Good hevvins, I had no idea they had kids. I think I stopped reading around the time the strip turned into a World War II romance novel for a couple of years.
It’s funny. I was a fan of CAD early on. (despite it’s obvious roots and continued structure as an MS fanboy’s ripoff of Penny Arcade). But over time he just lost me with his obvious narcisistic self interest and attitude of disrespect for anything that wasn’t in his sphere of giving a damn.
So seeing what is meant to be the protagonists most vulnerable moment turned into a meme, well… kinda seems like just deserts. 🤷♂️
A Shape Motif is part of a Character Design. Are they made of Circles, Squares, or Triangles? These shapes have significance to the Character. Triangles imply Hot Tempers and Intense Feelings. Squares are for Stability and Stoicism. Circles are for the Soft and Malleable. The Shape Motif is the domination of a certain Shape in the design or used throughout with no others.
Given that the editor of the newspaper is Daisy, I imagine that if the 69 Mouse-ear BLVD guy did a “fuck the gay away” storyline she’d drop it from publication
Someone has to actually edit the comics page together so someone will at least see it.
I don’t think Daisy cares all that much about the comics page, but I assume she’d care enough about homophobia to stop it from being published in her newspaper if she was aware of it.
There are only three points to any 9 Chickweed Lane strip:
1) Legs (like, that’s not a chair there behind him, those are her legs)
2) Child neglect
3) Bigotry (homophobia and racism and I think the current story line is gearing up for transphobia)
I think what upsets me most about chickweed lane (homophobia aside) is, it’s clearly meant to be an outlet for the artists leg fetish, but the legs aren’t even sexy. He sucks at drawing legs. Legs are actually hot but he draws them like long flesh sticks. No shape. If you’re going to be a fetish artist you have to be good at drawing your fetish.
https://imgur.com/a/9D5MrBE
Page 1. Yeah it’s gonna be a thing. Also I’ll probably have to go back and fix like 20 things I hate about this…damn it making comics is hard.
I know right? You’d thing a comic format witch is just panels going in a straight row would be limiting but I guess if there’s anything people like Willis and Yoto have proven its that it’s not the case.
I can think of a few ways to keep Joyce happy and blissful. 1-4 are go buy a vibrator and/or a dildo, number 5 is to take a long hot shower and then eat ice cream.
I wrote this only so sarcastically but ykw it does kinda track for someone so rigidly solution-oriented to then, y’know, be actually helpful when they realize that the solution-oriented thinking isn’t working.
That’s not really what Sarah said last night. She said she didn’t always know how to help and that Joyce should stop looking up to her because she didn’t always know who to prioritize. I think she can see that Joyce is doing worse than she thought. I know it gets more emphasis when it’s in crisis mode, but she’s been able to be casually helpful and supportive to Joyce outside that, especially after Joyce told her everything didn’t need to be a grand gesture. She isn’t always good at it, but she tries.
Please don’t make me pull receipts, I am very tired and Sarah appears a lot, and y’all know me. I will pull up a giant ass list with citations. XD
I don’t think Sarah was being nearly that constructive last night. It read to me fairly overtly as Sarah condemning herself for not being able to help Joyce (especially since the “you shouldn’t look up to me” line is a direct callback to something Joyce said to her prior to the Faith-Off).
Sarah’s thinking she’d leap to the conclusion to help Joyce by helping Liz (like she literally says this) and Liz is someone she did all the wrong by through running with the same “bulldoze to the solution” thinking that she relies on in a crisis, so she came home and went “the Trial that I, Sarah, have undergone did not provide me any meaningful growth.” I don’t think Sarah has any idea how to help other than a direct solution and so far that’s been “pester Joyce into being nice by moralizing at her” because Sarah can’t call Joyce’s dad to take her home from a drug binge. She realized there is no direct solution, she can’t de-traumatize Joyce, and so she feels helpless to provide meaningful aid.
I think a lot of what you say here is true, but “stop looking up to me because I don’t know how to help” comes right off Sarah admitting that she wants to and she thought maybe letting Joyce yell and be snappy might be better. But then Joyce said that ableist line about Dina being like a robot (and before anyone gets into it, no, I’m not saying Dina was a perfect angel in that scene – she did come into her room uninvited, sit on her even after she was told Joyce was in pain, and brought up a potentially traumatic topic Joyce really wasn’t interested in talking about – none of that entitles Joyce to use ableist lines at her). Sarah said that she can’t forsake other people’s feelings for the sake of Joyce’s (in this case, Dina’s feelings over the ableist line vs how damn tired Joyce is and how crappy she feels) and she doesn’t know who to prioritize.
