d probably fit right in, but nope. Nopenopenope.
We don’t know that Joyce is seeing Ryans everywhere. Last we saw, she had talked to Sal and had calmed down about that issue. She’s definitely nervous now, but about an entirely new issue.
Rubbing her wrist? I just went back to check and I don’t think she is. She’s certainly been hugging herself a lot, especially when there was a prospect of being left alone, but I don’t think she’s been touching her wrist specifically.
Yes, things are incredibly bad and set to being worse… but we ALSO haven’t seen what Joyce did with the phone the last few minutes. There is anguish and epicness in the future.
And whatever happens they will face it together, as should be.
Dear everyone asking “where’s Dina”: she’s out getting ice cream. toedad turned his back and she ran and now she’s eating ice cream and preparing an aerial strike on toedad and nothing is wrong and also fuck you.
That Chinese embassy was what they were aiming for (whether or not they knew that that’s what it was). I haven’t seen, have they said whether the MSF Hospital was what they were aiming at, whatever they thought it was, whatever their reason for attacking it. It’s not that airstrikes don’t go astray or overlap things not aimed for, but most tragedies/outrages in air attacks happen because they hit what they were aiming at but what they were aiming at was something other than what they thought it was.
Don’t think a gunshot is possible. The woods were close enough to the fountain that any rifle fire would have been heard by Joyce and Becky (who probably would have commented on it in the strip).
Not sure. Ever hear how loud a .22-caliber rifle isn’t? The discharge of a small-caliber rifle more than likely wouldn’t make enough noise to attract attention; and even if it did, if there were no following shots the average person would just dismiss it.
Others have pointed out that the rifle is a Ruger V-1 Varmint, which (according to google) is a .223. so, the bullet seems to be quite a bit bigger than the .22, so I suspect it would be a bit louder too. (Not a gun expert… anyone have more knowledge on the subject?)
Yes, because there doesn’t seem to be a suppressor on the barrel so if its a .223 (5.56 for our metric friends) it will be loud because it uses more gun powder and the round will also break the sound barrier
Wouldn’t a .223 be only marginally larger than a .22?
After some experimentation, we were able to confirm the YouTube myth that the sound of a .22 can be silenced well enough that it doesn’t attract attention by taping a 2-litre pop bottle (empty, or filled with packing peanuts) to the end. No idea what it does for accuracy, though, and it doesn’t make enough of a difference for super-sonic rounds (yay for rural property! lol). Besides, Ross doesn’t seem to have one with him, or at least, not on the gun. He sure as hell isn’t worried about anyone seeing him holding a rifle on a campus; I can’t see him caring if anyone hears the rifle.
The number is the diameter of the actual bullet (in inches), which is just the silvery or coppery bit at the top. You can see that the .22 LR and .223 bullets are about the same size. The brass part below is the cartridge casing that holds the gunpowder that makes the bang and propels the bullet to high speeds. (And when fired, they separate, the cartridge casing remaining in the chamber of the gun (in this case; more advanced guns will eject it and automatically load a fresh round, but butthole dad’s gun is a very primitive design) and the bullet part going away very fast.) And you can see that the .223’s cartridge is much longer, much fatter, and holds a lot more gunpowder. Which means it makes a much bigger bang, and the bullet goes a lot faster – which means it goes farther accurately and goes through things and people better once it gets there.
Actually, the numeric part of a cartridge designation is quite deceptive. It’s not always precise or accurate. The .22LR is actually .224 in bullet diameter. Not very precise. The .223 is actually specced to land anywhere from .223 to .2255. Not very accurate. Some designations don’t even refer to the bullet. .357MAG and .38SPC ammo can share the exact same bullets. .38 is referring to the diameter of the case, not the bullet.
Still, I would not counsel attempting to seat a .22LR lead slug in a .223 case with a regular .223 powder charge. .223 cartridges like those big, pointy, copper jacketted slugs. Applying that motive force to a tiny, soft, pure lead slug could actually render the slug molten on its way out the end of the barrel. You’d be literally “spitting” lead at your target. The gods of ballistics would not look favourably on your aim if you did that.
.223 is on the order of 2x as massive in the bullet weight dept., but because of the vast amount more powder in the .223, it delivers on the order of 10x the terminal energy of the .22LR.
E = ½mv². It’s a powerful servant and a fearful master.
.223 is COMPLETELY different from .22. Like bicycle tires, the diameter tells you approximately nothing about what you have or need, and is only useful as a shorthand name. .223 is quite loud, and is roughly analogous to what is used in the M16 family of rifles. Even stuck into someone’s gut, it’d be loud AF. Probably not loud enough to default summon the cops, though, if it were just one shot. Our ears are weird that way. Everyone in the field would’ve played the ‘fireworks or gunshot?’ game in their head, then guessed firework after no subsequent shots were heard.
Anyway. .223 is not actually 5.56, they’re just close enough some interchange is possible. The leade lengths and pressure specifications are different. Also, .223″ != 5.56mm, though the bullets are the same diameter. Math, and different methods of measurement, are “fun”.
Yeah I wouldn’t fire a 5.56 round through a .223 calibre rifle but for the purposes of sound and trauma inflicted its close enough plus some on here might not realise that a 5.56 round is basically a .223 round
Americans and their love of doing things differently to the rest of the world and all that
Reassuring fun time thought- there’s at least four stick figure people in the background, two more if you include the initial gun scene, at least it’s not deserted around them
Man, it would completely wreck this arc if it happened, but I really wouldn’t complain if Ross and Joyce whipped out some duel disks and had themselves a good ol’ game of duel monsters.
Okay Joyce, time to put on your big girl pants and save your friend from a brainwashing of Biblical proportions. My money’s on Toedad using a captive Dina to force Becky to go with him. What is it about religion that makes people so batshit crazy?
Becky leaps between her dad and Joyce, taking a bullet for the crush that brought her here to begin with. Toedad is tackled and hauled off to jail. Dina is injured, but arrives in time to see it all go down. She and Joyce are traumatized out of their minds.
These cliff hanger bits are starting to get to me. Last night I dreamed that I was reading the next couple of pages. One where Becky’s dad gets her with a tranq dart and one where Sal shows up and takes on Becky’s dad.
This topic comes up quite often in these threads (and will probably come up in this one.)
Willis has commented that none of the cast of the comic will be dying. (Given the fact that time passes slower in the comic than in real life, a death would result in an extensive time frame with characters grieving, something that the creator wants to avoid.)
On at least one occasion, he’s made a possible exemption for characters no one cares about. He used Tony as an example. I’m not sure if butthole dad counts. For all that he’s making Becky’s life hell, he’s still her dad, and I think her reaction to his death would be complicated (see also: Amber in Shortpacked!), especially if she’s somehow responsible for it.
Irrelevant detail, but Becky seems a tad self conscious about her hair. She got a new haircut first opportunity and she has made the high-vis joke several times now.
Wait… Is Becky 18+? I turned 19 my freshman year, but my sophomore year bf was 17, 16 as a freshman in college,from skipping grades. Is toe dad still her guardian?
Probably not. I don’t think she was unintelligent, but we haven’t seen anything suggesting she was the type of person to have skipped grades. (Plus, I’m not sure how common that would be with home-schooled kids.)
I think they even mentioned her being 18+ in some of the comics.
I don’t understand why Becky doesn’t just stand up for herself. She’s not obligated to go anywhere with her father against her will at her age. Call the cops if he presses the issue.
I believe that would be the “call the cops” thing that I mentioned.
Mind you, it didn’t look to me like she was standing up for herself before. She was already in full panic mode. Preparing for flight. Which is what brought her here in the first place. Run run run.
Because she’s a teenage abuse survivor. Her whole life experience has taught her that her that the authorities are on her father’s side. She hasn’t been out from that long enough, even in this more liberal enclave, to really accept that it isn’t true here.
“Just stand up for yourself.” Against your Dad. The person who had complete control over your life for the first almost two decades of it. That kind of ingrained habit doesn’t go away just because you reach a magical age number.
Honestly, even the fact that she is capable of defying him, to his face, and running away instead of just meekly saying, “Yes, sir,” and getting into the car, as she has spent her entire life being trained to do, is remarkable.
If you have the will, it never gets deeply ingrained in the first place. I was emancipated at age 16 going on 17. Didn’t even need to reach the “magical number”.
Hopefully, her friends will soon get around to providing a defiant wall of support instead of just going along with the panicky run-and-hide tactics like they have been thus far.
Ah. So Becky’s problem isn’t the abusive father or the screwed up religious upbringing. It’s just that she isn’t strong willed enough.
If she was, she’d just face down the armed man who’s 3 times her size and her will would make him back down.
She refused to go with him, yanked her hand free and escaped to a whole nother city the first time he insisted. Then she angrily stood her ground and stood up for her girlfriend before again, standing up for herself and running. And we’ll probably get a third angry refusal to go with him here.
Every time she has stood up for herself against how she was trained and her father’s demands.
Unless you’re wondering why she hasn’t tried to attack him like Dina, which the answer to that is she’s a twig and her dad is a slab of beef duct-taped to a brick. Getting in that sort of range is a great way to be literally dragged off again like in the first time.
Aside from all these other good reasons, she is probably acutely aware that getting the authorities involved guarantees that she loses her place to stay and possibly gets pulled away from the friends who are her lifeline right now.
We’ve all seen the panel of the ambulance in front of the IU Hospital Emergency Center. But that’s all we’ve seen. We’ve also seen a crazy-assed parent, and a gun, and two kids running for their literal lives. So we added all that together and came up with the conclusion that the hospital panel fits into this story arc because crazy-assed dad shoots someone <i(or gets shot himself).
But stop and think for a minute. If there had been a shooting on campus this would attract attention. There wouldn’t be just one ambulance sitting quietly at the ER entrance; there would be an entire metric fuck-ton of police, police cars, paramedics, bystanders, rubber-neckers, and of course media covering the latest campus shooting. So here’s my take on the matter:
We haven’t seen much of Billie and Ruthless, and we all know Ruth is still hitting the sauce pretty hard. I’m thinking that the ambulance is part of the next story arc; someone (maybe Billie, maybe someone else) has found Ruth who has self-medicated herself to the point of alcohol poisoning and she has been transported to the hospital for treatment.
How DARE you present a circumstance where that relieves me
But we’ve seen preview panels of Ruth and she didn’t seem distressed or in horrible medical state, and seemed to still be in a position of authority, which she would not be if she was caught drinking on campus. If you have a clipboard you have power. FACT
Alcoholism is now considered to be a disease rather than a defect of character; and since Ruth is an RA she is in fact an employee of IU so her University-provided health-care plan would more than likely would provide coverage for de-tox, diagnosis, and further treatment.
Secondly — and speaking from experience here — a person cannot be discharged as a result of medical conditions so long as they don’t adversely affect the employee in the performance of their job. Discipline can be handed down (a verbal warning, a written letter of reprimand entered into her personnel file, or even a suspension without pay for a specific time) but if Ruth — or anyone else — successfully completes the prescribed treatment regimen they would more than likely be reinstated to their position.
In a perfect world maybe, but if a college discovers one of their student employees is an alcoholic, her ass will be fired before she could even try to protest. I guarantee if this is a dry campus (and I think it is?), underage drinking and alcohol possession are addressed in Ruth’s contract. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Ruth is only a year or two older, so not 21. And it would depend on the circumstance, but if it was discovered that she was drinking in her room, it wouldn’t matter her age.
I don’t know, my suspicion would be if she wasn’t fired immediately or “asked to step down”, then she’d be kicked out of the dorm for “violating her lease agreement for the dorms” and you’re definitely not allowed to be a RA if you’re not living in the dorms.
Exactly. Colleges are all about protecting their own asses and maintaining their public image. Typically with the path of least resistance. Can’t have suicidal alcoholics making a spectacle in the dorms. And it’ll look twice as bad since they gave her a position of authority.
