*Forrest Gump theme*
The FINAL bonus strip of the FIRST TEN YEARS is about the further adventures of Danny’s escaped hat! All patrons can check it out over here at the Dumbing of Age Patreon.
and remember you can pledge up to always read TOMORROW’s strip TODAY
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and the pandemic is still going
…
oh, October in the COMIC
… I mean, with the sliding time scale thingy, yeah. Technically.
Let’s be honest, though… it feels like it took us as long as it did to get to this point in 2020 as it did to get to this point in the story.
2020’s been a hell of a long decade.
Can we concentrate on what’s important? It’s still October and we haven’t missed Halloween yet.
Why not? Retailers started concentrating on Halloween a week ago.
I’m in the Northeastern US. My sister’s b’day is mid-August and Halloween is her favorite holiday.
For many years now, the appearance of Halloween-baggged candy and decorations have been popping up in the major-brand stores the first week of August.
She loves getting three months of her favorite holiday, and I like the fact that seeing those plastic pumpkins in the store in early August reminds me to send her a b’day card.
Halloween? I was at a Costco today and the Christmas stuff was already out!
But tomorrow is likely to be November.
I bet November is going to be the crown jewel of the crap that has been 2020.
I’m wearing a Plague Mask for Halloween this year!
Bow-wow-chicki-chicka-wow-ow! If this frame holds over the timeskip into the winter, we’re gonna get some non-Patreon tree-NUDITY!
Does this mean five months will pass if there’s a five day break?
SPRINGING OF AGE LET’S GO
I think we’ll at least skip ahead into January. That gets us past the congressional inauguration, freeing up Robin as a side character. It’s more than enough time for Blaine and Toedead’s estates to be settled (at least the “clean” above-board matters in the former’s case). Mike might be on the cusp of coming out of his coma, or be in physical therapy by then.
Generally speaking, that’s not quite how comas work. The longer they stay in the coma, the smaller a chance they have of coming out of it. Four months into a coma, the chance they have of ever coming out is less than 15%, and the chance they have of a full recovery is extremely low. If Mike is still in a coma around January, unless Willis plays it very unrealistically, we will never see Mike back to normal in the duration of the comic.
You’re right, longer than a couple weeks would be bad news, if it’s not exaggerated for soap opera plot dramatics. Barely 48 hours had passed since we checked in last, and there’s a substantial time skip coming. He could be out of it by Halloween for all we know. Point is, we’re not stuck with real-world years of Mike being stuck on the bus, serving as not much more than a Macguffin for Amber and Ethan’s character arcs. We get to jump ahead to a point where his fate is less ambiguous.
There’s a Mike-ish silhouette In the ’coming soon’ preview on Twitter. He’ll probably be back in some form eventually, but not at 100%. I bet there’s going to be some cartoon healing factor in play for storytelling purposes.
*Barely 48 hours passed between his fall and when we last checked in on him.
Bloody mobile commenting…
That may be Imaginary Mike….
Happy Trees because they have broken ties with their leaves?
Cuz they’re gonna git nekid!
Silly me, I thought this was a Bob Ross allusion…
I can’t find the hidden Michael Myers.
Oh crap, does that mean he’s behind me?
I’d run
And for God’s sake, don’t just start having sex, whatever you do.
or singing Bohemian Rhapsody.
What if you have sex with Michael Myers? Would he have to kill himself then?
According to VHS (literally the only movie I can think of with this situation in it), the monster still kills you once it gets off.
Happened in Species, too.
Haven’t seen that one yet. Need to.
His penis is a machete that impales you, slicing you open from the inside!
Well, did you build it?
Because then he’ll come.
Happy trees made by a happy accident.
oh god, this was all in SEPTEMBER up until now?
No, we made it about halfway through October before yesterday’s strip came by.
Looking at this, my guess is tomorrow’s strip is “November”, then “December”, then “January” is where we pick up again.
that sounds pretty reasonable
So nothing of significance happens to our main cast for the next quarter?
I find that hard to believe since we still have the likely up and coming divorce of Joyce’s parents, Mike is still in the hospital, and if Amber doesn’t leave campus, Walky’s mom will throw a fit.
