Well, there was an ‘um’ in there. She needed an explanation, not a truth.
Why she felt the need to explain herself, I dunno. Kid reads too many superhero comics.
Oh man, can you imagine? Malaya is the person he called to come help, fights off Sal, Marcie catches up, has to choose between them, muddied by the fact that Malaya is taking the side of her childhood bully.
Nope! The party involving Ryan was a party Joyce went to. The party where Dorothy got schwasty, Dina and Becky got together, and Ruth forced everyone to watch Frozen is the Joyceparty.
True, and what a fantastic party that was, but the prominent thing in mind for now when someone says “Joyce”+”Party” is the Ryan incident, but, perhaps, that won’t be true after this part of the story is over.
It’s a comments filter. Willis didn’t like people calling characters b-words so every instance gets replaced with “bongo”.
There’s also something — I don’t know what — that gets replaced with “glistening phallus”.
And the c-word that refers to female-genitalia and doubles as an extremely derogatory reference to a woman gets your post automatically deleted outright.
I think I saw that the phallus one was removed. Another filter is a Street Fighter movie quote, from when the big bad was giving a speech to the heroine about how the day he came into her life was the most important day for her, but for him is was just another day.
The names of the Libertarian nominees for president and vice president in the 2016 USA election contest are replaced with the names of the Democratic nominees. I think because Willis was tired of people spamming comments with just those names and “2016”.
A little bit, yeah, he did spend at least an hour trying to drug and rape some random girl at a party and that was clearly his goal in going to the party so he also put effort into acquiring what he needed and finding an appropriate party and target prior to his hour long attempt on said target..
Yeah, but for rapists, the turn-on isn’t accessing consensual sex with a willing partner. The turn-on is the power in victimizing someone and violating their boundaries.
One of my ex’s rapists was the living embodiment of this principle because he was full of charisma and very charming. And he had people who were very attracted to him and down for all sorts of consensual activities. So every time, he would instead push and push against the boundaries at the edges because for him the enjoyment wasn’t having nice consensual sex, it was making a person feel violated and like trash. The fun for him was the rape and so he would go out of his way to turn a consensual encounter into a non-consensual one even if that took way more work.
@Bicycle Bill: A consensual night of sex between consenting adults where both mad clear they weren’t interested in a relationship and just wanted to have fun.
Don’t forget she sent the photo to Dorothy for verification. Also, someone might have seen the photo on whatever social media she used during the fight, just before he deleted it.
Big deal, she’s a computer scientist. Recovering deleted data is trivial. When you “delete” a file, all it does is mark that space is reusable, it doesn’t actually remove any of the data unless you use some sort of data wiping utility, which scarface certainly did not.
I think trivial is still a bit of a stretch, but yes, it isn’t usually difficult under normal circumstances. That’s clearly the least of her worries though “How long…” is the more important question to her.
Problem is that most phones use internal memory these days, which means that in most cases you won’t have the block device access you need, and unless you’ve already got some means of streaming block device level access to another system or a chroot with recovery software already installed (or I suppose an Android version of block level recovery software on a rooted phone) you at the very least have to risk overwriting or triggering remapping of the target memory to install suitable software for recovery…
This probably doesn’t apply here though, given the time this was set in Amber’s phone probably requires a microSD card for photos, which works well for recovery, but just about the only way you’d get it back on a modern phone (remember even modern phones with memory cards will use the internal storage first) would be FBI level forensics.
The time this is set in is -now-. Dumbing of Age uses Comic Book Time. When the first strip was posted, it was set in 2010, but presently the current strip is set in 2016 and the first strip is retroactively set in 2016. Four years from now, the first strip, this strip, and the then-current strip will all be set in 2020.
(Unless in-comic New Years rolls around by then, in which case the then-current strip would be set in 2020 while the first strip and this strip would be retroactively set in 2019)
@Deanatay: If I recall correctly, someone mathed it out with specific in-comic references to august and october, and we’re currently on early AM October 4th. Unless we hit a pretty giant timeskip, this year’s synch date will most likely be either Oct 4 or MAYBE Oct 5.
Flash memory, as used in phones, is even more difficult to delete, to the point where it’s difficult for current technology to actually say it has been deleted and overwritten.
Still, phones don’t tend to be overburdened with storage, which means every minute it’s powered on noticeably increases the chances of data overwriting the “wiped” blocks, and given how JPEG compression works, all it takes is a single bad block to make the entire picture pretty much useless.
The problem is that Ryan deleted it, which means he grabbed the phone before it screenlocked, meaning he could have seen enough to figure out who AG really is: he has had access, for a limited time, to all of Amber’s personal information.
Didn’t she text the picture to Dorothy? So there’s still at least one copy of the photo floating around somewhere. Assuming Dorothy didn’t delete the text, she could download and upload the image, right?
Besides, I’d be more worried about the car at this point.
would Amazi-Girl go out of her way to keep someone like Ryan from being murdered? I know Batman would, but how close is she to Batman in terms of morality?
The picture Dorothy has is the one she took from further away back when she saw him across the room in the rally crowd. She took a picture of him later when she confronted him in the lobby that was much closer up. That picture is gone or at the very least likely a challenge to retrieve even for someone who has substantial computer skills. The picture she sent Dorothy would be on Dorothy’s phone regardless, but it’s a lot lower quality for however she planned than the close-up she got.
She could probably take another shot of him now that they caught up with him, but if he was under visible duress in it that might make people sympathetic to him. :/
If it’s still on her phone, it’s not really that much of a challenge to retrieve. Pull out the SD card, stick it in a computer on read only, then use an undelete program.
The question, though, is whether it’s still there. Once deleted, a file can be overwritten at any time. Whether it gets so is basically random, in my experience.
The ‘challenge to retrieve’ is if he managed to delete it. Amber has enough computer skills that she might be able to retrieve it if it hasn’t been overwritten yet, while that would be beyond the average person’s skillset. Given how not too much time seems to have passed, that may be more possible than otherwise.
As she said “uploading” directly after taking the shot she obviously uploaded it either to a social media account or some cloud or other. With both, retrieving it is a piece of cake technicality as they never really delete stuff. It might be more difficult in terms of getting the respective provider to do so.
And the real question is, how did he manage to delete her phone? As they caught him, there can only have been a few minutes between this page and the last. Was her lock screen not engaged? Resetting the phone also need a pw usually. How did he figure that out? Dabs on the screen?
Did he take screenshots of her contacts and mailed them to himself?
Well
If we go long term enough death is the eventual outcome anyway
I don’t think there are any humans with a verified age over 122 years, so a one-century timeskip means all these characters would probably be down for the count
In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway nine,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected, and steppin’ out over the line
H-Oh, Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
`Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I want to guard your dreams and visions.
Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims
And strap your hands ‘cross my engines!
Together we could break this trap
We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back
Ho-Oh, Will you walk with me out on the wire
`Cause baby I’m just a scared and lonely rider…
…and on the VERY OBVIOUS BAD SIDE, He was likely inside Amber’s phone and maybe (almost certainly) long enough to potentially find identifying information.
Deleting his own photo takes seconds, assuming it was still up. Calling someone doesn’t take too long, either.
And, as someone else said, why isn’t he saying something about knowing her identity to get Sal to let him go?
Maybe he’s seen what she looks like, but that’s not going to be enough to identify her. It depends on how much identifying information she had in her phone. On mine, the only way to get my info would be my email address, and, unlike mine, Amber’s may not be her name @google.com.
Most phones switch over to the next photo when one is deleted. Any of her photos has the potential to be very problematic. He might not know who she is right now, but he might have enough information to figure it out later or to track down someone she knows…like Danny, for instance.
Yeah, he might have contact info, and then could figure it out from there. But having seen photos would tell him nothing. Not until he runs into those people in real life, at least.
And, even then, the longer that takes, the less likely he’ll remember exactly what they look like to be sure.
Seeing the photos would tell him both what they look like and likely where to look for them. Remember this is a college campus that they all attend. It wouldn’t take much for him to go “Oh, that’s such-and-such building or place,” at which point he knows exactly where to go to look for them.
We played a game on my college campus at one point that on occasion involved identifying specific places on campus from obscure photographs and I can tell you it hardly took anything at all for most people to know where a photograph was taken. Even one that was just the face of a microwave.
What Doopyboop said. His first concern was to delete the picture; mission accomplished.
Second concern was to get the hell out of Dodge, and he called someone on his own phone to do that. Why his own phone? Because no one memorizes phone numbers any more. Someone gives you their number, you just enter it into your phone and turn it into a contact.
I don’t think enough time has passed for him to have done anything more than that.
I’m sure what you said (that nobody remembers phone numbers anymore) is going to get me in trouble one of these days: I always had poor memory for this kind of stuff (random strings of numbers, I’m actually good at remembering happenings and names and such), and I still struggle to remember my own phone number without checking first. I don’t even know what my parents’ numbers are.
And one of these days, I’ll have to make an emergency call to somebody, my phone will be dead and I’d be in deep shit.
You know, it doesn’t really matter if the photo is deleted. He’s right there- she merely has to take another. Random Car Person might interfere with that….which is probably why Willis had them arrive when they did.
She’s not worried that he deleted the photo- I mean it doesn’t matter that he did. She sent it to Dorothy, so she still has it anyway. She just has to redownload it from messages.
This means he might know she’s AMBER, though, is why she’s wigging out.
AG mentions ‘her friend’s phone’ which is Sal’s. But, I kinda thought AG and Amber each have their own phones. AG’s might have limited contacts, etc. No incriminating pics of Amber, etc, for just this reason. I may be wrong, but… the way she partitions AG/Amber, it makes sense.
You’d be surprised how fast cellphones lose their value. So long as you don’t have to have the latest model of a phone, previous models — even brand new — are at least a couple hundred bucks less than the newest versions. And you can get a used, second-hand phone on Craigslist or eBay even cheaper.
Actually, she said “my, um, friend wrote onto another phone”.
This “friend” is Amber. Amber is Clark Kent, AG is Superman. She’s hiding a piece of information about her real identity (that she is good with coding) to avoid revealing any info that could be used to identify her.
Dorothy has said pic, he is right in front of you to take another, why are you freaking out – besides the fact your screen lock isn’t INSTANT. Wtf amazi-amber
My guess is that he didn’t find anything compromising, or else he’d be shouting it out immediately to show AG he’s got something on her and try to blackmail her into letting him go.
