Wack’d is running a bracketed Best Dumbing Of Age Character poll on their Twitter starting YESTERDAY, and … it’s fun and I’m excited they’re doing this!!!! Dumbing of Age is turning TEN soon, y’all.
Wack’d has taken the polling results from previous BEST CHARACTER polls on this site to determine, SCIENTIFICALLY, how to match folks up, and Day 1 saw Dina versus Raidah, Jocelyne versus Danny, Walky versus Lucy, and Jason versus Mike. You can… probably guess how most of those turned out. Today, I believe there’ll be four more battles unleashed! Go vote for them!
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“Avon calling”
“Welcome Wagon!”
Welcome wagon who?
Welcome wagon-ah do sum fancy acrobatics and rescue yew.
Oh no! You’re that land shark! I ain’t opening the door for you!
Oh god, I forgot about that! XD
In Indiana, shark jumps you!
Pretty sure the DOA shark came pre-jumped.
LOL!
Candygram!
“Candygram!”
For Mongo?
Candygram my foot, you get out of here before I call the police, you’re that shark and you know it!
“Who is it?!”
“It’s the Plumber, I’ve come to fix the sink!”
“And the Mailman, here to ‘handle your parcels’!”
“And your Neighbor, here to ‘borrow some sugar’!”
… Sorry, who ARE you people??
“No time for the old in-out, love, I’ve just come to read the meter.” (Alex De
large)
I understood that reference!
“Hi, we are Mormons, and we would like to talk to you about our Saviour Jesus Christ…”
*Joyce knocks the heathens over…*
😜
“I’m selling these fine leather jackets.”
trick or treat
Get the door–IT’S DOMINO’S!
“Your rescue in 15 minutes or it’s free! Well, okay, it’s a rescue, so of course it’s free.”
Not in America!
I just patented the rescue as a technique for saving people. They’ll need money to pay the licencing fee.
Also I just patented a method for leaving messages for others in a Comments section encoding words as text. The rest of you need to pay up.
14 15 20 9 6 9 21 19 5 14 21 13 2 5 18 19 !
3 21 18 19 5 19 !
A HREF=”https://www.dcode.fr/letter-number-cipher”>https://www.dcode.fr/letter-number-cipher
Ah, so Joyce had the foresight to install that new superhero delivery app, Suber.
…Wait, they actually did that in a plot of the new DuckTales.
WADDLEDUCK~
Now how to get out of a speeding vehicle?
Carefully.
With a frightend leap.
(all the cool kids do Xena references, right?)
Wait for the car to stop, and then get out, generally. Just depends on how deranged Blaine is and how heavy the traffic is in Indiana in the morning traveling away from a college.
…
Yeah, Joyce better jump.
Tuck and roll.
Bold of you who assume she knocked with her hands and not by throwing something at it
My first thought was that AG did it with a well timed yo-yo
The knocks would be noticeably far apart, though.
I didn’t say it was a good thought, just a first thought.
One in each hand
But it’s Amber, not AG, and I don’t think yo-yos actually work like that? Though I had a yo-yo style toy as a kid that I don’t think would count as an actual yo-yo but might be able to do the trick.
I’ve seen no indication that Amber is less badass than AG? AFAIK the main difference is that she loses control and gets a little too badass.
Yeah, I was just correcting the AG part of my post; clearly, it wasn’t AG doing the knocking, because AG’s not there.
The important distinction is, as we know from Miraculous Ladybug, yo-yos *do* work like that, but only for superheroes. As Amber is a badass normal instead of a superhero, it wouldn’t work for her.
Amber would have awesome yo-yo powers if she could fuse with Walky to form Smoky Quartz.
I’m glad BBCC wasn’t taking part in this thread or I would be really confused by now.
Hi. 🙂
Even bolder take: Amber is the one knocking.
I suppose she could have used bolders, but that seems a little heavy.
