Historically, it would be those people who want first pick at all the old crap the wealthy had boxed up and put outside for whomever to make off with. Not that they would know what was in the boxes until after they opened it. I mean, if the boxes were even labeled, they’d be labeled based on the new presents they had previously held, not with whatever was discarded into it. So it was really a pig in a poke situation, except it was unlikely to move on its own and you probably wouldn’t need to feed it.
The thing most people remember about Mike was the extraordinarily large number of nickels he carried around, it was almost as if he never got paid in any other currency.
Not to shit on the dead, but yeah. We were privy to literally everything Mike did, including his decision to kill himself because he thought that was the only way to repent for his behavior.
He was not a good person, and I think anything Ethan is about to say here is gonna be bullshit.
Unfortunately, Booster being who they are….. this is not going to end well.
Yeah. That wasn’t suicide by abusive dad, but I don’t think he had any illusions about how bad a decision that was about to be.
He just hoped it would be equally bad for both of them.
Agreed, I think he paid out his life as the price of doing something he thought was worth it. Maybe it was more than one thing, I dunno, he didn’t say.
I’m with CT. Not just because his books are fun, either.
I believe Mike knew that what he was doing put his life at risk, and he valued his life lowly enough in that moment to consider it a risk worth taking. It’s an important difference, I think.
I mean, he’s humouring him so far. He’s given him a prompt to go on about how he is the only one strong and courageous enough to remember Mike/the right way.
Given that a lot of people seem ready to forgive Joe for his own (far more close to IRL) douchebaggery, I’m surprised people aren’t really ready to forgive Mike.
I think Mike is one of the most interesting characters in the strip. We see in flashbacks that at a young age that he prefers to sit in the back and hang out with the loners; he’s an observer and a judge, and deeply aware of institutional corruption and structural imbalance from a young age. We can see in his reaction to Sal and Jason, and the way he confronts Amber’s teacher.
As an observer and judge I think he sees Amber and Ethan as innocents who deserve better, and ultimately he wants to protect them. He uses his intelligence to try and find solutions to their problems that don’t disrupt their lives overmuch, such as when he blackmails Amber’s father and gets revenge on her teacher.
With Ethan, he literally offers his body as a safe space for Ethan to explore his sexuality. Based on my personal experience I think this is actually a form of self harm, but I don’t think this is lost on Willis either.
So although he does have an intensely coarse exterior, I really don’t think it’s worth passing judgment on him as harshly as I’ve seen here. What’s the worst thing he’s really *done*, besides say some nasty things? I think that’s just the tough outer shell of someone who knows that in reality, ugly words barely scratch the surface of real injustice.
Well I can remember that time he emotionally manipulated a high schooler who thought they were real friends into conducting a illicit, online affair with that teacher that was mean to Amber for the crime of being a girl that knows math, before dumping the dude.
Mike used a innocent guy to accomplish his own goals in a way that was creepy and potentially dangerous. This is fucked up and this was Mike. I get liking his character, but he does deserve whatever judgement people feel like giving. It’s okay to enjoy characters that do bad things even while judging them for it.
Yeah, you’re definitely right that his methods are shady. As I said, I think even the way he wants to protect Ethan is shady and self-destructive. I definitely spoke too soon asking what bad he’s really done.
Let’s not forget though that the teacher also assaulted Mike (a child at the time) directly after he confronted her. And as far as using that kid goes, he doesn’t exactly seem thrilled about his actions afterword. In the next comic you can see that he’s obviously conflicted.
But ultimately because Mike is dead now, we’ll never know if he had any potential to change his behavior, if he would get better or worse.
I’m a pretty big critic of Joe, but I’m absolutely willing to forgive him (in addition to pointing that he really did need forgiveness, which a lot of people seem to forget. Joe’s trying to change. That’s important.
Mike did have a realization of how messed up his actions were in his last moments, but he died so he never got the chance to try to change.
No matter how shitty somebody was, there are still people who will feel genuine loss when they are gone. Ethan knew Mike for his whole life and understood some of his better points. It makes sense that he would grieve. It also makes sense that he’s upset the others don’t seem to care.
He united all people by giving us some common ground. Regardless of age, race, gender or sexual orientation, Mike somehow managed to sleep with all of their mothers. HE really brought us together.
But yeah, I think they are at least kind of being upfront with Ethan instead of the shit they pulled with Amber, which makes me think they might have at least internalized why that went poorly.
Walky and Lucy don’t seem to mind Booster much, but neither are characters known to be terribly unapproachable, so it probably takes a lot to hit a brick wall with those two.
Im not so sure that Walky can be offended by somebody telling him how it is, he understands that he is a Manchild and has fully accepted thats how he is gonna be for the rest of his life, the only time he seems to falter is when something pops up that might get in the way of that, like his grades falling.
Lucy just seems to have put herself behind so many walls that she fails to see anything that isnt already put as truth in her mind. Everything is Positive all the time in some way, to the point that she ignores anything close to a Red Flag. Booster would just try to tell her that she is wrong, she would say she isn’t wrong and then go about her day as if nothing happened.
Mike was a big ol’ fucko, but we made excuses for him because some of us remembered him from Shortpacked and he was less real there and more whimsically antagonistic. Oh whoops, 4th wall break.
Anyway, Booster took a lil, but I love them as much as the rest of the cast. Well played, Willis.
I don’t know Shortpacked, so all I saw was DoA’s version… And yes, he was just… Mike. I did not enjoy him because we only really got to know him when he was nearing his end. Very sad.
I remember semme Mike and he died fighting the martians, a real hero and not a bad guy overall when drunk. Not everyone has the fortitude to take that trip now, though. If you do, make sure to squint at every page, every gust of wind, and every magazine rack. That’s a slight spoiler but it will probably avail you not.
