In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Edison Rex
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The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Ozzie the Vampire
Eric Lide
Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Peritale
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A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Sakana
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Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
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Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
Little Tiny Things
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What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
Novae
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A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
The Weave
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A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Monster's Garden
Ash G.
Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
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A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
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A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Nerf Now!!
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A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Darkling Bright
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Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Saint for Rent
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Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
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.
Lies Within
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Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Angel's Orchard
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After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
The Messenger
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In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Barbarous
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A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Freakshow
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A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Augustine
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August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
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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That’s a common jibe, even if they WEREN’T wearing the same thing… it’s just a ‘dear god you are a total geek and I can’t remember ever seeing you in anything that WASN’T geeky’ sneer that the popular kids always gave the geeks in high school.
Clearly, Sal has not matured past High School mentality yet… which combined with Joyce still being in Grade School mentality… is a volatile mix. Someone else needs to catch up to them… NOW.
Pigtails, a sweater vest and with stockings that come up past her knees and a skirt that comes just below, so you can just catch a few rare glimpses of thigh.
Would you prefer Joe in pigtails with a sweater vest and with stockings that come up past his knees and a skirt that comes just below, so you can just catch a few rare glimpses of thigh?
PLEASE tell me someone forces her to quit smoking. Someone like Mike… okay, or Joyce. One of those two, and no one else. Although they did both fail to knock the perviness out of Joe, so… hmm….
No, they were put in place because people don’t mind someone’s rights being taken away as long as it’s not their rights. If someone’s smoking and you don’t want to be around that, just move away.
The same argument works the other way. If there’s a no smoking sign and you want to smoke, just move away. It makes even more sense because you’re the person sticking a slow, cancery deathstick in your mouth. As opposed to someone with asthma who can’t breathe around smokers.
I admit to loathing smokers, because too many of them have been self-indulgent and irresponsible about it. As a I child, I remember being dismissed as rude for asking an adult at a restaurant not to smoke at the dinner table we shared while I was still eating. Later, I remember when a non-smoking section was still likely to have smoke blown in.
I remember when smoking was allowed in military transports, and people who got addicted from being in a closed van for an hour a day of exposure. I remember when drill breaks gave you the choice of standing in the rain of going to the smoking shelter.
I remember guests in my house destroying one of my grandfather’s wood carvings to use it as an ashtray. I remember guests who smoked in my apartment after being told to smoke elsewhere, and using my dishes despite the fact I had an ashtray they could take with them. I remember at least three occasions on which people used something I was still eating or drinking as an ashtray while I was called away to fill an order. And while I can still soldier up twelve flights of stairs or stand out in -20 weather because some self-indulgent waste of sperm decided to foul up the elevator or the bus shelter, neither I nor my respiratory ailments should have to tolerate that sort of thing.
I look at the number of butts smokers leave on the ground because they’re too damned lazy to field strip them and throw out the paper.
You’ve got no right to smoke wherever you please, any more than I’ve the right to build the sort of hell you so richly deserve, or to send you there.
Oh sure, Viktoria. When some smoker is fouling up the air of the enclosed space where I have to work or eat or whatever, I can just move away (unless I’m in a car, or in an elevator, or on a jury pool, or at home, or…). And, presumably, I can take my work or food with me. Of course, then I won’t have a desk to work at or table to eat at, but better to let that smoker continue poisoning the air I have to breathe later instead of ask for a break for my chronically asthmatic lungs.
Or, on second thought, no. That smoker can damn well move somewhere else and stop fouling up the air I have to breathe later. Unless, of course, said smoker is a so utterly self-absorbed as to not notice or care about the people around him or her.
Your smoking is not a right. I need clean air more than you need nicotine.
You have exactly the same right to create your noxious cancer cloud of oppressive chemical warfare near me as I have the right to punch you repeatedly in the FAAAAAAAACE.
One more point on the “just move away” argument: Note that I pointed to laws about smoking near air vents. Similar ones apply to smoking near public entrances as well, because air vents and entrances don’t move.
Tell you what, though. I’m willing to compromise. You can smoke wherever you please when I have the right to urinate with the exact same limitations. If I have to put up with cigarette stains and smell on my clothes and in my food, surely you can surely tolerate the same effect as a result of a natural bodily function.
