Dumbing of Age

It’s like a who’s who of Shortpacked!‘s least popular players.  On the left we’ve got Blaine O’Malley, Amber’s divorced and estranged father.  He hasn’t been around in Amber’s life much, for Reasons.  One of those reasons might involve Faz, on the right, a member of the family Blaine remarried into, but it’s not the most important one.

Not a lot of redesigning going on here.  Blaine is the Old Universe’s Blaine, but with his temple grays replaced with lighter browns.  Faz is Faz with a t-shirt instead of his usual toy store uniform.

Let’s see how they are in this universe.

Amber’s mom, Stacy O’Malley, suffered no huge changes in her translation from Shortpacked! other than shaving about a decade off her age.  (Shaving a decade off one’s age doesn’t matter quite as much when we’re talking about scooting it from 50 to 40, versus, say, 20 to 10.)  She’s a smidge skinnier and her chin is sharpened, but that’s about all that’s visibly altered.

That said, this process seems to have moved her from “I’d hit that, sure” to “God daaayyum.”  Speaking for myself.

Don’t judge me.

The Original Universe’s Joe’s Dad was Joe with a beard.  But Walkyverse Joe has a beard now, so I decided to grizzle up Dr. Richard Rosenthal’s beard a bit in the Dumbiverse.  That’s right, he’s a doctor.  A BONE doctor.

He is not above using wordplay to that effect to try to pick up chicks.  It might be why he chose that specialty.

(Weirdly and completely coincidentally, today’s republished Roomies! strip is kind of pertinent, in a cross-universal sort of way.)