I think Sarah really does want to help, whether that be solution oriented or letting her blow off steam, or something else. Unfortunately, this situation has a lot of hurt feelings everywhere. First with Becky, which, again, not going to say Becky was or is a perfect angel who did nothing wrong or that Joyce is a completely horrible person who has no right to feel the way she does. Sometimes, yeah, we think and feel dickish things when we’re upset and still working through stuff. It may not be right, but it’s human. That said, it’s easy to see why Becky was hurt with some of the things Joyce said (specifically, implying she was an idiot – I don’t think that’s what Joyce initially meant but things have escalated since then. Not solely blaming Joyce or Becky for that, but it is reality – things have escalated). Now this bit with Dina. Sarah’s not sure what to do about complicated situations like that and doesn’t know how to triage her response among the various parties. You’re right, there’s no ‘calling her dad’ here or a real way to immediately push for a solution. So, yeah, I think she’s just trying to fall back on being as nice as she can be to Joyce right now – especially since she is WITH Joyce right now – and maybe she can figure out how to help more later. Or maybe she was saying ‘I’m tapping out on actively trying to help, let’s just hang out’. I’m not sure where this storyline is gonna go, but I’m excited for it.
I mean the “I can’t forsake other people’s feelings for yours” line is kinda naff considering Sarah has not once at all considered Joyce’s feelings over the Faith-Off. She’s openly antagonized her numerous times about apologizing to Becky for a conflict that is entirely Becky’s fault and also that Joyce now is super fucking lame and should go back to being that person Sarah exploited for laughs and emotional labour all the time. Sarah herself is someone who’s made Dina mad, she’s griped about how “a cranky Dina is all we need” while talking about how hitting on Dina is weird, but it’s fine if Sarah does it because Sarah’s “bad with people” and thus she’d never say a line like “you done fucked up if Dina’s mad” in reference to herself or basically anyone, because she has no investment in anyone’s character like she does Joyce. Joyce is also completely correct in her beef with Becky, but regarding Sarah it’s just another context of “wow Joyce I thought you were better than this” because Sarah needs Joyce to exist in one specific context even if that context is “Joyce you can’t be an atheist, I need you as my buffer.”
(There’s no acceptable degree of “not a perfect angel” or “entitled to hate speech” for what Joyce said, and also Dina was being a stupid little shithead anyway because Joyce told her to get off because you are causing me pain and Dina refused because she was here to make Joyce justify being beaten by her parents for Becky’s sake, and then capped it off with “you’re an asshole because your parents beat you.” What Joyce said is still wrong, and also Being Problematic isn’t a “this person violated your bodily consent and said you’re a bad person for being beaten” free pass)
Sarah can’t help because there’s no solution. What Joyce needs is what she got to do with Walky, Joe, and what she’s got with Sarah here: just letting her feel things instead of constantly trying to drag her back into the person that Joyce was constantly mocked for being. That’s why Sarah’s doing good now; she’s not moralizing at her, she’s not insulting her, she’s not trying to rob Joyce of her pride at her new job, she’s not trying to fix her right now because Sarah’s utterly incapable of fixing this and always will be, and now that she’s realized that she’s making her first genuine step into supporting her.
Yeah the reason I’m looking at “stop looking up to me because I don’t know how to help” as Sarah condemning herself is that it’s an extension of Sarah’s solution-oriented thinking. She only think she’s worth Joyce looking up to her if she can solve the problem, and she cannot because it’s not a problem to be solved, let alone by someone else. Joyce needs time to think, to process, to not justify in real time her entire collapsed worldview to her nutcase best friend, and Sarah only thinks she’s a role model as long as she can swing a bat at Joyce’s problems.
Unrelated to the comic, trying to write comments on this site drives me fucking nuts. The page keeps moving up and down and if it thinks I clicked on someone’s name. Then it opens and I have to go back to this page start writing the comment again.
The problem is any money she’d give him would be USELESS because it’d be money her creator spawned himself. Like by the merit she could give him 5 bucks he could also just draw a mountain of 5 dollar bills.
My goodness, just a scavenger hunt of comics references, sandwiching Joyce’s inaugural references.
