Mike needs friends to cover for him when he finally acts out on his masterplan. To Mike’s understanding, “friends” are people that you have secured a number of favors from
It’s possible that Ethan and Amber are mere assets to him, sure, but I think this seems a little earnest for him. I think he’s going to get broken, and it’s not going to be pretty.
Maybe the teacher is going to tell him that it’s the grade Amber deserves, or something like that, and he’ll become acquainted with the unfairness of life?
I mean, the moment of his birth was heralded by a thousand crows encircling the hospital and cawing a dirge, while an inexplicable eclipse blackened the sun and every doctor present was struck blind and mad.
But lots of babies are born every day, so that can’t be a unique occurrence.
It is said Temujin was born holding a blood clot. I assume Mike was born holding a nickel, and it’s just that at this point he is still too young to understand the omen.
Same thing happened to me, but to be fair the family next door were also wearing hooded robes and had a bloody goat, but that may have just been a coincidence.
Mike isn’t evil, he’s a sociopath. He doesn’t experience empathy the way that other people do, and he has a tendency to reduce interpersonal interactions to equation-like analysis. That doesn’t mean he’s evil, though, he just seems that way a lot of the time because he doesn’t care if others react badly to him. He’s always been capable of doing something nice if it suits him, it’s just that his priorities are way different from those of more prosocial humans.
Like what, a strip in which he is diagnosed or states a diagnosis? I think explanations for Mike at this point are pretty clearly theories, which may have varying levels of support…asking for “hard proof” for something like this seems strange.
I think Mike’s an otherwise normal individual that is sick of the lies and bs that typically hold society together. He’s brutally honest far more than he is mean. Perhaps he’s noted that people tend to actually deal with things they’re told with brutal honesty? Or maybe he’s just sick of the drama his friends (Ethan and Amber) create?
Nah, he’s just mean (see strips involving getting Walky’s stuff back, and recording him crying at night). And most people who say they’re “brutally honest” tend to just be jerks.
Diagnosis is unlikely anyways since it’s no longer in use. It’s called Anti Social Personality Disorder. And the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes does not equal the ability to like people, want them to be happy and not want them to be mistreated (compassion). Mike’s a terrible person, regardless of motivation, but it’s probably not sociopathy.
It just bothers me a lot about the comment section that a lot of peeps seems to have decided that Mike is evil, period. No deeper meaning, nothing else, he was born evil and every evidence to the contrary is just misdirection, that he is incapable of empathy, and that his Evil is just in his nature. I’ve always thought that true evil comes from choice. Seeing both paths in front of you, and choosing the one that causes harm.
I’d say to wait until the flashbacks show us the entire thing. It’ll take a few months but we got time, because when the flashbacks end, I guess something will have happened that will have Mike with both paths in front of him, willingly diving into the one that causes harm.
My personal theory about Mike is that he doesn’t lack empathy, but the opposite, that he feels too strongly, and he acts like he does to reject that. After all, drunk Mike, Mike with no inhibitions was the nicest character in the walkyverse.
I agree that nobody is born evil but every time we see Mike he chooses evil. That’s pretty hard to sympathize with. I’m interested to see why he’s like this but I don’t believe he’s coming from this out of some sort of ‘asshole sage’ type thing (as some have suggested). I don’t know what his motives are but I suspect we’ll soon find out.
With any statement put forth as an absolute, especially when concerning humans, there are numerous examples that prove the opposite.
I remember a neighbor who switched to bottle feeding despite very strong, heavy handed, familial pressure not to do so – the damage the hellspawn was doing to her before it even started teething was shrugged off as just another burden to bear – almost losing her vision was the tipping point – she still wears heavy foundation and high necked clothing to hide the scarring to this day.
I find it hard to characterise Mike as ‘evil’ in a strip that includes Blaine, Toedad, and Grandpa. Not to mention Joyce’s would-be rapist, whose name escapes me right now. Mike’s an asshole, but has he actually harmed or cheated anyone?
Annonymouse – Seriously? They were a baby. I guarantee they didn’t know what they were doing.
NelC – *shrugs* Using the same words as the OP to make a point. Feel free to substitute whatever ‘value of dickishness’ you want. Though I’d argue that at least a few of the things he’s done are emotional abuse.
Annonymouse wasn’t calling the baby evil. They were giving an example of how absolute statements are not always true. In this case, the absolute in question was the notion that anyone who doesn’t breastfeed their baby is a horrible monster who shouldn’t be a parent, no excuses.
That’s true, and breastfeeding benefits are honestly really overblown in industrialized societies. I still don’t feel like anybody is born evil and can never ever do anything better ever.
If Annonymouse wasn’t calling the baby evil, “hellspawn” probably wasn’t the best word choice in the context of this conversation. If they were implying the baby was born bad or such, it–and the comment as a whole–makes more sense.
Just to reiterate a point above, with how you responded to the theory that he’s a sociopath, ASPD=/= evil, with so much lurk starting out their comment with that.
Agreed. Low-empathy people are perfectly capable of being good, and empathetic people are absolutely able to be awful. (Empathy has limits, for one thing, and once you start shutting it off it becomes easier to say ‘well MY experiences aren’t like that, so it can’t be that bad!’ and other such dreck.) There’s a time and place for armchair diagnosing and Mike ain’t it. He’s probably the same White Edgelord Dude you see all over the internet SWATing people and harassing Kelly Marie Tran. Most of them don’t have any underlying pathology, they just decide to be awful.
Personally, I’ve never considered Mike to be evil in the slightest.
To borrow from the D&D alignment grid, I’d put Mike squarely on the “Chaotic Good” corner, possibly bordering into “Asshole Good” at times – everything he’s ever done genuinely is for good reasons, but often causes collateral damage, seems to just come out of nowhere like some giant space-flea (sorry, random Star Trek reference), or even appear as though he’s trying to hurt the people he’s actually helping. Sometimes it looks more like he’s trying to cause pain and helping them is merely an incidental (or accidental) by-product.
But yeah, I really truly think that he is trying to help his friends – he just doesn’t care how, as long as it’s the quickest and most effective way.
Mike has actually helped someone maybe three times if you include today.
Even if we naively assumed his intentions were ALWAYS good, good intentions and even good results do not justify incredibly shitty, harmful methods. Meaning well and even ACTUALLY HELPING does not excuse his complete disregard for the distress and harm he causes for the recipients of his “help”
Even if he magically KNEW that his actions would end up benefiting his target in the end, it wouldn’t give him the right to pull the kind of shit that he does. People aren’t toys to be played with like that
I dunno, I have a sibling who is an actual sociopath, and I can enjoy Mike storylines, whereas any fictional character who ACTUALLY reminds me of my brother causes me intense stress. Obviously not hard scientific proof this, but I’m just not seeing enough similarities in behavior.
In my experience, sociopaths often don’t think about the consequences of their actions (we know Mike carefully calculates each move and generally correctly predicts the outcome) and it’s not that they don’t care what others think/don’t care about hurting others, often they really DO care that others think highly of them (something we know Mike doesn’t care about) but are generally incapable of even seeing how their actions negatively affect others (Mike seems pretty aware of how his actions affect others, he just doesn’t seem to care if it affects them negatively).
