The DUMBING OF AGE BOOK 9 KICKSTARTER is just $400 (as of this writing) from unlocking a pledge tier to include a MIKE MAGNET with your book! Thinkin’ TOMORROW (today) we’ll hit this goal, huzzah!
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The DUMBING OF AGE BOOK 9 KICKSTARTER is just $400 (as of this writing) from unlocking a pledge tier to include a MIKE MAGNET with your book! Thinkin’ TOMORROW (today) we’ll hit this goal, huzzah!
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what do you mean “Amazi-Girl’s cape” that’s clearly a random tarp that can’t be tied to anyone
…
?
Also pretty sure HIS blood is on it too…
Right along with a shitload of witnesses that saw him do it along with accomplices that may be willing to flip the dude is fucked.
If “amazi-girl” does get arrested, his brain is probably gonna pop when they call him to tell him his daughter has been arrested for murder.
Sure, Blaine, what’s like…six witnesses gonna say when you have a cape?
Six witnesses, no motive, or murder weapon. Also tied up accomplices who will probably give crazy murder mask guy for a plea deal… good plane Blaine
Yeah, hired goons who just wanted a chance to beat up Amazi-Girl don’t make for loyal lackeys. They’re probably on some security camera doing the kidnappings and they’re not going down alone.
Well the witnesses could provide a motive, but yeah, those witnesses will lie to save their asses.
A good detective would pick their stories apart, since they’re idiots, but if Blaine controls the detectives…
* witnesses could provide motive being our gang, and the witnesses lying to save their asses being the lackeys. Stupid ambiguities.
I still absolutely refuse to believe that someone this incompetent could hold anything more than some minor sway over a few policemen.
And yet look at the White House.
How about someone with access to a good chunk of the mob’s blackmail material and money?
Thing is, IF Blaine’s got that sort of leverage with some crooked members of law enforcement, then he hasn’t been particular incompetent here… with the sole exception of partnering with Ross. (And maybe the overall plan of intimidating Amber… I’m not really sure how that fits together into an actual goal, though.)
Well I mean I agree Blaine is screwed but it’s not like there is no motive Becky’s dad was pretty well hated by most members of the group.
I was about to say.
“I wanna be a Blacklister when I grow up!”
What?
Also, Damn You Willis.
Goddammit, Joyce is getting kidnapped AGAIN? Or does this not count as another kidnapping because the previous one wasn’t really over?
tbh I think Joyce’s Dad will save the day in the next panel
/my guess
That would be…surprising, but I’d take it.
What’s really surprising is Hank’s costume… (or should I say The Chastening Chaplain’s costume?) Steel Scalemail with appropriate underlayers, and a human-safe cattleprod in a mace form-factor.
(( This is a joke. I do not have a Patreon and I cannot see tommorrow’s strip. ))
But to answer Yumi’s original question, Joyce’s original kidnapping ended once Blaine and crew were incapacitated and Joyce was free to leave. This is a second kidnapping.
Asher’s gramps or uncles might be more likely.
Hank can call the cops at most, otherwise he’s going to end up just like Ross…The only member of the Brown clan remotely capable of heroics is currently in need of them.
As great of Hank to question his unquestionable brotherhood for the sake of his last child to leave the nest, this is after his three other kids only got to see him agree with everyone else. Not every office worker who shows up for work once at the end of the fiscal year deserves to be employee of the month.
Wait, when did Joyce get kidnapped the first time? That should ring a bell and it isn’t…
Early, at the start of this arc, when they all got kidnapped.
*Earlier
I mean, I don’t know if this is what Yumi meant, but the only reason any of them are there in the first place is because they all got kidnapped.
The plot of the current story?
its the kidnapping version of a double rainbow
Definitely one of the best storylines I’ve read in a comic in years
This is supposed to be the realistic alternative to the Walkyverse, right?
It technically still is proportionally more realistic than the Walkyverse; for one thing, there are no aliens, superpowers, or talking cars.
What about the ‘85? Or ‘86? Ford Granada? Would nag the hell out of you if you didn’t fasten a seatbelt right away, if you didn’t have all four doors shut, if you went around a corner too fast… OMG, make a hard left turn and; “your oil pressure has suddenly dropped. Immediate attention is needed to prevent serious harm to the engine,” over and over again until you were on a straightaway again. Made getting it Out of the car parks at airports sheer hell.
Talking cars, meh! Hope I never hear another one.
How many mid-80s Ford Granadas are still on the road in the Walkyverse – or in the real world, for that matter?
There are no talking cars.
There are a lot of talking cars. They just talk about what route you should take, your estimated arival time, and how there’s a speed trap ahead and how you should turn right in 1000 feet. Mostly though they just beep, but after you’ve had them awhile you can figure what they’re on about.
Yet.
but dina still walks through walls when no one is looking
Um, except you have like 8 witnesses to say “Yeah, Amazi-Girl wasn’t even in the house when ToeDad was being murdered. He was killed by Ballpeen and then the cape was used as a shroud on the corpse.”
This entire plan requires everybody to be a complete idiot.
Or, as they pretty much said earlier, have the police force in his pocket/influence.
Blaine’s standards of intelligence are not as high as he thinks they are.
Heh… you have a lot more faith in the police than me… I wouldn’t be surprised if they did arrest Amber. Probably Walky and Sarah too.
There’s 2-3 white people as witnesses, they have some legitimacy in their claims.
If I’m brutally honest I’m really not liking that one strip where Sarah casually mentioned not being comfortable around police officers. Police profiling has been a main talking point for several days now even though the main storyline is about, you know, a psychopathic guy in a super villain costume roping an idiot Christian into kidnapping a study group worth of minors. I doubt that this arc is going to cover that side of law enforcement, or if it does it certainly won’t be the main talking point.
Thank you for this. It bugged me as well because it just seemed so…I don’t know…wrong?
I mean shes been kidnapped, tied up, thrown down stairs but shes more scared of the cops who may do something to her rather than the kidnapper that actually has done something to her, the kidnapper that has, presumably, killed
Ross is, presumably, dead and the guy that killed him has Joyce as hostage but some people are still worried for Sarah
I guarantee that if Sarah is sitting down calmly when the cops arrive the cops won’t harm her but Blaine could certainly hurt Joyce, more then already has
I trust you’ve seen the popular video of the young black man killed for jogging past the truck of an ex-officer on the theory he might have been a burglar? I’m inclined to agree that Sarah would be fine, but I completely understand the desire not to test it.
yeah, i think that comment by sarah was not so much meant as foreshadowing or an estimate on how likely she is to be arrested or whatever, but just reflects that different ppl have a fundamentally different association with police forces. where for some people (mostly the straight white population) they are this thing that you call upon for help, but for many already marginalized groups, the police is generally a scary and violent group bc most encounters with them can go either way, where asking for help can get you arrested, assaulted or deported.
and just the fact that sarah would have to ‘sit down calmly’ and basically perform victimhood in a very clear way to be safe, whereas joyce or dorothy probably wouldn’t be suspected even if they held a weapon they had wrestled from their abductors already explains why sarah is super uncomfortable with police and not willing to place her full trust in them to fix the situation.
I’m sorry but for me if I have to choose between the person that’s kidnapped me, threatened me threatened my friends and then kills someone and the police then I’m choosing the police
I would like to know what changed Sarah’s opinion on the police between now and Joyce being druggef
It’s risky as hell, but I think what changed her mind in-universe is that if Sarah takes her roofied roommate to the police department, that is WAY LESS LIKELY to escalate and endanger her than here. Pretty damn sure Sarah was also banking on ‘okay, Amber’s AG? Makes sense. AG has a good track record, I trust her to get us out safe’ and underestimating the degree of Dangerously Unhinged Blaine was.
That said, OUT OF UNIVERSE, what changed Willis’s mind in writing Sarah was a decade’s worth of growing awareness for white people that police intervention is not an open-and-shut Safe Option for black people in particular. That seriously cannot be divorced from the context here. It’s still probably worth the risk in this particular instance because of the kidnapping, but having a vigilante on your side does make a safe escape without calling the police in progress a POSSIBILITY, and that was definitely not the only reason to be wary about police intervention. (That Willis saved the ‘Mike warns AG there are cops on the take’ line for later and doesn’t bring up ‘guns escalate and Ross was already willing to kill for Becky, I don’t want them escalating while we’re still defenseless’ is a choice, and not the best one.)
Ex cop as you say and probably for a very good reason but I’ll say it again she was choosing the cops possibly doing something to her over a killer that actually did something to her
It just came off as a bit jarring given that not that long ago she wanted the cops called on Ryan especially since she actually hit him with a baseball bat which she might have to explain whereas her she’d be sitting down doing nothing
Mark, that just might have to do with the Floating timeline,
and the news .