It’s in regards to the general outrage that sparks in the comments here whenever Sal lights a cigarette. Hence the “you fanatics” and not a reference to a single individual.
I’d like zuche to be my new best friend too.
I also agree with Blightning and Shade Tail: smoking is a privilege, not a right. So many people throw around the word “right” in talking about their “right to do” x,y,z when really what they mean is that they want to be able to do x,y,z without suffering any consequences for their actions. So basically, Viktoria wants to be able to poison herself (I’m presuming by the name that we’re dealing with a female…I may be wrong) and others without anyone telling her that she can’t even though her actions are effecting other people. That’s simply wrong. Everyone has to deal with the consequences of their actions. If she wants to poison herself, then she has the privilege to do so, but away from people like me who don’t want to be poisoned. That’s called being considerate of other people.
I hope you fanatics never roll your windows down in traffic and have the best in-cabin filtering system available because you breathe all the same stuff in traffic every day. Or walking on the sidewalk. Or pretty much just being outside in any industrialized city.
Hey, Smoker. I’ll get over myself when you get over your selfish entitled attitude. Just because other people are forced by economics to drive cars doesn’t give you the right to foul up my breathing space even more with your filthy habit.
People have to drive cars for their jobs and getting food. You don’t have to smoke for any reason, except that you seem to enjoy pretending you have any right to be holier-than-thou.
Honestly, I was homeschooled for two years (5th and 6th grade), but that didn’t turn me completely crazy. Of course, the folks are a little different, and were pushing me to de-stress and slack off more before I lost my mind in the public school system.
People are homeschooled for a lot of reasons. Some are at home to have their education tailored to their personal needs. Some are kept at home to protect them from new ideas.
I’m afraid I don’t have the links anymore, but you should still be able to find articles online by people expressing their concern with how the religious right co-opted home schooling programs and support in North America.
Huh? Umm… I think I need to clarify what I mean. Yes, she needs to be exposed to other people who aren’t in her normal comfort area. But that’s not what I mean when I say I feel sorry for her.
Instead its BECAUSE she was sheltered. She doesn’t understand how to read people, so watching her follow Sal around like a puppy (who Sal will not doubt manipulate due to her ‘bad girl’ behavior and will eventually probably hurt her feelings) is kinda sad to watch.
Given Sal’s history in the other comics and behavior so far in this one, I’d say she’d skip past the manipulating and straight to the hurting. Sal’s kind of a blunt instrument.
I’m not sure Sal has enough interest in other people to actively manipulate them. She’s such a loner that the woman sharing a room with her never sees her there.
I doubt Sal has to work hard to manipulate Joyce. All she has to do is say “Go get me food” and I bet Joyce would come back with a Thanksgiving Spread.
Well, OK, I can see what you mean there, Shift. I’m still not quite ready to pity her for that. It’s a bit early to start speculating on what will end up happening between them. The comic has only barely started, after all (we’re still on the first week of the new semester). And extreme comic exaggeration happens a lot with these characters. For all we know, they’ll end up best friends for the *correct* reasons instead of the wrong ones.
I really like Joyce. She’s sweet, cute, & yes, maybe a little out of her element, but many of us are at that age. I think it’s unfair to judge her so harshly for being 18 & raised in a certain kind of home.
& also I think all of the sexualizing her up in here is a little…weird.
I haven’t read any of the other comics with these characters, so I just sort of assumed that Joyce was different (sexier/less naive) in the others and people were drawing from that, so it didn’t seem as creepy… But maybe not? *confused*
Actually, in the other continuity, she refused to acknowledge the existence of sex at all. At the age of twenty-one, her idea of where babies came from involved fairies.
That was pre-maturation, though. There’s a lovely comic somewhere in the archives where Obscenely modest Joyce and Slutty Joyce are arguing with each other as she loses her virginity… Only to be clipped round the earhole by a Joyce dressed in a comfy jumper who tells them to “settle down… I’m trying to enjoy this.”
