well yeah. Who would want a drawing of Danny? It might Dan up your notebook! Plus, you could get a drawing of Walky instead, and that’s like, a bajillion times better.
Haha, just remembered that we say “pulling a Dan” because my BIL has this game strategy of putting all his snipers in the front [whaaaaaaat]. I wonder if Danning things up is universal among Daniels.
I was waiting for a Dina strip to ask this, but I guess I shouldn’t wait indefinitely; my birthday is next month and I need to have a list of things that people close to me can get me. Can you please put some Dina merchandise (preferably shirts, Dina’s hat, or mugs, but especially shirts) on your website so that I can direct them to it?
What’s the current estimate? Also, will it be okay to wear to school? (no beer or any other questionable content. . .) Or will it hold hot cocoa? Great, now I want hot cocoa which I can’t have cause I’m out!
The Dumbiverse isn’t in continuity with the Walkyverse, so you don’t need to have read the Walkyverse to know everything you need to know (though DoA does, admittedly, sometimes have bonus funny for Walkyverse readers).
(Seriously, tiny, tiny amount. I’ve read Roomies! through probably at least a dozen times, and I’d forgotten that Alice even existed until Willis pointed her out in the Roomies! reruns a few months ago.)
This is exciting. Could be an absolutely new character with no meta-baggage from the previous universe. I’ll bet Willis is both excited at that prospect and annoyed at all the folks who are asking this exact question.
Not because those folks are annoying, necessarily, more because the comments section is so full or stuff outside this universe that it makes new readers intimidated, which is the exact opposite of the purpose of this current webcomic.
Not to presume to know Willis’s motivations or feelings, of course.
When this happpens to me I generally google that character’s name and “Walkyverse” and eventually it leads me to the walky wiki and a description of that character in other continuities, which of course never helps because everything in DoA is basically separate and different so screw it just keep on truckin.
DoA isn’t in the Walkyverse so it can’t be an introduction to it.
DoA is basically Willis starting over from scratch with no continuity baggage or sci-fi elements (or old attitudes & beliefs he no longer holds), so it’s self-contained. Any additional enjoyment old Walkyverse fans get is strictly trainspotting (“Oh hey, it’s so-and-so!”).
Of course he could really blow peoples minds with occasional strip links and references to bits of an alternate continuity, the Chuck verse, in which the very same characters existed with a completely different history and have some sock puppets to make bogus comments about what the characters did there. Did you know that Alice and Joe were a thing in the Chuckverse after he dumped Billie?
More likely it’s both. Lots of fast food (CFA is fairly healthy as fast food places go, but it ain’t exactly a salad bar) combined with a liking for beer – which is a lot of calories in a form that doesn’t encourage you to go out and burn them.
Actually, I thought of this…. “All the young girls love Alice. Tender young Alice, they say. Come over and tease me, come over and please me. Alice, it’s my turn today.”
A NEW CHALLENGER HAS ENTERED THE RING ! translation completely new character makes her debut for the first and possibly the last time since starting DoA.
Oh sorry I only completely read through Itswalky, Joyce and Walky, shortpacks , and this.any character that was mentioned only in Roomies I don’t think I would know too well.
This is what I think as well. My guess is something like “I knew you were coming here too but you party too much and I’m here to study and can’t let you drag me down.”
In Roomies, Alice invited Billie to a party and offered her a beer. And I think she was a bridesmaid or something at Billie’s wedding. So I guess they’ve been buddies in other universes, but we the readers don’t know Alice yet.
Bad, they could still hit a home run.
Neither, they could strike out.
Both, your man on first base might fumble the ball so hard that it goes viral on YouTube, earning him fame and humiliation both.
I’d make a ‘Where’s Dobermon?’ joke but I don’t think anyone would get it so I’ll just say “Welcome to the Dumbverse Alice! Hope you survive the experience!”