You might as well complain about all the topicaL chronoclasms that occur like Pokemon Go , or spider killing due to floating timeline.
She wanted the cops called on Ryan *for Joyce.* That’s the difference in Sarah’s attitude about the cops and it’s huge and important. For herself? She’s afraid of what might happen. For the white girl? Not so much.
Yes I’ve seen it. And dozens of other horrific cases. It’s possible to acknowledge the very real problems with the police and still think they’re a better option than the murderous kidnapper.
Thats not quite the way the case has developed.
Sarah probably reads the news more than you, Karen.
Does she though, shes a student wanting to be a lawyer so shes probably busier I am and has less spare time than me
Its so the comic can happen though.
Most white people don’t get a stab of fear from seeing cops because most white people haven’t been treated badly by cops just for being. This morning I read an article about an off duty cop leading a mob of angry gun toting white people to the house of a black high school senior. They stood on the lawn with guns displayed and demanded to be let inside to look for a girl who had gone missing. The young man didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Not only did they have the wrong house and that young man was not the young man they thought would know about missing girl. But the towering entitlement to threaten violence to a black family blew me away—because the cons have never profiles my family. It was a modern day lynch mob.
It’s uncomfortable as a white person hearing about all the racial wrongs that are actually happening. But we need to hear about them.
Agreed. Not talking about entitled harassment ensures it never changes.
There should be security footage of Amber going to her dorm to grab her costume, when she ran into Ruth. Hell, there’s probably more footage of her at Becky’s place too, since it belongs to a congresswoman and all.
tbf Blaine is just smart enough to be really, really stupid.
Also kidnapping Joyce when she hasn’t yet gone into her full rage is extremely not smart.
Yeah, we’re gonna need another thing of popcorn for this one.
Blaine was just smart enough to avoid being really, really stupid. Now he’s unhinged enough that he’s not really using his smarts anymore.
I keep expecting Faz to come to his senses here, this version seems a bit more sympathetic than the original.
Oh his actions have proven he is FAR beyond that point.
Nope, I don’t see him being anyone else but playing Hulk-Daddy’s boy.
Give him time, there’s stillabout a month’s comics before this is over.
I think he’s still got a chance. Maybe Blaine is gonna force him to sit in the back with Joyce, and she’ll be able to get through to him, and he’ll realize that he doesn’t need the approval of his horrible father and should just do the right thing and help out Amber and her friends.
Counterpoint: Faz is fully indoctrinated by Blaine. He’s probably not going to break on his own.
Then again, he’s Faz. Joyce could probably win his eternal loyalty by running her fingers through his hair once, if that even occurs to her.
Then again, she’s Joyce. She has grown in many ways, but I’m not sure she’s to the point of getting free by engaging in, “PREMARITAL HANKY PANKY.”
Now just straight up fighting her way free, THAT I can see her doing.
Please let him get Yoshikage Kira-ed by the police car or a random ambulance that comes to the scene. I hope he gets Yoshikage Kira-ed.
Could he maybe get Diavolo-ed, too, while we’re at it?
I was figuring Sal, on her motorbike, with a sideswipe.
But now that I think about it more, perhaps Robin in her car on a sugar-high?
Wait, who is dead besides Toe-dad? Is he talking about Mike? I thought Mike was in the hospital with presumably Ethan by now. If Blaine is heading there to kill him then he’s going to find presumably security waiting.
He’s talking about Ross. Why are you excluding the person he killed from the list of dead people?
Didn’t he claim that Mike was dead in yesterday’s strip?
No? He claimed it a while ago, but then immediately claimed he could have Mike killed. At least one was a lie, since the two claims are contradictory.
He didn’t say anything about it last strip, and hasn’t for a while.
I don’t think the cape will be convincing evidence when he’s still holding the hostage.
We are talking about a delusional psychopath.
WILLIS THIS IS NOT THE CONTENT I SIGNED UP FOR
He did warn you at the beginning of the storyline?
This is so much MORE complex than I could have imagined. This latest twist has me off in the FIELD OF FEELS, not entirely what I volunteered for. … or expected. Oops, gotta make more popcorn! BRB!
If you aren’t a patreon supporter, then you didn’t sign up for anything. Or were you expecting an attack of giant blankets?
“Blanket Content”? OooOooo, they’re gonna CUDDLE!
You certainly endeavor to live up to your name, don’t you
Where did the hammer go in panel 2? Does he just have it jammed into his own throat?
Hammerspace.
I’m actually really worried for Sarah right now.
for a sec i thought faz was punching dorothy. yes i need glasses but could you imagine
Looks like the escape vehicle is a Ram Tradesman van. With Blaine’s company name on the back doors, I hope.
The perfect vehicle for a human trafficker. I’m sure it has no license plate because…it’s a supervillain thing.
Looks more like a ‘Sprinter’ van (made by Mercedes-Benz) to me. I don’t think any American manufacturer has made a “full-size” van since the early 2000s; they’ve just let the mini-vans become larger, although even now they’re still only about 3/4 the size of the old Chevy G-20/Ford Econoline/Dodge B-series vans I had in the 1980s-1990s.
GM still makes the 1996 Chevy Express.
Ford still produces the E-series as a cutaway cab-on-chassis for the RV, ambulance, and moving truck market. It’s even getting a mild refresh for the ’20 or ’21 model year. (The Econoline will never die, as long as U-Haul has anything to say about it.
Chrysler discontinued their warmed-over ’70s Ram Van in 2002, replacing it with a rebadged Sprinter. After Fiat bought them out they discontinued that and replaced it with the Ram ProMaster, which is a godawful excuse of a truck. It’s a Fiat Ducato with the FWD drivetrain from the Dodge Caravan shoved under the front.
Ford’s current van is the Transit, same body as they sell in Europe but with US-market powertrains. Honestly, even the smallest Transit holds more than the old E-series. The 70s-designed VN platform’s ladder frame, cast iron engines, and twin I-beam suspension are heavy.
Wow! You REALLY know your vans. If I’m ever in the market, can I get your input?
I kind of have to for work.
The answer’s pretty simple, though. If you just need to haul stuff around, get a Ford Transit. If you need towing capacity, get a Chevy Express. If you’re only hauling stuff once in a while, keep your money and your car and just rent a U-Haul when you need one.
[Mr. Regular voice] Chevy Express: the box cheap LS swaps come in.
Looks like a Ford Transit van to me.
I’m pretty sure that’s a Sprinter. The Transit’s headlights are pointier where they go up the fender.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2016_Ford_Transit_350_2.2.jpg
I think we’ve established that Faz is a willing accomplice.
And Sarah, grab your bat!
Blaine is an idiot. Sure, the police would be after him for murdering his accomplice, but EVERY cop will be after him for kidnapping a tiny, pretty white girl. That goes double in Bloomington.
I feel like the real name of this storyline should have been (but could not be, because spoilers,) ‘Blaine Is An Idiot.’ Just smart enough to be really, really stupid indeed.
Also, every progressive plot point makes me anticipate Joyce and Becky’s next interaction with the congregation more and more. It’s gonna be good. (Becky is DEFINITELY losing her shit for this one.)
I’m looking forward to seeing Joyce’s father’s wake up call when he finds out that 1) his daughter has been kidnapped, 2) the man who kidnapped her is the guy that bailed Toedad out of jail, and then 3) killed Toedad, and 4) managed to escape with his daughter as his hostage. That conversation with Joyce’s mother should be Epic.
God, if we see that fight it’s going to be several days’ worth of fireworks. But I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of the fight is held off until Joyce is present for narrative purposes. (Also, Jocelyne’s reaction. We can infer from her conversation with Ethan and her telling Joyce to hide and harness her anger that she DOES have at least some of Joyce’s righteous fury tendencies and has considered it a possibility she’d weaponize coming out if she were involved in a relevant conversation and truly upset. I don’t really want her, on one level, to do that in anger… but I am kind of eager for Joyce to finally know about her sister. And if Jocelyne doesn’t deem Carol a kidnapping and conversion therapy risk, it will certainly burn that bridge.)
I don’t think Carol’s gonna be in contact with most of her family after this. Hell, John’s gonna be tone-policing and victim-blaming, I’m sure, but since I don’t think he was present at the meeting where Blaine showed up he has an opportunity to be douchey to Carol and how they should have done due diligence on this guy before letting him into the flock. We have reached a state where even John has plausible reasons to be disapproving of Carol’s actions, because the church let a mobster get close to Joyce and kill Ross and his involvement wasn’t actually about Becky. (He may well blame Joyce for befriending a mobster’s daughter, but this is the Least Foreseeable Thing Ever so she’ll at least get to call him there.) That… is unlikely to happen, but that there’s even a POSSIBILITY is testament to how deeply the church screwed up giving Blaine even an inch.