Her original was all over the map. At first she was only slightly naïve, much less than here (and had gone to high school), but about as puritanical, to the point that being forced to watch a fairly vanilla porn film was enough to drive her to wipe her own mind. Then she was even more naïve than here, too naïve even to be puritanical, to the point that Sal and Jason have to give her “The Talk,” after which she reacts to sex like an eight-year-old who’s just heard of it. This lasts until an oversexed “Bizarro” version is created, who implies her memory loss is at least partially conscious repression, and for that Joyce *murders* her in cold blood. (She gets off first because the government designates the clone as an infiltrator, then when the public gets wind and doesn’t buy that, she’s pardoned for her role in a major battle.) She cools off about sex after that, and by the time her memories have come back fully, she’s only a little prudish. I think the “Perverse Sexual Lust” meme started after the “Anti-Joyce” arc.
Oy! No! It’s from before even “The Talk,” after she’d gotten her own mind wiped to erase the memories of “pre-marital hanky panky.” Although, to be fair, it wasn’t clear at that point she’d forgotten what sex was, just that she was really, really, hung up about… er…
The term “perverse sexual lust” dates from … Roomies!, maybe? Late Roomies! or early It’s Walky!. It originated from a site poll, not the strip itself, and originally referred to fans’ lust for a fictional character.
The sexualizing: Joyce literally has nowhere to go but more sexualized than she currently is. And given her writer and the precedent, there is an exactly 0% (or perhaps -2.6%) chance she won’t go there. We’re just anticipating the trend.
Also, she’s not drawn *un*sexy. Besides the fact she has as good a figure as any yet seen, remember that dress?
How many more comics of this do you think it will take Sal to realize that Joyce is too oblivious or too fragile for her snark and she then actually has pity for Joyce?
And now I’m imagining Sal taking Joyce under her wing and training her in the ways of Sal.
I get the whole “dressing for dinner” thing, and why parents and family who are into that wouldn’t bother with updressing for kindergarten (because everyone who’s read the description knows that at some point in kindergarten there will be physical play and fingerpainting, sometimes unintentionally simultaneously). What slightly astounded me growing up was parents who didn’t know their kids knew how to tie neckties. Admittedly, that’s rare.
I just imagined a kindergartner Grace dressed up in a tiny vest with a lunch box showing up to her kitchen table. Think about it you’ll daaww for a second.
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 19h
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
Joyce: She remembered! Sorta! =D
it takes a lot for someone to remember someone else’s clothing! i never remember what i wear anyway, i would feel honored if someone else did.
That’s a common jibe, even if they WEREN’T wearing the same thing… it’s just a ‘dear god you are a total geek and I can’t remember ever seeing you in anything that WASN’T geeky’ sneer that the popular kids always gave the geeks in high school.
Clearly, Sal has not matured past High School mentality yet… which combined with Joyce still being in Grade School mentality… is a volatile mix. Someone else needs to catch up to them… NOW.
Joyce makes sure you remember her by putting on your helmet and making vroom noises.
this is very true.
i would say sal’s being unnecessarily nasty to joyce, but A: it’s sal and B: joyce doesn’t get it anyway…
Sal isn’t out to make friends, which makes all the more cooler so Joyce is going to want to be her friend more
awwww poor joyce
i would date her.. but i have a special skill for corruption
Is it your penis?
That’s actually why I’d date her. Corrupting is sexy sexy work
corrupting IS sexysexy work. and it ENDS with my penis… gotta start gently tho… so smooth mike wouldnt even know to hit me
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Hahahaha!
Hahaha!
*ahem*
HA!
=D
-_- i never should have shown u this comic. and you KNOW i have certain *ahem* skills.
No, you shouldn’t have shown me this comic. Now I will follow your posts and incessantly make fun of them.
Certain skills? NO IDEA what you mean.
For the record, y’all are creepy.
lol only cuz you dont know us!!
I… I don’t think that would help.
we have an interesting group of friends. but we like each other so its ok
For the record, if you think we’re creepy, I don’t think you’ve seen much of the internet.
If Joyce REALLY was dressing for the first day of kindergarten, she’d have pigtails or braids.
…actually, that could be kinda hot.
Pigtails, a sweater vest and with stockings that come up past her knees and a skirt that comes just below, so you can just catch a few rare glimpses of thigh.
madock… you are very very disturbing
Nah.
It’s not disturbing until a lollipop and a skipping rope are added to the picture.
Would you prefer Joe in pigtails with a sweater vest and with stockings that come up past his knees and a skirt that comes just below, so you can just catch a few rare glimpses of thigh?
She actually would look quite cute with that.