There are stories of people who have been committed against their will for days or weeks by their schools(under the guise of a hospitalization/suicide watch) because they admitted to depression and suicidal ideation. They, of course, missed classes and failed. This was then used as grounds to expel them.
One option that we’ve all probably not thought of: What if Ross’s health isn’t anywhere near as good as we’ve thought and the stress he’s been putting himself under triggers a heart attack or a stroke?
No… No, here and now, surrounded by witnesses, is the time to have this confrontation. Ross’s freedom of action is massively reduced by the environment and, if the girls stand firm, he’s going to have few cards to play except to try force. That would be a very, very bad idea on his part.
The bastard had already pulled a gun out in broad daylight with witnesses around, he’s not going to care about how he looks to other people. Standing there to confront him isn’t the best idea.
No, I don’t think that’s necessary anymore. This is a fight that’s going to be won with words, not fists. Ross isn’t going to start something in a public place, unless he’s enormously stupid.
He swerved off the road and onto a sidewalk. He pulled out a rifle. He chased two girls into a shelterbelt. He’s potentially harmed one of said girls and may or may not have her stowed in his trunk. All on a college campus, with people around, who have seen him and would easily be able to point out “the walking refridgerator with no neck” wearing cammo pants.
All because he feels he’s entitled to take possession of, control, and correct his daughter because she’s “strayed from the righteous path of being a completely heterosexual grandchild factory”.
And don’t think he’s doing it because he cares about HER. This is all about him, his pride, and his own security as he ages as hyper religious people like that follow the traditions of the children taking in and caring for their elderly. Becky’s his only kid (amazingly) that we know of, as I don’t recall it being mentioned she had any siblings… so if he loses his grip on her, then he’s going to face a future where he is truly and utterly alone, since not even getting a second wife would guarantee he wouldn’t live out his final days soiling himself in some decrepit nursing home.
If Ross gets his way and somehow manages to take her back, nothing that will be done will be in Becky’s best interests… only his, whether he acknowledges that or is even smart enough to realize how selfish he’s being. He’d force her through some corrective program where she’d be physically and possibly sexually abused until she’s broke into submission, or runs away again, and ends up in a more uncertain and unsafe situation.
Thankfully, no matter if he gets her in the car or not, he’s not getting off campus without a caravan of cop cars running him down. Given that this comic is in ‘modern’ times and are at the very least combining some elements of real life current events within it, school shootings are likely just as much of a “common thing” going on, and something that the DoA media will jump on as soon as they get a whiff of that story. Ross will end up getting arrested and charged, the entire nation will be made aware of an incident that happened at Indiana State Uni, and Becky will possibly be thrust into the spotlight as the ‘motivation’ for the crimes. Awareness of her plight will make national headlines, and maybe she’ll be like that one guy who was attacked by his own parents for coming out as gay and get a big gofundme campaign made in her honor to give her funds to help herself get established out of the control sphere of her hyper-religious upbringing.
Silver linings and all that… and I hope Dina was just ditched in the shelterbelt and will be emerging from there with only some minor scrapes and bruises to be a key witness against Ross… or at worse, gets released from the trunk of the car with only some minor injuries to, again, be a key witness.
Never helpful when it would matter to the plot. And Danny getting an asskicking instead of a batshit nuts girlfriend might have been the better option.
I suspect that the combined trauma of party flashbacks and dealing with toedad will result in Joyce having a total breakdown and trying to beat toedad into a pulp.
Given how she reacted to Ryan when pushed that’s pretty likely. Of course, as Dina has already demonstrated, it might not be the best of plans.
But still… if Joyce take out all that fear and fury on ToeDad I will cheer her on as loud as I can. Joyce has already defied God for the sake of Becky. Toedad Childmurderer is NOT getting out of this unharmed.
She grew up with a ton of older brothers. Chances are she knows plenty well how to land a hit that’ll knock even the toughest person off kilter. That little area right above the abdomen and right where the two sides of the ribcage meet is an excellent aiming point, since no matter how muscular you are, there’s almost nothing there except the abdominal wall and a thin layer of connective tissue, and the cartilage ‘cap’ of the sternum (which can be easily broken off and is enormously painful, not to mention it can cause injury to the diaphragm and other bits if it gets snapped off).
Joyce, unlike Dina, also has some weight and build on her. She might not be Ronda Rousey, but she’s also not going to get flung around so easily.
There’s also the fact that, being it’s a college campus and plenty of college age dudes are upstanding guys who wouldn’t put up with watching some guy try and manhandle a couple of girls, would be rushing over to confront and beat the shit out of him.
Just binge read this comic. Actually kinda wishing I had found this comic a couple of weeks from now, so I wouldn’t be caught up at the most suspenseful part of the arc.
Depends on quality. Inferior processes can damage hair and leave it brittle, but I’m fairly certain it’s easily achievable for under $20.
Dying hair as pretty as Becky’s would be a shame, though.
After this storyline (barring any other known crazy relatives) Becky won’t have any reason to dye her hair. She’s never shown any signs of disliking her hair color until Toedad showed up.
While I can’t help feeling bad that she seems to have forgotten about Dina for the moment, I have to agree with you, too. It’s unpleasant, but realistic.
Plus, Becky probably counted on Dina to run and stay hidden rather than jumping Toedad. Dina is skilled at not being seen, so she’d have been safe if she’d done that.
I was also discomforted by how she hasn’t mentioned Dina, or tried to catch sight of her, this whole strip. Becky never saw the rifle coming out, but her dad is still three times Dina’s size and capable of completely thrashing her with or without firearms. :c
This. She has no idea that Dina is in danger. As far as she knows, Dina is that dinosaur girl other people don’t seem to notice in the background whereas she’s got a signal flare for a head, so she probably presumed Dina was able to escape safely while Toedad was busy pursuing her.
So basically, her mistake is she massively underestimated how awesome and protective her girlfriend really is.
i still think she shouldve thought at least a little about dina. i think toedad is more willing to hurt dina than becky, and even if becky didnt realize that she shouldve still thought a little about dina. like when she came to joyce matbe mention that dina ran the other way or something. but no, nothing. it seems that she has completely forgotten about dina and if toedad leaved, she would go with joyce and habg out with her for days before realizing she hasnt talked to dina in a while
Why am I the only one reading this trip as Toedad LEAVING the campus ?
It seems weird that he would spot Becky, then turn around, walk all the way back through the woods, get into his car, drive around those same woods, and then park and get out of the car, instead of just going across the field, straight for Becky.
There’s just something that doesn’t feel right here, almost like he’s given up, but I can’t quite see that kind of guy just “suddenly” getting a change of heart either….
He needs Becky on the car. It makes more sense to force her into the car if it is close, rather than force her to walk at gunpoint all the way back to where he left the car the first time.
I’m still trying to work out whether the artist was fully aware that a drawing of a Ruger Varminter rifle can look like a two-trigger shotgun when viewed from the side, and whether this ambiguity was intentional.
I just want to say thank you for this storyline. I didn’t come out to my family until I was 32 because it was all too plausible that a situation like this would occur, except that the gun-toting lunatic dragging me off to be “corrected” would have been my mom. Had I been outed during college, I still think this probably would have happened to me. There really are people like Toedad out there, and lots of them.
I’m half expecting Ross to have Dina and try to use her as a bargaining chip. However, I think it is quite possible that Joyce may surprise him. Especially if the Campus police turn up and Joyce backs up Becky’s allegation that he’s attacked a student (Dina).
Hank’s later arrival will be due to a bailed-out Ross complaining to the Browns that Joyce is “consorting with sinners”.
“Ross had a gun and attacked (possibly kidnapped) a fellow student” is a pretty great excuse for Joyce to give her parents if Ross tries to get her kicked out or in trouble with her folks. When she has all the information Joyce could easily say she was protecting Becky for fear she’d get killed or extremely hurt and at this point it would be true. Could even throw in some bible quotes for good measure. Joyce’s parents are fundies but from what I’ve seen so far they’re not monsters and I have some faith they’ll take Joyce’s side after this.
Never underestimate the human ability to defend the indefensible: “Oh, we condemn his actions but his motives were laudable! You should have been the peace-maker and persuaded Becky to go with him to avoid a violent confrontation! He’s an upright member of our church, Joyce! Your actions have caused him embarrassment and could cost him his position on the council of trustees!”
I don’t have much experience with fundamentalists but Joyce getting kicked out would pretty much spell an end to DoA, so I’m pretty optimistic about how her parents will take this. Joyce can spin this in her favor very easily without having to lie once.
Willis has already said that we will never see semester #2. Maybe a plotline where Joyce gets kicked out/withdrawn from school is his way of making sure we don’t?
FWIW, I suspect that the end of the semester will show clearly where the characters are likely to go in the future. They will have all set their childhoods aside and will be well on the way to adopting their adult selves’ perceptions, attitudes and lives.
I thought the point was that he could run the college idea “Forever” so it’s gonna be a Simpson’s like “Never ending first semester” And no one is gonna die?
It just.. How do overarching plots without forward movement?
I assume tuition for the first year is already paid, so the family doesn’t have any leverage there. And its a secular institution (unlike Anderson) so there’s probably no “morals” issue. Joyce may become estranged from her family, but technically she’d probably still be able to continue her studies (with help from financial aid and/or part time work.)
It’s possible that her parents wouldn’t support her financially after this but I really really can’t see it happening. An argument/worsened relationship with them maybe probably but I can’t see them refusing to pay her tuition past first year. Maybe I’m too optimistic tho. Dunno.
Also- I assumed it would be possible for Joyce to get pulled out of school since Becky did. Maybe that was just Ross having no regard for the rules as is regularly demonstrated in this arc.
Becky was going to a “christian college”. Being a private (and religious based) institution probably results in them giving more authority to toedad than a private/secular institution would.
Even then, unless her parents are paying for her school themselves, Joyce can simply refuse to leave when they ask. And it’s still early enough in the semester that alternative payment options could be discussed with the school.
Not that estrangement from her (relatively loving)family is an easy decision for anyone, much less someone like Joyce.
Why doesn’t Becky run right now? Because she needs to find out that toedad has Dina hostage? We know that Joyce will have to end up saving Becky. Sarah said so in a deliberate plot point, just yesterday / two months ago. Trust the foreshadowing. It rarely fails.
Cause anywhere she could start to run he could circle the car around to and cut her off.
Plus she’s out of breath from her last desperate sprint. And she hasn’t seen the gun yet which is seeming all sort of Chekhovian. So that will definitely change the calculus on running when that gets pulled out.
Well, Becky has just seen his car in the last panel. The next strip might start with her trying to run away. But I doubt it, for the reasons Cerberus pointed out.
I’m trying to think rationally and be like “she’s 18, he can’t make her do a damn thing” but then I remember that the man has a fucking GUN so basically rational thought serves no purpose.
Not sure if Joyce would have called 911… she knew Toedad was there, but she probably didn’t know he had a gun (or that he had done anything illegal up to that point).
They probably have and I have no doubt that the cops are currently at the other end of the woods, searching for said gunman. It might be dramatically appropriate if Joyce gets the ‘active shooter – shelter in place’ text on her ‘phone at the moment she sees Ross’s gun propped up on the front passenger seat of his car.
So, aside from the hundred police officers that should descend upon an idiot toting a loaded slugthrower on campus, which cast members might show up within the next two strips?
Dorothy? Joyce was considering a call to her anyway. She’d have contacts with the campus LGBT* organizations, and would be an excellent character witness if necessary. Kind of a middling person for a stand-up conflict with someone thoroughly irrational.
Ethan? Kind of my #2 call choice for Joyce. Less connected than Dorothy, but maybe better for getting words into the mind of a misogynist. Well, until he reveals that he, too, is part of the lesbian supremacy.
