she actually threw the blue mask down in the stairwell after running away from Sal and Walky on garbage roof, i guess she just never went to retrieve it.
One of them (light brown hair, glasses) is one of the guys who was beating up Danny reeeally early into the comic’s run, just before Amazi-Girl’s first appearance.
This is just…contrived. Really, really contrived. I can’t bring myself to like it because it breaks the barely-plausable veneer that willis usually maintains.
These two featured in a high-speed car chase storyline involving grappling hooks, hang-gliding skateboards, car-to-car jumping, fighting on the roof of a moving vehicle, and a mid-air motorcycle rescue, and *this* is what you’re complaining about?
Many alt-Earth settings have escalated frequency of things like acts of violence, disappearances, etc, to fit the narrative. Heck, one D&D campaign I ran had silver-coated weapons available at every shop ’cause lycanthropy was considered an everyday concern.
Given what we’ve seen so far, it’s easy to excuse Willis’ narrative quirks just by stating that open violence is more easy to come by in Dumbiverse than in the real world. Based off that, there’s no inconsistency and, thus, no contrived elements or reduction of plausibility.
Similarly, giant man-shaped mecha fighting each other is ludicrous in the real world, but we accept that as something normal for oh, oh so many narratives out there. In short, stories just have to be consistent within themselves, not necessarily to our real world expectations; In fact, it’s in their offering contrast to the real world that stories typically shine the most.
That said, my first thought upon reading today’s comic was “Gods, how many fights does this campus have, none of the multiple campuses I’ve been on over the years never had any of note”. So yeah, I do get where your perspective is coming from.
If nothing else, does lean Dumbiverse a bit more toward Walkyverse’s exaggerated tones, and that may not necessarily be beneficial for future immersion in this more grounded narrative.
I’m not even sure what the Unusually Angry Hippie finds contrived about it.
That there’s the fight at all?
That Sal’s holding her own against three bigger guys?
That Amazi-Girl swings in at the right dramatic moment?
It all boils down to: She’s a super hero. She gets to play by superhero tropes. She always has. Hell, Amazi-Girl’s first appearance was jumping in just like this to stop 3 guys (including one of these 3) from beating on Danny.
“She gets to play by superhero tropes. She always has”
Oh, don’t forget this elaborate chase sequence, where she was hoping across rooftops and treetops like a squirrel on meth. Yeah, I think she jumped the shark.. I mean, truck, a good while back.
Makes sense that the Dumbing of Age universe is alt-Earth with slight differences like escalated fighting situations. We’ve already seen other examples of differences. For instance, in the DOA universe, parents have a ridiculously high chance of being awful human beings.
Actually, tallying things up it still appears to be the minority of parents in DoA that are awful, it’s just that those parents are highlighted in the narrative. Likewise, as King Daniel noted, even among parents we’ve gotten a good look at, they’re still not the majority.
And as far as the real world goes, awful parents have overwhelmingly surpassed DoA in both quantity and magnitude. I’m honestly not entirely sure that decent parents aren’t just a Hollywood myth.
If your experiences in real life differ, then you’ve been blessed with fortunate circumstances- or haven’t been looking close enough. Frankly, humans are pretty darn awful, and I’ve seen very few fictions that come even remotely close to what I’ve seen in my own life. To me, DoA just seems normal and realistic. Like, what you’d find in normal, not extremely bad life circumstances.
So, y’know- pick at the superheroes and two-bit villains, but don’t mistake everything in the comic as being exaggerated against real life. :/
Why?
Based on the dialogue, I get the impression that Sal and AG are “patrolling” the campus Buffy style. Not sure what these guys did, but presumably this is an in medias res situation where Sal saw them committing some sort of crime and put a stop to it.
The weirder part is how Sal and AG seem to be patrolling buddies now – Sal just smiled to see her like they’re good friends.
Redhead’s a recurring bully. He started off beating up Danny in the first storyline, then he was beating up someone at the party where Ryan was attacking Joyce (that’s why AG was at the party) and now apparently he’s decided to move on to attempting to bully Sal apparently.
I sure hope that kid wasn’t too fond of having teeth.
Not necessarily. “Sorry I lost my mask in the aftermath of you interrupting me with your brother” would kind of give away her identity in front of Sal and a few random people.
My assumption was she could have easily found it again if she remembered where she threw it. Unless someone took her mask, it should still be at the bottom of that stairwell.
Sal and Amazi Girl are friends now, but Amber is still afraid of Sal and Sal barely knows Amber. Of course, Sal might be smiling because she’s just been saved from a bad scene. I don’t care how tough she is, she can’t take three men.
Realistically, hard as hell, barring really serious advantages. Especially when they’re all bigger than you.
Here? We’re playing by action movie rules. Three unnamed mooks aren’t a threat.
I suspect it indeed is a dream sequence. Next strip, or the strip after, will be Amber waking up in a panic because she and Sal are buds in DDoA(Dream Dumbing of Age).
For a second there, I was caught up in an imaginary sequel to Dumbing of Age, set 20 years in the future: Dream Daddy of Age, featuring Ethan, Evan, Thad, Sayid, Bryan, and Danny. (And whoever else I’m missing.)
Seeing as Danny went through an entire universe without it ever being revealed that he was bisexual…when it comes to Jacob, who knows?
I did forget about Eric. Right now he’s definitely a cheater and honestly kind of a creep, but who knows, maybe in twenty years he’ll have settled down.
I would guess it’s a dream despite the torn jacket, because that’s not Sal’s usual speech pattern. So, Amber’s? Walky knows how his sister speaks, and he’s the only other person who knows the blue mask is “lost”.
The second panel, which seems to be the sort of superhero repartee that AG has used in the past, and which Sal hasn’t. The contractions and southernisms are normal for Sal, tho. All IMHO, of course.
It reads like the comic where Sal came to AG’s rescue at the rally, but with the roles reversed.