Last we saw of them only two of them were fighting Sal and AG. The other one was either forgotten about during the commotion or booked it first chance he got.
And after Dorothy got the call, she texted Joyce who ran out and stole car an is now arriving on the scene. Who else would go Squeeee!!! at the sight of Sal and Amazigirl. :-S
Blaine got around a lot, remember? (At least in the Walkyverse.) Faz is the youngest son. Faa’s the eldestson, Fab’s the second-eldest, Faj is the tenth-eldest.
I’m happy enough that Sal didn’t that even if it comes at the cost of Ryan not getting hit too so be it. He can always be dragged through the mud later.
damn, from the looks of it it’s the worst case scenario. dude in the car probably isn’t ryan’s friend, he’s his dealer. and right now, the one thing worse than a dude selling roofies on a college campus is amazigirl having someone like that to focus and obsess over.
I have a few contacts saved simply because I had to block those numbers due to stalking and I don’t want the phone to “forget” to ignore those numbers.
I mean, they are just straight-up standing in the middle of the street, so it’s really not a surprise that they’re being run over. But Amazi-Girl really needs to pay better attention to traffic safety. Traffic is probably the #1 vigilante killer in the country^^
Good thing she texted the photo to Dorothy, you can retrieve photos from texts pretty easily. And if he deleted it from the text, Dorothy had a copy on her phone now.
Amazi-Girl, I know you’re a cape and all and it comes with the territory, but if you’re concerned about your secret identity, you might want to resist the urge to exposit in front of the perp.
Amber’s going to jail and Sal and Ryan are in some serious pain. So like the only good in this encounter is Amber will probably end up, eventually, with the help she needs and the dubious possibility of Ryan being brought to justice for his attempted rape… All because waiting till a more opportune time to stealthily photograph him or just not being so confrontational in photographing him was so hard.
None of them look like they were actually hit to me. Sal pulled Ryan out of the way, and AG was just on the other side, maybe lightly grazed.
I do agree that AG’s penchant for going in half-cocked caused this, though. Come up, take his photo, then leave. Post it, and the Internet would have figured out his name.
But because AG wanted a fight, she didn’t do that.
It’s the problem I’ve said for a long time. Sal says it’s escalation, but she’s not quite right. It’s just not planning things. This often leads to escalation, but that’s not the whole problem.
Usually, when you are talking about something sensitive, it’s always for a fictitious friend (“I have this ‘friend’ – yeah, that’s it, a ‘friend’ – who’s two weeks late; do you know where I can tell her to go to get tested?”). Amber does not want it to be known — at least not by Ryan — that she is a tech geek.
I’m wondering if perhaps that her background was set to a picture of her and Danny or something, and now he’ll keep a lookout for “Amazi-Girl’s boyfriend.”
At the least, I think he got a contact. Dorothy, Ethan or Danny seem the most likely.
It wouldn’t be a picture of Amber and Danny, because Danny is Amazi-Girl’s boyfriend, and it wouldn’t be a picture of Amazi-Girl and Danny, because it’s Amber’s phone.
If she was able to track her phone from Sal’s phone, would she be capable of doing something on her own phone to enable her to track Ryan’s phone? (Likely this would require at least some access to it but c’mon, it’s RIGHT THERE. Well, assuming it didn’t just get run over, but still.)
I think it is safe to say that this is the friend Ryan was calling in the last strip. Given he told him to “turn around and come back”, it was probably someone who was at the rally but left after the fighting broke out.
The only tagged people we’ve seen at the rally are Sal, Amazigirl, Leslie, Frieda, Ryan, Beef, Kyle, the DeSantos and the Dude-bro triplets.
AG, Sal and Ryan are accounted for.
The DeSantos and Kyle are preparing for the rally and wouldn’t have left.
Leslie is right out.
Definitely not the dude-bro triplets, they were incapacitated. Even if they’re up now, they wouldn’t have made it out before Ryan.
Frieda is possible, but very unlikely. Vehicular manslaughter would compromise the campaign.
Beef is a possible culprit. We haven’t seen him since Sal punched Ryan. He may have bailed when he realized AG wasn’t going to lose the fight and he wasn’t going to get any kind of vicarious revenge.
The other option is, of course, someone we haven’t met or who we weren’t aware was at the rally.
Beef was at the party, and at least hanging out with the jerks who wanted to beat up Danny. If its anyone we’d actually seen at the rally, I’d bet it’d be him.
Leland seems like another possibility though. He’s the right kind of asshole.
Indeed! I thought he may be friends with Ryan (or at least be acquainted with him) because he’s been in both places we saw Ryan and we have reason to think he’s kind of a jerk.
I kind of doubt it would be Leland. While he was certainly being raised to be exactly that kind of asshole, it would be too much of a bizarre coincidence.
The one person I forgot about was Marcie (just like Sal did). It could be her coming to break up the fight, but I doubt she would know exactly where they are and I don’t think she has the financial wherewithal to own a car. It seems as though she puts most of her resources into rent.
IU is a big public school in the same state they grew up in, so not THAT much of a coincidence. My college only had about 2,000 people total, and there were at least 20 people from my high school who went there, and I grew up 3 hours away.
This would also seem a good point in the story (hopefully near the end) for the two arcs to start crashing together, if they were going to.
True. Indiana isn’t exactly sparsely populated, but it wouldn’t be so strange for kids who went to elementary school together to end up at the same college.
I still doubt it’s Leland, though. Leland would most likely be a freshman, same as Sal and Walky. Ryan said he needed to stay at his friend’s place for a while, but Leland would be living on campus.
I don’t think it’s safe to say that at all. The car is still moving, maybe just trying to stop. If they were the friend, they’d know approximately where Ryan was.
Well, unless they freaked out when they heard Ryan’s phone drop. But, even then, they got there really, really fast. Surely there would have been about a minute of making sure that Ryan wasn’t there and frantically calling him back.
Sure, the car is still moving, but “SQUEEE” implies hard braking. The friend may have been trying for a non-lethal hit to free Ryan. Or maybe he’s just reckless. Or maybe he’s not that good a friend of Ryan’s and he doesn’t much care if he gets hurt.
I doubt the driver didn’t see them. Their headlights are on and AG is wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit. Also, the road they’re on looks like a short, curved drive for picking up and dropping off passengers, so it’s very unlikely anyone is driving up at that speed and at that hour unless they meant to get there in a great damn hurry.
As for the swift arrival, Ryan did say that he was just around the corner.
actually if you text a picture to someone then delete the picture the picture is still in your texts AND your friend still has the photo, so deleting the picture doesn’t matter one bit 🙂
Comic Reactions: … Yeah, I’m not gonna lie and say this arc isn’t slow going for me and right now, I’m just right there with AG. He had access to AG’s phone for an undisclosed amount of time, likely not only trying to find the photo, but also the (slur for woman) who sent a superhero after him.
At the very least, he should have Dorothy’s name and number (and Dorothy is not a terribly common first name) and possibly also the name of Joyce if AG had to reference Joyce by name for the confirmation.
Which means Ryan has become like Toedad, a sword of Damocles waiting around in the background. Which is kind of how it feels with dangerous folks who know where you are. Like, at any moment they could destroy your life, so you can never fully settle and relax.
And for AG, it also means a person who may have a means of harming her (and likely also giving Sal a tool to know if AG is spying on her by the tracking app left on her phone, which is a nice sign of trust) and who may know her identity and want to spread it far and wide so as to better insulate his own self in case she tries to attack him.
Overall, this is one of the bigger “oh fuck” cliffhangers in a while.
Yeah, I think in terms of potential future implications, this is on the same scale as any of our other really big cliffhangers and definitely the biggest we’ve had in a while.
A lot of people in the comments are suggesting that perhaps Ryan didn’t have time to find her personal information. After all, he was running away and trying to arrange rescue. Maybe that’s true. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.
But AG doesn’t know that. She can’t ever know that. Even if he doesn’t have her personal information, the thought that he might will haunt her. He may not be a threat, but she’ll always be afraid, and he can use that fear to make her life hell.
Okay, a lot of you are talking like Sal and Ryan got hit. To me, they look like they’re on the other side of the car, and just jumped out of the way (but Sal lost her grip on Ryan. Above I thought she still had him, so I thought she pulled him away.) AG looks like she was knocked around by the wind.
So are some of you spoiled with the next comic? Or are we just all seeing things differently?
In general, I have been impressed with the restraint showed by the other Patreon people here with not spoiling tomorrow’s comic, even when people are saying things that are obviously wrong from our foreknowledge.
If you really can’t afford that, I’m sorry. I know. I’ve been there. It sucks. I’m not trying to guilt you or rub it in your face. That would be a seriously shitty thing to do.
But for others in the comment section who can afford a latte, consider buying Willis a coffee. He has twins. He needs the coffee.
Where I work, a small coffee is about $2, a large latte is about $5. I have charged as much as $8 for drinks with extra shots of espresso, half and half and extra syrup.
Whoa wait $20 is only like… three hours of work a week here? Did you typo that?
And $5 is pretty much the average for coffee drinks. You can buy instant coffee to make at home for less, but if you go to a coffeeshop it’s probably going to be $4-6. ;~;
I don’t have a steady income source. I still live with my parents and therefore don’t need to worry about money for the immediate future, but while I can feel reasonably confident I’ll have one or two dollars in my account every month that I can use to support things on Patreon that’s about the most I can reliably commit.
If $5 is at all a medium-to-big deal for anybody, for the love of God, absolutely don’t worry about it, ever ever. You need that $5 more than me. I’d rather people eat than have free comics they will see tomorrow!
I am annoyed at Amazi-Girl for not having her own separate line and phone. Using Amber’s phone for her extra-curricular activities was always a huge risk. When I was running my own business I had a separate line for work related things so I didn’t have to give out my private number. I suppose her gaff can be forgiven on grounds of limited funds.
Amber is a college student who, it has been implied, is having college funded on her behalf by her derivation of applied DNA. She also had to wait for her mom to “scrounge up” money for new glasses. She likely doesn’t have money for a second line or even a cheap burner phone.
Oh, really? Whoever that is was planning to run over Ryan as well as Amazi-Girl and Ryan! I’m wondering if he is low man in a much larger and much more unpleasant pile upon which Amazi-Girl and Sal have just stumbled!
“Huh, nerd girl has the same phone cover as Amazi-whatsit.”
