Kind of funny historically speaking since back in the day only elite military units wore red supposedly due to always getting their uniforms stained with the oppositions blood or conversely not letting the opposition know you were wounded.
How far “back in the day” are we talking about, here? Because there were a few centuries when the entirety of the British army was in red, and a few decades at least when the entirety of the French army was in red trousers. “Les pantalons rouges, c’est la France” and all that.
– Sal, Marcie’s known you since you were five. She knows where this is going – straight off a cliff.
– It’s sweet Marcie doesn’t seem to blame Sal for what happened, although she seems to have more realistic expectations for her situation (and as such may not appreciate those comments – or, at least, not believe them).
– Sal’s face in that last panel. She’s BREAKING ME guys.
– Sal’s still clinging to that hope of this being temporary. Thanks a LOT, Charles.
– Shit. Sal’s smoking already? Oww. That can seriously mess you up. It can take up to 15 years to reverse damage done by cigarettes. I found that out googling health benefits for quitting for a story (and kinda felt pretty good about making my parents quit 18 years ago).
– I’m not quite sure what Marcie would mean. That Sal doesn’t smoke and Marcie wouldn’t approve? If so, why did Marcie take up smoking? Does it mean she already smokes? Did she meant Sal doesn’t chill?
– This Asher kid worries me. Sal’s said before she and Marcie have bad taste in people, other than each other, so I’m worrying we’re going to see this.
I mean, she wouldn’t be wrong. Sal feels things very intensely, but because of SOME PEOPLE (*cough*Walkertonparents*cough*) she’s very bad at understanding, processing or articulating them and its like pulling teeth to get her to share them.
She was, but that was after this. I was kinda hoping against hope that was her first time in an attempt to make herself look badass (before she ended up taking it up for real).
Yes, but assuming that the surgery has to be done soon after the injury, we aren’t that far away from that day. We are probably going to see her descent into a bad social circle pretty fast. And I think Asher might be one of the persons involved in her first robbery.
Marcie lost her voice when Sal was 12 and the robbery happened when she was 13,so the longest is about a year. And that’s assuming a helpful surgery even exists in the first place. Other than Charles’ wishful thinking,we’ve heard nothing about a surgery to help Marcie, just that her medical bills from going to the hospital are sky high.
I’m assuming there is one. Marcie probably got an overview of her options at the hospital and if there wasn’t a way, she’d probably have told Sal by now.
Whether Sal would listen to what a doctor has to say is debatable, though. She seems like the type to stubbornly refuse to accept the worst case scenario.
Except Marcie doesn’t seem to believe any of what Sal says about her situation and we know Sal is stubborn – especially since she feels guilty about this and her dad did not help. And the doctors at the hospital were already talking about how it may be permanent after stabilizing her, so I’m guessing even if there IS a surgery, it’s probably a long shot.
Yeah, guessing he’s in their age range, so until we hear otherwise I include him in the ‘somebody help these children!’ part. But if he is somehow the point of contact for Sal’s involvement in the robberies then him helping will not work out very well long-term, so I don’t want him to be doing that part. (Also I don’t really expect 12-14-year-olds to really be able to provide the kind of help any of them need now because, y’know, kids. Huge chunks of their brains are still developing.)
Huh. . I’ve never seen Ashur spelled with an E before. Weird. And this strip continues down the downward spiral of what led Sal to try and rob the convenience store. It is still heartbreaking.
Aaaaaaand I know it doesn’t really matter, but I was meaning to link to the earliest mention of Asher in the Bible, and… I screwed up. I should have presented this verse instead, from the fuckfest that is Genesis 30:
Here’s where I wish I knew how to do IPA character entities…
“Ashur” in its many latin-alphabet transliterations is a name that probably goes back at least far as the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (“the Assyrian king with the soul of a librarian,” as Susan Wise Bauer calls him). If you really want to be a pedant about spelling that name, cuneiform or GTFO.
