AMAZI-GIRL: “Stop! Or I, the Great Amazi-Creep, shall be forced to manhandle you fine ladies one by one!”
[They all gang up on him]
AMAZI-GIRL: “Four at a time?? That’s too great a challenge even for the Great Amazi-Creep! Amazi-Girl, though this may not be your… thing… I could still use your assistance in this matter!”
AMAZI-GIRL: (Groans) “Yeah, yeah, I gotcha…”
AMAZI-CREEP: “And be sure to bring copious amounts of Amazi-Lube!!”
AMAZI-GIRL: “On second thought, you’re on your own.”
Of course it is! Every successful super-hero eventually has her most notorious enemies team up to defeat her. It’s a trope! This is Amazi-Girl’s Legion of Doom, or Sinister Six!
Heck, they all deserve good villain names, so…
Sal’s the Black Bandit.
Marcie’s the Mute Menace.
Malaya’s totally SkHater Girl. (The ‘H’ is silent, like the silent depths of her HATE.)
And Carla – Spider-Carla.
Yeah, Amber’s pulling a huge bongo move. Then again, her whole superhero motivation is exactly what people portray Batman as having in parody. Rather than actually wanting to do good, she’s just looking for an excuse to punch people.
Honestly, she’s more like the Punisher than Batman.
It’s not just in parody. While he does mean well Batman’s primary motivation for being Batman is as an outlet for his psychological issues. He’s physically and mentally incapable of stopping.
Batman just chooses to target people who have done more than just underage drinking. Tho they do have a past, Sal was obviously arrested for her previous crime. I relate to sal in this position, and think Amber needs to spend some time in therapy, hasta pronto. Batman was at least able to function in society without losing his grip on reality.
I think we’re all agreed that poor Amber needs therapy and a restraining order on her dad. What she’s doing now is only going to make things worse, for her and everyone else involved.
Batman’s grip on reality and his ability to function in society, well, that can be debated. His sanity really depends on the writer; but the idea of someone taking the law into his own hands kinda implies they aren’t functioning properly in society.
Honestly, Batman’s motivation varies from adaptation and period in his life. In his younger days, he was usually portrayed a violent and vengeful, but later on I’ve noticed him as being much more taciturn and focused on saving lives and doing right by people who deserved it.
My base motivation has always been revenge and control. I was a messed up little brat to start with, with my uber-rich parents wrapped around my little finger; when a mugger killed them and broke my illusion of control, it became an obsession with me. I HAVE to be in control at all times, at all costs. Saving lives is just an expression of that – to the point where I save the life of the Joker multiple times, long after any sane person would have let him die.
“Fighting crime” isn’t done by beating up muggers and terrorizing goons. Wanna fight crime? Join the police and do it the right way. I’m just here to work out my childhood trauma by punching homeless people. There’s nothing healthy about what I do.
Bruce Wayne is a massive philanthropist whose company employs mostly ex-convicts who need jobs. He’s got Gates-level money, he can afford both charity AND a ridiculous hobby.
So, he takes advantage of the fact that they are ex-cons and no-one else will emply them and exploits and underpays them. Wouldn’t surprise me if his companies also run the prisons in Gotham and Arkham Asylum.
That’s a nice sentiment OH WAIT the police don’t stop crime. Since when have they put a banksta in jail? All the police do is stop criminals too poor or stupid to have decent lawyers. And yeah, I consider underage drinking ESPECIALLY SINCE IT LOOKS LIEK DRIVING WAS GOING TO BE INVOLVED — a big deal.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not but they only had a six pack and at this point, Carla is taking half of it with her so they would only have one beer per person left. How many people do you know who are too sloshed to drive after one beer?
While one beer probably doesn’t affect the average person enough, my group of friends has always had the rule that after the first beer you give up your keys for the night. We go very much by the “better safe than sorry” philosophy.
“Always” been revenge and control? Holy amnesia, Batman! You’ve forgotten that there was a period that you fought for justice and American bat-values. Justice and Bat-American values. America and Bat-judiciary values. Whichever.
Yeah, and there was a time when I used guns and fought thinly-disguised racial caricatures on top of buildings shaped like giant household appliances. Most people do me the courtesy of forgetting my early indiscretions, though.
“Truth, Justice, and the American Way” is the other big guy in tights.
That was more than 40 years ago and I was hit with a truck since then, but I think elementary school. That means after 3rd but definitely by 6th, somewhere between Washington state and North Africa (military brat in the ’60s, we got moved around, a LOT)
And I leaving this with the Mike Gravatar on purpose because I had a childhood that couldn’t have been made any worse if I had been abducted by aliens as depicted in the Walkyverse. 2 out of 3 of my childhood friends were dead by the time I graduated college.
“Lolly Lolly Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here” was first aired in 1974, so it must have been shortly after that. So, probably about the same time I started school and learned to read.
I still don’t know what adverbs are and I’m fluent in two languages and working on a third. Don’t know what object, predicate, whatever whatever are either.
I’m sure you do, you just don’t know the names for them.
Everyone picks up grammar pretty intuitively as we’re learning language, but for some reason students (and sometimes teachers) seem to think it’s something entirely new they don’t already know.
“Drinking” (or any verb+ing) can also be a gerund, in which case it acts as a noun. Such would be the case if Amazi-Girl said “your underage drinking,” but as it is, it is a verb.
No, no, she’s just going after Sal because she feels it’s her last chance to confront her past since Dorothy knows her secret identity, and the fact that Sal just HAPPENS to be drinking means she can disguise it as actual vigilantism rather than just violent revenge.
Remember the party? She only beat down on a few scumbags and ignored pretty much everyone else, even though 90% of them were probably drinking illegally.
I’ve learned never to think that I know where Willis is going, but it looks like Amber’s grip on reality is increasingly intermittent and that currently she’s having a psychotic breakdown. Blaine was a real threat in the present, besides having tormented her all of her life. Sal is someone completely different. Not to mention that when Amber stabbed Sal, she was at least as messed up as Sal was: a pair of messed-up kids acting out dangerously. Sal SEEMS to be WAY more together than Amber, who seems to be crossing over into a psychotic stalker.
“psychotic breakdown” implies that she’s broken from reality. The fact that she watched Sal leave the dorm, put on her stupid costume, and then hunted her down implies premeditation, not psychosis, unless you mean psychopathic which is not the same thing as psychotic.
I may have the situation AND the term wrong; I defer to you on this. I was thinking that she’s seeing SAL as if it’s still/again that night when they were 13/14, even if she’s otherwise in touch with relatively superficial reality. I’m really unsure if she thinks she’s Amber Blaine disguised or just dressed as Amazigirl OR identifies as Amazigirl, who is this “Amber”…
From her behaviour in previous comic strips, I’d say she thinks she’s AG, at least temporarily. Whether attacking Sal (and seeing the others) will flip something in her and she’ll return to normal, or whether she’ll simply continue wanting to beat Sal half to death, only Willis knows.
Plus, she beat the tar outta a fully grown man with a history of abuse problems. I think we’ve established that AG is mean mumba jumba.
And to be fair, I don’t see Malaya getting involved, so it’s really more like 3 on 1.
Still, for plot based reasons, I cannot see how this can possibly end well for Amber, unless Danny has the stones to show up and stop things before they get outta hand.
I’d put my money on Carla, not Danny, in this. I doubt it’s just a coincidence that she shows up here and now. Odds are she’s playing the part of “Chekov’s gun”, not just a sophomore with a 1st class fake I’d.
Malaya’s feisty. Even if she doesn’t get along so well with the rest of the crew, I think she’d jump into the fight just so she had an excuse to hit someone.
I actually think Sal might not have the experience to take AG down solo. Amber has fought so many people that she likely knows exactly how to do things like throwing them. Do we know if Sal has any martial arts training?
4 against 1, on the other hand… I fear for Amber. Someone is going to get beaten up badly.
There is a lot, an old parking lot
beside a big box store
Where the underage drink a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
to even up the score.
I don’t get why Amber is after Sal… I get why she’d be upset seeing her and suspect her of stuff maybe even spy on her or something but just attacking her? Again? Didn’t you already get revenge Amber?
The way Amber sees it, Sal humiliated her indirectly in the holdup, because Amber was powerless and consequently got ridiculed by her asshole father (again, probably). Not only that, but Sal threatened to harm her best friend. Amber also probably has a bit of a Javert streak going and doesn’t think Sal has changed. So she looks at Sal and sees this violent chick who threatened to kill her best friend and indirectly caused her more humiliation by her father’s hand. And she’s walking free.
You also have to remember that Amber does not appear to be mentally stable. She’s thinking purely in a twisted logic, without empathy or consideration for what Sal might have gone through.
Children who are physically and emotionally abused at a young age tend to become aggressive and develop anxiety and depression. I feel really sorry for Amber, but she should really be getting help. I don’t care how cliche that sounds, it’s true.
^ This. Amber’s vigilante personality is a direct reflection of Blaine. That’s part of the reason Blaine claimed he was jumped by a “big guy” instead of a girl in a cape – it’s a warped sense of “power over” that is incredibly fragile when directly threatened. Amber has the same issue, which is why she’s totally spiraling now that her “power over” (her Amazi-Girl persona) has been threatened.
Followed by “Joyce Wrassles with Her Religion The Musical!”. Starring Hugo Weaving as Joyce, Danny DeVito as Dorothy, and the impeccable Donald Glover as Walky. Written by the ghost of Rod Serling.
Did Ultra Car actually like “Frankenstein”? I thought she only liked the “Short Circuit 2” references to “Frankenstein” and “Pinocchio”, not the actual books.
No see, cuz Frankenstein is the fleshy version of Short Circuit. Although now that I think about it, I guess Carla’s “short circuit” is actually Ultra Car.
Technically, Frankenstein was the creator of the artificial being; the creature has no name in Mary Shelly’s novel. And Johnny Five bought the novel, not the Universal or Hammer movies.
But anyway, would she like “Pinocchio”, since she got her wish to be a “real girl”?
Well, I remember reading somewhere that in the novel, the creature actually identifies itself as Dr. Frankenstein’s son (in proper grammar, because he wasn’t a mindless brute in the novel). I haven’t read the novel myself, but if this is true, that means the creature would also take on the surname of Frankenstein by default.
It’s probably still more proper to keep calling him Frankenstein’s Monster for clarity. But the people who call him Frankenstein are not wrong.
I know right? I really want Amber to go to the hospital or something and actually deal with the fact that she might have PTSD or something along those lines and get help. Too bad a week in the behavioral unit equates to about 150 strips :/
Problem is that if that happens she also goes to jail for beating the thing she called her father nearly to death. The law is weird about stuff like attempted murder.
I just hope she doesn’t get too badly beat up by Sal and maybe an intervention of some sort. Joyce would suggest divine intervention through prayer, but I think Danny or Walky might show up.
I’m pretty sure the only interaction Joyce and Walky had with Amber was when they ran into each other at Galasso’s and Amber yelled at Ethan. They are not terribly likely to participate in an intervention for someone they barely know.
Amber and Ethan would be well served by a honest conversation discussing both their issues, but outside of him and maybe Dina and Danny, nobody else really knows her well enough to help.
She also followed the jocks who were picking on Danny to Ron’s party and attacked them in the middle of the party. You can see it in the background though it’s easily missed on account of the attempted rape.
It’s not 100% clear what’s going down there from the bits and pieces we see in the background, but I don’t think Amber started that fight. It looks like one of the jocks hit some random background guy for no obvious reason (he’s just kind of standing around in an unprovoking fashion in the previous strip when they show up), and in the next strip Amazi-Girl intervened and took out the trash.
It does seem likely that she was stalking them looking for an excuse to beat them up again, but they did give her a pretty good one.
And no “almost” about it… IANAL and I’m not real familiar with the specifics of Indiana law, but I’m pretty sure that by the legal definition, Amber did assault Joyce. The threshold for assault is not nearly as high as most people think.
Legally wasn’t attempted murder. Besides, a story in which Amazigirl assaulting Blaine gets into the legal system would be a drag–hundreds of media clowns choking the place for months trying to interview everyone who was ever within a block of Amber.
FACT: Deafness is NOT really hereditary–you won’t really find entire families of people born deaf, but rather one or two for whom the rest of the family must learn ASL [or similar such for their native language]. Like any language, whoever is willing to learn it can easily pick it up from books and from actual deaf/mute people.
[to echo prior comments: Sal *talks* to Marcie, which establishes Marcie is mute but not deaf]
You seem to be missing the point. We’re wondering where and when and why Sal chose to put time and effort into learning sign language, instead of, say, riding a motorbike or whatever else she does.
I’m guessing it was probably due to her friendship with Marcie, but that’s probably an interesting story.
That was my point indeed, Jerden. To go through the trouble of learning a language just to communicate with a single person, you must be close to that person in the first place. It’s understandable if the mute or deaf-mute person is a member of your family, but it must be hard to be friends with a person who can’t communicate with you (at first). Now I’m curious: did Marcie and Sal become friends before Sal ever learned to understand ASL? Or did Marcie become mute later in life?
If they were in “prison” [Tennessee] together, that could easily be enough, because hell if there’s anything ELSE to do there. “Lahk prison” is an apt description =p [and considering they’re working on criminalizing miscarriages, even more so]
Marcie has been previously established in Dumbing of Age to be deaf. She uses American Sign Language to communicate, often with Sal translating for those who don’t speak ASL. She can also lip read, I believe.
“I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they’d have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They’d get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody’d think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they’d leave me alone . . . I’d cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I’d meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we’d get married. She’d come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she’d have to write it on a piece of paper, like everybody else”
“If our age limit was 18 then High school kids could easily buy it for their younger high school friends.” – so make it 19 then. College kids could still buy it for their 18-year-old college friends, but those aren’t the people you’re worried about. You could even make it “19 or has a high school diploma”.