I think that image is now stuck in my mind forever. Thanks a lot.
Mine too… >_>
Joyce just doesn’t have a clue… she’s not going to find another Becky from the group she’s associated with so far.
Yeah, poor Joyce. She’s having a rough go at it right now and Sal ain’t helpin. If I were a character (which I’d like to be) I’d ask her out.
Now where’s Billie?
PLEASE tell me someone forces her to quit smoking. Someone like Mike… okay, or Joyce. One of those two, and no one else. Although they did both fail to knock the perviness out of Joe, so… hmm….
Why? It’s her choice. It’s a bad choice, that may well end up killing her, but so’s owning a motorcycle. Why object to one but not the other?
Because a motorcycle can be used as a form of transportation with about as much risk of killing someone else as you would with a car.
Smoking bans in enclosed public spaces and near air vents weren’t put into place just because cigarette smoke smells bad.
No, they were put in place because people don’t mind someone’s rights being taken away as long as it’s not their rights. If someone’s smoking and you don’t want to be around that, just move away.
The same argument works the other way. If there’s a no smoking sign and you want to smoke, just move away. It makes even more sense because you’re the person sticking a slow, cancery deathstick in your mouth. As opposed to someone with asthma who can’t breathe around smokers.
Nicotine is a privilege, not a right.
You do not have the right to poison me.
I admit to loathing smokers, because too many of them have been self-indulgent and irresponsible about it. As a I child, I remember being dismissed as rude for asking an adult at a restaurant not to smoke at the dinner table we shared while I was still eating. Later, I remember when a non-smoking section was still likely to have smoke blown in.
I remember when smoking was allowed in military transports, and people who got addicted from being in a closed van for an hour a day of exposure. I remember when drill breaks gave you the choice of standing in the rain of going to the smoking shelter.
I remember guests in my house destroying one of my grandfather’s wood carvings to use it as an ashtray. I remember guests who smoked in my apartment after being told to smoke elsewhere, and using my dishes despite the fact I had an ashtray they could take with them. I remember at least three occasions on which people used something I was still eating or drinking as an ashtray while I was called away to fill an order. And while I can still soldier up twelve flights of stairs or stand out in -20 weather because some self-indulgent waste of sperm decided to foul up the elevator or the bus shelter, neither I nor my respiratory ailments should have to tolerate that sort of thing.
I look at the number of butts smokers leave on the ground because they’re too damned lazy to field strip them and throw out the paper.
You’ve got no right to smoke wherever you please, any more than I’ve the right to build the sort of hell you so richly deserve, or to send you there.
Oh sure, Viktoria. When some smoker is fouling up the air of the enclosed space where I have to work or eat or whatever, I can just move away (unless I’m in a car, or in an elevator, or on a jury pool, or at home, or…). And, presumably, I can take my work or food with me. Of course, then I won’t have a desk to work at or table to eat at, but better to let that smoker continue poisoning the air I have to breathe later instead of ask for a break for my chronically asthmatic lungs.
Or, on second thought, no. That smoker can damn well move somewhere else and stop fouling up the air I have to breathe later. Unless, of course, said smoker is a so utterly self-absorbed as to not notice or care about the people around him or her.
Your smoking is not a right. I need clean air more than you need nicotine.
You have exactly the same right to create your noxious cancer cloud of oppressive chemical warfare near me as I have the right to punch you repeatedly in the FAAAAAAAACE.
Which I will do.
One more point on the “just move away” argument: Note that I pointed to laws about smoking near air vents. Similar ones apply to smoking near public entrances as well, because air vents and entrances don’t move.
Tell you what, though. I’m willing to compromise. You can smoke wherever you please when I have the right to urinate with the exact same limitations. If I have to put up with cigarette stains and smell on my clothes and in my food, surely you can surely tolerate the same effect as a result of a natural bodily function.
It’s in regards to the general outrage that sparks in the comments here whenever Sal lights a cigarette. Hence the “you fanatics” and not a reference to a single individual.
Zuche, you are my new best friend.
I’d like zuche to be my new best friend too.