Sal intensifies Salling
We’re all Sallyvating.
I suppose it makes sense that the motercycle is a Salling vehicle. And that’s even before the shipping starts.
oh jeez, i’m now worried the van has an alarm bell for when the door is open, because all Blaine has to do is slam on the brakes to ensure grievous bodily harm…..
I’m pretty sure the alarm for the rear door being open is only a light on the instrument cluster. If there even is an alarm.
That would require a level of attention to detail Blaine may not have.
if there is, he has to stop and go back there, and they’ll be out of hammering distance if that happens, even on foot.
I’m worried about Sal potentially cutting him off to slow him down (so Joyce and probably Faz can jump without getting dead) and him ramming her. Even when he’s more logical I doubt Blaine exactly watches out for motorcyclists
I think the idea is Slam On Brakes = Motorcycle Rear-Ends Van.
yes this makes sense, I thought that was just about Joyce
On my van it only indicated that a door was ajar, but not which one specifically. Of course, I never had anything newer than a 2005….
Forget the alarm. Throwing open the rear door makes it visible in Blaine’s left side mirror, and how can he miss a sudden white object popping up there, with accompanying noises.
Is it me, or is Faz being awfully logical, calm and pragmatic about all this.
OOC?! i’unno.
I honestly don’t know as much about DOA Faz as that of SP’d Faz.
We don’t have as good a sense of DoA Faz in general, but this is DEFINITELY less goofy and incompetent than Shortpacked Faz. We have seen Faz be pretty canny before, though – he managed to get files off Amber’s computer without her noticing, and his speed (which probably ties into how he was so stealthy earlier) was enough Amber couldn’t keep up with him. Given the unfamiliar layout he had there, that probably included some improvising, too.
The perception in particular, though? That’s pretty new. (I have… concerns, about why a Faz raised by Blaine might be better at reading people, you know? But for all we know SP!Faz was always this perceptive and just liked getting beat up by Mike on a consistent basis or something.)
Fazz might have needed to be perceptive to survive growing up under Blaine and his mother, whose name I forget and is not a nice person at all, I think.
That dreadful smirk might be a mask.
Faz’s mother’s name is Yuri.
“why a Faz raised by Blaine might be better at reading people,”
Well, Blaine fancies himself a manipulator (Whether he IS adept at it is up for debate), so, that skill requires being able to read people.
Faz (seemingly more… MORE than ‘Other Faz’, and somewhat of a manipulator himself – dig what he’s been saying to Joyce. That DEFINITELY sounds like ‘Sleazy Ex BF trying to get you to STAY’ shite) seems to have the capacity to have learned from Blaine (and especially learned from his MISTAKES).
A Faz raised by Blaine, who is implied to be physically abused by said Blaine, would need to be able to read a room pretty well so as to avoid a beating.
^This is the correct interpretation.
Faz stressing the Blaine was … disappointed… in him says a whole lot. He was raised by the same abuser as Amber. You can get very good at hiding intelligence and working around the Devil you know.
I feel like he’s more resigned.
I think he’s got another shoe to drop.
We still have about three weeks of strips left for this chapter. Even with some epilogue and cooldown strips where we see the early aftermath, it’s still a little early to start wrapping things up.
I think the next arc, “Is A Song Forever?” will be the extended wrap-up.
Blaine slows down to make a turn and now they’re all mostly in the van.
Faz is… much more perceptive than I ever gave him credit for, here.
That’s. Interesting.
Walkyverse Faz didn’t have to make any sense. This one needs a little grounding.
He may be more perceptive, but I see that he too fell for Becky’s bluff.
Why are you so insistent that it’s a bluff?
I read the comic?