I’m with you. The dialog seemed out of character, and this in media res scene comes too hot on the heels of where we last saw the characters. It’s jarring, to say the least.
actually DoA has all been one long dream sequence, hallucination really, since AG got the head trauma when Sal failed to catch her falling off that car.
Beef got sick of their toxic masculinity bullshit. He realized he was better than that. He politely declines and makes up excuses about hanging with them now. They still haven’t quite figured it out.
He saw Sal was involved now at the rally and promptly said ‘Fuck this shit, I died because I was jealous of her ONCE, this time I’m staying far far away.’
Are we sure that AG isn’t getting Amber’s memories? Or is she just saying “couldn’t find my mask” as a way of saying she had to find a spare? Since the other one was ruined by a presumed burrito-splosion at the bottom of that stairwell. I am curious if she is still getting Amber’s memories or not, because if Sal puts it together that Amber is AG they might have an awkward conversation about earlier. Unless Sal already knows in which case that conversation is unavoidable.
A few chapters ago, Amber woke up in bed to find that her fists were all scuffed for some reason, then checked her phone and found out that Amazi-Girl had been up and about the previous night – without her knowledge.
I know that Amber isn’t getting AG’s memories, I’m just wondering if it is working the same in reverse and how consistently. I haven’t seen any instances of the reverse, I think.
I believe it’s pretty much established that Amber’s suffered a complete personality split — both halves are individuals that only share a body. (But I could be wrong)
Anti-hero rules means she’ll never get in a fight with anyone who’ll be willing to report it or record it, unless it’s a govt. agent who naively blackmails her into participating in a black ops program and is inevitably killed once she’s no longer in peril of being arrested.
So how long has it been between now and garbage roof hook up? 3 hours, 4 hours, or a day? And is that Just Amazi-girl taking control of Amber in her sleep again?
I’m taking a stab in the dark and saying this is the same night, Sal probably encountered these punks after leaving Garbage Roof. So either that post-stairway moment with Walky didn’t last long or AG is going for a moonlit walk while Amber is unaware. I’m hoping it is just the former one but it is probably the latter.
Almost certainly a few hours later, before dawn the next morning. Time skips have always been noted in the comic itself, so we can assume this new story starts after midnight the same night.
Yeah, that and Amazi-Girl with the mask comment heavily implies it’s the same night. I doubt Amber wouldn’t have a second mask, rather than using what looks like an improvised one.
Almost certainly the latter. We know she’s been doing that.
What we didn’t know is that she’s apparently been meeting up with Sal to patrol. Not at all sure what to make of that.
On the one hand, I am still happy that Amber threw away the mask, if for nk other reason than it helped her. But on the other hand, she should have known AG would have another one or make it. This is going to cause some serious issues if Amber is unaware that AG went out with a new mask, thinking she stopped her somehow.
Also this is only tangentially related, did that burrito/doorstop actually hit the mask when she threw it? We never found out and inquiring minds need to know.
She last appeared “in the flesh” in April 2017 (having an argument with Amber, but they were both in the dark so only their eyes can be seen), and then in a picture on November of that same year. Has she been doing stuff like this the entire time?
By “properly,” I mean visible, in costume, and actually doing something. But yeah, at a guess she has. Though that’s only a few days in comic time. And she’d have been away from campus, and hence her costume, while Amber was gone after the Ryan incident.
It’s been mentioned further up that the “new” mask we see here is the original Amazi-Girl mask from Shortpacked! – the mask we’re all used to is/was part of Amazi-Girl’s redesign when moving between continuities.
Wait no this is actually a thing- she’s being written with a more outputting costume cuz this scene is meant to be unsettling- Amazi-girl’s appearance in this strip signifies a major backside in Amber really struggling to overcome her other self. Moreover; Amazi-girl is essentially invading Amber’s body and using it to commit acts of violence in a way that’s slowly evolved over DoA’s run from cool to terrifying.
TL;DR this is Amazi-girl doing an evil costume shift as her role in story becomes less beneficial and more menacing
Amber cannot “overcome” AG no matter how hard she tries. So this is not a “backslide”.
Her DID got worse some time ago as was hinted with Amber waking up and not remembering that AG had been out at night while before they shared memories. Not they don’t.
But doesn’t it look like Sal and AG have been out fighting several times by now, which would mean Sal really gave up on her promise to Marcie to not fight?
Hmmm…you know, if Sal and AG’s “team ups” have become a regular thing (which still seems unlikely to me) it might explain why Sal was looking for AG earlier when she walked in on Walky and Amber. Really, we can’t do much except speculate since today’s transistion from the flashback is so jarring. (“We know rejoin the current continuity of ‘Dumbing of Age’ already in progress….”)
There were a few jokes back when Sal teamed up to fight Ryan at the rally with AG that Sal was her sidekick. Since AG had just been stalking Sal, this kinda irked me a little and so I started joking that since Sal was (generally) more level headed, always wins the most badass poll and has saved AG twice, AG should be Sal’s sidekick instead and it’s just become one the jokes I’ve made since then whenever they team up.
I seem to recall that after the Toedad storyline ended, Willis remarked that he “just needed to write a car chase” once in while. (Can’t find the exact quote, but that’s the gist of it.)
For all the deep deconstruction stuff going on with Amazi-Girl, the real reason she’s here and isn’t likely going away is that Willis likes drawing action sequences.
So, assuming this is the same night, what do you think happened?
Did the make out session end and they go their separate ways?
Did they have sex and go their separate ways?
Or did the two of them sex each other to sleep and then AG took the body out for her and Sal’s regular Anger Management session?
Maybe Sal will punt Blaine to mars or something. Or Dina could suddenly become very small and hop into Becky’s hair to live there forever. This could be really wholesome.