Well, there are benefits to the drinking law. One dangerous thing about drinking is drinking and driving. As you can drive from yea 16 up, there’s nothing preventing drunk driving from going on in 18-, 19-, and 20-year olds. Meanwhile your brain is not fully developed until around age 21, meaning your decisions will be even stupider than if you were drunk and older. Really, teenagers are probably not the best people to be driving in the first place, but we all have to learn somewhere. And it’s easier to start learning it at 15 or 16 than your early 20’s. But teenage drunk driving is not a good option, so making alcohol illegal until 21 is not a bad plan.
Plus, there’s plenty of other stupid things you can do with alcohol that could harm you or kill you. So that might be a factor as well.
Actually, if it was by brain development, it would be different for men and women, and it would be more like 23-24, although it can vary a bit by person. It also depends on what you’re setting as the goal line for “fully developed”.
American attitudes towards drinking seem to be much less healthy than those of other countries. Whether the drinking age limit is a factor in that is up for debate.
So, with the drinking age at 21, you end up in a situation where you are legally an adult, and are allowed to marry, and join the military, but cannot drink. Strange law.
Illinois used to be 19 for beer and wine, till the Feds pushed the states to all shift to 21. They needed to be all the same, 19 or 21. When Illinois was 19, kids between their 19th & 21st birthdays drove across state-lines to buy legally but ended up illegal back home, if they didn’t get in a wreck driving home. Hooray for Federalism!
Actually, countries with lower drinking ages tend to have less problems with alcoholism and binge drinking, as people learn to control their drinking from a young age.
Yep. They learn to drink with adults in their family and have a much better chance to learn that the purpose of drinking isn’t just “let’s get stupid!”
Texas law still allows underage drinking “in the visible presence of” a legal-age parent or spouse. So yes, in Texas, parents can buy their kids beer/wine/whatever like in a restaurant.
(FWIW: Many laws differ significantly from state to state in the US, not just alcohol-related ones.)
Trust me, that’s not even the strangest alcohol-related law on the books here in Hoosierland. And compared to a few other states, we’re downright sensible.
Welcome to Amber’s mind. Amazi-Girl is her only real release valve for her anger, and she figures, after tonight, she won’t have it anymore, so she’s going straight for the focus of her anger.
Nevermind that it’s not the actual CAUSE of her anger (that’d be her father). Besides, she already beat him up.
Anger is like fire – it doesn’t just burn its target, it spreads to everything. Even if you extinguish the original source, the rest continues to burn.
I don’t want Amber to get hurt. But she’s gonna get into quite a bit of trouble if she doesn’t back off. And by trouble I mean jail time. And not the fun jail time where you get sent to the brig because you forgot to put the safety on your gun and shoot out a light fixture. I’m talking getting sent to Garrus-9 and having your spark extracted because you spent millenia murdering any twisted experiment of Jhiaxus’ you could hunt down.
Amber is a vigilante. She’s threatening to assault four women, one of whom is deaf, because they used a fake ID to buy beer. (Speaking of which, I’ve examined this alcohol chemical you humans drink. They’d probably get a higher buzz drinking distilled grain alcohol or wine rather than this beer stuff. Unless they were to take the beer and distill it? Can you do that? I do that to make engex, refining it over and over again, and apparently you can do that to wine, to produce brandy and cognac. Can beer be distilled? Inquiring Autobots want to know!) Amber’s not a cop, she has no superpowers, she’s not even an employee at a toy store who catches shoplifters. And now she’s threatening to beat up Sal, Marcie and Carla. Classy. Still, if she wants to beat up Malaya then Amber isn’t lost. Just like Whirl, no one really likes to hang out with Malaya. 😉
I posted this before reading the clarification that Marcie is not deaf. Still, if Marcie’s still mute, and Amber decides to attack her without provocation…
Wait, what does Marcie’s being mute have to do with her ability to defend herself when there are three other people there? Unless Amber carries her off somewhere she can’t call for help.
Not to mention that the whole “Beating You Up Because You’re Drinking” excuse is just a thin veneer so that she can physically assault Sal for revenge for an event that happened 7 or so years ago, for an event Sal has already paid for (and then some), and disregarding the last time she went on such a berserk rage, she put a man in a hospital (Whether he deserved it or not, it was still an action that was poorly thought out with other options clearly available at the time, and will definitely come back to haunt her); mind, the man was also much larger than her, and would more likely have had no qualms about bringing lethal force to defend himself, and while she won, she was also lucky that it did not go wrong. Here, the people she are targeting are much smaller in stature, and while 3/4ths of them probably know how to fight (Sal, Marci, Carla), there is still a great risk that she could kill one of them, especially since she doesn’t have anyone here she trusts to stop her this time.
Amber has severe anger issues, ones that she needed to see a professional therapist about for a long while. Maybe she’s already talked to one (I would imagine it would be after her stabbing Sal’s hand). If so, she needs MORE help.
Her anger issues can be directly linked to a result of her father’s actions and abuse, but that doesn’t mean that she’s absolved of what she does while angry, especially not here. This, unlike the other two times we’ve seen her gone berserk, was a preemptive, planned action, as seen when she says she needs to carry out this plan tonight.
Sorry for rambling.
Oh, and Marci’s not deaf. Willis just confirmed it in a comment on this page.
I don’t want her to get hurt, but I don’t think Sal is going to be easy prey like the other lowlifes she’s dealt with.
She has her own issues and I bet some of them are just as deep as Amber’s, and probably not just the crap with Walky and her parents either though that might be the start of it.
For all that though I doubt that Sal is planning to put Amber in the hospital if it comes to defending herself and her friends. Amber on the other hand…
I would like to see this get resolved without blood being spilled, but I am sure someone is going to end up on the ground before this is all over. I’m just betting that this time its going to be Amber.
Don’t worry, I’m rooting for Amazi-Girl. Come one, what’s cooler, getting psychological help to deal with your insecurities and problems, or unleashing them on society while hiding behind a thinly veiled façade of justice?
I know which one I’d prefer, if I wasn’t tediously sane.
Well, half the commentators seem to be reading this as Batman vs Joker, half to be reading it as a story about college kids, some of whom were abused as kids, etc. And Willis seems to be doing it poised on the edge so you can see what you’re inclined to see.
I’m imagining she didn’t leap onto the back of it or anything, but has instead somehow convinced Danny to drive her, and he’s sitting inside panicking that she’s gonna fall off or maybe it’s too soon after he’s waxed the roof or that she’s gonna jump too early or too late and break something and maybe he could drive slower? Or at least stop the car before she gets off?
True but Amber isn’t exactly the Adam West version of a superhero. That Batman was more a “support your local police” deputized officer of the law-type superhero.
Amber in this case is more like channeling a good bit of the Keaton vigilante version of Batman, with maybe a touch of Bale’s Batman (I can even imagine her doing a good imitation of the voice).
I figure that that what be what an actual superhero would be like. (I’d justify it by pointing out that he’s mostly harmless, and at least crime-fighting keeps him out of trouble, and gives the villainous nutcases someone to play with)
Or, you know, in prison. Which may be where Amber is heading. The law frowns on vigilantes. The law is very grumpy.
Ah geeze, Amber, no.
One this is psychotic vengeance for something that happened years ago and two, there is no part of you that won’t regret this if you actually go through with it.
Yes, please! And have Malaya lose her front teeth! (It will give her something legitimate to whine about instead of her usual excessive entitlement whining.)
“Is it right to beat up someone who doesn’t remember me over shit that happened half a decade ago?”
[I cannot tell you, or I will be cheating you the growth of your character.]
They’ll be this moment, when Sal’s like, “what’s your problem, psycho!”, and then Amazi-Girl reveals it, and Sal remembers, and then they either talk over their respective problems and come to a better understanding of each other and themselves, or carry on fighting until one of them’s in hospital, thus starting a lifelong quest for vengeance.
Or something like that.
I doubt that on the grounds that sal still doesn’t know who the fuck she is, at this point ambers just ” The weird girl who keeps running away when she see me,” to Sal rite now
“Ladies. You have drink well. You’ve drunken your beers…and maybe some spirits. But your drink is nearly over. From this moment on….none of you are safe.”
Salty Sal seems like she’d be moonlighting as a weatherman on the same network, and possibly also as a nebulously-defined castle-dwelling creature-of-the-night who shows horror movies on Saturdays around midnight.
Also… I kind of don’t want Amber to win this, either. No matter if she wins or loses, it’ll hurt her psyche, but I have a feeling that winning might make her more dangerously unstable in the future.
For some reason I get the image of Rorschach getting unmasked in The Watchman when I see AmaziGirl about to strike.
And my impression of that scene (been years since I read the comic, admittedly) was that Rorschach never recovered from the unmasking. He just lost it totally.
I mean, assuming she can beat Sal with Marcie and maybe Carla stepping in, that just means there’s an obviously unsympathetic bit of vigilantism that precisely nobody will be willing to lie about (The fact that blaine falsified the facts to the police basically makes it very unlikely she sees consequences from that, if not impossible). That makes it less likely Dorothy won’t spill the beans.
Or she just gets her clock cleaned by Sal. If they don’t find love blooms after that like a non-zero number of shippers hope (Note: I ship Billie/Sal as much as Billie/Ruth, so this really doesn’t mean me), then, well… there’s Amazi-girl, having to check into a hospital.
This can really only go so poorly, I think. The way I understand it is the number one rule of webcomics is “no one likes drawn-out litigation arcs”, and one of those is really the only possible result of anyone here getting their clocks sufficiently cleaned.
No one likes litigation that actually reflects how it works in real life. (Including the time required, because Willis’s grandkids will have to finish the arc for him.)
Yeah, that’s the interesting part for me as well- the impression I’ve gotten is that things can only go so badly before it slips into a long, drawn out storyline of pure misery.
HOWEVER, I’m having a hard time seeing how Amber’s actions could realistically end in anything but (at the very least) a trial. Dorothy doesn’t seem the type to sit on evidence in a felony assault case (she hasn’t gotten that connection solid yet, but she will, and apparently another assault is happening tonight, to witnesses who will accurately describe the attacker), no matter how conflicted she might feel.
I’m mostly just interested to see how this all shakes out without feeling too unrealistic. I think it’s a pretty narrow line that has to be walked to keep the strip feeling mostly realistic without Amber ending up in jail or worse.
There doesn’t need to be a trial. In the United States’ legal system, District Attorneys often offer first time offenders the chance to plead guilty to a less serious crime. The problem is that Amber is not a first time offender. Even if the assault charge from stabbing Sal was sealed, Amber has been committing acts of criminal mischief for weeks. If Dorothy outs Amber as Amazi-Girl and insinuates that Amber attacked Blaine, she could be in lots of legal hotwater. And I’m not talking about “Ultra Magnus gives you a speech about how what you did was wrong”. I mean “Ultra Magnus drags you to Garrus-9 in inhibitor cuffs, and your spark is extracted for decades” hotwater.
If I were the DA in Monroe County, I’d plea bargain this so fast that you’d hear the sonic boom in New York City, if not Seattle. A sympathetic white defendant with mental issues that can be traced directly to her abusive father and a past commited by her (black black blackity-black black) victim?
I’m still rooting for this to devolve into the five of them sitting around drinking beer in the parking lot and Sal and Amber having tearful drunken bonding time.
Crazy hopeful thought of the thread award goes to you. That’s what I’m hoping happens only after a couple punches are thrown, amber’s mask comes off and a bit of shouting occurs. just to make it more in line with how things seem to go in this comic.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s particularly likely, especially since if I recall preview panels from however many months ago Willis was drawing this, there’s some actiony stuff coming up, but if Sal (and, uh, Malaya, which might require a miracle) is reasonable and nonconfrontational about this, and Amazi-Girl’s unwilling to actually unilaterally attack someone who hasn’t initiated the violence (and it’s probably a good thing that A-G’s in the driver’s seat, not Amber right now), I could see it ending without any major characters in the hospital or jail.
I wasn’t really seeing any other way it could end up like that, which I think it kind of has to for meta reasons, but someone downthread pointed out that all of Sal’s crew have wheels, so maybe we’re getting a chase scene, not an immediate fight.
I’d feel quite validated in presuming Walmart doesn’t have ninjas at its disposal, because they don’t even pay their NORMAL employees. Ninjas want to be INVISIBLE, not at every street corner in the Bible Belt.
That, or possibly a Wal-Mart employee arrives and suggests that Amazi-Girl should check out the prostitute aisle, as it might calm her down.
(Note: I am aware that the idea that all an angry woman needs is a good evening of premarital hanky-panky is both loathsome and reprehensible. Occasionally ethics must be ignored in favour of a joke.)
Well, we’re not just getting one person’s story. We’re getting dozens of people’s stories, and collectively they are (obviously) more interesting than a single person’s story, especially since we can see how their stories interact.
Also, my college life wasn’t particularly interesting, but I’ve seen and heard some absolutely bonkers stories, and watched some heartwrenchingly stupid but still sympathetic relationship crashes. RL college can be pretty crazy too.
Amazi-Girl: Badass.
Sal: Badass.
Marcie: Badass.
Carla: We know nothing about Carla, but if she ain’t a badass, she ain’t this universe’s version of Ultra Car.
Malaya: *sigh*
One badass versus three badasses (and Malaya). These are not good Amazi-Odds. And I thought Sal was the one who sucked at math….
Willis said that Carla in DoA is just like UC in SP!, “but you know, fleshy.” Also, she’s putting her skates on, just prepping up for some informal Roller Derby.
This is looking distinctly double-plus-hopeful for Amazi-Girl.
Why do so many people assume Sal and Marcie are badasses? Sal acts tough, but other than the robbery flashback, has she actually been in any sort of physical confrontation in this universe?