Sal’s actually clever enough to probably connect the dots, but individual phones and phone covers aren’t that distinctive on a campus full of college kids with phones.
She’d need to have spent enough time in the same room as Amber to have noticed her phone too, and that’s never happened, because Amber always has a panic attack
No, she’d need to spend time with Amber at some point in the future, otherwise she’d be noticing Amazi-girl with Amber’s phone and not Amber with Amazi-girl’s phone.
With all the press she’s been getting, Amazi-girl might want to consider getting Amber a cheap phone case so they can’t be linked by that if someone happens to catch a picture of her taking a break from the midnight crusade to text someone or check the time.
That seems more likely, but even if Sal stops triggering Amber’s panic attacks entirely, I’d be rather surprised if they end up hanging out. Becoming friends is not a necessary result of them no longer being enemies.
Also, why do people keep suggesting a broke-ass college student buy a second cell phone and phone line like it’s something she could afford? What little disposable income she has goes into comic books and WoW subscriptions and grappling hooks and extra caltrops!
I don’t know if TlaclocW above was joking or not, but that really does look like Becky’s dad”s car. Look at the damage on the underside. This would be a really weird twist, though.
PREDICTION:
Ryan is a member of a group of like-minded individuals, a ‘Campus Roofie Club’, if you like, who aid and shelter each other, giving alibis and the like. The reason his friend in the car is trying to run him over along with Sal and Amazi-Girl is that he’s decided that it is better if Ryan is silenced rather than have the opportunity to turn the whole lot of them in as part of a plea bargain.
Amazi-Girl and Sal may have knocked the top off a very unpleasant, pus-filled sore in Bloomington. This could be their big moment when they ascend to serious notoriety for a big catch. Or it could be the moment when they realise just how out-of-their-depth they really are.
Groups of misogynistic assholes congeal naturally wherever you get enough toxic masculinity in one place. It doesn’t even have to be taught explicitly. No vast hidden conspiracy is required. It’s like how its possible to create a bomb from household items. None of the ingredients are hard to find, they just need to be assembled in a particular way. Except in this case, that tends to happen by accident with alarming regularity.
Even most frats probably aren’t straight-up rapist factories. They just often tend to emphasize hyper-masculinity and use a lot of peer pressure, turning some into just the right kind of echo chamber than can start spitting out douchebags non-stop once if they start turning bad.
Have The Analysts figured out if Ryan is on the hood/bonnet of that car and if he is why his head pointing away from it and if not how he became airborne and please don’t say that Sal swung him horizontal BEFORE her Full Nelson was broken as she recoiled away from the car and how they didn’t notice the car until it was in the midst of them and is that a DeLorean and it’s about to take Ryan into the past … or future … um, where was I? OH YEAH! AG should have given Ryan her best shot right in the dchnoz while Sal had him I mobilized in that Full Nelson (which Ryan seemed not to know how to break, Probly cause wrestling was cut at his high school). Can you say “go down like the proverbial sack of potatoes, blood spraying everywhere” boys and girls?
(Yes, Sals hold was not a proper Full Nelson (her hands aren’t behind his neck, canterlevering his arms up and out and pushing his head forward and downwards ……)
Looks like Sal saved his life by pulling him out of the way of that car. He didn’t appear to have been struggling earlier. He just took a hit to the head, and probably realizes that struggling would result in more hitting. Which, I’d be totally fine with.
I don’t think that the analysts have enough examples of Dumbiverse physics available to make reliable predictions. In particular Amazigirl’s gravity defiance field is a bit of an unknown.
The issue isn’t that she doesn’t have the photo – Ryan’s RIGHT THERE, she could take another photo. The issue is that he deleting the photo means he had access to her unlocked phone and she has no idea what else he did – like findign out who she is.
The worry is that he’s seen other things on her ‘phone (although I doubt that he had the time or thought to do that – after deleting the pic, his first thought probably would have been to find somewhere to lie low rather than spend time looking through her contacts list and photo album). That doesn’t mean that Amber won’t have a nasty few days whilst she frets that he may have passed information about her or her friends on to insalubrious individuals.
Ok, I see plenty of people commenting on this, so I thought I’d make an explanatory post instead of a comment response. The reason you don’t get why AG is so worried about the missing photo is because you’re focusing on the wrong panel.
It’s not the third panel, it’s the fourth.
The photo is nothing. Dorothy has the photo. Ryan’s RIGHT THERE, she can take as many photos as she wants. The missing photo is just evidence that he had access to the phone in an unlocked status. Here’s the fourth panel speech, uncut-off:
“Did you get in BEFORE the screenlock? How long were you…” looking through my phone and OH MY GOD WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT ME FROM IT?
Yeah, a lot of people aren’t picking up what Davis is putting down in panel four. Which is weird because wasn’t Amazigirl all, “Oh no, my identity” just a couple of days ago?
Yup, that’s the terrifying part. That Ryan was in the phone. That Ryan might have seen something that lets him “get his revenge” on a later date on either her other alter or one of her friends (or worse yet, Dorothy and Joyce as those names likely came up on the text messages on her phone that were also likely up on a tab).
Him being on the phone long enough to navigate it and remove his photo means that he’s going to be a future threat and is likely upgrading to the Full Stalker package as he fumes on his “emasculation” at the hands of a couple of (slur for women).
Keep in mind, the only real evidence they have is witness testimony– A failed attempt is much less able to be proven. And Joyce can be as traumatized as possible– He still can’t actually be convicted of rape. The entire VENGEANCE thing doesnt always work out.
Also, no police report? Joyce hasn’t actually gone to the cops, remember? I’m not familiar with the intricacies (possibly clusterfuck) of the US judicial system, but I don’t think rape is a public crime; i.e., even if everyone knew that Ryan was a rapist, he can’t be brought to trial if none of the victims presses charges.
I don’t think that’s true. The case is still the State vs Gashface.
Now, it’s hard enough to get a conviction on rape charges with a cooperating victim, it would be very rare for a prosecutor to push the case when the victim isn’t interested.
Given how terrible the landscape is for actually prosecuting rape attempts, my hope is that he oversteps himself like Toedad did in the common narrative of forcing a queer kid into reparative therapy in a way the cops just can’t ignore.
And hopefully in a way that either minimizes new traumas for Joyce or allows her some sort of healing moment standing up to her rapist.
Toedad was immersed in a positive feedback loop – everyone around him (effectively, the society he interacted with) thought like he did; no-one from his community would condemn him for wanting Becky in disreparative mindfuck. When he pulled the gun out, he didn’t think he was going to jail for it, he thought that was what anyone would do.
Ryan’s in a different boat – maybe his dudebros would high-five him if he told him he roofied and raped a girl, but, critical prosecution failures aside, public opinion at large tends to be very much against rape. While Toedad would proudly advertise to the world the steps he took to save his daughter from the “demons of gayness,” Ryan KNOWS his best shot at not-ostracism is keeping it secret.
Well, yeah, they are against “rape”. But “everyone knows” that a good guy like Ryan would never rape. Like, he doesn’t lurk in bushes, he hangs out at parties and has friends and is probably really kind and friendly to those he considers equals.
And so, he certainly couldn’t have committed rape. She must be trying to destroy his name because she “regretted” a one-night stand after giving in to her lustful impulses and (slur for woman who is sexual) ways.
And he’s really hurt by this. This is affecting his studies and ruining his life and he can’t believe she’d be so cruel as to accuse him of something so awful.
And people will believe that, because they want to believe that (slurs for women) always be lyin’ about things like this. Because we view rape as bad in the same way as we view racism as bad. As something that marks someone as a “bad person”, so any accusation of actually being that is seen as beyond the pale, because that person isn’t what we imagine as a purely “bad person” without positive value.
So a crowd is more likely to take something like assault or attempted murder more seriously than even a rape case with evidence.
He doesn’t even enjoy steak like he used to! *gags*
Two salient differences from (what I understand are) most rape trials, however, are that: 1) drugs were involved (though at this point it’d be impossible to prove anything, unless Ryan is dumb enough to keep those on his person or a stash at his place); 2) since the rape attempt was unsuccessful, there really is nothing for Joyce to regret (well, there IS, but not a one-night stand).
On the other hand, after having realised that rapists are getting lighter sentences because ACTUAL FUCKING JUDGES are going easy on rapists because they don’t want to ruin their future (presumably, giving them actual jail time might make it harder for them to rape again, which would, y’know, be such a pity), what the fuck do I know?
I mean, other than I already loathe humanity enough, please stop giving me more reasons, humanity, kk? Thanks.
I think I may have to wait a month or two before going back to reading this comment. The gut-wrenching train wreck that’s going to happen now is more than I want to deal with.
I have created this detailed chart indicating why, of all possible people, the great Faz is the only one whou could possibly be driving that car. I have also made this chart, detailing why Faz makes the best charts.
This is why my screen lock button on my phone case has a deep divot worn away in the middle. Whether you’re a superhero or not, pressing it subconsciously is a great reflex to develop!
Loading ...
Bringing a dropkick to a carfight again, Amazi-Girl?
I guess that’s better than bringing piss to a shitfight.
(Silicon Valley reference aside, that doesn’t sound like it would have any winners)
Well she won the last fight, so… go with what works.
Interesting that she calls Amber her friend when Amber seems to largely view Amazi-Girl as a place for all the negative aspects of herself.
Well, there was an ‘um’ in there. She needed an explanation, not a truth.
Why she felt the need to explain herself, I dunno. Kid reads too many superhero comics.
Amber shes Amazigirl as a way to lock all the negative aspects that are Amber away.
It’s much the same way Superman drops a line about how he flew Clark Kent to safety.
Amazi-Girl and Amber think of themselves as distinct entities, we just don’t know what that means to her yet.
I think she’s referring to Sal. After all, she just asked Sal to borrow her phone a couple strips ago.
She’s referring to Amber, the person who wrote the locator app. AG downloaded the app her “friend” wrote onto Sal’s phone.
Ooooh, I see! Thanks! ^_^
I see Malaya has arrived on the scene.
Oh man, can you imagine? Malaya is the person he called to come help, fights off Sal, Marcie catches up, has to choose between them, muddied by the fact that Malaya is taking the side of her childhood bully.
Talk about crash course
Ryan wasn’t her childhood bully.
besides, I think it’s pretty clear that if it came down to actually having to pick sides, Marcie wouldn’t even hesitate.
“You didn’t see…fanfic did you? Because I want you to know that it’s set in an alternate universe where those characters are all over 18!”