I feel like Dumbing of Age felt a lot sillier in the early parts so Mike still worked pretty well. I think Dumbing of age had sort of an unofficial drama tag pull where the world started to take itself a little more seriously. Which can make a reread a bit awkward.
“Dumbing of Age felt a lot sillier in the early parts”
The part where ambers dad put on a super villian costume? The whole kidnapping, murder, extortion, murder thing was a weird phase to read through. It was like, these are real kids, going through real problems, dealing with them in fairly real ways, to, oh, no, this is a superhero story where people jump from moving vans and walk away as things explode behind them and everyone is made of flubber.
And then at the halloween party, Walky made clear he was struggling with Mikes death, and it got real again.
Mike was a fucko. But he was also a fucko who would take a bullet (or this case, thrown himself off a flight of stairs) for his friends (DoA and Walkyverse versions).
Mike was better in Shortpacked, because that world was a lot more silly and his actions didn’t have the consequences they have in a more realistic world. And most of the targets of his asshole behavior in Shortpacked were annoying dumb customers at a store.
I never read shortpacked, and I could never decide how I felt about Mike. I feel like most of these characters strike a good balance of cartoonishness to realness, but Mike’s worst behaviours were… really bad. And I could just never settle on an opinion on him, even a nuanced one vs the overly black and white takes I often see on here.
Yeah but if I take my fingers and go like this 🤏, it’ll cover the T and Y, so “they” will look like “he”. I just have to keep that up forever and I’ll be able to justify anything I say.
I wonder if Walky has any feelings about Mike. I know he didn’t know him long but they were roommates and despite Mike treating him like shit Walky never really seemed to hate him.
There was something during the Halloween flashback where he said something really crass about Mike’s death but his follow-up when confronted on it amounted to, “Jesus Christ, I desperately need to not think about that for one night,” so it definitely hit him.
Dorothy calling for a moment of silence at a party was pretty shitty as well. She acts like a robot a lot. She said she sees a therapist on a regular basis at one point, but she cluelessly ripped open a fresh wound in a room full of people, and she had no skills to manage the almost guaranteed fuckuppery that it would, and did, generate.
Everyone is struggling to cope with so much stuff, including Dorothy, but Dorothy of all people should have known better than to do what she did.
Bruh, it was actually really hurtful and distressing of him. I’m still not over it. If I act like it’s funny, I’m not going to get as angry about that having happened.
People do grief in different ways. Some of them are fucked up. Walky has retreated from everything remotely emotionally difficult with, usually, wildly inappropriate commentary meant to be joking but which also justifiably doesn’t land. Like do you think I’m trying to absolve him of it being a shitty thing? I already called it crass and shitty. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t still affected by Mike’s death.
My read is that Walky wasn’t mad specifically because everyone was upset at his joke.
He was already mad generally at the fact of his former roommate’s death, very specifically mad at Dorothy for making a big show of bringing it up at this party, subconsciously mad that no one else seemed to understand this, and lacked any other tools for expressing his anger other than making a horrible joke.
I don’t think he planned on getting punched in the face over it. But I get the sense that he considered it an absolutely acceptable outcome. It was probably cathartic, compared to all the other pain he’s experiencing.
I think it’s a situation where you just become accustomed to people. It’s natural to find familiarity even in something you might find abrasive. Walky probably misses Mike because he was there.
For his part, almost all of Walky’s relationships have some varying degree of antagonistic feel to them be it the teasing of Sal, the back and forth with Jennifer, or the frenemies with Joyce;
the only people he hangs around with a lot who we don’t see treat him that way are the women he’s been involved with, and that’s only been 3 women over about 5 months.
And when he met Mike, he hadn’t seen or talked to Sal for 5 years and had been basically bullied or ignored by Jennifer for most of if not all of high school, so about 4 years.
So he was probably happy to have someone his own age to be around more often (he doesn’t seem to have had many friends growing up).
He was basically almost as “close” to Mike as he is to Joyce, close in “” because of the antagonistic relationship he has with both and almost because Walky never seemed to try to mouth off to Mike like he does to pretty much everyone else.
And it’s not because he was scared because we’ve seen him scared of Ruth and that wasn’t the same vibe; that just wasn’t their dynamic for some reason.
For Mike’s part, the role that he thought he played, one of being the asshole to make people realize stuff about themselves/make things better for them in the long run has been the closest to accurate with Walky as him visiting their Gender Studies class led Dorothy to be open about messing with Walky, and he bought Walky his beloved pajama jeans which led to Walky and Dorothy’s first breakup and first make up. Plus he was an extra fly in Walky’s ear about Math simply from sharing the same room and the occasional word.
Mike was unpleasant to everyone, but I think he simply accepted Walky for who he is, which I don’t see from anyone else. That may have been quite attractive to Walky.
Mike abused Walky more than anyone else, except possibly Ethan and Amber. Mostly due to proximity. Mike didn’t accept him or help him with his abuse – other than by complete accident.
Walky was really messed up by his death. He tells Booster at one point that he’s still checking the closets for fear Mike’s going to spring out to surprise him.
Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on literally every claim of “Mike was a helper!” He was a terrible abuser who maybe once in the entire comic’s run actually helped someone, and I’ll be dead before I let anyone think he ever helped Walky.
Not that anyone will see this (or that I’ll see any reply if they do), but I did say the role Mike THOUGHT he played was the CLOSEST to accurate with Walky.
I didn’t say he was correct in that thought.
A roommate dying will mess anyone up. In Walky’s case it’s probably complicated by relief that Mike’s not around to mess with him anymore. He doesn’t have to be afraid every time he comes home or goes to sleep anymore. OTOH, he’s got to be guilty about that, since it’s because Mike’s dead, especially since he died saving Amber.