Leaving aside her prowess on a motorbike, including the fairly wild ride with Marcie we witnessed, Sal is apparently able to start waterskiing without a lesson, not to mention easily manhandle Jason.
*AHEM* Might I remind you that the other universe’s Malaya stalemated a brawl with a car (and I mean she wrestled a car, not she was fighting someone inside one) and apparently carries a knife around just in case and isn’t afraid to use it. Out of everyone assembled Malaya’s the most likely to send someone to the hospital, aside from Amazi-Crazy.
Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Malaya whips out a knife and Sal flips out on her because she doesn’t roll that way any more since turning over a new leaf and/or actually getting stabbed herself?
I’m reasonably sure we’ll get at least one montage of Amber beating up the non-Sals, framed to look AWESOME… though with a hint of how psychotic her behavior is. And then either she and Sal will have a huge showdown, or there will be some sort of swerve… either way, it’ll be exciting, but I doubt it’ll really be a four-on-one fight.
When Amazi-Girl says ‘That makes this easier’, she’s not saying the cops will see what she’s doing in any better light. She’s saying this can make the law-abiding, do-gooder side of her conscience shut up long enough for the repressed-anger side of her conscience to have some fun.
At least Amber is Amazi-Girl, not Judge Dredd. Otherwise there would be four bullet-ridden corpses right now. They broke the law, and the Judges are judge, jury, and executioner.
Yes, but at least Judge Dredd is qualified for those three roles! He went to Judge Academy and learnt Judging so that he could Judge. And Jury. And Execute.
underage drinking hardly counts as a crime worthy of a violent reaction of any kind. a proper judge would give them each 2 to 8 months in the isocubes. considering they’re still minors it might be even less. and i doubt they would put up a fight against a proper judge.
Malaya will run, and then watch from a safe distance.
Carla will likely watch, no guess if she will jump in or not.
Marcie will side will Sal.
My guess it will just be 2 against 1.
Amazi-girl is pissed. Sal is sharp, but Amber is crazy.
I think she’s been running from her fear in that holdup for so long that she thinks that standing up to the bandit may stop the fear. Who knows?
Yes, I know that she stabbed Sal in the hand while Sal was being arrested. And that’s the point. She did not stand up to her alone, face to face. Maybe she thinks if she beats her fair and square she will not be afraid anymore?
If Marcie were not in the mix, I’d bet on a draw between Amazi-girl and Sal.
Hmm it would be interesting if Sal was to get hospitalized just to see the reaction from the parents. But Amber is totally in the wrong here. While Danny might’ve been okay with her cracking down on her father, I feel like he’ll different about this.
I just realized. Sal has a bike, Malaya and Carla are on skates, and Marcie has a skateboard if she didn’t just ride with Sal. They can all just leave.
Yeah, I figured as much, but there are so many ways to turn that into a storyline. The only thing that seems a given (if it is what it sounds like) is that seeing dingdongs on whiteboards all day is going to affect Joyce in some way. Like, making her snap and suck like a billion dicks.
Someone at our college drew this awesome elaborate chalkboard graffiti, and the professor [really a grad student] complained primarily because it was chalk [1. impermanent, and 2. a slight hazard to the MANY computers in the room].
Because justice always prevails!
And maybe after two of her foes are defeated and she graciously shows mercy on Sal, she’ll be more stable! I mean, it is their fault she lost it… Sal perhaps less so. Vengeance!
But AmaziGirl, do you really have to seek her out to beat her up? Or if she wasn’t breaking laws, would you just stalk her across campus?
Place your bets, do you think Sal will completely dominate the scene, or will Amber have a mental break down and beat her within an inch of her life?
Or will Ethan show up last second and completely deny us the fight because Dorothy went and told him what’s what and he tries to get Amber to let go of the past like he did, even though Sal went coo-coo for Cap’n Crunch and traumatized Amber into stabbin’ a bongo?
It’s interesting, I’m seeing a lot of people thinking Sal (alone) has the upper hand, but not a lot of reasoning for it. There’s a pretty big difference between someone who’s trained and ready to fight, and someone who isn’t…
“Trained”? Did Amber take up MMA when I wasn’t looking? Sal’s every bit as trained as Amber is, and Amber gave up surprise when she jumped on the roof of a car.
I mean, one way or another she’s clearly not an amateur. She’s taken on multiple opponents at once. She’s taken on much larger and stronger opponents. We know for a fact that she beats people up strangers on a regular basis. You’d kind of have to ignore a lot to assume she wasn’t in some way proficient at this.
A-G needs a training montage. With ’80s music (oh gods this Amber wasn’t even born yet in the ’80s, was she) and like running on wires while carrying buckets of concrete and punching telephone poles and balancing on one hand on rooftops and waxing cars and stuff.
Actually, I’m hoping Danny will show up. As in the Walky-verse, he possesses the ability to calm mad rages. And he already has empathy with Amazi-Girl. He’s what she needs right now.
Actually, knowing Malaya and Carla, neither one gives two shits about Sal, and definitely won’t stick their necks out to help in a fight that has nothing to do with them.
Amazi-Girl isn’t singling out Sal though. She’s using underage drinking as a reason to interfere and everyone but Carla is guilty so everyone but Carla is technically being threatened.
Exactly. So while Carla may not be obliged, I doubt that Malaya would want to be caught for underage drinking, and would probably proceed to beat the crap out of Amber.
She’s a sophomore, so she’s not likely to be any older than 20.
Either way, she bought for minors — that’s actually a fairly serious crime in most states. (In my home state, for instance, it’s a gross misdemeanor. Not *quite* a felony, but just shy of one.)
I’m pretty sure that just the way these laws are handled it’s generally a much greater offense to provide the drugs to an under-age individual than it is to partake of them while under-age.
Makes sense when you think about it. You accomplish a whole lot more by punishing the place that’s selling to minors than you do by punishing any individual minor. If you slap the kid with a fine while the cashier continues to neglect to check for ID then not much has changed for the community as a whole.
People are really expecting Sal to put up a fight, because she’s a badass who smokes and rides a motorcycle, but we don’t actually have any indication that she has any fighting abilities, or even any kind of strength/agility beyond what’s required to climb in and out of her dormroom window.
Four people in the area doesn’t necessarily mean four people fighting back either. It’s not as if Amber walked in on Captain Sal and her Pirate Crew or anything.
I think we should maybe ease up on the excitement, because what’s coming could be a gruesome one-sided beatdown directed at somebody who was just minding her own business trying to share a drink with some friends and acquaintances.
“Captain Sal and her Pirate Crew” keeps cracking me up every time I think about it, thanks. And it’s also an excellent point.
My jaw would hit the floor if Malaya or Carla made a serious effort to fight. Carla has just met these people and doesn’t even want to sit around a minute and split a beer. I would bet a couple bucks that Malaya is either going to stand around bongoing and/or freaking out, thus escalating the situation, or she is going to GTFO immediately. One of them might call the cops, maybe make a token effort to shove Amber away, but actually commit to a throw down once they see Amber is dangerous, determined to fight, and actually only focused on Sal? I can’t see it at all.
Sal in this comic has struck me as a self-aware person trying to work on her own issues and stay out of trouble, though she doesn’t always succeed. I see her, and Marcie too, as having the initial smart reaction of “you aren’t the cops, we don’t have to deal with you, you should go or we should”, and trying to remove themselves from the conflict (even if they phrase it more like “fuck off”).
So yeah, I agree that it’s possible none of them can or will fight here, and I further submit arguments that it’s not just possible but probable.
Sooooo.
She’s, uh.
Coming up with reasons so she can justify to herself that they ‘made’ her hurt them.
Way to follow the same path as your dad, Amber.
Yeah… didn’t even realize she was in the business of enforcing the law. Thought she was more of a general “Clean up your community, keep people safe” type than a Judge Dredd type.
Carla takes the six pack and skates away. AG isn’t interested in her, but Sal is suddenly rather not guilty. AG then needs a new excuse to confront Sal.
I keep forgetting that you have to be 21 to drink in the US. The whole concept is completely bonkers to me, and I really don’t understand why you guys aren’t changing this. If Harper attempted to pull this crap here (and I’m pretty sure he could considering his track record of making Canada suck a little bit more each year), there would be riots.
Alcohol is like, an integral part of college life here. Fighting over a meager 6-pack is something we did in high school, not college. XD
Alcohol is integral to college here too. There’s a certain amount of “look the other way” when it comes to drinking in college. Most people seem to have easier access than this, going to house parties or having older friends who don’t care.
…on the other hand, it’s impossible to buy alcohol after 11PM here, (outside of a bar) and there’s definitely NOT a drop of the stuff at places like Wal-Mart. Two other mind blowing foreign concepts here, but those are actually awesome.
Isn’t your Torus-State the one with public officials who get tanked on engex and circuit boosters? Or are you the guys who are unfailingly polite while riding horses in red tunics? I mixing up Earth geography. (Now Earth geology is something else…)
“…I really don’t understand why you guys aren’t changing this.”
At one time in recent history (since 1970) it *WAS* legal to drink at age 18. But then we had the do-gooders like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) and other anti-alcohol/anti-drug factions team up and pressure the legislature to slowing reverse the trend. The biggest thing that forced these laws, however, was when the federal government threatened to withhold a percentage of federal highway funding (money the federal government would grant to a state for construction/maintenance of major highways) from a state unless it passed a 21-year-old drinking law. This is also how we got the 55-mph speed limit jammed down our throats back in the days of the so-called energy crisis.
Much as it seems weird to me, I’d keep in mind that a drinking age of 19 doesn’t exactly leave us with the greatest leg to stand on. A lot of people do still spend a solid chunk of their first year in post-secondary underage. All those snappy little things that people throw around like “You can operate a firearm, serve in the military, own land, get married before you can drink”, pretty sure they apply to us too.
Also. I may be wrong, but Marcie is a wild-card here. I don’t see her standing by, and she’s pretty athletic and fearless. She seems chill, but I don’t know if I’d want her mad at me.
And then Sal punched Amazi-Girl in the face, providing the first actual resistance she’s encountered all comic. Amazi-Girl immediately falls over, and everyone runs away.
… wait, did Blaine actually try to fight her/physically abuse her? I forget. But anyway, as someone who’s been in quite a few fights, people who haven’t got experience getting hit tend to panic and loose, regardless of whether or not they’re bigger/stronger/faster. The human body is fragile and likes to remind you of it.
Blaine appeared to be trying to fight Amber, but I don’t think he ever landed anything even resembling a hit. She wrecked him so hard and fast he never had a chance.
We’ve seen the flashbacks where Sal had Ethan at knifepoint during the C-store holdup, and Amber was cowering helplessly. We then are shown a scene where Sal has been disarmed and arrested, and Amber goes berserk, grabs the knife, and stabs Sal in the hand. *BUT DID WE EVER SEE WHAT HAPPENED IN BETWEEN??* No, we did not.
We also know that Amber has been constantly chided and put down by her controlling and manipulative father, including references to this incident as well as remarks against Amber’s mother.
So I’m gonna toss this out here and then duck-and-cover.
Blaine happened to walk into the C-store at the climax of the holdup (he’d been outside pumping gas, right?). It was he who rescued Ethan and neutralizing Sal at least until the police arrived. And of course, he never let Amber forget that she was just a cowering little pipsqueak who did nothing to help her friend.
So *THIS* is what is driving Amber’s passion to be Amazi-Girl. It also explains why she was in such a white-hot rage against Blaine. And since in Amber’s mixed-up mind, all this would never have happened had Sal not tried to hold up the C-store, she has made Sal her bête noire in much the same way that the white whale became Ahab’s single point of focus and ultimate source of destruction.
Close, but not quite. Blaine did nothing heroic, from what I can tell – he stood by while the police disarmed the situation, and then verbally abused his PTSD’d daughter until she snapped.
uh, Amber? This is just silly. I mean, these girls are tough from what I remember from past chapters AND in Shortpacked. Even if Carla isn’t a robot, she still has THREE people to go against someone who has no real training and if Sal was a former convict, i doubt she would have soften up over the years.
I’m not nearly as sure as everyone else that Amazi-Girl is going in swinging. First, we know she doesn’t throw the first punch for non-violent crimes: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/shortstuff . Second, she generally wears the mask in order to suppress her worse instincts. Presumably that’s still her reason, since she doesn’t suppose it’ll hide her identity anymore. Third, you don’t generally beat up a bunch of people when your secret identity is about to be revealed. Fourth, while Amber is often violent, she never premeditates it. Finally, she just told Ethan that she wanted to be a different person facing Sal than last time: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/same-person/ .
I don’t know exactly what she’s going to try. Maybe picking up Sal and running somewhere with her like she did Billie so she can talk to her with Amazi-Girl’s self-control?
The thing to understand is that the person she normally is, is the same person she was during her first encounter with Sal: a weak, cowardly, useless little girl. That’s how she sees herself, no thanks to her father. That’s who she doesn’t want to be when she faces Sal – thus, the mask. It’s her fear, not her rage, that the mask is there to suppress.
I say that they are going to laugh and say, “And your point is…” or something like that and start beating the shit out of Amber, then Sal is going to recognize Amber and tell them to stop beating her up.
I half-expect Sal to say something like, “Hey, yer that girl who stabbed me when Ah took yer little friend hostage in the convenience store years ago, aintcha? Sorry ’bout that; Ah was in a bad place in mah life. So . . . how ya been? An’ why are ya wearin’ a mask?”
Wow, Amber has flipped her shit. Well, even more flipped than her shit already was. Flipped further, but not, you know, so much that it has rotated a full 360°, because that would be indistinguishable from having not flipped at all. I think this metaphor has gotten away from me.