Alternatively maybe Faz and Galasso could start dating and it’s flying to the red because they execute millions of people to build their dark later of matrimony
I’m pretty sure that Amber, Amazi-Girl and Sal are going on a journey to the centre of all three of their traumas and neuroses.
We’ll see if Sal is strong enough to continue to be friends with the woman who’s room-mate with the woman who stabbed her in the hand. My call? The way Sal treats Marcie shows that she has a considerable caring/healing aspect to her nature. I think that, if she realised just how screwed up Amber is (“As screwed up as ah am, maybe worse!”), she’ll want to help her, if she can.
Oh, I meant it would be nice if they actually just stood there and watched, because he deserves it and they think he needs to learn a lesson. More guys should let their buddies get beaten up. This isn’t sarcasm.
That was before three thugs threatened her integrity. I don’t think even with their history Marcie would expect her to wait meekly to get /raped/beat up/whatever the guys who ganged up on an apparently weak an’ lonely victim were planning/.
Of course she just might have been “lookin’ for trouble” but he mostly keeps to herself, plus “for tearing my jacket” reads like a clue that she didn’t start it, guv.
I think that we’re being told that Sal and Amazi-Girl have been working together ever since the Ryan incident at Robin’s rally. Sal is the sort of woman – ‘provocatively’ dressed and ethnic minority – that attract the sort of guys who proactively refuse to take ‘no’ as an answer (and even take it as encouragement). So, she goes out wandering at night, drawing them in so that she and Amazi-Girl can bust their chops.
Basically, she’s doing it for the same reason as Amber started being Amazi-Girl. So long as they’re beating up obvious bad guys, they’re not turning their anger and frustration on people whom it is harder to argue deserve it.
My guess is it’s Amber having a dream (or AG communicating with her, for a change, while she’s asleep. Same difference.) and mixing up details, as happens in dreams.
I would also hazard the guess that this chapter will mostly concern how Sal wound up getting stabbed by Amber, and that somewhere down the line Amber gets to confess and apologize to her for it. Maybe by 2025 real-time.
So Amber and Amazi Girl are definitely different personalities that aren’t aware of what the other is doing? This girl really needs help or she will become a villain from a Shyamalan movie. Seriously, if Amazi Girl is absorbing all the kindness, justice and badassery from Amber, Amber is going to be a mass of self hatred.
If not a sponge, it is a bad case of having black and white morality world view, so Amber has to separate all her goodness into a personality that can only do good, and in that way she is “sacrificing” her sanity for that.
That sort-of hits the mark? The way I see it, AG started out as Amber’s anger management/coping strategy, but it went well wrong. Amber’s trying to paint a “good vs. bad” layer over it, but that’s more the consequence of self-hatred and a superhero ideal. Amber’s done some great things, while AG’s done some crappy things – the line is more blurred than either of them is willing to admit.
She thinks that’s what AG is, but A) Amber’s plenty good on her own and B) AG has does absolutely shit things. For instance, since college started, all Amber’s done is run from Sal. AG’s stalked her twice and once intended to ambush and beat the shit out of her in the middle of the dorm entrance for having the GALL to stand around existing and waiting for a friend. And again, that’s not how DID works. One is not all good and one is not all bad – regardless of whether or not they want to admit it.
Cerberus referred to it as the “Golden Alter”. It’s the persona that exists to be the perfect one, but it’s still actually a real human persona so it can’t be perfect and keeping up the pretense just winds up being more damaging. Amazi-Girl winds up taking credit for anything good and pushing anything bad onto Amber.
We’ve seen this play out – when Amber was talking to Danny about their breakup, she said she worried about her bad influence on Amazi-Girl. It’s bullshit, as BBCC says, but it plays into both their narratives – not just that AG is the perfect super-hero, but that Amber is the monster.
I don’t think it really has anything to do with a black and white morality world view though, more with Amber’s Blaine derived view of herself as a worthless monster. She can’t possibly be good or deserve any credit for anything, so all that goes to Amazi-Girl.
Super hero team up! So Cool!
“But wait, Sal’s not a super-”
She rides a motorcycle and can put up with Danny’s ukelele-super hero.
(sorry if this has been said, I didn’t read everything)
BTW, I gotta say, if you’re Batman, three against one may not be long odds, but in RL, three against one is a fight you are going to lose – unless you are Jocko Willinck.
I strongly suspect that the hints of non-memory sharing are true.
Amazi-Girl said she had trouble finding her mask because she doesn’t know where Amber left it. She never found it and had to quickly craft another one from some yellow cloth.
I further suspect she and Sal have been doing the hero-and-sidekick thing for a while now. They seem so nonchalant and casual about the whole thing. They’re actually bantering, like fighting thugs is a normal thing and the only abnormal part of it is that Amber was running late. Late enough that Sal was looking for her (on Garbage Roof) and eventually gave up and went crime-fighting on her own.
Sal is also having so much fun fighting that she’s completely abandoned her promise to Marcie. I’m guessing she used to get into fights a lot, before the accident that hurt Marcie and took her voice, and has been “on the wagon” ever since. She’s relapsing, becoming “old Sal” from before. This is evident in the loss of her accent, which she obviously didn’t have growing up.
They’re becoming a dangerous couple. They’re both powderkegs, and it’s only a matter of time before they explode.
So is Sal just good at beating ass because she’s angry? I’m all for gender equality and there are undoubtedly girls that could beat ass like her, but we’ve never seen any martial arts training or any physical exercise being done by Sal that would make her fighting ability in any way plausible.
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“and I had to wash some kind of sludge off of it that I think might have been toxic”
she’s wearing a yellow mask instead of blue, so… maybe she didn’t find the blue one? :/
or it’s still wet from washing off that sludge 🙂
Oh dang, didn’t even catch that!
Amazi-girl is ALWAYS prepared, so I bet she has a spare.
I wonder if Amber knew that Amazi-Girl had a yellow mask (perhaps AG had to make one.)