The first time I met Mike, he asked me if he should have a hairstyle that can’t exist in three dimensions. I said “No! How would you do that? How would that even work?”
I suppose hearing about a monster in a false light is a lot less damaging than when the abuser is still alive and you get forced into contact with them without warning.
Amber had/has a split personality, blackouts, does stuff as one identity that the other doesnt know about., suicidal tendencies, low self esteem, and more.
Amber doesnt need booster. Amber needs professional help on multiple levels.
Pretty sure that’s not what anon was talking about, but to address your separate point– needing professional help and needing friends are not mutually exclusive.
Yeah, but that poster seems to think mentally [anything] people shouldn’t have friends in the first place. Presumably something something burden something something.
By the context, he’d agreed to not do his Mike things to Danny, so he went on with a plan to seduce Ethan to make Danny jealous instead. Hooking up with Eric, and being seen doing so by Ethan, was part of that plan.
To be fair, that plan messed with Mike as well. He wasn’t completely impervious to feelings about Ethan, but he was committed to his sctick.
Considering that Mike was a jerk to pretty much everyone except Ethan and possibly Amber, is it really any surprise that most people remember Mike the way he treated them?
Ethan’s not wrong that most people remember Mike ‘flatly’ – as an asshole, noth8ng else.that’s how he presented. Ethan got somewhat more than that, he got to see a whole person who was, yes, mostly an asshole but not entirely.
It must be very lonely for Ethan, really – he’s mourning someone who, while real, only existed for him. If he tries to tell other people ‘no, THIS person, I miss THIS’ they just think he’s romanticizing or wearing rose-colored-glasses and, I imagine, stop listening to a greater or lesser extent. And the only other person who did get to see nuanced-Mike is Amber, but he can’t talk to Amber because she swings between trying to appropriate his grief and use it to self-flagellate or making the conversation about her needs/wants; there’s no support to be had from Amber.
Booster represents someone who never knew Mike at all, but immediately indicates both that they understand Ethan had a personalized Mike and they’d like to hear about that. It must feel phenomenal, no wonder he smiles: someone actually listening.
All that time and he was maybe 50% sure they were friends.
Amber had basically cut him off by the time college started. She tolerated him for Ethan’s sake, but otherwise never sought him out or willingly interacted with him. By that time, as we found out later, he’d spent years “poking Amber’s bear” to turn her into a time-bomb to use against Blaine.
Absolutely. Ethan knew him since they were kids and also weirdly don’t have the goldfish memory everyone else (comments not characters) where he did have other moments? Like, it’s absolutely fine not to like him and not to pretend he was a lovely person after he passed, but he clearly had layers. Just had to really peel back the onion.
Booster, what evil schemes are you up to? What horrible plot have you begun to concoct? What nightmarish hazards will you visit upon dear, precious, sweet little Ethan, whose only crime is being slightly moody?
Truly, they are the incarnation of malice and hatred, this Booster before us.
This might be the first actually healthy conversation two characters on doa have had on screen about some deep underlying psychological issue that needs addressing.
But after 10 years of comics where many of the characters are walking around clearly advertising deep psychological issues without any character actually addressing thos problems, having Booster straight up ask Ethan to talk about it might be a bit jarring.
Jarring for someone with a ghoulishly pessimistic view of the story, perhaps. Personally, Ruth isn’t part of this particular plot thread, so I’m not all that invested, even if it’s pretty neat.
It’s not lip service, I’m sure Booster would like to actually know more about the dead dude they keep being named after, and Walky certainly wouldn’t be the person to ask about it in any depth
As much as I’ll dunk on Booster, it’s really nice to see them just be there for Ethan here. It doesn’t seem like he’s had an unbiased person to talk about Mike to.
Good. I hope by 2025 the consequences of Mike’s death will be over and DoA will move well past him. Then, at some point in the future, when absolutely nobody mentions that old character Mike in the comments, Willis will decide that it’s time to merge universes or to insert some zaniness in DoA, and he will be resurrected/come out from his disguise persona to annoy us.
At some point the Feds will bust the entirety of the Mob Blaine was laundering money for, and Mike will come out of Witness Protection and back to his friends.
You can always him trying to do good in spirit…with the added benefit of diving elbow deep into someone’s mind and taking a good rummage around to see what interesting stuff he can find inside.
His problem isn’t a lack of good impulses. It’s combining those two objectives without asking for permission first.
On the other hand, he must realize he is toeing a line too delicate when it comes to Ethan to risk doing stuff like that, so I wouldn’t call this Improvement. It’s the same thing with better optics.
I continue to like Booster, despite everything. I think this shows that they and Ethan have real potential for friend chemistry. And also that all the psycho-babble has some actual goodwill motivating it, under the layers of obfuscation, avoidance, and smug intellectualism.
Or perhaps, as a smug, avoidant intellectual, I am merely projecting.
Ethan is about to discover that he did not lose very much, other than a toxic cancer. “Dumbing of Age”, Mike, was insufferably toxic, and no one should have had to put up with him; sorry, not sorry.
Booster is good, they managed to make Ethan smile, HOORAY! Maybe Ethan will be the first real client/patient in Booster’s life, they’re looking at him after a request from Amber, probably no one has ever asked him to before. Let’s hope everything goes well. I think Booster is good, but they lacks experience. Ethan might resent if they actually tells him what they thinks of Mike based on the gathered informations.
Asking someone their experience or memory of a person or an event lets them tell THEIR truth about it. Not THE truth. Other people can experience Mike as nothing but an asshole, and thats fine too.
I would assume Booster knows this and knows its about getting Ethan to open up so he can grieve mike and move on. Maybe then ethan might open up about being in then out then in then back out of the closet?
Either way, this may be the first time two characters actually deal with some underlying psychological bullshit onscreen on doa, so I guess thats progress.