Granted, I am no psychologist, just someone who grew up affected by the consequences if these behaviors within the family, and my experience is only one person’s.
I think he enjoyed the chance of confronting the teacher and humiliating her that she got schooled by a 8 year old. Amber is a non-entity by Mike since she’s too easy of a prey.
No, sadly, unlike real predators–Mike goes for the strong and healthy.
I can maybe see that, though they look pretty middle school to me. In previous flashback strips from this arc, Amber mentions babysitting and the teacher refers to the class as homeroom. Homeroom (and also lockers) are definitely more common once you reach middle school, but depending on the school, that can vary. But babysitting would be really out of place for someone that young.
They’re in Cartoon School, which always has a high school structure no matter how old the characters are or what grade they’re in. Just look at Doug and Big Nate.
I’m so tired that upon reading your first sentence, I thought you were trying to correct my spelling of the word “neighbor.”
Anyway, yeah, the neighbor boys were neighbours. His parents being nearby doesn’t really make it that much more reasonable, though, since it’s not like they were in the same house. I think, anyway. If the twins had come over to Arthur’s house and he was in charge of watching them while his parents were around, I could accept that more.
I have no idea. IIRC, D.W. mentions she babysat them sometimes and she’s 4, the same age they are. Though, in her case, I imagine she’s overstating things because she also says she has to be in charge of Arthur.
Honestly, using two differnt spellings of the same word in a sentence bother me more than just misspelling any one word. My OCD insists one be picked and stuck with.
@DeliciousTaffy My siblings and I were actually banned from watching Arthur because of all the stuff DW got away with. The one time DW got in trouble with her parents (on screen at least, and that’s all that matters to viewers) was when she unknowingly swore at them. She’s a spoiled little brat.
My theory is that Mr. and Mrs. Read are eternally apologizing for calling her “Dora Winifred”.
I wonder if arguing with the teacher and encouraging Amber to deceive people is actually nice or Mike already being a corrupter. I wouldn’t be surprised if we won’t get a horrifying Keyser Soze moment where Mike reveals he created Amber’s mental health problems by encouraging her to divide herself.
I… think that would be going a little too far. Mike is a kid here and Amber already has her anxiety issues because of her father at minimum. This could just be a genuine friend moment between kids because I did know kids who probably would have done this for their friends and it is a typical kid solution to suggest just lying to avoid trouble. While we know he does become much more vile at some point, this could be like the flashbacks of Marcie which are to make us think ‘what happened to you?’
Which is an interesting question considering we know Mike had pretty loving, slightly overbearing but generally sweet parents. Which means he likely learned his more vicious tactics from someone else around him in his life, possibly even from observing Blaine as kids tend to parrot things they see/experience and we have seen that Blaine was still abusive towards Amber in Ethan’s presence. If he did the same thing around Mike too… it could explain how his morality and values became warped as you are more likely become an abuser yourself if you SEE abuse without being a target of it.
…I’m not sure I want to know what you’re thinking. I was just thinking Mike’s so young anything that could ‘shoe drop’ him into being a jerk all the time would be incredibly sad. I had no specifics in mind.
FWIW, I think that Willis deliberately drew young!Amber to resemble the character’s appearance in Shortpacked! Mostly because, in personality terms, they’re very similar.
SPIDER MIKE, SPIDER MIKE
DOES WHATEVER A SPIDER MIKE DOES
CAN HE SWING FROM A WEB?
NO HE CAN’T, WHAT KIND OF STUPID-ASS QUESTION IS THAT
LOOK OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT HERE COMES THE SPIDER MIKE
I’m wondering if it’ll be a No Good Deed Goes Unpunished type of deal. He gives up on trying to help people, realizing that it’s never as easy or simple as it should be.
Now he just opts for the option with the most fireworks, at the very least.
He’s going to argue with a teacher and is already encouraging Amber to lie. It’s just bullying Amber is playing on Easy mode for a dedicated shooter enthusiast.
And how is Mike supposed to know that? Assuming they’ve only been friends for a day to maybe a week, Amber has probably kept him away from Blaine and Mike probably assumes that her dad is just a bit strict at the most.
Seriously the dudes a kid here. You’re acting like he came out of his mom’s pussy plotting how to destroy the world
My final line of the previous comment was gonna be
“I await the ‘No, Mike is definitely Evil from birth’ responses”
but I didn’t want to paint a target on the comment. Glad to see my first thought was correct.
Honestly, Mike interests me the most in a motivation way. I know he’s mostly a flat character, but how he interacts with most people brings up new developments.
I mean, given this advice came from Blaine, I’m inclined to say ‘yeah just let Mike handle this and maybe it won’t end terribly.’ (I mean, ideally ‘you go in, I’ll be with you to back you up’ might help some of Amber’s anxiety more than just Mike doing it on her behalf, but this is probably going to work fine. Unless Mike threatens the teacher. In which case, fuck.)
Let’s be clear here, my ideal situation for Amber is getting her and her mom away from Blaine while Amber’s still tiny, ditto Faz and Yuri, Blaine ends up dead in a ditch somewhere and tiny Amber somehow gets some kind of supportive therapy/counseling for her anxiety including gradual help with social situations like this. Needless to say, that one never had a chance in hell.
I have the feeling Blaine is a different kind of beast than Granpa and Toedad. I’m inclined to think Blaine probably had exactly the kind of abusive home which he put Amber in–because his treatment of her is all about her standing up for herself and being disappointed when she can’t.
In other words, he thinks he’s helping her. Which means at some point, he was warped by his father into the thing he became. Sadly, redemption is not possible for him since life is not Star Wars.
It’s possible. It’s just incredibly incredibly unlikely at this stage of the game. And Toedad and Gramps both think they’re helping their charges too – they’re just terrible people with terrible ideas of what help means.
I wouldn’t bother with giving Blaine the benefit of doubt as to his intentions.
He already is a serial abuser and I don’t give a fuck as to how they make themselves look good in their own eyes.
Not to mention, it’s becoming implied he groomed and had a sexual relationship with a teenager and has ties to the mob. Every mention of him consistently makes him a worse person than previously assumed. Could he have been abused? Eh, possibly, though not necessarily in the exact same way Amber was. Some abusers do. But the cycle of abuse isn’t some given thing of destiny, it tends to make abuse victims feel worse about themselves, and you can just as easily get just as shitty a human being by mistake and not combatting the culture of entitlement a straight white dude grows up in,!and get a perfectly wonderful human being from out of a horrifically abusive environment. So frankly? I don’t care where Blaine came from, I care that he continues to be controlling and abusive time and time again, fucking up more people in his wake.
He’s probably the character that suffered the most from the translation from It’s Walky/Shortpacked to Dumbing of Age. He was (mostly) comic relief there, and he’s served the same role here, but mostly in the same way, despite going from a sci-fi strip with weird, wacky hijinks (mostly) to a serialized college drama (like what Roomies was originally).
Here, Mike needs more of a backstory to make his general dickery more understandable. He’s still funny (mostly), but he hasn’t really become a fully fledged character yet. Seems like Mr. Willis is trying to address that here :).
