Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
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...
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
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.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Angel's Orchard
Harry Bogosian
After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
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.
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.
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.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
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.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Novae
KaiJu
A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
The Messenger
indui
In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
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.
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
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My parents took ours down a year or two ago. It was in the wooded part of our yard and some kids started playing on it (apparently thinking it was a vacant lot despite out house being visible from it) and my parents didn’t know how sturdy it was or how safe it would be if our dog noticed them
An empty lot on my old street had this absolutely enormous pine tree that had blown over, but was still rooted and thriving. It made an amazing tree house just as it was. To us neighborhood kids, it was no different than the Lost Boys’ City in Hook; it was freakin’ magical.
Holy crap, I called it!!! They went to Mount Baldy!!!
Sometimes growing up sucks for reasons that have nothing to do with crappy parents and intolerant indoctrination. Stop being a heavy-handed metaphor, Nature!
What, just because it’s an unstable uninhabitable disaster of light-color that will swallow you up whole if you try and go back onto it that will never feel like it did when they were young?
I don’t see anything metaphorical about that or representative in their town. In the exact same way that Joyce driving in circles at the beginning of the comic is totally not reflective of her panicked brain after her mom’s words about pulling her out of school.
I grew up in (actually slightly outside) a small mill town. About all that’s still open on main street is the grocery store, the tavern, and the tourist-trap restaurant. Everything else either has little placards in the windows saying what it used to be, or has been converted into an antique shop.
…Seriously, how many fucking antique shops can one town support? A town that has no other business in it?!
I swear to god, there’s a Walmart, a Kohls, a McDonalds, and fifty goddamn places I can buy an 80 year old sewing machine and a china doll that is so creepy you could put in in a horror movie if you needed a red herring so people will be shocked when it isn’t possessed by a demon.
To be fair, malls are dying out all over the place. My hometown’s not hurting economically by any stretch of the imagination, and it lost a big one a few years back.
They are magnets for kids, who drive away the paying customers. People are destination-shoppers, these days. Park close to the shop they need (in a strip mall) rather than mosey all over a huge mall, looking for the *one* place they want. We’ve had two close, in Austin. The open centers are thriving. Unfortunately, they are all the same set of shops.
A friend of mine was trying to put into words what she and our friends did in high school. He was active in football and other school activities. Eventually she settled on “loitering”.
Yeah, our town’s last real indoor mall is about to get closed for…many, many reasons, not least because about a third of the stores have been empty for months if not years
Oh yeah, because those make PERFECT sense in the midwest where the prime shopping season is during the cold months. You hope it’s actually cold enough for snow at that point, because walking back to your car is pretty loaded down with packages is great fun in the Nov-Dec rain. /sarcasm
(can you tell I loathe those stupid things? At least regular malls made sense: you could shop all those stores and NOT be out in the elements.)
Nobody wants 80s-style interior malls anymore. They’re all getting replaced by those “phony main street” malls. You know, the ones that look like a small town square lost in a a sea of crossover SUVs.
You don’t know small. The town where I went to high school had a sign at the road (note THE road) that said population plus or minus 100.The school secretary once got a call from some supplier asking where the school was. She told them 101 S. Lincoln(a made up address to tell fedex and ups). They asked again and she told them the same. Then they said,” No, where in Oklahoma are you?” A bus driver there related this-some delivery company wanted a physical address-which we didn’t have. So she asked her- how close are you to the highway? Several miles. What color is your house? White. What color are the other houses around? White. What’s around your house? Cows. And do you know what she asked me then, she asked me. Yep. What color are the cows!
The random sinkholes were caused by the soil erosion, which in turn was caused by the excessive foot traffic. Of course, if those two decide to break the law and trespass anyway, $20 bucks says they fall in a sinkhole and have to get rescued by the Browns.
Bonus trivia: Mt. Baldy spent a few years with just a few patches restricted due to the erosion, then a sinkhole swallowed a kid (he lived) and they decided it’d be safest to just close it entirely
Final nail in the coffin of home not being the same. Luckily, that last panel already looks like they’re standing at a grave, so just abandon all hope here.
On a positive note, I really like the shadow across both their faces in panels 1-3. Expresses that they’re in a car, very clearly and simply, without visual clutter.
Oh man, Panel 1 Becky’s facade is really starting to crack there. I think she was about 4-5 panels away from just demanding Joyce tell her what’s wrong, painful subjects be damned.
Fun fact: Six Flags gets its name from the six flags that have flown over Texas. That’s right, the Sixth Flag is the Confederate flag. (The other Five are the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan and Union flags.)
Poor Heston. That’s all he’s remembered for now. Well, aside from being Moses. Hmm, that’s probably the only way Becky and Joyce would know him from though is being Moses.
There was a small beach on a small lake near my house when I was in High School. There was a somewhat private area and a grove of bamboo plants with a path to a small fishing area. Shortly after graduation, it was plowed under for a housing development. The town’s downtown park (one of two public parks) was closed and given to the local garden club because teens were hanging around playing Frisbee. The old home town kinda sucked.