So far I see:
-Ctrl Alt Del (Loss.jpg)
– 9 Chickweed lane (horny 4 legs)
-Mr Boop (first and second panels of lower comics)
-Garfield (paraphrased in lower panel 3)
-Dinosaur Comics (Cephalopods quoted in lower panel 4)
Trying to pick if there are any more, the characters in the upper comic look like the Spy vs Spy spies, but our protagonist dresses kind of like the guy from Sinfest whose name I don’t care to look up.
It’s not her first effort at drawing though. Joyce canonically draws very well, it has come up before in-comic. If you’re going to nitpick, the least you could do is nitpick correctly.
It’s the slice of life college intro to her broader sci-fi universe.
An idea that is totally unique and hasn’t been done before by anyone anywhere near here.
…so out of curiosity, is there a full fourth panel to Joyce’s strip that you have drawn out somewhere, or did you just draw enough to make it look like the strip has an ending?
Don’t worry, Joyce. Give it another 20+ years and an added title of Internet Porn Lord (… internet porn lady? that doesn’t sound equivalent somehow…) and you’ll be making EVERYONE ELSE wait 24 hours for that dopamine hit.
In large part, yes. Though Willis has stated they put at least some part of themselves into almost all of their characters, Joyce has definitely got the lion’s share. (It’s even addressed in the FAQ!)
Okay, in case the artist is reading this and (I’m flattering myself here) nobody else gets it, I see the Garfield injoke in “Mouse Ear Blvd”. Nicely played. 🙂
I’m surprised at how the student newspaper has two (apparently) syndicated comics and one created by a student that they pay for. I’d think it would be just the one created by a student.
I assume 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd is the Dumbiverse’s Chickweed Lane equivalent. So that one’s definitely syndicated. Not sure about Toog Or Dare, as I can’t figure out what Doog and Blair is. If I’m correct, it was in the student newspaper next to original Roomies! I was under the impression that Daisy does not pay anyone else besides Joyce to do a comic for her paper.
I don’t think that was suggested. There was one opening because she was replacing a graduated cartoonist, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t others still running.
I have gotten the impression that all of the comics in the paper are student made. Daisy says if they can’t fill Joyce’s current slot with a student cartoonist they’ll replace it with classifieds rather than a syndicated strip
Anyone else ready for a 69 Mouse Ear Blvd spinoff?
Also, having written for a two-bit college newspaper (back in the day we did layouts with X-Actos), is there anything to talk about for actual 21st century college papers as incubators of student-created comics? Is that still a thing?
Is this the beginning of Joyce’s downward spiral into drugs and/or alcohol that eventually leads to a point of redemption, recovery, and understanding? (I might be confusing reality with an afterschool special again)
Awwww… look at that happy face ♡. I kinda hope to see the page of the newspaper again in the future to see Willis’ version of “Mary worth” and “Funky Winkerbean”.
I don’t know, I can think of a few comics already.
– Rhetta’s husband is horny for her legs at home
– A gay man discovers he is actually horny for a woman’s legs
– Rhetta’s husband is horny for her legs at a concert
– An annoying man rambles about the time he was horny for a Nazi’s legs
– The twins discuss how their mother is a “dish”
24 hours? thought it was a weekly strip not daily. I know college can get busy/chaotic tho idk how many ppl would enough enough content for a daily paper for a local place
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it’s like Twitter but physical
haha not-Doog-and-Blair and not-Chickweed-Lane
one day i will actually read doog and blair, somehow
For $45, you can! (until someone actually buys that linked copy)
*ponders starting a campaign to scour used bookstores for copies, considering the local one has like twenty copies of Megatokyo vol.2 (and ONLY 2)*
Who are the creepy twins in the final panel of Not Chickweed Lane though?
Not Edda and Not Amos’s twin toddlers, I assume.
Good hevvins, I had no idea they had kids. I think I stopped reading around the time the strip turned into a World War II romance novel for a couple of years.
*skims through most recent couple of months*
Oh look, it’s a World War II romance novel again
Hey, I saw one of these in Wally’s pub once. Yep, that’s what I saw.
From what Willis has shared on Twitter, Amos and Edda seem to forget they had kids as well.
At least, an Amos has appeared today.
Thanks bunches, I now have 2 and 3 of a trilogy porn series that I got 1 for free.
Iris and Angel are a THING
While I had heard of Chickweed Lane, I had never heard of Doog and Blair, so I was going to say I was at a Loss to recognize the first strip.