Yeah, edgelords like him aren’t hard to find, especially among teenagers. The ones who neither grow out of it or become full blown MRAs or Fox News hosts find themselves with a ever shrinking group of friends willing to put up with their shit as they get older
Sure, but that doesn’t make for a very interesting character. What I’m seeing is Willis making an effort to give Mike a second dimension.
Order of the Stick ran into this issue too, with the Halfling Ranger/Barbarian Belkar Bitterleaf. Initially he was a comic relief character for his comedic sociopathy and being a contrast against the normal Halfling stereotype, and for contrasting the Good/Neutral party, but as the comic shifted from standard game comedy to a serious dramatic arc (with comedy thrown in too), he had to grow some depth to avoid becoming a one-note trope.
I think I relate more to Past-Amber than anyone else in the comic; an extreme, cringing fear of conflict and panic at the real or imagined judgements of observers are mucho suck to grow up with, I tell you what.
I think there’s another shoe dropping with Mike as I think Mike is a character who, at the end, isn’t going to turn out to be a Jerk with a Heart of GoldTM.
This definitely helps show why Amber and Ethan are friends with him now. I’ve had friends who became varying levels of jerks (not, to my knowledge, due to anything traumatic, but also not reaching Mike level of jerk), and it can be hard to stop seeing someone as a friend even if they start doing things that bother you.
I actually think he sincerely wants to help Amber. He’s been shown as someone who reads other kids and uses that to make friends quickly. I suspect what’s actually going to happen is this sort of ‘charge in to rescue!’ directness backfires, a lot, in no small part because Ethan and Amber, here, can’t actually be genuinely helped by it. (See Ethan, who Mike has already identified as ‘likes other boys’ or at least ‘liked me on sight and gets blushy’, dating Amber throughout high school.)
A string of defeats, when people you care about are at stake, might well be enough to turn someone from ‘I will help!’ to ‘fuck it, nothing helps, everything gets worse, might as well just hurry that along’.
I don’t think he’s actually been shown as “someone who reads other kids and uses that to make friends quickly.”
He certainly reads other kids, but we haven’t seen enough to see how he uses that ability. That whole bit wouldn’t have been too out of place coming from college age Mike and he certainly wasn’t actually making friends.
It’s possible he’d more of a normal kid here (and maybe we’re seeing what turned him into an asshole), but it’s also possible he’s already the manipulative jerk we know. We haven’t seen enough yet.
He did win up deliberately or not wind up attaching himself to two very vulnerable kids.
Strongest evidence to support the “he’s looking to argue” theory so far.
Maybe he’s just going to explain the situation and then when the teacher agrees to correct the mistake, she’ll talk to Amber. Ideally a teacher would have the conversation with the student in question, even if said student is too anxious to initiate it.
I’m just trying to come up with a response for the question posed, dude. Anyway, Mike is a jerk now, I don’t question that. That doesn’t mean he was always a jerk, or a jerk in the same way.
Probably by carefully-considered reasoning that deliberately pushes all of their neuroses buttons. Finally, he implies that he wants Amber to flunk so they grade her at A+ for the rest of her school career just to get back at him.
Jeez, this is a weird face turn. I’m really interested in where this is going. Is Mike’s current horrible behaviour the result of specific events, or just a slow decline into sadism?
In panel 7, poor young Amber maxes out most of my cute category measures.
Now, is Mike trying to cause trouble? Or, back then, was he genuinely interested in helping out his friends and genuinely didn’t realise that challenging authority figures in their tiny empire of self-importance was a bad idea?
I suspect that secondhand Blaine will be part of what messes with Mike. I read him here as sincerely offering help. ‘Amber can’t do this, she’s scared, but I’m not scared, so I’ll do it for her.’ And then that doesn’t actually help because Amber just gets more scared, or suffers more at home because of course Blaine can tell if Amber lies or hides things. He has made sure she’s not Fort Knox, emotionally speaking.
So the lesson Mike ends up learning (with later additional support from watching Ethan who likes other boys date Amber) is ‘helping makes things worse, so fuck it’.
I actually kind of want to predict that it’s partially Amber, unintentionally, that fucks him up. We’ve seen her berserk before, and if she gets, like, punished by Blaine because of Mike, I can see her lashing out (not necessarily violently, ofc). Thus, even if he understands it’s not her trying to be mean, a friend yelling at you for your attempts to help getting them hurt, physically or emotionally, isn’t a party.
That, plus Blaine existing, and other theories people have mentioned – Ethan dating Amber despite liking boys, etc – plus possible other traumas (who knows?), could be a pretty good catalyst for a cynicsl asshole.
Doesn’t mean I like him. Just theorizing some shit.
Much as I hate to give him any credit for anything, as he is truly an awful person, Blaine DOES have a point here. Children do need to learn to stand up for themselves at some point. You can’t go through life being a pushover unless you want to be the perpetual victim. That doesn’t mean that his methods of instilling that knowledge were good or right but the message itself that he’s trying to teach is not wrong.
The main problem here is that Blaine is using good advice ‘you can’t let others do everything for you or always stand up for you, you have to set your own boundaries and know when to speak up’ and twisting it into ‘you shouldn’t rely on the support of others at all, do it yourself or not at all’ and this feeds into Amber’s anxiety which then makes it harder for her to do it herself which then traps her in an anxiety cycle where she does become a perpetual victim of him as it gives him endless reason to be annoyed and angry at her and she does become extremely reliant on others to do things for her in the end because his feeding her anxiety paralyses her ability to do it herself.
How so? He went from someone who sees ‘something’s wrong’ and thinks ‘I should help!’ to someone who sees ‘something’s wrong!’ and thinks ‘good, time to find that knife and twist it’. That’s a pretty big difference in attitude and intent, I think.
like this is not what helping your friends with anxiety looks like. He just forced her into an adversarial interaction. you encourage, you support, but ultimately you need to respect limits, and not make your friend’s situation even more out of control.
Yeah. It’s a shortcut that might make sense to Mike, but it’s actually putting Amber in a shitty position by requiring her to keep a secret from Blaine. It definitely seems benign, but it’s not an ideal option for Amber at all. I’m getting a picture of a Mike that’s caring, and damn perceptive in his empathy, but not good at engaging with other people’s feelings at all.
He’s like 10 (…I don’t actually know how old they are here), kids don’t usually know the best steps to help your anxious friend, and this would make sense to me if I was a kid.
Although I still don’t get why he’s so nice, and I’m not sure I trust it.
True. What Mike SHOULD have done is instead offer to accompany Amber for moral/emotional support while Amber talks to her teacher. Mike doesn’t have to say or do anything. Just knowing that there’s someone next to you who has your back can be enough.
Are we actually expecting an elementary-school age kid to be able to correctly identify long-term mental health issues in his friends and handle them exactly correctly? Because ‘well, they’re kids, they don’t know any better’ is used to grant the technical-adult versions of the cast some slack for imperfect though well-intentioned decision-making.
Or is this just ‘it’s Mike, he always knows exactly what he’s doing or not doing no matter how old he is’?
this is fair. i guess a more context-relevant way to express this is “she’s clearly uncomfortable with what he’s doing, he does it anyways, and he’s extremely perceptive so he’s got less of an excuse”. I wouldn’t be so hard on a real person, but he’s a comic character who shows a (hopefully!) unrealistic level of manipulative prowess that’s always-on.