She had to dimension-hop and steal it from Lucy, clearly.
Her alter ego has evolved and the change in mask color is an indicator of that perhaps? Just a thought.
she actually threw the blue mask down in the stairwell after running away from Sal and Walky on garbage roof, i guess she just never went to retrieve it.
And Amazi-Girl probably doesn’t remember that.
She’s the new Toxic Avenger now?
Best super hero ever.
uh-oh
slow costume shift to Shortpacked!Amazi-Girl
It’s actually Walkyverse!Amber crossing over into the Dumbiverse.
If so, I expect to see her wielding a corn popper in tomorrow’s strip.
PLEASE
…that and i had to beat up some crippling depression first
i hope she didnt beat up Walky, such a nice boy
Unless he’s into it
Um, who are these guys exactly?
Judging by their lack of tags, nobodies.
One of them (light brown hair, glasses) is one of the guys who was beating up Danny reeeally early into the comic’s run, just before Amazi-Girl’s first appearance.
A friend of Beef’s.
And by the looks of it he hasn’t learned his lesson the last time.
Jagweed Brigade.
Well, I doubt they are harmless enthusiasts of amateur boxing, and I think that leaves muggers, rapists, or a would-be lynch gang.
This is just…contrived. Really, really contrived. I can’t bring myself to like it because it breaks the barely-plausable veneer that willis usually maintains.
These two featured in a high-speed car chase storyline involving grappling hooks, hang-gliding skateboards, car-to-car jumping, fighting on the roof of a moving vehicle, and a mid-air motorcycle rescue, and *this* is what you’re complaining about?
Many alt-Earth settings have escalated frequency of things like acts of violence, disappearances, etc, to fit the narrative. Heck, one D&D campaign I ran had silver-coated weapons available at every shop ’cause lycanthropy was considered an everyday concern.
Given what we’ve seen so far, it’s easy to excuse Willis’ narrative quirks just by stating that open violence is more easy to come by in Dumbiverse than in the real world. Based off that, there’s no inconsistency and, thus, no contrived elements or reduction of plausibility.
Similarly, giant man-shaped mecha fighting each other is ludicrous in the real world, but we accept that as something normal for oh, oh so many narratives out there. In short, stories just have to be consistent within themselves, not necessarily to our real world expectations; In fact, it’s in their offering contrast to the real world that stories typically shine the most.
That said, my first thought upon reading today’s comic was “Gods, how many fights does this campus have, none of the multiple campuses I’ve been on over the years never had any of note”. So yeah, I do get where your perspective is coming from.
If nothing else, does lean Dumbiverse a bit more toward Walkyverse’s exaggerated tones, and that may not necessarily be beneficial for future immersion in this more grounded narrative.
I’m not even sure what the Unusually Angry Hippie finds contrived about it.
That there’s the fight at all?
That Sal’s holding her own against three bigger guys?
That Amazi-Girl swings in at the right dramatic moment?
It all boils down to: She’s a super hero. She gets to play by superhero tropes. She always has. Hell, Amazi-Girl’s first appearance was jumping in just like this to stop 3 guys (including one of these 3) from beating on Danny.
That the three guys are standing around letting her talk instead of swarming her and taking her to the ground?
“She gets to play by superhero tropes. She always has”
Oh, don’t forget this elaborate chase sequence, where she was hoping across rooftops and treetops like a squirrel on meth. Yeah, I think she jumped the shark.. I mean, truck, a good while back.
Makes sense that the Dumbing of Age universe is alt-Earth with slight differences like escalated fighting situations. We’ve already seen other examples of differences. For instance, in the DOA universe, parents have a ridiculously high chance of being awful human beings.
…I don’t find that part to be terribly unrealistic based on my experiences.
Also, the math’s been done and it only comes out to be half the known parents with some flavor of awful. Not a “ridiculously high” number.
Actually, tallying things up it still appears to be the minority of parents in DoA that are awful, it’s just that those parents are highlighted in the narrative. Likewise, as King Daniel noted, even among parents we’ve gotten a good look at, they’re still not the majority.
And as far as the real world goes, awful parents have overwhelmingly surpassed DoA in both quantity and magnitude. I’m honestly not entirely sure that decent parents aren’t just a Hollywood myth.
If your experiences in real life differ, then you’ve been blessed with fortunate circumstances- or haven’t been looking close enough. Frankly, humans are pretty darn awful, and I’ve seen very few fictions that come even remotely close to what I’ve seen in my own life. To me, DoA just seems normal and realistic. Like, what you’d find in normal, not extremely bad life circumstances.
So, y’know- pick at the superheroes and two-bit villains, but don’t mistake everything in the comic as being exaggerated against real life. :/
*by my experiences, awful parents
Why?
Based on the dialogue, I get the impression that Sal and AG are “patrolling” the campus Buffy style. Not sure what these guys did, but presumably this is an in medias res situation where Sal saw them committing some sort of crime and put a stop to it.
The weirder part is how Sal and AG seem to be patrolling buddies now – Sal just smiled to see her like they’re good friends.
Dare I say….timeskip?
Timeskips have always been noted in the comic before now.
Amber has been losing time. I think we’re seeing what it is she’s been losing. This also explains why Sal was looking for Amazigirl on Garbage Roof.
Redhead’s a recurring bully. He started off beating up Danny in the first storyline, then he was beating up someone at the party where Ryan was attacking Joyce (that’s why AG was at the party) and now apparently he’s decided to move on to attempting to bully Sal apparently.
I sure hope that kid wasn’t too fond of having teeth.
Literal redshirts. B) guy seems to be a recurring punching bag
Yeah definitely not sharing memories anymore. Not good.
Not necessarily. “Sorry I lost my mask in the aftermath of you interrupting me with your brother” would kind of give away her identity in front of Sal and a few random people.