They could be tying knots, or learn how to manage a small and controlled campfire! Next thing you know, they’ll be *gasp* go camping in the woods under the supervision of a responsible adult!
The town’s leadership felt that the town’s youth should either be home, or working. Rich kids belonged at home, poor kids belonged on the job. The local burger drive-in was well known for calling the police if a teen didn’t leaved immediately after eating. Stopping to talk in a parking lot could mean a ticket for loitering. I’m not sure they knew about the parties at a local lake a few miles out of town and away from local PD jurisdiction. It was a Corp of Engineers lake and some of the beaches were quite secluded. The park rangers were usually college kids during the summer and they didn’t care as long as the camp fire was contained. Submarine races and watermelon roasts were common occurrences.
That is entirely in accordance with our driving cultural imperative that only money matters. Any activity that isn’t making someone money must be strongly discouraged.
That’s sad. I emphasize. My home town, went from 50k to 30k pop. after losing half it’s industrial base: the Westinghouse Plant, General Electric Plant, Grand Union Food Processing Plant, Remington Rand, and more. All of it started 30 years ago, and took 20 years, but more keep leaking away.
Get it over with and go back to school. Call the asshole parents to come get the car, before they have you arrested for stealing it.
They can’t pull you out of school, this semester is paid for. Joyce is over 18 I’m guessing.
Then she will have some time to find part time work, at Galasso’s? maybe, to pay for meals. She has a dorm room for a few weeks. She can apply for Grants. She can make it.
Soon as she stops 5 minutes and thinks, right now she’s just on auto pilot.
If her parents paid for a meal plan (which is highly likely since she lives in a dorm) then she doesn’t even need to worry too much about food, at least not for this semester.
Shit, mom’s gonna be pissed. There are photos of her at Mount Baldy still hidden in her albums.
Oh well, I guess I can still visit the old outfield we had when I was a kid, we used to fly kites there and shit SHIT they fenced it off, “You MANIACS” etc
Secular authorities are all on the payroll of the Antichrist. After all, it’s only evilutionist scientists who believe in this so-called “sinkhole theory”.
We fundamentalists believed in “Intelligent Erosion” theory. Erosion isn’t caused by man. It’s just the natural result of God’s loving caresses of the Earth.
(DISCLAIMER: Unlike pretty much all my other stories about the crazy stuff I believed, this one isn’t true. Kind of. We believed people could have small effects on local environments, just not big enough to change the whole Earth.)
(Actually, 18 and 19 century scientists paying close attention to things like erosion was an important part of them understanding just how freakishly old Earth is, which was why theories evolution became so obviously needed to explain MILLIONS of years of natural history (and then it turned out to be BILLIONS of years. Wow…). I’m convinced that if there had been better geologists in the 17 and 18 century, Carl von Linne would have come up with the theory of evolution a century before Darwin)
Also I should point out: Scientists has already figured out that evolution happens – or, rather, that species develop, die out and are replaced by other, similar species – by the time Darwin published his book. What Darwin did was to propose a single, unifying theory as to why all of the species arose and why the ones that went extinct died out.
Origin of Species didn’t happen in a vacuum – frankly, if Darwin hadn’t figured it out when he did, someone else was going to pretty soon.
Someone did! Poor Alfred Russel Wallace was never as good with the press as Darwin (and a bit too busy with having malaria on the other side of the planet), even if Darwin was nice enough to present his paper on natural selection for the Linnean Society at the same time as his own book.
And just as you say, Lamarck and others were on track with THAT evolution happened 50 years before Darwin and Wallace, even if they were wrong about the HOW.
Pfff! You don’t believe in Lamarckian Evolution? It’s a known fact! You see, when a fundamentalist stretches and stretches and STRETCHES their holy texts…
Out of curiosity I looked up La Porte and it’s not all that different from my home town of Erie, Pennsylvania. At least there is a beach although at that time of year wouldn’t be much more than something to look at.
because I failed to make a Mad Max reference during the car chase, I will make one now…Joyce needs to have some old ladies tell her that Mt. Baldy has been closed for years. Also I hope that Joyce eventually tears of Toe Dad’s face. “Remember me!” followed by Danny flipping over a car, to kill Blaine.
The IU campus? But if you came from the west you already passed it. *Joyce walks away, taking off her arm brace, falls to her knees and screams while dramatic music plays*
My town used to have an outlet mall. Now it’s a hotel.
My old elementary school is now an office building.
Two of our old movie theaters, where I first watched Toy Story and two of the special edition Star Wars movies, turned into gym clubs. One of them burned down.
Makes me want to listen to “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders.
The cinema close to my home became a baptist church. The dollar theater became a laser tag place, then a baptist church.
In my area everything has a life cycle, business gets “lucky” enough to come in and bring business, my family visits business, business fails or is put out of business by local churches, building remains empty for an indeterminate amount of time, pass by and see it’s a storefront church, church falls apart, building remains empty until the cycle can begin again.