I see what you did there
We all do, Joyce.
we all do.
…urgh. the loss meme is bad and everyone should feel bad.
Willis just had to get it out of his system, since he had to resist the urge to do it when Mike was hospitalized.
Yeah he could have done a replica of the original loss comic and it would have fit right into the story
I was there Gandalf. I was there 3,000 years ago…the day the strength of webcomic failed
It’s been fourteen years already?!
I think minimalist loss meme is beautiful.
l ll
ll l_
or:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Loss.svg/283px-Loss.svg.png
Just wait until you hear about Ancient Roman Loss.
(1, 2, 2, 50)
Thanks, this made me smile 😀
It’s funny. I was a fan of CAD early on. (despite it’s obvious roots and continued structure as an MS fanboy’s ripoff of Penny Arcade). But over time he just lost me with his obvious narcisistic self interest and attitude of disrespect for anything that wasn’t in his sphere of giving a damn.
So seeing what is meant to be the protagonists most vulnerable moment turned into a meme, well… kinda seems like just deserts. 🤷♂️
spelling: potatoe thumbs and brain
Don’t let the Loss meme turn you into a sad, depressed sack of tears for the rest of your life. Move past it, and heal.
It’s mostly that it’s ACTUALLY LOSS, rather than a subtle abstraction of it
I think the loss meme is one of the best memes.
Joyce looks so SHINY in this strip! 😍
I think that is grease from not showering in a while.
It’s more than that tho. I am LOVING her shape motif. Willis has really evolved as an artist!
Indeed he has. What is a shape motif?
A Shape Motif is part of a Character Design. Are they made of Circles, Squares, or Triangles? These shapes have significance to the Character. Triangles imply Hot Tempers and Intense Feelings. Squares are for Stability and Stoicism. Circles are for the Soft and Malleable. The Shape Motif is the domination of a certain Shape in the design or used throughout with no others.
Yes, her big big smile, is so amazing.
Joyce, if you subscribe to your own Patreon, you get to see your strip for tomorrow early.
Hooray, Joyce looks very happy.
Also, what in the world is going on with 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd? I mean the title alone – and those teeth!
It’s a very accurate parody of 9 Chickweed Lane.
Sample strip for comparison.
It’s a comedy, in theory.
About only thing that’s missing is a bit of gratuitous gaybashing.
(Please do not include the gratuitous gaybashing thank you)
Given that the editor of the newspaper is Daisy, I imagine that if the 69 Mouse-ear BLVD guy did a “fuck the gay away” storyline she’d drop it from publication
You don’t think she actually reads them do you?
Someone has to actually edit the comics page together so someone will at least see it.
I don’t think Daisy cares all that much about the comics page, but I assume she’d care enough about homophobia to stop it from being published in her newspaper if she was aware of it.
Can someone explain to me the point of this strip, I feel I’m missing something
There are only three points to any 9 Chickweed Lane strip:
1) Legs (like, that’s not a chair there behind him, those are her legs)
2) Child neglect
3) Bigotry (homophobia and racism and I think the current story line is gearing up for transphobia)
4) Legs
5) Playing the piano
6) Exhibitionism
7) Legs
8) Really looooooong legs
Also weird how the current storyline is defining “woman” as conventionally attractive woman.
I had to go back and find this comment, because when I opened the paper today I saw that 9 Chickweed Lane had a single leg take up 7 panels: https://www.gocomics.com/9chickweedlane/2022/04/24
I think what upsets me most about chickweed lane (homophobia aside) is, it’s clearly meant to be an outlet for the artists leg fetish, but the legs aren’t even sexy. He sucks at drawing legs. Legs are actually hot but he draws them like long flesh sticks. No shape. If you’re going to be a fetish artist you have to be good at drawing your fetish.
Someone could have a bad anatomy fetish 🤷🏻♀️
There appears to be a bit of “first Garfield strip” thrown in there, too.
I would say that’s the crowning touch, but then we have the last panel.
Thank you for the elucidation.
It’s apparently 9 chickweed lane with references to Garfield, Mr boop and dinosaur comics all at once, because Willis is a mad lad.
Prediction: Daisy only runs the Joyce and Dorothy strips.