“Asher”, though, as in the tribe of Israel and the likely namesake of the character in this strip, is Hebrew, not cuneiform. Apparently it means “happiness” in Hebrew.
According to Wikipedia, “some scholars” think that it may be linked to either Asherah or Ashur, but it seems there’s not enough evidence for them to make a stronger statement than that:
Eeeenteresting… I wonder if there’s a connection there. I know there was a significant overlap between Mesopotamian mythology and pre-Jewish Canaanite mythology, but then again, there’s absolutely no connection between Daniel and Danel.
I’m no Hebrew scholar, so I can’t really tell you, although it would be interesting to know whether “Ashur” means anything like “happy” in Sumerian or the language of any other culture that worshipped that deity. That would seem to increase the odds of a connection.
What I *can* tell you, as someone who came from a fundie upbringing similar to Willis’, is that the Israelite tribe is almost certainly the inspiration for the name of this character that W created.
Not a joke setup. Those are all first names one might encounter in one’s travels around the world. I’ve worked with an Ashour and I’ve known someone who married an Ascher.
I know this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, and Willis is probably gonna make me hate him later, but kind-hearted thief is one of my favorite character types, so until he does something truly terrible, I can’t hate him.
I also can’t like him, because he definitely at least low-key inspired a traumatic event in three good characters’ lives, and I’m expecting Willis to show him doing worse in two, maybe three strips.
Yeah, there’s potential for him to be a pretty decent guy, we don’t know yet… Buuuuuut this is a Sal flashback, so at best he’ll probably bow out when Sal gets in trouble.
I don’t think we’re meant to hate him. Not every traumatic event can be traced back to some uber-evil villain like Amber’s dad or gashface; sometimes bad things happen as a result of shitty circumstances. I doubt Asher’s home life is all that great, but let’s stop nailing the guy to a cross for stealing a candy bar and smoking in what, seventh grade? Eighth? I knew kids who did that shit that are teachers and lawyers now, it’s not that big a deal. I think the real villain here isn’t supposed to be a specific character, the villain is society and the general apathy to the plight of people like Sal and Marcie, which is a really douchey way of saying it, so I hope Willis finds a better way.
Oh yeah. He’s unlikely to be particularly good for anyone in this storyline, but given how young he is I doubt it’s true maliciousness so much as thinking society’s fucked in general. (Which, fair.)
I mean, we don’t have a great age gauge so if he turns out to be, like, 16 then that’s a slightly different story (don’t get preteens involved in your shit,) but I’m doubting that. But at the same time, the cues we have (He’s never been mentioned before, Sal has said she and Marcie have historically bad taste in friends, that clarification that Sal wasn’t alone for the first robbery very recently and we have no idea who would have arranged things) all suggest he’s not gonna be particularly good news for them. Probably not incapable of improving! But unless we see him after this flashback set, we probably won’t know if he does. (See also Dana. I do still want to see more Dana to get that situation clarified. Wait, I’m a Patreon/Drip sponsor. NEXT MONTH VOTE DANA!)
also on the subject of sponsorship… TIL that https://contributor.google.com lets you buy ad removal passes for some websites. I used it for AccuWeather because they were very polite in pointing out my use of adblock (and didn’t actually block me, so I had the chance to see that their site didn’t suck).
The list of participating sites is pretty darn short right now, but this seems like something that might be handy for webcomics?
then again, it was a penny per pageview for the weather site… if I was only coming here for the comic and not the comments, that would be like 30c/month (as opposed to $1/month in patreon, which I’m thinking of increasing once we have income again). with all the refreshing for comments, I… really have no idea how much that would be here. definitely more than $1/month.
Not really, but I decided last minute that hey, if founding donors mean anything later might as well have the bragging rights and it sure doesn’t seem like Patreon will get its shit together any time soon.