“I need closure on that Steve/Bucky hurt-comfort slashfic. Can you email part 2 to me later on?”
It’s the truck driver who killed Ruth! HE’S BACK! JUDGEMENT DAY HAS ARRIVED!
Either that or the driver from Something Positive is making their way through Indiana.
At least it wasn’t a truck this time.
Unlikely. S*P traditionally uses red cars for that sort of thing.
Yeah, but they got flown in for the guest appearance and the rental place was all out of red cars…
The driver was trying to take care of that…
They are not red when fresh out of the car wash.
Isn’t that driver from Something Positive dead?
Naw, Avogadro is dead.
But Avogadro was already dead when Drew got himself run’dover.
But then that’s the Walkyverse, not the Dumbiverse. All bets are off.
No the driver from Something positive is dead remember
i can’t stop laughing.
It’s Rayne and his Audibot from LICD.
As questionable as Rayne is, he would never support anyone like Ryan.
act with honor
oh geeze he got in…… quick take a new picture.
I think the picture is the least of her worries.
she’s been car hopping before. she’s used to it.
no…he could have figured out her identity….
yeah but if thats the case all the more reason to get his photo.
Then you both have leverage against the other, deadlocked in a stalemate. “Back to square one. Scary square.”
If she loses Amazi-Girl, she’s likely to snap. Nobody wants that. Well some some… things do, but nothing I’d be sure about calling a person.
Snap hasn’t been implemented, yet.
You have used an unfortunate name.
Nope! The party involving Ryan was a party Joyce went to. The party where Dorothy got schwasty, Dina and Becky got together, and Ruth forced everyone to watch Frozen is the Joyceparty.
True, and what a fantastic party that was, but the prominent thing in mind for now when someone says “Joyce”+”Party” is the Ryan incident, but, perhaps, that won’t be true after this part of the story is over.
He described her as “some crazy superhero bongo” in the previous panel. Didn’t sounds like he knew her identity.
huh, that is an interesting autocorrect
New to the comments? There’s more.
It’s a comments filter. Willis didn’t like people calling characters b-words so every instance gets replaced with “bongo”.
There’s also something — I don’t know what — that gets replaced with “glistening phallus”.
And the c-word that refers to female-genitalia and doubles as an extremely derogatory reference to a woman gets your post automatically deleted outright.
Is there any I’m missing?
I think I saw that the phallus one was removed. Another filter is a Street Fighter movie quote, from when the big bad was giving a speech to the heroine about how the day he came into her life was the most important day for her, but for him is was just another day.
“No capes!” will likely go on the list soon.
No, “No capes!” isn’t harmful to anyone, it’s just a meme.
I could be wrong… but is that one particular Rick Astley youtube link on that list?
“No capes” isn’t harmful, but neither is the “For her, it was … ” bit.
That got overused and annoying, so it got zapped.
Is the SJW one still working?
The names of the Libertarian nominees for president and vice president in the 2016 USA election contest are replaced with the names of the Democratic nominees. I think because Willis was tired of people spamming comments with just those names and “2016”.
Yeah, but if there’s names in the contact list he could put things together with some effort. Or do worse things than just figure out her identity.
does he look like the type of person who puts effort into things?
A little bit, yeah, he did spend at least an hour trying to drug and rape some random girl at a party and that was clearly his goal in going to the party so he also put effort into acquiring what he needed and finding an appropriate party and target prior to his hour long attempt on said target..
as opposed to trying to get legitimate one night stands and such.
An hour of of effort is still an hour of effort.
miados, at the risk of sounding like a certified prude, just what is considered a “legitimate” one night stand?
@Bicycle Bill, I’d wager one that was consensual on both ends and not… you know… rape.
ety is right. two people hooking up and having sex once then splitting without any rape would be a legitimate one.
CONTENT WARNING: Awful rape stuff
Yeah, but for rapists, the turn-on isn’t accessing consensual sex with a willing partner. The turn-on is the power in victimizing someone and violating their boundaries.
One of my ex’s rapists was the living embodiment of this principle because he was full of charisma and very charming. And he had people who were very attracted to him and down for all sorts of consensual activities. So every time, he would instead push and push against the boundaries at the edges because for him the enjoyment wasn’t having nice consensual sex, it was making a person feel violated and like trash. The fun for him was the rape and so he would go out of his way to turn a consensual encounter into a non-consensual one even if that took way more work.
@Bicycle Bill: A consensual night of sex between consenting adults where both mad clear they weren’t interested in a relationship and just wanted to have fun.
Yeah, he might have learned something about her. But that’s nothing that percussive memory maintenance can’t solve.
“Percussive memory maintenance” sounds like a very useful technique. Do you have a natural way with words?
Uh…. does Broca’s Area count? If so, yes.
Don’t forget she sent the photo to Dorothy for verification. Also, someone might have seen the photo on whatever social media she used during the fight, just before he deleted it.
He deleted the higher-resolution photo that she took during the confrontation, that she hadn’t sent to Dorothy.
Big deal, she’s a computer scientist. Recovering deleted data is trivial. When you “delete” a file, all it does is mark that space is reusable, it doesn’t actually remove any of the data unless you use some sort of data wiping utility, which scarface certainly did not.
yeah. unless you do a mass bit/byte rewrite with a program it can be found. something like turn everything to a 0 then a 1 then a 0 again
I think trivial is still a bit of a stretch, but yes, it isn’t usually difficult under normal circumstances. That’s clearly the least of her worries though “How long…” is the more important question to her.
My friend *just* did this for me, tonight! Not impossible.
I know. I’ve done it quite a bit myself.
Problem is that most phones use internal memory these days, which means that in most cases you won’t have the block device access you need, and unless you’ve already got some means of streaming block device level access to another system or a chroot with recovery software already installed (or I suppose an Android version of block level recovery software on a rooted phone) you at the very least have to risk overwriting or triggering remapping of the target memory to install suitable software for recovery…
This probably doesn’t apply here though, given the time this was set in Amber’s phone probably requires a microSD card for photos, which works well for recovery, but just about the only way you’d get it back on a modern phone (remember even modern phones with memory cards will use the internal storage first) would be FBI level forensics.
“given the time this was set in”
The time this is set in is -now-. Dumbing of Age uses Comic Book Time. When the first strip was posted, it was set in 2010, but presently the current strip is set in 2016 and the first strip is retroactively set in 2016. Four years from now, the first strip, this strip, and the then-current strip will all be set in 2020.
(Unless in-comic New Years rolls around by then, in which case the then-current strip would be set in 2020 while the first strip and this strip would be retroactively set in 2019)
Except “the time this was set in” is now… it’s always now in the Dumbiverse (well, flashbacks excluded).
However, Amber/AG’s phone isn’t a particularly new one, so what you said still pertains.
Aaand I didn’t refresh.
Regardless of the year, we’ll soon be caught up to the correct month (October), and soon maybe even the correct DAY!
(Hoping they meet on Halloween OH PLEASE)
@Deanatay: If I recall correctly, someone mathed it out with specific in-comic references to august and october, and we’re currently on early AM October 4th. Unless we hit a pretty giant timeskip, this year’s synch date will most likely be either Oct 4 or MAYBE Oct 5.
Out of boredom, I decided to check previous synch dates:
2010 does not have a synch date due to not having started yet, so the first strip is closest. (Sep 10 real date vs Aug 29 comic date)
2011 does not have a synch date due to not updating 7 days a week at that time. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/activist/ comes closest (Sep 2 real date vs Sep 3 comic date)
September 12, 2012: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/06-strange-beerfellows/plan/
September 18, 2013: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/junior/
2014 does not have a synch date due to flashbacking. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/un-locked/ comes closest. (Sep 21 real date vs Sep 23 comic date)
September 27, 2015: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/admirably/
Feel free to find whatever significance you will.
Yeah, it’s very trivial. All you do is bring up your camera ap, make sure the flash is engaged, turn the camera on him, and snap another OSHITCAR!
>When you “delete” a file, all it does is mark that space is reusable
Huh, interesting. I always wondered how they did it in TV series.
I think AG’s more worried about what else he might have been doing on her smartphone while he took the time to locate and delete the photo….
Flash memory, as used in phones, is even more difficult to delete, to the point where it’s difficult for current technology to actually say it has been deleted and overwritten.
Still, phones don’t tend to be overburdened with storage, which means every minute it’s powered on noticeably increases the chances of data overwriting the “wiped” blocks, and given how JPEG compression works, all it takes is a single bad block to make the entire picture pretty much useless.
The problem isn’t the photo.
The problem is that Ryan deleted it, which means he grabbed the phone before it screenlocked, meaning he could have seen enough to figure out who AG really is: he has had access, for a limited time, to all of Amber’s personal information.
Didn’t she text the picture to Dorothy? So there’s still at least one copy of the photo floating around somewhere. Assuming Dorothy didn’t delete the text, she could download and upload the image, right?
Besides, I’d be more worried about the car at this point.
She sent Dorothy the picture she took from far away. She got a closer one a few strips later, which is presumably the one he deleted.
Did Douchebro’s friend just try to run him over, too?
He knows too much, and they know his face now.
it turns out to be Frieda, who has decided to murder Ryan in order to keep him from compromising the election.
For the Greater Good of the Cause.
would Amazi-Girl go out of her way to keep someone like Ryan from being murdered? I know Batman would, but how close is she to Batman in terms of morality?
Well if she’s Christian Bale Batman then she doesn’t have to save him. Just ask Ra’s.
Purposely kill? No. Hesitate so he dies? Yes.
…or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Yep, it matters.
Amazi-Bot? Asimo-Girl?
The Greeeeaaaaater Goooooooood
And the Ethereals. The greater good and the Ethereals.
Don’t they tend to be considered one and the same unless you follow Farsight?
I’m going to believe this is the case for the next 24 hours for much needed levity.
And enters random car!
AAAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!! No.
Now that is most definitely illegal.
I’d call that a…SHOCKING SWERVE!
Yay!
Hopefully when she sent it to Dorothy, she did so in a manner that means Dorothy now has a copy on her own phone.
…how else would one do it?
Uploaded it to an account and sent a hyperlink, maybe?
and what sort of account would have it still only stored locally?
Paranoid idiots like me who don’t trust DropBox … I tend to upload my pictures onto my hard-disks.