Divorces take a fair while even if they’re uncontested (and a Hank-Carol split almost certainly won’t), Mike was in a coma when last we saw him (and those also aren’t often the sort of thing that come to a quick end), and Linda can throw as many fits as she wants but from a meta perspective nothing’ll come of it unless Willis writes Amber out of the comic entirely.
They will be your new, red flashback panels.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
-V. I. Lenin.
Linda thinks the matter with Amber is settled, because Blaine paid her tuition and now he’s dead.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/04-is-a-song-forever/marketplace/
But the “changes” are coming on the 10th.
There aren’t enough months for that to happen and it still be winter.
7th = November
8th = December
9th = January
10th = January/February, still winter either way.
February and Ethan still hasn’t left Mike’s hospital bedside.
Didn’t Willis, at one time or another, say we would probably never see the end of this semester? Of course, he also said that no one would die in the comic either … then gave himself some wiggle-room by saying that ‘no major character would die’ and killed off both Ross and Blaine in quick succession. So maybe they weren’t ‘major’ characters on the same level as Joyce, Walky, Amber, or Dina, but they were at least major plot drivers.
Who knows what we can believe any more?
That is also my recollection, but what do we know, we who merely read and are not the author.
“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
Technically, we won’t be seeing the ending of this semester because we’re skipping past it!
Yes! Off on a technicality!
+1 pretend upvote.
Blaine isn’t dead until we see the body.
After the timeskip: characters talking about Blaine’s funeral in the past-tense.
Some commenters: “He isn’t confirmed dead yet!”
If the mob faked his death, they could certainly conduct a fake funeral.
It’s like Blaine is your first supervillain….
Oh, Blaine was a villain, sure. But not a super one.
I hope not. That would be almost as bad as the blank pages in the Twilight books.
Well, except that those empty pages were actually the best written in the whole series.
(Note: I haven’t actually read those books. I tried once, but couldn’t get past the first page. I have, however, read several reviews/readthroughs of them. Including all the comments about the blank pages.)
Is that anything like the black page in ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’?
I once thought I was being unfair, found the first book in the bookstore, and flipped it open randomly… EXACTLY to the sparkling part
Threw it down and never looked back
Do you remember?
Well, time for bed, I spent a moment confused about not remembering posting that.
It’s an easy error to make.
I tried to remember….
Wait what happened with Joyce’s family? Or her mom getting rock bottomed by Ruth?
Asking the real questions here, I hope she got hurt by Ruth.
They are on a quest to exotic archeological sites full of ancient deathtraps to retrieve the mystic artifact that will save their misguided daughter(s) from Hell.
There’s a “Wake Me Up When September Ends” joke in here somewhere, but I’m too tired to tease it out.
The Eternal September actually only lasted until January 25, 2005. But hey, they’ve added a COVID mode to sdate now. https://github.com/df7cb/sdate
Not really. AOL dropped Usenet then, but the damage was already done. Between what happened earlier and the impact of the Web, Usenet never recovered. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s still that terrible September…
Today is September 9868, 1993.
If the timeskip goes past Halloween, I’m going to assume that not spending literal years drawing everyone in costumes was at least a secondary reason.
The lower left says ‘october’ since halloween is the las day of october we know it at least isn’t over yet.
Right, but we know ‘winter is coming’, it’s pretty likely tomorrow’s strip is going to be ‘November’, aside from the possibility of a short interlude, which will then be followed by ‘November’ anyway.
Dang, this is probably the heaviest strip so far. I can’t think of another one that even comes close to this one in terms of paradigm shifts and emotional resonance.
I can’t tell if that is a joke or not
It is a single panel where nothing is happening, but when reading it consecutively with all the others it is the pause that lets the weight of everything has happened sink in,
Yeah, I love how Joyce’s feelings of transition are represented in the leaves here. Will she keep fully in touch (through the leaves) with Dorothy (the godless cars)? Or will their friendship be blown away by the wind?? No, they are BFFs. Tree/Cars OTP.
A university graduate of freshman literature I see.
It’s a nice drawing.
With happy little trees, how could it not be?