Many of the world’s biggest mistakes can be traced to people who were almost, but not quite, as smart as they thought they were.
Heck, most of MY biggest mistakes occurred when I was almost, but not quite, as smart as I thought I was.
Blaine is enough of a narcissist that he really believes he is superior to the people around him. And what he thinks will happen will of course happen.
Joyce is having an absolute dogshit freshman year
Hasn’t it been, like, barely three months so far?
Yup. We haven’t hit Thanksgiving yet.
Think she’ll go home for it?
More likely a hospital bed.
I suddenly want to see her going with Becky to have Thanksgiving with Dina’s family
I have a feeling that it’d be amazing
Now that is a heartwarming thought. These people and Joyce and Becky really deserve some time off. Of course reality doesn’t work that way. 😔
Neither does the comic. The disadvantage with reality is that we can’t shake our fist at the sky and yell “Damn You Willis!”
Well, we could, but then the men in the white outfits would come and escort us back to our room.
Not if they also read this comic. They’ll probably join in.
We haven’t even made it to Halloween.
According to the DoA timeline, the last chapter (Book 10, Chapter 2; “To Remind You of my Love”) covered October 19th and ended with Amber and Dina in their dorm room and Amber preparing to pull an all-nighter study session, and Becky, alone, staring out her apartment window. This new chapter (“When It Crumbles”) started with a three-strip flashback, then resumed the real timeline with the 4:00 AM fire alarm at Read Hall, so it’s only the 20th of October.
Not even. She started in the last few days of August and now it’s mid-October.
Only her first semester and she’s been nearly raped and directly involved in two kidnappings and is now being held hostage by a murderer.
Don’t forget she’s losing her religion and realizing her mother is full of shit and her dad is an enabler. I wonder what happened with Jordan?
Wild speculation: What if Jordan is actually the one that saves her from Blaine here? I’ve got absolutely no basis for this guess, but it’d be one hell of an introduction
Heck everyone should be looking to switch schools after this. A gunman, a stalker with a knife, a kidnapping?
Like, people like Linda or Naomi would be on their phones after the first one frothing at the dean.
AG’s blood-covered cape… and 7 eye-witnesses to the killing.
… er, 6 without Joyce.
… 5, without Amber outing herself.
… 4, without Sarah wanting to deal with the cops.
…. 3, without any sane lawyer willing to put Walky on the stand…
…. 2, with…
DAMMIT that might actually work.
She can simply retrieve the cape.
Fuck the American justice system! I want Blaine to be beaten to a bloody pulp!
With that note I am in favor of a reform. Destruction of the justice system is a bad thing for any democratic country.
*eyes the appointment of certain judges to certain federal courts by a certain president*
Agreed.
Yeah what is the deal with that, isn’t there supposed to be a separation between lawmaking power, judges and police/army? The whole “trias politica” thing? I guess I should be reading into government mechanics a bit more…
Aren’t they teaching government mechanics in a required course in high school anymore? I mean, I wouldn’t know. Haven’t been near a high school since the late ’60s.
The President appoints judges with the consent of the Senate. After that, judges are theoretically independent, since those are life appointments.
They’re separate, but each branch has ways of influencing the other branches, either by doing something or withholding something. The theory was that each branch would serve as a check and balance against the others. That theory (which was the work of Montesquieu but its incorporation into the Constitution was mostly the work of Madison) viewed each branch as defending its own interests, and did not anticipate the idea of political parties that would command the loyalties of factions within each branch. The theory therefore died the second that some genius (Madison, again, though it was probably inevitable) decided to make political parties a thing in America.
The big ways that the legislature and executive (on the federal level) influence the judiciary are: Controlling who gets appointed to the judiciary (president nominates, Senate
confirmssits on their thumbs and just refuses to hold a vote); writing the laws that the judiciary adjudicates; and controlling the police agencies that decide whether or not to bring/prosecute criminal cases in the first place.The founding fathers were aware of the problems of “factions”, but didn’t have a solution. By ignoring them, they made the two-party system inevitable. Parliamentary systems on the other hand tend to build parties into the rules and thus are able to balance them better.
They did a pretty good job of balancing the powers of the branches – you really need at least two to cooperate to do anything, though blocking action is easier.
The ultimate check is supposed to be the voters and we’re really supposed to not just think about outcome, but about process: The Senate just sitting on their thumbs and refusing to vote on a SC nominee should have turned the public against them, even those who didn’t like that nominee.
Yeah, “did not anticipate” wasn’t a great word choice there. “Did not account for” or “could not deal with” would have been better.
*Eyes a certain Attorney General even more sharply.
I’m kind of curious as to why Amber wouldn’t have called Sal in to help when she was back at the dorms, knowing that Sal can fight, Sal knows she’s Amazi-Girl, and that Walky is in danger. Hopefully Sal will make an appearance in this arc.
Sal is actually the absolute last person I want around a murder scene and potentially compromised cops.
And from her previously-stated position on being at crime scenes when there’s cops around (back during the Toedad Incident), she wouldn’t be keen on being here herself.
Same reason that she didn’t call the police at the same time:
1. Don’t get help.
2. ???
3. Triumph!
Wow, now Carol’s “I’d do anything for you” has a new parallel.
(Off in the farthest distance possible) “I did what I did to stop her from being corrupted by Simpson’s episodes…”
I sooooo hope that this whole thing comes back to bite Carol and the church in the ass sooo hard. I don’t want anything to happen to Joyce, because I love her so and I want her to have that long time coming confrontation with her mother.
I’m damn sure Joyce is going to survive.
I am much less sure the congregation is going to survive Joyce’s wrath. And I sure do want to see what Becky’s like when she reaches her fucking limit.
Well, we’re one transfer of information away from Becky losing her shit. Won’t take long
I will forgive so much implausibility to see Becky get Tired Of Being Nice.
The church has now been directly responsible for the kidnapping and harm of multiple minors over multiple days. The spin that they give this is gonna be DELICIOUS.
I so want to see Joyce get up in front of the whole church, recount the story and the church’s role in it, play the “what fellowship has light with darkness” card, renounce her membership, and drop the mic right in front of the speaker on the way out.
We’re not going to get that, but…
I’m not sure she’s gonna be able to be calm enough for that (and the adults are likely enough to start doubling down on the paternalistic crap before she gets a chance to stand up,) but it would be the most fucking awesome if she managed it.
That was a reply to a comment that no longer exists.
I just went from “Damn you, Willis” to “What the actual f*ck, Willis” in five panels. 🙁
That is how I feel about Homestuck and Steven Universe on a dialy basis. Willis just adds some salt to the injury.
I forgot to add STVTFOE. Too many feelings to shout out.
OK, the cops show up, go “Where’s the bad guy?”
“You just missed him! He’s driving away in a white van and he kidnapped one of us!”
“Yeah, likely story. On the ground, all of you. We need to make sure none of you is a bad guy.”
Half an hour later, Blaine is wherever he wants to be, and Joyce is in severe danger, and AG is in police custody and can’t rescue her.
There would still be ample evidence in the crime scene alone that would point to a different culprit. The group is going to be detained regardless, but once they let the police know that Blaine has a hostage then they’re most likely going to make tracking him down and rescuing Joyce their top priority.
Regardless of what happens though, Blaine’s in a corner. All he’s done is buy himself time. There’s more than enough evidence to detain him, and him trying to use a hostage won’t help his case. Even with his connections, I think it’s safe to say that he’s become so much of a liability that a lot of people he’s connected to won’t step in to help him.
I have to wonder how Blaine thinks this is going to go. Taking a hostage obviously is an improvisation, and an escalation.
It’s not really an escalation. He already had hostages.
Stop, Willis. It was weird enough that Toedad, roughly Blaine’s physical equal when Blaine is fresh, allowed himself to get hit in the head with a completely telegraphed hammer. Now Blaine, who has trouble even breathing, gets to beat both Dina and Joyce while everyone else just watches? This is villain plot armor, and it’s all the more disinteresting when used on a character who has done nothing to earn it.
You do realize Willis writes and uploads these over two months in advance? He isn’t going to change the course of the arc; it’ll be over by then.
We know this chapter won’t be over until the end of June. There’s still plenty of time for the good guys to come out more or less ahead.
It’s not even that. As readers, we ‘know’ that the good guys will win. But the journey has to make sense. The problem in the way has to be both ‘real’ (enough to make it seem like a legitimate threat) and ‘realistic’ (since DoA’s setting is steeped in real world realism).