What I love is that anyone who hasn’t heard the song thinks you’re lecturing. Anyone else just started singing. (the song is now stuck in my head, BTW)
I don’t know, but there are twenty-seven eight-by-ten glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back describing what each one was.
(I owned the original back in the day. So stay off my lawn, you kids!)
man, fuck that song. ok no, actually it’s a fun song, but i hold an unfair grudge against it and arlo guthrie because of a former coworker of mine, who was very clearly not ok in her noggin, whether from drugs, brain damage, or just plain born that way. this lady was always talking to herself, only it was ore like she was holding a conversation with someone else who was not present on any plain of reality the rest of us were privy to, and we only ever heard her side of the conversation. well i guess both sides were technically hers, but ANYWAY. she was always talking about being in a band with her buddy arlo (yeah, THAT arlo) and occasionally she’d mention alice’s restaurant and crack up laughing.
the weird part (not that any of this is not weird) was my office had her working phones, so she was always pausing her self-chatter to mumble “thankyouforcallingfamilyassistancem’nm’s’ndahowcanidirectyou” in a lower register of voice, so all the customer complaints to management about her were directed at “the guy who answers the phone”. this became funnier when we had a male part-timer who also mumbled really fast and was also the recipient of customer complaints.
tl;dr: i irrationally and unfairly hate arlo guthrie because of all the time he spent as a resident in a crazy lady’s head.
Presumably we will (start to) find out 24 hours from now. This is this character’s first appearance in this comic so anything else is sheer speculation. But clearly it’s someone Billie knows and is surprised (?) to see here.
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell them a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice when she was just small
When the men on the chess board
Get up and tell you where to go
And you just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s lost her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Back in Roomies, she was a side character and an acquaintance of Billie. In the storyline where she (briefly) appeared, Alice offered Billie alcohol– unaware that Billie had decided to cut back on it. (Billie drank it, but felt super guilty afterward so she didn’t regress.)
Loading ...
whoops?
Oh, Hi Alice.
oh snap here it comes
YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, ALICE
WHY ALICE WHY
Yeah, I love when the happy, upbeat, and optimistic stuff that comes out of Joyce’s mouth is actually the Toll of Doom. 😆
DoA being my introduction to Walkyverse, I am confused.
There is nothing yet you need to know. It will all be made known.
I assumed, but I still figure I’m missing something.
P.S. Hi, I met you at ECCC and I tipped you like five bucks (which confused you) for drawing Danny in my book (which confused you more.)
well yeah. Who would want a drawing of Danny? It might Dan up your notebook! Plus, you could get a drawing of Walky instead, and that’s like, a bajillion times better.
Or a drawing of your TA being eaten by a t-rex.
Or a drawing of your TA being eaten OUT by a T-Rex.
Your TA being, of course, Dina.
Danny being eaten by a T-Rex is probably an acceptable Danny.
Nah, he’s gonna Danny it up buy givin’ the T-Rex indigestion.
Haha, just remembered that we say “pulling a Dan” because my BIL has this game strategy of putting all his snipers in the front [whaaaaaaat]. I wonder if Danning things up is universal among Daniels.
well yeah, most people tip him to NOT draw danny in their books.
I was waiting for a Dina strip to ask this, but I guess I shouldn’t wait indefinitely; my birthday is next month and I need to have a list of things that people close to me can get me. Can you please put some Dina merchandise (preferably shirts, Dina’s hat, or mugs, but especially shirts) on your website so that I can direct them to it?
It depends on when the Hiveworks store goes live! There’ll be at least one thing there when it does.
A Hiveworks store with potentially one thing? But it will be a Dina thing?
Works for me.
What’s the current estimate? Also, will it be okay to wear to school? (no beer or any other questionable content. . .) Or will it hold hot cocoa? Great, now I want hot cocoa which I can’t have cause I’m out!
LIES! If Willis knows it, it must be important to the story!
(he didn’t think anyone would figure that out!)
Willis that’s not fair to us new people
I have NO idea how “read the story as I deliver it to you, at the same speed as everyone else” is unfair to anybody. What the hell?