I also agree with Blightning and Shade Tail: smoking is a privilege, not a right. So many people throw around the word “right” in talking about their “right to do” x,y,z when really what they mean is that they want to be able to do x,y,z without suffering any consequences for their actions. So basically, Viktoria wants to be able to poison herself (I’m presuming by the name that we’re dealing with a female…I may be wrong) and others without anyone telling her that she can’t even though her actions are effecting other people. That’s simply wrong. Everyone has to deal with the consequences of their actions. If she wants to poison herself, then she has the privilege to do so, but away from people like me who don’t want to be poisoned. That’s called being considerate of other people.
I hope you fanatics never roll your windows down in traffic and have the best in-cabin filtering system available because you breathe all the same stuff in traffic every day. Or walking on the sidewalk. Or pretty much just being outside in any industrialized city.
She’s OUTSIDE. Get over yourselves.
She never said anything about being outside.
Hit the wrong reply button. Look up one tier.
Hey, Smoker. I’ll get over myself when you get over your selfish entitled attitude. Just because other people are forced by economics to drive cars doesn’t give you the right to foul up my breathing space even more with your filthy habit.
People have to drive cars for their jobs and getting food. You don’t have to smoke for any reason, except that you seem to enjoy pretending you have any right to be holier-than-thou.
So Joyce was homeschooled…..that explains alot
It has been brought uphttp://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/socialized/ before
Honestly, I was homeschooled for two years (5th and 6th grade), but that didn’t turn me completely crazy. Of course, the folks are a little different, and were pushing me to de-stress and slack off more before I lost my mind in the public school system.
People are homeschooled for a lot of reasons. Some are at home to have their education tailored to their personal needs. Some are kept at home to protect them from new ideas.
I’m afraid I don’t have the links anymore, but you should still be able to find articles online by people expressing their concern with how the religious right co-opted home schooling programs and support in North America.
Despite how much I disliked Joyce in the previous storyline, I feel sorry for her here.
I can’t say that I do. She’s so ridiculously sheltered that she needs some exposure to people who don’t fit her mold.
And in an odd way, I could say the same thing about Sal.
Huh? Umm… I think I need to clarify what I mean. Yes, she needs to be exposed to other people who aren’t in her normal comfort area. But that’s not what I mean when I say I feel sorry for her.
Instead its BECAUSE she was sheltered. She doesn’t understand how to read people, so watching her follow Sal around like a puppy (who Sal will not doubt manipulate due to her ‘bad girl’ behavior and will eventually probably hurt her feelings) is kinda sad to watch.
Given Sal’s history in the other comics and behavior so far in this one, I’d say she’d skip past the manipulating and straight to the hurting. Sal’s kind of a blunt instrument.
I’m not sure Sal has enough interest in other people to actively manipulate them. She’s such a loner that the woman sharing a room with her never sees her there.
I doubt Sal has to work hard to manipulate Joyce. All she has to do is say “Go get me food” and I bet Joyce would come back with a Thanksgiving Spread.
Well, OK, I can see what you mean there, Shift. I’m still not quite ready to pity her for that. It’s a bit early to start speculating on what will end up happening between them. The comic has only barely started, after all (we’re still on the first week of the new semester). And extreme comic exaggeration happens a lot with these characters. For all we know, they’ll end up best friends for the *correct* reasons instead of the wrong ones.
I really like Joyce. She’s sweet, cute, & yes, maybe a little out of her element, but many of us are at that age. I think it’s unfair to judge her so harshly for being 18 & raised in a certain kind of home.
& also I think all of the sexualizing her up in here is a little…weird.
It’s traditional. Her character is the reason we now talk about “Perverse Sexual Lust”.
How could you even Question The Trope Namer for Perverse Sexual Lust?! she is the origonal, lust girl prime!
(it should be noted that my posts on the subject are jokes, Im gay, so ummmm… no joyce fantasies here.
I am so glad I’m not the only sliiightly creeped out by the fandom.
Isn’t that the whole point of fandoms?
I haven’t read any of the other comics with these characters, so I just sort of assumed that Joyce was different (sexier/less naive) in the others and people were drawing from that, so it didn’t seem as creepy… But maybe not? *confused*
Actually, in the other continuity, she refused to acknowledge the existence of sex at all. At the age of twenty-one, her idea of where babies came from involved fairies.
That changed eventually though. She evolved as a character considerably and eventually grew to have regular premarital sex.
And she murdered her clone for dressing immodestly and having sex with Mike.