Everyone’s saying this is Mike being decent, and obviously something happens after this to make him the Mike we know.
But what I see happening here, is Mike has just said:
“I notice that you are too shy to handle this easy confrontation, and are being pressured to do so by your direct parent or guardian. So I will handle this confrontation for you, so that “if” (Read: When) details of this easy confrontation reach your parent or guardian, you will have to lie to them, which in itself is a MUCH Harder confrontation to have, and either she succeeds in doing so, or even worse (and more likely), she FAILS in doing so, which perpetuates a feedback loop of “You say (lie) that you confronted your teacher but you can’t even work up the nerve to tell me properly that you have done so. So I (Her father) call bullshit.” Which will leave you in an even worse situation.”
TL;DR: Mike is handling this easy confrontation, because it almost guarantees Amber will be put into either a worse confrontation, or a MUCH worse confrontation, at a later point. Those are the two options I can see.
Is this the arc where it revealed that Mike has had a crush on Ethan and Amber for years and that everything he’s done has been a bizarre and desperate attempt to impress them?
I can’t help thinking that he’s not doing this to be nice but to do SOMETHING assholeish, either to Amber or the teacher. Maybe it’s cynical, but I’m suspicious.
Amazed that anyone thinks Mike is being “nice” to Amber. He knows what he is doing. He understands the dynamics here and instead of building up and supporting Amber, he leaves her hiding in a locker. He gives he deliberately terrible advice (then you lie). He does so with a smile on his face, because this amuses him.
I agree that a 12 year old is more acted on than actor, but Mike is already toxic here. Willing to grant that he was probably damaged by his upbringing, but he is passing the damage on to others. A circle of toxicity. Nope. This is not a good thing and to the extent any person isn’t good, Mike isn’t good. Or neutral.
I’m so far reserving judgement on Mike here. He’s still a kid and without knowing what he eventually becomes I doubt anyone would be judging him so harshly.
It’s possible he’s already just a smaller version of the jerk he’ll become. It’s also possible he hasn’t yet been completely warped and we’re going to see some of that process.
Yes. Adult-Mike would say different things to the teacher and to Amber – both true, but misleading – leading to confusion and complication later, screwing over both people. What child-Mike intends remains to be seen, but even if he has the same impulse, he is unlikely to be able to do something so sophisticated.
As others have noted, even if he means well, it is not likely to end well. Especially, Amber attempting to lie to Blaine is a very bad idea.
Dude, he’s like 11. I doubt he’s some Mastermind supervillain manipulator. He’s not going about this in the best way but I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to help. After all, the purpose of this is to give Mike more depth. “He was an asshole from the moment of conception MUAHAHAHAHAHA” just sounds cheap and boring. I have more faith in Willis than that
OTOH, he’s already been set up to have at least some of the older Mike’s traits – reading the room for weaknesses. He’s almost certainly not up to the full manipulator level he later reaches, but that doesn’t mean he’s all sweetness and light now.
As I said elsewhere, I’m reserving judgement for now. We don’t have enough information yet to judge his motivations.
Guys, I know Mike’s an asshole at 18, but you’re acting like he came out a horrible person from day one. Like, come on. That’s just as ridiculous as the asshole sage argument
I agree with you. Especially because we know Mike’s parents are perfectly loving people, and a little overbearing about it to others. So it is a possibility that Mike was a good kid at first, but became warped by seeing other influences (such as Blaine) over time which wouldn’t excuse any of his actions, but would explain why Ethan and Amber remain so attached to him, why he stopped smiling, why even when they both acknowledge that Mike is an awful person, Ethan and Amber still hang out with him even though they are aware he will try to destroy them.
So I’m not sure how closely you monitor the comments, David, but in the event you see this, I thought I’d note that the comic RSS appears to have become non-functional as of 3 days ago. I have no idea why, but it hasn’t updated since “Honour” on 6/4.
The alt text (“just your friendly neighborhood michael warner”) has given me a thought that I must get out there:
Is Mike one of those Anonymous trolls for whom Mr. Rogers can do know wrong (and rightly so, to be clear), or is even he a potential target for Mike’s … yeah sure, let’s go with evil.
Loading ...
OH NO I CAN’T LOOK
*covers eyes with hands*
*giant cartoon eyeball peeks out through fingers*
*popcorn.gif*
Mike needs friends to cover for him when he finally acts out on his masterplan. To Mike’s understanding, “friends” are people that you have secured a number of favors from
It’s possible that Ethan and Amber are mere assets to him, sure, but I think this seems a little earnest for him. I think he’s going to get broken, and it’s not going to be pretty.
I’d not bet against you.
The most logical explanation would be that Mike has discovered alcohol at a young age, however my money would be on Mike finding a way to be Mike.
Oh wow, that’s… sadly quite possible.
Maybe the teacher is going to tell him that it’s the grade Amber deserves, or something like that, and he’ll become acquainted with the unfairness of life?
oh hey look, he WASN’T BORN EVIL.
Will the wonders ever cease.
I mean, the moment of his birth was heralded by a thousand crows encircling the hospital and cawing a dirge, while an inexplicable eclipse blackened the sun and every doctor present was struck blind and mad.
But lots of babies are born every day, so that can’t be a unique occurrence.
It is said Temujin was born holding a blood clot. I assume Mike was born holding a nickel, and it’s just that at this point he is still too young to understand the omen.
That sounds super cool. I’m jealous :C
Same thing happened to me, but to be fair the family next door were also wearing hooded robes and had a bloody goat, but that may have just been a coincidence.
Mike isn’t evil, he’s a sociopath. He doesn’t experience empathy the way that other people do, and he has a tendency to reduce interpersonal interactions to equation-like analysis. That doesn’t mean he’s evil, though, he just seems that way a lot of the time because he doesn’t care if others react badly to him. He’s always been capable of doing something nice if it suits him, it’s just that his priorities are way different from those of more prosocial humans.
DO ya have any hard proof that he’s a sociopath tho?
Like what, a strip in which he is diagnosed or states a diagnosis? I think explanations for Mike at this point are pretty clearly theories, which may have varying levels of support…asking for “hard proof” for something like this seems strange.
I agree, I don’t think Mike is a sociopath. I think he’s a willing misanthrope, bully, and sadist.
From so much lurk’s framing of sociopathy, he could be both.
I think Mike’s an otherwise normal individual that is sick of the lies and bs that typically hold society together. He’s brutally honest far more than he is mean. Perhaps he’s noted that people tend to actually deal with things they’re told with brutal honesty? Or maybe he’s just sick of the drama his friends (Ethan and Amber) create?
Nah, he’s just mean (see strips involving getting Walky’s stuff back, and recording him crying at night). And most people who say they’re “brutally honest” tend to just be jerks.
Diagnosis is unlikely anyways since it’s no longer in use. It’s called Anti Social Personality Disorder. And the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes does not equal the ability to like people, want them to be happy and not want them to be mistreated (compassion). Mike’s a terrible person, regardless of motivation, but it’s probably not sociopathy.