And yeaaaahhhhh, Sal’s said before she and Marcie have bad taste in people in general, except for each other. She said it in the context of dating but I’ve always assumed it extended to friends too. It’s part of why Sal’s so emotionally dependant on Marcie, because nobody else has been good to or reliable for her.
I’ve seen enough movies to know that heists never go according to plan. At least, not until the last 10 minutes when they reveal the secret plan-within-a-plan that included the inevitable failure of the first plan as a crucial part of themselves.
Times are tough for the Assyrian pantheon in general. The closest any of them got to a break in the movie biz was Ishtar, of which we shall speak no more.
Just in case anyone’s worried, I’m betting that this Asher was the boy who got Sal into bad ways. Which probably will turn out to be ironic because I bet that Linda and Charles thought that he was Sal’s nicer friend (certainly nicer than the problematic-by-existence Marcie).
So he is giving away some of his supply to potential new users. I’m sure he wants nothing in return and has no plan to use Sal for some illegal purposes. This will end in tears and Sal headed off to boarding school. And Linda will blame Marcie not that nice Asher boy.
Loading ...
smokes from Asher, seems a bit on the nose
Assuming the candy bar is chocolate, his name works on two levels at once!
“You don’t smoke, or you don’t relax?”
“Yes.”
Since she says this while accepting the ciggy, so the answer to that is kind of clear.
And won’t her parents be happy when they smell cigarette smoke on her clothes and/or hair?
I don’t remember seeing a character named Asher in the Walkyverse. Is he new?
I think so.
He seems nice.
He’s either hiding something, or he’s doomed.
Dratted flashback posterization. We can’t see if he’s wearing a red shirt.
Kind of funny historically speaking since back in the day only elite military units wore red supposedly due to always getting their uniforms stained with the oppositions blood or conversely not letting the opposition know you were wounded.
Which units wore the brown pants?
Francis wore the brown pants. Francis.
How far “back in the day” are we talking about, here? Because there were a few centuries when the entirety of the British army was in red, and a few decades at least when the entirety of the French army was in red trousers. “Les pantalons rouges, c’est la France” and all that.
He’s totes gonna be the one who teaches Sal to rob the convenience store
Why couldn’t it be one of the squaddies. Hooper maybe?
Uhhh, who is this and why do I have a diatinctly uncomfortable feeling about him?
This comment works extremely well with your Sarah avatar. I can imagine her thinking that every time she meets someone new.
Hell, I can imagine her thinking that when she meets someone she’s known for years.
bet this guy is involved in the robbery.
Because he clearly stole that candy bar, and is now encouraging a minor to smoke?
Not that he seems much older, which makes me kinda feel sorry for him.
It’s because of his weird, smug, joyless smile.
And his strangely shadowed upper lip
A distant cousin of Kim Possible
*plays Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax” on the hacked Muzak*
And I was just gonna comment “Asher Says Relax? Is he related to Frankie?”
Smokeful of Asher on the 45
Smokeful of Asher on the 45
Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow
Well this guy seems like a tool.
A real Ash hole, even.
Oh god. Cue someone deciding Sal stole the candy bar.
I immediately distrust him.
So many notes!
– Sal, Marcie’s known you since you were five. She knows where this is going – straight off a cliff.
– It’s sweet Marcie doesn’t seem to blame Sal for what happened, although she seems to have more realistic expectations for her situation (and as such may not appreciate those comments – or, at least, not believe them).
– Sal’s face in that last panel. She’s BREAKING ME guys.
– Sal’s still clinging to that hope of this being temporary. Thanks a LOT, Charles.
– Shit. Sal’s smoking already? Oww. That can seriously mess you up. It can take up to 15 years to reverse damage done by cigarettes. I found that out googling health benefits for quitting for a story (and kinda felt pretty good about making my parents quit 18 years ago).
– I’m not quite sure what Marcie would mean. That Sal doesn’t smoke and Marcie wouldn’t approve? If so, why did Marcie take up smoking? Does it mean she already smokes? Did she meant Sal doesn’t chill?