Well, Becky has yet to learn much about erosion, I think. But Dina would talk about it for sure.
And then Becky will be all “I love it when you talk all them cool facts, you ROCK!” and Dina will be all like “My mental energy increases in the presence of you because you are a good listener.” and then they will smooch.
Mr Alttext: Mt Baldy would’ve been closed most of Joyce’s life? Do you want to make me feel old? I didn’t realize it had been closed at all since I was there last!
This strips hits pretty close to home when, on a whim, I decided to go visit my old hangouts that I used to go when I was a kid. The library (moved to a newer building), the video arcade (closed down. It’s a pawn shop now), and my old school (felt a bit weird to be a grown man standing at the gates watching kids run around).
Moral of the story: You can never go back. Even if you do, it won’t be the same. Either the place will have changed, or you will have.
I think that it is possible that Joyce and Becky could have a long, meaningful conversation here about childhood and the loss of innocence that always comes with growing up and setting aside the things of a child. I think it is more likely that they’ll both feel the need to get away from this unpleasant realisation and go bowling or something.
This reminds me of a couple of things. Douglas Adams once went to Australia to do a test-drive comparision of jet-skis and manta rays for a magazine…. just after ray-riding had been banned. And The Bloggess discovered that Australian zoos no longer let you hug the koalas, even if you’re dressed as one.
To be pedantic, Adams reckoned ray-riding (or more generally, mucking about with the wildlife) had probably been illegal for about ten years, he just hadn’t thought to ask anyone. And as an occasional writer on conservation, he quickly realised that of course you couldn’t ride a manta ray and he was a complete idiot for having thought otherwise.
(The conclusion of his comparison test was that, from an environmental perspective, a form of aquatic transport you couldn’t use at all was probably the best kind.)
I’m astonished and disappointed at the insensitivity I’m seeing here. This is the 21st Century, so surely the proper name for this place is Mount Follicly Challenged.
…issues of geo-conservatism on national park lands always make me sad, and starts getting me thinking of the terrible things that visitors have done to Yellowstone, or even worse, National Conifer Monument.
Not really…there have been no-go zones on dunes since at least the early 90’s. Heavy foot traffic kills the plants that hold the sandy soil together and the dunes just…blow away.
The sand just blows away, which causes the dune to erode. Foot traffic is a problem because there are often plants (like seagrass) which effectively hold some dunes in place. When those get trampled and die nothing holds down the sandy soil and it just blows off in the wind.
I have to admit: this isn’t something that I identify with, unlike a lot of Joyce’s plight. My home town is still rockin’ along, and pretty much everything that was fun is still there. Granted, that wasn’t a whole lot, but it’s still there. And all the bigger stuff in surrounding areas are still there and booming.
The closest is a weird theme park that closed down, but that happened around age 10, so that doesn’t really count.
I sympathize with Joyce’s plight, but I can’t say I’ve lived it like most commenters here. Because where I grew up has been a desolate wasteland of things to do since the 70s
Yeah, this kinda thing is what worries me about taking my kid to Sleeping Bear Dunes, in the future. I have such fond memories of it as a kid, but every time we’ve gone back, the old hills and steeper and steeper. There’s one AWESOME hill I ran down (and took nearly two hours to walk back up) but now erosion has made it so steep that it’s not even an option for traversing anymore. I’ll be able to at least show him, but we won’t be able to walk on it.
Yeah, but it’s a 126 foot high sand dune. Which is kind of cool.
And it moves. I bet your real mountains don’t move.
OTOH, I know a little bit about mountain envy. The highest peak in my state isn’t the highest point. You can go up from the highest point in my state, which is on the shoulder of a mountain in the neighboring state.
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 ⋅ 18h
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
www.ebay.com/itm/23609767...
selling my netflix war for cybertron megatron -- the walmart exclusive one that came with pinpointer and lionizer (but being sold here without pinpointer and lionizer)
Gran... IS ALIVE?
okay, juliette still has brown hair, so this is probably definitely a flashback
i'm just surprised that the comic has remembered her, at all
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 18h
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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this is like every time I go home
…
Dad just told me the treehouse he built for us when we were kids blew down in a windstorm =(
Stupid childhood innocence, always inexorably fading away.
Hey, at least you’ve still *got* your dad. Gotta appreciate what’s good in life, while you’ve got it.
Yeah, he can always make you another one. Mush, father, mush!
My parents took ours down a year or two ago. It was in the wooded part of our yard and some kids started playing on it (apparently thinking it was a vacant lot despite out house being visible from it) and my parents didn’t know how sturdy it was or how safe it would be if our dog noticed them
The woods I used to play in behind the field on the other side of the street was logged.
And the field has houses on it now as well.
You bastards, you cut down my childhood. ;_;
An empty lot on my old street had this absolutely enormous pine tree that had blown over, but was still rooted and thriving. It made an amazing tree house just as it was. To us neighborhood kids, it was no different than the Lost Boys’ City in Hook; it was freakin’ magical.