It just bothers me a lot about the comment section that a lot of peeps seems to have decided that Mike is evil, period. No deeper meaning, nothing else, he was born evil and every evidence to the contrary is just misdirection, that he is incapable of empathy, and that his Evil is just in his nature. I’ve always thought that true evil comes from choice. Seeing both paths in front of you, and choosing the one that causes harm.
I’d say to wait until the flashbacks show us the entire thing. It’ll take a few months but we got time, because when the flashbacks end, I guess something will have happened that will have Mike with both paths in front of him, willingly diving into the one that causes harm.
My personal theory about Mike is that he doesn’t lack empathy, but the opposite, that he feels too strongly, and he acts like he does to reject that. After all, drunk Mike, Mike with no inhibitions was the nicest character in the walkyverse.
I agree that nobody is born evil but every time we see Mike he chooses evil. That’s pretty hard to sympathize with. I’m interested to see why he’s like this but I don’t believe he’s coming from this out of some sort of ‘asshole sage’ type thing (as some have suggested). I don’t know what his motives are but I suspect we’ll soon find out.
With any statement put forth as an absolute, especially when concerning humans, there are numerous examples that prove the opposite.
I remember a neighbor who switched to bottle feeding despite very strong, heavy handed, familial pressure not to do so – the damage the hellspawn was doing to her before it even started teething was shrugged off as just another burden to bear – almost losing her vision was the tipping point – she still wears heavy foundation and high necked clothing to hide the scarring to this day.
I find it hard to characterise Mike as ‘evil’ in a strip that includes Blaine, Toedad, and Grandpa. Not to mention Joyce’s would-be rapist, whose name escapes me right now. Mike’s an asshole, but has he actually harmed or cheated anyone?
Annonymouse – Seriously? They were a baby. I guarantee they didn’t know what they were doing.
NelC – *shrugs* Using the same words as the OP to make a point. Feel free to substitute whatever ‘value of dickishness’ you want. Though I’d argue that at least a few of the things he’s done are emotional abuse.
Annonymouse wasn’t calling the baby evil. They were giving an example of how absolute statements are not always true. In this case, the absolute in question was the notion that anyone who doesn’t breastfeed their baby is a horrible monster who shouldn’t be a parent, no excuses.
I’m just confused about how breastfeeding could cause scars on the *neck* :/ I’m not sure I actually want to know.
That’s true, and breastfeeding benefits are honestly really overblown in industrialized societies. I still don’t feel like anybody is born evil and can never ever do anything better ever.
If Annonymouse wasn’t calling the baby evil, “hellspawn” probably wasn’t the best word choice in the context of this conversation. If they were implying the baby was born bad or such, it–and the comment as a whole–makes more sense.
Just to reiterate a point above, with how you responded to the theory that he’s a sociopath, ASPD=/= evil, with so much lurk starting out their comment with that.
Agreed. Low-empathy people are perfectly capable of being good, and empathetic people are absolutely able to be awful. (Empathy has limits, for one thing, and once you start shutting it off it becomes easier to say ‘well MY experiences aren’t like that, so it can’t be that bad!’ and other such dreck.) There’s a time and place for armchair diagnosing and Mike ain’t it. He’s probably the same White Edgelord Dude you see all over the internet SWATing people and harassing Kelly Marie Tran. Most of them don’t have any underlying pathology, they just decide to be awful.
Personally, I’ve never considered Mike to be evil in the slightest.
To borrow from the D&D alignment grid, I’d put Mike squarely on the “Chaotic Good” corner, possibly bordering into “Asshole Good” at times – everything he’s ever done genuinely is for good reasons, but often causes collateral damage, seems to just come out of nowhere like some giant space-flea (sorry, random Star Trek reference), or even appear as though he’s trying to hurt the people he’s actually helping. Sometimes it looks more like he’s trying to cause pain and helping them is merely an incidental (or accidental) by-product.
But yeah, I really truly think that he is trying to help his friends – he just doesn’t care how, as long as it’s the quickest and most effective way.
It’s not an uncommon opinion. Frankly, I don’t see it at all.
His occasional stated motivations aren’t good. The outcomes are rarely good. His closest “friends” don’t trust him.
Mike has actually helped someone maybe three times if you include today.
Even if we naively assumed his intentions were ALWAYS good, good intentions and even good results do not justify incredibly shitty, harmful methods. Meaning well and even ACTUALLY HELPING does not excuse his complete disregard for the distress and harm he causes for the recipients of his “help”
Even if he magically KNEW that his actions would end up benefiting his target in the end, it wouldn’t give him the right to pull the kind of shit that he does. People aren’t toys to be played with like that
I think we can at least agree that we have hard proof that he’s a massive prick most of the time.
I dunno, I have a sibling who is an actual sociopath, and I can enjoy Mike storylines, whereas any fictional character who ACTUALLY reminds me of my brother causes me intense stress. Obviously not hard scientific proof this, but I’m just not seeing enough similarities in behavior.
In my experience, sociopaths often don’t think about the consequences of their actions (we know Mike carefully calculates each move and generally correctly predicts the outcome) and it’s not that they don’t care what others think/don’t care about hurting others, often they really DO care that others think highly of them (something we know Mike doesn’t care about) but are generally incapable of even seeing how their actions negatively affect others (Mike seems pretty aware of how his actions affect others, he just doesn’t seem to care if it affects them negatively).
Granted, I am no psychologist, just someone who grew up affected by the consequences if these behaviors within the family, and my experience is only one person’s.
And hence began Mike’s path to ultimate asshole power.
Not a hint of ulterior motive, what a Mike
I think he enjoyed the chance of confronting the teacher and humiliating her that she got schooled by a 8 year old. Amber is a non-entity by Mike since she’s too easy of a prey.
No, sadly, unlike real predators–Mike goes for the strong and healthy.
They’re not eight in this strip, or in elementary school. They seem to be in middle school, probably at least twelve.
Alas the art style confuses me.
I can maybe see that, though they look pretty middle school to me. In previous flashback strips from this arc, Amber mentions babysitting and the teacher refers to the class as homeroom. Homeroom (and also lockers) are definitely more common once you reach middle school, but depending on the school, that can vary. But babysitting would be really out of place for someone that young.
not really; I vaguely remember getting volunteered to babysit when I was… probably 8 or 9 tops.
yeah, they’re lucky nothing bad happened, I had none of the relevant skills… and still didn’t at 16, really 😛
It does happen. It’s still really out of place and not a good idea.
right. it probably says more about my parents really 😛
They’re in Cartoon School, which always has a high school structure no matter how old the characters are or what grade they’re in. Just look at Doug and Big Nate.
I remember an episode of Arthur when he was babysitting the neighbor boys. I was watching like, “This bongo is in the third grade.”
TBF, weren’t they neighbours? His parents were nearby to help.
Now why their grandmother didn’t just ask his PARENTS to babysit I have no idea.
I’m so tired that upon reading your first sentence, I thought you were trying to correct my spelling of the word “neighbor.”
Anyway, yeah, the neighbor boys were neighbours. His parents being nearby doesn’t really make it that much more reasonable, though, since it’s not like they were in the same house. I think, anyway. If the twins had come over to Arthur’s house and he was in charge of watching them while his parents were around, I could accept that more.
I have no idea. IIRC, D.W. mentions she babysat them sometimes and she’s 4, the same age they are. Though, in her case, I imagine she’s overstating things because she also says she has to be in charge of Arthur.