THIS IS NOT A PUN STRIP. PLEASE POST YOUR PUN ELSEWHERE.
[Actually don’t. I just wanted someone to see the pun.]
You only have yourself to blame, Willis.
When new people start seeing nonexistent references to an earlier work it’s not their own fault.
I just dont like being out of the loop. I like Knowledge. Knowledge is power.
The Dumbiverse isn’t in continuity with the Walkyverse, so you don’t need to have read the Walkyverse to know everything you need to know (though DoA does, admittedly, sometimes have bonus funny for Walkyverse readers).
And if you really want to know the tiny, tiny amount about another Alice in another universe that Walkyverse readers know, the Walkyverse is still there, get to readin’.
(Seriously, tiny, tiny amount. I’ve read Roomies! through probably at least a dozen times, and I’d forgotten that Alice even existed until Willis pointed her out in the Roomies! reruns a few months ago.)
This is exciting. Could be an absolutely new character with no meta-baggage from the previous universe. I’ll bet Willis is both excited at that prospect and annoyed at all the folks who are asking this exact question.
Not because those folks are annoying, necessarily, more because the comments section is so full or stuff outside this universe that it makes new readers intimidated, which is the exact opposite of the purpose of this current webcomic.
Not to presume to know Willis’s motivations or feelings, of course.
Alice showed up at least once in Roomies!, so no absolutely new charactering this time.
When this happpens to me I generally google that character’s name and “Walkyverse” and eventually it leads me to the walky wiki and a description of that character in other continuities, which of course never helps because everything in DoA is basically separate and different so screw it just keep on truckin.
EXACTLY.
NEVER BOTHER.
DoA isn’t in the Walkyverse so it can’t be an introduction to it.
DoA is basically Willis starting over from scratch with no continuity baggage or sci-fi elements (or old attitudes & beliefs he no longer holds), so it’s self-contained. Any additional enjoyment old Walkyverse fans get is strictly trainspotting (“Oh hey, it’s so-and-so!”).
Plus the occasional, “Ha ha would you believe those two are married with kids in the other universe?”
(Case in point, panel one.)
Of course he could really blow peoples minds with occasional strip links and references to bits of an alternate continuity, the Chuck verse, in which the very same characters existed with a completely different history and have some sock puppets to make bogus comments about what the characters did there. Did you know that Alice and Joe were a thing in the Chuckverse after he dumped Billie?
Willis, the fact that you don’t is completely unfair to us crazy people!
Plot twst!
Can’t remember who she is.
My guess in this universe, ex-cheerleader friend.
She’s the one who invited Billy to the party just before the end of Roomies! and tried to convince Billie to drink. She had the novelty beer glass.
So indirectly responsible for billies get together and break up with Ruth and and some other stuff
No, because those happened in different universes.
She was, however, Billie’s maid of honor in Walkyverse.
Bad timing, Billie. You only go ask “Alice?” when she’s ten feet tall.
Some make you rounder, some will make you tall, but those in the cafeteria don’t do anything at all
Feed Your HEAD!
I think someone yesterday thought that Chick-Fil-A was making Billie rounder.
That can’t be true. Yesterday was Sunday; Chick-Fil-A was closed.
That was me. There is nothing wrong with that, but I just cant help but notice. She is probably eating away her depression instead of drinking.
More likely it’s both. Lots of fast food (CFA is fairly healthy as fast food places go, but it ain’t exactly a salad bar) combined with a liking for beer – which is a lot of calories in a form that doesn’t encourage you to go out and burn them.
this is just asking for “EAT ME” art
I think with Billie, “Drink me” is more appropriate.
She tastes like booze!
Alice….What HAVE you done?…
Actually, I thought of this…. “All the young girls love Alice. Tender young Alice, they say. Come over and tease me, come over and please me. Alice, it’s my turn today.”
Joyce’s right you know.
Happens about twice a day.