Now there’s a house on that lot.
better than the woods at the entrance to our development became a parking lot and new wing for a church
Better than having your car stuck in the sand~
Holy crap, I called it!!! They went to Mount Baldy!!!
Sometimes growing up sucks for reasons that have nothing to do with crappy parents and intolerant indoctrination. Stop being a heavy-handed metaphor, Nature!
What, just because it’s an unstable uninhabitable disaster of light-color that will swallow you up whole if you try and go back onto it that will never feel like it did when they were young?
I don’t see anything metaphorical about that or representative in their town. In the exact same way that Joyce driving in circles at the beginning of the comic is totally not reflective of her panicked brain after her mom’s words about pulling her out of school.
I hate sand.
It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
You were supposed to bring balance to the dunes… Not leave it like this God!
But things are more interesting that way.
Read the sign – this was clearly Man’s doing, not God’s. Stupid free will!
The tragedy of the commons.
Sand probably sponsored this comic.
First Aladdin’s wedding, now DoA!
Oh god, that was one of the best lines from the movie.
“Sand! It’s everywhere! Get used to it!”
My home town is basically a black hole now. Visiting it is depressing. Ten years ago there were two malls, now there are zero. I can relate.
I grew up in (actually slightly outside) a small mill town. About all that’s still open on main street is the grocery store, the tavern, and the tourist-trap restaurant. Everything else either has little placards in the windows saying what it used to be, or has been converted into an antique shop.
…Seriously, how many fucking antique shops can one town support? A town that has no other business in it?!
I swear to god, there’s a Walmart, a Kohls, a McDonalds, and fifty goddamn places I can buy an 80 year old sewing machine and a china doll that is so creepy you could put in in a horror movie if you needed a red herring so people will be shocked when it isn’t possessed by a demon.
Where do all the antiques even come from?
The locals spend the winter making them, so they can sell them to tourists in the summer.
*hides scuffing and weathering tools*
A-hem. You may well ask. Can I interest you in some Antique Quaker furniture?
I think of it as a history mine. Eventually that, too, will dry up, and that will finally be it for the town.
Doc, the more you talk the more you sound like you’re describing my hometown. You’re not from the suburbs of Chicago, are you?
Nope. Ohio.
Was there a great forest with massive cliffs in your backyard? Because I always suspected…
Not even a dirt mall?
The dirt mall was first to go. The real mall just closed this past year.
I see the mall in a friend’s neighborhood every few weeks, watching it die slowly
before the inevitable gentrification.To be fair, malls are dying out all over the place. My hometown’s not hurting economically by any stretch of the imagination, and it lost a big one a few years back.
They are magnets for kids, who drive away the paying customers. People are destination-shoppers, these days. Park close to the shop they need (in a strip mall) rather than mosey all over a huge mall, looking for the *one* place they want. We’ve had two close, in Austin. The open centers are thriving. Unfortunately, they are all the same set of shops.
(not disputing any of that, just wondering:)
And how much of that is because there’s f-all else for the kids to do?
A friend of mine was trying to put into words what she and our friends did in high school. He was active in football and other school activities. Eventually she settled on “loitering”.
At least 98%.
Really? I heard it was the other way around. Teens have been the target audiences for lots of mall retailers for a while, but teen shopping is on the decline, and malls have suffered with that. http://time.com/money/3660041/teens-millennials-clothing-wet-seal/
Yeah, our town’s last real indoor mall is about to get closed for…many, many reasons, not least because about a third of the stores have been empty for months if not years
Oh yeah, because those make PERFECT sense in the midwest where the prime shopping season is during the cold months. You hope it’s actually cold enough for snow at that point, because walking back to your car is pretty loaded down with packages is great fun in the Nov-Dec rain. /sarcasm
(can you tell I loathe those stupid things? At least regular malls made sense: you could shop all those stores and NOT be out in the elements.)
Nobody wants 80s-style interior malls anymore. They’re all getting replaced by those “phony main street” malls. You know, the ones that look like a small town square lost in a a sea of crossover SUVs.
Sandwiched between two enormous parking garages hidden just out of view.
(my reply above was supposed to be to Needfuldoer, so
I grew up in rich suburbia and I have never heard a more apt description.
You don’t know small. The town where I went to high school had a sign at the road (note THE road) that said population plus or minus 100.The school secretary once got a call from some supplier asking where the school was. She told them 101 S. Lincoln(a made up address to tell fedex and ups). They asked again and she told them the same. Then they said,” No, where in Oklahoma are you?” A bus driver there related this-some delivery company wanted a physical address-which we didn’t have. So she asked her- how close are you to the highway? Several miles. What color is your house? White. What color are the other houses around? White. What’s around your house? Cows. And do you know what she asked me then, she asked me. Yep. What color are the cows!
I think I need a comedic relief comic.
Quick, Becky, say something about… how growing up sucks and how your childhood will gradually loose is magic.
OK, shit, Walky! Walky, say something about… your strained relationship with your sister and parental favoritism.
um…
Dina, say something about… your insecurities about your awesome girlfriend not being here right now.