I think Daisy is largely apathetic to the comics section. If she’s running 69 Mouse-Ear BLVD she can’t care that much about quality
loss.jpg and Mr. Boop are excellent choices for a feature
god i WISH that were Mr. Boop
Mr. Boopweed Lane
YAY! Someone else caught the Mr. Boop reference!
https://imgur.com/a/9D5MrBE
Page 1. Yeah it’s gonna be a thing. Also I’ll probably have to go back and fix like 20 things I hate about this…damn it making comics is hard.
Billie hugs are probably good, provided she isn’t smelling too boozy.
Oh my.
I love the four panel and a joke style – very retro to the earlier Its Walky days.
I look forward to reading more!
I know right? You’d thing a comic format witch is just panels going in a straight row would be limiting but I guess if there’s anything people like Willis and Yoto have proven its that it’s not the case.
We could ALL use a hug right now. 😊
Come here you lovable demonic screwballs! 🤗
*offers internet group hug*
(((comments section denizens)))
Denizens! Attention! For those of you old enough.
I’m already eager for more.
Also should I ink it? It’ll take longer but it’ll probably look better in the long run.
Created a straw poll for it 😉
https://strawpoll.com/polls/kjn1jL5e7gQ
Is it just me or is that low hug getting lower by the last panel? Like “danger zone” low?
Eventually she’ll be hugging his Ankles.
NICE
I could need more please. 🙂
https://imgur.com/a/74qJ0yr
I inked it anyway.
First time I’ve see some inked art of yours. I’m impressed.
Adorbs. I love it and your art!
If I didn’t know any better I’d say this was one of Willis’s own It’s Walky strips!
Great work!!!! 😁
You should left like that. Like, Jennifer and Billie alternating in Walky’s hug. hahahha
Terrible Chickweed Lane parody. 2 of the panels don’t even have superfluous
legs.
Oh crap, didn’t realize those were legs. I was thinking chairs maybe?
Now I’m imagining it with her legs just stretching continuously across all four panels.
That wouldn’t even be parody, 9CL has done multiple panel legs a lot.
Its a gif, if you keep watching they slide in slowly.
I can think of a few ways to keep Joyce happy and blissful. 1-4 are go buy a vibrator and/or a dildo, number 5 is to take a long hot shower and then eat ice cream.
If that doesn’t work, go to the doctor.
Sarah last night: “Fuck this, I have no idea how to do the slightest good by you, stop looking up to me.”
Sarah 12 hours later: “You should feel proud of your accomplishments :)”
I wrote this only so sarcastically but ykw it does kinda track for someone so rigidly solution-oriented to then, y’know, be actually helpful when they realize that the solution-oriented thinking isn’t working.
That’s not really what Sarah said last night. She said she didn’t always know how to help and that Joyce should stop looking up to her because she didn’t always know who to prioritize. I think she can see that Joyce is doing worse than she thought. I know it gets more emphasis when it’s in crisis mode, but she’s been able to be casually helpful and supportive to Joyce outside that, especially after Joyce told her everything didn’t need to be a grand gesture. She isn’t always good at it, but she tries.
Please don’t make me pull receipts, I am very tired and Sarah appears a lot, and y’all know me. I will pull up a giant ass list with citations. XD
I don’t think Sarah was being nearly that constructive last night. It read to me fairly overtly as Sarah condemning herself for not being able to help Joyce (especially since the “you shouldn’t look up to me” line is a direct callback to something Joyce said to her prior to the Faith-Off).
Sarah’s thinking she’d leap to the conclusion to help Joyce by helping Liz (like she literally says this) and Liz is someone she did all the wrong by through running with the same “bulldoze to the solution” thinking that she relies on in a crisis, so she came home and went “the Trial that I, Sarah, have undergone did not provide me any meaningful growth.” I don’t think Sarah has any idea how to help other than a direct solution and so far that’s been “pester Joyce into being nice by moralizing at her” because Sarah can’t call Joyce’s dad to take her home from a drug binge. She realized there is no direct solution, she can’t de-traumatize Joyce, and so she feels helpless to provide meaningful aid.
I think a lot of what you say here is true, but “stop looking up to me because I don’t know how to help” comes right off Sarah admitting that she wants to and she thought maybe letting Joyce yell and be snappy might be better. But then Joyce said that ableist line about Dina being like a robot (and before anyone gets into it, no, I’m not saying Dina was a perfect angel in that scene – she did come into her room uninvited, sit on her even after she was told Joyce was in pain, and brought up a potentially traumatic topic Joyce really wasn’t interested in talking about – none of that entitles Joyce to use ableist lines at her). Sarah said that she can’t forsake other people’s feelings for the sake of Joyce’s (in this case, Dina’s feelings over the ableist line vs how damn tired Joyce is and how crappy she feels) and she doesn’t know who to prioritize.