I have a watch that needs a new battery that’s like that.
Goddammit, Joyce, don’t you know better than to say things like that yet?
Joyce. Knowing better.
oxymoron.
It’s funny how Joyce says ”it’s just a cafeteria”’when she was at the Table Flip Galä just a week ago.
Table Flip held a Gala? 😀
She no longer looks like a genderswapped Faz.
I am disapointed.
You want something like that, get amber to squint and grin in a creepy manner that will do just fine.
Anyone else sad Willis doesn’t seem to have decided to run with that “disturbing resemblance to Faz” thing?
I love Faz and all Faz-like people and am, too, dissapointed.
This graph demonstrates that over 98% of people love Faz-like people in all forms! :▷
You’re holding it upside down.
Lies! The Great Faz has charts to prove you wrong!
in panel 3 joyce might as well be asking “what’s the worst that could happen?”
She looks cool!
A NEW CHALLENGER HAS ENTERED THE RING ! translation completely new character makes her debut for the first and possibly the last time since starting DoA.
Wrong! Raidah and friends are all original, while Alice is from like four Roomies! comics.
There’s what’s-her-name, too, who works at the… front desk, I guess you’d call it?
Asma.
Gesundheit
Do you need an inhaler?
I think her name’s asma
Oh sorry I only completely read through Itswalky, Joyce and Walky, shortpacks , and this.any character that was mentioned only in Roomies I don’t think I would know too well.
Since nobody’s linked it yet, here is where Alice appeared in Roomies!
http://www.itswalky.com/character/alice-chen/
Bah, my Reply-Fu has failed me! This was meant to be placed elsewhere.
Did Billie always not wear glasses in Roomies?
Yeah, she didn’t get her glasses until well into IW!.
Hope this is a good reunion, please be a good reunion
This webcomic is also fueled by comment hubris.
Oh, yay! Someone will now do the rain speech with comment hubris standing in for rain.
Yay! The return of super-ancillary Roomies! characters no one asked for!
Next stop: Guns!
Mark my words, one day we WILL have an appearance from Guns.
Guns is a super-ancillary It’s Walky! character. Totally different.
You mean like
TootsSierra?I keep hoping for a Hooper cameo.
…that came out far more sarcastic than I intended by sheer dint of coming out sarcastic at all.
I’m trying to read it as not-sarcastic but it’s hard.
I don’t know, it’s not that hard considering Wack’d is utterly devoted to the Walkyverse!.
Anyone else and I’d probably think it was sarcastic, though.
Maybe next we’ll get Larry!
Is that one of Billie’s friends from high school? Is she about to get another huge blow to the self-esteem?
Either that or the opposite.
The opposite? She is one of Billie’s friends from self-esteem, and she is about to get a huge blow to her high school?
No, no. That would be a huge blow to the self-astern.
This is what I think as well. My guess is something like “I knew you were coming here too but you party too much and I’m here to study and can’t let you drag me down.”
Maybe not so straight-forward but yeah.
In Roomies, Alice invited Billie to a party and offered her a beer. And I think she was a bridesmaid or something at Billie’s wedding. So I guess they’ve been buddies in other universes, but we the readers don’t know Alice yet.
(whoops, this was meant to be a reply, not meant as unsolicited multi-universe info. Sorry.)
So, you’re saying that Alice is probably the person who gave Billie her first beer in this ‘verse. This is TOTALLY gonna go well…
I’m liking this girl Alice’s haircut a lot.
Alice is going to ruin all the joy Walkie and Joyce brought, isn’t she?
New girl!
TAKE COVER!!!!
This could be good, bad, neither or both.
Good, now I have all bases covered.
Bad, they could still hit a home run.
Neither, they could strike out.
Both, your man on first base might fumble the ball so hard that it goes viral on YouTube, earning him fame and humiliation both.
I’d make a ‘Where’s Dobermon?’ joke but I don’t think anyone would get it so I’ll just say “Welcome to the Dumbverse Alice! Hope you survive the experience!”