But anyway there’s no way Amber is not going to end up in prison and/or a hospital at this point.
Any lawyers here? Does challenging someone to a fight [as Amazi-girl’s words arguably qualify as this] forfeit your right to claim self-defense if they hit you first, in the state of Indiana?
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Amber noooooo
Amber, it’s 4 against 1!
Her sidekick Faz will help!
You meant Amazi-Creep right?
The Amazing Faz. Don’t try to shorten his name.
AMAZI-GIRL: “Stop! Or I, the Great Amazi-Creep, shall be forced to manhandle you fine ladies one by one!”
[They all gang up on him]
AMAZI-GIRL: “Four at a time?? That’s too great a challenge even for the Great Amazi-Creep! Amazi-Girl, though this may not be your… thing… I could still use your assistance in this matter!”
AMAZI-GIRL: (Groans) “Yeah, yeah, I gotcha…”
AMAZI-CREEP: “And be sure to bring copious amounts of Amazi-Lube!!”
AMAZI-GIRL: “On second thought, you’re on your own.”
Oops! I shortened The Great Amazi-Faz’s name.
Sorry, Yotomoe!
You also said it was Amazi-girl saying the first line, making it even creepier.
Amazi-Girl can handle this herself.
She likes those odds. :]
Those odds seem a bit unfair to me.
FOR THE FOUR OF THEM.
Actually, Sal might make a good archnemisis.
Of course it is! Every successful super-hero eventually has her most notorious enemies team up to defeat her. It’s a trope! This is Amazi-Girl’s Legion of Doom, or Sinister Six!
Heck, they all deserve good villain names, so…
Sal’s the Black Bandit.
Marcie’s the Mute Menace.
Malaya’s totally SkHater Girl. (The ‘H’ is silent, like the silent depths of her HATE.)
And Carla – Spider-Carla.
Together, they form – The Legion of Drunk Idiots!
If there’s one thing Malaya’s hate isn’t, it’s silent.
4 against 1? I almost feel bad for them!
AG: “I am NOT the Fuzz! I do my lady-maintenance! Geez!”
Welp, Shit’s ’bout ta go down.
Yeah, Amber’s pulling a huge bongo move. Then again, her whole superhero motivation is exactly what people portray Batman as having in parody. Rather than actually wanting to do good, she’s just looking for an excuse to punch people.
Honestly, she’s more like the Punisher than Batman.
It’s not just in parody. While he does mean well Batman’s primary motivation for being Batman is as an outlet for his psychological issues. He’s physically and mentally incapable of stopping.
We’ve tried breaking all his bones. They just come back stronger.
Batman just chooses to target people who have done more than just underage drinking. Tho they do have a past, Sal was obviously arrested for her previous crime. I relate to sal in this position, and think Amber needs to spend some time in therapy, hasta pronto. Batman was at least able to function in society without losing his grip on reality.
I think we’re all agreed that poor Amber needs therapy and a restraining order on her dad. What she’s doing now is only going to make things worse, for her and everyone else involved.
Batman’s grip on reality and his ability to function in society, well, that can be debated. His sanity really depends on the writer; but the idea of someone taking the law into his own hands kinda implies they aren’t functioning properly in society.
Honestly, Batman’s motivation varies from adaptation and period in his life. In his younger days, he was usually portrayed a violent and vengeful, but later on I’ve noticed him as being much more taciturn and focused on saving lives and doing right by people who deserved it.
My base motivation has always been revenge and control. I was a messed up little brat to start with, with my uber-rich parents wrapped around my little finger; when a mugger killed them and broke my illusion of control, it became an obsession with me. I HAVE to be in control at all times, at all costs. Saving lives is just an expression of that – to the point where I save the life of the Joker multiple times, long after any sane person would have let him die.
“Fighting crime” isn’t done by beating up muggers and terrorizing goons. Wanna fight crime? Join the police and do it the right way. I’m just here to work out my childhood trauma by punching homeless people. There’s nothing healthy about what I do.
Thanks for uh…putting it all in perspective, Batman?
Shutup batman. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the hero we deserve.
That says a lot about you.
It says a lot about contemporary U.S. society.
As SMBC stated so well: Batman doesn’t spend his money very wisely if his goal is to stop crime.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2890
Bruce Wayne is a massive philanthropist whose company employs mostly ex-convicts who need jobs. He’s got Gates-level money, he can afford both charity AND a ridiculous hobby.
So, he takes advantage of the fact that they are ex-cons and no-one else will emply them and exploits and underpays them. Wouldn’t surprise me if his companies also run the prisons in Gotham and Arkham Asylum.
That’s a nice sentiment OH WAIT the police don’t stop crime. Since when have they put a banksta in jail? All the police do is stop criminals too poor or stupid to have decent lawyers. And yeah, I consider underage drinking ESPECIALLY SINCE IT LOOKS LIEK DRIVING WAS GOING TO BE INVOLVED — a big deal.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not but they only had a six pack and at this point, Carla is taking half of it with her so they would only have one beer per person left. How many people do you know who are too sloshed to drive after one beer?
While one beer probably doesn’t affect the average person enough, my group of friends has always had the rule that after the first beer you give up your keys for the night. We go very much by the “better safe than sorry” philosophy.
Especially since Sal likely has the Walkerton capacity for alcohol (none).
“Always” been revenge and control? Holy amnesia, Batman! You’ve forgotten that there was a period that you fought for justice and American bat-values. Justice and Bat-American values. America and Bat-judiciary values. Whichever.
Yeah, and there was a time when I used guns and fought thinly-disguised racial caricatures on top of buildings shaped like giant household appliances. Most people do me the courtesy of forgetting my early indiscretions, though.
“Truth, Justice, and the American Way” is the other big guy in tights.
but… he’s Batman. Batman takes no crap from no one.
Popcorn?
“Underaged drinking” is a verb now!
Is it not an adjective?
Drinking is a verb, always has been. In this case Underaged is acting as an adverb.
Cuz it Adds to the Verb!
OK real talk: in what grade did you learn about adverbs?
not just you, yoto. OPEN QUESTION
That was more than 40 years ago and I was hit with a truck since then, but I think elementary school. That means after 3rd but definitely by 6th, somewhere between Washington state and North Africa (military brat in the ’60s, we got moved around, a LOT)
And I leaving this with the Mike Gravatar on purpose because I had a childhood that couldn’t have been made any worse if I had been abducted by aliens as depicted in the Walkyverse. 2 out of 3 of my childhood friends were dead by the time I graduated college.
English class in 7th, and then in all of my foreign language classes through out the rest of schooling.
Elementary to middle.
“Lolly Lolly Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here” was first aired in 1974, so it must have been shortly after that. So, probably about the same time I started school and learned to read.
Early enough that I’d forgotten by the time it was important.
Well, I was playing Mad Libs from a pretty young age. My favorite adverb was always “like a pickle”. As in, “he ran like a pickle.”
I… have no idea actually. I just sorta understood the concepts of grammar semi-intuitively, so I don’t really remember any of my grammar lessons.
Sometime in elementary school. I want to say third grade?
Honest answer? Several years AFTER I left school. (They didn’t believe in teaching us, like, things.)
I still don’t know what adverbs are and I’m fluent in two languages and working on a third. Don’t know what object, predicate, whatever whatever are either.
I’m sure you do, you just don’t know the names for them.
Everyone picks up grammar pretty intuitively as we’re learning language, but for some reason students (and sometimes teachers) seem to think it’s something entirely new they don’t already know.
Drink is a verb. Drinking in this case is a participle, which is an adjective, modified by the adverb “underaged”.
“Drinking” (or any verb+ing) can also be a gerund, in which case it acts as a noun. Such would be the case if Amazi-Girl said “your underage drinking,” but as it is, it is a verb.
Is is wrong that I want them all to make out?
If you’re wrong, then you don’t want to be right. 😀
I think your words are… never mind …
If he’s wrong, I don’t want him to be right.
Yeah, one of those.
Plasma, my iPhone screen can’t properly display the color you use for your background, so it looks all glowy and awesome.
Just wanted to say. I thought it was interesting.
Danke! ^_^ While the background colour of my gravs doesn’t have an official name, I named it “Radioactive Absinthe Green”.
Shoulda made a Bastion reference by naming it “Calamity Stabsinthe Green”.
She cracks down on college kids drinking underage? This really is a futile quest.
No, no, she’s just going after Sal because she feels it’s her last chance to confront her past since Dorothy knows her secret identity, and the fact that Sal just HAPPENS to be drinking means she can disguise it as actual vigilantism rather than just violent revenge.
Remember the party? She only beat down on a few scumbags and ignored pretty much everyone else, even though 90% of them were probably drinking illegally.
Vigilantism, violent revenge… What’s really the difference?
Really, isn’t violent vigilantism just a way to get revenge on society?
I’ve learned never to think that I know where Willis is going, but it looks like Amber’s grip on reality is increasingly intermittent and that currently she’s having a psychotic breakdown. Blaine was a real threat in the present, besides having tormented her all of her life. Sal is someone completely different. Not to mention that when Amber stabbed Sal, she was at least as messed up as Sal was: a pair of messed-up kids acting out dangerously. Sal SEEMS to be WAY more together than Amber, who seems to be crossing over into a psychotic stalker.
“psychotic breakdown” implies that she’s broken from reality. The fact that she watched Sal leave the dorm, put on her stupid costume, and then hunted her down implies premeditation, not psychosis, unless you mean psychopathic which is not the same thing as psychotic.
TL;DR: She has no excuse for what she is doing.
I may have the situation AND the term wrong; I defer to you on this. I was thinking that she’s seeing SAL as if it’s still/again that night when they were 13/14, even if she’s otherwise in touch with relatively superficial reality. I’m really unsure if she thinks she’s Amber Blaine disguised or just dressed as Amazigirl OR identifies as Amazigirl, who is this “Amber”…
From her behaviour in previous comic strips, I’d say she thinks she’s AG, at least temporarily. Whether attacking Sal (and seeing the others) will flip something in her and she’ll return to normal, or whether she’ll simply continue wanting to beat Sal half to death, only Willis knows.
You know, because stabbing Sal in the hand wasn’t revenge enough.
Four on one? Come on, make it a CHALLENGE!
Oh come on, Sal is going to wipe the floor with Amber on her own, further increasing her downward spiral.
I don’t know, her getaway from Dorothy and Walky featured some impressive physical capabilities.
Physical feats of acrobatics, yes! Ass whooping? None implied.
The party, on the other hand, showed how she could handle multiple opponents.
Plus, she beat the tar outta a fully grown man with a history of abuse problems. I think we’ve established that AG is mean mumba jumba.
And to be fair, I don’t see Malaya getting involved, so it’s really more like 3 on 1.
Still, for plot based reasons, I cannot see how this can possibly end well for Amber, unless Danny has the stones to show up and stop things before they get outta hand.
I’d put my money on Carla, not Danny, in this. I doubt it’s just a coincidence that she shows up here and now. Odds are she’s playing the part of “Chekov’s gun”, not just a sophomore with a 1st class fake I’d.
Malaya’s feisty. Even if she doesn’t get along so well with the rest of the crew, I think she’d jump into the fight just so she had an excuse to hit someone.
I actually think Sal might not have the experience to take AG down solo. Amber has fought so many people that she likely knows exactly how to do things like throwing them. Do we know if Sal has any martial arts training?
4 against 1, on the other hand… I fear for Amber. Someone is going to get beaten up badly.
And my trust sidekick, The Moon!
In the name of the moon…
I AM CAPTAIN LUNAR!
Actually, her sidekick is the wolf, Moon Moon.
Tomorrow, we’ll be hearing a lot of “Dammit, Moon Moon!”
And then it crashes down wearing an Amazi-girl Mask Majora’s Mask style.
That’s no moon.
It’s not a moon? You sure? I’ve got my axe and everything.
That’s Jupiter…turned into the Getter Ray Sun.
It’s HIMP Dahak.
That’s the Amazi-Rack.
What, behind her? Oh, yeah, that’s the moon.
Stop looking at me!
Stupid moon…
NIGHTMAN
There is a lot, an old parking lot
beside a big box store
Where the underage drink a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
to even up the score.
Strax was right! It is not to be trusted.
On a scale from one to ten, sh!t is about to get real.
On a scale of one to ten, it’s not good.
I hope Sal wins this fight
Sal wins but ends up killing Amazi Girl. To avoid punishment she runs away to South America and joins the Farc.
if I were her, I would join the French Foreign Legion, but I guess she doesn’t take to authority all that well.
I hope somebody stops it before anyone gets hurt…
I hope somebody stops it after everything gets hurt.
I don’t get why Amber is after Sal… I get why she’d be upset seeing her and suspect her of stuff maybe even spy on her or something but just attacking her? Again? Didn’t you already get revenge Amber?
That shouldn’t have been a reply
The way Amber sees it, Sal humiliated her indirectly in the holdup, because Amber was powerless and consequently got ridiculed by her asshole father (again, probably). Not only that, but Sal threatened to harm her best friend. Amber also probably has a bit of a Javert streak going and doesn’t think Sal has changed. So she looks at Sal and sees this violent chick who threatened to kill her best friend and indirectly caused her more humiliation by her father’s hand. And she’s walking free.
You also have to remember that Amber does not appear to be mentally stable. She’s thinking purely in a twisted logic, without empathy or consideration for what Sal might have gone through.
Insane Bat-Logic.
Empathy only shackles JUSTICE.
Is it me, or are Amber’s motivations for wanting to hurt Sal,
Uh
Very, very Blaine like?
Also I’m not sure why this reply was put *here*, whoops.
yes. yes they were
thats what makes it so tragic
Children who are physically and emotionally abused at a young age tend to become aggressive and develop anxiety and depression. I feel really sorry for Amber, but she should really be getting help. I don’t care how cliche that sounds, it’s true.