Blaine fails on both counts. People have already poked enough holes in why he’s not really a threat – he’s a low level mobster who should have no real pulls, etc. He’s also not realistic, because of the amount of hoops and suspension of belief for this plan to even work. He’s supposedly managed to recruit a bunch of college no-name meatheads to aid and abet an out-in-public kidnapping of six people with no eyewitnesses. He was already visibly injured and managed to overpower and kill a man who looked to be in equal fighting shape even when Blaine was at his fittest. Joyce managed to punch out Ross who was already on the defensive but was overpowered and kidnapped by an injured Blaine who was already momentarily distracted by Dina.
Blaine doesn’t work in this universe. He’s a villainous anomaly, a cackling caricature, and it’s hard for people to care about these supposed stakes when our suspension of belief is already stretched thin.
Thanks, you’ve put into words what I’ve been trying to come up with
Kind of have to agree. Blaine is winning far more easily than he should be, and Walky’s refusal to even *try* to fight mystifies me. There were more than enough able people there to subdue Blaine. Just Faz being there doesn’t really seem plausible to make this escape work. Blaine is heavily wounded and can barely breathe; adrenaline can do wonders, but all this? I’m skeptical. I know David has a plan here, and I look forward to it, but the plot is little tough to chew right now. (the start of this with “invisible” kidnappings strained the “suspension of disbelief”, but now it’s just gotten cartoonish.
Yes, sending the distractable comic relief on… surveillance duty of the very dangerous man was a recipe for desaster.
Still, everyone else had a very valid thing to do, so…
About the invisible kidnappings – I can’t tell you the number of webcomics I’ve read that make the mistake of trying to show every single event. Showing the grabs would have required a week of real time for little emotional return.
We saw that Blaine had a decent plan for the start of things, we saw that he had enough people working with him to pull it off. Willis maybe could have shown Ethan getting dragged off, followed by a montage, but the montage of people getting tossed into the room accomplished about the same thing, but let the story move somewhat faster.
That’s not whe
Thing is, though, they were kidnapped from within a crowd of people. How’d that escape notice?
Exactly.
I’m definitely starting to lose suspension of disbelief with how successful Blaine has been in the past two or three strips.
The fact that Blaine keeps somehow winning despite having no plan, running on adrenaline and presumably broken ribs is straight up laughable. Aside from the the initial escape from the basement the protagonists are acting like complete idiots by splitting up, not further restraining the dangerous criminal, leaving him alone with the easily distracted comic relief without checking for other people and straight up sleeping before the police arrive. I’m sorry but this is poorly written and out of character. This is easily the worst storyline of DOA for me, and it’s too bad because it’s been so good til this point…
I feel the same. This one’s really jumped the shark. I have faith in Willis, but this is probably my least favorite arc so far.
I’ve heard the next arc’s about Joyce confronting her parents, though, so that should be a welcome improvement from this one
IIRC Willis posted screenshots of that Happy Days episode about three months ago…
Ah, so we were warned that it would be bullshit.
I have to agree. They were doing so good when escaping, but now they are back to being idiots. You acn’t switch from competent to idiot in just a few hours. It’s like a cut scene in a videogame where the villain escapes through the convinience of the cut scene because the player can’t act during it.
Ha crap. My comment missed the thread. Well.
Armed win unarmed. Especialy when you suprise the other with your first hit on the head with a fucking hammer. Also, we spend… how many day saying variation of “damn toedad is dense ?” is that surprising that he was a bit slow on the update from “blaine is yelling… again” to “blaine try to kill me”, in a second ? Toedad still being operational after he took a hammer to the face is a hommage of his superdenseness.
Afterward…
A unhinged psychopath with a steel weapon and a good motorcycle body armor mean that he could put out of combat anyone with a single blow, while himself is protected, and against unharmed untrained people that would have serious trouble to do damage anywhere else than on the head.
It’s the modern equivalent of a knight in armor with a mace but without the helm.
AG lost when she was fresh, and is now dead tired. The only effective stuff would be mass coordinated grappling, and the first one to try may get hammered.
Add that he did have time to rest a bit since… well, killing a heavy guy, so he must be pretty fresh. (you don’t stay fresh long wearing that sort of crap)
I wouldn’t try to fight or pursue him without some equipement.
But that would be a “realistic” aproach.
DOA is cartoonish, with a shubby girl succeding to be a real life super hero doing lot of improbable accrobatics, combat and spawning from nowhere, by using comic book training, so having hostages escapee witness of a murder not making the most rationnal and thoughfull decision post crisis don’t seem to be too unrealistic, even if it’s very convenient.
DoA is ‘supposed’ to be realistic, until Amazi-Girl enters the storyline.
It’s realistic that a bunch of sleep-deprived 18yos who are disoriented by being kidnapped and witnessing a murder don’t react like a well-trained team of mercenaries when one of their number is double-kidnapped.
It’s also realistic that a desperate criminal does something even more desperate.
It’s also, sadly, realistic that the aforementioned desperate criminal appears to be unthinkingly choking Joyce into unconsciousness while he attempts his getaway.
In this situation Blaine shouldn’t choke Joyce into unconsciousness because its very difficult to drag a dead weight*
You can of course but given that Blaine is injured and wearing body armour, he’d need, at best, two arms (unless you happen to be Brian Shaw…)
*Obviously Blaine shouldn’t choke Joyce for any reason
I don’t think Blaine is winning, in that he keeps committing crimes as his tidy plot unravels. He was going to frame Ross, then he was going to kill all the students, now he’s trying to go on the lam with just one student and a desperate attempt to frame Amazi-Girl. What he wants—Amber under his control and Amazi-Girl defeated—he can’t have, because they share a body.
He is driving away in a known vehicle with known company, leaving behind several people who know his identity with or without his mask. This is not winning.
This is desperation.
I agree. If they rushed him they could get Joyce away from him. They are five against one – assuming Walky doesn’t remain a chickenshite coward – and Blaine’d have a hard time swinging the hammer effectively *and* hanging on to Joyce. All they have to do is make him drop her, then grab her and run. If one of them were hit with the hammer, it won’t be fun, but that might be the price of Joyce’s life.
At this point, they don’t need to overpower him and restrain him, just dog pile him until Joyce gets away.
My money says Becky comes out of the house like a pack of velociraptors. She’s got to have heard the commotion, she sees Dina, and then she sees Joyce being held by him? She’ll try to kill him.
Fingers crossed the other four join her.
Don’t encourage him, he’s probably still writing an arc featuring Linda and Carol.
.. I’m sure he’s reading this with an evil smirk and tented fingers.
“Stop” is realllly not the best way to try to start a communication with a creator.
Yeah, not my most considerately phrased comment. I wasn’t actually trying to talk with Willis though. It was intended like talking to God by just speaking out loud.
Ah. So THAT’S how we’re filling another month of strips.
Well, Becky, time to prove Best Friend Superiority over Dorothy once and for all.
Also, I remind everyone that’s tired of the implausibilities of this arc: June 23rd’s the storyline ending. Next one’s gonna involve parents. Blaine being a supervillain is probably giving Joyce just more and more ammunition and stakes for THAT one.
Man, I remember when Mary being a terrible terrible person was the height of drama.
I’m going to need a vacation from the emotional stakes here.
That was after the happy fun gun time on campus and after Amber beat Blaine into a pulp. After the rape attempt.
This is an escalation, but Mary was never the worst in this strip. The worst student, perhaps.
Huh? I feel like I missed something between this page and last. Like how did he go from nearly about to be punched by Joyce to just escaping? Also good luck with this escape. So many people know who you are and what you did.
She’s 5’4″, 125 lb, and an untrained fighter in a confined space. His right arm was clear to grab her.
That’s not the problem. I get that Joyce can’t take him but this feels too abrupt. Like where was Amber who was right next to her? How did he do this with broken ribs after just getting his ass kicked for like the third time in two days with only Faz as backup? It’s just a little unbelievable to me after seeing how everything’s went down up to this point.
Amber was shouting at Joyce not to rush him in yesterday’s strip.
Yeah she was. That’s kind of all she did too which is slightly disappointing considering all the incredible stuff she’s done so far on no sleep. My guess is she’s crashing from it now conveniently right when Blaine managed to luck into an escape opportunity.
She did all the incredible stuff when she had the Amazigirl persona.
Now she has reverted back to Amber, perhaps she is worried that if she tries to attack blaine she might hurt joyce (since she doesn’t have the self control that Amazigirl has.) So she is forced to watch them flee.
Amber is as physically capable as Amazi-Girl. The lack of self-control might be worrying her as you suggest.
Amber going “haHA SURPRISE RAPTOR” and then not capitalizing on two entire distractions is a bit weird. Granted, she hasn’t slept in… a while. This weird plot point is one I’m kinda okay with.