She’s a CS Major so she might rented time on a ftp server somewhere so she can store stuff. Or even a SSH tunnel to her own machine.
Doesn’t need to be local only if he deleted the remote copy…
She didn’t send the close up one, only the one taken from a distance 🙁
The picture Dorothy has is the one she took from further away back when she saw him across the room in the rally crowd. She took a picture of him later when she confronted him in the lobby that was much closer up. That picture is gone or at the very least likely a challenge to retrieve even for someone who has substantial computer skills. The picture she sent Dorothy would be on Dorothy’s phone regardless, but it’s a lot lower quality for however she planned than the close-up she got.
She could probably take another shot of him now that they caught up with him, but if he was under visible duress in it that might make people sympathetic to him. :/
If it’s still on her phone, it’s not really that much of a challenge to retrieve. Pull out the SD card, stick it in a computer on read only, then use an undelete program.
The question, though, is whether it’s still there. Once deleted, a file can be overwritten at any time. Whether it gets so is basically random, in my experience.
Yeah, any new data written for an incoming text message, or anything else like that could end up overwriting it permanently
Hence pull it out right away.
Assuming, of course, she has her photos set to save on her SD card. If it’s on the internal memory, then all she can do is turn off the phone.
The ‘challenge to retrieve’ is if he managed to delete it. Amber has enough computer skills that she might be able to retrieve it if it hasn’t been overwritten yet, while that would be beyond the average person’s skillset. Given how not too much time seems to have passed, that may be more possible than otherwise.
As she said “uploading” directly after taking the shot she obviously uploaded it either to a social media account or some cloud or other. With both, retrieving it is a piece of cake technicality as they never really delete stuff. It might be more difficult in terms of getting the respective provider to do so.
And the real question is, how did he manage to delete her phone? As they caught him, there can only have been a few minutes between this page and the last. Was her lock screen not engaged? Resetting the phone also need a pw usually. How did he figure that out? Dabs on the screen?
Did he take screenshots of her contacts and mailed them to himself?
Did we see anyone driving a Mercedes?
I should read more carefully: he deleted the photo, not the phone.
She said she was uploading, yes. But it seemed not to be working very quickly.
But, even if it did make it, he could have deleted the photo there, too. And those sites do not make recovery easy.
This can only end well.
In the long term, the only possible outcome is death.
Or puppies.
Well
If we go long term enough death is the eventual outcome anyway
I don’t think there are any humans with a verified age over 122 years, so a one-century timeskip means all these characters would probably be down for the count
Puppies will inherit the Dumbverse.
No, kittens will. Specifically that one kitten that will never die from the suicide warning page.
Drifting through space after the sun collapses, unable to die. Forever.
You got a Fast Car/Fast enough for you to fly away/We gotta make a decision/Leave tonight or live and die this way…
I remember when we were driving… Driving in your car… At speeds so fast… nearly thought I was drunk…
In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway nine,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected, and steppin’ out over the line
H-Oh, Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
`Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I want to guard your dreams and visions.
Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims
And strap your hands ‘cross my engines!
Together we could break this trap
We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back
Ho-Oh, Will you walk with me out on the wire
`Cause baby I’m just a scared and lonely rider…
I always did like that song.
On the plus side, Dorothy still has the copy of the photo she was sent! It’s not as good as the up close version but it should still be good!
…and on the VERY OBVIOUS BAD SIDE, He was likely inside Amber’s phone and maybe (almost certainly) long enough to potentially find identifying information.
On the other hand, he was fleeing. He might not have bothered yet (he’d be free to do that once his ride showed up and he was out of there, after all)
He obviously had more than enough time to delete his own photo and make a call and he may have seen photos of Amber, while he was at it.
Deleting his own photo takes seconds, assuming it was still up. Calling someone doesn’t take too long, either.
And, as someone else said, why isn’t he saying something about knowing her identity to get Sal to let him go?
Maybe he’s seen what she looks like, but that’s not going to be enough to identify her. It depends on how much identifying information she had in her phone. On mine, the only way to get my info would be my email address, and, unlike mine, Amber’s may not be her name @google.com.
Most phones switch over to the next photo when one is deleted. Any of her photos has the potential to be very problematic. He might not know who she is right now, but he might have enough information to figure it out later or to track down someone she knows…like Danny, for instance.
Yeah, he might have contact info, and then could figure it out from there. But having seen photos would tell him nothing. Not until he runs into those people in real life, at least.
And, even then, the longer that takes, the less likely he’ll remember exactly what they look like to be sure.
Seeing the photos would tell him both what they look like and likely where to look for them. Remember this is a college campus that they all attend. It wouldn’t take much for him to go “Oh, that’s such-and-such building or place,” at which point he knows exactly where to go to look for them.
We played a game on my college campus at one point that on occasion involved identifying specific places on campus from obscure photographs and I can tell you it hardly took anything at all for most people to know where a photograph was taken. Even one that was just the face of a microwave.
(Contact info was supposed to be “contacts info,” as in, he might have info on one of her contacts. Like Dorothy.)
Wouldn’t the last photo taken be the one she s4nt to Dorothy?
Of course the one before that could be anything.
He also made the call with his own cellphone, so after deleting the picture he might have left her phone to dial up his buddy.
What Doopyboop said. His first concern was to delete the picture; mission accomplished.
Second concern was to get the hell out of Dodge, and he called someone on his own phone to do that. Why his own phone? Because no one memorizes phone numbers any more. Someone gives you their number, you just enter it into your phone and turn it into a contact.
I don’t think enough time has passed for him to have done anything more than that.
I’m sure what you said (that nobody remembers phone numbers anymore) is going to get me in trouble one of these days: I always had poor memory for this kind of stuff (random strings of numbers, I’m actually good at remembering happenings and names and such), and I still struggle to remember my own phone number without checking first. I don’t even know what my parents’ numbers are.
And one of these days, I’ll have to make an emergency call to somebody, my phone will be dead and I’d be in deep shit.
Also, if he called from Amazi-Girls phone, it might not get answered, because the person he called wouldn’t recognize the number.
You know, it doesn’t really matter if the photo is deleted. He’s right there- she merely has to take another. Random Car Person might interfere with that….which is probably why Willis had them arrive when they did.
She’s not worried that he deleted the photo- I mean it doesn’t matter that he did. She sent it to Dorothy, so she still has it anyway. She just has to redownload it from messages.
This means he might know she’s AMBER, though, is why she’s wigging out.
AG mentions ‘her friend’s phone’ which is Sal’s. But, I kinda thought AG and Amber each have their own phones. AG’s might have limited contacts, etc. No incriminating pics of Amber, etc, for just this reason. I may be wrong, but… the way she partitions AG/Amber, it makes sense.
Really the only reason to not have two separate phones for Amber and Amazi girl is…. THAT PHONES ARE FUCKING EXPENSIVE.
SO yeah, Amazi-girl is either boned or not. We’ll see.
You’d be surprised how fast cellphones lose their value. So long as you don’t have to have the latest model of a phone, previous models — even brand new — are at least a couple hundred bucks less than the newest versions. And you can get a used, second-hand phone on Craigslist or eBay even cheaper.
Yeah, but the actual phone line and data plan are not nearly as economical.
Actually, she said “my, um, friend wrote onto another phone”.
This “friend” is Amber. Amber is Clark Kent, AG is Superman. She’s hiding a piece of information about her real identity (that she is good with coding) to avoid revealing any info that could be used to identify her.
Dorothy has said pic, he is right in front of you to take another, why are you freaking out – besides the fact your screen lock isn’t INSTANT. Wtf amazi-amber
Annnd now there’s a car
I think she’s freaking out cause he might have seen photos of her secret identity?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qy4EIvvVj4
Because he could’ve seen her photos, contacts, name, etc.
My guess is that he didn’t find anything compromising, or else he’d be shouting it out immediately to show AG he’s got something on her and try to blackmail her into letting him go.
That said now, what the fuck car?
Must be the Bros attempting to rescue Ryan, tried to run Sal over, but nearly ended up running over him.(just a theory, it could be anyone else.)
Well he was calling somebody last strip to turn back to pick him up so logically it should be one of the bro clones.
Those bros were still lying in a heap when Ryan left. No way they got out fast enough to need to turn around and come back.
Gotta be somebody else.
Last we saw of them only two of them were fighting Sal and AG. The other one was either forgotten about during the commotion or booked it first chance he got.
INCORRECT!
Three pairs of legs, all three are tagged.
And after Dorothy got the call, she texted Joyce who ran out and stole car an is now arriving on the scene. Who else would go Squeeee!!! at the sight of Sal and Amazigirl. :-S
Bahahahaha!!!
Amazi-Girl is always adorable, but I did not think this was a moment of “squee!”
A few inches to the left and it would have been a moment of squick.
is there any chance ruth is driving that
i dont see see how she could be but damn
Billie has shotgun
Billie would just spend the whole time trying to figure out who’s pretending to be Amazi-Girl so that she can appear at the same time as Sal.
Now I’m going to spend way too much time considering what kind of shotgun would best suit Billie
Oh well, it’s not like I was sleeping
Sadly, no. Ruth is in the hospital. Probably there at least for the next several days. So, like, six months of strips.
I think it’s either Faz there for Ryan or Sarah and Joyce.
I NEED it to be Sarah and Joyce.
OMG! IT’S BLAINE AND FAJ TO THE RESCUE!
Faj?
Faz’s older brother.
Blaine got around a lot, remember? (At least in the Walkyverse.) Faz is the youngest son. Faa’s the eldestson, Fab’s the second-eldest, Faj is the tenth-eldest.
Dad was everyone’s favourite, but only for a little while.
I meant “Fad”. Their dad was never anyone’s favourite, ever.
That means Blaine named two of his kids “Fat” and “Fap”, and those aren’t even the worst one that comes up.
What did he name the 27th? Fa1? Faaa? Faa the Second?
On the one hand, it doesn’t seem possible.
On the other, look where the car’s bumper lines up. It went straight for Ryan’s femurs.
I hope it is Ruth.
“Act with integrity; no regrets.”
“[b]Act with disintegraty. No remains.[/b]”
CURSE YOU HTML COMMENT TAGS FOR RUINING MY POST! curseyoubbcodeformakingmeforgethowhtmlworks.
Curse you, fickle tag rules!
Now if only Sal had throw him into that oncoming car….
What’s that? Resolution? NOT IN MY SERIALIZED FICTION!
NOT HARD ENOUGH!