D.W. is a nightmarish fleshghast sent to torment Elwood City. Don’t trust a goddamned word out of her venom-withered mouth.
Honestly, using two differnt spellings of the same word in a sentence bother me more than just misspelling any one word. My OCD insists one be picked and stuck with.
@DeliciousTaffy My siblings and I were actually banned from watching Arthur because of all the stuff DW got away with. The one time DW got in trouble with her parents (on screen at least, and that’s all that matters to viewers) was when she unknowingly swore at them. She’s a spoiled little brat.
My theory is that Mr. and Mrs. Read are eternally apologizing for calling her “Dora Winifred”.
? I can definitely recall more than one time she got in trouble. I dunno, she never struck me as really worse than the average four year old.
So what you’re saying is that Mike is a humanoid form of the Zika Virus
I dig it.
Suspiciously Helpful Mike
What’s that whistling sound, and where did my other shoe go?
That Michael Warner is such a good egg.
…what
Mike being genuinely nice? Have I literally died?
I wonder if arguing with the teacher and encouraging Amber to deceive people is actually nice or Mike already being a corrupter. I wouldn’t be surprised if we won’t get a horrifying Keyser Soze moment where Mike reveals he created Amber’s mental health problems by encouraging her to divide herself.
I… think that would be going a little too far. Mike is a kid here and Amber already has her anxiety issues because of her father at minimum. This could just be a genuine friend moment between kids because I did know kids who probably would have done this for their friends and it is a typical kid solution to suggest just lying to avoid trouble. While we know he does become much more vile at some point, this could be like the flashbacks of Marcie which are to make us think ‘what happened to you?’
Which is an interesting question considering we know Mike had pretty loving, slightly overbearing but generally sweet parents. Which means he likely learned his more vicious tactics from someone else around him in his life, possibly even from observing Blaine as kids tend to parrot things they see/experience and we have seen that Blaine was still abusive towards Amber in Ethan’s presence. If he did the same thing around Mike too… it could explain how his morality and values became warped as you are more likely become an abuser yourself if you SEE abuse without being a target of it.
i……………love him??
This is so cute! <3
I'm nervous. Willis is infamous for other shoes dropping…
Also, did anyone else get Shortpacked! feels?
I think the other shoe dropped with Mike a long time ago.
I suspect Mike is going to enjoy this and that Amber would be horrified by his tactics.
Considering he looks like 12 here, I’d hope not. That would just be extremely sad.
I…feel like that’s not what was meant, but now I can’t actually be sure…
…I’m not sure I want to know what you’re thinking. I was just thinking Mike’s so young anything that could ‘shoe drop’ him into being a jerk all the time would be incredibly sad. I had no specifics in mind.
WELP.
Personally, I think this IS the other shoe. Turns out Mike isn’t a complete asshole! SHOCK OF ALL SHOCKS!
FWIW, I think that Willis deliberately drew young!Amber to resemble the character’s appearance in Shortpacked! Mostly because, in personality terms, they’re very similar.
SPIDER MIKE, SPIDER MIKE
DOES WHATEVER A SPIDER MIKE DOES
CAN HE SWING FROM A WEB?
NO HE CAN’T, WHAT KIND OF STUPID-ASS QUESTION IS THAT
LOOK OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT HERE COMES THE SPIDER MIKE
The Shortpacked! version of Mike could do it pretty well, though.
Panel 5: Mike deploys the eyebrows
mike….actually being friendly? in what universe????
then what changed him ?
I’m wondering if it’ll be a No Good Deed Goes Unpunished type of deal. He gives up on trying to help people, realizing that it’s never as easy or simple as it should be.
Now he just opts for the option with the most fireworks, at the very least.
He’s going to argue with a teacher and is already encouraging Amber to lie. It’s just bullying Amber is playing on Easy mode for a dedicated shooter enthusiast.
No point.
Except I don’t think he’s necessarily arguing with the teacher, and I don’t think encouraging someone to lie for their protection is a bad thing.
Lying to Blaine is going to have the same result as telling Blaine the truth I fear because he’s the problem, not the person dealing with.
It might not make a difference, but my point was about Mike, and whether or not what he was doing was bad.
And how is Mike supposed to know that? Assuming they’ve only been friends for a day to maybe a week, Amber has probably kept him away from Blaine and Mike probably assumes that her dad is just a bit strict at the most.
Seriously the dudes a kid here. You’re acting like he came out of his mom’s pussy plotting how to destroy the world
My final line of the previous comment was gonna be
“I await the ‘No, Mike is definitely Evil from birth’ responses”
but I didn’t want to paint a target on the comment. Glad to see my first thought was correct.
I merrily like the idea Mike isn’t some tragic character but just a jerk and a bully who grew up to be one.
if Mike ever saw Amber’s dad it’d make sense for him to encourage her to do that.
after some thought, it may be when amber snapped and stabbed Sal’s hand.
I’m amazed that nobody mentioned Nickels yet.
It was implicit.
Way to break the chain, you fucking heretic.
Whaat ?
Poor Amber 🙁
Honestly, Mike interests me the most in a motivation way. I know he’s mostly a flat character, but how he interacts with most people brings up new developments.
… Who is this and what has he done with Mike?
I would place money on his inherent Mike-ness. Not a lot of money, mind you, but still.
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
Nnnnnope.
Nope.
I mean, given this advice came from Blaine, I’m inclined to say ‘yeah just let Mike handle this and maybe it won’t end terribly.’ (I mean, ideally ‘you go in, I’ll be with you to back you up’ might help some of Amber’s anxiety more than just Mike doing it on her behalf, but this is probably going to work fine. Unless Mike threatens the teacher. In which case, fuck.)
Let’s be clear here, my ideal situation for Amber is getting her and her mom away from Blaine while Amber’s still tiny, ditto Faz and Yuri, Blaine ends up dead in a ditch somewhere and tiny Amber somehow gets some kind of supportive therapy/counseling for her anxiety including gradual help with social situations like this. Needless to say, that one never had a chance in hell.
I have the feeling Blaine is a different kind of beast than Granpa and Toedad. I’m inclined to think Blaine probably had exactly the kind of abusive home which he put Amber in–because his treatment of her is all about her standing up for herself and being disappointed when she can’t.
In other words, he thinks he’s helping her. Which means at some point, he was warped by his father into the thing he became. Sadly, redemption is not possible for him since life is not Star Wars.
It’s possible. It’s just incredibly incredibly unlikely at this stage of the game. And Toedad and Gramps both think they’re helping their charges too – they’re just terrible people with terrible ideas of what help means.
I wouldn’t bother with giving Blaine the benefit of doubt as to his intentions.
He already is a serial abuser and I don’t give a fuck as to how they make themselves look good in their own eyes.
Not to mention, it’s becoming implied he groomed and had a sexual relationship with a teenager and has ties to the mob. Every mention of him consistently makes him a worse person than previously assumed. Could he have been abused? Eh, possibly, though not necessarily in the exact same way Amber was. Some abusers do. But the cycle of abuse isn’t some given thing of destiny, it tends to make abuse victims feel worse about themselves, and you can just as easily get just as shitty a human being by mistake and not combatting the culture of entitlement a straight white dude grows up in,!and get a perfectly wonderful human being from out of a horrifically abusive environment. So frankly? I don’t care where Blaine came from, I care that he continues to be controlling and abusive time and time again, fucking up more people in his wake.