Becky was coming over expecting to meet her father and sacrifice herself to save Joyce and the others. At that point she had no motive to go after Blaine. She arrives to find her father dead, killed by a now captured Blaine. She spends a little time alone with her dead father coming to terms with the conflicting emotions. She exits to find Joyce once again in danger from the man who killed her father. She captures his attention with her bravado, placing the alleged messages just far enough in the future that he can’t easily check the truth, but not so far as to give him breathing room, and then sells it by revealing his “secret” identity. When he tries to get her to cancel the messages she instantly comes up with a logical reason that she can’t. She even asks Amber if she has overplayed her hand.
With her quick thinking she has reduced Blaine from a position of power to one of desperation. He flees, which is not what she intended, but her wits and words have still contributed to Blaine’s eventual defeat. Becky is awesome in her own right.
And if I should somehow be wrong, by insisting, I get to annoy those people who disagree. So, win win.
Not wrong tho.
I guess that’s a plausible theory, but it’s less plausible then her telling the truth. And when somebody asked why you think that, you wrote all that but no reason why you think it.
Or she does all that, like she says, because she expects to be taken prisoner and wants the word out as soon as the others are safe. She names Blaine because Amber/AG tells her about him. The only real difference is that she also names Ross, but there’s no need to mention that when talking to Blaine because he’s out of the picture.
The overplaying her hand part is about how she presents it and how Blaine’s likely to react, not the story itself. Note that Blaine doesn’t disbelieve her, the spite just wins out over self-preservation.
She doesn’t ask if she’s overplayed her hand. She asks if she’s playing this right. I took that as wanting to know if her chosen approach would have the desired effect.
Last time Becky sacrificed herself for Joyce by letting herself be kidnapped, she was partly saved by discreetly calling the cops. (Mostly by Amazi-Girl, but still, that was a good backup.) It doesn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility for her to remember that and decide to do something similar this time, and figure out a way to do it in advance, while not trying to repeat it exactly, because Ross would have been on the lookout for that this time.
Damn tailgaters.
They’re in Blaine’s blind spot. If he didn’t notice them pulling up in his wing mirrors, he’ll have no idea they’re there.
Unless he just got a “door ajar” notice on the dashboard, then he might think something’s up.
Dude, he left the back unlocked? Terribly kidnapping skills.
He was a bit in a hurry at the time…
Doors can be unlocked without a key from the inside.
After all, cargo vans generally don’t have child locks.
Federal law even, after a pizza driver was locked in the back of her delivery vehicle during a kidnapping/attempted rape in the very late 1980s or early 90s. I remember this for 2 reasons, she was a pizza driver and she was driving the exact same make and model car that I used to deliver pizzas.
I knew about Federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) No. 401; Internal trunk release, but this is a new one on me. Makes sense though.
It’s just a pair of clamshell doors. At least one side, usually the right-hand one when viewed from outside, locks, unlocks, and opens just like any other hinged door on a van. It the roll-down doors, like on a semi or a big square-box U-Haul or Ryder truck, that can only be locked/unlocked from the outside.
Most recent box trucks and semi trailers have levers on the inside, though they can still be padlocked from outside.
“See, amazi-girl. THIS is how you follow a kidnapper in a car without hitching a ride on a skateboard.”
“Showoff.”
Flowers.
Plumber, ma’am.
Candygram.
Knock – knock; Jehovas’ Witness at the door!
Candygram my foot! You get out of here before I call the police, you’re that shark and you know it!
Yeah, there’s no way out.
I don’t think Blaine was the only desperate one back there, Faz.
I don’t get your meaning here. Care to elaborate?
I believe that BBCC is saying that Faz too was desperate.
Bingo.
Desperate for what though?
Like he said, he knows Blaine is going to get caught (and he and his mom are probably going to lose their home by extension). I don’t think he was ready to admit that and just acted in a desperate move to stop it (hence cutting Blaine free).
Oh yeah, that’s very possible. Although it could also be that he was only convinced this would all fail once he heard about Becky’s tweet, at which point it was a lot harder for him to just back out.
HELLO THERE
I actually laughed out loud. Thank you for that.