Resolution, that is, we could always use more.
Tsk. If you’re worried enough about losing your phone to set a locater program, you should have pictures automatically synch to remote storage too.
ZEE CLOUD! EET DOES NAHZING!!
Well Ryan has just been run over
this is the only time I’m not completely happy about that
I don’t know if I’m happy Sal didn’t get hit or sad Ryan didn’t.
the good news about Sal saving Ryan is that it proves that she’s better than he is. Granted that is a very low bar to clear, but still.
I’m happy enough that Sal didn’t that even if it comes at the cost of Ryan not getting hit too so be it. He can always be dragged through the mud later.
Perhaps literally. Being keelhauled does ugly things to a person.
The thought may have crossed my mind.
damn, from the looks of it it’s the worst case scenario. dude in the car probably isn’t ryan’s friend, he’s his dealer. and right now, the one thing worse than a dude selling roofies on a college campus is amazigirl having someone like that to focus and obsess over.
…or Ryan’s friend is as much of a shitpile as he is. Which seems likely.
Or he’s driving drunk.…..
…. and/or he’s driving drunk.
every time I see and/or write “and/or” I think geez, we should really have a way to be more specific about xor vs or in casual language.
Throw him under the buss. Er, car.
Standing in for Ultra Car is Random Car. Not as smart as UC, but just as unpredictable.
Ryan didn’t call her father, did he?
Not that I think about it, she probably doesn’t have him saved on her phone. That’d be pretty dramatic, though
Also, Ryan calls on his own phone. Check the previous strip – his phone is red. Amazigirl’s is blue.
Exactly like lightsabers.
Also, her father wouldn’t be three minutes away and ready to take her on again.
Also, if her father WERE ready to do that, he would have done so before now. He knows where she sleeps.
Also, why would Ryan summon her father? He’s got no idea how fucked up their relationship is. He’d assume that her dad would come help HER out.
Also, why would Amber OR Amazi-girl have Blaine’s number in their contact section?
Lots of folks keep contacts saved so they don’t have to recognize the number, and just know not to answer the phone.
I have a few contacts saved simply because I had to block those numbers due to stalking and I don’t want the phone to “forget” to ignore those numbers.
He might have called his father.
Welp no choice now we gotta kill him.
What are Avogadro and Ollie doing in Indiana?
I mean, they are just straight-up standing in the middle of the street, so it’s really not a surprise that they’re being run over. But Amazi-Girl really needs to pay better attention to traffic safety. Traffic is probably the #1 vigilante killer in the country^^
You’d think the bright yellow jumpsuit would make her pretty easy to spot though
Target acquired. One of the reasons I don’t like HiViz when I’m cycling. I usually wear it to give my heirs better odds on the wrongful death lawsuit.
I was confused, then I remembered.
I remain confused, but am now morbidly curious.
Morbid played a part in it, apparently.
Good thing she texted the photo to Dorothy, you can retrieve photos from texts pretty easily. And if he deleted it from the text, Dorothy had a copy on her phone now.
i was just rereading the comic from the start and i saw your avatar and was like how did i forget something so cute.
Quick, Sal, block the car with the rapist!
Amazi-Girl, I know you’re a cape and all and it comes with the territory, but if you’re concerned about your secret identity, you might want to resist the urge to exposit in front of the perp.
One should have thought that the Evil Overlord List was in Amber’s educational background:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilOverlordList
At least it’s unlikely that anyone’s tried drumming The Things Mr Welch is No Longer Allowed to Do into her.
Well, what -she- really needs to memorize is The Valiant Hero list.
If nothing else, at least she’s found a competent, sarcastic person who knows what the hell they’re doing to be her consort.
PRIORITIES, DAMNIT! MORE PICTURES! NAO! ARGH!
Amber’s going to jail and Sal and Ryan are in some serious pain. So like the only good in this encounter is Amber will probably end up, eventually, with the help she needs and the dubious possibility of Ryan being brought to justice for his attempted rape… All because waiting till a more opportune time to stealthily photograph him or just not being so confrontational in photographing him was so hard.
None of them look like they were actually hit to me. Sal pulled Ryan out of the way, and AG was just on the other side, maybe lightly grazed.
I do agree that AG’s penchant for going in half-cocked caused this, though. Come up, take his photo, then leave. Post it, and the Internet would have figured out his name.
But because AG wanted a fight, she didn’t do that.
It’s the problem I’ve said for a long time. Sal says it’s escalation, but she’s not quite right. It’s just not planning things. This often leads to escalation, but that’s not the whole problem.
I think beating him up was the plan. Posting the photo was mostly to get him to start the fight – exposing him on the internet was just a bonus.
Didn’t she send a pic to Dorothy…?
Ohhhh the issue is her identity not the pic duh
A hero must be willing to allow their identity to be known when it comes to the greater good.
If that helps the greater good, arguably.
In this case, it does not.
AG is worried that, if he got into her phone he might find out who she really is. Once he knows, he could track her down.
And so we see Ryan has someone willing to risk running running people over for him. So, who would be so loyal?
I don’t think anyone was hit; Sal and detainee appear to be moving the wrong direction.
So he erased the photo (it should be on Dorothy’s cell – right?)
DoA, more ups and dips then a roller coaster.
Du ex machina, et tu car, and he is either rescued or dead meat. We can always hope it is Not rescued.
It appears to have missed AG unless it turns out her cape get hooked on the door.
Also seems to have jarred Sal’s hold on him loose, unless she makes a quick grab to pull him off the hood, or go with him.
So no one gets hurt and Ryan gets away.
Or Sal grabs on and she and Ryan both fall off and get run over and die.
Or AG’s cape gets caught in door and she gets dragged and dies.
Good job as usual Willis. We have no idea what’s next.
Hahahahaha et tu car
….. Danny?
“the app my, um friend wrote”
If she means Alfred, she should just say Alfred.
Usually, when you are talking about something sensitive, it’s always for a fictitious friend (“I have this ‘friend’ – yeah, that’s it, a ‘friend’ – who’s two weeks late; do you know where I can tell her to go to get tested?”). Amber does not want it to be known — at least not by Ryan — that she is a tech geek.
I’m wondering if perhaps that her background was set to a picture of her and Danny or something, and now he’ll keep a lookout for “Amazi-Girl’s boyfriend.”
At the least, I think he got a contact. Dorothy, Ethan or Danny seem the most likely.
It wouldn’t be a picture of Amber and Danny, because Danny is Amazi-Girl’s boyfriend, and it wouldn’t be a picture of Amazi-Girl and Danny, because it’s Amber’s phone.
Ooh, good point. I’d say she could have a photo, but then she might have purged her phone after she dumped him.
So what’s likely is that he got some idea who Amazi-Girl is, and failing that he got some contact info.
If she was able to track her phone from Sal’s phone, would she be capable of doing something on her own phone to enable her to track Ryan’s phone? (Likely this would require at least some access to it but c’mon, it’s RIGHT THERE. Well, assuming it didn’t just get run over, but still.)
I think it is safe to say that this is the friend Ryan was calling in the last strip. Given he told him to “turn around and come back”, it was probably someone who was at the rally but left after the fighting broke out.
The only tagged people we’ve seen at the rally are Sal, Amazigirl, Leslie, Frieda, Ryan, Beef, Kyle, the DeSantos and the Dude-bro triplets.
AG, Sal and Ryan are accounted for.
The DeSantos and Kyle are preparing for the rally and wouldn’t have left.
Leslie is right out.
Definitely not the dude-bro triplets, they were incapacitated. Even if they’re up now, they wouldn’t have made it out before Ryan.
Frieda is possible, but very unlikely. Vehicular manslaughter would compromise the campaign.
Beef is a possible culprit. We haven’t seen him since Sal punched Ryan. He may have bailed when he realized AG wasn’t going to lose the fight and he wasn’t going to get any kind of vicarious revenge.
The other option is, of course, someone we haven’t met or who we weren’t aware was at the rally.
Beef was at the party, and at least hanging out with the jerks who wanted to beat up Danny. If its anyone we’d actually seen at the rally, I’d bet it’d be him.
Leland seems like another possibility though. He’s the right kind of asshole.
Indeed! I thought he may be friends with Ryan (or at least be acquainted with him) because he’s been in both places we saw Ryan and we have reason to think he’s kind of a jerk.
I kind of doubt it would be Leland. While he was certainly being raised to be exactly that kind of asshole, it would be too much of a bizarre coincidence.
The one person I forgot about was Marcie (just like Sal did). It could be her coming to break up the fight, but I doubt she would know exactly where they are and I don’t think she has the financial wherewithal to own a car. It seems as though she puts most of her resources into rent.
IU is a big public school in the same state they grew up in, so not THAT much of a coincidence. My college only had about 2,000 people total, and there were at least 20 people from my high school who went there, and I grew up 3 hours away.
This would also seem a good point in the story (hopefully near the end) for the two arcs to start crashing together, if they were going to.
True. Indiana isn’t exactly sparsely populated, but it wouldn’t be so strange for kids who went to elementary school together to end up at the same college.
I still doubt it’s Leland, though. Leland would most likely be a freshman, same as Sal and Walky. Ryan said he needed to stay at his friend’s place for a while, but Leland would be living on campus.
He was a lot taller than both Sal and Walky. He could easily be Ryan’s age.
I don’t think it’s safe to say that at all. The car is still moving, maybe just trying to stop. If they were the friend, they’d know approximately where Ryan was.
Well, unless they freaked out when they heard Ryan’s phone drop. But, even then, they got there really, really fast. Surely there would have been about a minute of making sure that Ryan wasn’t there and frantically calling him back.
Sure, the car is still moving, but “SQUEEE” implies hard braking. The friend may have been trying for a non-lethal hit to free Ryan. Or maybe he’s just reckless. Or maybe he’s not that good a friend of Ryan’s and he doesn’t much care if he gets hurt.
I doubt the driver didn’t see them. Their headlights are on and AG is wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit. Also, the road they’re on looks like a short, curved drive for picking up and dropping off passengers, so it’s very unlikely anyone is driving up at that speed and at that hour unless they meant to get there in a great damn hurry.
As for the swift arrival, Ryan did say that he was just around the corner.
It’s Donald Trump.
…The only tagged people we’ve seen at the rally…
Everybody always forgets Daisy…
This is why all my photos automatically update to my OneDrive (use the cloud service that you prefer, I have no agenda here).