I know this timeskip is probably going to pass by the holidays but I really want to see whether Joyce goes home for Christmas or not. Fingers crossed that the timeskip isn’t to far into the future.
Anyone wants to place bets on how big the timeskip is?
I’m betting on the comic resuming in December or January at the latest.
Already placed my bet above, I’m guessing we’re going to pick up in January.
Senior year.
The comic only covers freshman year.
So we jump to senior year. Nobody’s attended classes for three years, so they all fail out and have to get jobs at a new toy store in town – a place called Shortpacked…
Or going home for Thanksgiving. Getting through that without major family trauma wasn’t going to be easy.
Christmas would kind of need to be mostly skipped though. The Christmas break would be years of real time at the normal pace, with our characters away from school and each other.
I thought we were in October already. Sara was putting up Halloween decorations albeit in secret.
We were. Next strip will almost certainly name a different month.
We were. We were about 10 days off from Halloween.
A mere ten storylines from Halloween. We were robbed.
I was hoping we’d get to see Halloween in DoA. I’m gonna be disappointed if that’s not the case.
Me too, esppecially since Joyce and Sarah had a moment about it..
Let’s do the time warp again~
It’s just a jump to the left!
and then a step to the right.
You put your hands on your hips!
And bring your knees in tiiiiight….
But it’s the pelvic thrust,
That drives you insane
Not this again.
I was thinking and I think I’ve come up with some new Patreon tiers.
$100 per month: You get access to the entirety of Willis’ backlog.
$1000 per month: You get one opportunity to say whatever you want in the comment section, no matter how terrible.
$5000 per month: You can select one commenter to ban, no questions asked.
$10,000 per month: You can write a comic, which will become canon and Willis will readjust his entire story to fit it. For example you could have Dorothy reject Atheism and join the Amish.
$100,000 per month: You may take one of Willis’ children.
▲
▲
BRAVO
I never joined Patreon.
I always knew it would end in tiers.
So, who’s the worst-behaved person in this strip? Let’s dogpile the beige sedan, I say.
It’s clearly the leafs.
The leaves are in a difficult place, what with their parent having suddenly cut them off from water and nutrients. Do they know what they did to bring this on?
The Leafs are, always, the worst.
Dammit, I wanted to say that.
😡
What’s stopping you?
What are you trying to say about that car by calling it “beige”?
Is that some kind of code word for something?
I had jury duty once on an autonomous car that monoed its driver so it could be free. It was beige.
The car on the right looks shifty. Probably a standard. Why is it all alone? What is it hiding?
It’s probably sticking around for a reason. Maybe gearing up for shenanigans. Or perhaps clutching to the hope that we’ll still get halloween.
Braking news: most of the puns get lost in transmission. Something about carrying some rings from Tudor to Fourdoor? Sorry, I was bored.
Next strip is going to be a time jump to December, isn’t it?
Either that or it will be labeled September to mess with our minds.
Nah, extended to Hank and Carol’s days here, and the real truth of what happened.
Notoriously, the Best Month.
why is that sign screaming in the background? What has it seen that Willis hasn’t shown us yet?
After everything that has happened in this story, it’s surprising people continue to study in that college. Seriously, there was an armed assult, a kidnapping, a police chase, another kidnapping of many more students, the arrest of local frat boys, a fight during a political event, etc.
After everything is said and done, and after the wrapping up from yesterday, I can say Joyce was wrong: educational times are ahead, and the lesson is that you have to always learn. Learn the many abd things will happen over and over, and all you have to do is stand firm, be kind, respect others and fight for what you believe is right.
Also, goddbye Danny’s hat. *Forrest Gump soundtrack is heard in the distance.*
A quick Google search shows that 2016 enrollment at IU-Bloomington was approximately 48,500. To put that in perspective, if the entire student population was a city it would be the 15th largest city in the state.
With that many people, I feel it is safe to assume that there are countless thousands who are blissfully unaware of what has been going on, and even among those who do (but did not have a personal stake in the matter), it would be quickly forgotten as continuing current events would push it out of their consciousness.
Normal year at Hogwarts!
Colleges have had mass shootings with many casualties and still get students to come there.