Yes, some people remember Alice from Digimon Tamers.
Billie, go ask Alice.
I think she’ll know.
Nah, she’s chasing a white rabbit.
Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?
Twenty-five years just waitin’ for a chance…
That kind of comment drives me Sturr crazy.
Well, since you’ve finally gotten that out of your system, it must seem like a New World to you now.
….yeah, I’ll show myself out.
My gut tells me that things are about to fall apart.
…Just the way I like it.
The good news are that Billie is pretty near the bottom, so the fall won’t be so bad.
The bad news is she’s pretty near the bottom of thin netting with a long drop underneath, and that little push will probably rip it.
Camera pans out & reveals Alice is sitting in a wheel chair. Billie flashes back to her drunk driving incedent.
OK, maybe not.
Remember Alice? It’s a song about Alice.
Dude, how old are you anyway? My copy of that album disappeared so long ago I don’t even remember what state I was living in when it went bye-bye.
Oh man, if you were young for the original, here is the reprise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjKF7aQthcQ
you will be a very happy baby boomer indeed.
love, a 2nd generation hippie.
I dunno about him but one of the radio stations around here plays it every Thanksgiving.
Only one? I’m guessing you only get two radio stations where you live.
Yesss, thank you.
You can get anything you want…at Alice’s Restaurant (Ceptin’ Alice)
It’s not the name of the restaurant, it’s just the name of the song. That’s why I call this song: Alice’s restaurant.
…You can get anythin’ you want…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM
What I love is that anyone who hasn’t heard the song thinks you’re lecturing. Anyone else just started singing. (the song is now stuck in my head, BTW)
Then my work here is done! ::dramatically swoops away::
… how many things in the world are eighteen minutes and twenty seconds long?
I don’t know, but there are twenty-seven eight-by-ten glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back describing what each one was.
(I owned the original back in the day. So stay off my lawn, you kids!)
man, fuck that song. ok no, actually it’s a fun song, but i hold an unfair grudge against it and arlo guthrie because of a former coworker of mine, who was very clearly not ok in her noggin, whether from drugs, brain damage, or just plain born that way. this lady was always talking to herself, only it was ore like she was holding a conversation with someone else who was not present on any plain of reality the rest of us were privy to, and we only ever heard her side of the conversation. well i guess both sides were technically hers, but ANYWAY. she was always talking about being in a band with her buddy arlo (yeah, THAT arlo) and occasionally she’d mention alice’s restaurant and crack up laughing.
the weird part (not that any of this is not weird) was my office had her working phones, so she was always pausing her self-chatter to mumble “thankyouforcallingfamilyassistancem’nm’s’ndahowcanidirectyou” in a lower register of voice, so all the customer complaints to management about her were directed at “the guy who answers the phone”. this became funnier when we had a male part-timer who also mumbled really fast and was also the recipient of customer complaints.
tl;dr: i irrationally and unfairly hate arlo guthrie because of all the time he spent as a resident in a crazy lady’s head.
So did she actually know Arlo?
Almost certainly not.
Walky, even depressed people sometimes smile. If they never smile they are in deep depression.
Or they are heavily injected with Botox.
The only thing I can find regarding Alice is alcohol-related. This can’t be good.
And now we sit and wait, hoping that Alice’s blow-up punchable beer mug makes its appearance. Along with Joyce’s unexplainable giant calculator.
I totally ship the giant novelty beer mug and the inexplicably giant calculator. OTP!
SHE DOESN’T EVEN GO HERE
Shut up, Walky!
a happy Billie is happy…me!!!
WOOOOOOOOO!
For some reason my brain has started to see the outlines of people’s mouths as black lipstick….
Whose Alice? Am I supposed to know who she is? Did I miss something?
This is her first Dumbiverse appearance; we don’t know anything about her yet. Well, besides her name, obviously.