My assumption was she could have easily found it again if she remembered where she threw it. Unless someone took her mask, it should still be at the bottom of that stairwell.
Or she didn’t have the time to go back, or it got so dirty it needs to be washed first.
Anyway, that “getting rid of ag” didn’t really work.. which itself is worrisome.
Well, we pretty much knew it wouldn’t.
Probably has Taco Bell all over it
Probably has doorstop all over it.
That last panel got me feeling some SalXAG.
That’d be fun for drama.
It would, but I don’t think Sal’s into gals, amazi or otherwise.
I don’t recall if it’s come up if Amber is any.
AG might be, even if Amber’s not.
….Jesus how WOULD you deal with that?
Wait for it…
oh, gods
I like it but
Going to bed with Amazi-Girl, waking up with Amber.
Quickly, Robin – to AO3!
Amber blearily blinks, trying to work out why Walky’s hair is longer.
Sal tries to get out of it by saying there was a Canada-related gender-swap.
Ruth, passing by, overhears and beats them both to death with their femurs for besmirching for blaming Canada.
The mental image is funnier than it ought to be. I just also got an image of Ruth beating drums with femurs.
My only question would be, how did those drums get femurs in the first place?
The same way that an elephant got into Captain Spalding’s pajamas?
Because: Tuscaloosa? Mebbe?
Walky and Sal would need to have some kind of tag-team arrangement.
Holy identity crisis, Batman!
Huh. Has this become a regular thing that they do now? And is Amber aware of this?
i dont think amber is aware of this
I don’t think Sal is aware that Amber isn’t aware of this.
Sal has no idea that Amber is AG or the girl who stabbed her.
A whole general lack of awareness at this college XD
I was unaware.
Lacking of Aware
lol
So dumb, so very … ha-ha!
Does Marcie know?
Wait why is Sal smiling? I thought she didn’t like Amazi-girl. Or did I forget something important that happend?
No they made up, officially friends.
You miss spelled “made out”.
Sal and Amazi Girl are friends now, but Amber is still afraid of Sal and Sal barely knows Amber. Of course, Sal might be smiling because she’s just been saved from a bad scene. I don’t care how tough she is, she can’t take three men.
Um.
Phrasing!
Sal might have taken on more than she could swallow.
It is entirely possible to take on three men in a fight and win.
Realistically, hard as hell, barring really serious advantages. Especially when they’re all bigger than you.
Here? We’re playing by action movie rules. Three unnamed mooks aren’t a threat.
Generally one will tackle you and then they start punching and kicking you. No reason to think this is a sequential boxing match.
I’m not sure why you think I do. As thejeff said, it’s hard as hell, but it is possible.
But these are action heroes.
Is that what you think when James Bond gets into a fist fight? Geez, there’s three of them, he’s toast.
Yup. Just what Sal had to save AG from at the rally. Now they’re even.
well, to be fair AG could handle *three* mooks. it was the fourth hiding off to the side that got her.
please be a dream sequence please be a dream sequence please be a dream sequence
Not a dream. This explains why Sal is wearing a new “Rutten” jacket in recent pin-ups David made on Tumblr.
I suspect it indeed is a dream sequence. Next strip, or the strip after, will be Amber waking up in a panic because she and Sal are buds in DDoA(Dream Dumbing of Age).
Dreaming of Amber
For a second there, I was caught up in an imaginary sequel to Dumbing of Age, set 20 years in the future: Dream Daddy of Age, featuring Ethan, Evan, Thad, Sayid, Bryan, and Danny. (And whoever else I’m missing.)
No Dream Daddy Jacob? (Prob goes by ‘Jake’ now)
Seeing as Danny went through an entire universe without it ever being revealed that he was bisexual…when it comes to Jacob, who knows?
I did forget about Eric. Right now he’s definitely a cheater and honestly kind of a creep, but who knows, maybe in twenty years he’ll have settled down.
I would guess it’s a dream despite the torn jacket, because that’s not Sal’s usual speech pattern. So, Amber’s? Walky knows how his sister speaks, and he’s the only other person who knows the blue mask is “lost”.
What doesn’t sound like Sal to you, out of curiosity?
The second panel, which seems to be the sort of superhero repartee that AG has used in the past, and which Sal hasn’t. The contractions and southernisms are normal for Sal, tho. All IMHO, of course.
It reads like the comic where Sal came to AG’s rescue at the rally, but with the roles reversed.
I’m with you. The dialog seemed out of character, and this in media res scene comes too hot on the heels of where we last saw the characters. It’s jarring, to say the least.
Fair enough. I don’t really see it – it doesn’t strike me as super different to other things she’s said when she’s ready to get in a fight – but YMMV.
actually DoA has all been one long dream sequence, hallucination really, since AG got the head trauma when Sal failed to catch her falling off that car.
DoA is entirely contained in an autistic Amber’s imagination, as she sits on her living room floor staring into a snow globe of Showalter Fountain.
Yeah, that trumps my “Christ, what an imagination I’ve got.” by a bit.
Hey, where’s Beef? He was with them last time
Beef got sick of their toxic masculinity bullshit. He realized he was better than that. He politely declines and makes up excuses about hanging with them now. They still haven’t quite figured it out.
He saw Sal was involved now at the rally and promptly said ‘Fuck this shit, I died because I was jealous of her ONCE, this time I’m staying far far away.’
Beef, from Phantom of the Paradise??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyCSThEPYGk
Where’s the beef?
Yay, Amazi-Girl! I’ve missed her. She looks so happy! It must be that nice new mask.
And the snazzy new World’s Finest monthly title.
Like the fella once said, Ain’t That A Kick In The HEAD?
My head keeps…spinnin’.