This kidnapping is really the only thing that goes well outside the norm – some rapes, some fights, a domestic kidnapping. It’s all basically background noise in any big city.
That it’s all happening to the people on this one floor is a bit extreme.
I wonder what, if any, will be the major changes in relationships.
Who have broken up? Who are now dating? Who else will know Amber is Amazi-Girl?
In honor of Mike, this strip takes place during the Fall
So, about the patreon bonus strips. If I sign up do I get to see all the old ones too or just new ones?
all the old ones are still there
cool, thanks
Curse you Bagge!
*shakes fists angrily into air*
🙂
You get all the old ones as well.
Becky is hiding in the tree
With Dina. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
Do the kids at Blowjob Cat’s elementary school dress it up for Halloween? Because that’d be both adorable and terrifying.
It’s just dressed up the morning of Halloween. Nobody knows why or how.
There are so many bonus strips we need to vote for now.
Aw, nuts, I guess we won’t be celebrating in 2020. 🙁
Let’s try this again:
(cough)
Aw, nuts, I guess we won’t be celebrating Dumbing Day in 2020. 🙁
Just the latest thing 2020 has taken from us.
Our revenge in 2021 will be swift and brutal.
And completely ridiculous?
I guess if we want halloween strips, we have to nominate them on patreon. I wonder if anyone will have dropped out during the timeskip. I hope there’s a happy spot in between a lot of “as you know” dialogue, and constant suspense for readers about stuff the cast all would be aware of.
This strip is gonna be hard to find using the tags.
Time passes in the classical comic book style…
Is this the first DoA comic to not have any tags?
I suppose you could tag, “car”. Or maybe, “tree”? Leaves?
Second, I believe. The opening strip of The Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit was the first.
Yes! October! New era, new storyline, new creative team!
… what? In Marvel, when a scene like yesterday’s happens, it usually signals an end of one creative team’s run and the start of another’s 🙂
Can’t wait to see what Mark Millar and Rob Liefeld are going to do with DoA! I’m sure it will be great 😉
Are you sure this season isn’t being directed by Alex Kurtzman?
“Wow, Gramma, you sure had a wild Freshman year.”
“Year? Ha! That was one month! Sit yourself back down, child, I have far more tale to tell.”
Hey earth science majors and amateur detectives: given the shadow angles and the amount of remaining foliage, care to take a stab at an estimated date and time-of-day this image represents?
Here’s a Google Street Maps view of almost the exact same angle, but a different time of year.
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.165423,-86.5152447,3a,25.1y,30.17h,89.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQDi6IKXBxOPWCFZxqcvtdA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en&authuser=0
WHEW He didn’t skip Halloween.
But, where’s the punchline? Every strip has a punchline, right?
Unless…
UNLESS THAT IS THE PUNCHLINE DAMN YOU WILLIS
This is the next story arc, in the series, just four cars, in a parking lot. Occasionally a squirrel will run by, some students will walk past in the background, or some leaves will fall onto on the the cars, but that is it. After a few weeks of these strips, a couple of people will get into their car, and drive off, ending the the arc.
No, we just see the cars starting to rust, get covered in leaves,etc., while “I Will Wait For You” plays.
I rate that one mili-seymour, a little sad, but not much.
Oh, I get it: we’re going to get timeskips each day until September 10, the 10th anniversary of DoA. Then the next arc will begin.
every single thing that happened before this page happened within roughly one month. can you fucking imagine if your freshman september was this fucking nuts? my freshman september had like, a rainstorm. i mean, it was a bad rainstorm, but like…not that exciting.
Two months. The last storyline was on approximately October 20.
…friends
Next strip will be Blaine O’Malley’s wake.
Then we get Halloween.
The Paper Chase continues …
I’m confused because midterms happen in October. I literally went to IU. My midterms were in October
They’ve been talking about taking midterms for the last three chapters/days. Where’s the confusion there?
That this was obviously framed like a timeskip?
Time is.
Why is there a link to a deviantart where nothing happened since 2012?
I don’t remember where Willis used to post the preview panels, probably Instagram and maybe he left them? Are there still preview panels posted somewhere?
I am sad, I was looking forward to Halloween hijinks, but this timeskip is going to just jump right over it.