I think Sarah really does want to help, whether that be solution oriented or letting her blow off steam, or something else. Unfortunately, this situation has a lot of hurt feelings everywhere. First with Becky, which, again, not going to say Becky was or is a perfect angel who did nothing wrong or that Joyce is a completely horrible person who has no right to feel the way she does. Sometimes, yeah, we think and feel dickish things when we’re upset and still working through stuff. It may not be right, but it’s human. That said, it’s easy to see why Becky was hurt with some of the things Joyce said (specifically, implying she was an idiot – I don’t think that’s what Joyce initially meant but things have escalated since then. Not solely blaming Joyce or Becky for that, but it is reality – things have escalated). Now this bit with Dina. Sarah’s not sure what to do about complicated situations like that and doesn’t know how to triage her response among the various parties. You’re right, there’s no ‘calling her dad’ here or a real way to immediately push for a solution. So, yeah, I think she’s just trying to fall back on being as nice as she can be to Joyce right now – especially since she is WITH Joyce right now – and maybe she can figure out how to help more later. Or maybe she was saying ‘I’m tapping out on actively trying to help, let’s just hang out’. I’m not sure where this storyline is gonna go, but I’m excited for it.
I mean the “I can’t forsake other people’s feelings for yours” line is kinda naff considering Sarah has not once at all considered Joyce’s feelings over the Faith-Off. She’s openly antagonized her numerous times about apologizing to Becky for a conflict that is entirely Becky’s fault and also that Joyce now is super fucking lame and should go back to being that person Sarah exploited for laughs and emotional labour all the time. Sarah herself is someone who’s made Dina mad, she’s griped about how “a cranky Dina is all we need” while talking about how hitting on Dina is weird, but it’s fine if Sarah does it because Sarah’s “bad with people” and thus she’d never say a line like “you done fucked up if Dina’s mad” in reference to herself or basically anyone, because she has no investment in anyone’s character like she does Joyce. Joyce is also completely correct in her beef with Becky, but regarding Sarah it’s just another context of “wow Joyce I thought you were better than this” because Sarah needs Joyce to exist in one specific context even if that context is “Joyce you can’t be an atheist, I need you as my buffer.”
(There’s no acceptable degree of “not a perfect angel” or “entitled to hate speech” for what Joyce said, and also Dina was being a stupid little shithead anyway because Joyce told her to get off because you are causing me pain and Dina refused because she was here to make Joyce justify being beaten by her parents for Becky’s sake, and then capped it off with “you’re an asshole because your parents beat you.” What Joyce said is still wrong, and also Being Problematic isn’t a “this person violated your bodily consent and said you’re a bad person for being beaten” free pass)
Sarah can’t help because there’s no solution. What Joyce needs is what she got to do with Walky, Joe, and what she’s got with Sarah here: just letting her feel things instead of constantly trying to drag her back into the person that Joyce was constantly mocked for being. That’s why Sarah’s doing good now; she’s not moralizing at her, she’s not insulting her, she’s not trying to rob Joyce of her pride at her new job, she’s not trying to fix her right now because Sarah’s utterly incapable of fixing this and always will be, and now that she’s realized that she’s making her first genuine step into supporting her.
(oh right forgot this part)
Yeah the reason I’m looking at “stop looking up to me because I don’t know how to help” as Sarah condemning herself is that it’s an extension of Sarah’s solution-oriented thinking. She only think she’s worth Joyce looking up to her if she can solve the problem, and she cannot because it’s not a problem to be solved, let alone by someone else. Joyce needs time to think, to process, to not justify in real time her entire collapsed worldview to her nutcase best friend, and Sarah only thinks she’s a role model as long as she can swing a bat at Joyce’s problems.
Unrelated to the comic, trying to write comments on this site drives me fucking nuts. The page keeps moving up and down and if it thinks I clicked on someone’s name. Then it opens and I have to go back to this page start writing the comment again.
Yeah, I’ve found it doesn’t like me viewing it on mobile browsers for some reason.
Yeah, but cheer up Joyce – every day you get a dopamine hit, as long as you can keep this comic going!