*I go to sleep and keep grinnin’
If this is just the beginnin’
My life is gonna be bee-yoo-tee-ful*
…so Amazi-Girl doesn’t remember what Amber does now
wuh-oh wuh-oh
Are we sure that AG isn’t getting Amber’s memories? Or is she just saying “couldn’t find my mask” as a way of saying she had to find a spare? Since the other one was ruined by a presumed burrito-splosion at the bottom of that stairwell. I am curious if she is still getting Amber’s memories or not, because if Sal puts it together that Amber is AG they might have an awkward conversation about earlier. Unless Sal already knows in which case that conversation is unavoidable.
A few chapters ago, Amber woke up in bed to find that her fists were all scuffed for some reason, then checked her phone and found out that Amazi-Girl had been up and about the previous night – without her knowledge.
I know that Amber isn’t getting AG’s memories, I’m just wondering if it is working the same in reverse and how consistently. I haven’t seen any instances of the reverse, I think.
That doesn’t actually mean anything, since Amazi-Girl hasn’t appeared in more than a year, and rhe memory lock started after her last appearance.
I believe it’s pretty much established that Amber’s suffered a complete personality split — both halves are individuals that only share a body. (But I could be wrong)
And realistically the tacosplosion would’ve obliterated so much of campus that AG would be able to find her blue mask on the blast crater
Wonder how Sal got to the point where she had to punch out douchebros
They tore her jacket. Seems pretty self-explanatory.
Are Sal and AG teaming up to fight to fight peeps as, like, a regular thing? That would be badass, but also raise a bunch of concerns!
Yeah, maybe someone tell Sal not to do that with a huge, unique tattoo.
Anti-hero rules means she’ll never get in a fight with anyone who’ll be willing to report it or record it, unless it’s a govt. agent who naively blackmails her into participating in a black ops program and is inevitably killed once she’s no longer in peril of being arrested.
“I’m Reboot Amazi-Girl, you can tell by the costume change.”
The viral marketing for the new Streets of Rage is hella intense!
So how long has it been between now and garbage roof hook up? 3 hours, 4 hours, or a day? And is that Just Amazi-girl taking control of Amber in her sleep again?
I’m taking a stab in the dark and saying this is the same night, Sal probably encountered these punks after leaving Garbage Roof. So either that post-stairway moment with Walky didn’t last long or AG is going for a moonlit walk while Amber is unaware. I’m hoping it is just the former one but it is probably the latter.
Almost certainly a few hours later, before dawn the next morning. Time skips have always been noted in the comic itself, so we can assume this new story starts after midnight the same night.
Yeah, that and Amazi-Girl with the mask comment heavily implies it’s the same night. I doubt Amber wouldn’t have a second mask, rather than using what looks like an improvised one.
Almost certainly the latter. We know she’s been doing that.
What we didn’t know is that she’s apparently been meeting up with Sal to patrol. Not at all sure what to make of that.
On the one hand, I am still happy that Amber threw away the mask, if for nk other reason than it helped her. But on the other hand, she should have known AG would have another one or make it. This is going to cause some serious issues if Amber is unaware that AG went out with a new mask, thinking she stopped her somehow.
Also this is only tangentially related, did that burrito/doorstop actually hit the mask when she threw it? We never found out and inquiring minds need to know.
I legit thought I missed a couple of comics here.
That was my first reaction, too. But a quick looksee at the comments set me to rights! 🙂
*clicks tag*
Damn. I hadn’t realized it had been quite so long since we last saw Amazi-Girl properly. February 2017, really?
She last appeared “in the flesh” in April 2017 (having an argument with Amber, but they were both in the dark so only their eyes can be seen), and then in a picture on November of that same year. Has she been doing stuff like this the entire time?
By “properly,” I mean visible, in costume, and actually doing something. But yeah, at a guess she has. Though that’s only a few days in comic time. And she’d have been away from campus, and hence her costume, while Amber was gone after the Ryan incident.
Gotta say… That mask really clashes with the outfit. Somebody stop AG for her crimes against fashion!
It’s been mentioned further up that the “new” mask we see here is the original Amazi-Girl mask from Shortpacked! – the mask we’re all used to is/was part of Amazi-Girl’s redesign when moving between continuities.
I kinda wonder where AG got it; this might be my bias towards Amber talking but I think she knows better than that costume
For a moment I thought she had drawn on the mask outline. Then I read the comments.
Wait no this is actually a thing- she’s being written with a more outputting costume cuz this scene is meant to be unsettling- Amazi-girl’s appearance in this strip signifies a major backside in Amber really struggling to overcome her other self. Moreover; Amazi-girl is essentially invading Amber’s body and using it to commit acts of violence in a way that’s slowly evolved over DoA’s run from cool to terrifying.
TL;DR this is Amazi-girl doing an evil costume shift as her role in story becomes less beneficial and more menacing
Amber cannot “overcome” AG no matter how hard she tries. So this is not a “backslide”.
Her DID got worse some time ago as was hinted with Amber waking up and not remembering that AG had been out at night while before they shared memories. Not they don’t.
But doesn’t it look like Sal and AG have been out fighting several times by now, which would mean Sal really gave up on her promise to Marcie to not fight?
Hmmm…you know, if Sal and AG’s “team ups” have become a regular thing (which still seems unlikely to me) it might explain why Sal was looking for AG earlier when she walked in on Walky and Amber. Really, we can’t do much except speculate since today’s transistion from the flashback is so jarring. (“We know rejoin the current continuity of ‘Dumbing of Age’ already in progress….”)
YAYYY!!! Amazi-Girl’s back!!
aw yeah
amazi-girl has a posse ♥
2 Worries and a Bet
Worry #1 – Fuck, AG and Amber really AREN’T sharing any memories anymore. AG doesn’t have Amber’s either. FUCK.
Worry #2 – Sal’s getting back into some bad habits with AG around it seems, especially since Marcie’s not speaking to her.
Bet – My guess is after they finish kicking these guy’s asses, Marcie’s going to see them. I don’t think she’ll be amused.