Sal? Well, it hasn’t been that long since she left Joyce. She’s more caring than she lets on, and she was idling anyway; she might have lingered to make sure that Joyce was OK with her agoraphobia. She could be a very good or a very bad person to have show up now, with her emotional “brick-through-a-window” way of dealing with people.
Dina? Trunk is the obvious choice, but maybe she was down-but-not-out in the forest. She’s willing to go to bat physically for Becky, and she’s shown some surprising improvisational social engineering skills.
Amber/Super-Girl? Fun choice, the Toedad eats pavement. Of course, weird-person-in-tights might be enough to make Toedad’s brain implode and actually pull the trigger on his trusty varmintshotrifle.
Mike? Come on, we all want him here. “Congratulations on becoming a martyr for gun-rights lunatics everywhere. Oh, and on your new felony convictions.”
A lot depends on who (if anyone) Joyce called for aid. Remember, Joyce may have been restrained by a fear that telling too many of her friends about Becky might let the College Administrators learn about her.
Also, from a story point of view, the more this is handled by Becky and Joyce the better. Someone else sweeping in to save the day might be cool in a way, but dramatically and for character development reasons, it’s best to keep this focused.
It’s Joyce’s story and Becky’s plot arc. If someone else winds up handling Toedad, then it won’t be a resolution – he’ll be back. They need this confrontation and they need to win it.
Yeah, that’s definitely why. It has nothing to do with the limited number of people who have seen Toedad with the gun, the tiny fraction of that group who are carrying a firearm with them, and the even smaller number who a) have figured out what’s going on, b) want to get involved, and are comfortable either c) shooting a man who isn’t threatening them personally *and hasn’t actually raised the gun to fire at all* or d) confronting an armed man without getting shot themselves. Totally the author’s bias. Nothing to do with verisimilitude at all. Nope.
He did actually raise the gun to fire while he was in the woods. Nobody saw that but Dina, though.
(He also wasn’t successfully aiming at anybody, but he was trying to.)
Name one time where that has actually happened in real life. In the real-life gun-crime events the offender is either taken down by the police or more often turns their own weapon on themselves.
Perhaps for the same reason that no-one did any such thing in the Umpqua Community College shooting. Several witness have said in interview that they were carrying guns but did not use them.
I don’t know of any incident since 1966 in which bystanders took up arms against a spree shooter.
Would have been more pertinent to post a few days earlier, but couldn’t fins the video. I think it was made by the FBI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VcSwejU2D0
I don’t know how effective this strategy is for open public place, as it is more devised for in-building mass-shooting.
I doubt that Ross would recognise the validity of a ‘secular’ definition of adulthood as limiting his power over his daughter. Nor do I believe he would respect a secular court’s jurisdiction in this matter (and in some parts of the US, local-level courts, at least, would side with him). I’m sure he will try to use moral blackmail against Joyce by implying that continuing to support Becky makes her a sinner or an ‘apostate’. Standing firm in the face of those accusations will be the hardest thing that Joyce will ever do.
No, this will come to him threatening force against Becky or Dina. In the end, it will be his last card to play and he will likely end up being arrested for his pains.
She surely can be forced go with him. Doing so would be *illegal* but it wouldn’t be *impossible*.
She has no money or time to get a lawyer to have a restraining order. He’s right there, right now, he’s stronger than her and has a car and a gun. Telling him this is a crime won’t stop him.
What teachers? So far the only instructional staff we’ve seen has been Jason (who is really only a TA), Leslie Bean (Gender Studies instructor), and the Dean. Plus a bunch of unnamed background figures in the faculty box at the football game.
Professor Rees, the actual instructor for the math class Jason TAs, has been visible at least once. There’s also Alex, who teaches Amber and Danny’s CS For Morons class. And Penny who’s another math TA.
(Having known Penny in the other universe, though, I cannot imagine that adding her to this situation could be in any way helpful in reducing possible body count.)
We’ve also seen the guy teaching that computer science class Amber and Danny are so scornful of, and I think we might have seen Jason’s Professor Rees in a panel or two?
How useful any of these people are going to be against a gunman is a currently untested question. I’d prefer campus security, myself.
Is Becky legally an adult? Because that can drastically change how horrifying her situation is about to be. I assume her Dad is the only bread winner, she might hate him but him going to jail (and the ramifications of that on the rest of her family) will still probably hurt her, a lot. Like, go back home to try and help out as they try to pray the gay away and actively abuse her levels of guilt.
Becky’s mom died last year according to her and her dad. She’s never mentioned other siblings, so I would guess she doesn’t have any. And her dad seems quite intent on sending her to some pray the gay away camp.
So, even if he gets away with everything that happened today, Joyce is now officially involved and Toedad is going to her parents. The Browns have proven themselves to be decent people in Walkyverse, but I’m curious to see how this is going to melt down.
Which is the point, I guess? I’m not offering anything insightful, here.
Or it’ll be the good, christian mans word against his lesbians daughters word, a girl that likes to pretend to be a dinosaur and the word of another girl thats friends with and defends atheists
Where are police and why are they not involved? Fact is that Becky should not have to keep hiding/running from assdad. He needs to be arrested, charged and convicted of various crimes, jailed, and then given a restraining order. DoA is often realistic (if exaggerated) but here and now it has taken a bizarre and dangerous path. People should know that they can go to authorities in this situation. Often, tragedy has taken place because they were not involved.
Becky has had the time to run maybe 100 or 200 yards from the time she saw Toedad to meeting Joyce. That’s going to be (at most) a minute or 2. Plus, neither Joyce nor Becky knew about the gun (which would be key to a quick police response.) The only person we know for sure knew about the gun was Dina, who didn’t have her phone with her.
There was the individual in the background of an earlier strip who may have seen the gun, but we don’t know for sure what they saw or if they even called the police. (And even if they did, its still going to take more than 1 or 2 minutes to respond. They may not even know where to go to… Toedad was seen going into the forest, but he’s left there.)
It’s about 700 yards (or 700 meters, near enough for the precision of that measurement) from the intersection of E. 6th and N. Indiana, which is where I believe the girls first encountered butthole dad, to Showalter Fountain. 9 minutes by Google walking directions, a fair bit less at a dead run. If the alarmed person in the background called the cops as soon as the gun appeared, they’re probably only just starting to respond, and will be responding 700 yards away from where butthole dad is now.
Read Hall is closer to Showalter Fountain than 6th and Indiana is. Any help Joyce might have summoned from the dorm could be arriving any moment now.
Oh, and as far as what Dina did. If she survives, she totally deserves to be Amazi-Girl’s sidekick or even co-superhero. That was both incredibly brave, and incredibly dangerous.
What’s really sad is that multiple news sources are reporting that a 19-year-old named Lucas Leonard was beaten to death yesterday by his own parents, sister, and several other members of their “church” in a “counseling session” because they felt he needed to confess sins and ask for forgiveness. His younger brother was also “counselled” and is in a hospital with serious injuries. There are indeed actual living human beings capable of behaving the way Toedad is.
Why isn’t “Nobody dies in this comic” in the FAQ? I mean, not that anyone ever reads it before posting, but at least we could easily point them to it after they’ve posted.
EVERYONE will be shot. Every single student on campus. But only non-lethal injuries. It’ll be like The Night The Terminator Kneecapped The Entire LAPD.
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QUICK WRAP A TOWEL AROUND YOUR HEAD MAYBE HE’S SO STUPID HE THINKS IF YOU CAN’T SEE HIM HE CAN’T SEE YOU
…dammit how did he not get towed in that surely five minutes he was illegally stopped
(/sarcasm, sadly)
((congrats on $5k Patreon moneys!))
Five bucks says Dina hostage
This is depressing if true.
Depressing us is a thing Willis is sometimes very good at.
You spelled “often” wrong.
RAINNNBOOWWSSSS
Five other talking male deer say that Dina’s mangled body is lying in the woods. Which bucks are you going to believe?
I didn’t think of that.
Fuck.
That’s a very good reason to go back to his car first.
Seems likely.
I am hoping that he took off after Becky too quickly to toss Dina in the back.
I really, really hope it’s not going to take like two weeks to find out if Dina is safe or not. :-/
Hmm, people seem strangely intent on voting for Dina and Becky in the “people we’ll see more of next year” poll. Wonder why that would be.
Plus Mike, of course.
Dis nurd dont has a gravatar.
?
Get a gravatar lel, thats the default one.
Some of us enjoy the default gravatars.
We don’t get enough Mike in this strip! Mike is one of those characters that just makes things happen. He’s insulting, rude, and brash, but genuinely cares about pretty much everyone he meets.
Mike is my favorite character and I really hope we get to see a lot more of him.
at this point his arrest warrant is going to look reeeal interesting if we’re including abduction
I am also imagining repeatedly resisting arrest on the grounds of “I have done absolutely nothing wrong!”
dina’s not tagged in this so she is probably not in the trunk.
It would kinda spoil the surprise if they added dina to the tags if she is kidnapped
Plus there have been cases in the past where people are present in the scene, but aren’t drawn in the comic so aren’t tagged.
Or were in the scene, but we weren’t supposed to know they were, so they were tagged retroactively.
Fuck, do all the abusive dads in this universe attend the same seminar or something?!
“Thank you for coming, my name is Dargon Chesterfield”.
“Here with me is special guest Immortan Joe”
“hey I know he wasn’t invited but I brought a friend Shou Tucker, that okay?”
Fuck. Even just the name fills me with rage and sorrow.
No kidding.
I am now a thing in this comic comments section. RAIINNNBOOWWSSS
And now out keynote speaker will deliver his speech: “How to make your kid get in the fucking robot.”
Was that an NGE reference or a MGSV reference?
Azama Nakiri will be giving a lecture on teaching methods.
Let me introduce the main speaker, Ian Brady.
(It’s Azami Nakiri not Azama)
(I think I got him confused with Azuma Kazuma, their shows are remarkably similar)
“Just as long as no one minds Tywin sitting in.”
No problem, I believe there’s a few empty chairs behind Firelord Ozai.
Not at all. There’s room over by Ragyo Kiryuin.
Too soon Edu-ardu. Too soon.
If we’re gonna talk about horrible fathers in FMA, Father himself burned Greed to death a couple times…
And all the way from Austria, Herr Fritzl!
He’ll be leading a seminar on Bunker Maintenance.
now guys i know she’s not a man.. but i think she has the kind of
thing we really need in our group.
Special guest Margaret White!!!
her abusive nature and entirely dogmatic faith in the bible really turned her daughters life around!!
I know she looks young, but that’s just who she’s possessing at the moment, please welcome Dean Morgan from Silas University!
Good question!
If that’s the case he’s really ramping up his felony count.
I was going to say something along those same lines. I’m betting your bet is the right bet. Bet.
It’d be redundant, though…
First thing I thought too.
NO NO no NO NO NO!!!!! :'(
If it means we get to see AmaziGirl take down another villain, I’m all for it
Ooooh better yet : Sal is still around and saves Dina. That’ll be cool
The bad guy’s car never gets towed, does it?
(except for that one time where it totally was)
He got it back really quick though. Unless he hotwired another car…
Or rented one from the airport.
After checking, that’s the same car that got towed when he first showed up. He must have got it back somehow.
I bet he paid a nickel
It got towed the day before. That is potentially enough time to get it back.
Yeah, you can get it back as soon as the truck reaches the impound lot with it. You know. Assuming no line at the counter, and a certain amount of funds at your disposal.
–There was a time when we got towed every damned time we parked in downtown Vancouver. Their parking regulations are ridiculous and poorly-labelled.
I think the best policy in regards to driving in Vancouver is to just
don’t.
That’s unfortunately true.
You’re meaning Vancouver, BC, right? You can’t park for ten minutes without “OH SHIT MY CAR IS BEING TOWED.” I don’t own a car anymore now because of that. Gave it to my older brother.
Toedad is a ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal?
Hope he doesn’t do poetry.
He could probably pass for a Vogon.