^ This. Amber’s vigilante personality is a direct reflection of Blaine. That’s part of the reason Blaine claimed he was jumped by a “big guy” instead of a girl in a cape – it’s a warped sense of “power over” that is incredibly fragile when directly threatened. Amber has the same issue, which is why she’s totally spiraling now that her “power over” (her Amazi-Girl persona) has been threatened.
I get that but again, she already got revenge. Knife through the hand?
Again, two things:
1. Mental instability.
2. Javert Syndrome. She may see Sal today as exactly the same as Sal that fateful day, and unchangeable, only stoppable.
AmaziAmber is about to join BrokenBlaine in der Krankenhausen, Jah?
Time for the “Amber Makes Unsympathetic Decisions! Power Hour!”
Followed by “Joyce Wrassles with Her Religion The Musical!”. Starring Hugo Weaving as Joyce, Danny DeVito as Dorothy, and the impeccable Donald Glover as Walky. Written by the ghost of Rod Serling.
So help me I am going to build a portal to the alternate universe where that is real.
Holy shit!
Tonight, Amber/Amazigirl’s lines will be scripted by Frank Miller!
Quick question about Carla. Does Carla have the same fondness for “Short Circuit” as Ultra Car? Does Carla like “Police Academy”?
Or Frankenstein?
Did Ultra Car actually like “Frankenstein”? I thought she only liked the “Short Circuit 2” references to “Frankenstein” and “Pinocchio”, not the actual books.
No see, cuz Frankenstein is the fleshy version of Short Circuit. Although now that I think about it, I guess Carla’s “short circuit” is actually Ultra Car.
Carla’s not an artificial being in this continuity so Frankenstein wouldn’t really be especially relatable to her.
Technically, Frankenstein was the creator of the artificial being; the creature has no name in Mary Shelly’s novel. And Johnny Five bought the novel, not the Universal or Hammer movies.
But anyway, would she like “Pinocchio”, since she got her wish to be a “real girl”?
Well, I remember reading somewhere that in the novel, the creature actually identifies itself as Dr. Frankenstein’s son (in proper grammar, because he wasn’t a mindless brute in the novel). I haven’t read the novel myself, but if this is true, that means the creature would also take on the surname of Frankenstein by default.
It’s probably still more proper to keep calling him Frankenstein’s Monster for clarity. But the people who call him Frankenstein are not wrong.
“I’m the goddamn Amazi-Girl!”
Then has sex with Sal.
Re: Tonight, Amber/Amazigirl’s lines will be scripted by Frank Miller!
That’s easy. “Whores whores whores whores …”
…is it too late for amazi-therapist to swoop in?
Sorry, Walky has him booked for the night
I know right? I really want Amber to go to the hospital or something and actually deal with the fact that she might have PTSD or something along those lines and get help. Too bad a week in the behavioral unit equates to about 150 strips :/
Problem is that if that happens she also goes to jail for beating the thing she called her father nearly to death. The law is weird about stuff like attempted murder.
I just hope she doesn’t get too badly beat up by Sal and maybe an intervention of some sort. Joyce would suggest divine intervention through prayer, but I think Danny or Walky might show up.
I’m pretty sure the only interaction Joyce and Walky had with Amber was when they ran into each other at Galasso’s and Amber yelled at Ethan. They are not terribly likely to participate in an intervention for someone they barely know.
Amber and Ethan would be well served by a honest conversation discussing both their issues, but outside of him and maybe Dina and Danny, nobody else really knows her well enough to help.
Amber also came very close to assaulting Joyce in the cafeteria. Grabbed her arm and was yelling at her before Sarah intervened.
…Jesus.
I used to feel sympathy for Amber, but seeing all the violent things she’s done listed like this… I really can’t think anything good about her.
She also followed the jocks who were picking on Danny to Ron’s party and attacked them in the middle of the party. You can see it in the background though it’s easily missed on account of the attempted rape.
It’s not 100% clear what’s going down there from the bits and pieces we see in the background, but I don’t think Amber started that fight. It looks like one of the jocks hit some random background guy for no obvious reason (he’s just kind of standing around in an unprovoking fashion in the previous strip when they show up), and in the next strip Amazi-Girl intervened and took out the trash.
It does seem likely that she was stalking them looking for an excuse to beat them up again, but they did give her a pretty good one.
And no “almost” about it… IANAL and I’m not real familiar with the specifics of Indiana law, but I’m pretty sure that by the legal definition, Amber did assault Joyce. The threshold for assault is not nearly as high as most people think.
Legally wasn’t attempted murder. Besides, a story in which Amazigirl assaulting Blaine gets into the legal system would be a drag–hundreds of media clowns choking the place for months trying to interview everyone who was ever within a block of Amber.
Indiana only sells until 3am. Realism tarnished.
They’ve been bickering for a while.
Carla could possibly have bought it earlier and been busy with something else for an hour.
I thought that was just bars. But, then, I’ve never actually tried to buy alcohol late at night.
When do 24-hour places (this is a 24-hour walmart) start selling again?
Walmart parking lots, the place to be.
“How dare you damage your body with booze, for this heinous crime, I will beat you until you’re black and blue!”
Like the police purposefully hitting you with their car because you were texting while driving on an empty road.
Something like that.
is that a thing that has happened?
How can they hit you with a car if the road is empty?
ILL damage your body if that’s what you want….that sounded differently in my head,eh screw it.
Whoa, did someone hit the fast forward button to the climax?
Damnit. Who has the remote?
It just feels so sudden, not that I’m complainin’.
Okay, turns out it was skates after all.
for carla’s height? could be she was already taller than the rest of the girls while standing, and is now putting ON skates.
Relaxing huh? Nope FUCK that.
So is Marcie a mute?
She actually isn’t. She just thinks that everyone is too stupid to bother talking to.
Guess she’s going to talk less and less in Dumbing of age isn’t she?
Yes. Yes she is.
I wonder where Sal learned sign language to understand her… I’d very much like to know the story of their friendship.
FACT: Deafness is NOT really hereditary–you won’t really find entire families of people born deaf, but rather one or two for whom the rest of the family must learn ASL [or similar such for their native language]. Like any language, whoever is willing to learn it can easily pick it up from books and from actual deaf/mute people.
[to echo prior comments: Sal *talks* to Marcie, which establishes Marcie is mute but not deaf]
You seem to be missing the point. We’re wondering where and when and why Sal chose to put time and effort into learning sign language, instead of, say, riding a motorbike or whatever else she does.
I’m guessing it was probably due to her friendship with Marcie, but that’s probably an interesting story.
Learning to use a skill yourself is often integral to fully understanding a skill, and when it comes to communication, understanding is paramount.
That was my point indeed, Jerden. To go through the trouble of learning a language just to communicate with a single person, you must be close to that person in the first place. It’s understandable if the mute or deaf-mute person is a member of your family, but it must be hard to be friends with a person who can’t communicate with you (at first). Now I’m curious: did Marcie and Sal become friends before Sal ever learned to understand ASL? Or did Marcie become mute later in life?
If they were in “prison” [Tennessee] together, that could easily be enough, because hell if there’s anything ELSE to do there. “Lahk prison” is an apt description =p [and considering they’re working on criminalizing miscarriages, even more so]
It’s really not that hard. I’d expect Marcie did a lot of writing notes at the beginning of their friendship. That’s pretty much how I learned ASL.
Marcie has been previously established in Dumbing of Age to be deaf. She uses American Sign Language to communicate, often with Sal translating for those who don’t speak ASL. She can also lip read, I believe.
Marcie is not deaf.
Okay. In regards to Marcie using ASL, is she mute?
Yes.
Oh. I stand corrected.
She’s never been shown to be deaf.
Mute doesn’t automatically equal deaf.
No, she’s just moot. Doesn’t really matter.
You’re a horrible person and I want to subscribe to your newsletter.
“I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they’d have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They’d get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody’d think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they’d leave me alone . . . I’d cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I’d meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we’d get married. She’d come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she’d have to write it on a piece of paper, like everybody else”
And then Section 9 show up.
Caught by the fuzz
Well I was, still on a buzz
They were drinking the kind of beer that goes well with fuzzy cheez.
So they got fuzz buzzed?
Well, This Is Happening.
This is going to continue to happen.
lawdy lawd.
OH SHIT.
Everyone knows the punishment for underage drinking is a brutal asskicking by a college student in a costume!
American drinking laws are sure strange. 😛
You also are not allowed to drink until you are 21, UNLESS you were born at midnight on Halloween and have a wart on the bottom of your left foot.
This is why you should never write new lawa while high on a cocktail of absinthe and mescaline.
We have our reasons… backed by reasoning…
If our age limit was 18 then High school kids could easily buy it for their younger high school friends.
Some weird logic about maturity and understanding of one’s body and mind by about 21.
Honestly I don’t care for drinking. I drink to taste and alcohol tastes bad to me and I don’t like to spend the money.
Also I’m a lightweight. One pint of hard lemonade and I can’t stand straight.
“If our age limit was 18 then High school kids could easily buy it for their younger high school friends.” – so make it 19 then. College kids could still buy it for their 18-year-old college friends, but those aren’t the people you’re worried about. You could even make it “19 or has a high school diploma”.
Well, there are benefits to the drinking law. One dangerous thing about drinking is drinking and driving. As you can drive from yea 16 up, there’s nothing preventing drunk driving from going on in 18-, 19-, and 20-year olds. Meanwhile your brain is not fully developed until around age 21, meaning your decisions will be even stupider than if you were drunk and older. Really, teenagers are probably not the best people to be driving in the first place, but we all have to learn somewhere. And it’s easier to start learning it at 15 or 16 than your early 20’s. But teenage drunk driving is not a good option, so making alcohol illegal until 21 is not a bad plan.
Plus, there’s plenty of other stupid things you can do with alcohol that could harm you or kill you. So that might be a factor as well.
Actually, if it was by brain development, it would be different for men and women, and it would be more like 23-24, although it can vary a bit by person. It also depends on what you’re setting as the goal line for “fully developed”.
American attitudes towards drinking seem to be much less healthy than those of other countries. Whether the drinking age limit is a factor in that is up for debate.
Probably more the feeling of invincibility from being in the “land of opportunities.”
So, with the drinking age at 21, you end up in a situation where you are legally an adult, and are allowed to marry, and join the military, but cannot drink. Strange law.
All those things really don’t have anything to do with each other, which is why the difference.
And do we REALLY want people binging on ALL of them at once? [Drunk-drive marrying at the recruitment center??]
Illinois used to be 19 for beer and wine, till the Feds pushed the states to all shift to 21. They needed to be all the same, 19 or 21. When Illinois was 19, kids between their 19th & 21st birthdays drove across state-lines to buy legally but ended up illegal back home, if they didn’t get in a wreck driving home. Hooray for Federalism!
Actually, countries with lower drinking ages tend to have less problems with alcoholism and binge drinking, as people learn to control their drinking from a young age.
Yep. They learn to drink with adults in their family and have a much better chance to learn that the purpose of drinking isn’t just “let’s get stupid!”
Texas law still allows underage drinking “in the visible presence of” a legal-age parent or spouse. So yes, in Texas, parents can buy their kids beer/wine/whatever like in a restaurant.
(FWIW: Many laws differ significantly from state to state in the US, not just alcohol-related ones.)
That must be why all the binge drinking stories come from up North.
(I live in Texas.)
Correct. Texas is perfect. That’s what the red stands for on the political parties map.
Trust me, that’s not even the strangest alcohol-related law on the books here in Hoosierland. And compared to a few other states, we’re downright sensible.
Oh…I thought it was being locked up in a bathroom, chained to the sink with a dead guy lying in the middle of the room.
But if you can overpower them while drunk you get an automatic drinking liscense. Of course, few have actually succeeded.
I was pretty sure the penalty for underaged drinking was having a friend killed by a truck.
Amazi-girl vs. Schtickshift the DoA version
But this time, it’s ORIGINAL Amazigirl, and schtickshift has her loyal band of Alcoholic Amazons at her side!
Oooh, Alcoholic Amazons works as a team name! Better than Legion of Drunken Idiots.
Wait, which one is Schtickshift?? I already had villain names for each of them…
Ultra-Car became Schtickshift, when her old “Spider-Car” disguise just didn’t fit in her new body. She fought the second Amazi-Girl, Lucy.
Aww, I liked Spider-Carla. But, I suppose SchtickShift works.
This is when Clever Girl shows up out of nowhere and helps even up the odds and proves herself worthy of being the trusted sidekick. It is known.
Jesus, Amber. This is pathological.
THIS IS AMAZI-GIRL!
Welcome to Amber’s mind. Amazi-Girl is her only real release valve for her anger, and she figures, after tonight, she won’t have it anymore, so she’s going straight for the focus of her anger.
Nevermind that it’s not the actual CAUSE of her anger (that’d be her father). Besides, she already beat him up.
Anger is like fire – it doesn’t just burn its target, it spreads to everything. Even if you extinguish the original source, the rest continues to burn.
Caught “underage drinking” is the worst possible excuse for committing bodily harm. This is experience talking.
OMG GUYS we are 10 minutes in and like half of you want Amber to get her ass kicked!
She’s just mentally scared and not thinking straight!
This shit needs to be stopped. If having her emotional outlet crushed and robbed of it’s power hastens that then so be it.
I don’t want Amber to get hurt. But she’s gonna get into quite a bit of trouble if she doesn’t back off. And by trouble I mean jail time. And not the fun jail time where you get sent to the brig because you forgot to put the safety on your gun and shoot out a light fixture. I’m talking getting sent to Garrus-9 and having your spark extracted because you spent millenia murdering any twisted experiment of Jhiaxus’ you could hunt down.