Its been all sorts of “we dont talk about Bruno” here. It will be interesting if all the other characters that are clearly suffering from depression, anxiety, etc, start having sillmilar conversations about their internal states, cause a lot of characters have been stuck in the same place for ten years of comics.
You know, Ethan, if Mike hadn’t been such a shrieking piece of shit until two strips before his effective character death maybe other people wouldn’t have seen him flatly.
Or you’re just horny and not dealing well with it. He was about as flat as his hair (and himself after hitting the ground).
That’s… Interesting. I would consider that a valid interpretation, and I’m not sure yet whether or not I agree with it. He abused Walky, so we have established him as an abuser, I think? In any case I still think that it’s going to be good for Ethan to talk about Mike in a positive way. And it’s okay to have positive feelings toward your abusers without it invalidating anything!
lol not excited for the eventuality where booster has to break it to ethan that he is definitely romanticizing his memory of mike. they seem to be a smart cookie tho so im sure they’ll find the appropriate time to have that talk, not right now
If Booster were a good psychologist they would not tell him anything and would be able to help Ethan understand that on his own. But unfortunately, as talented as Booster, they are still a young student. I’m afraid they tells him too much and for reaction Ethan will avoid them and withdraw more and more into himself.
Be interesting if Booster hears Ethan’s stories of Mike and just picks up on it all being manipulative abuse. Not sure how they’d handle that. Suggest actually talking to a professional about it, I’d hope.
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Happy (un)Boxing Day
And if we’re talking other holidays that happen to fall today—for anyone else who celebrated Hannukah this year, hope you had a good one. 🙂
I’ve dream casted my favorite webcomics for years, and I think Thomas Vaccaro/Unicorn of War would fit Booster fine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8TOA8-T6I4
Boxing day? Who’s fighting?
Historically, it would be those people who want first pick at all the old crap the wealthy had boxed up and put outside for whomever to make off with. Not that they would know what was in the boxes until after they opened it. I mean, if the boxes were even labeled, they’d be labeled based on the new presents they had previously held, not with whatever was discarded into it. So it was really a pig in a poke situation, except it was unlikely to move on its own and you probably wouldn’t need to feed it.
I’m Gonna Tell/I’m Gonna Tell/I’m going to tattle and I’m gonna yell…
The thing most people remember about Mike was the extraordinarily large number of nickels he carried around, it was almost as if he never got paid in any other currency.
🥲🥲🥲
It’s a Boxing Day miracle!
*plays “Hanezeve Caradhina” from Made in Abyss OST on hacked muzak*
Just loved this “holiday”. A charitable one; wish I have a day like this over here.
Flatly, like his hair.
Yes, to be fair, Mike’s hair was somehow a 2D object operating in three-dimensional space (and if you count ghost-mike across time itself).
Flatly, like Mike meeting the earth.
Meh, we readers knew more about Mike than most of the cast and I for one was not impressed.
Not to shit on the dead, but yeah. We were privy to literally everything Mike did, including his decision to kill himself because he thought that was the only way to repent for his behavior.
He was not a good person, and I think anything Ethan is about to say here is gonna be bullshit.
Unfortunately, Booster being who they are….. this is not going to end well.
I didn’t think he tried to kill himself. He was just trying to stop Blaine.
Yeah. That wasn’t suicide by abusive dad, but I don’t think he had any illusions about how bad a decision that was about to be.
He just hoped it would be equally bad for both of them.
Stopping someone by tackling someone over a balcony has to be at least adjacent to trying to kill yourself.
Agreed, I think he paid out his life as the price of doing something he thought was worth it. Maybe it was more than one thing, I dunno, he didn’t say.
I’m with CT. Not just because his books are fun, either.
I believe Mike knew that what he was doing put his life at risk, and he valued his life lowly enough in that moment to consider it a risk worth taking. It’s an important difference, I think.
Mike was indeed a terrible person.
But he was still special to Ethan, and Ethan needs to talk about him, and that’s okay.
This, too.
I mean, he’s humouring him so far. He’s given him a prompt to go on about how he is the only one strong and courageous enough to remember Mike/the right way.
“I mean [they are] humouring him so far. [They have] given him a prompt…”
Booster’s pronouns are they/them, not he/him. Thanks!
Argh my bad!
Given that a lot of people seem ready to forgive Joe for his own (far more close to IRL) douchebaggery, I’m surprised people aren’t really ready to forgive Mike.
I think Mike is one of the most interesting characters in the strip. We see in flashbacks that at a young age that he prefers to sit in the back and hang out with the loners; he’s an observer and a judge, and deeply aware of institutional corruption and structural imbalance from a young age. We can see in his reaction to Sal and Jason, and the way he confronts Amber’s teacher.
As an observer and judge I think he sees Amber and Ethan as innocents who deserve better, and ultimately he wants to protect them. He uses his intelligence to try and find solutions to their problems that don’t disrupt their lives overmuch, such as when he blackmails Amber’s father and gets revenge on her teacher.
With Ethan, he literally offers his body as a safe space for Ethan to explore his sexuality. Based on my personal experience I think this is actually a form of self harm, but I don’t think this is lost on Willis either.
So although he does have an intensely coarse exterior, I really don’t think it’s worth passing judgment on him as harshly as I’ve seen here. What’s the worst thing he’s really *done*, besides say some nasty things? I think that’s just the tough outer shell of someone who knows that in reality, ugly words barely scratch the surface of real injustice.
Well I can remember that time he emotionally manipulated a high schooler who thought they were real friends into conducting a illicit, online affair with that teacher that was mean to Amber for the crime of being a girl that knows math, before dumping the dude.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/arrangement/
Mike used a innocent guy to accomplish his own goals in a way that was creepy and potentially dangerous. This is fucked up and this was Mike. I get liking his character, but he does deserve whatever judgement people feel like giving. It’s okay to enjoy characters that do bad things even while judging them for it.