Oh fuck, I didn’t even remember that she’s barely awake
That makes this arc a whole lot more coherent
She’s also punched out a man who was facing her and on the defensive.
And were we given any indications that Blaine is an experienced fighter when Ruth flipped him fairly easily despite detoxing?
well he did just fucking kill a very very large man, one on one
Ross had just stood up from a car crash at that point. I suspect it wasn’t just Joyce’s punch that put in the hospital with a neck brace.
As for Blaine, while he certainly seems to have taken a level in bad ass since his first appearance, he’s been consistently dangerous in this one. He went a few rounds with Amazi-Girl earlier. Apparently the mask and body armor are effective.
She punched out a man who’d just realized he fucked up, lost a fight with a superhero, and barely survived a car crash.
I guess “facing her and on the defensive” is sort of also accurate, but he only had one hit point left and she injured herself doing it.
And while Blaine is a coward who fled when Ruth established she could fight back, he would have won that encounter if he hadn’t. He didn’t realize since he ran away, but she took herself out with that move and only stunned him.
I don’t think the cartoon has to show every action in detail. I can certainly imagine a scenario where blaine takes over without seeing a panel-by-panel description…
Joyce tries to hit blaine (using a a crotch kick)… His protective gear saves him… Joyce mistakenly tries the get closer to “brawl” with him… Blame now has both hands free (having lost hold of walkey) so he can grab Joyce. Meanwhile Amazigirl can’t act to stop Blaine from grabbing Joyce because she is directly in the middle.
The theatrics and comic-book absurdity in this arc is so strong, I’m kind of expecting the superpowers and aliens to make a comeback.
Does anyone have songs that remind them of DoA? I might make a few more She-Ra videos first (because asdfjlsdfjls), but I think I want to get back to making a DoA fanvideo.
I’m thinking of using “Sober Up” by AJR, but I listened to it so much at one point that I got sick of it, so now I’m not sure.
God, She-Ra. It gave us such gifts this weekend.
The Kerry Ellis rock version of Defying Gravity is Word of Willis-ly AG’s theme song and the background music of the car chase, so that’s always an option.
I could also see a decent Joyce-centric one set to Utada Hikaru’s Sanctuary, potentially. (Don’t Think Twice is far too romantically focused for her and I think too intense for Becky/Dina despite one HELL of an opening line for our ex-fundies, but Sanctuary has enough platonic readings I could see it fitting. It also being Kingdom Hearts is just a nice bonus for me as a fucking nerd.)
Nowhere Fast from Streets of Fire has a good degree of codependent implications for Ruth/Billie, plus it’s the opening to a cult 80s film and ends with the singer getting kidnapped from her own concert by a biker gang. Which is one of those images so setpiecey and badass I kind of have to suggest it for a Sal/Marcie one even if they rarely get to act THAT ridiculously cool. (I also suggest it because it could probably work for a She-Ra one. God if something gets me into AMV-making it’s probably going to be the need to do a She-Ra one set to the Revolutionary Girl Utena theme after that ending.)
I feel like every member of the cast could have Love Like You applied to them, and yes I am listening to a random playlist of mine and going ‘huh everything here could be workable.’
… I don’t listen to much pop music, if you couldn’t tell. Though it did also occur to me that Kesha’s cover of Zedd’s True Colors is one of those songs that would go very badassly to Becky and Joyce getting Tired Of Being Nice, Becky in particular.
Negative Space by Artificial Silence fits Joyce’s relationship with her faith pretty goddamn well, I think. It’s also just an incredible track by an incredible band in general.
bandcamp link: https://artificialsilenceband.com/track/negative-space
HE IS ONE GUY. HOW ARE THEY NOT JUST GANGING UP ON HIM!
I agree on this; it’s not like they can’t outrun him before he gets into the car. You never, ever let a kidnapper take someone away in a car. Just don’t. Now would be a great time for the police and ambulance to arrive and block the van.
This. Going after him one at a time clearly isn’t working, and they definitely outnumber Blaine and Faz at this point.
Ugh, poor Joyce. Didn’t stand a chance against Hulk-Blaine.
Somebody slash his tires before he takes off!
What are the chances someone took the distributor cap? None? Yeah that is overconfidence!
Do vehicles even have distributor caps any more? I thought they became obsolete over twenty years ago.
Nope. Coil-on-plug ignition has been the norm since the early 90s.
A person could pull a spark plug wire or two and it would have the same effect. But most hood releases are inside the vehicle nowadays, so if the door is locked there’s no easy way to get at the engine.
You can effectively disable most vehicles by unscrewing the cores out of the valve stems. Let the air out then put the caps back on. Even if they have a compressor, all the air will come right back out again once they take the Schrader valve off the stem.
God damn, Blaine is like Vegeta at this point if he’s able to take down Ross *and* Joyce with broken bones.
Speaking of which, that’s quite the nosebleed Joyce has. Hopefully her nose isn’t broken…
I have to wonder at what point Blaine’s mob boss decides he’s no longer an asset and just finishes the job on Blaine himself.
‘The moment he actually hears about this all’, is my guess.
GOD, what I would pay to see that reaction. I know we’re not getting it and it’s unlikely to be a Patreon strip, but just four to six silent panels of a mob boss’s progressively-disbelieving faces would be a thing of beauty and one hell of a palate-cleanser for the arc.
This is so unrealistic. why doesn’t Sarah run to tackle Blaine? Why is Dorothy not tackling him? He is a middle aged man with broken rips and other injuries, and he is carrying a struggling teenager of probably 80 kg. Also, he isn’t carrying a gun, so the moment Joyce he has to start the car Joyce can punch his face.
Also, a bloodied cape isn’t good evidence, Blaine! There are many teenagers that will testify against you, there’s evidence that you bailed out a convict, and your goons are just cowardly jocks that can say they don’t know you to save their own asses. The only factor that could free you of a long sentence would be if the judge and the jury are corrupt enough to favor you. Knowing you are the pawn of a bigger fish, you are screwed.
Blaine start the car*
I type too fast!
To be fair, Sarah is probably level headed enough to know NOT to charge at the mentally unstable criminal who has already shown a willingness to murder, and Joyce seems to have been knocked out (that won’t go well for Blaine if this is being played realistically – If she’s out for any appreciable time frame, that can potentially kill her, so now an attempted murder charge on top of his current murder, multiple charges of kidnapping, etc.)
And Blaine has shown he’s a moron
There does appear to be blood – or at the very least, a bruise – on Joyce’s face in panel two, and she does have the “woozles” (the swirly circular lines that indicates a person is stunned and not possessed of their full mental faculties) around her head. At this point I would declare Joyce as hors de combat, and as such she would be unable to help herself in any attempt to free her from Blaine. So any attempt to get her away from Blaine would require at least two of the rescuers having to drag or carry her away from the scene.
And what is left of the potential rescue contingent? Last we knew, Becky was still in the basement with her dad; Dina had rushed Blaine and gotten tossed aside/present condition unknown; Joyce is a hostage; which leaves just Walky, Amber, and Dorothy against a guy with a hammer and the willingness to use it and his munchkin accomplice (Faz). Sarah MAY be somewhere in the background, but if she’s going to do anything she’d better do it in the next five seconds or it’s gonna be too late.
Blaine has the upper hand … for now. Be sure to tune in tomorrow!!
I agree with you on most of the points but 80kgs? 60 at the most…
Armed win unarmed. Especialy when you suprise the other with your first hit on the head with a fucking hammer. Also, we spend… how many day saying variation of “damn toedad is dense ?” is that surprising that he was a bit slow on the update from “blaine is yelling… again” to “blaine try to kill me”, in a second ? Toedad still being operational after he took a hammer to the face is a hommage of his superdenseness.
Afterward…
A unhinged psychopath with a steel weapon and a good motorcycle body armor mean that he could put out of combat anyone with a single blow, while himself is protected, and against unharmed untrained people that would have serious trouble to do damage anywhere else than on the head.
It’s the modern equivalent of a knight in armor with a mace but without the helm.
AG lost when she was fresh, and is now dead tired. The only effective stuff would be mass coordinated grappling, and the first one to try may get hammered.
Add that he did have time to rest a bit since… well, killing a heavy guy, so he must be pretty fresh. (you don’t stay fresh long wearing that sort of crap)
I wouldn’t try to fight or pursue him without some equipement.
At this point, they don’t need to win. They just need to break his grip on Joyce so they can grab her away from him, and then run. What matters is getting away from him.
Who cares if he escapes now. They know who he is. Let the police do their job.
Breaking his grip mean a good deal of getting into skull splitting range and staying on it. That would be a stupid move outside for Blaine, but he… would surely do it.
Who want to try their luck at that ?