This is why? We have a real life superhero here? Cool!
wait, so it isnt sal or amber who is amazi-girl, but mary? no wonder billy didnt figure it out, lol
It truly is why. Not being a hero, per se, but being able to get a shot of a villain and having it safety stored after having my phone destroyed.
Quick, take a picture of the license plate of that car. It might be Ryan’s evil buddies.
Or if not, it could be Marcie. *shrugs*
BREAK HIS KNEES NOW
NOT HARD ENOUGH!
actually if you text a picture to someone then delete the picture the picture is still in your texts AND your friend still has the photo, so deleting the picture doesn’t matter one bit 🙂
That’s a different picture.
Comic Reactions: … Yeah, I’m not gonna lie and say this arc isn’t slow going for me and right now, I’m just right there with AG. He had access to AG’s phone for an undisclosed amount of time, likely not only trying to find the photo, but also the (slur for woman) who sent a superhero after him.
At the very least, he should have Dorothy’s name and number (and Dorothy is not a terribly common first name) and possibly also the name of Joyce if AG had to reference Joyce by name for the confirmation.
Which means Ryan has become like Toedad, a sword of Damocles waiting around in the background. Which is kind of how it feels with dangerous folks who know where you are. Like, at any moment they could destroy your life, so you can never fully settle and relax.
And for AG, it also means a person who may have a means of harming her (and likely also giving Sal a tool to know if AG is spying on her by the tracking app left on her phone, which is a nice sign of trust) and who may know her identity and want to spread it far and wide so as to better insulate his own self in case she tries to attack him.
Overall, this is one of the bigger “oh fuck” cliffhangers in a while.
Yeah, I think in terms of potential future implications, this is on the same scale as any of our other really big cliffhangers and definitely the biggest we’ve had in a while.
This feels like it might end up being the longest day yet. Its been weeks and the sun isn’t even up yet!
I hope Ryan will be done for good before the end of it.
Not having to worry about him coming back would be a really nice breather before whatever the next horrible thing to happen is.
As if Dexter went away that easily…
A lot of people in the comments are suggesting that perhaps Ryan didn’t have time to find her personal information. After all, he was running away and trying to arrange rescue. Maybe that’s true. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.
But AG doesn’t know that. She can’t ever know that. Even if he doesn’t have her personal information, the thought that he might will haunt her. He may not be a threat, but she’ll always be afraid, and he can use that fear to make her life hell.
Yeah, this is a really good point! Similar to how we’re all debating if he could have seen it or not, she can’t know either.
(AND since he’s a known liar, she can’t trust him even if he says he didn’t.)
Yup, and given how AMBER reacts to fear, Amazi-girl has to worry about her as wel, apart from everything else.
Ultracar’s nemesis, Negacar!
HEADCANON
Now this car probably has a tear-away cape.
Okay, a lot of you are talking like Sal and Ryan got hit. To me, they look like they’re on the other side of the car, and just jumped out of the way (but Sal lost her grip on Ryan. Above I thought she still had him, so I thought she pulled him away.) AG looks like she was knocked around by the wind.
So are some of you spoiled with the next comic? Or are we just all seeing things differently?
In general, I have been impressed with the restraint showed by the other Patreon people here with not spoiling tomorrow’s comic, even when people are saying things that are obviously wrong from our foreknowledge.
Tbh my first response was: OMFG, SAL GOT HIT BY A FUCKING CAR.
And then I realised oh wait, no she wasn’t. It is just between her and Amazi-Girl, not knocking her flat.
Didn’t she already send the picture to someone to confirm his identity?
A photo from across the room. The second photo at issue here is a closeup.
Now wondering if the driver thinks Sal is the Superhero he was talking about.
Well shit.
And here I am unable to afford the $5 Patreon previews.
(Not that it would help for more than a day.)
Remember, $5 is a latte per month.
If you really can’t afford that, I’m sorry. I know. I’ve been there. It sucks. I’m not trying to guilt you or rub it in your face. That would be a seriously shitty thing to do.
But for others in the comment section who can afford a latte, consider buying Willis a coffee. He has twins. He needs the coffee.
wait, HOW expensive is coffee in the US????????????
signed, a person who earns approximately $20 per month as of right now
Where I work, a small coffee is about $2, a large latte is about $5. I have charged as much as $8 for drinks with extra shots of espresso, half and half and extra syrup.
Let’s put it this way: $5 would not be unusual for a “coffee” order.
Whoa wait $20 is only like… three hours of work a week here? Did you typo that?
And $5 is pretty much the average for coffee drinks. You can buy instant coffee to make at home for less, but if you go to a coffeeshop it’s probably going to be $4-6. ;~;
The last thing he needs is coffee, what he likely needs is some sleep.
I definitely plan to once I get some income instead of living off my roommate’s (which is why I’ve currently only pledged $1 a month). ;w;
I don’t have a steady income source. I still live with my parents and therefore don’t need to worry about money for the immediate future, but while I can feel reasonably confident I’ll have one or two dollars in my account every month that I can use to support things on Patreon that’s about the most I can reliably commit.
If $5 is at all a medium-to-big deal for anybody, for the love of God, absolutely don’t worry about it, ever ever. You need that $5 more than me. I’d rather people eat than have free comics they will see tomorrow!
I am annoyed at Amazi-Girl for not having her own separate line and phone. Using Amber’s phone for her extra-curricular activities was always a huge risk. When I was running my own business I had a separate line for work related things so I didn’t have to give out my private number. I suppose her gaff can be forgiven on grounds of limited funds.
Amber is a college student who, it has been implied, is having college funded on her behalf by her derivation of applied DNA. She also had to wait for her mom to “scrounge up” money for new glasses. She likely doesn’t have money for a second line or even a cheap burner phone.
Ugh. He’s going to get away. :/
Car-lady:
“DON’T YOU WORRY, AMAZI-GIRL. YOUR TRUSTED SIDEKICK IS HERE!!!!”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/hostage-2/
You’ve just brought a smile to my face. Thank you.
I’d like to second this sentiment.
Smiles are good!
Nice idea, but wrong color car.
Yes, because CLEARLY she doesn’t own an experimental color-changing car to fool criminals.
Ho ho, what a silly notion.
Probably a replacement car while hers is being fixed up.
What she said.
Holy shit! It’s Becky’s dad! He broke out of jail, and he’s back for vengeance starting with Amazi-Girl!!!
Aw jeez this just got bad… but doesn’t Dorothy have a copy of the photo still?
Oh, really? Whoever that is was planning to run over Ryan as well as Amazi-Girl and Ryan! I’m wondering if he is low man in a much larger and much more unpleasant pile upon which Amazi-Girl and Sal have just stumbled!
None are innocent. All must be judged. All must pay.
“A plea of innocence is guilty of wasting my time.”
While this is a very serious thing going on, the juxtapositioning of AG to the bush/tree in the background isn’t helping me not to laugh.
haha, thanks for bringing that to my attention. A welcome bit of levity.
Quick, Amazi-girl! Steal his phone! Get his identity from it! Nothing can go wrong with that plan!
….. or you know, check his wallet for ID.
I keep wondering why neither Amazi-Girl nor Sal have thought of that one!
Well, they only just secured him. Give them a moment to check him.
Unfortunately that car doesn’t seem inclined to give them a moment.
Ryan gets free, jumps in the car with his roofie-bros, they speed away. AG looks defeated. Sal holds up his wallet.
Okay I’m saying here and now. That’s Joyce’s brother in that car!
Just guessing though.
What would he be doing at IU?
Her sister seems more likely, but I don’t think she has a car.
Oh Come ON!
I was so happy yesterday and now this?
Fffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Any ideas about the whereabouts of Ryan’s red cell phone at this point?
Lots of tiny pieces on the ground, one would hope out of pure spite 🙂
So what happens when sal sees amber with AG’s phone, I wonder.
“Huh, nerd girl has the same phone cover as Amazi-whatsit.”
Sal’s actually clever enough to probably connect the dots, but individual phones and phone covers aren’t that distinctive on a campus full of college kids with phones.
Yyees, mostly, but Amber has a phone with a flip-out keyboard, which is kind of unusual.
She’d need to have spent enough time in the same room as Amber to have noticed her phone too, and that’s never happened, because Amber always has a panic attack
No, she’d need to spend time with Amber at some point in the future, otherwise she’d be noticing Amazi-girl with Amber’s phone and not Amber with Amazi-girl’s phone.
With all the press she’s been getting, Amazi-girl might want to consider getting Amber a cheap phone case so they can’t be linked by that if someone happens to catch a picture of her taking a break from the midnight crusade to text someone or check the time.
That seems more likely, but even if Sal stops triggering Amber’s panic attacks entirely, I’d be rather surprised if they end up hanging out. Becoming friends is not a necessary result of them no longer being enemies.
Also, why do people keep suggesting a broke-ass college student buy a second cell phone and phone line like it’s something she could afford? What little disposable income she has goes into comic books and WoW subscriptions and grappling hooks and extra caltrops!
Time for another round of “What’s That Car?”!
My guess goes to post-facelift 2009-2011 Toyota Camry.
I don’t know if TlaclocW above was joking or not, but that really does look like Becky’s dad”s car. Look at the damage on the underside. This would be a really weird twist, though.
Where do you see any damage?
And the headlights are the wrong shape. The headlights on Ross’s car were more square.
Ross’s car didn’t have fog lights and the wheels are completely different.
Besides that, it’s probably sitting in an impound lot as part of the armed kidnapping investigation.
Considering that it also flipped, it wasn’t going anywhere, soon.
There is no damage to the underside of the car. That’s dust kicked up from the road to indicate dangerous driving.
I’m gonna hazard a guess that that’s the ride Ryan just called in.
Time for the level two mooks.
PREDICTION:
Ryan is a member of a group of like-minded individuals, a ‘Campus Roofie Club’, if you like, who aid and shelter each other, giving alibis and the like. The reason his friend in the car is trying to run him over along with Sal and Amazi-Girl is that he’s decided that it is better if Ryan is silenced rather than have the opportunity to turn the whole lot of them in as part of a plea bargain.
Amazi-Girl and Sal may have knocked the top off a very unpleasant, pus-filled sore in Bloomington. This could be their big moment when they ascend to serious notoriety for a big catch. Or it could be the moment when they realise just how out-of-their-depth they really are.
It’s a fraternity?