Presumably we will (start to) find out 24 hours from now. This is this character’s first appearance in this comic so anything else is sheer speculation. But clearly it’s someone Billie knows and is surprised (?) to see here.
“Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall”
Who the Fuck is Alice?
(ten points to everyone who gets it)
The Gompie song?
Some girl who lived next door for 24 years.
10 points right here, Dr Hook!
I searched the comments section to check that nobody else had posted it before I did.
!!! Yessss cool new cast member
Please do not revert to type, Billie. Please!
Please be nice Alice, please be nice, please be nice, I don’t think I can take much more of Billie in depressed mode
New girl seems cute, so she’ll probably be horrible.
It’s got to be someone she’s known from her cheerleading days so either way something will happen I reckon
She’s perfectly nice, but a bit annoyed that someone has stolen her cheerleader uniform. Are you aware of how hard they are to find in her size?
Your avatar makes this perfect.
Go ask Alice…Jefferson Airplane (before they became Jefferson Starship).
Grace Slick vocals.
As to Billie, stay happy.
Go ask Alice…You think she’ll know?
Jefferson was always out of luck?
Apropos of nothing, but as Transformers are periodically subject matter for DoA …
Self-Constructing Origami Robots
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28660904
This is pretty interesting.
Are logic and proportion about to fall sloppy dead?
What? Again?
Alice? Are we going through the Looking Glass now? Guess we’ll have to wait and see!
Curiouser and curiouser.
I’m beginning to think Joyce’s level of social awareness is actually on par with Dina. Smile=all better!
Also, “This is just a cafeteria.” As opposed to what? A suicide cliff? The den of the lust-wolves?
A fateful highway?
A truck stop.
Ah, subverted hubris. The same concept that makes ‘We’re safe here’ and ‘what could possibly go wrong?’ such hideously dangerous expressions.
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell them a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice when she was just small
When the men on the chess board
Get up and tell you where to go
And you just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s lost her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head
Maybe we’ll get Lillith — she’s a WALKY! character that had decent page-time and some actual story.
Characters directly based on real people I know will not make appearances in DoA. See also: Hooper, Ninja Rick.
Whoa, Ninja Rick’s a real person?
Did you think someone could MAKE UP a Ninja Rick?
I figured he was digitally composited from multiple real-world individuals like most of the Shortpacked! customers.
Does that mean you are no longer in touch with your Dina?
Understood. Apologies if you’ve covered that one before and I missed it, or if I hit a touchy subject.
I bet Alice is really, really sick of people making Lewis Carroll/Jefferson Airplane/Arlo Guthrie references at her.
And I hope she brought her giant inflatable beer mug to this universe.
She’s also probably sick of chains.
Somebody want to explain to a rookie who only knows the DoA universe who Alice is?
She’s new to DoA.
Back in Roomies, she was a side character and an acquaintance of Billie. In the storyline where she (briefly) appeared, Alice offered Billie alcohol– unaware that Billie had decided to cut back on it. (Billie drank it, but felt super guilty afterward so she didn’t regress.)
First rule of Dumbing of Age: You don’t need to know anything Willis-produced outside of Dumbing of Age.
This is my first Willis comic anyhow. I’m sticking to it!
I love the Alt Text on this one…I am now waiting to see how big a brick is going to fall on poor Billie.
Willis is like the Old Testament God when it comes to his characters…nothing is earned except by pain and misery.
Nothing I like more than coming back from a three week vacation and seeing a buttload of new DoA to read. 🙂
Also, damn. I don’t know who that Alice girl is, but I feel like Billie won’t stay happy for long…
I am so surprised that nobody has started singing “Alice, Alice, Who The Fuck Is Alice?!” yet.
Except for the two who have.
So. Go ask, “Alice?”
All hands Red Alert!!
Is it just me, or is Joyce usually cross-eyed?
Alice? Who the hell is Alice?
Anyone else disturbed at how Joyce and Walky can see Billie’s smile through the back of her head?
Joyce can hear her smile.
And hear the angels laugh.