Thought you said ‘Vorlon’ and was trying to see how the heck that worked.
Oh, freddled gruntbuggly…
Towed-dad.
on the first day of terribleness my father gave to me… my girlfriend in the back seat?
… I really hope Dina’s not back there though…
If he has kidnapped Dina, she’s probably not in the back seat or she’d still be trying to attack him, which means if she is kidnapped she is probably in the trunk…
You know things are fucked up when I’m really just hoping she’s knocked out in the woods.
no, he’d have to show her off at gun point. she’s probably next to him tied up or knocked out?
or worse in the woods
Welcome to the panic attack fun club, dina. Amber and Joyce will keep you company.
Your icon <3
Better than the trunk?
that is a very mixed message!
but, yes, i do realize what you mean.
If Dina is anything like me, she probably went through a phase where she read survival manuals that would only be useful in specific situations. Given that Toedad lacked rope and prep time, even if Dina got shoved in the trunk she’d be able to go for the emergency trunk release and pull a Dilophosaurus with a packet of cafeteria salsa.
After which she would go on a rant about how there’s no evidence Dilophosaurus could do that.
I SOOO want that to be true. “And as you can see I have your [racist and homophobic slur] hostage, so if you excuse me while I twirl my mustaches…” *Toedad opens the trunk* “…we see that the trunk is empty. Where is that little…” *Dina let’s go of trunk lid, Salsa spits ToeDad and goes for the throat*
Dina, while jumping on his head “THIS REPRESENTATION OF DILOPHOSAURUS IS NOT SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE, BUTTHOLE”
Leslie: “Didn’t check the lid. Rookie mistake.”
Or kick out a brake light. It’s pretty easy to do from the interior of a trunk, and usually doing that and sticking a hand out of the back is enough to get someone to call the police.
I’ll remember that in times of need.
Or maybe his plate and car’s description was already mentioned to the police by the person who saw him park, get out, and pull out a gun.
Not an unlikely thought! Remember when she got swept up on the beach trip? She had a raft in her backpack! http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/stain/ (in the background) Be prepared!
Unless he has duct tape and/or plasticuffs in the boot of his car
Actually it seems reasonable he would have brought along cuffs in case Becky was “reluctant” to come along.
Her teeth were serrated. She’s pretty clearly shown herself to be some sort of superpowered mimic octopus, what with her camouflage and shapeshifting skills. At this point, the chances that putting cuffs on Dina will encumber her are about the same as the chances that she will eat them.
Unless he knocks her unconscious
If he made rope available to Dina, he’s done.
Too soon, dude!
Too soon… for Christmas carols. TOO SOON!!
aw, he didn’t go play frizbee.
Who says he didn’t? Becky could have been oddly slow about getting to Joyce.
ya, she got there family circus style. plenty of time for frisbee and ice cream
Ross and Dina had a pleasant conversation waiting for the plot to catch up
Dina: So whats up with you
Ross: Nothing much
Dina: Good good….ooh looks like Becky’s about to reach Joyce
Ross: So back to fighting?
Dina: RAAAH!
Oh Joyce. Sweetheart. Never promise someone forever.
gah! trucked by my own hubris!
BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO DINA
Godly voice: DINA WILL LIVE!!!
BUT WHAT ABOUT BOOMER?!
BOOMER WILL…Um…dinosaur girl’s been here. We’ll get’ch’ya another Boomer.
All of his femurs are gone, its an acceptable loss RAINNBOOWWSSS
Someone is trying too hard…
I can’t think who…
*possessed voice*: DINA MUST LIVE
Where’s Dina where’s Dina where’s Dina
BEHIND YOU!
Paying your mom a nickel
Woah,he sure moves fast.So did he kidnapped Dina and put her in the trunk?
He can’t be that evil to do that, can he?
He came after them with a SHOT GUN
On a college campus, no less
Varmint rifle.
Is it a shotgun or a rifle??
Rifle.
Kiitti =^_^=
Do you feel a growing sense of dread?
I’m afraid the dread has reached metastasis by this point.
Odd you should mention it though.
Well that escalated quickly.
TELEPORTING TOE DAD!
Maybe there’s two of him! Hell, maybe there’s a whole foot’s worth!
little toe dad gets out the car and he runs up to them, waist height starts yelling in a high pitched voice
And thus was invented the sport of Tauren hockey.
A dwarf,why not a gnome?
Gnomes can’t be paladins, that’s why.
Oh right,anyway they would fit better as a hockey puck due to their size.
That’s racist.
Speciesist.
I don’t think Ross is the type of person who would appreciate “Becky has two daddies”…
What you did there. I saw it.
Anyone wanna take a guess as to if he’s holding Dina hostage or not?
oh ffs… if he is…
I bet the next strip is him just walking out of the car with a gun pointing a gun at Dina saying, “Becky get in the car or some bad might just happen to your pour little pokemon girl”
pokeman*
How can he be holding her hostage when her poor mangled body is lying limply on the forest floor breathing it’s last Rarrr?
I’m wondering how many people saw the rifle he was toting around.
We know there was that one dude when Ross pulled it out. Anybody else, though? Not sure.
This is Indiana. Not completely out of the ordinary there
Pretty sure someone whipping out a gun on a college campus will get noticed now that some kids get shot every other week these days. I live in Wisconsin; we ride around with deer rifles (illegally) in the back window of pickup trucks. That doesn’t mean we expect to whip it out on a college campus and not draw a lot of unhappy attention and the campus and city police.
Someone whipping out a rifle as two other someones run like hell…
Yes, whipping it out on a college campus will draw attention.
With any luck, that person in the background a few days ago called the police, and there’s a BOLO for a guy who looks like a toe, driving a green coupe, who attempted to abduct two college-age women before pulling a rifle on them.
I am hoping that as well!
$5K on Patreon! How high do we need to get it for Ross to suffer a meteorite strike to the head?
I don’t know which possibility’s scarier.
That he picked up the gun.
Or he didn’t.
I can’t think of a single recurring college member that would do bad things in the possession of it…
We don’t know what dina is capable of.
Maybe she’s the one holding him hostage O.O
Now I’m half hoping he remembered to pick it up just because I’m that afraid of Ruth somehow getting ahold of it (especially given how her most recent preview is going).
I was worried as soon as they went into the woods that he would lose the gun and thus be less of an obvious target for the police. Though now that he’s (probably) got a college kid in his trunk he’ll be arrested, gun or no gun.
Though I hadn’t thought of the possibility that someone else would take the gun. Hopefully Dina reports that he had one and it’s in the woods. Doubt anyone would find it before the police do in that case.
This is not looking good…
Ross or the situation? Heck the first thing in the morning that I don’t want to see is his face.
Quick, Becky, hide your face by making out with Joyce!
Oh, wait.
He he, ho ho? Becky’s dad works at the funny farm?
Round 3, then.
Begin.
Appropiate music for this.
Oh, good. I had the voice in my head as I typed it.
I’d prefer Civility to Brutality, but I don’t think words alone can solve this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iGyaa-QhwA
Well Ross is going to misinterpret panel 4 isn’t he?
“My daughter is so greedy, she can’t stick to one girl”.
More like “so many girls trying to take away my daughter’s womanhood”
“No, the sin is spreading! contain, contain!”
Sadly, it’s not unreasonable (in his twisted ass religious worldview) for him to suspect that her “close friend Joyce” is patient zero on this whole “lesbian delusion”. Like, ah, of course, the one who first confused her on the roles of men and women. Separate her from that one and the healing can truly begin.
I admit once he’s pointing a gun at people, it seems unlikely, but I can almost see Joyce being able to convince him to back down.
I was wondering if someone would make this conclusion besides me. I’d be worried that Ross will talk to Joyce’s parents and convince them they need to be worried about her enough to pull her out of IU.
Uh-oh. Let’s hope he just gets arrested and ruins his credibility enough for that NOT to happen.
Yeah, Joyce’s parents are dickish, but they don’t strike me as the ‘waving a gun around on a college campus’ flavor of dickishness.
That was my first thought: Joyce’s parents are going to hear all about her “lesbian exploration”.
Please tell me he’s stupid enough to have brought the gun with him and will be waving it around in full view of the public long enough to summon his overdue asskicking.
I can’t believe he hasn’t already waived it in full view of the public long enough to summon his overdue asskicking.
Back when he first pulled out the gun, somebody in the background noticed. I’d hope they’d have called and the police are on the way.
…when seconds count, the police are just minutes away
LEO response time runs 5-10 minutes in most cases, even in a city. But someone waving a rifle does bring a crowd of them.
Sometimes, it doesn’t even need to be a rifle.
Well, that didn’t work. Here’s the link. http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2014/04/03/baltimore-police-investigate-incident-at-kipp-academy/
Somehow I’m under the impression that his racial features have played a role.
*blam*
~ooh whatcha saaaaaay~
~mmm that you only meant well…~
bruh
Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap…
Dina has been kidnapped, as expected. Now all they have to do is inform the RA and/or Amazi-Girl
Or the cops?
The Coast Guard!
Maybe Batman, but it’s a long way from space to Indiana.
Not when he dives straight out of orbit and lands on toedad. He’s batman.
That would still take many minutes.
He’s Batman.
But the RA or Amazi-girl isn’t going to investigate what the heck Becky is doing on campus in the first place, the cops (especially the campus police) probably would.
“Visiting my long-time childhood friend whom I’ve been promising I’d visit since we left for college like, only a month ago?”
Not illegal to be homeless; not illegal to visit for a few days. And right now it has only been a few days.
The police aren’t likely to investigate why Becky’s there; she isn’t breaking any laws in doing so and her presence is entirely plausible and (until now) has been non-disruptive.
Well, Joyce said she’d try to find help…I am hoping help is shortly forthcoming in some fashion or another.
I am shocked, shocked that Blaine and Ross are not on the poll.
What if I want to see the two worst villains in the strip have a romantic moment between each other?
I’d hate to see the faces in a prison where they’re the prettiest boys.
Please don’t joke about that.
Ditto. It’s… just please don’t.
I really shouldn’t have, but it was too easy.
Compelled by The Law of the Conservation of Comedy?
“Pair the Spares”?
Rape isn’t funny.
!! I hadn’t recognized that was a rape joke. Definitely not funny.
I dunno, Blaine looks pretty nice. I mean, he’s fit, and his face is basically a square version of Amber’s
In the showers, stooping for the soap?
,,Yo Blaine,can you bend over and grab my soap.”
,,Ahh,yes sure.”
Somehow Ross strikes to me as the kind of man that would have sex with other men all while being 100% in denial about the fact that, 1: it is sex and, 2: it is homosexual sex.
Amber broke Blaine’s ribs a couple weeks ago in comic time. Unless those hospital previews happen to bring us close to him, he’s not coming back for a WHILE.
If it was a couple weeks ago then he wouldn’t still be in hospital for just a broken rib.
He’s not moving quickly, but unless he’s in ICU, he’s out there.
I just became inexplicably nauseated.
FYI, this is in reference to the prospect of Blaine and Ross hooking up. I’d love to see some dude on dude action in this comic, but …. not those two dudes.
ok but WHERES DINA
Where’s Dina, String? Where the fudge is Dina? Huh? I just want to know where Dina is, String. Where the fudge is Dina?!?
I am rocking and stemming super hard whenever I think about this, and I usually manage to restrain myself.
We can bring a restrain jacket if you wish…Please don’t bite me!
Oh, the time for pleading has long since passed.
He’s holding Dina hostage, isn’t he? He’s going to trade her for Becky coming back with him.
If that’s the plan he’s gonna trade her for going to fucking jail because unless Joyce is incomprehensibly stupid that’s how that plays out.
I think that the moment where Joyce shows us her Stockholm-syndromey brainwashed side is near.
I want to see Joyce and Becky roar and attack at the evil Toedad.
…wow, people have already beaten me on suggesting he took Dina hostage.