– This Asher kid worries me. Sal’s said before she and Marcie have bad taste in people, other than each other, so I’m worrying we’re going to see this.
*clapping meme* Let. Sal. Have. Friends.
Just. Not. This. One.
Pretty sure Sal meant that she has no chill.
I mean, she wouldn’t be wrong. Sal feels things very intensely, but because of SOME PEOPLE (*cough*Walkertonparents*cough*) she’s very bad at understanding, processing or articulating them and its like pulling teeth to get her to share them.
Sal couldn’t relax if you sedated her.
She’s capable, but its easy to get her invested again.
Wasn’t she smoking when she robbed the store in the flashback? I’m not sure..
She was, but that was after this. I was kinda hoping against hope that was her first time in an attempt to make herself look badass (before she ended up taking it up for real).
Yes, but assuming that the surgery has to be done soon after the injury, we aren’t that far away from that day. We are probably going to see her descent into a bad social circle pretty fast. And I think Asher might be one of the persons involved in her first robbery.
Marcie lost her voice when Sal was 12 and the robbery happened when she was 13,so the longest is about a year. And that’s assuming a helpful surgery even exists in the first place. Other than Charles’ wishful thinking,we’ve heard nothing about a surgery to help Marcie, just that her medical bills from going to the hospital are sky high.
I’m assuming there is one. Marcie probably got an overview of her options at the hospital and if there wasn’t a way, she’d probably have told Sal by now.
Whether Sal would listen to what a doctor has to say is debatable, though. She seems like the type to stubbornly refuse to accept the worst case scenario.
Except Marcie doesn’t seem to believe any of what Sal says about her situation and we know Sal is stubborn – especially since she feels guilty about this and her dad did not help. And the doctors at the hospital were already talking about how it may be permanent after stabilizing her, so I’m guessing even if there IS a surgery, it’s probably a long shot.
Seriously. Someone help these children! But probably not Asher.
I mean, he’s smoking and shoplifting and doesn’t seem much older. He could probably use a bare minimum ‘Everything okay at home, bud?’
Yeah, guessing he’s in their age range, so until we hear otherwise I include him in the ‘somebody help these children!’ part. But if he is somehow the point of contact for Sal’s involvement in the robberies then him helping will not work out very well long-term, so I don’t want him to be doing that part. (Also I don’t really expect 12-14-year-olds to really be able to provide the kind of help any of them need now because, y’know, kids. Huge chunks of their brains are still developing.)
Huh. . I’ve never seen Ashur spelled with an E before. Weird. And this strip continues down the downward spiral of what led Sal to try and rob the convenience store. It is still heartbreaking.
I’ve never seen it spelled with a U before.
I don’t think those are exactly the same name, though I’ve never heard “Ashur” before. Apparently he’s an Assyrian god. Huh.
Asher is one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and it looks like it’s spelled “Asher” in every English translation other than the Douay-Rheims.
https://biblehub.com/genesis/35-26.htm
Aaaaaaand I know it doesn’t really matter, but I was meaning to link to the earliest mention of Asher in the Bible, and… I screwed up. I should have presented this verse instead, from the fuckfest that is Genesis 30:
https://biblehub.com/genesis/30-13.htm
Here’s where I wish I knew how to do IPA character entities…
“Ashur” in its many latin-alphabet transliterations is a name that probably goes back at least far as the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (“the Assyrian king with the soul of a librarian,” as Susan Wise Bauer calls him). If you really want to be a pedant about spelling that name, cuneiform or GTFO.
“Asher”, though, as in the tribe of Israel and the likely namesake of the character in this strip, is Hebrew, not cuneiform. Apparently it means “happiness” in Hebrew.
According to Wikipedia, “some scholars” think that it may be linked to either Asherah or Ashur, but it seems there’s not enough evidence for them to make a stronger statement than that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asher
Eeeenteresting… I wonder if there’s a connection there. I know there was a significant overlap between Mesopotamian mythology and pre-Jewish Canaanite mythology, but then again, there’s absolutely no connection between Daniel and Danel.