Yeah, you’re definitely right that his methods are shady. As I said, I think even the way he wants to protect Ethan is shady and self-destructive. I definitely spoke too soon asking what bad he’s really done.
Let’s not forget though that the teacher also assaulted Mike (a child at the time) directly after he confronted her. And as far as using that kid goes, he doesn’t exactly seem thrilled about his actions afterword. In the next comic you can see that he’s obviously conflicted.
But ultimately because Mike is dead now, we’ll never know if he had any potential to change his behavior, if he would get better or worse.
The implication there is definitely not that he thought they were ‘friends’, at least not without tacking on ‘with benefits’
(this makes it worse)
I’m a pretty big critic of Joe, but I’m absolutely willing to forgive him (in addition to pointing that he really did need forgiveness, which a lot of people seem to forget. Joe’s trying to change. That’s important.
Mike did have a realization of how messed up his actions were in his last moments, but he died so he never got the chance to try to change.
No matter how shitty somebody was, there are still people who will feel genuine loss when they are gone. Ethan knew Mike for his whole life and understood some of his better points. It makes sense that he would grieve. It also makes sense that he’s upset the others don’t seem to care.
They met in high school.
Would you like to tell me more about how he slept with your mom for a nickel?
Nah, Booster has already seen Amber’s Ao3 page. “Mike X Booster’s Mom” is currently on its 17th chapter.
He united all people by giving us some common ground. Regardless of age, race, gender or sexual orientation, Mike somehow managed to sleep with all of their mothers. HE really brought us together.
I’m still waiting for the reveal that Dina experimented on him before he died.
I guess I mostly just wish that if Booster was gonna psychoanalyze everyone, he would just kinda be open and upfront that he’s about to do it :/
But this is, admittedly, kinda sweet
Booster’s they/them. We all trying to remember that as best we can. Respect.
They/them, not he.
They, not He.
But yeah, I think they are at least kind of being upfront with Ethan instead of the shit they pulled with Amber, which makes me think they might have at least internalized why that went poorly.
Walky and Lucy don’t seem to mind Booster much, but neither are characters known to be terribly unapproachable, so it probably takes a lot to hit a brick wall with those two.
Im not so sure that Walky can be offended by somebody telling him how it is, he understands that he is a Manchild and has fully accepted thats how he is gonna be for the rest of his life, the only time he seems to falter is when something pops up that might get in the way of that, like his grades falling.
Lucy just seems to have put herself behind so many walls that she fails to see anything that isnt already put as truth in her mind. Everything is Positive all the time in some way, to the point that she ignores anything close to a Red Flag. Booster would just try to tell her that she is wrong, she would say she isn’t wrong and then go about her day as if nothing happened.
“…I wish that if Booster was going to psychoanalyze everyone, [they] would just be open and upfront that [they are] about to do it.”
they/Them, apologies
This is a really really sweet way for Booster to handle it. I like how this is going so far.
Agreed, I’m crossing fingers they keep it up.
So maybe Booster does have the makings of a therapist or counselor. Once the brashness is ground down a bit.
I just hope there isn’t another shoe to drop.
Genuinely. Ethan needs more friends, and a support network beyond Amber (who’s barely holding it together herself).
He had Danny but then there was the whole hospital fiasco which Danny still hasn’t apologized about…
Mike was a big ol’ fucko, but we made excuses for him because some of us remembered him from Shortpacked and he was less real there and more whimsically antagonistic. Oh whoops, 4th wall break.
Anyway, Booster took a lil, but I love them as much as the rest of the cast. Well played, Willis.
I don’t know Shortpacked, so all I saw was DoA’s version… And yes, he was just… Mike. I did not enjoy him because we only really got to know him when he was nearing his end. Very sad.
I remember semme Mike and he died fighting the martians, a real hero and not a bad guy overall when drunk. Not everyone has the fortitude to take that trip now, though. If you do, make sure to squint at every page, every gust of wind, and every magazine rack. That’s a slight spoiler but it will probably avail you not.
I feel like Dumbing of Age felt a lot sillier in the early parts so Mike still worked pretty well. I think Dumbing of age had sort of an unofficial drama tag pull where the world started to take itself a little more seriously. Which can make a reread a bit awkward.
“Dumbing of Age felt a lot sillier in the early parts”
The part where ambers dad put on a super villian costume? The whole kidnapping, murder, extortion, murder thing was a weird phase to read through. It was like, these are real kids, going through real problems, dealing with them in fairly real ways, to, oh, no, this is a superhero story where people jump from moving vans and walk away as things explode behind them and everyone is made of flubber.
And then at the halloween party, Walky made clear he was struggling with Mikes death, and it got real again.
Mike was a fucko. But he was also a fucko who would take a bullet (or this case, thrown himself off a flight of stairs) for his friends (DoA and Walkyverse versions).
Mike was better in Shortpacked, because that world was a lot more silly and his actions didn’t have the consequences they have in a more realistic world. And most of the targets of his asshole behavior in Shortpacked were annoying dumb customers at a store.
See also: Robin.
I never read Shortpacked (or any of the Walkyverse) and I liked Mike.
I never read shortpacked, and I could never decide how I felt about Mike. I feel like most of these characters strike a good balance of cartoonishness to realness, but Mike’s worst behaviours were… really bad. And I could just never settle on an opinion on him, even a nuanced one vs the overly black and white takes I often see on here.
I remember Mike flatly, but I think he was a dancer.
I saw what you did there.
This is a general reminder that Booster uses “they” and not “he”.
*looks up*
too late.
Yeah but if I take my fingers and go like this 🤏, it’ll cover the T and Y, so “they” will look like “he”. I just have to keep that up forever and I’ll be able to justify anything I say.