It is extremely fortuitous that there were no liquids in my mouth when I loaded the page, HOLY SHIT i can’t stop laughing
*plays “Linus & Lucy” on the hacked Muzak*
Don’t worry, Joyce, just slip your creator a fiver and you’ll be a step closer to the future!
Oh, you don’t think you have a creator anymore? Well, have I got news for you…!
The problem is any money she’d give him would be USELESS because it’d be money her creator spawned himself. Like by the merit she could give him 5 bucks he could also just draw a mountain of 5 dollar bills.
Willis at least solves the problem of evil.
“Why do good people suffer so?”
“Because it amuses me and my audience!”
We are all characters in the web comics of the gods. Pray they don’t go through a supernatural horror phase again.
I wish my writer would go back to the Hentai Manga phase, that was fun and entertaining.
Joyce: Why do I exist, my creator?
Willis: To create porn comics!
Joyce: That explains so much.
As a former newspaper reporter, I feel for ya Joyce. Waiting for those dopamine hits were brutal.
Also, I am in love with the combo 9 Chickweed Lane/ Mr. Boop parody for the final comic. We’re not gonna talk about the first comic….
I am glad it lived up to her expectations.
Son of a bongo THATS LOSS
Walky will be sad.
My goodness, just a scavenger hunt of comics references, sandwiching Joyce’s inaugural references.
So far I see:
-Ctrl Alt Del (Loss.jpg)
– 9 Chickweed lane (horny 4 legs)
-Mr Boop (first and second panels of lower comics)
-Garfield (paraphrased in lower panel 3)
-Dinosaur Comics (Cephalopods quoted in lower panel 4)
Trying to pick if there are any more, the characters in the upper comic look like the Spy vs Spy spies, but our protagonist dresses kind of like the guy from Sinfest whose name I don’t care to look up.
Ooh, as usual Ana Chronistic is ahead of the curve with Doog and Blair
I think the only one you missed was Doog and Blair, which is where the character designs from the upper comic come from.
I don’t know Joyce do you have life? Your looking sort of pail.
Hmmm… Joyce’s art seems too good for her first effort, and… wasn’t her concept a sci-fi strip?
It’s not her first effort at drawing though. Joyce canonically draws very well, it has come up before in-comic. If you’re going to nitpick, the least you could do is nitpick correctly.
It’s the slice of life college intro to her broader sci-fi universe.
An idea that is totally unique and hasn’t been done before by anyone anywhere near here.
Willis’ love for hating 9Chickweed Lane is now invading the strip
Noooo!
Don’t worry.
That demon energy is fuel for things you’ll all love. 😈
Stay tuned!
…so out of curiosity, is there a full fourth panel to Joyce’s strip that you have drawn out somewhere, or did you just draw enough to make it look like the strip has an ending?
yeah, I was wondering
That strip seems… Familiar…
I’m sure it’s my imagination
a’wwwwww. Big sis is proud
Big Sis gets to laugh at Joyce having to wait 24 hours for another dopamine hit.
Don’t worry, Joyce. Give it another 20+ years and an added title of Internet Porn Lord (… internet porn lady? that doesn’t sound equivalent somehow…) and you’ll be making EVERYONE ELSE wait 24 hours for that dopamine hit.
Per a past Willis hovertext, Pornlord is gender-neutral. (Joyce was described in it as a “future Pornlord”.)
The 9 dickweed lane spoof is just mint. Bang on
Follow Willis on Twitter if you don’t. Him grilling this comic is the best thing
Omg that parody is perfect
Joyce is Willis?
In large part, yes. Though Willis has stated they put at least some part of themselves into almost all of their characters, Joyce has definitely got the lion’s share. (It’s even addressed in the FAQ!)
I don’t know if I’m angry at the parody comics, or disappointed. Probably both.
I also feel like recognising Loss should be the equivalent of losing The Game.
Ha, got you.
It took me embarrassingly long to figure out the ’69 Mouseears Blvd’ reference.
But I did.
69 Mouse-ear Boulevard and in particular its last panel is straight up the best thing I have seen this week. <3
omg
This is too precious.
Such great feels right now. 😀
Okay, in case the artist is reading this and (I’m flattering myself here) nobody else gets it, I see the Garfield injoke in “Mouse Ear Blvd”. Nicely played. 🙂
Also, “Is this Loss?” 🙂
If the references keep going, it could get mean, and I am COMPLETELY here for that. 🙂
The loss and chickweed lane references tho X’D
Panel 3 & 5 Sarah is learning to smile, but she’s still not very good at it.