I’m no Hebrew scholar, so I can’t really tell you, although it would be interesting to know whether “Ashur” means anything like “happy” in Sumerian or the language of any other culture that worshipped that deity. That would seem to increase the odds of a connection.
What I *can* tell you, as someone who came from a fundie upbringing similar to Willis’, is that the Israelite tribe is almost certainly the inspiration for the name of this character that W created.
It’s also apparently a not too rare Jewish name. I remember it from a Chaim Potok book.
Asher, Ashur, Ashour, and Assur walk into a bar…
Not a joke setup. Those are all first names one might encounter in one’s travels around the world. I’ve worked with an Ashour and I’ve known someone who married an Ascher.
Four of them and not one of them thought to duck?
The other half of the ‘n’ and the ‘s’ fell off the end. Why are you encouraging bad habits, Stuart?!
this is a weird strip to read when you know someone named Asher
Stuart Asher. He paid for it with tat.
I know this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, and Willis is probably gonna make me hate him later, but kind-hearted thief is one of my favorite character types, so until he does something truly terrible, I can’t hate him.
I also can’t like him, because he definitely at least low-key inspired a traumatic event in three good characters’ lives, and I’m expecting Willis to show him doing worse in two, maybe three strips.
Yeah, there’s potential for him to be a pretty decent guy, we don’t know yet… Buuuuuut this is a Sal flashback, so at best he’ll probably bow out when Sal gets in trouble.
I don’t think we’re meant to hate him. Not every traumatic event can be traced back to some uber-evil villain like Amber’s dad or gashface; sometimes bad things happen as a result of shitty circumstances. I doubt Asher’s home life is all that great, but let’s stop nailing the guy to a cross for stealing a candy bar and smoking in what, seventh grade? Eighth? I knew kids who did that shit that are teachers and lawyers now, it’s not that big a deal. I think the real villain here isn’t supposed to be a specific character, the villain is society and the general apathy to the plight of people like Sal and Marcie, which is a really douchey way of saying it, so I hope Willis finds a better way.
I’m more worried about him than mad at him.
Oh yeah. He’s unlikely to be particularly good for anyone in this storyline, but given how young he is I doubt it’s true maliciousness so much as thinking society’s fucked in general. (Which, fair.)
I mean, we don’t have a great age gauge so if he turns out to be, like, 16 then that’s a slightly different story (don’t get preteens involved in your shit,) but I’m doubting that. But at the same time, the cues we have (He’s never been mentioned before, Sal has said she and Marcie have historically bad taste in friends, that clarification that Sal wasn’t alone for the first robbery very recently and we have no idea who would have arranged things) all suggest he’s not gonna be particularly good news for them. Probably not incapable of improving! But unless we see him after this flashback set, we probably won’t know if he does. (See also Dana. I do still want to see more Dana to get that situation clarified. Wait, I’m a Patreon/Drip sponsor. NEXT MONTH VOTE DANA!)
Speaking of drip… Is there any reason to sign up for that when I already have Patreon?
also on the subject of sponsorship… TIL that https://contributor.google.com lets you buy ad removal passes for some websites. I used it for AccuWeather because they were very polite in pointing out my use of adblock (and didn’t actually block me, so I had the chance to see that their site didn’t suck).
The list of participating sites is pretty darn short right now, but this seems like something that might be handy for webcomics?
then again, it was a penny per pageview for the weather site… if I was only coming here for the comic and not the comments, that would be like 30c/month (as opposed to $1/month in patreon, which I’m thinking of increasing once we have income again). with all the refreshing for comments, I… really have no idea how much that would be here. definitely more than $1/month.
Not really, but I decided last minute that hey, if founding donors mean anything later might as well have the bragging rights and it sure doesn’t seem like Patreon will get its shit together any time soon.
ah darn, I just got back and it’s probably too late for that founding member thing, eh?