Really not sure why everyone struggles so hard with this, but here it is on EVERY FUCKIN PAGE with Booster in it.
It’s easy when you comment before reading anybody else’s comments.
I wonder if Walky has any feelings about Mike. I know he didn’t know him long but they were roommates and despite Mike treating him like shit Walky never really seemed to hate him.
There was something during the Halloween flashback where he said something really crass about Mike’s death but his follow-up when confronted on it amounted to, “Jesus Christ, I desperately need to not think about that for one night,” so it definitely hit him.
I think that was more Walky trying to avoid even mentioning that Mike had died.
He was still basically doing it to cope, being shitty about a moment of silence for Mike because he had enough silence alone in his room as it was.
That was when he got punched for it.
His follow-up was to try to force people to like his shitty joke.
You’re attributing a lot more guile to Walky than I feel he ever shows. Yes, even the very shallow amount that would require.
This reaction was to tell people “no, you’re all wrong, Mike’s not dead”, and then got mad at them when they GOT UPSET.
Dorothy calling for a moment of silence at a party was pretty shitty as well. She acts like a robot a lot. She said she sees a therapist on a regular basis at one point, but she cluelessly ripped open a fresh wound in a room full of people, and she had no skills to manage the almost guaranteed fuckuppery that it would, and did, generate.
Everyone is struggling to cope with so much stuff, including Dorothy, but Dorothy of all people should have known better than to do what she did.
Gotcha, fake Dali lama quote guy.
The amount of pettiness this comment section holds onto is truly grand sometimes.
Bruh, it was actually really hurtful and distressing of him. I’m still not over it. If I act like it’s funny, I’m not going to get as angry about that having happened.
People do grief in different ways. Some of them are fucked up. Walky has retreated from everything remotely emotionally difficult with, usually, wildly inappropriate commentary meant to be joking but which also justifiably doesn’t land. Like do you think I’m trying to absolve him of it being a shitty thing? I already called it crass and shitty. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t still affected by Mike’s death.
My read is that Walky wasn’t mad specifically because everyone was upset at his joke.
He was already mad generally at the fact of his former roommate’s death, very specifically mad at Dorothy for making a big show of bringing it up at this party, subconsciously mad that no one else seemed to understand this, and lacked any other tools for expressing his anger other than making a horrible joke.
I don’t think he planned on getting punched in the face over it. But I get the sense that he considered it an absolutely acceptable outcome. It was probably cathartic, compared to all the other pain he’s experiencing.
I think it’s a situation where you just become accustomed to people. It’s natural to find familiarity even in something you might find abrasive. Walky probably misses Mike because he was there.
Nah, Walky never hated him.
For his part, almost all of Walky’s relationships have some varying degree of antagonistic feel to them be it the teasing of Sal, the back and forth with Jennifer, or the frenemies with Joyce;
the only people he hangs around with a lot who we don’t see treat him that way are the women he’s been involved with, and that’s only been 3 women over about 5 months.
And when he met Mike, he hadn’t seen or talked to Sal for 5 years and had been basically bullied or ignored by Jennifer for most of if not all of high school, so about 4 years.
So he was probably happy to have someone his own age to be around more often (he doesn’t seem to have had many friends growing up).
He was basically almost as “close” to Mike as he is to Joyce, close in “” because of the antagonistic relationship he has with both and almost because Walky never seemed to try to mouth off to Mike like he does to pretty much everyone else.
And it’s not because he was scared because we’ve seen him scared of Ruth and that wasn’t the same vibe; that just wasn’t their dynamic for some reason.
For Mike’s part, the role that he thought he played, one of being the asshole to make people realize stuff about themselves/make things better for them in the long run has been the closest to accurate with Walky as him visiting their Gender Studies class led Dorothy to be open about messing with Walky, and he bought Walky his beloved pajama jeans which led to Walky and Dorothy’s first breakup and first make up. Plus he was an extra fly in Walky’s ear about Math simply from sharing the same room and the occasional word.
Mike was unpleasant to everyone, but I think he simply accepted Walky for who he is, which I don’t see from anyone else. That may have been quite attractive to Walky.
Mike abused Walky more than anyone else, except possibly Ethan and Amber. Mostly due to proximity. Mike didn’t accept him or help him with his abuse – other than by complete accident.
Walky was really messed up by his death. He tells Booster at one point that he’s still checking the closets for fear Mike’s going to spring out to surprise him.
Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on literally every claim of “Mike was a helper!” He was a terrible abuser who maybe once in the entire comic’s run actually helped someone, and I’ll be dead before I let anyone think he ever helped Walky.
I agree.
He DID order for him pajama jeans and got him to go to class a few times.
That said, he also definitely abused Walky.
The intent of the pajama jeans was to hurt him by getting Dorothy to dump him.
Not that anyone will see this (or that I’ll see any reply if they do), but I did say the role Mike THOUGHT he played was the CLOSEST to accurate with Walky.
I didn’t say he was correct in that thought.
Walky never really liked Mike, but I think it’s pretty clear that he has not taken his death particularly well.
A roommate dying will mess anyone up. In Walky’s case it’s probably complicated by relief that Mike’s not around to mess with him anymore. He doesn’t have to be afraid every time he comes home or goes to sleep anymore. OTOH, he’s got to be guilty about that, since it’s because Mike’s dead, especially since he died saving Amber.
The first time I met Mike, he asked me if he should have a hairstyle that can’t exist in three dimensions. I said “No! How would you do that? How would that even work?”
Yeah, no one else is as deluded about how Mike was as Ethan is. Must have been the sexin.
You would be surprised at what people will overlook or simply bite their tongue over in exchange for good sex.
Sometimes biting the tongue is part of the good sex.