Amber is a vigilante. She’s threatening to assault four women, one of whom is deaf, because they used a fake ID to buy beer. (Speaking of which, I’ve examined this alcohol chemical you humans drink. They’d probably get a higher buzz drinking distilled grain alcohol or wine rather than this beer stuff. Unless they were to take the beer and distill it? Can you do that? I do that to make engex, refining it over and over again, and apparently you can do that to wine, to produce brandy and cognac. Can beer be distilled? Inquiring Autobots want to know!) Amber’s not a cop, she has no superpowers, she’s not even an employee at a toy store who catches shoplifters. And now she’s threatening to beat up Sal, Marcie and Carla. Classy. Still, if she wants to beat up Malaya then Amber isn’t lost. Just like Whirl, no one really likes to hang out with Malaya. 😉
I posted this before reading the clarification that Marcie is not deaf. Still, if Marcie’s still mute, and Amber decides to attack her without provocation…
Wait, what does Marcie’s being mute have to do with her ability to defend herself when there are three other people there? Unless Amber carries her off somewhere she can’t call for help.
Not to mention that the whole “Beating You Up Because You’re Drinking” excuse is just a thin veneer so that she can physically assault Sal for revenge for an event that happened 7 or so years ago, for an event Sal has already paid for (and then some), and disregarding the last time she went on such a berserk rage, she put a man in a hospital (Whether he deserved it or not, it was still an action that was poorly thought out with other options clearly available at the time, and will definitely come back to haunt her); mind, the man was also much larger than her, and would more likely have had no qualms about bringing lethal force to defend himself, and while she won, she was also lucky that it did not go wrong. Here, the people she are targeting are much smaller in stature, and while 3/4ths of them probably know how to fight (Sal, Marci, Carla), there is still a great risk that she could kill one of them, especially since she doesn’t have anyone here she trusts to stop her this time.
Amber has severe anger issues, ones that she needed to see a professional therapist about for a long while. Maybe she’s already talked to one (I would imagine it would be after her stabbing Sal’s hand). If so, she needs MORE help.
Her anger issues can be directly linked to a result of her father’s actions and abuse, but that doesn’t mean that she’s absolved of what she does while angry, especially not here. This, unlike the other two times we’ve seen her gone berserk, was a preemptive, planned action, as seen when she says she needs to carry out this plan tonight.
Sorry for rambling.
Oh, and Marci’s not deaf. Willis just confirmed it in a comment on this page.
She most certainly did not go to therapy. Blaine obviously tried to do it himself.
I guess if you distilled beer you’d technically end up with a kind of whiskey…
Check out the Alcohol episode on Periodic Table of Videos on Youtube
They distill beer. It’s kinda cool.
I don’t want her to get hurt, but I don’t think Sal is going to be easy prey like the other lowlifes she’s dealt with.
She has her own issues and I bet some of them are just as deep as Amber’s, and probably not just the crap with Walky and her parents either though that might be the start of it.
For all that though I doubt that Sal is planning to put Amber in the hospital if it comes to defending herself and her friends. Amber on the other hand…
I would like to see this get resolved without blood being spilled, but I am sure someone is going to end up on the ground before this is all over. I’m just betting that this time its going to be Amber.
You left an “r” off of “scarred”.
She’s scared in her mind. She’s just not showing it! 😛
Don’t worry, I’m rooting for Amazi-Girl. Come one, what’s cooler, getting psychological help to deal with your insecurities and problems, or unleashing them on society while hiding behind a thinly veiled façade of justice?
I know which one I’d prefer, if I wasn’t tediously sane.
she’s also planning unprovoked assault* on several people based off how someone acted several years ago
so yeah, if she does start something, then yes most of us want her to loose because of the above reason
* no. underage drinking dosen’t count
Well, half the commentators seem to be reading this as Batman vs Joker, half to be reading it as a story about college kids, some of whom were abused as kids, etc. And Willis seems to be doing it poised on the edge so you can see what you’re inclined to see.
I think its safe to say that this will end well and nothing but good things will come from this meeting.
Did I mention I was operating on three hours of sleep this week?
That makes this so much easier? Uh… was her original plan to just beat the crap out of Sal for no reason at all?
For historical reasons, I’d say.
Remember the Maine!
This could escalate to physical violence!
Sal seems to be the type to not buckle under to either real or imagined authority, somehow…
Also she’s already mad at Malaya and the beer thing. She is at like negative 3 fucks to give right now.
Yeah, I’m thinking that for all AG’s mad ninja skills, she’s about to get her cape handed to her by Sal.
Amazi-girl, you do realize that it’s possible to ride on the INSIDE of cars, right? It’s even heroic, Batman does it all the time.
Yeah, but Bats usually lands on top of other people’s car as entrance.
BECAUSE I’M BATMAN.
. . . and because I can afford to pay for the damages.
if only Superman had that same coverage.
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=328
(last 5 panels)
I’m imagining she didn’t leap onto the back of it or anything, but has instead somehow convinced Danny to drive her, and he’s sitting inside panicking that she’s gonna fall off or maybe it’s too soon after he’s waxed the roof or that she’s gonna jump too early or too late and break something and maybe he could drive slower? Or at least stop the car before she gets off?
Meanwhile, Amazi-Girl is casually standing on the roof playing Mario Kart.
You know they’re in a PARKING LOT, don’t you? No indication that car’s moving, or has anything to do with AG other than concealing her until the bust.
…
heh heh BUST
AND IT BEGINS! This is going to be awful but at least we get a show.
Whenever Amazi-Girl talks in dark blue, I hear her as Abed as Christian Bale as Batman.
Not as Annie as Christian Bale as Batman?
I hear her as Amber as Annie as Abed as Christian Bale as Chevy Chase as Batman.
I hear her as my own voice, maybe at a slightly lower pitch.
Your way sounds complicated.
I doubt Amber has an accent like a British maths TA
yeah, but if she used that for her amazi-girl voice, it’d really throw people off the scent for her secret identity.
-insert the theme tune from Batman The Animated Series-
Personally I prefer the Adam West Batman theme tune
It contains high quantities of “BAM!” “POW!” and “ZOK!”
Or we could go the AVGN route.
That works too! 😀
True but Amber isn’t exactly the Adam West version of a superhero. That Batman was more a “support your local police” deputized officer of the law-type superhero.
Amber in this case is more like channeling a good bit of the Keaton vigilante version of Batman, with maybe a touch of Bale’s Batman (I can even imagine her doing a good imitation of the voice).
Oh she can be a mixture of every Batman
…I just find it hilarious the idea of the 60’s theme song playing as she is violently beating people up!!!
She should be Beware the Batman Batman. He didn’t get nearly enough of a chance.
I agree!
I figure that that what be what an actual superhero would be like. (I’d justify it by pointing out that he’s mostly harmless, and at least crime-fighting keeps him out of trouble, and gives the villainous nutcases someone to play with)
Or, you know, in prison. Which may be where Amber is heading. The law frowns on vigilantes. The law is very grumpy.
Her punches don’t go biff, boff, and pow.
NANANANA NANANANA–AMAZIGIRL!!!!!
I heard this used as the “on hold” music for a biotechnology company yesterday! It blew my mind!
Ah geeze, Amber, no.
One this is psychotic vengeance for something that happened years ago and two, there is no part of you that won’t regret this if you actually go through with it.
What’s the punishment for underage drinking? It’s death right?
If those PSA’s are accurate, then yes!
Well, it’s either that or psychological scarring.
Nah, it is three broken ribs and a broken nose and a bunch of bruises. No one likes bruises after all.
Oh finally…Shits going down!!!
And it’s hitting the fan.
Who put a fan down there!?!
Who knows, but I definitely don’t want to clean up that mess!
Well, something has to be blowing her cape out like that.
Oh no… is she shitting on the fan?
Doesn’t it usually hit Cyclops in Willis comics?
This ain’t gonna end well.
I agree….my bet is that Sal whoops her ass.
My moneys on Amazi-girl, but first I bet Malaya mouths of to her and she gets drop kicked in the face.
We can only hope.
With ya on that one!
Yes, please! And have Malaya lose her front teeth! (It will give her something legitimate to whine about instead of her usual excessive entitlement whining.)
Fuzz it, it’s the Cheese!
“Is it right to beat up someone who doesn’t remember me over shit that happened half a decade ago?”
[I cannot tell you, or I will be cheating you the growth of your character.]
They’ll be this moment, when Sal’s like, “what’s your problem, psycho!”, and then Amazi-Girl reveals it, and Sal remembers, and then they either talk over their respective problems and come to a better understanding of each other and themselves, or carry on fighting until one of them’s in hospital, thus starting a lifelong quest for vengeance.
Or something like that.
Or Amber falls off the car and the others just leave.
I am imagining that right now and I feel such mixed feelings of sympathy and contempt.
oh god amazigirl vs stickshift
FRICK
Cheez it? Heh. Nice double (triple?) reference there Willis.
Side note: You want some cheese with your whine Malaya?
ALL ZE TIME!!!
It will not surprise me at all if Sal says “Hello Amber.”
I doubt that on the grounds that sal still doesn’t know who the fuck she is, at this point ambers just ” The weird girl who keeps running away when she see me,” to Sal rite now
“You killed my ability to walk around barehanded. Prepare to die.”
More likely “Hey fat girl who keeps sobbing and running away everytime I see you.”
Go home, Amazi-Girl, you’re crazy.
You’re just figuring this out?
What? I’ve been explaining her crazy for months now.
“Ladies. You have drink well. You’ve drunken your beers…and maybe some spirits. But your drink is nearly over. From this moment on….none of you are safe.”
Can I just step in and say that that was my favorite Batman scene, like, ever?
Art-wise, this has to be one of the best Amazi-Girl poses done, right down to the cape and wind-blown hair.
…I THOUGHT THAT LOOKED FAMILIAR
*short attention span finally remembers the special backer wallpaper that’s pretty much a redraw of the last panel here*
Agreed.
Aw shit, this isn’t gonna end well.
Wow Amber has gone Casey Jones crazy mode!
At least she’s not wearing hockey pads.
But does she play cricket?
She better watch her speed.
Ah, youth… when getting a lousy six pack was like planning a heist.
In this corner, Amazi-girl.
And in this corner….
The girl who gives out ass whoopings AND booze.
The Carlavore!!!
And a girl who is half hate, half booze, all brat
The Malayanator!!!
And next, A woman of few words.
MUTE….MARCYYYYYYYYYYYY
And finally. The woman you’ve all been waiting for!
our SALvation
Our aSALant
The SALIMON GRUNDY of INDIANA
THE SALTY SAL!!!!!
Salty Sal? I would’ve gone with Stone Cold Sal.
I like it, you know why?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IEghXXP-jz4
“This is going to be one hell of a slobber knocker! “…. My JR impression sucks dude.
Well, at least you can do a JR impression. The only thing I can do is repeat things three times and say BAH GAWD and GOOD GAWD ALMIGHTY.
Or the always classic…
“AS GOD AS MY WITNESS HE IS BROKEN IN HALF!!!
“BUSINESS HAS JUST PICKED UP!!!”
It’s a donnybrook!
“Salty Sal?”
Sounds like an old-time children’s television show host.
The best old-time children’s TV show host EVER.
Salty Sal seems like she’d be moonlighting as a weatherman on the same network, and possibly also as a nebulously-defined castle-dwelling creature-of-the-night who shows horror movies on Saturdays around midnight.
Captain Kangaroo?
better than pSALty
*sigh* This makes them sound like pro wrestlers, not super-villains.
That’s what I was goin’ for!
“It’s murderin’ time!”
-Hopefully not Amber
Hey, at least it’s better than “It’s jokin’ time!”
Also… I kind of don’t want Amber to win this, either. No matter if she wins or loses, it’ll hurt her psyche, but I have a feeling that winning might make her more dangerously unstable in the future.
Oh, you needn’t worry about that. No one’s winning this fight.
For some reason I get the image of Rorschach getting unmasked in The Watchman when I see AmaziGirl about to strike.
And my impression of that scene (been years since I read the comic, admittedly) was that Rorschach never recovered from the unmasking. He just lost it totally.
“GIVE ME BACK MY FAAAACE!”
“FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!”
LOL love that part!
FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
I swear to god if you successfully bring back that meme I will find you and I will kill you.
With my penis.
Hm. Debating…
Not your femurs?
He needs them to live.
For a nickel?
GIVE ME BACK MY FACE!!!
Oops. Ninja’d
*Puts on a monocle and sips tea slowly* “Yes. This is quite entertaining. Good show, Sir Willis. Good show, indeed.”
*adjusts sitting position as cream is stirred* Yes, I concur. Truly this is a intriguing turn of events.
*sips tea while adjusting the monocle* Yes, quite.
*Sips tea * I wonder how they will fair barbaric scene that we will no doubt find invigorating.
I expect a truly spectacular spectacle, how about you chaps?
*Hears kettle whistling*
*Calls butler to make a cup of Earl Grey Tea*
“Would you like your Earl Grey Tea hot, sir?” Asks the butler
[dramatic action move music starts playing in the background]
There’s only really one song dramatic enough for this scene.
You have rare taste.
(For a moment I thought you were going to link to a certain Metal song that’s been Rising in popularity of late…)
(I also would have accepted this.)
Breaking the law! breaking the law! ♪
You Don’t Know What It’s Like….
Well, this will go poorly for Amber.
I mean, assuming she can beat Sal with Marcie and maybe Carla stepping in, that just means there’s an obviously unsympathetic bit of vigilantism that precisely nobody will be willing to lie about (The fact that blaine falsified the facts to the police basically makes it very unlikely she sees consequences from that, if not impossible). That makes it less likely Dorothy won’t spill the beans.