That said…
I don’t think we’re done tempting fate yet.
I am really hoping for epic karate battles between Ross and Joyce
Nah,kung fu. So after whooping his ass Joyce can say ,,KUNG F U!”
Willis needs to bring back her plasgun for just this arc: “You call that a gun? THIS is a gun.”
Okay, so as I was refreshing the site for the new comic, I took a longer look at Ross.
And I finally got it. Why people think his head looks like a toe.
It’s his chin, right? I kept thinking it looked like a used staple, but I finally took in the whole picture.
Man that took me way too long.
well that and his general shape
…Dinq is in the car i just know it
Fear has returned. I don’t enjoy this brand of fear. It’s dark times from here.
So everyone realizes he’s probably holding Dina hostage now right?
BUT WHERE IS DINA
Dina is in a place where it is going to matter that she doesn’t have her phone.
Let’s look at this logically. There are basically three posibilities. Ross has Dana in his car. Ross left to pursue Becky and Dana just let him go. Ross left Dana in no condition to try to interfere with his pursuit of Becky.
Which of those three possibilities are you hoping for and which is most likely?
I suppose using words to achieve a favorable outcome is still out of the question, but I still hope Joyce pulls it off. It might buu some time, at least.
I hope that in his rage, Toedad forgot about Dina and left her in the woods. Maybe his gun too.
that’s a point. maybe by not having his gun on him and nowhere to be found he doesn’t get arrested? on the other hand, I really don’t want a checkovs gun situation on our hands
I’m conflicted about it. On one hand, if he forgot the gun then he can’t shoot anybody. While on the other hand, the police could potentially let him go because he doesn’t have the gun people claimed he had.
The type of person who brings their gun to a confrontation with their runaway daughter “just in case” is not the type of person who leaves said gun behind.
Him having a gun didn’t keep Dana from attacking him and slowing his pursuit of Becky. Without the gun, she wouldn’t let him go after Becky without attacking him again unless she couldn’t. Careful what you wish for.
Part of me thinks taking a hostage is too stupid even for him. Then again, he’s on a spiritual crusade to save his daughter.
For all we talk of how he’s definitely going to get taken down, that doesn’t mean the shit he’ll do until then isn’t terrifying.
He already brought a gun to a college campus
I don’t think we’ve seen the end of “too stupid”
He could be too stupid to think of taking a hostage
Ultimately Ross will reveal that this isn’t even his final form. He will then transform into a guy who resembles a foot.
Even that isn’t his final final form. He’ll turn into a whole leg.
his second form will be defeated by Mike after having fused with Daisy (who was earlier defeated by Ross)
And then he will cross the toeshonen line and turn back into himself.
He will murder Dina causing Joyce to become Super Joyce
No, his final form will be that entire foot and leg in his own mouth.
Okay, Joyce, now’s the moment. Lie to him and tell him you haven’t seen her. As long as you dumped all your points in Bluff, you’ve got a chance.
But seriously, that last panel face on Becky is heart-breaking. That’s the face of someone who is quickly running out of all their options and sunny optimism. She’s like five more terrible things away from having a minor collapse.
What makes it even worse? We know for a fact that Joyce is in the midst of a brutal trigger attack. Joyce is fully seeing the sea of Ryans and is probably also suffering the physical flashbacks of it all given how she has been rubbing her wrist this story arc since Walky left. She’s just trying to desperately shove it aside to manage crisis intervention with Becky in the same way that Becky is trying to downplay her own fear.
They are both so incredibly emotionally vulnerable and there is no chance that Toedad isn’t about to open up a whole fresh can of traumas (I mean, assuming he took his gun with him, that alone should be enough to ensure a whole new set of traumatic flashbacks).
Hey, telling an impossible lie is only a -20 to bluff. If she’s sunk enough ranks into it, she can pull it off.
Considering that you can’t spend more than level+3 skill points on a skill and she’s still working on her education, I’d be surprised if her skill cap was above 7 even for class skills. I’m not sure what her class is, but I suspect Bluff would be cross-class. (Cleric and Barbarian seem like the closest things to fitting matches in core materials.)
Who knows, maybe she’s got an NPC class, like commoner.
Lying’s quite a bit easier if we imagine she’s a Dark Heresy class?
Nope, not even considering it.
I don’t want to fit someone as naively idealistic as Joyce into the Imperium. She’d probably fit right in, but nope. Nopenopenope.
We don’t know that Joyce is seeing Ryans everywhere. Last we saw, she had talked to Sal and had calmed down about that issue. She’s definitely nervous now, but about an entirely new issue.
Rubbing her wrist? I just went back to check and I don’t think she is. She’s certainly been hugging herself a lot, especially when there was a prospect of being left alone, but I don’t think she’s been touching her wrist specifically.
Went back and checked and you’re totally right. Guess Sal managed to short-circuit the full on trigger flashbacks. Go Sal!
Minor?
I’m saving room for future traumas.
I am deeply unsettled.
Yes, things are incredibly bad and set to being worse… but we ALSO haven’t seen what Joyce did with the phone the last few minutes. There is anguish and epicness in the future.
And whatever happens they will face it together, as should be.
Thelma & Louise?
One hostage-at-gunpoint situation coming right up.
Dear everyone asking “where’s Dina”: she’s out getting ice cream. toedad turned his back and she ran and now she’s eating ice cream and preparing an aerial strike on toedad and nothing is wrong and also fuck you.
No airstrike, they might hit Joyce and Dina.
My money is her going to get Ninja Rick.
That never happens or they wouldn’t do them. Airstrikes are very precise. Pinpoint accuracy.
Unless you’re a Chinese embassy. Or a hospital. :/
That Chinese embassy was what they were aiming for (whether or not they knew that that’s what it was). I haven’t seen, have they said whether the MSF Hospital was what they were aiming at, whatever they thought it was, whatever their reason for attacking it. It’s not that airstrikes don’t go astray or overlap things not aimed for, but most tragedies/outrages in air attacks happen because they hit what they were aiming at but what they were aiming at was something other than what they thought it was.
Ninja Rick is based on a real person and will not be appearing in the comic.
Better chances if Dina is with him than if she is still in the forest with a gunshot wound.
Don’t think a gunshot is possible. The woods were close enough to the fountain that any rifle fire would have been heard by Joyce and Becky (who probably would have commented on it in the strip).
Not sure. Ever hear how loud a .22-caliber rifle isn’t? The discharge of a small-caliber rifle more than likely wouldn’t make enough noise to attract attention; and even if it did, if there were no following shots the average person would just dismiss it.
Others have pointed out that the rifle is a Ruger V-1 Varmint, which (according to google) is a .223. so, the bullet seems to be quite a bit bigger than the .22, so I suspect it would be a bit louder too. (Not a gun expert… anyone have more knowledge on the subject?)
Yes, because there doesn’t seem to be a suppressor on the barrel so if its a .223 (5.56 for our metric friends) it will be loud because it uses more gun powder and the round will also break the sound barrier
Wouldn’t a .223 be only marginally larger than a .22?
After some experimentation, we were able to confirm the YouTube myth that the sound of a .22 can be silenced well enough that it doesn’t attract attention by taping a 2-litre pop bottle (empty, or filled with packing peanuts) to the end. No idea what it does for accuracy, though, and it doesn’t make enough of a difference for super-sonic rounds (yay for rural property! lol). Besides, Ross doesn’t seem to have one with him, or at least, not on the gun. He sure as hell isn’t worried about anyone seeing him holding a rifle on a campus; I can’t see him caring if anyone hears the rifle.
I’m no expert, but apparently, though it’s only slightly larger in diameter, it’s actually a much larger round. Longer, significantly more powder.
The round on the left is a .22 LR, which is the round people are usually talking about when they just say “.22”. The round second from the right is 5.56x45mm NATO, the round the US military’s M16 fires, based on and very similar, though no longer quite identical, to a .223 Remington.
The number is the diameter of the actual bullet (in inches), which is just the silvery or coppery bit at the top. You can see that the .22 LR and .223 bullets are about the same size. The brass part below is the cartridge casing that holds the gunpowder that makes the bang and propels the bullet to high speeds. (And when fired, they separate, the cartridge casing remaining in the chamber of the gun (in this case; more advanced guns will eject it and automatically load a fresh round, but butthole dad’s gun is a very primitive design) and the bullet part going away very fast.) And you can see that the .223’s cartridge is much longer, much fatter, and holds a lot more gunpowder. Which means it makes a much bigger bang, and the bullet goes a lot faster – which means it goes farther accurately and goes through things and people better once it gets there.
Actually, the numeric part of a cartridge designation is quite deceptive. It’s not always precise or accurate. The .22LR is actually .224 in bullet diameter. Not very precise. The .223 is actually specced to land anywhere from .223 to .2255. Not very accurate. Some designations don’t even refer to the bullet. .357MAG and .38SPC ammo can share the exact same bullets. .38 is referring to the diameter of the case, not the bullet.
Still, I would not counsel attempting to seat a .22LR lead slug in a .223 case with a regular .223 powder charge. .223 cartridges like those big, pointy, copper jacketted slugs. Applying that motive force to a tiny, soft, pure lead slug could actually render the slug molten on its way out the end of the barrel. You’d be literally “spitting” lead at your target. The gods of ballistics would not look favourably on your aim if you did that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.22_Long_Rifle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Remington
.223 is on the order of 2x as massive in the bullet weight dept., but because of the vast amount more powder in the .223, it delivers on the order of 10x the terminal energy of the .22LR.
E = ½mv². It’s a powerful servant and a fearful master.
.223 is COMPLETELY different from .22. Like bicycle tires, the diameter tells you approximately nothing about what you have or need, and is only useful as a shorthand name. .223 is quite loud, and is roughly analogous to what is used in the M16 family of rifles. Even stuck into someone’s gut, it’d be loud AF. Probably not loud enough to default summon the cops, though, if it were just one shot. Our ears are weird that way. Everyone in the field would’ve played the ‘fireworks or gunshot?’ game in their head, then guessed firework after no subsequent shots were heard.
Anyway. .223 is not actually 5.56, they’re just close enough some interchange is possible. The leade lengths and pressure specifications are different. Also, .223″ != 5.56mm, though the bullets are the same diameter. Math, and different methods of measurement, are “fun”.
Yeah I wouldn’t fire a 5.56 round through a .223 calibre rifle but for the purposes of sound and trauma inflicted its close enough plus some on here might not realise that a 5.56 round is basically a .223 round
Americans and their love of doing things differently to the rest of the world and all that
Chris73, my Kiwi friend, you have that backwards: it’s the rest of the world that doesn’t do it The American Way.
That made me literally laugh out loud
*stylus skips across vinyl record*
Is this a reference to the hovertext? If so, it seems we’re the only ones to recognize that reference so far!
“…and I’ll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they’re coming to take me away!!”
Hoo-hoo, hee-hee, haa-haa…
AUGH SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.
Damn you, Willis. That song is effing impossible to get rid of. That’s why no one has mentioned it.
The Imperial March and the G4 My Little Pony theme are pretty good at purging earworms.
I was so relieved and then I read the comments.
Anything’s a relief when every midnight you fear someone’s gonna get their chest pressed by a bullet.
Reassuring fun time thought- there’s at least four stick figure people in the background, two more if you include the initial gun scene, at least it’s not deserted around them
On the first day of Toe, my jerk-ass dad showed to me,
One large gun and a very surprised bystander!
On the second day of Toe, my dinosaur lesbian gave my dad,
Two deep scratches,
And a popular Jurassic Park reference!
On the third day of Toe, my traumatized crush gave to me,
Three bolded words,
Two shaking hands,
And one big hug next to the naked lady fountain!
On the fourth day of Toe, my jerk-ass dad will come back…
Tune in tomorrow to find out what comes next!
NOOOOO TOOO SOOOON FOOOOR CAROOOOOOLS!