Not the sexin. He was deluded long before. I’d say it was the years of abuse. Mike had his hooks deep into Ethan.
Silly Ethan, only Amber remembers him flatly
feels like amber should be here too or also have a separate convo with booster about mike later
I feel like that’s coming. Booster’ll relay information to Amber, and she’ll be all “uh Ethan?” and Ethan’ll be all “DANNY SAID THIS”.
I mean i don’t really think it matters that much if someone gets the wrong impression that a dead kid is slightly nicer than he actually was
I don’t think it matters if Booster gets the wrong impression, but Ethan and Amber are going to have to grapple with the abuse at some point.
I suppose hearing about a monster in a false light is a lot less damaging than when the abuser is still alive and you get forced into contact with them without warning.
Amber had/has a split personality, blackouts, does stuff as one identity that the other doesnt know about., suicidal tendencies, low self esteem, and more.
Amber doesnt need booster. Amber needs professional help on multiple levels.
Pretty sure that’s not what anon was talking about, but to address your separate point– needing professional help and needing friends are not mutually exclusive.
Yeah, but that poster seems to think mentally [anything] people shouldn’t have friends in the first place. Presumably something something burden something something.
¿Por qué no los dos?
yay it’s the “mentally ill folks don’t deserve love” guy saying more of that
i’m putting you in the blacklist
Thank you!!! Merry Boxing Day, Willis!!!
It’s the end of the dumbing of age comments section fake Dali Lama quote guy era. :O
this is really sweet tbh made me smile
Same <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
ETHAN killed Mike!
DUN DUN DUN!
oh god we’re gonna get a flashback to exactly when mike died, aren’t we?
Pearls on the alley pavement and everything
An entire strip of just his EKG gradually flatlining.
With one last pulse that looks like a hand flipping the bird.
Gonna count the panels down like it’s a New Years’ ball drop. I’ll even get someone to edit a party hat on Joyce in my Gravatar and everything.
Not gonna lie, that would be Mike all over, and funny as well.
Mike: Ethan…
Ethan: Mike! You’re awake!
Mike: Yeah, to make you feel guilty.
Ethan: Wait, what?
*Mike wills himself to die*
well no one else was having sex with him either so let’s not polish his grave too much.
(although actually idk who mike was sleeping with, someone who’s on top of the slipshines lmk)
We know Mike hooked up with Eric earlier on. By the context it seems like Mike was casually fooling around with people when he felt like it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/needs-2/
By the context, he’d agreed to not do his Mike things to Danny, so he went on with a plan to seduce Ethan to make Danny jealous instead. Hooking up with Eric, and being seen doing so by Ethan, was part of that plan.
To be fair, that plan messed with Mike as well. He wasn’t completely impervious to feelings about Ethan, but he was committed to his sctick.
Considering that Mike was a jerk to pretty much everyone except Ethan and possibly Amber, is it really any surprise that most people remember Mike the way he treated them?
I’d say that’s really “pretty much everyone, especially Ethan and Amber”.
Regardless of how Mike actually was, this is good
It’s healthy to be able to say and feel what your feeling without judgment
Also yay Booster did good
Ethan’s not wrong that most people remember Mike ‘flatly’ – as an asshole, noth8ng else.that’s how he presented. Ethan got somewhat more than that, he got to see a whole person who was, yes, mostly an asshole but not entirely.
It must be very lonely for Ethan, really – he’s mourning someone who, while real, only existed for him. If he tries to tell other people ‘no, THIS person, I miss THIS’ they just think he’s romanticizing or wearing rose-colored-glasses and, I imagine, stop listening to a greater or lesser extent. And the only other person who did get to see nuanced-Mike is Amber, but he can’t talk to Amber because she swings between trying to appropriate his grief and use it to self-flagellate or making the conversation about her needs/wants; there’s no support to be had from Amber.
Booster represents someone who never knew Mike at all, but immediately indicates both that they understand Ethan had a personalized Mike and they’d like to hear about that. It must feel phenomenal, no wonder he smiles: someone actually listening.
Well said
When did Ethan get to see nuanced Mike?
It’ll be interesting to see what Ethan has to say about Mike. Maybe he’s got some bits we didn’t see or that I’ve forgotten.
Middle school and high school
All that time and he was maybe 50% sure they were friends.
Amber had basically cut him off by the time college started. She tolerated him for Ethan’s sake, but otherwise never sought him out or willingly interacted with him. By that time, as we found out later, he’d spent years “poking Amber’s bear” to turn her into a time-bomb to use against Blaine.
Absolutely. Ethan knew him since they were kids and also weirdly don’t have the goldfish memory everyone else (comments not characters) where he did have other moments? Like, it’s absolutely fine not to like him and not to pretend he was a lovely person after he passed, but he clearly had layers. Just had to really peel back the onion.
i mean his (mike’s) parents def loved him, tho awkwardness aside i dk if there’s much of a chance for ethan to visit them and talk about it
Booster, what evil schemes are you up to? What horrible plot have you begun to concoct? What nightmarish hazards will you visit upon dear, precious, sweet little Ethan, whose only crime is being slightly moody?
Truly, they are the incarnation of malice and hatred, this Booster before us.
This might be the first actually healthy conversation two characters on doa have had on screen about some deep underlying psychological issue that needs addressing.
But after 10 years of comics where many of the characters are walking around clearly advertising deep psychological issues without any character actually addressing thos problems, having Booster straight up ask Ethan to talk about it might be a bit jarring.
Jarring for someone with a ghoulishly pessimistic view of the story, perhaps. Personally, Ruth isn’t part of this particular plot thread, so I’m not all that invested, even if it’s pretty neat.