“Someone order Jimmy Johns?”
For Faz’s sake, he better not know Blaine killed Ross, otherwise he could be facing accessory after the fact to murder. He might still anyway, come to think of it. He did participate in a felony kidnapping during which someone was murdered, so he’s screwed.
His only hope is he’s just 14 (IIRC) and maybe can show abuse and control.
But he’d better learn an expression other than that smirk or the jury will convict him on that alone.
Well I think he’s 15 now
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/stepdad/
“… allows 14 and 15-year-olds to have non-forced sexual activity … can I pencil you in for when I reach the age of consent in two weeks?”
I read that as he was 13 at that time and was talking about reaching the age of 14 (which he classed as “the age of consent”) in two weeks.
And since the events of the “Faz is Great” chapter took place on October 12th and the events of this chapter are happening on October 20th (according to the DoA timeline), he’s still got about a week to go to hit 14.
That is, if Joyce lets him live that long.
He was 15 at the time and thus legal for her with the close in age exemption. When she replied “That’s super gross”, he suggested waiting two weeks until the normal age of consent (16).
I interpret it the same way as Bicycle Bill, to be honest.
I can see it being the other way, but it seems more likely to me that he’s saying he’s almost 14.
14 isn’t the age of consent. What Faz is referring to is a Romeo and Juliet law that makes it okay to have sex with someone below the age of consent if you’re within a few years of age. The age of consent is 16. Ergo, Faz is 15.
There was some confusion about it. I believe Willis confirmed the intent, though I can’t find it now.
Willis confirmed that Faz is fifteen-going-on-sixteen here, in response to an earlier version of this same debate over the meaning of that “Romeo and Juliet law” strip: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/handle-2/
(search the comments)
He know blaine is a killer (or he has heard it, whether he believes it or not)…
– dina said “you killed Becky’s father” when she attacked blaine (and faz was in the room at the time)
– blaine told Dorothy “keep your dead body” during the escape
– Dorothy told blaine “you only killed one co-conspirator” when they were heading to the van
So… what exactly is the plan here? “Jump on, Joyce! We got room for one more!”?
Blaine opening the door expecting to find an unconscious Joyce and actually finding Sal and her sidekick, Amazi-Amber would be satisfying, but I have no idea how they would pull it off.
And who drives the motorcycle?
Amber uses her grappling hook to get into the van (using some comic book physics)jumping from the back of the bike over Sal’s head. Sal drops back and follows at a safe distance. When blaine opens the van he gets confronted by an angry Joyce and amber team-up. Sal provides backup (and maybe calls the police to give a location).
In theory Joyce could jump out (amber catches her). They could slow down and leave her on the side of the road, then speed up to retrieve faz. (They already caught up to the van once after it had a head start… Doing it again shouldn’t be a problem.)
Three might can fit on a speeding bike, but can four?
This comic has already pushed the boundaries of realism.
Lets all be honest here, the realism boat sailed a long time ago
Very carefully.
https://misterslimm.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/a-close-shave-21-shaun-riding-a-motorcycle.jpg
This speeding van is badly in need of a paint job. If you’d be willing to carry a set of our magnetic signs for the next seventeen years, we can supply the materials at no charge. Of course, you will still have to pay a small fee to cover labor.
*Knock Knock* Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior Jesus Christ?
Joyce: DO I!
I don’t think they can carry 4 people in a motorcycle. They need to stop Blaine from driving somehow.
If Sal can catch a speeding Amazigirl in freefall, she can catch a jumping Joyce.
Faz will ride into the uttermost West and remain Faz.
I’m thinking Faz is gonna be forced to stay behind and face Blaine, which would definitely not go well for him.