His plain, unmarked van could use some identifying marks. A bat to the windshield or mirrors would work.
While this is a distressing turn of events, a part of me is thankful that Willis acknowledged that this was the most likely outcome. Blaine is bigger, armed, wearing body armor and most importantly, he has experience in fighting. Joyce has none of those advantages, despite her indignation and rage. THIS is why police and self-defense experts are always advising people that the best course of action in a crisis situation is to run, and only fight if you have no other option. If somebody is willing to use force against you, chances are good they’ve used it in the past and will know what they’re doing. (It’s why trying to fight back against bullies usually backfires, because if they come from a broken home, chances are good they have experience in fighting, against people bigger and stronger than they are.)
Agreed. A lot of the people on here always seem to fall back on adrenaline as if it’s almost like a superpower but it’s not something that can be turned on whenever you want and the same people never seem to realise the bad guy might also get an adrenaline surge…
Walky is a disgraceful spinless coward for his failure to charge into glorious battle every 20 seconds, apparently.
Dude the cape is bullshit since the kids will just say you were wearing a cape, they can say you changed capes after killing the guy. Also, they can say they recognized you from the time you unlawfully came into their dorm, so they can even identify you without outing Amber.
Also Ross’ dried blood is still on his face. He’s very deluded right now to believe he’ll get away with this.
They can also tell the truth. Why would they lie?
Wait. What. Cape? Ok. So the cape Faz had was suppose to be Amazigirls…
HOW THE F*** did he take it from that room.. that had the 4 of them in there? literally looking at the dead guy. then get up stairs BEFORE them as well?
AG used her cape to cover his head when he got restrained. She wasn’t wearing it. Faz cut it off Blaine to free him.
I just noticed he wasn’t wearing gloves. Hello fingerprints.
The are also eye witnesses and co-conspirators.
He is wearing gloves, they’ve just got a window to the back of his palm.
What about the scissor cuts in the cape? Or what about all the duct tape lying around in the basement? Or how both Ruth and Ethan can confirm their story? (although I guess he doesn’t know about Ruth)
Dorothy has the plate memorized, because she’s Dorothy.
Unless she’s nearsighted.
How many unmarked Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans could possibly be roaming the streets at this hour? All the plumbers and electricians won’t be up and about until half their window has gone by.
Most people would just say “white panel van”, and those are insanely anonymous due to use by a lot of on-site contractors and delivery services.
I get how a suspension of disbelief can be fun and all, but this isn’t it. I like this comic in general, but I’m not enjoying this storyline at all.
I know. Can’t read any new DoA comics without feeling tense. Plus, Blaine is making these kids feel dumb. At this rate, he’s won this battle. Only way he’ll lose is he loses grip of the vehicle and crashes and burns, if there is such chance.
At least you’re feeling the supposed stakes. If I can be brutally honest, I just can’t bring myself to care about this arc at all. I know Willis wants me to worry about the outcome and feel the tension by making Blaine the way he is and pacing the story the way he has, but I’m just not feeling it.
The worst part is that a character has actually DIED and it feels like a throwaway moment in the midst of all this absurdity. Like, I would not be the least bit surprised if Toedad himself came barreling out the door right now, that’s how little impact his death has made. Way to waste the pathos, Willis.
Same here, yeah. It’s not just because Blaine is basically a cartoon villain to the point where Joyce getting kidnapped has the same feel of Daphne being napped by the Scooby-Doo villain of the week. But it’s also because it feels like everyone has to hold the idiot ball collectively for any of this to happen.
Boy, I hope everyone follows Dorothy’s lead and get therapy after this.
That’s another thing that bothers me. Like the rule was no killing characters because then the cast would be in mourning forever and that wouldn’t be an enjoyable reading experience. (I get how Toedad is an exception because everyone hates him and no one will mourn his death). But somehow it’s fine to give these characters an untold amount of trauma by kidnapping them and making them witness a murder, among other things?
I don’t know, it just seems contradictory to me.
Trauma gives more varied ground to work with and can evolve over time. AmbG and Sal came pre-traumatized with the robbery and their respective abusive parents. So is Ruth. Billie’s been repressing a lot of her shit but she definitely has some going on between the depression and the DUI incident. Joyce has had PTSD symptoms for most of the story from the party at the end of Book 1. Walky’s goofiness is pretty strongly implied to be a way of defusing tension and conflict, again because of Linda. And that’s before we add in things like the car chase and Amber stabbing Ryan. Trauma can play into character arcs in a lot of different ways (we’ve seen it happen throughout the comic,) and Willis is pretty damn good at exploring those different responses.
Grief, by contrast, can get complicated, but it’s probably going to be a lot less complicated to Sarah or Dorothy than it is to Joyce and Becky here. Trauma moves the story and arcs forward, grief halts them.
Sorry, but I disagree and I would appreciate it if we could cut the conversation here because I don’t want to clutter this comments section with more of my complaining.
The traumatized kids in an extremely stressful situation who haven’t slept and are the stars of a comic named after how dumb they are? Those kids?
If Blaine gots aways might be better than all the non white characters leave the scene along with Amber so she doesn’t get recognized. Becky and Dorothy could be fine when the cops and be able to make work the “a blond young girl has been kidnaped”! good enough :S
Or hopefully the hits in the head Blaine has will do him first…
Is anyone else just getting tired of all of this?
Yes. Very emotionally exhausted.
Okay so, I gotta say the big loser of this arc (besides the dead guy) has got to be Walky! Like he has fallen so far down the rankings here. Getting punked by Faz was bad enough but I have to assume he just let Blaine by. And don’t give me that crap about Blaine being big and having body armor and a scary hammer or him being untrained. Dina is the smallest, weakest character present also with no self defense training and she has been fucking going for it at every opportunity! Walky sucks now (to me he always did) and I can’t imagine him still being well recieved after this unless he does something incredible.
At least Dina’s trying, unlike Walky. He’s probably sucking his thumb at the corner of the house right now.
Its almost as not wanting to grow up, not wanting to take responsibility, being coddled, being spoiled etc etc leads to negative outcomes
Who’d thunk it?
Dina and Joyce tried to jump him and look where it got them. Dina was mildy effective due to surprise (special ninja superpowers), but still ended up knocked across the room. Joyce got taken hostage.
Walky was making the best decision there.
Amber’s the only one with any realistic chance and she hasn’t been doing anything either.
“Look where it got them?” I am. That’s the problem. Did you not see Walky immediately move out of the way instead of tackling Blaine or at the very least stopping Joyce with his newfound freedom earned by Dina pouncing on the guy with the hammer in the first place? Amber’s sudden freeze is also questionable but I’m choosing to believe she’s finally down from the adrenaline after that break to go see a dead guy so the whole no sleep thing is conveniently for Blaine catching up to her. Walky really has no excuse here though. He just sucks. Like the best decision would have been not to get rolled by a teenager with no established history of stealth or fighting ability.
I suppose Blaine might have been hampered by having 2 hostages to deal with.
A better decision could have been grabbing an arm, grabbing the head, grabbing him from behind and yelling for help.
Another option could have been running for door and alerting everyone to what was happening.
Hell even lying on the floor and letting Blaine tripnover Walky would have been useful
Or maybe getting clear as the enraged girl he probably knows punched out the last evil dad goes in for the kill.
But yes, Walky’s fight or flight reflex is clearly not “fight”. Which apparently makes him a chickenshit. (His reflex is apparently snark, which is a less common option. )
Seriously the ragging on Walky for not immediately reacting and fighting a guy who he knows just KILLED SOMEONE is getting victim-blamey and deeply uncomfortable. He’s been kidnapped! This is easily the most dangerous situation he’s ever experienced! I can say for certainty that if one of my friends was getting rekidnapped by the dude who kidnapped us all and then killed his co-conspirator – and I had to WATCH part of that – I would not be fighting them off myself! There’s a very high percentage of ‘fight’ reflex characters in this strip but it doesn’t make Ethan or Walky (who are not, and Ethan leaving is probably also good for him to NOT be in an extended hostage situation again or be potentially triggered once the police do arrive because the Amber stabbing was clearly hugely traumatic for him as well as the held at knifepoint part,) or Becky (who is much more likely to acquiesce when she thinks fighting will put others in danger) worse people for NOT having the fight reflex.
I’m not trying to victim blame Walky for not uppercutting Blaine into the roof or something. I get that he’s the victim here and him and Ethan and maybe even Dorothy aren’t the fighting types. So I apologize for that.
But I don’t understand why he’s getting a free pass for what’s happened here either. They are all in a tense situation but he specifically seems to be the one who fucked up out of all of them.