Fuck it; Carla, Malaya, or Mike, tell someone they’re an asshole and why.
Just to be an asshole, Mike does nothing.
Mike would probably go compliment someone and then glare at someone else who expected him to be an asshole out of their own small minded ness.
Sorry; Mike’s drunk.
Who drank him?
A coalition of moms.
For a nickel.
When I first saw panel 2 in the previews, I thought Joyce’s parents were waking Joyce up and they were about to do something awful.
*plays America’s “A Horse With No Name” on the public address speakers*
*followed by David & David’s “Swallowed By The Cracks”*
*plays Enya’s “A Day Without Rain”*
The pain of growing up. You have the means to do just about anything you wanted to as a kid, but you still don’t get to.
Soil erosion, and not the random sinkholes that could swallow you whole and kill you in minutes?
Sarlacc pits.
Those don’t actually kill you until about a millenium goes by. Something about weak stomach acid that somehow prevents aging or starvation.
The random sinkholes were caused by the soil erosion, which in turn was caused by the excessive foot traffic. Of course, if those two decide to break the law and trespass anyway, $20 bucks says they fall in a sinkhole and have to get rescued by the Browns.
Nah, Dina steps out from behind a bush and tosses them a rope.
this is just not a good weekend isn’t it…
she’ll be needing stitches
[I’M SORRY]
Do it, Joyce! Complete your turn to the Dark Side!
Bonus trivia: Mt. Baldy spent a few years with just a few patches restricted due to the erosion, then a sinkhole swallowed a kid (he lived) and they decided it’d be safest to just close it entirely
Forget hurricanes and earthquakes. When THE LAND IS SWALLOWING CHILDREN, the local community needs to reexamine what it has been doing to anger God.
Problem is they are likely to double down on what they are doing wrong, and scapegoat something else that unrelated.
This strip made me think of all the “don’t bust the crust!” national park signs to protect the cryptobiotic soil. Now I want to go hike.
“Screw it, let’s go do burnouts in the Kmart parking lot.”
She might even meet Sal and the gang there.
And get beat up by a superhero. Not a problem free plan
Final nail in the coffin of home not being the same. Luckily, that last panel already looks like they’re standing at a grave, so just abandon all hope here.
On a positive note, I really like the shadow across both their faces in panels 1-3. Expresses that they’re in a car, very clearly and simply, without visual clutter.
AREA CLOSED
National park area beyond this point closed due to Chernobog bringing about eternal darkness.
Currently importing giant church bells to drive him away, but until then… it shall be Night on Baldy Mountain!
Why does this forum not have a “like” button? That was awesome.
Well we do have his brother to counter him (something else I learned reading urban fantasy from Ilona Andrews) so maybe not eternal night?
How about The Evening of Insufficent Light?
(with all due respects to Phil)
I doubt they would understand the reference, which sucks, because that was well-executed.
Oh, you.
YES.
YES.
So much yes.
Oh man, Panel 1 Becky’s facade is really starting to crack there. I think she was about 4-5 panels away from just demanding Joyce tell her what’s wrong, painful subjects be damned.
Or possibly just start hugging her without letting go until everything is fine again.
Not advised while target is driving.
That should be a PSA “No huggy feel behind the wheel”
It’s better than climbing out the window to get in a gunfight with a superhero while driving.
“How to be good at things:
Step 1. Don’t do whatever Ross did.”
(takes notes)
“Never take kids to Six Flags of Chick-Fil-A.”
Fun fact: Six Flags gets its name from the six flags that have flown over Texas. That’s right, the Sixth Flag is the Confederate flag. (The other Five are the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan and Union flags.)
I can’t say I find that fact especially fun.
Given what they did at Chick-Fil-A that is still solid advice.
I mean, that’s true, but there’s room for a few layers between that and “Acceptable.”
Before you “Mount Baldy”, you should always ask for consent.
Years ago, Joyce’s dad went to “Mount Olive.”
Popeye got pissed.
*dodges rubber bullets*
*thwap!* with rolled-up newspaper
We went to “Mount Rushmore”.
That was weird.
Wah-wah-waaaah….
FUCK CHILDHOOD BARRIERS. WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF ADULTHOOD BARRIERS.
But they suck moooooooooore
Becky and Joyce failed to notice the ghost of a well-known actor hovering nearby.
“You DID it! You MANIACS!” the ghost exclaimed. “Damn you! Damn you all to HELL!!”
Poor Heston. That’s all he’s remembered for now. Well, aside from being Moses. Hmm, that’s probably the only way Becky and Joyce would know him from though is being Moses.
“Soylent Green is people!”
I have to say when I first saw ‘Mount Baldy’ I was very confused as to why they were in southern California all of a sudden.
I do a double-take, too!
I live practically at the foot of Mt. Baldy in SoCal. I was confused too! LOL!
Well hello there fellow Californeys!