It’s not lip service, I’m sure Booster would like to actually know more about the dead dude they keep being named after, and Walky certainly wouldn’t be the person to ask about it in any depth
As much as I’ll dunk on Booster, it’s really nice to see them just be there for Ethan here. It doesn’t seem like he’s had an unbiased person to talk about Mike to.
I hope their friendship goes well.
Good. I hope by 2025 the consequences of Mike’s death will be over and DoA will move well past him. Then, at some point in the future, when absolutely nobody mentions that old character Mike in the comments, Willis will decide that it’s time to merge universes or to insert some zaniness in DoA, and he will be resurrected/come out from his disguise persona to annoy us.
At some point the Feds will bust the entirety of the Mob Blaine was laundering money for, and Mike will come out of Witness Protection and back to his friends.
And in the biggest twist of all, it ends up that Amber was Mike this entire time
He’s just THAT good
Now I’m starting to see Booster as more of a rounded character. And yay, somebody figured out how to break Ethan’s shell!
booster? doing something nice and good??
You can always him trying to do good in spirit…with the added benefit of diving elbow deep into someone’s mind and taking a good rummage around to see what interesting stuff he can find inside.
His problem isn’t a lack of good impulses. It’s combining those two objectives without asking for permission first.
On the other hand, he must realize he is toeing a line too delicate when it comes to Ethan to risk doing stuff like that, so I wouldn’t call this Improvement. It’s the same thing with better optics.
Ugh. They/them*
Yes. they are Chaotic Good, but still of a good alignment.
They remember him flatly because that’s how he looked like after hitting that pavement. Splat.
I’d scrape him off. For a nickel.
It’s good today is already AFTER Christmas.
But it’s before NEXT Christmas. Gotta start building my position early if I want to place high in the rankings. Gimme that coal!
Santa stopped giving naughty people coal. These days, he gives NFTs
Damn, beat me to it.
I continue to like Booster, despite everything. I think this shows that they and Ethan have real potential for friend chemistry. And also that all the psycho-babble has some actual goodwill motivating it, under the layers of obfuscation, avoidance, and smug intellectualism.
Or perhaps, as a smug, avoidant intellectual, I am merely projecting.
This is my favorite thing they’ve done so far!
Ethan is about to discover that he did not lose very much, other than a toxic cancer. “Dumbing of Age”, Mike, was insufferably toxic, and no one should have had to put up with him; sorry, not sorry.
Booster rips off his mask to reveal… Historical Jesus!
Ahh, Booster could hope to be so supportive.
“Booster rips of [their] mask to reveal…”
Booster’s pronouns are they/them not he/him. Thanks!
Booster is good, they managed to make Ethan smile, HOORAY! Maybe Ethan will be the first real client/patient in Booster’s life, they’re looking at him after a request from Amber, probably no one has ever asked him to before. Let’s hope everything goes well. I think Booster is good, but they lacks experience. Ethan might resent if they actually tells him what they thinks of Mike based on the gathered informations.
Asking someone their experience or memory of a person or an event lets them tell THEIR truth about it. Not THE truth. Other people can experience Mike as nothing but an asshole, and thats fine too.
I would assume Booster knows this and knows its about getting Ethan to open up so he can grieve mike and move on. Maybe then ethan might open up about being in then out then in then back out of the closet?
Either way, this may be the first time two characters actually deal with some underlying psychological bullshit onscreen on doa, so I guess thats progress.
Its been all sorts of “we dont talk about Bruno” here. It will be interesting if all the other characters that are clearly suffering from depression, anxiety, etc, start having sillmilar conversations about their internal states, cause a lot of characters have been stuck in the same place for ten years of comics.
Wow, Amber knocked it out of the park.
Everything Is Therapy Analysis Including Friendship person becoming friends with Desperately Needs A Therapist and Friendship guy.
And Amber also aimed Joyce at Joe. She is the writer for these episodes.
You know, Ethan, if Mike hadn’t been such a shrieking piece of shit until two strips before his effective character death maybe other people wouldn’t have seen him flatly.
Or you’re just horny and not dealing well with it. He was about as flat as his hair (and himself after hitting the ground).
More I think that Ethan is a long term abuse victim who Mike had made dependent on him.
That’s… Interesting. I would consider that a valid interpretation, and I’m not sure yet whether or not I agree with it. He abused Walky, so we have established him as an abuser, I think? In any case I still think that it’s going to be good for Ethan to talk about Mike in a positive way. And it’s okay to have positive feelings toward your abusers without it invalidating anything!
Ethan is so cute this strip. :3
… Huh.
That was actually really considerate and helpful.
Thumbs up, Booster!
Yeah that amber girl sure did remember him very flatly, as in rendering.
lol not excited for the eventuality where booster has to break it to ethan that he is definitely romanticizing his memory of mike. they seem to be a smart cookie tho so im sure they’ll find the appropriate time to have that talk, not right now
If Booster were a good psychologist they would not tell him anything and would be able to help Ethan understand that on his own. But unfortunately, as talented as Booster, they are still a young student. I’m afraid they tells him too much and for reaction Ethan will avoid them and withdraw more and more into himself.
Be interesting if Booster hears Ethan’s stories of Mike and just picks up on it all being manipulative abuse. Not sure how they’d handle that. Suggest actually talking to a professional about it, I’d hope.
“It hurts less when you neglect to understand what you’ve lost.”
Referring to Amber?
I like Booster a lot. They’d be grating to know in person, but they’re fun to watch, and they’ve opened up a few interesting scenes.
Glad this seems to be working for Ethan.
me too ethan me too
I mean he was a flat character for the vast majority of the comic, so
I love the subtle expression on Ethan’s face in the last panel.
Helpful and hopeful? This is good!
…Why do I get the feeling we’re about to jump cu-
I KNEW BOOSTER WAS ACTUALLY GOOD WITH PEOPLE!!