I’m surprised at how the student newspaper has two (apparently) syndicated comics and one created by a student that they pay for. I’d think it would be just the one created by a student.
I had assumed the other two were student comics.
I assume 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd is the Dumbiverse’s Chickweed Lane equivalent. So that one’s definitely syndicated. Not sure about Toog Or Dare, as I can’t figure out what Doog and Blair is. If I’m correct, it was in the student newspaper next to original Roomies! I was under the impression that Daisy does not pay anyone else besides Joyce to do a comic for her paper.
Wait, does that mean Whengs Down is also a student at Indiana?
(Whengs being Toog Or Dare’s artist.)
I don’t think that was suggested. There was one opening because she was replacing a graduated cartoonist, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t others still running.
I have gotten the impression that all of the comics in the paper are student made. Daisy says if they can’t fill Joyce’s current slot with a student cartoonist they’ll replace it with classifieds rather than a syndicated strip
This is why you should pay for Patreon: to be prepared to feels.
Like today, at memory of this strip of Loss https://cad-comic.com/comic/loss/
Anyway, the today strip is amazing! Loved the Joyce’s happiness and the all strip references.
Anyone else ready for a 69 Mouse Ear Blvd spinoff?
Also, having written for a two-bit college newspaper (back in the day we did layouts with X-Actos), is there anything to talk about for actual 21st century college papers as incubators of student-created comics? Is that still a thing?
Definitely still a thing in the ’90s & ’00s. The same is true of the free newspapers that you get at the metrostation. Not sure about nowadays.
The next strip down is Gibporn, a 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd spinoff.
Is this the beginning of Joyce’s downward spiral into drugs and/or alcohol that eventually leads to a point of redemption, recovery, and understanding? (I might be confusing reality with an afterschool special again)
1) Ah, so this is why Willis has been doing “research” this whole time.
2) Such loss.
Also, and I should have said this first, this is a very well done newspaper comics page. Genuinely good.
Arizona State University had some great student comic strips back in the early aughts.
Did Joyce and Sarah both become happy at the same time?
Nah. Sarah right now is more like a proud mom.
Awwww… look at that happy face ♡. I kinda hope to see the page of the newspaper again in the future to see Willis’ version of “Mary worth” and “Funky Winkerbean”.
Maybe Pat McHoarney will get himself dropped from syndication for homophobia or racial slurs.
That’s quite a lot of references to other comics in the first panel. I’m nearly at a loss for words about it.
… can we have a better view of the 9 Chickweed Lane parody?
isthisloss.jpg
From now on, the readers of ths strip shall say “Is this Toog?” instead of “is this loss?”
So your emperor decrees.
The world was marginally more pleasant before I learned about this Chickweed comic and its fanbase. Yeesh.
I’d suggest making the Chickweed lane parody a full spin off but I suspect it would just be that same comic over and over again
I don’t know, I can think of a few comics already.
– Rhetta’s husband is horny for her legs at home
– A gay man discovers he is actually horny for a woman’s legs
– Rhetta’s husband is horny for her legs at a concert
– An annoying man rambles about the time he was horny for a Nazi’s legs
– The twins discuss how their mother is a “dish”
I don’t know, staring into the abyss for too long can be dangerous…
I mean I feel like it’s going to win at least 1 patreon poll.
Joyce reminds me of the Grinch here. “Then Joyce had an idea…”
What are the other two comics references to?
The first one is loss.jpg with different characters.
The third one is an amalgamation that includes LEGSLEGSLEGS, Garfield, and Dinosaur Comics.
And perhaps a touch of Mr. Boop as well, to my eyes
So this is one of the more autobiographical strips, right?
24 hours? thought it was a weekly strip not daily. I know college can get busy/chaotic tho idk how many ppl would enough enough content for a daily paper for a local place
Wish I could read the end of Joyce’s strip: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/betty/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CcoMLy9us1I/
(Or: Showing off new avatar.)
Nice a 9 Chickweed Lane ref.
Accidentally dressed like Buddy Holly
Do Luann next
I already liked the strip, then I actually read what was going on in the fake 9 Chickweed Lane pastiche and I laughed out loud.
Wait a minute, did you just loss.png us with that first togg or dare comic?