That was pre-maturation, though. There’s a lovely comic somewhere in the archives where Obscenely modest Joyce and Slutty Joyce are arguing with each other as she loses her virginity… Only to be clipped round the earhole by a Joyce dressed in a comfy jumper who tells them to “settle down… I’m trying to enjoy this.”
Her original was all over the map. At first she was only slightly naïve, much less than here (and had gone to high school), but about as puritanical, to the point that being forced to watch a fairly vanilla porn film was enough to drive her to wipe her own mind. Then she was even more naïve than here, too naïve even to be puritanical, to the point that Sal and Jason have to give her “The Talk,” after which she reacts to sex like an eight-year-old who’s just heard of it. This lasts until an oversexed “Bizarro” version is created, who implies her memory loss is at least partially conscious repression, and for that Joyce *murders* her in cold blood. (She gets off first because the government designates the clone as an infiltrator, then when the public gets wind and doesn’t buy that, she’s pardoned for her role in a major battle.) She cools off about sex after that, and by the time her memories have come back fully, she’s only a little prudish. I think the “Perverse Sexual Lust” meme started after the “Anti-Joyce” arc.
Should clarify – by “after,” I mean “well after,” between that arc and the one where she regains her memories.
Oy! No! It’s from before even “The Talk,” after she’d gotten her own mind wiped to erase the memories of “pre-marital hanky panky.” Although, to be fair, it wasn’t clear at that point she’d forgotten what sex was, just that she was really, really, hung up about… er…
…ah, Internet. Never change.
The term “perverse sexual lust” dates from … Roomies!, maybe? Late Roomies! or early It’s Walky!. It originated from a site poll, not the strip itself, and originally referred to fans’ lust for a fictional character.
I judge her harshly for the violence. If it weren’t for that…well, she’d still be really, really annoying, but comically so.
The sexualizing: Joyce literally has nowhere to go but more sexualized than she currently is. And given her writer and the precedent, there is an exactly 0% (or perhaps -2.6%) chance she won’t go there. We’re just anticipating the trend.
Also, she’s not drawn *un*sexy. Besides the fact she has as good a figure as any yet seen, remember that dress?
Just commenting to say–oh my god is that Batman with a Wang Fire beard?
If so, WELL PLAYED, SIR OR MADAM. +1000
If not, it’s a pretty cool avatar anyway! +10
The beard is tentacles.. it’s Bathulhu
How many more comics of this do you think it will take Sal to realize that Joyce is too oblivious or too fragile for her snark and she then actually has pity for Joyce?
And now I’m imagining Sal taking Joyce under her wing and training her in the ways of Sal.
“Holy cow, was that Joyce on a motorcycle?”
Aaaand begin Joyce thinking Sal is so much more cooler than she is, when Sal is actually equally broken (just in a different way).
Assuming Sal Walkerton is anything like Sal Walters of course.
Sweater vests, the everyday semi formal wear.
Joyce has become…the new Number Two.
I get the whole “dressing for dinner” thing, and why parents and family who are into that wouldn’t bother with updressing for kindergarten (because everyone who’s read the description knows that at some point in kindergarten there will be physical play and fingerpainting, sometimes unintentionally simultaneously). What slightly astounded me growing up was parents who didn’t know their kids knew how to tie neckties. Admittedly, that’s rare.
To be fair to Sal, Joyce WAS wearing that sweater-vest on monday: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/wait/
Her Monday, not your Monday.
So? Time is relative.
Actually, it’s more like a ball. A ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.
Is it just me, or does Sal look really sad in the first panel?
Yes! I’m Sal. My first post is a win!
Now I feel saddened that I did not experience that in Kindergarten. Damn uniforms.
So, if Joyce’s sweater is Blue and Blue, is she De Ting? is BLUE AN BLUE ON DE TING!!!
Oh my Gods, WHERE THE HELL HAVE I READ THAT BEFORE?!?!?! Damnit, it’s going to piss me off all day ’til I work it out…
first
See, now that’s just silly.
^ ^;; I don’t think Joyce gets it…. Its ok, though, we still love Joyce (when shes not batsh*t insane).
I just imagined a kindergartner Grace dressed up in a tiny vest with a lunch box showing up to her kitchen table. Think about it you’ll daaww for a second.