Or she just gets her clock cleaned by Sal. If they don’t find love blooms after that like a non-zero number of shippers hope (Note: I ship Billie/Sal as much as Billie/Ruth, so this really doesn’t mean me), then, well… there’s Amazi-girl, having to check into a hospital.
This can really only go so poorly, I think. The way I understand it is the number one rule of webcomics is “no one likes drawn-out litigation arcs”, and one of those is really the only possible result of anyone here getting their clocks sufficiently cleaned.
Explain Phoenix Wright to me again =o
No one likes litigation that actually reflects how it works in real life. (Including the time required, because Willis’s grandkids will have to finish the arc for him.)
Yeah, that’s the interesting part for me as well- the impression I’ve gotten is that things can only go so badly before it slips into a long, drawn out storyline of pure misery.
HOWEVER, I’m having a hard time seeing how Amber’s actions could realistically end in anything but (at the very least) a trial. Dorothy doesn’t seem the type to sit on evidence in a felony assault case (she hasn’t gotten that connection solid yet, but she will, and apparently another assault is happening tonight, to witnesses who will accurately describe the attacker), no matter how conflicted she might feel.
I’m mostly just interested to see how this all shakes out without feeling too unrealistic. I think it’s a pretty narrow line that has to be walked to keep the strip feeling mostly realistic without Amber ending up in jail or worse.
Sal would nee report it, she has a grudge against the police.
There doesn’t need to be a trial. In the United States’ legal system, District Attorneys often offer first time offenders the chance to plead guilty to a less serious crime. The problem is that Amber is not a first time offender. Even if the assault charge from stabbing Sal was sealed, Amber has been committing acts of criminal mischief for weeks. If Dorothy outs Amber as Amazi-Girl and insinuates that Amber attacked Blaine, she could be in lots of legal hotwater. And I’m not talking about “Ultra Magnus gives you a speech about how what you did was wrong”. I mean “Ultra Magnus drags you to Garrus-9 in inhibitor cuffs, and your spark is extracted for decades” hotwater.
If I were the DA in Monroe County, I’d plea bargain this so fast that you’d hear the sonic boom in New York City, if not Seattle. A sympathetic white defendant with mental issues that can be traced directly to her abusive father and a past commited by her (black black blackity-black black) victim?
Dude, I would *so* not be touching that.
I’m still rooting for this to devolve into the five of them sitting around drinking beer in the parking lot and Sal and Amber having tearful drunken bonding time.
That would actually be nice. Or just talking it out.
Oh, I’d like that.
Crazy hopeful thought of the thread award goes to you. That’s what I’m hoping happens only after a couple punches are thrown, amber’s mask comes off and a bit of shouting occurs. just to make it more in line with how things seem to go in this comic.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s particularly likely, especially since if I recall preview panels from however many months ago Willis was drawing this, there’s some actiony stuff coming up, but if Sal (and, uh, Malaya, which might require a miracle) is reasonable and nonconfrontational about this, and Amazi-Girl’s unwilling to actually unilaterally attack someone who hasn’t initiated the violence (and it’s probably a good thing that A-G’s in the driver’s seat, not Amber right now), I could see it ending without any major characters in the hospital or jail.
I wasn’t really seeing any other way it could end up like that, which I think it kind of has to for meta reasons, but someone downthread pointed out that all of Sal’s crew have wheels, so maybe we’re getting a chase scene, not an immediate fight.
Because underage drinking is totally worth beating someone up.
So, what’s the chance that this fight gets broken up before it can really get going by Wal-Mart cart boy Ninja Rick?
Never presume Walmart doesn’t have ninjas at its disposal.
I’d feel quite validated in presuming Walmart doesn’t have ninjas at its disposal, because they don’t even pay their NORMAL employees. Ninjas want to be INVISIBLE, not at every street corner in the Bible Belt.
That, or possibly a Wal-Mart employee arrives and suggests that Amazi-Girl should check out the prostitute aisle, as it might calm her down.
(Note: I am aware that the idea that all an angry woman needs is a good evening of premarital hanky-panky is both loathsome and reprehensible. Occasionally ethics must be ignored in favour of a joke.)
It does – only, they’re ninja LAWYERS.
Nah, we need Cowboy Rick, the area’s rent-a-cop.
You know, I hate to say it, but my college years were much less eventful than this.
And I was the one who had silly putty thrown through my window.
Did someone stamp a threatening note into it with newspaper ink?
No, silly putty is threatening enough as-is.
Shit’s just gotten real when somebody whips out the Serious Putty, though.
Don’t get me started on the Muderous Intent Putty.
Isn’t Murderous Intent Putty just another term for Semtex?
Pretty sure Real Life can’t measure up to a well-written comic, that’s kind of the idea of writing.
Unless you have a Super Awesome Real Life and are comparing it to some high schooler’s DeviantArt “comic,” but that’s significantly less likely.
Yeah, I’ll, uh, try to make my story less interesting, sorry!
Sorry, Not sorry.
Well, we’re not just getting one person’s story. We’re getting dozens of people’s stories, and collectively they are (obviously) more interesting than a single person’s story, especially since we can see how their stories interact.
Also, my college life wasn’t particularly interesting, but I’ve seen and heard some absolutely bonkers stories, and watched some heartwrenchingly stupid but still sympathetic relationship crashes. RL college can be pretty crazy too.
Amazi-Girl: Badass.
Sal: Badass.
Marcie: Badass.
Carla: We know nothing about Carla, but if she ain’t a badass, she ain’t this universe’s version of Ultra Car.
Malaya: *sigh*
One badass versus three badasses (and Malaya). These are not good Amazi-Odds. And I thought Sal was the one who sucked at math….
Well, I mean Carla can’t fly, doesn’t have as much weight to throw around, is down an arm, and probably doesn’t have any cream pies on her.
So I could accept Carla being less useful in combat than Ultra Car.
Granted, that’s still two on one.
Willis said that Carla in DoA is just like UC in SP!, “but you know, fleshy.” Also, she’s putting her skates on, just prepping up for some informal Roller Derby.
This is looking distinctly double-plus-hopeful for Amazi-Girl.
Why do so many people assume Sal and Marcie are badasses? Sal acts tough, but other than the robbery flashback, has she actually been in any sort of physical confrontation in this universe?
Leaving aside her prowess on a motorbike, including the fairly wild ride with Marcie we witnessed, Sal is apparently able to start waterskiing without a lesson, not to mention easily manhandle Jason.
Also, she climbs out windows.
None of which imply fighting prowess. The closest would be Jason, but he wasn’t exactly fighting back.
What about tossing Ruthless aside effortlessly after Walky said “Sal, no!”
Well, she was sent off to school. Everyone knows you learn badass fighting skills there.
No, Amber is good at math. These are badasses we’re talking about, not normal people. Inverse Ninja Rule and all that.
*AHEM* Might I remind you that the other universe’s Malaya stalemated a brawl with a car (and I mean she wrestled a car, not she was fighting someone inside one) and apparently carries a knife around just in case and isn’t afraid to use it. Out of everyone assembled Malaya’s the most likely to send someone to the hospital, aside from Amazi-Crazy.
Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Malaya whips out a knife and Sal flips out on her because she doesn’t roll that way any more since turning over a new leaf and/or actually getting stabbed herself?
or malaya whips out a knife, triggering a ptsd flashback in sal (because stabbings), while amazi-girl stands there like “well shit, what now?”
4 against 1! I can’t wait for the action sequence. 😀
Malaya’s so obnoxious that Amazi-Girl changes her mind and teams up with the rest to curb stomp her instead?
Oh dear.
I’m willing to bet that this will end in conviction, expulsion or serious injury.
Perhaps two of the three. Maybe all of them.
This won’t end well. For Amber, I mean.
I’m reasonably sure we’ll get at least one montage of Amber beating up the non-Sals, framed to look AWESOME… though with a hint of how psychotic her behavior is. And then either she and Sal will have a huge showdown, or there will be some sort of swerve… either way, it’ll be exciting, but I doubt it’ll really be a four-on-one fight.
Yeah, 4-on-1 fights where the participants are remotely close to even tend to turn into more of ‘curbstompings’ and they’re pretty brutal.
Since no one is going to be in the hospital for a week in comic time (one year IRL), I’m guessin that’s not where this is going.
Underaged drinking is against the law enough to be a justifiable beatdown sin?
Huh.
When Amazi-Girl says ‘That makes this easier’, she’s not saying the cops will see what she’s doing in any better light. She’s saying this can make the law-abiding, do-gooder side of her conscience shut up long enough for the repressed-anger side of her conscience to have some fun.
At least Amber is Amazi-Girl, not Judge Dredd. Otherwise there would be four bullet-ridden corpses right now. They broke the law, and the Judges are judge, jury, and executioner.
Yes, but at least Judge Dredd is qualified for those three roles! He went to Judge Academy and learnt Judging so that he could Judge. And Jury. And Execute.
underage drinking hardly counts as a crime worthy of a violent reaction of any kind. a proper judge would give them each 2 to 8 months in the isocubes. considering they’re still minors it might be even less. and i doubt they would put up a fight against a proper judge.
Malaya will run, and then watch from a safe distance.
Carla will likely watch, no guess if she will jump in or not.
Marcie will side will Sal.
My guess it will just be 2 against 1.
Amazi-girl is pissed. Sal is sharp, but Amber is crazy.
I think she’s been running from her fear in that holdup for so long that she thinks that standing up to the bandit may stop the fear. Who knows?
Yes, I know that she stabbed Sal in the hand while Sal was being arrested. And that’s the point. She did not stand up to her alone, face to face. Maybe she thinks if she beats her fair and square she will not be afraid anymore?
If Marcie were not in the mix, I’d bet on a draw between Amazi-girl and Sal.
‘Ches it, the cops’? roflmao
Oh, Amber… I am afraid to read the next update. Seriously, I will be opening that tab and peeking through my fingers.
Hmm it would be interesting if Sal was to get hospitalized just to see the reaction from the parents. But Amber is totally in the wrong here. While Danny might’ve been okay with her cracking down on her father, I feel like he’ll different about this.
If she is hospitalized, she’ll be back out in a day, ’cause that’d be like two months of comic time as it is =p
goddamit amber
Amazigirl= supervillain?
Does lawsuits count as criticism? If so OMG!
I don’t know if Amazi-Girl criticism immunity passed over to the DoAverse. Pretty sure she just has immunity to normal-ass relationships with people.
No, Amazi-Girl has, in this universe, stated that she is immune to criticism. Whether or not she really is, is the question…
Criticism? Sure. Legal consequences? Not so much.
I’ve been saying that for ages now.
Wait a sec….its 4am, everyone’s sober and looking to get drunk? What are you, graveyard shift workers?
No
Amber
don’t do dumb things
Prediction: Ultracar will punch Amazi-Girl and Amber will go down like someone switching a light off.
No robots in this setting, they’re all human.
I just realized. Sal has a bike, Malaya and Carla are on skates, and Marcie has a skateboard if she didn’t just ride with Sal. They can all just leave.
Decided to not play around with the meaning of the arc title this time?
I think the next chapter title (visible in the Archives dropdown) is going to make up for any lack of around-playering with this one.
“The Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit”
I don’t even.
I saw that. And, I CAN imagine. This is the same artist that gave us the ‘Butt-Taco’.
Sounds like someone sneaks into empty classrooms and draws cocks on the board for people to eventually walk in on.
I’ve done something similar, but it was a superhero rather than a phallus. Because any old wanker can whip out a dong.
Yeah, I figured as much, but there are so many ways to turn that into a storyline. The only thing that seems a given (if it is what it sounds like) is that seeing dingdongs on whiteboards all day is going to affect Joyce in some way. Like, making her snap and suck like a billion dicks.
Someone at our college drew this awesome elaborate chalkboard graffiti, and the professor [really a grad student] complained primarily because it was chalk [1. impermanent, and 2. a slight hazard to the MANY computers in the room].
well it’s a song reference, does that count?
Is her name Carla because calling a regular person Ultracar would be weird? Does she become Spider Carla?
Stay tuned for our next episode!!!
Yes. No. Hell yeah!
Yes, yes she does! Spider-Carla FTW!
AMBER
Because justice always prevails!
And maybe after two of her foes are defeated and she graciously shows mercy on Sal, she’ll be more stable! I mean, it is their fault she lost it… Sal perhaps less so. Vengeance!
But AmaziGirl, do you really have to seek her out to beat her up? Or if she wasn’t breaking laws, would you just stalk her across campus?
Fight!Fight!Fight! 😀
Place your bets, do you think Sal will completely dominate the scene, or will Amber have a mental break down and beat her within an inch of her life?
Or will Ethan show up last second and completely deny us the fight because Dorothy went and told him what’s what and he tries to get Amber to let go of the past like he did, even though Sal went coo-coo for Cap’n Crunch and traumatized Amber into stabbin’ a bongo?
It’s interesting, I’m seeing a lot of people thinking Sal (alone) has the upper hand, but not a lot of reasoning for it. There’s a pretty big difference between someone who’s trained and ready to fight, and someone who isn’t…
My money’s still on Amber.
“Trained”? Did Amber take up MMA when I wasn’t looking? Sal’s every bit as trained as Amber is, and Amber gave up surprise when she jumped on the roof of a car.
Yes, actually, she did. Hence all the running up walls and flipping she’s done. Willis mentioned it several times in the comments.
Mentioning in the comic at somepoint would probably be wise but that’s probably for the inevitable BIG origin flashback.
I mean, one way or another she’s clearly not an amateur. She’s taken on multiple opponents at once. She’s taken on much larger and stronger opponents. We know for a fact that she beats people up strangers on a regular basis. You’d kind of have to ignore a lot to assume she wasn’t in some way proficient at this.