See, I was gonna say “what’s stopping Faz from bolting the moment the van slows down or comes to a halt”, considering how sprightly he is, but then I think of a couple of outcomes:
• Faz exits when the van is going slow, potentially hurts himself and isn’t in a good condition to run; if Blaine spots him in the wing mirrors (not a guarantee given his desperation), that’s an easy catch since he could probably swing that thing around, oncoming traffic or physics be damned
• Faz exits when the van stops, and if Blaine’s seen him (more likely since he’ll be getting out of the van), Blaine can just get back into the van and try to catch up with him; this would be stymied somewhat if Faz takes a route that’s not reasonably accessible by van (even for someone like Blaine who’d probably off-road that thing to keep up) but would still likely end poorly
His best option would be to escape at the same time as Joyce, and given that he’s probably lighter than the others given his younger age, it might not screw up balance on the bike if he leapt on (especially considering earlier precedence). But his egress would be dependent on if Sal and Amber wanna rescue him too, given that he helped with the kidnapping in some form.
This is a tense situation, I gotta say.
To be fair carrying four people on her motorbike wouldn’t even be in the top three of unlikely things Sals done with her motorbike
They could if they do it like this.
Faz is going to screw this up for all of them somehow. Isn’t he?
Question is: for who though?
Oh crap…didn’t read the for all of them…definitely a possibility…
…also the most likely one
So, there’s room for one more, not two. Joyce would be giving Faz a near-death sentence if she escapes but leaves Faz behind. However, Faz can not be trusted, as he may choose to betray Joyce & Co if he gets the impression that Blaine might go free…
“Near”? Blaine’s off the edge of the map, sanity-wise. If Faz doesn’t bolt, Blaine will kill him. And my read is that Faz doesn’t really want to help Blaine, especially since his other option right now (Joyce) has always treated him like a person instead of a hemorrhoid or a punching bag.
How did they knock?
Loudly.
Loud enough to be heard anyway.
Two brief impacts on the back door in rapid succession.
You close up to the rear bumper and lean waay forward…
Joyce repeating the sound effect of the knock in words is for some reason incredibly funny to me. I mean, the repetition of the “knock knock” makes sense to us as the readers of a visual medium, but I imagine it’d be a little more odd to hear someone say “knock knock” out loud as an incredulous reaction to an actual knock-knock.
“Knock, knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Search!”
“Search who?”
“Sal and Amber’s Mobile Search and Rescue Squad!”
I think one of them just yelled Knock Knock out loud.
Oh. That. That makes more sense.
It would, but it looks like a sound effect. I dunno, has DoA had dialogue in outlined text with no speech bubbles before?
Just because it makes more sense doesn’t mean it’s true.
Joyce, if Sal says hi, you ask how high. Did they teach you nothing at University?
Sal: “Hi”
Joyce: “Oh, I don’t do drugs.”
“Only on my lord and savior Jesus Christ!” (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/high/)
I feel much better about Faz now. I think yesterday I was just so… Overwhelmed
So…. Amber climbs into the van with a cel phone, police follow the phone via gps, if Blaine stops the van to open up the back he gets a face full of righteously-enraged daughter? Or just tail the van with the same idea, hoping Blaine doesn’t notice he’s being tailed, and they only knocked on the door to let Joyce know there’s help so she feels better?
I’m not seeing other options. No room on that motorcycle for four, no access to the cab from the rear, and no seat belts for the people we care about in case Amber’s thinking of doing a high speed hijack.
Well this app transportation services have really become more and more efective 😛
Someday Faz may have a facial expression.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/sass/
yeah sure okay whatever
…well, they found ’em…
If you can knock on the back door of a van, you can probably put an object in its tailpipe and stall it. Then Sal and Amber hide behind it until Blaine runs around to keep Joyce from jumping out, ambush him, and win.
I wasn’t sure Sal and AG were gonna catch up, since the van seemed pretty far ahead. Now I’m not sure if that motorcycle can fit 4 people on it.
AG is probably going to jump into the van so she can confront her father.
Regarding the bracket poll: Dina vs Jocelyne in the upcoming round is gonna be a nailbiter.