20 Internet cookies says he uses Dina as a hostage.
And now in order to save Dina, Joyce must beat Toedad in a children’s card game!
…
RIP Dina.
Man, it would completely wreck this arc if it happened, but I really wouldn’t complain if Ross and Joyce whipped out some duel disks and had themselves a good ol’ game of duel monsters.
It’s why fan art exists
But Toedad would never play the Yugiohmanz for it is the tool of the Satan and blah blah blah…
Then I hope he likes the Shadow Realm.
MIND CRUSH
I heard all of these comments in different yugioh abridged voices.
Okay Joyce, time to put on your big girl pants and save your friend from a brainwashing of Biblical proportions. My money’s on Toedad using a captive Dina to force Becky to go with him. What is it about religion that makes people so batshit crazy?
The threat of eternal torment, duh. How else would you develop morals?
And that car is fueled by unmitigated hatred! Muahahahahahahahaaaa!
Guy is like a villian in a slasher film O.o he never seems to run as fast as the victim but somehow always catcher to her D:
To be fair, he has a car and she doesn’t.
I’m going to be pissed if they just sweep the gun thing under the rug in the next page.
Excuse me, I have to get my fusion canon back from Ratchet. It’s time to rename Columbus to Megatronia.
Here I come Indiana.
Lookout! Three-headed monkey!
No, way, that’s just a toe.
I’ve read all the comments and there is one I have not seen.
He doesn’t need Dina, whether she is in the car or not.
Toedad just shoots Becky and Joyce where they stand, in plain sight, on the stairs.
Becky leaps between her dad and Joyce, taking a bullet for the crush that brought her here to begin with. Toedad is tackled and hauled off to jail. Dina is injured, but arrives in time to see it all go down. She and Joyce are traumatized out of their minds.
And Becky dies.
I hate you
I get that a lot. Risk of the profession, I’m afraid.
Maybe because nobody dies in the comic.
Well. This can only go from bad to worse.
You are with Joyce now, Becky. Everything will be OK. Everyth… everythi… everything… sorry, need to cry a bit.
These cliff hanger bits are starting to get to me. Last night I dreamed that I was reading the next couple of pages. One where Becky’s dad gets her with a tranq dart and one where Sal shows up and takes on Becky’s dad.
Tomarrow we shall see if you have developed future predicting powers
If either prediction (or both) comes true, I’m buying all the lotto tickets!
https://31.media.tumblr.com/d4c8e6abca1054e537a23d076d6ef006/tumblr_inline_n6kc59r6Ah1qezdsy.gif
if only my internet had thumbs….
Well, the good news is I don’t think Dina is in the car or unconscious in the woods.
The bad news is I think she’s in the woods, but not actually breathing anymore.
Damn you Willis for giving me these dark thoughts before bedtime.
A little less grim scenario is Dina out cold in the woods, and cops
Show up and put Toedad down for good.
In front of an already traumatized Joyce, and in front of Becky, either of whom would probably be severely traumatized.
I’m hoping Toedad slips and is taken away to Belarus by crazed gypsy clowns.
This topic comes up quite often in these threads (and will probably come up in this one.)
Willis has commented that none of the cast of the comic will be dying. (Given the fact that time passes slower in the comic than in real life, a death would result in an extensive time frame with characters grieving, something that the creator wants to avoid.)
“Willis has commented that none of the cast of the comic will be dying. ”
I’ve seen countless posters write this over these last few days, but I still haven’t seen Willis write this anywhere…
He posted that a long, long time ago. Around the time Dina first showed up in DoA, I think.
Specifically, in this strip here.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/mine/
The gist of things is that if any of the characters were to die, the sliding timescale would dictate that they’d be in grief for years on end.
Personally I’m far more interested in the characters knowing that death won’t be some form of character resolution.
He’s written it several times both in the comments and on tumblr.
Often to people begging him not to kill Dina.
On at least one occasion, he’s made a possible exemption for characters no one cares about. He used Tony as an example. I’m not sure if butthole dad counts. For all that he’s making Becky’s life hell, he’s still her dad, and I think her reaction to his death would be complicated (see also: Amber in Shortpacked!), especially if she’s somehow responsible for it.
They might not die, but as the bird said, you’d be amazed at what you can live through.
Despite the events in today’s strip, I had to laugh when I read the hovertext!
Immediately recognized that Napoleon XIV reference!
Irrelevant detail, but Becky seems a tad self conscious about her hair. She got a new haircut first opportunity and she has made the high-vis joke several times now.
Don’t worry about it, Becky – it’s rad.
Rad but highly visible. Being loud has never been a problem until this specific moment for her.
“Quick! Dina! Give me your hat!”
Curse her visibility. If only she were bi! Or ace!
Aces, bis, put your hands in the air! Lend her your energy!
That’d be PERFECT! NOBODY sees those guys!
She’s probably kicking herself in hindsight for not dyeing her hair instead of getting the haircut.
Wait… Is Becky 18+? I turned 19 my freshman year, but my sophomore year bf was 17, 16 as a freshman in college,from skipping grades. Is toe dad still her guardian?
Probably not. I don’t think she was unintelligent, but we haven’t seen anything suggesting she was the type of person to have skipped grades. (Plus, I’m not sure how common that would be with home-schooled kids.)
I think they even mentioned her being 18+ in some of the comics.
Found a reference to her age in the comic. So yes, Becky is 18.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/stringent/
Yes, she’s 18.
No, he’s not her guardian legally.
He still considers himself responsible for ‘saving’ her, even if that means shooting people over. He’s not bothered by the law, because God.
I don’t understand why Becky doesn’t just stand up for herself. She’s not obligated to go anywhere with her father against her will at her age. Call the cops if he presses the issue.
“Dad I-”
*bang*
she did stand up to him. then he pulled out a gun and chased her and her girlfriend through the woods.
how exactly do you think a second time would go???
I believe that would be the “call the cops” thing that I mentioned.
Mind you, it didn’t look to me like she was standing up for herself before. She was already in full panic mode. Preparing for flight. Which is what brought her here in the first place. Run run run.
Do you think a phone can magically summon cops instantly to your position?
No. She starts calling 911, while Ross grabs her, forces her into the car, throws the phone away and goes away to BrainwashCamp. Congratulations.
I think Becky is unaware he has a gun. She bolted before he got it from his car.
Because she’s a teenage abuse survivor. Her whole life experience has taught her that her that the authorities are on her father’s side. She hasn’t been out from that long enough, even in this more liberal enclave, to really accept that it isn’t true here.
“Just stand up for yourself.” Against your Dad. The person who had complete control over your life for the first almost two decades of it. That kind of ingrained habit doesn’t go away just because you reach a magical age number.
Honestly, even the fact that she is capable of defying him, to his face, and running away instead of just meekly saying, “Yes, sir,” and getting into the car, as she has spent her entire life being trained to do, is remarkable.
You run, Becky. You run all the way to freedom.
If you have the will, it never gets deeply ingrained in the first place. I was emancipated at age 16 going on 17. Didn’t even need to reach the “magical number”.
Hopefully, her friends will soon get around to providing a defiant wall of support instead of just going along with the panicky run-and-hide tactics like they have been thus far.
Ah. So Becky’s problem isn’t the abusive father or the screwed up religious upbringing. It’s just that she isn’t strong willed enough.
If she was, she’d just face down the armed man who’s 3 times her size and her will would make him back down.
Sure.
But she has.
She refused to go with him, yanked her hand free and escaped to a whole nother city the first time he insisted. Then she angrily stood her ground and stood up for her girlfriend before again, standing up for herself and running. And we’ll probably get a third angry refusal to go with him here.
Every time she has stood up for herself against how she was trained and her father’s demands.
Unless you’re wondering why she hasn’t tried to attack him like Dina, which the answer to that is she’s a twig and her dad is a slab of beef duct-taped to a brick. Getting in that sort of range is a great way to be literally dragged off again like in the first time.
Aside from all these other good reasons, she is probably acutely aware that getting the authorities involved guarantees that she loses her place to stay and possibly gets pulled away from the friends who are her lifeline right now.
Damnit! He was smart enough to get in his car and drive over instead of chasing after her and dropping dead from a heart attack.
I’ve just had a thought.
We’ve all seen the panel of the ambulance in front of the IU Hospital Emergency Center. But that’s all we’ve seen. We’ve also seen a crazy-assed parent, and a gun, and two kids running for their literal lives. So we added all that together and came up with the conclusion that the hospital panel fits into this story arc because crazy-assed dad shoots someone <i(or gets shot himself).
But stop and think for a minute. If there had been a shooting on campus this would attract attention. There wouldn’t be just one ambulance sitting quietly at the ER entrance; there would be an entire metric fuck-ton of police, police cars, paramedics, bystanders, rubber-neckers, and of course media covering the latest campus shooting. So here’s my take on the matter:
We haven’t seen much of Billie and Ruthless, and we all know Ruth is still hitting the sauce pretty hard. I’m thinking that the ambulance is part of the next story arc; someone (maybe Billie, maybe someone else) has found Ruth who has self-medicated herself to the point of alcohol poisoning and she has been transported to the hospital for treatment.
How DARE you present a circumstance where that relieves me
But we’ve seen preview panels of Ruth and she didn’t seem distressed or in horrible medical state, and seemed to still be in a position of authority, which she would not be if she was caught drinking on campus. If you have a clipboard you have power. FACT
Where are these preview panels everybody keeps mentioning?
Here you go. Enjoy!
Alcoholism is now considered to be a disease rather than a defect of character; and since Ruth is an RA she is in fact an employee of IU so her University-provided health-care plan would more than likely would provide coverage for de-tox, diagnosis, and further treatment.
Secondly — and speaking from experience here — a person cannot be discharged as a result of medical conditions so long as they don’t adversely affect the employee in the performance of their job. Discipline can be handed down (a verbal warning, a written letter of reprimand entered into her personnel file, or even a suspension without pay for a specific time) but if Ruth — or anyone else — successfully completes the prescribed treatment regimen they would more than likely be reinstated to their position.
In a perfect world maybe, but if a college discovers one of their student employees is an alcoholic, her ass will be fired before she could even try to protest. I guarantee if this is a dry campus (and I think it is?), underage drinking and alcohol possession are addressed in Ruth’s contract. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Ruth is only a year or two older, so not 21. And it would depend on the circumstance, but if it was discovered that she was drinking in her room, it wouldn’t matter her age.
Ruth’s 20, Word of God. I asked him a while back for exactly this reason.
I don’t know, my suspicion would be if she wasn’t fired immediately or “asked to step down”, then she’d be kicked out of the dorm for “violating her lease agreement for the dorms” and you’re definitely not allowed to be a RA if you’re not living in the dorms.
And speaking from experience here, colleges are definitely not that incredibly understanding when it comes to mental illness.
Exactly. Colleges are all about protecting their own asses and maintaining their public image. Typically with the path of least resistance. Can’t have suicidal alcoholics making a spectacle in the dorms. And it’ll look twice as bad since they gave her a position of authority.
There are stories of people who have been committed against their will for days or weeks by their schools(under the guise of a hospitalization/suicide watch) because they admitted to depression and suicidal ideation. They, of course, missed classes and failed. This was then used as grounds to expel them.
One option that we’ve all probably not thought of: What if Ross’s health isn’t anywhere near as good as we’ve thought and the stress he’s been putting himself under triggers a heart attack or a stroke?
I’m kinda expecting/hoping that the hospanel is just completely random and Willis is just fucking with us.
It could just as easily be Billie who needs help. She’s still living somewhat in denile and hasn’t slowed down her drinking at all.
We are almost at the point where Ross demonstrates his stupidity by trying to physically impose his ‘authority’ on Joyce.
Meanwhile Dina’s corpse continues to cool in a nearby forest…
Trunk of his car?
Man that would look really bad when the cops show up.
Less hugging, more running. Time is freedom guys.