There was a small beach on a small lake near my house when I was in High School. There was a somewhat private area and a grove of bamboo plants with a path to a small fishing area. Shortly after graduation, it was plowed under for a housing development. The town’s downtown park (one of two public parks) was closed and given to the local garden club because teens were hanging around playing Frisbee. The old home town kinda sucked.
The park was closed… because it was being used?
Unfortunately, many adults believe that a group of teens being in the same place = troublemaking.
by the “wrong crowd”, I’m sure.
Boy Scouts.
They could be tying knots, or learn how to manage a small and controlled campfire! Next thing you know, they’ll be *gasp* go camping in the woods under the supervision of a responsible adult!
The town’s leadership felt that the town’s youth should either be home, or working. Rich kids belonged at home, poor kids belonged on the job. The local burger drive-in was well known for calling the police if a teen didn’t leaved immediately after eating. Stopping to talk in a parking lot could mean a ticket for loitering. I’m not sure they knew about the parties at a local lake a few miles out of town and away from local PD jurisdiction. It was a Corp of Engineers lake and some of the beaches were quite secluded. The park rangers were usually college kids during the summer and they didn’t care as long as the camp fire was contained. Submarine races and watermelon roasts were common occurrences.
Huh. Turns out roasted watermelon is a Real Thing.
Watermelon roasts, and roasted watermelon are two entirely different things.
That is entirely in accordance with our driving cultural imperative that only money matters. Any activity that isn’t making someone money must be strongly discouraged.
There was a bit of a Puritan ethic there, too. Many in the town lived in fear that somewhere, somehow, someone was having fun.
Teen culture always finds a way.
So I guess there’s an upside to bring a child of divorce/Army Brat. I didn’t have a stable enough childhood to get ruined!
Yay!
Jeez, that’s still terrible.
Whoomp, whoop.
I had a similar moment when I found out [redacted] is gone. (I can’t name it because a Google search gives the exact location) Oh, it was so cool.
[Redacted] was the best, though.
That’s sad. I emphasize. My home town, went from 50k to 30k pop. after losing half it’s industrial base: the Westinghouse Plant, General Electric Plant, Grand Union Food Processing Plant, Remington Rand, and more. All of it started 30 years ago, and took 20 years, but more keep leaking away.
Get it over with and go back to school. Call the
assholeparents to come get the car, before they have you arrested for stealing it.They can’t pull you out of school, this semester is paid for. Joyce is over 18 I’m guessing.
Then she will have some time to find part time work, at Galasso’s? maybe, to pay for meals. She has a dorm room for a few weeks. She can apply for Grants. She can make it.
Soon as she stops 5 minutes and thinks, right now she’s just on auto pilot.oops only supposed to strike out ‘asshole’
If her parents paid for a meal plan (which is highly likely since she lives in a dorm) then she doesn’t even need to worry too much about food, at least not for this semester.
She did; iirc she was shorting herself on food earlier so she could use it to feed Becky too.
Darn you baden powell and your excessive draw for foot traffic!
Damn you, people enjoying nature preventing people from enjoying nature!!!
“I got the BP spirit all round my head…”
Shit, mom’s gonna be pissed. There are photos of her at Mount Baldy still hidden in her albums.
Oh well, I guess I can still visit the old outfield we had when I was a kid, we used to fly kites there and shit SHIT they fenced it off, “You MANIACS” etc
Home is a time, not a place
You can never go home again…but I guess you can shop there.
related:
“The Golden Age of science fiction is twelve.”
Goodbye, childhood boundaries!
Hello, adulthood boundaries…
Hello darkness, my old friend…
If that’s not a metaphor for Joyce’s crisis of faith, I don’t know what is
Shhh, alt text. Just pretend they never noticed the sign before and their parents didn’t recognize its authority.
Secular authorities are all on the payroll of the Antichrist. After all, it’s only evilutionist scientists who believe in this so-called “sinkhole theory”.
We fundamentalists believed in “Intelligent Erosion” theory. Erosion isn’t caused by man. It’s just the natural result of God’s loving caresses of the Earth.
(DISCLAIMER: Unlike pretty much all my other stories about the crazy stuff I believed, this one isn’t true. Kind of. We believed people could have small effects on local environments, just not big enough to change the whole Earth.)
So called “micro erosion”.
(Actually, 18 and 19 century scientists paying close attention to things like erosion was an important part of them understanding just how freakishly old Earth is, which was why theories evolution became so obviously needed to explain MILLIONS of years of natural history (and then it turned out to be BILLIONS of years. Wow…). I’m convinced that if there had been better geologists in the 17 and 18 century, Carl von Linne would have come up with the theory of evolution a century before Darwin)
Also I should point out: Scientists has already figured out that evolution happens – or, rather, that species develop, die out and are replaced by other, similar species – by the time Darwin published his book. What Darwin did was to propose a single, unifying theory as to why all of the species arose and why the ones that went extinct died out.
Origin of Species didn’t happen in a vacuum – frankly, if Darwin hadn’t figured it out when he did, someone else was going to pretty soon.