Okay fine, it’s been the same van this whole time.
ITYS.
Now I have to find some other petty and ultimately irrelevant thing to get aggravated over (because I’m just burned out from the rest of the world going to hell in a handbasket). I hope you’re satisfied. 😛
If it helps, Willis rages on his twitter pretty often how a transformer’s colour scheme is wrong, you can co-opt that one.
True friends know how to make a surprise visit♡. But Faz will alter his father or help Joyce?
One state over, in Pickerington Ohio, there is the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
At the end of all this, I nominate Sal’s bike (and Sal) for her heroic efforts in saving lives while riding.
Joyce and Faz are safe where they are. The greatest danger is Blaine crashing. They can jump and run when the van stops.
Blaine isn’t getting away if he is being trailed by someone with a phone.
Don’t do anything….oh wait, this is Dumbing of Age.
If Blaine crashes into something right now, they’re going to go flying forward until they impact the inside of the van.
The safest place for them would be sitting with their backs to their front wall of the cargo area. In a front end crash, that’s actually safer than being belted in a forward facing seat.
*The* front wall. Damn autocarrot.
Damn you Otto Korrect!
Break Check!
So as soon as Blaine stops… Or is he running red lights now?
Oh thank the gods they caught up.
Now to reenact the highway scene of True Lies, but with a motorcycle and not a helicopter.
….getting her on the bike is gonna be awkard, even if amber climb to the truck first
OK, so what’s more dangerous, jumping out of a speeding truck onto a speeding motorbike, or trusting Faz?
…jump onto that bike.
“Do you have a moment to discuss our Lord, and Savior, the Flying Spaghetti Monster?”
Joyce’s face in the last panel made me make a laugh that sounded more like a bark and now my cats are scared
An unexpected blip of humor in an otherwise very serious plotline
Dammit, Sal! Now we’ll never know if Faz would pass the
Voight-KampffJoyce-Brown test!Hmmm, how did Sal manage to knock on the door without ramming her front tire into the van. Her arms are not long enough to reach past the tire.
Might’ve come up alongside very briefly, then dropped back
I considered that, but I doubt Sal would be willing to come alongside, Blaine might see them.
Stretch Girl arms.
Reverse wheelie
…. so, is Amber gonna scoot over or…?
Also are they taking Faz? Because I do not put it past Blaine to use his son as a hostage.
Hostage, no. Faz likely doesn’t survive to the next block if he’s left with Blaine at this point.
So, I’ve had an uneasy feeling since reading this strip, and I just figured out why. I’m pretty sure that Faz is checking out by the end of this chapter. And it honestly bothers me more than I would expect it to. I’m so used to disliking the little creep that worrying about frickin’ FAZ just feels unnatural. Yes, he’s not that same freak from Shortpacked!, but it’s so weird knowing that there’s a person behind that smirk that it’s . . . it’s actually unnerving. I hope I’m wrong, but if I’m not, I just hope that Faz takes Blaine down with him.
I’m confused, are you implying Faz might die? I don’t really think that will happen (if for no other reason than Ross already died and another death would seem excessive for this comic) but if he did die I would bawl like a baby.
I am, and I’ll definitely cry too if that happens.
I’d be disappointed if that happened. Faz is a creepy little weirdo, but he deserves a chance to get out from under Blaine’s thumb and rectify that. SP!Faz was creepy beyond redemption, but I don’t think DoA!Faz is there yet.
There’s no room on the bike for a third, they have to stop the van.
I’m considering the possibility that Blaine is NOT the father of Faz.
Look at his eyes. They’re never open.
Only a DNA test will prove it, but I believe his mom cheated on Blaine and had a one-night fling with Jughead Jones.
And before anyone asks … the comic-book character, not the live action TV guy.
I like to imagine Sal did a reverse wheelie and managed to keep it stable with Amber flailing in the air, long enough to do a proper policeman knock.