No… No, here and now, surrounded by witnesses, is the time to have this confrontation. Ross’s freedom of action is massively reduced by the environment and, if the girls stand firm, he’s going to have few cards to play except to try force. That would be a very, very bad idea on his part.
The bastard had already pulled a gun out in broad daylight with witnesses around, he’s not going to care about how he looks to other people. Standing there to confront him isn’t the best idea.
It may be critical to Dina’s safety
If it hasn’t already been mentioned, this would be an excellent time for Amazi-Girl to put in an appearance.
And kick evil Toedad in the FAAACE!!!
No, I don’t think that’s necessary anymore. This is a fight that’s going to be won with words, not fists. Ross isn’t going to start something in a public place, unless he’s enormously stupid.
I honestly think pulling out the gun counts as starting something in a public place.
He’s not just stupid, he’s RELIGIOUSLY stupid.
He swerved off the road and onto a sidewalk. He pulled out a rifle. He chased two girls into a shelterbelt. He’s potentially harmed one of said girls and may or may not have her stowed in his trunk. All on a college campus, with people around, who have seen him and would easily be able to point out “the walking refridgerator with no neck” wearing cammo pants.
All because he feels he’s entitled to take possession of, control, and correct his daughter because she’s “strayed from the righteous path of being a completely heterosexual grandchild factory”.
And don’t think he’s doing it because he cares about HER. This is all about him, his pride, and his own security as he ages as hyper religious people like that follow the traditions of the children taking in and caring for their elderly. Becky’s his only kid (amazingly) that we know of, as I don’t recall it being mentioned she had any siblings… so if he loses his grip on her, then he’s going to face a future where he is truly and utterly alone, since not even getting a second wife would guarantee he wouldn’t live out his final days soiling himself in some decrepit nursing home.
If Ross gets his way and somehow manages to take her back, nothing that will be done will be in Becky’s best interests… only his, whether he acknowledges that or is even smart enough to realize how selfish he’s being. He’d force her through some corrective program where she’d be physically and possibly sexually abused until she’s broke into submission, or runs away again, and ends up in a more uncertain and unsafe situation.
Thankfully, no matter if he gets her in the car or not, he’s not getting off campus without a caravan of cop cars running him down. Given that this comic is in ‘modern’ times and are at the very least combining some elements of real life current events within it, school shootings are likely just as much of a “common thing” going on, and something that the DoA media will jump on as soon as they get a whiff of that story. Ross will end up getting arrested and charged, the entire nation will be made aware of an incident that happened at Indiana State Uni, and Becky will possibly be thrust into the spotlight as the ‘motivation’ for the crimes. Awareness of her plight will make national headlines, and maybe she’ll be like that one guy who was attacked by his own parents for coming out as gay and get a big gofundme campaign made in her honor to give her funds to help herself get established out of the control sphere of her hyper-religious upbringing.
Silver linings and all that… and I hope Dina was just ditched in the shelterbelt and will be emerging from there with only some minor scrapes and bruises to be a key witness against Ross… or at worse, gets released from the trunk of the car with only some minor injuries to, again, be a key witness.
Amazi-Girl is never helpful.
Danny, the girl who was being sexually harassed, the owner of the car that was nearly cinderblocked, and others would probably disagree.
Never helpful when it would matter to the plot. And Danny getting an asskicking instead of a batshit nuts girlfriend might have been the better option.
I suspect that the combined trauma of party flashbacks and dealing with toedad will result in Joyce having a total breakdown and trying to beat toedad into a pulp.
Given how she reacted to Ryan when pushed that’s pretty likely. Of course, as Dina has already demonstrated, it might not be the best of plans.
But still… if Joyce take out all that fear and fury on ToeDad I will cheer her on as loud as I can. Joyce has already defied God for the sake of Becky. Toedad Childmurderer is NOT getting out of this unharmed.
She grew up with a ton of older brothers. Chances are she knows plenty well how to land a hit that’ll knock even the toughest person off kilter. That little area right above the abdomen and right where the two sides of the ribcage meet is an excellent aiming point, since no matter how muscular you are, there’s almost nothing there except the abdominal wall and a thin layer of connective tissue, and the cartilage ‘cap’ of the sternum (which can be easily broken off and is enormously painful, not to mention it can cause injury to the diaphragm and other bits if it gets snapped off).
Joyce, unlike Dina, also has some weight and build on her. She might not be Ronda Rousey, but she’s also not going to get flung around so easily.
There’s also the fact that, being it’s a college campus and plenty of college age dudes are upstanding guys who wouldn’t put up with watching some guy try and manhandle a couple of girls, would be rushing over to confront and beat the shit out of him.
Just binge read this comic. Actually kinda wishing I had found this comic a couple of weeks from now, so I wouldn’t be caught up at the most suspenseful part of the arc.
You binge read it NOW???? Poor sap.
Wow you have shit timing, just come back tomorrow though.
Hair dye, Becky. Hair dye was a thing.
Can anyone tell me how expensive a hair dying process tends to be?
Depends on quality. Inferior processes can damage hair and leave it brittle, but I’m fairly certain it’s easily achievable for under $20.
Dying hair as pretty as Becky’s would be a shame, though.
After this storyline (barring any other known crazy relatives) Becky won’t have any reason to dye her hair. She’s never shown any signs of disliking her hair color until Toedad showed up.
sooo becky has forgotten all about dina. such a great girlfriend
Or she is perhaps scared out of her wits and trying to flee her abusive father, and maybe she hasn’t totally collected her thoughts yet.
While I can’t help feeling bad that she seems to have forgotten about Dina for the moment, I have to agree with you, too. It’s unpleasant, but realistic.
Plus, Becky probably counted on Dina to run and stay hidden rather than jumping Toedad. Dina is skilled at not being seen, so she’d have been safe if she’d done that.
I was also discomforted by how she hasn’t mentioned Dina, or tried to catch sight of her, this whole strip. Becky never saw the rifle coming out, but her dad is still three times Dina’s size and capable of completely thrashing her with or without firearms. :c
They went separated ways so Toedad couldn’t follow them both. She likely assumed he would follow her.
And he did. Toedad went after her, not Dina. It was Dina who went after Toedad and ambushed him
If Becky is seeing Toedad getting there, she can only assume he went after her and Dina escaped safely.
Also, she doesn’t know about the gun. There’s little to be worried about Dina if she’s not here while Toedad is.
But whatever, let’s ignore Becky’s point of view and use our knowledge of things she couldn’t possibly known to keep shitting on her.
This. She has no idea that Dina is in danger. As far as she knows, Dina is that dinosaur girl other people don’t seem to notice in the background whereas she’s got a signal flare for a head, so she probably presumed Dina was able to escape safely while Toedad was busy pursuing her.
So basically, her mistake is she massively underestimated how awesome and protective her girlfriend really is.
As far as she knows, Dina’s taken off to go get help, or at least stay out of her father’s way.
She probably didn’t know about Dina’s personal affinity with roleplaying as a velociraptor.
i still think she shouldve thought at least a little about dina. i think toedad is more willing to hurt dina than becky, and even if becky didnt realize that she shouldve still thought a little about dina. like when she came to joyce matbe mention that dina ran the other way or something. but no, nothing. it seems that she has completely forgotten about dina and if toedad leaved, she would go with joyce and habg out with her for days before realizing she hasnt talked to dina in a while
Why am I the only one reading this trip as Toedad LEAVING the campus ?
It seems weird that he would spot Becky, then turn around, walk all the way back through the woods, get into his car, drive around those same woods, and then park and get out of the car, instead of just going across the field, straight for Becky.
There’s just something that doesn’t feel right here, almost like he’s given up, but I can’t quite see that kind of guy just “suddenly” getting a change of heart either….
He’s already had the car towed once. He’d rather not go through that again, especially as he is pretty sure he knows where she’s going to be going.
He needs Becky on the car. It makes more sense to force her into the car if it is close, rather than force her to walk at gunpoint all the way back to where he left the car the first time.
This. Dragging her across a field leaves her lots of room to wiggle free and run again.
I’m still trying to work out whether the artist was fully aware that a drawing of a Ruger Varminter rifle can look like a two-trigger shotgun when viewed from the side, and whether this ambiguity was intentional.
I just want to say thank you for this storyline. I didn’t come out to my family until I was 32 because it was all too plausible that a situation like this would occur, except that the gun-toting lunatic dragging me off to be “corrected” would have been my mom. Had I been outed during college, I still think this probably would have happened to me. There really are people like Toedad out there, and lots of them.
I’m half expecting Ross to have Dina and try to use her as a bargaining chip. However, I think it is quite possible that Joyce may surprise him. Especially if the Campus police turn up and Joyce backs up Becky’s allegation that he’s attacked a student (Dina).
Hank’s later arrival will be due to a bailed-out Ross complaining to the Browns that Joyce is “consorting with sinners”.
“Ross had a gun and attacked (possibly kidnapped) a fellow student” is a pretty great excuse for Joyce to give her parents if Ross tries to get her kicked out or in trouble with her folks. When she has all the information Joyce could easily say she was protecting Becky for fear she’d get killed or extremely hurt and at this point it would be true. Could even throw in some bible quotes for good measure. Joyce’s parents are fundies but from what I’ve seen so far they’re not monsters and I have some faith they’ll take Joyce’s side after this.
Never underestimate the human ability to defend the indefensible: “Oh, we condemn his actions but his motives were laudable! You should have been the peace-maker and persuaded Becky to go with him to avoid a violent confrontation! He’s an upright member of our church, Joyce! Your actions have caused him embarrassment and could cost him his position on the council of trustees!”
I don’t have much experience with fundamentalists but Joyce getting kicked out would pretty much spell an end to DoA, so I’m pretty optimistic about how her parents will take this. Joyce can spin this in her favor very easily without having to lie once.
Willis has already said that we will never see semester #2. Maybe a plotline where Joyce gets kicked out/withdrawn from school is his way of making sure we don’t?
FWIW, I suspect that the end of the semester will show clearly where the characters are likely to go in the future. They will have all set their childhoods aside and will be well on the way to adopting their adult selves’ perceptions, attitudes and lives.
I don’t think we’d see an ending that anticlimatic. Would be really unfitting for DoA imo.
I think the planned ending for DoA is “the buffer runs out a few months after Willis shuffles off this mortal coil”.
Yeah, no kidding. We’re already five years and counting into it, and it’s only been what, less than two months in-universe?
Today is Monday of Week 5.
I thought the point was that he could run the college idea “Forever” so it’s gonna be a Simpson’s like “Never ending first semester” And no one is gonna die?
It just.. How do overarching plots without forward movement?
Could she get “kicked out”?
I assume tuition for the first year is already paid, so the family doesn’t have any leverage there. And its a secular institution (unlike Anderson) so there’s probably no “morals” issue. Joyce may become estranged from her family, but technically she’d probably still be able to continue her studies (with help from financial aid and/or part time work.)
It’s possible that her parents wouldn’t support her financially after this but I really really can’t see it happening. An argument/worsened relationship with them maybe probably but I can’t see them refusing to pay her tuition past first year. Maybe I’m too optimistic tho. Dunno.
Also- I assumed it would be possible for Joyce to get pulled out of school since Becky did. Maybe that was just Ross having no regard for the rules as is regularly demonstrated in this arc.
Becky was going to a “christian college”. Being a private (and religious based) institution probably results in them giving more authority to toedad than a private/secular institution would.
Even then, unless her parents are paying for her school themselves, Joyce can simply refuse to leave when they ask. And it’s still early enough in the semester that alternative payment options could be discussed with the school.
Not that estrangement from her (relatively loving)family is an easy decision for anyone, much less someone like Joyce.
Why doesn’t Becky run right now? Because she needs to find out that toedad has Dina hostage? We know that Joyce will have to end up saving Becky. Sarah said so in a deliberate plot point, just yesterday / two months ago. Trust the foreshadowing. It rarely fails.
