Dumbing of Age

Let’s all bid a bittersweet farewell to Joe’s It’s Walky!-era purple luau shirt.  A college freshman who wants to have intimate relations with multiple females is not going to be wearing that in 2010.  Unfortunately, as, if I recall correctly, Starline Hodge pointed out to me the other day, the modern equivalent of the tacky luau shirt is the Ed Hardy shirt.  I googled that, because I am 31, and, man, no way am I gonna be drawin’ those!  All those patterns colors would double my drawing time!

So, as a concession, I found a fairly subdued example and tried to filter it down into an “I can do this in more than one panel” simplicity.  Other than that, yay, stripes.  We love stripes!

But goodbye, purple luau shirt.  We had some good times.  Let’s retire you… with a song.

I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you
I know you were right believing for so long
I’m all out of love, what am I without you?
I can’t be too late to say that I was so wrong

This is Danny, who was the main character in Roomies!.  In Dumbing of Age, Joyce takes center stage, pushing Danny into the background a bit, but not so far into the background that he wouldn’t need a change of clothes.  He used to be a hoodie guy, but I want to make that Walky’s thing, so I came up with some Stuff That Isn’t A Hoodie for him.  Some, but not all.

Basically, Danny dresses himself like every character Breckin Meyer has ever played.

These were some clothes that Maggie and my friend Graham helped me with.  Graham had read my blog post about Billie’s wardrobe in which I said I was an old, bloated dude who didn’t have any grasp of modern girls’ fashion (but I don’t remember using the word “bloated”), and pointed out to me that I did know, like, fifteen people who taught high school.

Hint taken, Graham.  Hint taken.

(What this means is that everyone is going to be wearing Crocs.)

Those of you who are familiar with my older works have been seeing a lot of very familiar faces, but there’s going to be some unfamiliar faces as well.  Which is fine, since this is a new continuity and I’m introducing everyone as if you’d never heard of them before anyway!

For 99% of you, Dorothy Keener is a new character.  Her only appearances in the Old Continuity are in Joyce and Walky!, and almost entirely in the subscriber-only material.  So don’t worry if you don’t know her.  After all, you’re not “required” to, same as everyone else in Dumbing of Age.  It’s a clean slate for everyone.

In today’s strip, she wears green and yellow, and you’ll notice that up above she’s in purples.  See, at some point in the middle of drawing this storyline, I realized that I had too many characters who wore predominantly green.  I am, like, a green fiend.  Probably all those years of Shortpacked! getting to my brain.  This green overabundance bothered me, but not enough to go back and recolor Dorothy differently, I guess.  So, uh, hope you don’t like the greens, ‘cuz she wont’ be wearing them after this first “day” of strips.  After that, it’s mostly purples for her.