I’ll vote Dana next month. 😛
And yeaaaahhhhh, Sal’s said before she and Marcie have bad taste in people in general, except for each other. She said it in the context of dating but I’ve always assumed it extended to friends too. It’s part of why Sal’s so emotionally dependant on Marcie, because nobody else has been good to or reliable for her.
According to the tagging system, Asher wasn’t there when Sal robbed the second C-store, so he must be the guy behind the first heist.
Unless he was hiding out of sight, going all “just according to plan”…okay your guess is probably better.
I’ve seen enough movies to know that heists never go according to plan. At least, not until the last 10 minutes when they reveal the secret plan-within-a-plan that included the inevitable failure of the first plan as a crucial part of themselves.
Unless he’s completely unrelated to the heists at all. 🙂
Comments section, circa 2011: “Stop with the FAAAAAAAAAACE!”
Cigars are more dangerous than weed.
Bears are more dangerous than cigars
With bears, you either die instantly or not at all.
So if you survive a bear attack, you become immortal? I’ll have to keep that in mind.
Of course they are. How would one smoke a bear?
Over an open fire? (Presumably a large one.)
I dont know why, but I feel like I can’t understand the sentence in the last panel. maybe the grammar is a little weird? what does it mean?
Either Sal doesn’t smoke (before now) or Sal doesn’t chill.
It means English is an inherently flawed method of communication.
In other words: “Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door.”
Marcie would normally point out that Sal never relaxes
oh sal.
She needs a hug.
Ah, Asher. I remember how often Sal and Marcie have talked about him. “It was the three of us against the world,” they said.
I’m sure this will end well
Why is the Assyrian God of the Sun stealing from a convenience store?
Actually, he’s probably named for one of the tribes of Israel.
That would’ve been my second guess
Times are tough for the Assyrian pantheon in general. The closest any of them got to a break in the movie biz was Ishtar, of which we shall speak no more.
Meanwhile the Asgardians keep making that money…
Eh, give it time. Soon, they’ll be out of fashion, just like the Olympians were
Mandatory “Is he new?” post.
Oh, Sally. Baby. You are so young to get into that. Yikes.
MAN Willis is just stomping on my heart
Just in case anyone’s worried, I’m betting that this Asher was the boy who got Sal into bad ways. Which probably will turn out to be ironic because I bet that Linda and Charles thought that he was Sal’s nicer friend (certainly nicer than the problematic-by-existence Marcie).
So you’re saying Asher is Eddie Haskell?
God lord, a “Leave it to Beaver” reference? How old do you think the readership is?
Old enough to recognize a “Leave it to Beaver” reference, apparently
Raises hand; “I did. I got that reference!”
Look at how nice he is, giving presents! What a guy.
oh oh oh
New character. :DDDDDDD
Well. This is going to end badly.
Hey, it’s a small Fonz.
A Fonzlet? Fonzling?
Nice pun with “Asher” giving the cigarette
He shoplifts from the convenience store… I wonder if he’s going to inspire the robbery spree.
That guy has a nice MAzinger-era haircut, I like it
So he is giving away some of his supply to potential new users. I’m sure he wants nothing in return and has no plan to use Sal for some illegal purposes. This will end in tears and Sal headed off to boarding school. And Linda will blame Marcie not that nice Asher boy.
Ooooooooh! I think I get why Sal held up the convenience store. She wanted to raise money to help Marcie.
We know, Padparadscha. 😉
I’ve just had the most wonderous vision, Amber is Amazi-Girl!
Don’t be ridiculous. Amber wears glasses and slouches a lot. She can’t possibly be Amazi-Girl.
Asher looks like he has two dads: Danny Zuko and Pegasus Seiya
Not cool, Asher. She’s going to have a smoking habit for years now.
Somehow, I suspect she is already smoking.