Also – AG, lateness is unacceptable, your other half is a comic nerd, you should KNOW better about how to be a proper sidekick!
Wait, AG is the sidekick? I do think Sal is more badass, and she has a much more level head(relatively speaking) but does Sal consider herself a hero?
I’m pretty sure this should be classified as a team up of a hero and antihero.
Totally agree. Authoritarian vigilante and authority-hating rebel think they hate each other until they team up to fight the real enemy.
This would probably be more accurate, but I’m mostly being silly and so AG is the sidekick. 😛
There were a few jokes back when Sal teamed up to fight Ryan at the rally with AG that Sal was her sidekick. Since AG had just been stalking Sal, this kinda irked me a little and so I started joking that since Sal was (generally) more level headed, always wins the most badass poll and has saved AG twice, AG should be Sal’s sidekick instead and it’s just become one the jokes I’ve made since then whenever they team up.
I thought Sal and Marcie were on speaking terms again after Malaya went off to have sex with Joe.
Not so far as I can tell – Marcie just shrugged and it doesn’t appear they’ve spoken since.
I don’t think Marcie is really on speaking terms with anybody.
the drummer sighs, takes a drag off his cigarette, then rolls out a reluctant *ba dum tishhhh*.
hnnnng I should be worried about amazi-girl showing up because of what it implies about amber’s psyche/split personalities, but JUMPKICK
yeah.
the drummer sighs, takes a drag off his cigarette, then rolls out a reluctant *ba dum tishhhh*.
Sorry, wrong comment! Stupid mobile…
I seem to recall that after the Toedad storyline ended, Willis remarked that he “just needed to write a car chase” once in while. (Can’t find the exact quote, but that’s the gist of it.)
So…car chase coming up?
For all the deep deconstruction stuff going on with Amazi-Girl, the real reason she’s here and isn’t likely going away is that Willis likes drawing action sequences.
So now Sal and AG are teaming up, fighting crime.
FIGHTING CRIME!~
Here they come, just in time!
Sal does not feel obliged to avoid trouble any longer…
Hey, Marcie forgave her for fighting at the rally, right? Kind of? Not at all?
Uh, I’m sure it’s fine.
Sal has a new best friend that’s just as cool and hates Malaya and lets her fight as much as she wants! What do you think about that, MARCIE!
Avoid how?
He seems to like it!
So, assuming this is the same night, what do you think happened?
Did the make out session end and they go their separate ways?
Did they have sex and go their separate ways?
Or did the two of them sex each other to sleep and then AG took the body out for her and Sal’s regular Anger Management session?
I’d assume make-outs only.
I think we’d be given more of a direct hint if they’d actually had sex.
To prove me wrong Willis will cut to a scene of Walky waking up alone and confused in Amber’s bed. 🙂
New chapter title – “Flyin’ Into The Red”.
Red, as in red panels? Can’t be good.
Maybe Sal will punt Blaine to mars or something. Or Dina could suddenly become very small and hop into Becky’s hair to live there forever. This could be really wholesome.
Alternatively maybe Faz and Galasso could start dating and it’s flying to the red because they execute millions of people to build their dark later of matrimony
*altar
Maybe they all become communists?
I’m pretty sure that Amber, Amazi-Girl and Sal are going on a journey to the centre of all three of their traumas and neuroses.
We’ll see if Sal is strong enough to continue to be friends with the woman who’s room-mate with the woman who stabbed her in the hand. My call? The way Sal treats Marcie shows that she has a considerable caring/healing aspect to her nature. I think that, if she realised just how screwed up Amber is (“As screwed up as ah am, maybe worse!”), she’ll want to help her, if she can.
Dina? Dina is the room-mate of Amber, and Amber stabbed Sal in the hand.
Yeah, I think benrg meant head-mate, not roommate.
Super Best Frenemies.
Jumpkick? More like sidekick.
I’d say plunging kick. You know, like plunging fire?
Dynamic Entry!
Sal definitely needs a sidekick name and costume. Though I doubt she’d care enough to want one.
How about https://sidekickgirl.net/ ? Sal’s got a bare midriff, different tattoos, and gloves, but really not much different.
Oh hey, the yellow mask is back!
(Yes I’m worried about how much agency Amazi-Girl has now, but I’ve had a stressful few weeks and am enjoying a cooldown so I’m gonna take this.)
Sure would be nice if those other guys just stood there and let their buddy get his ass kicked.
In their defence, they probably weren’t expecting the costumed vigilante to drop down on them from above.
Oh, I meant it would be nice if they actually just stood there and watched, because he deserves it and they think he needs to learn a lesson. More guys should let their buddies get beaten up. This isn’t sarcasm.
Unfortunately, these sorts of creatures tend to hunt in like-minded packs.
I feel very in medias res-ed. GG.
He wears his sunglasses at night, so he can so he can.
Watch you weave then breathe your lies.
Take one look at Sal’s smile in the last panel and tell me that she’s not crushing on Amazi-Girl.
I wonder if she knows (or even can imagine) that her partner is ‘borrowing’ a body that its’ other occupant is currently not using as she’s asleep.
“Hello, lover.”
Secondary comment: I’m voting right now for a spin-off comic: “The Adventures of Amazi-Girl and The Spider“.
“No more fights”, Sal?
That was before she discovered that she likes being a mysterious leather-clad vigilante.
That was before three thugs threatened her integrity. I don’t think even with their history Marcie would expect her to wait meekly to get /raped/beat up/whatever the guys who ganged up on an apparently weak an’ lonely victim were planning/.
Of course she just might have been “lookin’ for trouble” but he mostly keeps to herself, plus “for tearing my jacket” reads like a clue that she didn’t start it, guv.
Yeah, I imagine in such a situation, Marcie’d say ‘Yeah, no, promise suspended, go ahead and kick their asses’.