Someone did! Poor Alfred Russel Wallace was never as good with the press as Darwin (and a bit too busy with having malaria on the other side of the planet), even if Darwin was nice enough to present his paper on natural selection for the Linnean Society at the same time as his own book.
And just as you say, Lamarck and others were on track with THAT evolution happened 50 years before Darwin and Wallace, even if they were wrong about the HOW.
Pfff! You don’t believe in Lamarckian Evolution? It’s a known fact! You see, when a fundamentalist stretches and stretches and STRETCHES their holy texts…
A virgin and a lesbian fail at climbing on Mt Baldy.
Nope, no joke there…
Pretty sure they’re both virgins.
We probably have different definitions of virgin, if Becky’s previous relationship went as implied.
and here i thought they were going somewhere
Out of curiosity I looked up La Porte and it’s not all that different from my home town of Erie, Pennsylvania. At least there is a beach although at that time of year wouldn’t be much more than something to look at.
My birthplace! Last time I was there I had to visit the beach at Misery Bay.
oh hey, my dad and entire family lived there. Did you know the Tanenbaums?
Becky and Joyce: :I
Thomas Wolfe said it best; ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’.
But I guess you can shop there.
Now this reminds me of something….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtyrDZG-eDo
because I failed to make a Mad Max reference during the car chase, I will make one now…Joyce needs to have some old ladies tell her that Mt. Baldy has been closed for years. Also I hope that Joyce eventually tears of Toe Dad’s face. “Remember me!” followed by Danny flipping over a car, to kill Blaine.
The IU campus? But if you came from the west you already passed it. *Joyce walks away, taking off her arm brace, falls to her knees and screams while dramatic music plays*
Someone draw this.
Having just played Life is Strange this week. This comic is speaking to me on very deep levels.
wow, that’s…subtle.
My town used to have an outlet mall. Now it’s a hotel.
My old elementary school is now an office building.
Two of our old movie theaters, where I first watched Toy Story and two of the special edition Star Wars movies, turned into gym clubs. One of them burned down.
Makes me want to listen to “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders.
My high school is now a prison. Puts a damper on class reunions, what with all the barbed wire and guard towers.
I thought you were making some kind of metaphor, until I realized that you meant it had actually been turned into a prison.
It was always a prison, they just got honest about it
The cinema close to my home became a baptist church. The dollar theater became a laser tag place, then a baptist church.
In my area everything has a life cycle, business gets “lucky” enough to come in and bring business, my family visits business, business fails or is put out of business by local churches, building remains empty for an indeterminate amount of time, pass by and see it’s a storefront church, church falls apart, building remains empty until the cycle can begin again.
A downtown fourplex here was turned into an office building for a potash company after it closed.
Won’t it make more sense to turn it into an office building before the potash company closed?
SSometimes, the past is just that and all that you have left are the good memories.
Can’t decide if no memories is worse than having time change the things you remember…
It kinda looks like they stand by a grave….
which they kinda do…
the grave of their childhood…
…CURSE YOU NATURE FOR BEING A HEAVYHANDED METAPHOR
On the other hand, Becky at least can see this as an opportunity to learn about erosion and how it’s affected the planet over millions of years.
You just know that Dina would start blabbing about that… and i bet Becky bites her tongue to not bring it up.
Well, Becky has yet to learn much about erosion, I think. But Dina would talk about it for sure.
And then Becky will be all “I love it when you talk all them cool facts, you ROCK!” and Dina will be all like “My mental energy increases in the presence of you because you are a good listener.” and then they will smooch.
…on the mouth??
Repeatedly.
Eventually, there might even be tongue.
This is sad.
Both because it is entirely logical and because Joyce needed this thing.
But at least they can both sit in front of the sign instead of in the car?
Entropy is a real bongo.
Welcome to the real life!
Or is this just fantasy?
These comment trees looks like a landslide.
Tomorrow: Joyce and Becky get caught in a landslide. The comic ends. The remainder of the buffer consists of Dina looking sad.
They’re our escape from reality.
We shouldn’t try to escape from reality. Reality is beautiful! Open your eyes! Look at the sky and sea!
What makes you think I have a view of the sea? I’m just a poor boy, remember?
Foiled once again by adulthood boundaries
The house where I was born is now a car park.
So, Mt Baldy is now bald?
Plays Streisand’s The Way We Were – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8_3DZpym-0
Mr Alttext: Mt Baldy would’ve been closed most of Joyce’s life? Do you want to make me feel old? I didn’t realize it had been closed at all since I was there last!
Let’s pretend it was recent.
This strips hits pretty close to home when, on a whim, I decided to go visit my old hangouts that I used to go when I was a kid. The library (moved to a newer building), the video arcade (closed down. It’s a pawn shop now), and my old school (felt a bit weird to be a grown man standing at the gates watching kids run around).
Moral of the story: You can never go back. Even if you do, it won’t be the same. Either the place will have changed, or you will have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu_oJR2psGY
It used to be Mount Full Head Of Hair til those darned kids kept running over it.