Threaten? No. I think Mike has blackmail material on the teacher.
He’s probably the character that suffered the most from the translation from It’s Walky/Shortpacked to Dumbing of Age. He was (mostly) comic relief there, and he’s served the same role here, but mostly in the same way, despite going from a sci-fi strip with weird, wacky hijinks (mostly) to a serialized college drama (like what Roomies was originally).
Here, Mike needs more of a backstory to make his general dickery more understandable. He’s still funny (mostly), but he hasn’t really become a fully fledged character yet. Seems like Mr. Willis is trying to address that here :).
Mike is entirely understandable and believable.
Like Robin, I think he works well with the transition to being a simple bad person.
Yeah, edgelords like him aren’t hard to find, especially among teenagers. The ones who neither grow out of it or become full blown MRAs or Fox News hosts find themselves with a ever shrinking group of friends willing to put up with their shit as they get older
Sure, but that doesn’t make for a very interesting character. What I’m seeing is Willis making an effort to give Mike a second dimension.
Order of the Stick ran into this issue too, with the Halfling Ranger/Barbarian Belkar Bitterleaf. Initially he was a comic relief character for his comedic sociopathy and being a contrast against the normal Halfling stereotype, and for contrasting the Good/Neutral party, but as the comic shifted from standard game comedy to a serious dramatic arc (with comedy thrown in too), he had to grow some depth to avoid becoming a one-note trope.
I think I relate more to Past-Amber than anyone else in the comic; an extreme, cringing fear of conflict and panic at the real or imagined judgements of observers are mucho suck to grow up with, I tell you what.
I think there’s another shoe dropping with Mike as I think Mike is a character who, at the end, isn’t going to turn out to be a Jerk with a Heart of GoldTM.
There’s a difference between being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and being the Jerk You Need.
He’s the Jerk Gotham needs, but not the Jerk Gotham deserves right now?
Poor babies ;.;
This definitely helps show why Amber and Ethan are friends with him now. I’ve had friends who became varying levels of jerks (not, to my knowledge, due to anything traumatic, but also not reaching Mike level of jerk), and it can be hard to stop seeing someone as a friend even if they start doing things that bother you.
Younger Amber is also intensely relatable.
Mike is being nice. This is extremely weird.
I suspect it’s more the chance to humiliate the teacher getting wrongs a elementary school Amber didn’t. Low hanging fruit isn’t Mike’s style.
He’s not old enough to fuck the teacher’s mom for a nickel, after all.
I actually think he sincerely wants to help Amber. He’s been shown as someone who reads other kids and uses that to make friends quickly. I suspect what’s actually going to happen is this sort of ‘charge in to rescue!’ directness backfires, a lot, in no small part because Ethan and Amber, here, can’t actually be genuinely helped by it. (See Ethan, who Mike has already identified as ‘likes other boys’ or at least ‘liked me on sight and gets blushy’, dating Amber throughout high school.)
A string of defeats, when people you care about are at stake, might well be enough to turn someone from ‘I will help!’ to ‘fuck it, nothing helps, everything gets worse, might as well just hurry that along’.
I don’t think he’s actually been shown as “someone who reads other kids and uses that to make friends quickly.”
He certainly reads other kids, but we haven’t seen enough to see how he uses that ability. That whole bit wouldn’t have been too out of place coming from college age Mike and he certainly wasn’t actually making friends.
It’s possible he’d more of a normal kid here (and maybe we’re seeing what turned him into an asshole), but it’s also possible he’s already the manipulative jerk we know. We haven’t seen enough yet.
He did win up deliberately or not wind up attaching himself to two very vulnerable kids.
How is Mike going to convince the teacher that the grading was mistaken if Amber is still holding the test paper?
Strongest evidence to support the “he’s looking to argue” theory so far.
Maybe he’s just going to explain the situation and then when the teacher agrees to correct the mistake, she’ll talk to Amber. Ideally a teacher would have the conversation with the student in question, even if said student is too anxious to initiate it.
What part of Mike do you not understand?
I’m just trying to come up with a response for the question posed, dude. Anyway, Mike is a jerk now, I don’t question that. That doesn’t mean he was always a jerk, or a jerk in the same way.
Probably by carefully-considered reasoning that deliberately pushes all of their neuroses buttons. Finally, he implies that he wants Amber to flunk so they grade her at A+ for the rest of her school career just to get back at him.
Man, back when Mike figured he needed to smile around people.
Jeez, this is a weird face turn. I’m really interested in where this is going. Is Mike’s current horrible behaviour the result of specific events, or just a slow decline into sadism?
i get a pang in my chest whenever i see him. truly, damn you willis. damn you. nothing has even happened yet. goddamn. the FOREBODING.
I don’t know WHAT’S happening but it’s an Amber and Mike strip so I’m at peace
That is a surprisingly big mood.
I miss this mike
Aim better next time.
No! No! That wasn’t what I meant to say. Let me try again.
So does your mother.
No, still not right. Okay, I got it.
Where do you miss this Mike from? Not from Shortpacked. Not from walky and Joyce. Certainly not from DOA. So where then?
In panel 7, poor young Amber maxes out most of my cute category measures.
Now, is Mike trying to cause trouble? Or, back then, was he genuinely interested in helping out his friends and genuinely didn’t realise that challenging authority figures in their tiny empire of self-importance was a bad idea?
I suspect that secondhand Blaine will be part of what messes with Mike. I read him here as sincerely offering help. ‘Amber can’t do this, she’s scared, but I’m not scared, so I’ll do it for her.’ And then that doesn’t actually help because Amber just gets more scared, or suffers more at home because of course Blaine can tell if Amber lies or hides things. He has made sure she’s not Fort Knox, emotionally speaking.
So the lesson Mike ends up learning (with later additional support from watching Ethan who likes other boys date Amber) is ‘helping makes things worse, so fuck it’.
I actually kind of want to predict that it’s partially Amber, unintentionally, that fucks him up. We’ve seen her berserk before, and if she gets, like, punished by Blaine because of Mike, I can see her lashing out (not necessarily violently, ofc). Thus, even if he understands it’s not her trying to be mean, a friend yelling at you for your attempts to help getting them hurt, physically or emotionally, isn’t a party.
That, plus Blaine existing, and other theories people have mentioned – Ethan dating Amber despite liking boys, etc – plus possible other traumas (who knows?), could be a pretty good catalyst for a cynicsl asshole.
Doesn’t mean I like him. Just theorizing some shit.
She broke mike or was there when it happened
Much as I hate to give him any credit for anything, as he is truly an awful person, Blaine DOES have a point here. Children do need to learn to stand up for themselves at some point. You can’t go through life being a pushover unless you want to be the perpetual victim. That doesn’t mean that his methods of instilling that knowledge were good or right but the message itself that he’s trying to teach is not wrong.
Standing up for myself earned me a harder beating.