But she’d probably not be happy if she was out looking for trouble with Amazi-Girl. Which it seems might be a thing now?
Just noting the irony.
Amazi-girl, as played by Dorothy.
Did I miss some strips?
we had sal/amber and walky on the roof in daylight…. sals flashback and now we’re in the middle of a fight scene.
I don’t know how we got here and picking random fights isn’t really very sal so I’m lost
I think that we’re being told that Sal and Amazi-Girl have been working together ever since the Ryan incident at Robin’s rally. Sal is the sort of woman – ‘provocatively’ dressed and ethnic minority – that attract the sort of guys who proactively refuse to take ‘no’ as an answer (and even take it as encouragement). So, she goes out wandering at night, drawing them in so that she and Amazi-Girl can bust their chops.
Basically, she’s doing it for the same reason as Amber started being Amazi-Girl. So long as they’re beating up obvious bad guys, they’re not turning their anger and frustration on people whom it is harder to argue deserve it.
My guess is it’s Amber having a dream (or AG communicating with her, for a change, while she’s asleep. Same difference.) and mixing up details, as happens in dreams.
I would also hazard the guess that this chapter will mostly concern how Sal wound up getting stabbed by Amber, and that somewhere down the line Amber gets to confess and apologize to her for it. Maybe by 2025 real-time.
Dream sequence or stress-induced hallucination- either way I don’t think this is actually happening.
If it’s the latter, a part of me would find it interesting to see how Amber would react to Amazi-Girl being gay or bi and is attracted to Sal.
Perhaps they have split into two separate beings in body as well?
Calling it now. This is Amber having a confused sexy dream.
Daredev, er, Amazi-Girl: Yellow
So Amber and Amazi Girl are definitely different personalities that aren’t aware of what the other is doing? This girl really needs help or she will become a villain from a Shyamalan movie. Seriously, if Amazi Girl is absorbing all the kindness, justice and badassery from Amber, Amber is going to be a mass of self hatred.
That’s….not even remotely how DID works. One personality isn’t some kind of ‘goodness sponge’, no matter how hard AG and Amber want that to be true.
If not a sponge, it is a bad case of having black and white morality world view, so Amber has to separate all her goodness into a personality that can only do good, and in that way she is “sacrificing” her sanity for that.
That sort-of hits the mark? The way I see it, AG started out as Amber’s anger management/coping strategy, but it went well wrong. Amber’s trying to paint a “good vs. bad” layer over it, but that’s more the consequence of self-hatred and a superhero ideal. Amber’s done some great things, while AG’s done some crappy things – the line is more blurred than either of them is willing to admit.
She thinks that’s what AG is, but A) Amber’s plenty good on her own and B) AG has does absolutely shit things. For instance, since college started, all Amber’s done is run from Sal. AG’s stalked her twice and once intended to ambush and beat the shit out of her in the middle of the dorm entrance for having the GALL to stand around existing and waiting for a friend. And again, that’s not how DID works. One is not all good and one is not all bad – regardless of whether or not they want to admit it.
Cerberus referred to it as the “Golden Alter”. It’s the persona that exists to be the perfect one, but it’s still actually a real human persona so it can’t be perfect and keeping up the pretense just winds up being more damaging. Amazi-Girl winds up taking credit for anything good and pushing anything bad onto Amber.
We’ve seen this play out – when Amber was talking to Danny about their breakup, she said she worried about her bad influence on Amazi-Girl. It’s bullshit, as BBCC says, but it plays into both their narratives – not just that AG is the perfect super-hero, but that Amber is the monster.
I don’t think it really has anything to do with a black and white morality world view though, more with Amber’s Blaine derived view of herself as a worthless monster. She can’t possibly be good or deserve any credit for anything, so all that goes to Amazi-Girl.
Does anyone know how Cerberus is?
The SalAmazi combo are ON…
As la Dyer would say, “You’re going dahn you facking twat!”
Willis! I just got a takeover add on Android.
Super hero team up! So Cool!
“But wait, Sal’s not a super-”
She rides a motorcycle and can put up with Danny’s ukelele-super hero.
(sorry if this has been said, I didn’t read everything)
Too long since D.Y.Willis has drawn an action scene.
BTW, I gotta say, if you’re Batman, three against one may not be long odds, but in RL, three against one is a fight you are going to lose – unless you are Jocko Willinck.
whats great is, when you inevitably make the sal/amazigirl slipshine, you can use the exact same pose!
… and one liner!
You are assuming he hasn’t already.
Hey did you all know Sal can always see Amazi-Girl on her left side? It’s true, she spider.
I strongly suspect that the hints of non-memory sharing are true.
Amazi-Girl said she had trouble finding her mask because she doesn’t know where Amber left it. She never found it and had to quickly craft another one from some yellow cloth.
I further suspect she and Sal have been doing the hero-and-sidekick thing for a while now. They seem so nonchalant and casual about the whole thing. They’re actually bantering, like fighting thugs is a normal thing and the only abnormal part of it is that Amber was running late. Late enough that Sal was looking for her (on Garbage Roof) and eventually gave up and went crime-fighting on her own.
Sal is also having so much fun fighting that she’s completely abandoned her promise to Marcie. I’m guessing she used to get into fights a lot, before the accident that hurt Marcie and took her voice, and has been “on the wagon” ever since. She’s relapsing, becoming “old Sal” from before. This is evident in the loss of her accent, which she obviously didn’t have growing up.
They’re becoming a dangerous couple. They’re both powderkegs, and it’s only a matter of time before they explode.
I am sorry but what happened to the rss? It stopped working some week ago…
So is Sal just good at beating ass because she’s angry? I’m all for gender equality and there are undoubtedly girls that could beat ass like her, but we’ve never seen any martial arts training or any physical exercise being done by Sal that would make her fighting ability in any way plausible.