Groups of misogynistic assholes congeal naturally wherever you get enough toxic masculinity in one place. It doesn’t even have to be taught explicitly. No vast hidden conspiracy is required. It’s like how its possible to create a bomb from household items. None of the ingredients are hard to find, they just need to be assembled in a particular way. Except in this case, that tends to happen by accident with alarming regularity.
Even most frats probably aren’t straight-up rapist factories. They just often tend to emphasize hyper-masculinity and use a lot of peer pressure, turning some into just the right kind of echo chamber than can start spitting out douchebags non-stop once if they start turning bad.
The Willis giveth, the Willis taketh away.
Damn you, Willis.
That car must be driven by an ex-KGB agent with with a grudge against the west because the stealth drive from Red October seems to be installed on it.
Or its just a hybrid. Considerably less menacing, but damn those things are quiet.
That looks like a late model Camry; doubtful Marcie could afford it. Whoever is in this car could be very nasty indeed.
On the bright side, Sal may have lifted his wallet by now. And now he’s the one missing a phone.
Have The Analysts figured out if Ryan is on the hood/bonnet of that car and if he is why his head pointing away from it and if not how he became airborne and please don’t say that Sal swung him horizontal BEFORE her Full Nelson was broken as she recoiled away from the car and how they didn’t notice the car until it was in the midst of them and is that a DeLorean and it’s about to take Ryan into the past … or future … um, where was I? OH YEAH! AG should have given Ryan her best shot right in the dchnoz while Sal had him I mobilized in that Full Nelson (which Ryan seemed not to know how to break, Probly cause wrestling was cut at his high school). Can you say “go down like the proverbial sack of potatoes, blood spraying everywhere” boys and girls?
(Yes, Sals hold was not a proper Full Nelson (her hands aren’t behind his neck, canterlevering his arms up and out and pushing his head forward and downwards ……)
Looks like Sal saved his life by pulling him out of the way of that car. He didn’t appear to have been struggling earlier. He just took a hit to the head, and probably realizes that struggling would result in more hitting. Which, I’d be totally fine with.
I don’t think that the analysts have enough examples of Dumbiverse physics available to make reliable predictions. In particular Amazigirl’s gravity defiance field is a bit of an unknown.
She has gravity powers. She just hasn’t figured that out yet.
I think so long as it’s not the same origin as Greta, she’ll be ok.
Couldn’t Amazi-Girl just have Dorothy send her copy of the photo to her?
Also, I’m wondering who Ryan’s friend in the car is.
The issue isn’t that she doesn’t have the photo – Ryan’s RIGHT THERE, she could take another photo. The issue is that he deleting the photo means he had access to her unlocked phone and she has no idea what else he did – like findign out who she is.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!! (FABULOUS picture of Magneato and the Twins!l
I’m thinking the driver will be none other than Leland. I doubt he’s changed one bit since he was kid.
New challenger appears?
He deleted the photo? So what? With Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Photo, it’s uploaded automatically to the internet.
Heck, if she sent the photo to someone else to see if that was the guy, then that someone does have the photo too!
The worry is that he’s seen other things on her ‘phone (although I doubt that he had the time or thought to do that – after deleting the pic, his first thought probably would have been to find somewhere to lie low rather than spend time looking through her contacts list and photo album). That doesn’t mean that Amber won’t have a nasty few days whilst she frets that he may have passed information about her or her friends on to insalubrious individuals.
+1 for “insalubrious individuals”
Well she already sent the photo to whatsherface right? She could just get the photo from that chat or from her directly if anything
Ok, I see plenty of people commenting on this, so I thought I’d make an explanatory post instead of a comment response. The reason you don’t get why AG is so worried about the missing photo is because you’re focusing on the wrong panel.
It’s not the third panel, it’s the fourth.
The photo is nothing. Dorothy has the photo. Ryan’s RIGHT THERE, she can take as many photos as she wants. The missing photo is just evidence that he had access to the phone in an unlocked status. Here’s the fourth panel speech, uncut-off:
“Did you get in BEFORE the screenlock? How long were you…” looking through my phone and OH MY GOD WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT ME FROM IT?
Yeah, a lot of people aren’t picking up what Davis is putting down in panel four. Which is weird because wasn’t Amazigirl all, “Oh no, my identity” just a couple of days ago?
Yup, that’s the terrifying part. That Ryan was in the phone. That Ryan might have seen something that lets him “get his revenge” on a later date on either her other alter or one of her friends (or worse yet, Dorothy and Joyce as those names likely came up on the text messages on her phone that were also likely up on a tab).
Him being on the phone long enough to navigate it and remove his photo means that he’s going to be a future threat and is likely upgrading to the Full Stalker package as he fumes on his “emasculation” at the hands of a couple of (slur for women).
They are both smart enough that they could use that as a trap for him if he tries anything.
The fact that they might be able to handle that situation doesn’t make it much less terrifying. There’s so many ways it could go wrong.
I like that he has a supervillain name. “Gash Face.”
THIS DOES NOT COUNT AS NOBODY GETTING HIT WITH A TRUCK, YOU TROLLING RUSEMAN
I am very pissed at this… WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LET HIM GO TO PRISON AND GIVE JOYCE SOME PEACE?!?!?!
Because that’s hilariously unrealistic, given the way our culture and legal system are set up.
Keep in mind, the only real evidence they have is witness testimony– A failed attempt is much less able to be proven. And Joyce can be as traumatized as possible– He still can’t actually be convicted of rape. The entire VENGEANCE thing doesnt always work out.
Also, no police report? Joyce hasn’t actually gone to the cops, remember? I’m not familiar with the intricacies (possibly clusterfuck) of the US judicial system, but I don’t think rape is a public crime; i.e., even if everyone knew that Ryan was a rapist, he can’t be brought to trial if none of the victims presses charges.
I don’t think that’s true. The case is still the State vs Gashface.
Now, it’s hard enough to get a conviction on rape charges with a cooperating victim, it would be very rare for a prosecutor to push the case when the victim isn’t interested.
Give it about two weeks.
Given how terrible the landscape is for actually prosecuting rape attempts, my hope is that he oversteps himself like Toedad did in the common narrative of forcing a queer kid into reparative therapy in a way the cops just can’t ignore.
And hopefully in a way that either minimizes new traumas for Joyce or allows her some sort of healing moment standing up to her rapist.
This strikes me as unlikely.
Toedad was immersed in a positive feedback loop – everyone around him (effectively, the society he interacted with) thought like he did; no-one from his community would condemn him for wanting Becky in disreparative mindfuck. When he pulled the gun out, he didn’t think he was going to jail for it, he thought that was what anyone would do.
Ryan’s in a different boat – maybe his dudebros would high-five him if he told him he roofied and raped a girl, but, critical prosecution failures aside, public opinion at large tends to be very much against rape. While Toedad would proudly advertise to the world the steps he took to save his daughter from the “demons of gayness,” Ryan KNOWS his best shot at not-ostracism is keeping it secret.
CONTENT WARNING: Rape Apologia
Well, yeah, they are against “rape”. But “everyone knows” that a good guy like Ryan would never rape. Like, he doesn’t lurk in bushes, he hangs out at parties and has friends and is probably really kind and friendly to those he considers equals.
And so, he certainly couldn’t have committed rape. She must be trying to destroy his name because she “regretted” a one-night stand after giving in to her lustful impulses and (slur for woman who is sexual) ways.
And he’s really hurt by this. This is affecting his studies and ruining his life and he can’t believe she’d be so cruel as to accuse him of something so awful.
And people will believe that, because they want to believe that (slurs for women) always be lyin’ about things like this. Because we view rape as bad in the same way as we view racism as bad. As something that marks someone as a “bad person”, so any accusation of actually being that is seen as beyond the pale, because that person isn’t what we imagine as a purely “bad person” without positive value.
So a crowd is more likely to take something like assault or attempted murder more seriously than even a rape case with evidence.
He doesn’t even enjoy steak like he used to! *gags*
Two salient differences from (what I understand are) most rape trials, however, are that: 1) drugs were involved (though at this point it’d be impossible to prove anything, unless Ryan is dumb enough to keep those on his person or a stash at his place); 2) since the rape attempt was unsuccessful, there really is nothing for Joyce to regret (well, there IS, but not a one-night stand).
On the other hand, after having realised that rapists are getting lighter sentences because ACTUAL FUCKING JUDGES are going easy on rapists because they don’t want to ruin their future (presumably, giving them actual jail time might make it harder for them to rape again, which would, y’know, be such a pity), what the fuck do I know?
I mean, other than I already loathe humanity enough, please stop giving me more reasons, humanity, kk? Thanks.
Man, I was hoping for a solid month of Ryan getting hit in the face.
Had I any animator skills, I’d make you a .gif mixing Joyce’s glass-strike, Sal’s punch, and AG’s flying kick.
I think I may have to wait a month or two before going back to reading this comment. The gut-wrenching train wreck that’s going to happen now is more than I want to deal with.
If the car hit them from that side, shouldn’t their legs point the other way?
Yes, they would. The car didn’t hit them. Sal pulled them backwards out of the way
A picture taken of Ryan before panel five would have the side issue of why he is being restrained by
Salsome fuzzy blob.A picture taken in panel five would have even more questions.
Panel six would help answer some question.
WATCH IT BE FAZ.
I have created this detailed chart indicating why, of all possible people, the great Faz is the only one whou could possibly be driving that car. I have also made this chart, detailing why Faz makes the best charts.
DAMMIT RUTH! THERE ARE NO TRUCKS IN THIS SCENE! SHOO!
Never give up, never surrender?
This is why my screen lock button on my phone case has a deep divot worn away in the middle. Whether you’re a superhero or not, pressing it subconsciously is a great reflex to develop!
God damn it Willis. Can we have something nice happen once without it leading into way, way more horrible implication? Just once, please?
You are the George R.R. Martin of webcomics.
No, George R.R. Martin is the David M. Willis of novels.
This is exactly why I made a petition yesterday for the comic to end forever at that exact point.
just my prediction, mary is the one driving the car
I am now inscribing on the Wall of Shame the names of all those who thought it was the photo earlier sent to Dorothy that was deleted.
The Future shall point and laugh!
I hope the driver is Beef.
Mr Jefferson here to ruin the day?
Goddammit, Malaya!
tfw it’s 9:05PM PT and the new DOA hasn’t loaded yet… We’re so spoiled!
Oh god, please tell me this is turning out to be a supervillain origin.