This situation shouldn’t have happened because he should’ve been able to keep an eye on Blaine when the situation was resolved safely. There’s not much of an excuse for how Faz beat him short of Faz having a gun or something? Was he that afraid of scissors? Did Faz sneak up behind him and knock him out with a frying pan or kick him in the nuts? That’s on Walky, cause I feel like literally anyone else, even Ethan or Dina or Dorothy would not have let that happen.
All that is before last page where in a situation where his friends are risking their own safety to save and protect him, protect each other, he ran. Like he didn’t have to attack Blaine or even touch him but he just backed off instead of even trying to stop Joyce, who was trying to protect Dina, who had just saved him. That’s just really selfish to me. When it really counts Walky’s not gonna be the guy to count on.
You’re simultaneously complaining that he didn’t fight Blaine and that he didn’t stop Joyce from attacking Blaine.
I will happily grant that Walky isn’t the one to count on in a fight. Frankly, I wouldn’t actually want Dina or Joyce either – they tried, but just got themselves hurt or captured.
I do think Walky’s distractability was a factor in Blaine getting free, but there were also, what, five other dudes he was trying to keep an eye on as well? And Faz was apparently actively hiding during the fight scene, waiting for a moment. (Walky’s line about how he thinks Faz had been in the cupboards explains enough I’m inclined to read it as not exaggerating.) When you have no reason but one chance to count people in the bright light above you, hours ago, to know someone’s there? It is WAY easier for them to get the jump on you.
He shouldn’t have been the only one in that room but if Dorothy’s gonna take the reins with police-dealing, Sarah’s exhausted and stressed from midterms (they are all exhausted and stressed for midterms, but she has made no secret of that fact at any point) on top of all this, Ethan performing the entirely necessary ‘check in on Mike, the other victim here who we haven’t seen in a day’, and everyone else dealing with the dying man in the basement/prepping Becky for the bad news, there weren’t a lot of good options. (Swapping Ethan and Walky’s roles is unlikely to get better results. Ethan doesn’t have a fight response – and with how fast things are escalating, this is all reflexes – and has the probable Previous Hostage Trauma in play himself.) AG wasn’t leaving Joyce in a basement with a dying man alone, Joyce needed to be there for herself and Becky, and Dina needed to be able to come in with Becky for her.
Side note on the pacing in this arc: I’m dead certain that structurally, Ross’s death being where it was was so that we didn’t spend a month asking about him/hoping for a deus ex machina, and to give Becky time to arrive and her grief a time to actually HAPPEN before another escalation took priority. It’s definitely impcting the people who were there – Dina and Joyce are both this Precise Level of Stupid Angry because he’s dead. The denouement here could be a letdown but I do think this order of events was in some way deliberate and not just seat-of-your-pants writing.
I was complaining about that but I get that Walky’s just not the person for that now. I get it. My real problem is that this just seems to prove he cares more about himself than other people. I don’t know how else to put it and it seems pretty disgusting considering everyone is struggling so hard to get out of this safely. Like even Ethan was willing to try and protect Walky or I guess die in battle like Dinobot because he knows he can’t fight. Walky was trying to spork a guy while also cowering behind Ethan as a human shield. What are we supposed to think about that?
@Regalli-I don’t think it’s at all hastily written. I actually enjoyed the developments except this most recent thing. Like we’re clearly getting Blaine’s final appearance at least for a while so it needs to have closure for all the stuff related to him. And I’m guessing this is to give Becky a hero moment rescuing Joyce like Joyce did when Ross had kidnapped Becky. It’ll be cool if that happens. I just wish it didn’t seem so convenient for Blaine that literally the worst one in the group was in charge of watching him and that guy just gets a pass on it.
I think you are VASTLY overestimating the amount of conscious thought Walky – or ANYONE, really, since AmbG’s the only one who fights often enough that she’s not totally on trauma reflex here and she’s so heavily sleep-deprived – is putting into responses here.
When I said ‘fight reflex’? I meant the instinctual, automatic threat response. Joyce’s brain tends to respond to threats by shoving her fist in their face, so they go away and don’t hurt her. There’s also flight (respond to danger by running away, so you do not get hurt,) freeze (unable to move or act against the threat – instinctually it’s probably a “don’t do anything that’ll draw attention to you or make them angry” thing, it was Amber’s response at the convenience store robbery before Blaine goaded her into the stabbing,) and more recently a fourth one’s been suggested called “fawn”, where you try to make the threat go away by complying with what they ask. They’re all based in the self-centered “stay alive” impulse, even fight. (If you kill the lion, it’s not attacking you anymore!) Which one’s your go-to isn’t a value judgment, since again, all of them have circumstances where they’re useful.
Walky is the only one here with no experience dealing with this level of danger. Walky probably didn’t know what his brain’s go-to stress response is, at least in a situation this dangerous, so he has less framework to fight back against that reflex and change it the way AmbG or Dina can. Turns out, it’s not fight. People not responding the way they think they should (say, helping other people) in a trauma situation is both normal and not entirely in their control. (And given Walky’s ‘defuse tension with jokes’ habit, I’m inclined to think it’s got a good bit of fawn in there and then one of the other two, and that he picked up the fawn technique because of Linda.)
Walky trying to spork a guy? Is still something in the middle of something this dangerous, especially since they had limited weapon options. But primarily, he’s not doing anything because he’s operating largely off Instinctive Lizard Brain, and Instinctive Lizard Brain says not to fight. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Walky grappling with this after the arc, and frankly I hope he does because there’s much potential for angst.
I dunno, I think “GET AWAY” after being released from a dangerous situation rather than running right back into danger is a perfectly reasonable response.
I forgot to put “reacting with” before “‘GET AWAY'”
What you fail to understand is that Walky is male. All these females keep showing him up. He’s in his late teens and hasn’t even died in glorious battle even once in the last week–possibly longer!
Or yeah, maybe victim blaming. It’s one of those two.
I’m not sure, but it could be because she’s Amber and not Amazigirl right now and is in timid mode, not rage mode. It could be because of exhaustion. It could be that she knows the fight with her father ends in his death and she isn’t willing to go there yet.
That was in response to the observation that only Amber had a realistic chance of taking on Blaine and Amber wasn’t doing anything either.
By the way she’s constantly hanging onto the doorways, I assumed that the sleep deprivation finally hit. She looks exhausted.
Dina and Joyce both have firsthand experience with Abusive Shitheads Threatening Them before now. Remember, the first time Blaine showed up in Dina’s dorm room, she was standing there frozen herself while Amber had the confrontation.
This is almost certainly Walky’s first experience being threatened by someone armed and incredibly dangerous, and the dude’s accomplice just got MURDERED. Trauma and flight/freeze responses are normal! (I think after this kidnapping it’s gonna be EXTREMELY interesting to see how Walky processes it.)
I was thinking that too. Walky’s probably going to have some guilt to work through after this. I’m kinda wondering if Willis is going to explore how social norms about masculinity and what a man’s “supposed to do” will come into play here. Kinda hoping for it actually.
The therapy sessions that will come out of this will be AMAZING, let me tell you. (Yes, that is exactly my hope as well.)
For all the complaints about Walky being useless here, I actually really like that it is the girls who are the aggressive ones – even if not always effectively, while the boys are more passive and not doing any of the fighting. It seems an intentional role reversal while also being rooted in the individual characterization.
It’s also true that while Walky and Ethan aren’t aggressive, they still had instincts to defend each other. Ethan shielded Walky and Sarah. When Walky realized Ethan wasn’t actually gonna fight he threatened a guy with a fork (they don’t make for good threatening, but you can hurt somebody with one–it was the same idea Dorothy had, too) to protect him.
Good point. We’ve seen Dina and two adults freeze while Blaine went after Amber. We’ve also seen Amber, despite being able to handle Blaine and considering him dangerous, throwing other people into his path while she ran away. She was actively resisting her urge to fight at that point, but if any response was selfish it was that one.
Dina went for it and it was a bad idea. Are you suggesting Walky should be doing something because it’s stupid? That it’s bad for different characters to react differently because that’s too realistic?
Is this a gender thing?
Ok, I hate Blaine. But Faz is just … disgusting. Is he even capable of thinking and acting like a human?
No, because he’s being actively coerced by an abusive parent. Which makes one inhuman, apparently.
Just checking in to see if TimeMonkey has changed his opinion.
Also, Damn You Willis!!!
At this point with the ruckus there gotta be a neighbour outside filming the whole thing
Not sure why the neighbors would notice.
the fight was inside and didn’t involve guns, so there wouldn’t be much sound outside. Before the blaine/faz escape all any neighbors would have seen were some college kids talking outside some house.
And I think a lot of this is taking place at night/early morning so there may not be any random neighbors outside doing, well, neighbor stuff.