The main problem here is that Blaine is using good advice ‘you can’t let others do everything for you or always stand up for you, you have to set your own boundaries and know when to speak up’ and twisting it into ‘you shouldn’t rely on the support of others at all, do it yourself or not at all’ and this feeds into Amber’s anxiety which then makes it harder for her to do it herself which then traps her in an anxiety cycle where she does become a perpetual victim of him as it gives him endless reason to be annoyed and angry at her and she does become extremely reliant on others to do things for her in the end because his feeding her anxiety paralyses her ability to do it herself.
Plenty of good advice turns toxic when pushed to extremes.
JESUS Mike what happened to you?
looks like not much tbh
How so? He went from someone who sees ‘something’s wrong’ and thinks ‘I should help!’ to someone who sees ‘something’s wrong!’ and thinks ‘good, time to find that knife and twist it’. That’s a pretty big difference in attitude and intent, I think.
like this is not what helping your friends with anxiety looks like. He just forced her into an adversarial interaction. you encourage, you support, but ultimately you need to respect limits, and not make your friend’s situation even more out of control.
Yeah. It’s a shortcut that might make sense to Mike, but it’s actually putting Amber in a shitty position by requiring her to keep a secret from Blaine. It definitely seems benign, but it’s not an ideal option for Amber at all. I’m getting a picture of a Mike that’s caring, and damn perceptive in his empathy, but not good at engaging with other people’s feelings at all.
He’s like 10 (…I don’t actually know how old they are here), kids don’t usually know the best steps to help your anxious friend, and this would make sense to me if I was a kid.
Although I still don’t get why he’s so nice, and I’m not sure I trust it.
True. What Mike SHOULD have done is instead offer to accompany Amber for moral/emotional support while Amber talks to her teacher. Mike doesn’t have to say or do anything. Just knowing that there’s someone next to you who has your back can be enough.
Are we actually expecting an elementary-school age kid to be able to correctly identify long-term mental health issues in his friends and handle them exactly correctly? Because ‘well, they’re kids, they don’t know any better’ is used to grant the technical-adult versions of the cast some slack for imperfect though well-intentioned decision-making.
Or is this just ‘it’s Mike, he always knows exactly what he’s doing or not doing no matter how old he is’?
They’re elementary schoolers, maybe middle school? I don’t expect any of them to know the right way to deal with anxiety
this is fair. i guess a more context-relevant way to express this is “she’s clearly uncomfortable with what he’s doing, he does it anyways, and he’s extremely perceptive so he’s got less of an excuse”. I wouldn’t be so hard on a real person, but he’s a comic character who shows a (hopefully!) unrealistic level of manipulative prowess that’s always-on.
Everyone’s saying this is Mike being decent, and obviously something happens after this to make him the Mike we know.
But what I see happening here, is Mike has just said:
“I notice that you are too shy to handle this easy confrontation, and are being pressured to do so by your direct parent or guardian. So I will handle this confrontation for you, so that “if” (Read: When) details of this easy confrontation reach your parent or guardian, you will have to lie to them, which in itself is a MUCH Harder confrontation to have, and either she succeeds in doing so, or even worse (and more likely), she FAILS in doing so, which perpetuates a feedback loop of “You say (lie) that you confronted your teacher but you can’t even work up the nerve to tell me properly that you have done so. So I (Her father) call bullshit.” Which will leave you in an even worse situation.”
TL;DR: Mike is handling this easy confrontation, because it almost guarantees Amber will be put into either a worse confrontation, or a MUCH worse confrontation, at a later point. Those are the two options I can see.
Sounds like Mike (Current) to me.
Tiny Mike…….. cute.
Is this the arc where it revealed that Mike has had a crush on Ethan and Amber for years and that everything he’s done has been a bizarre and desperate attempt to impress them?
This is now my OT3.
Man, I honestly WISH. I would LOVE to see that V come to weird fruition.
Holy shit same. That would be fucked up but cute.
I can’t help thinking that he’s not doing this to be nice but to do SOMETHING assholeish, either to Amber or the teacher. Maybe it’s cynical, but I’m suspicious.
Amazed that anyone thinks Mike is being “nice” to Amber. He knows what he is doing. He understands the dynamics here and instead of building up and supporting Amber, he leaves her hiding in a locker. He gives he deliberately terrible advice (then you lie). He does so with a smile on his face, because this amuses him.
I agree that a 12 year old is more acted on than actor, but Mike is already toxic here. Willing to grant that he was probably damaged by his upbringing, but he is passing the damage on to others. A circle of toxicity. Nope. This is not a good thing and to the extent any person isn’t good, Mike isn’t good. Or neutral.
I’m so far reserving judgement on Mike here. He’s still a kid and without knowing what he eventually becomes I doubt anyone would be judging him so harshly.
It’s possible he’s already just a smaller version of the jerk he’ll become. It’s also possible he hasn’t yet been completely warped and we’re going to see some of that process.
Yes. Adult-Mike would say different things to the teacher and to Amber – both true, but misleading – leading to confusion and complication later, screwing over both people. What child-Mike intends remains to be seen, but even if he has the same impulse, he is unlikely to be able to do something so sophisticated.
As others have noted, even if he means well, it is not likely to end well. Especially, Amber attempting to lie to Blaine is a very bad idea.
Dude, he’s like 11. I doubt he’s some Mastermind supervillain manipulator. He’s not going about this in the best way but I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to help. After all, the purpose of this is to give Mike more depth. “He was an asshole from the moment of conception MUAHAHAHAHAHA” just sounds cheap and boring. I have more faith in Willis than that
OTOH, he’s already been set up to have at least some of the older Mike’s traits – reading the room for weaknesses. He’s almost certainly not up to the full manipulator level he later reaches, but that doesn’t mean he’s all sweetness and light now.
As I said elsewhere, I’m reserving judgement for now. We don’t have enough information yet to judge his motivations.
Guys, I know Mike’s an asshole at 18, but you’re acting like he came out a horrible person from day one. Like, come on. That’s just as ridiculous as the asshole sage argument
I agree with you. Especially because we know Mike’s parents are perfectly loving people, and a little overbearing about it to others. So it is a possibility that Mike was a good kid at first, but became warped by seeing other influences (such as Blaine) over time which wouldn’t excuse any of his actions, but would explain why Ethan and Amber remain so attached to him, why he stopped smiling, why even when they both acknowledge that Mike is an awful person, Ethan and Amber still hang out with him even though they are aware he will try to destroy them.
FUCK OFF BLAINE! YOU ARE THE REASON AMBER IS AN EMOTIONAL WRECK!!!!
don’t make me like mike! i’m not emotionally ready for this. but if he stands up for the meek. dammit… i’m warming to mike
So I’m not sure how closely you monitor the comments, David, but in the event you see this, I thought I’d note that the comic RSS appears to have become non-functional as of 3 days ago. I have no idea why, but it hasn’t updated since “Honour” on 6/4.
You are doing me a frighten.
The alt text (“just your friendly neighborhood michael warner”) has given me a thought that I must get out there:
Is Mike one of those Anonymous trolls for whom Mr. Rogers can do know wrong (and rightly so, to be clear), or is even he a potential target for Mike’s … yeah sure, let’s go with evil.
This bodes.
Mike being sweet..amazing…I like it. Let it continue please.