She might actually be cornered if the road around the fountain goes all the way around, which pictures of the fountain online seem to suggest is the case:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/meetin/
http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/files/2010/08/Showalter_fountain.jpg
Cause anywhere she could start to run he could circle the car around to and cut her off.
Plus she’s out of breath from her last desperate sprint. And she hasn’t seen the gun yet which is seeming all sort of Chekhovian. So that will definitely change the calculus on running when that gets pulled out.
Well, Becky has just seen his car in the last panel. The next strip might start with her trying to run away. But I doubt it, for the reasons Cerberus pointed out.
remember when you ran away and I got on my knees and begged you not to leave because I’d go berserk?
(you mangy mutt – annnnnd…)
Becky
I’m trying to think rationally and be like “she’s 18, he can’t make her do a damn thing” but then I remember that the man has a fucking GUN so basically rational thought serves no purpose.
So, any reason no one is calling 911 because a crazy person is running around with a gun on campus.
I assume they are, see October 10th strip, the blob in the background with shock bubbles. also maybe Joyce called as well
That makes sense: I’ll have to admit, this storyline, after the shootings in the last couple of weeks, makes my skin crawl.
Not sure if Joyce would have called 911… she knew Toedad was there, but she probably didn’t know he had a gun (or that he had done anything illegal up to that point).
Joyce knew he was physically chasing Becky.
That’s sufficient reason to call the police, although not enough to guarantee that she would’ve.
They probably have and I have no doubt that the cops are currently at the other end of the woods, searching for said gunman. It might be dramatically appropriate if Joyce gets the ‘active shooter – shelter in place’ text on her ‘phone at the moment she sees Ross’s gun propped up on the front passenger seat of his car.
The person in the background might have a couple strips ago but we have yet to see if he has his gun with him here.
I honestly hope he does have it with him so he gets stopped ASAP.
So, aside from the hundred police officers that should descend upon an idiot toting a loaded slugthrower on campus, which cast members might show up within the next two strips?
Dorothy? Joyce was considering a call to her anyway. She’d have contacts with the campus LGBT* organizations, and would be an excellent character witness if necessary. Kind of a middling person for a stand-up conflict with someone thoroughly irrational.
Ethan? Kind of my #2 call choice for Joyce. Less connected than Dorothy, but maybe better for getting words into the mind of a misogynist. Well, until he reveals that he, too, is part of the lesbian supremacy.
Sal? Well, it hasn’t been that long since she left Joyce. She’s more caring than she lets on, and she was idling anyway; she might have lingered to make sure that Joyce was OK with her agoraphobia. She could be a very good or a very bad person to have show up now, with her emotional “brick-through-a-window” way of dealing with people.
Dina? Trunk is the obvious choice, but maybe she was down-but-not-out in the forest. She’s willing to go to bat physically for Becky, and she’s shown some surprising improvisational social engineering skills.
Amber/Super-Girl? Fun choice, the Toedad eats pavement. Of course, weird-person-in-tights might be enough to make Toedad’s brain implode and actually pull the trigger on his trusty varmintshotrifle.
Mike? Come on, we all want him here. “Congratulations on becoming a martyr for gun-rights lunatics everywhere. Oh, and on your new felony convictions.”
More/better?
A lot depends on who (if anyone) Joyce called for aid. Remember, Joyce may have been restrained by a fear that telling too many of her friends about Becky might let the College Administrators learn about her.
Also, from a story point of view, the more this is handled by Becky and Joyce the better. Someone else sweeping in to save the day might be cool in a way, but dramatically and for character development reasons, it’s best to keep this focused.
It’s Joyce’s story and Becky’s plot arc. If someone else winds up handling Toedad, then it won’t be a resolution – he’ll be back. They need this confrontation and they need to win it.
Can we please have Mike show up and punch ToeDad multiple time?
This is Indiana. Why hasn’t someone pulled their personal protection sidearm and shot Toehead mofo carrying a rifle and chasing two young women?
Because that would go against the “Guns are bad m’kay” narrative.
Yeah, that’s definitely why. It has nothing to do with the limited number of people who have seen Toedad with the gun, the tiny fraction of that group who are carrying a firearm with them, and the even smaller number who a) have figured out what’s going on, b) want to get involved, and are comfortable either c) shooting a man who isn’t threatening them personally *and hasn’t actually raised the gun to fire at all* or d) confronting an armed man without getting shot themselves. Totally the author’s bias. Nothing to do with verisimilitude at all. Nope.
He did actually raise the gun to fire while he was in the woods. Nobody saw that but Dina, though.
(He also wasn’t successfully aiming at anybody, but he was trying to.)
Name one time where that has actually happened in real life. In the real-life gun-crime events the offender is either taken down by the police or more often turns their own weapon on themselves.
Perhaps for the same reason that no-one did any such thing in the Umpqua Community College shooting. Several witness have said in interview that they were carrying guns but did not use them.
I don’t know of any incident since 1966 in which bystanders took up arms against a spree shooter.
The proper way to summon Mike to the scene is to have one of them hold a nickel above their head.
Would have been more pertinent to post a few days earlier, but couldn’t fins the video. I think it was made by the FBI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VcSwejU2D0
I don’t know how effective this strategy is for open public place, as it is more devised for in-building mass-shooting.
Is she 18 yet? Because if she is then she’s an adult and can’t be forced to go with him, she might even be able to file a restraining order.
I doubt that Ross would recognise the validity of a ‘secular’ definition of adulthood as limiting his power over his daughter. Nor do I believe he would respect a secular court’s jurisdiction in this matter (and in some parts of the US, local-level courts, at least, would side with him). I’m sure he will try to use moral blackmail against Joyce by implying that continuing to support Becky makes her a sinner or an ‘apostate’. Standing firm in the face of those accusations will be the hardest thing that Joyce will ever do.
No, this will come to him threatening force against Becky or Dina. In the end, it will be his last card to play and he will likely end up being arrested for his pains.
She surely can be forced go with him. Doing so would be *illegal* but it wouldn’t be *impossible*.
She has no money or time to get a lawyer to have a restraining order. He’s right there, right now, he’s stronger than her and has a car and a gun. Telling him this is a crime won’t stop him.
So where are the teachers when the girls really need their guidance?
What teachers? So far the only instructional staff we’ve seen has been Jason (who is really only a TA), Leslie Bean (Gender Studies instructor), and the Dean. Plus a bunch of unnamed background figures in the faculty box at the football game.
Professor Rees, the actual instructor for the math class Jason TAs, has been visible at least once. There’s also Alex, who teaches Amber and Danny’s CS For Morons class. And Penny who’s another math TA.
(Having known Penny in the other universe, though, I cannot imagine that adding her to this situation could be in any way helpful in reducing possible body count.)
Best case scenario, she might steer the body count in a better direction.
We’ve also seen the guy teaching that computer science class Amber and Danny are so scornful of, and I think we might have seen Jason’s Professor Rees in a panel or two?
How useful any of these people are going to be against a gunman is a currently untested question. I’d prefer campus security, myself.
Is Becky legally an adult? Because that can drastically change how horrifying her situation is about to be. I assume her Dad is the only bread winner, she might hate him but him going to jail (and the ramifications of that on the rest of her family) will still probably hurt her, a lot. Like, go back home to try and help out as they try to pray the gay away and actively abuse her levels of guilt.
She is eighteen, has no other family, and I think you do not understand ‘ran away from home’ as a concept
Becky’s mom died last year according to her and her dad. She’s never mentioned other siblings, so I would guess she doesn’t have any. And her dad seems quite intent on sending her to some pray the gay away camp.
They see me rolling…. they hatin… patrolling, and they wont let me take my own daughter.
Quick, distract him with a flare!
So, even if he gets away with everything that happened today, Joyce is now officially involved and Toedad is going to her parents. The Browns have proven themselves to be decent people in Walkyverse, but I’m curious to see how this is going to melt down.
Which is the point, I guess? I’m not offering anything insightful, here.
Or it’ll be the good, christian mans word against his lesbians daughters word, a girl that likes to pretend to be a dinosaur and the word of another girl thats friends with and defends atheists
Just to put another spin on it
I think it’s time for Marcie and Malaya to show up and open up a can of Roller Derby Smackdown. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Woman-stops-intruder-with-medieval-combat-skills-6563597.php
Where are police and why are they not involved? Fact is that Becky should not have to keep hiding/running from assdad. He needs to be arrested, charged and convicted of various crimes, jailed, and then given a restraining order. DoA is often realistic (if exaggerated) but here and now it has taken a bizarre and dangerous path. People should know that they can go to authorities in this situation. Often, tragedy has taken place because they were not involved.
…no, she should Rin, where are you that police response time is measured I seconds? Sounds nice. And fictional.
Run
Becky has had the time to run maybe 100 or 200 yards from the time she saw Toedad to meeting Joyce. That’s going to be (at most) a minute or 2. Plus, neither Joyce nor Becky knew about the gun (which would be key to a quick police response.) The only person we know for sure knew about the gun was Dina, who didn’t have her phone with her.
There was the individual in the background of an earlier strip who may have seen the gun, but we don’t know for sure what they saw or if they even called the police. (And even if they did, its still going to take more than 1 or 2 minutes to respond. They may not even know where to go to… Toedad was seen going into the forest, but he’s left there.)
It’s about 700 yards (or 700 meters, near enough for the precision of that measurement) from the intersection of E. 6th and N. Indiana, which is where I believe the girls first encountered butthole dad, to Showalter Fountain. 9 minutes by Google walking directions, a fair bit less at a dead run. If the alarmed person in the background called the cops as soon as the gun appeared, they’re probably only just starting to respond, and will be responding 700 yards away from where butthole dad is now.
Read Hall is closer to Showalter Fountain than 6th and Indiana is. Any help Joyce might have summoned from the dorm could be arriving any moment now.
“Excuse me, wild gunman who’s chasing me with said gun. I need a moment to contact the proper authorities.”
Red on green should never be seen. Quick! Get a Hat … ah,
Maybe this is where Joyce will kick ass by overcoming her fear?
“Thou shall not kill”seems to be the one commandment often forgotten by the ultra-religious.
That may be because of multiple divine ordinances specifying that certain people must be put to death.
Um, they also forgot all the other ones.
Oh, and as far as what Dina did. If she survives, she totally deserves to be Amazi-Girl’s sidekick or even co-superhero. That was both incredibly brave, and incredibly dangerous.
What’s really sad is that multiple news sources are reporting that a 19-year-old named Lucas Leonard was beaten to death yesterday by his own parents, sister, and several other members of their “church” in a “counseling session” because they felt he needed to confess sins and ask for forgiveness. His younger brother was also “counselled” and is in a hospital with serious injuries. There are indeed actual living human beings capable of behaving the way Toedad is.
Why isn’t “Nobody dies in this comic” in the FAQ? I mean, not that anyone ever reads it before posting, but at least we could easily point them to it after they’ve posted.
it’s only become a pressing, urgent issue very recently. And maybe won’t in the future
Wait. So JOYCE gets shot???
I’M SO CONFUSED!!!
Considering Joyce is completely fine and dandy in the next story arc (ie: tomorrow), chances are it won’t be her.
If anyone’s going to the hospital it’ll be Becky or Dina.
Ross. It’ll be Ross.
I keep telling myself that.
Any time I read “Ross” in place of “Toedad” I think of Monica Gellar’s brother
hey, he did go to the hospital that once for a kiwi allergy, didn’t he
Maybe Becky’s mom is still alive.
They’re just on a break.
EVERYONE will be shot. Every single student on campus. But only non-lethal injuries. It’ll be like The Night The Terminator Kneecapped The Entire LAPD.
I wonder if the bullet will go all the way through both of them, stop in the second one of them or just stop in the first one.
TUNE IN TOMORROW TO FIND OUT