“You can’t go home again” ….. Thomas Wolfe.
….and I guess Professor Fate beat me to it.
La Porte, where dreams go to die.
Not just dreams. Look up “Belle Gunness”.
Return of the triangle smile!
…For about ten seconds.
Oh well. It’s a start.
I think that it is possible that Joyce and Becky could have a long, meaningful conversation here about childhood and the loss of innocence that always comes with growing up and setting aside the things of a child. I think it is more likely that they’ll both feel the need to get away from this unpleasant realisation and go bowling or something.
This reminds me of a couple of things. Douglas Adams once went to Australia to do a test-drive comparision of jet-skis and manta rays for a magazine…. just after ray-riding had been banned. And The Bloggess discovered that Australian zoos no longer let you hug the koalas, even if you’re dressed as one.
To be pedantic, Adams reckoned ray-riding (or more generally, mucking about with the wildlife) had probably been illegal for about ten years, he just hadn’t thought to ask anyone. And as an occasional writer on conservation, he quickly realised that of course you couldn’t ride a manta ray and he was a complete idiot for having thought otherwise.
(The conclusion of his comparison test was that, from an environmental perspective, a form of aquatic transport you couldn’t use at all was probably the best kind.)
Depicted: Douglas Adams meets the kakapo
http://i.imgur.com/qSPi1Ay.gif
http://i.imgur.com/g8kaOjd.gif
I’m astonished and disappointed at the insensitivity I’m seeing here. This is the 21st Century, so surely the proper name for this place is Mount Follicly Challenged.
…issues of geo-conservatism on national park lands always make me sad, and starts getting me thinking of the terrible things that visitors have done to Yellowstone, or even worse, National Conifer Monument.
Console yourself with the thought that sometime, someday, Yellowstone will erupt, and have its final vengeance on everybody.
The fact that your Gravatar is Sarah just makes that comment even better.
None Shall Pass
Wah wah waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
*laughtrack*
Be free… be free! Run!… Go away, this is better for you! I can’t keep you! *Sobs.*
When God closes a door he opens a hole in the sand
that’s an entirely new level of human caused environmental damage…
Not really…there have been no-go zones on dunes since at least the early 90’s. Heavy foot traffic kills the plants that hold the sandy soil together and the dunes just…blow away.
Also, how do you erode sand?
The sand just blows away, which causes the dune to erode. Foot traffic is a problem because there are often plants (like seagrass) which effectively hold some dunes in place. When those get trampled and die nothing holds down the sandy soil and it just blows off in the wind.
#Neverallowedtoplayonsanddunesasakid
I have to admit: this isn’t something that I identify with, unlike a lot of Joyce’s plight. My home town is still rockin’ along, and pretty much everything that was fun is still there. Granted, that wasn’t a whole lot, but it’s still there. And all the bigger stuff in surrounding areas are still there and booming.
The closest is a weird theme park that closed down, but that happened around age 10, so that doesn’t really count.
I sympathize with Joyce’s plight, but I can’t say I’ve lived it like most commenters here. Because where I grew up has been a desolate wasteland of things to do since the 70s
The losing horn from “Price is Right” just played in my head.
Now they are fully grown-up.
Dang.
I think my favorite part about this is that Joyce’s idea of “rebelling” is to run around on sand dunes without adult supervision.
Oh, Joyce. I know that this story arc is going to change you, but please. Don’t let it change you too much.
Just as well, they might have walked on sand with rhythm, and no good can come of that.
*finally notices that Captain Button is now wearing the prestigious title of Slartibeast*
This… is a truly great day.
The honor is mine, your Majesty.
Yeah, this kinda thing is what worries me about taking my kid to Sleeping Bear Dunes, in the future. I have such fond memories of it as a kid, but every time we’ve gone back, the old hills and steeper and steeper. There’s one AWESOME hill I ran down (and took nearly two hours to walk back up) but now erosion has made it so steep that it’s not even an option for traversing anymore. I’ll be able to at least show him, but we won’t be able to walk on it.
Good grief. Indiana’s Mount Baldy is 126 feet high, according to Wikipedia. Here in [state redacted], we call that a speed bump!
Panel 5 = so touching, though.
Yeah, but it’s a 126 foot high sand dune. Which is kind of cool.
And it moves. I bet your real mountains don’t move.
OTOH, I know a little bit about mountain envy. The highest peak in my state isn’t the highest point. You can go up from the highest point in my state, which is on the shoulder of a mountain in the neighboring state.
* “I bet your real mountains don’t move. ” *
Very infrequently. And when they do, it’s a good time to be in Indiana!
You think that’s sad, in New Orleans if you want a hill you have to build it!
http://www.nola.com/homegarden/index.ssf/2014/07/while_not_the_highest_point_in.html
Here is the Wikipedia page about Mount Baldy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Baldy_%28sand_dune%29
There is a sand dune called Old Baldy in Michigan at Camp Miniwanca on Stony Lake. https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5553759,-86.4868119,113a,20y,270h,82.89t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!9m1!1b1