Sunrise in Bloomington at this point in October’s a bit after 7 AM. The kidnapping occurred somewhere in the 3 AM range, as I recall but am not up to go back and check for sure. 4 AM at latest. So people are probably out and about now, but this is the first thing this arc that’s really going to grab Attention. (Especially if this place is in fact an AirBNB, a bunch of kids hanging around on the porch in their pajamas this early isn’t going to really raise eyebrows. It’s a college town, after all.) This is late enough that the first slots of early shift people have already left for work, but too early I think for the elementary school kids to be on their way to school. (Monroe County apparently starts elementary school at 9 AM.) This would be the right time for the MIDDLE SCHOOLERS to pass by, but middle schoolers can leave for school on their own and it is a cruel, cruel age. They’ll be of no help here.
Dear God, they’ve been kidnapped and in adrenaline mode for three to four hours already.
Their best chance right now is probably Amber short-circuiting Blaine by unmasking herself.
But we have 36-ish strips left in the arc, so that’s unlikely to happen yet.
At first I’m asking “Where are the police already?” but now I have doubt to depend on them, especially if the officers are in Blaine’s pocket.
Forget the police. Bet the ambulance is driving from Indianapolis to take care of Ross, who’s already coma-toes’d at best.
Ugh yeah, that could very likely happen.
Well, so much for the “insiders”. Time for someone from the rest of the cast to weigh in. Blaine is proving himself very resilient, so this is calling for a team.
Choose your favorite:
1. Ruth, Billie and their Forest Army.
2. Sal, Carla and the Technologically-Enhanced Roller Derby Beasts.
3. Robin, Leslie and the DeSanto Really Huge Family.
4. Asher, his gramps and the Really Pissed-off Korean Mob.
5. Mike Warner and his League of Hallucinations, Clones and Resurrections.
Going further to the wacky side, it would be great if Dean McHenry offered Jason and Penny the possibility to be rehired on condition of leading a team of TAs to rescue Joyce and disposing of the bodies of Toedad & Blaine discreetly.
Said it before, say it again. My money is on piece-of-shit asher and Sal.
I’m still thinking Mike’s Dad may be more than he appears. Perhaps he’s in the FBI or some other federal agency that can quickly usurp whatever corrupt police force is handling all this.
Team Sal for the roadblock to Hulk-Blaine’s crime spree.
I’m going to make a Prediction Based on these comments …. VERY SOON
( within a week ) Willis will have to close the comments … *
After Sarah takes out Blaine with the Baseball bat .
* Based off todays karens demanding the black female characters Always Love the Police, and never change their minds, for their comfort.
— and other yet to be thought up bootlicking demands
Blaine kidnapped Sarah, threw her down some stairs, threatened her, threatened her friends and killed someone so yeah in this case I do believe the cops would be a better choice for Sarah’s safety
I do suspect that it’s not so much a case here of Sarah changing her mind in the last few weeks (of her time), but of Willis’s changing understanding of police brutality and its interaction with race. Remember that arc was back in 2011 – before BLM and Ferguson and Trayvon Martin. The problem certainly existed, but white awareness of it didn’t. At least not to the same extent as today.
Beyond that, while there have been some blatant karen style comments, there’s been plenty more reasonable critique along the lines of Mark’s here – that weighing the risks during a kidnapping by murderers doesn’t reasonably lead to cops making it worse. Which are often only responded to by pointing at example of police killings as if the commenter must have been unaware of the concept.
Wait for the comments after Sarah takes out the corrupt cops with the baseball bat.
If they’re corrupt then fine good job, if they’re not then there’ll be issues for sure
Even if they are, hitting cops with a baseball bat is a good way to get yourself shot and for it to be seen as a “good shoot”.
Yes, BallPeen(tm). antagonizing Joyce is a very good way for things to go well for you. It’s not like she has a whole stables of bigsises who itch to save her from the evils of the word.
Poor Dorothy. Her carefully laid plains destroyed yet again due to circumstances outside of her control (darn you, Faz)
That’s what happened to Blaine’s plans, too. His weren’t as carefully laid, though, and relied on the assumption that those things were inside his control. That part is different.
I just noticed, Blaine’s got Joyce around the neck, and she does not look well. He’s murdered once, I guess he doesn’t particularly care if he chokes someone whose name he doesn’t even know to death.
If Blaine kills Joyce now, she’s useless as leverage against Amber.
He gets her in the van and drives away, who’s going to know? Sooner or later it would occur to him to get rid of her anyway, and she’d be toast, alive or dead. I think Blaine’s at Fargo levels of dumb plans and sociopathy here.
WHERE IS SAL (and her moto) WHEN YOU NEED HER???? Also, can’t wait to see Joyce’s mother reaction at this.
Willis – if you harm Joyce, I’m through with DOA
She’s already harmed, but I highly doubt she’ll be killed off or else fans will be coming in Willis’ place with facemasks and pitchforks.
I’m fairly certain that she actually can’t die. Willis’s rule for DoA is that no one dies because the grieving would take ages to resolve, with an exception for Ross because there’s barely any grieving to be done for him. If Joyce died, however… God, that’d take years to get through.
She’s also still midway through one of the strongest character arcs in the series right now, so it wouldn’t really make any sense for her to die yet.
Isn’t Joyce supposed to mirror some of his experiences, too? So unless he’s a ghost or had a near-death experience, then I think she’s safe? Hopefully?
Indeed she is. I assume Willis has got a lot more to say about his college life and also has probably not returned from the realm of the dead
And if he has, he’d better tell us how
She’s the protagonist. If she’s never harmed, there’s not much of a story.
That doesn’t have to be physical, but it already has been in this case.
Lugging around a girl is not good for Blaine’s internal injuries. Maybe the camel’s back is about to snap.
You know, this daily comic strip is a gift from Willis. Whenever it occasionally gets intense, I’m always amazed at the entitlement some people feel concerning how Willis choses to tell his story. I’m all for a good argument about how realistic something is as long as the disagreement is reasonably civilized. No-one is forcing us to read something we aren’t enjoying. But I do not understand the urge to come here and dump discontent.
Also, Damn You Willis.
That’s… not a good defense. Something being free doesn’t make it immune to criticism. As long as nobody’s engaging in personal attacks, (which I haven’t really seen,) there’s nothing wrong with being critical, even extremely critical of content that most people in the comments have been reading and enjoying for years. We’re here because we’re fans. We love these characters, and if someone reads the comic and feels that the plot is being forced along by out-of-character behaviors or unrealistic plot contrivances, they should be able to talk about those problems critically.
Saying that something is poorly written isn’t entitlement. Even *bad* criticism isn’t entitlement. If someone starts criticizing the comic based off of things that didn’t happen, (or by pretending things did happen that we weren’t shown or told about,) that would be a bad faith argument, but that’s about the extent of it.
Complaints about realism in a comic strip featuring a superhero are kind of amusing. Even more amusing in a world where POTUS is a mashup of the adults in charge at SEMME.
The thing is a lot of the comic is realistic, at times uncomfortably so (in a good way) and so you get used to it being realistic
People are allowed to complain about the media they consume. People are especially allowed to complain if they’ve financially supported said media, as I assume a good chunk of the more vocal and frequently commenting people here have.
Also, complaining about people complaining is actively detrimental to something’s growth. Trying to limit feedback on a thing to strictly positive and telling others to not voice their opinion leads to nothing changing.
Most people complaining here aren’t attacking Willis, we all love these characters! Personally if I don’t like something at all I won’t complain, just stop reading. If I’m critiquing something it’s because I like it and also want it to be the best it can be. Willis, as an artist and creator has probably had a lot of critiques through his career which have helped him improve. A lack of critiques means stagnating your work. I’m pretty sure everyone currently not feeling the arc is in the same boat – we are expressing our opinion from a place of loving the comic. Personally I’m not going to keep harping on every update about not feeling this arc (I’ll just wait for the next one and look forward to more grounded hijinks and storyline then) but considering how far we are into it I think people are allowed to voice it a little if they aren’t feeling it.
Y’all complain all you want, this comic is literally the first page I load every morning. Keep up the good work, Willis.
Thanks to.my time zone it’s the last thing I load every night–which has the disadvantage that I then lie in bed thinking about the plot. The smart part of my brain says I should hold off on reading until the morning, but curiosity always wins out.
This week of Dumbing of Age: Literal Amber Alert.
I mean, on Dumbing of Age. This page needs Disqus.
Oh I can but dream . . . .
My dread and hate keep increasing.
Faz goes to the back door of the van and opens it.
“SURPRISE!” says Sarah, standing there with her bat in hand.
Really surprising, since Sarah was just by the door in panel 3. 🙂
Tell me, which would you vote for. Tried by twelve or carried by six.