A-G needs a training montage. With ’80s music (oh gods this Amber wasn’t even born yet in the ’80s, was she) and like running on wires while carrying buckets of concrete and punching telephone poles and balancing on one hand on rooftops and waxing cars and stuff.
Actually, I’m hoping Danny will show up. As in the Walky-verse, he possesses the ability to calm mad rages. And he already has empathy with Amazi-Girl. He’s what she needs right now.
Would that make him Betty Ross at the end of the Ang Lee movie, calming down The Hulk?
Amber: I think I’ll beat up that Malaya girl too. Something about her just makes me automatically want to punch something.
We can only hope Malaya accidentally falls down a man-hole.
No I want her to back away from her sort of non-municipal code ways. and Show that AG has mercy.
DEATH BY FACE-PUNCHING
DOA has no shortage of Backpfeifengesicht.
“There are seven working defenses from this position. Three of them disarm with minimal contact. Three of them kill. The other– [KRAKK] –hurts.”
I wonder if at least one of them recognizes her from the paper.
And then AG beat all the obnoxious brats into pulp and we never heard from them again.
*GROAN
This won’t end well for Amber. Knowing Malaya and Carla, they’ll probably beat the crap out of her.
Actually, knowing Malaya and Carla, neither one gives two shits about Sal, and definitely won’t stick their necks out to help in a fight that has nothing to do with them.
I dunno. Obliging someone who’s picked a fight seems like the sort of thing Malaya might do.
Amazi-Girl isn’t singling out Sal though. She’s using underage drinking as a reason to interfere and everyone but Carla is guilty so everyone but Carla is technically being threatened.
Exactly. So while Carla may not be obliged, I doubt that Malaya would want to be caught for underage drinking, and would probably proceed to beat the crap out of Amber.
Carla’s guilty too.
Yeah, I had forgotten to mention that. She was caught buying alcohol for minors.
She mentions that she did so with a fake id. I’m pretty sure she’s as underage as anybody else here.
She’s a sophomore, so she’s not likely to be any older than 20.
Either way, she bought for minors — that’s actually a fairly serious crime in most states. (In my home state, for instance, it’s a gross misdemeanor. Not *quite* a felony, but just shy of one.)
I’m pretty sure that just the way these laws are handled it’s generally a much greater offense to provide the drugs to an under-age individual than it is to partake of them while under-age.
Makes sense when you think about it. You accomplish a whole lot more by punishing the place that’s selling to minors than you do by punishing any individual minor. If you slap the kid with a fine while the cashier continues to neglect to check for ID then not much has changed for the community as a whole.
Girl-fight!
People are really expecting Sal to put up a fight, because she’s a badass who smokes and rides a motorcycle, but we don’t actually have any indication that she has any fighting abilities, or even any kind of strength/agility beyond what’s required to climb in and out of her dormroom window.
Four people in the area doesn’t necessarily mean four people fighting back either. It’s not as if Amber walked in on Captain Sal and her Pirate Crew or anything.
I think we should maybe ease up on the excitement, because what’s coming could be a gruesome one-sided beatdown directed at somebody who was just minding her own business trying to share a drink with some friends and acquaintances.
“Captain Sal and her Pirate Crew” keeps cracking me up every time I think about it, thanks. And it’s also an excellent point.
My jaw would hit the floor if Malaya or Carla made a serious effort to fight. Carla has just met these people and doesn’t even want to sit around a minute and split a beer. I would bet a couple bucks that Malaya is either going to stand around bongoing and/or freaking out, thus escalating the situation, or she is going to GTFO immediately. One of them might call the cops, maybe make a token effort to shove Amber away, but actually commit to a throw down once they see Amber is dangerous, determined to fight, and actually only focused on Sal? I can’t see it at all.
Sal in this comic has struck me as a self-aware person trying to work on her own issues and stay out of trouble, though she doesn’t always succeed. I see her, and Marcie too, as having the initial smart reaction of “you aren’t the cops, we don’t have to deal with you, you should go or we should”, and trying to remove themselves from the conflict (even if they phrase it more like “fuck off”).
So yeah, I agree that it’s possible none of them can or will fight here, and I further submit arguments that it’s not just possible but probable.
Well, well, well. If it isn’t my old friend, Underaged Drinking. So we meet again. How are you, Underaged Drinking? …besides illegal?
Heh, Clone High
so…much…to dislike about Amber….hard to…aughhhh
The only way this ends well is if everyone starts hugging and forgiving each other. Odds?
I *so* want Sal to break out Twinkies and tell AG to calm down, and AG is all … =D BFFs
Sooooo.
She’s, uh.
Coming up with reasons so she can justify to herself that they ‘made’ her hurt them.
Way to follow the same path as your dad, Amber.
Yeah… didn’t even realize she was in the business of enforcing the law. Thought she was more of a general “Clean up your community, keep people safe” type than a Judge Dredd type.
“How are you, underage drinking, except ILLEGAL!”
Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law.
On a second read, I got reminded of the Sal/Billie throwdown in It’s Walky!
This, however, is far less exciting and far more ‘Oh noooooo’
Amber REALLY is an unlikeable asshole, isn’t she?
At the moment. She’s kinda broken right now.
YES. Yes. Yes. Yes. She is.
Carla takes the six pack and skates away. AG isn’t interested in her, but Sal is suddenly rather not guilty. AG then needs a new excuse to confront Sal.
Sal is holding a can of something in both yesterday’s strip as well as today’s.
Yeah, I know it’s another universe and Carla is not Ultracar but since we don’t really know much about Carla yet…
I think a fight between Amazigirl and Ultracar could be interesting.
Its about to hit the fan. Lets see how far it sprays.
Yeeeee… this ain’t gonna end well for Amber methinks.
AWW HELLS YES.
So Amber’s a fan of the Fascist Supercop interpretation of Batman.
I keep forgetting that you have to be 21 to drink in the US. The whole concept is completely bonkers to me, and I really don’t understand why you guys aren’t changing this. If Harper attempted to pull this crap here (and I’m pretty sure he could considering his track record of making Canada suck a little bit more each year), there would be riots.
Alcohol is like, an integral part of college life here. Fighting over a meager 6-pack is something we did in high school, not college. XD
Alcohol is integral to college here too. There’s a certain amount of “look the other way” when it comes to drinking in college. Most people seem to have easier access than this, going to house parties or having older friends who don’t care.
…on the other hand, it’s impossible to buy alcohol after 11PM here, (outside of a bar) and there’s definitely NOT a drop of the stuff at places like Wal-Mart. Two other mind blowing foreign concepts here, but those are actually awesome.
Isn’t your Torus-State the one with public officials who get tanked on engex and circuit boosters? Or are you the guys who are unfailingly polite while riding horses in red tunics? I mixing up Earth geography. (Now Earth geology is something else…)
You’re thinking of english canadians. 😉
“…I really don’t understand why you guys aren’t changing this.”
At one time in recent history (since 1970) it *WAS* legal to drink at age 18. But then we had the do-gooders like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) and other anti-alcohol/anti-drug factions team up and pressure the legislature to slowing reverse the trend. The biggest thing that forced these laws, however, was when the federal government threatened to withhold a percentage of federal highway funding (money the federal government would grant to a state for construction/maintenance of major highways) from a state unless it passed a 21-year-old drinking law. This is also how we got the 55-mph speed limit jammed down our throats back in the days of the so-called energy crisis.
Interesting…
It was de facto 18 in Louisiana until 1995, because of convenient loopholes.
Much as it seems weird to me, I’d keep in mind that a drinking age of 19 doesn’t exactly leave us with the greatest leg to stand on. A lot of people do still spend a solid chunk of their first year in post-secondary underage. All those snappy little things that people throw around like “You can operate a firearm, serve in the military, own land, get married before you can drink”, pretty sure they apply to us too.
Oh, hey, it’s Psycho-Girl. Hurray for Psycho-Girl.
Violence to Malaya is the best kind of violence.
1 Amazi-girl is kind of a fascist isn’t she?
2 Sometimes only those that DO remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (Seriously, fuck the past, sometimes anyway)
Amber, dude, you went full dredd. Everybody knows you never go full dredd O_ou
Also. I may be wrong, but Marcie is a wild-card here. I don’t see her standing by, and she’s pretty athletic and fearless. She seems chill, but I don’t know if I’d want her mad at me.
And then Sal punched Amazi-Girl in the face, providing the first actual resistance she’s encountered all comic. Amazi-Girl immediately falls over, and everyone runs away.
… wait, did Blaine actually try to fight her/physically abuse her? I forget. But anyway, as someone who’s been in quite a few fights, people who haven’t got experience getting hit tend to panic and loose, regardless of whether or not they’re bigger/stronger/faster. The human body is fragile and likes to remind you of it.
Blaine’s more of a verbal abuse type, but I believe he tried to grab her once, and got punched. This was Amber, BTW, not Amazi-Girl.
Blaine appeared to be trying to fight Amber, but I don’t think he ever landed anything even resembling a hit. She wrecked him so hard and fast he never had a chance.
We’ve seen the flashbacks where Sal had Ethan at knifepoint during the C-store holdup, and Amber was cowering helplessly. We then are shown a scene where Sal has been disarmed and arrested, and Amber goes berserk, grabs the knife, and stabs Sal in the hand. *BUT DID WE EVER SEE WHAT HAPPENED IN BETWEEN??* No, we did not.
We also know that Amber has been constantly chided and put down by her controlling and manipulative father, including references to this incident as well as remarks against Amber’s mother.
So I’m gonna toss this out here and then duck-and-cover.
Blaine happened to walk into the C-store at the climax of the holdup (he’d been outside pumping gas, right?). It was he who rescued Ethan and neutralizing Sal at least until the police arrived. And of course, he never let Amber forget that she was just a cowering little pipsqueak who did nothing to help her friend.
So *THIS* is what is driving Amber’s passion to be Amazi-Girl. It also explains why she was in such a white-hot rage against Blaine. And since in Amber’s mixed-up mind, all this would never have happened had Sal not tried to hold up the C-store, she has made Sal her bête noire in much the same way that the white whale became Ahab’s single point of focus and ultimate source of destruction.
Close, but not quite. Blaine did nothing heroic, from what I can tell – he stood by while the police disarmed the situation, and then verbally abused his PTSD’d daughter until she snapped.
Interesting theory! But it would require Blaine to have done something useful. Not sure the fanbase would stand for it.
wow, that sounds like an awesome plot twist. I kinda hope Willis uses that.
Amazi-issues to the… rescue?
You either die the hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
legitimately just accidentally referred to this comic as “dumbing in the name of”
uh, Amber? This is just silly. I mean, these girls are tough from what I remember from past chapters AND in Shortpacked. Even if Carla isn’t a robot, she still has THREE people to go against someone who has no real training and if Sal was a former convict, i doubt she would have soften up over the years.
Wait, did Sal just say Daganabbit? That is too funny.
My first thought was, next scene, whoever owns that car fires it up and drives away with Amazi-girl on the roof, as she yells “curses, foiled again”.
Uh, Amazi-Girl, isn’t it illegal or something to climb up on top of other peoples’ vehicles?
I’m not nearly as sure as everyone else that Amazi-Girl is going in swinging. First, we know she doesn’t throw the first punch for non-violent crimes: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/shortstuff . Second, she generally wears the mask in order to suppress her worse instincts. Presumably that’s still her reason, since she doesn’t suppose it’ll hide her identity anymore. Third, you don’t generally beat up a bunch of people when your secret identity is about to be revealed. Fourth, while Amber is often violent, she never premeditates it. Finally, she just told Ethan that she wanted to be a different person facing Sal than last time: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/same-person/ .
I don’t know exactly what she’s going to try. Maybe picking up Sal and running somewhere with her like she did Billie so she can talk to her with Amazi-Girl’s self-control?
The thing to understand is that the person she normally is, is the same person she was during her first encounter with Sal: a weak, cowardly, useless little girl. That’s how she sees herself, no thanks to her father. That’s who she doesn’t want to be when she faces Sal – thus, the mask. It’s her fear, not her rage, that the mask is there to suppress.
Amazi-Girl looks so awesome in this shot 😀
Batman: When you say become a cop and fight crime the right way you realize most cops are actually crazier than you right?
funny you mention breaking the law amber. because being a vigilante is also against the law. as is assault and battery.
That was Amber, though??
*imagines AG walking up to campus security to turn in Amber by ripping off her mask*
Also, you’re super outnumbered, Amber…
I say that they are going to laugh and say, “And your point is…” or something like that and start beating the shit out of Amber, then Sal is going to recognize Amber and tell them to stop beating her up.
I know synnerman said it above, but . . .
I half-expect Sal to say something like, “Hey, yer that girl who stabbed me when Ah took yer little friend hostage in the convenience store years ago, aintcha? Sorry ’bout that; Ah was in a bad place in mah life. So . . . how ya been? An’ why are ya wearin’ a mask?”
I don’t know Sal didn’t recognize her before without a mask. As for being outnumbered, she was outnumbered when she saved Danny that one time.
Wow, Amber has flipped her shit. Well, even more flipped than her shit already was. Flipped further, but not, you know, so much that it has rotated a full 360°, because that would be indistinguishable from having not flipped at all. I think this metaphor has gotten away from me.
But anyway there’s no way Amber is not going to end up in prison and/or a hospital at this point.
Her shit has flipped 359° and flopped onto the fan
???
Doesn’t Sal have Super Powers?
Not in this universe
Aw $#¡+
Any lawyers here? Does challenging someone to a fight [as Amazi-girl’s words arguably qualify as this] forfeit your right to claim self-defense if they hit you first, in the state of Indiana?
Ignore this, I meant to post to today’s.
Five folks, a case of beer, and a Wal-Mart parking lot. Sounds like Sal’s kind of party
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/walmart/