Yup yup. If you’re in the driver’s seat, it lets you see what is behind and to the right; if you’re in the passenger seat, it lets you see behind the car.
He’s also pissed off and not thinking or acting rationally.
This goes for big things, like threatening his daughter and university students with a gun, but also for minor things like checking his mirrors and generally paying attention while driving.
He has other things to think about. Unlike the left hand mirror, the right hand mirror compresses the field of view. It makes objects appear further away and you can see behind you from a much wider range.
Tunnel vision has set in. He has one goal, and that’s to keep anyone from taking Becky. His only thought right now is to get to the highway and go back home out of Satan’s reach. Nothing outside a tiny sphere of comprehension will be noticed.
I think Ross is showing classic symptoms of ‘Fundie-vision’, which prevents him from seeing anything with does not agree with a fundamentalist world-view. Atheist superheroes are probably completely invisible, to him.
Or, maybe, Amber just happened to swerve to the right when Becky is looking in the mirror. Check the backseat center-line and Amber’s position in the frames.
realistically, even Ross shouldn’t be able to see Amazigirl out of the side mirror since she’s directly behind them. to answer your question, though, it’s because the story needs Becky to notice Amazigirl before Ross.
This is bad. Like seriously, so bad. You cannot drive safely without looking in your sideview mirrors. Please start using both of your side view mirrors.
My bf never would, because when he would look to the right, he would turn his whole head around to actually check in the blind spot, which is better than the general practice of exclusively using mirrors (unless you have the aforementioned blind-spot mirror MAYBE).
You’re supposed to turn your head to check your blind spot, and use the mirror to check the rest of the way down the road. One to make sure you’re not going to ram into anyone while changing lanes, and the other to make sure nobody’s coming. It’s the same on the lefthand side.
But she doesn’t buckle the seat belt until sometime between the fourth and fifth panel. She knows that the fertilizer is due to hit the oscillating air circulatory device very soon now….
Ross: “I see you have finally given up on thoughts of escape. Does that mean you are ready to submit to the will of The Lord?”
Becky: “No. Are you?”
*Becky yanks parking brake. Ross crashes through window*
Plus, a parking brake isn’t typically powerful enough to stop a car quickly. Make it lose control, yes, but he’s not going to crash through the window unless that causes him to hit something.
Amazi-Girl leaps onto the trunk of the now-stopped car, lets her momentum lead her into a somersault over the cab, lands with both feet in the small of Ross’ back (now spreadeagled on the hood), then leaps off – onto the skateboard, which passed harmlessly under the car.
This reads like some shit that would happen in a Batman movie. I like it. (And yes, it’s as unrealistic as flipping a semi by driving under it with a tow cable. :p )
to be honest, i didn’t notice that in the last panel until you pointed it out. did becky do it because she somehow knows about amazi-girl, or is she just aware that things are about to get a little weird?
Even if she never heard about Amazi-Girl during her brief stint on campus, the sight of what is obviously someone attmpting to be a costumed superhero in the rear-view mirror would clue her in that weirdness was about to ensue.
I like to think that was a one-time deal out of desperation when she thought she was about to be exposed, and that otherwise she wouldn’t have gone after Sal the way she did.
It did contribute to Sal’s decision to help Joyce intercept this asshole, though, so there’s that.
“SHIIIIT!”
… wait, no, that doesn’t work, ToeDad probably avoids swearing.
“SHOOOOOT!”
… That just has unfortunate implications, considering recent events.
“CRAAAP!”
… That might work, though it might be too close to swearing. I’m not sure what the rules are.
This might not be the best site to hang around for a week or so, then… Or maybe it will be. I expect it’ll be at least a two weeks before we get a chance to see Joyce beat down Ross, though.
Maybe. I’m expecting unexpected cooperation between AmazIgirl and Sal, shattering the I pass between them, or at the very least leading to grudging respect.
After Sal held her best friend hostage. Not that she’d realize tho, she didn’t recognize either of them after meeting them again in person (not in any costumes). Amber/Amazigirl is the only 1 of the 2 (3? Not yet, but kinda getting there potentially…) who knows the connections.
That said, I can see a potential team up against a greater enemy…
When you are able to conceptualize and convey story so fully and brilliantly through a character’s small shifts of posture and expression, you can “copy and paste” (your super-complicated and detailed car setting) all fucking day, for the *win.*
Breaking the fourth wall requires the characters to address the audience. The fourth wall is the screen you’re viewing them from. If Walky admitted he was in a webcomic while looking at the camera, that’d be breaking the fourth wall. The Animaniacs and Freakazoid have a lot of examples.
By that logic any time something happens to be placed facing the camera it’s breaking the fourth wall. In this case she’s putting the bottle in front of her navel, which happens to be facing us. It also happens to block her navel to Joyce, too, so the comment isn’t breaking the 4th wall a bit.
We’ve seen you try trolling around here a few times, now you’ve even directly annoyed Mr Willis, my might wanna ease up on the trolling before you get banned. And changing Gravatars won’t help, he knows how to find out you IP address. Remedial Troll School might be a good idea…
Nahh thats too much trouble to go through, I didnt meant to offend anyone, I didnt intend to troll, and I certainly didnt intend to incur the wrath of willis. Im sorry if stating my opinion on fourth wall breaking offended anyone for whatever reason.
I got rid of you because you flooded my comments with like a dozen shouts of “RAINBOW” at random other commenters, which took me a too-large portion of my day to remove from my website. Changing your IP so you can post again doesn’t enamor me of you, either.
Structure in terms of the arrangement of the five panels. The symmetry plus the larger angled shot in the middle dividing the moments… it’s solid. As for the “copy and paste” take a closer look and note the nuance. It’s quality work – because sometimes quality is in the small things, not the large.
I think that’s why there might be a chance. There’s villainous characters, sure, but Mary’s the one character who just feels intentionally completely two dimensional, and that we’ll start to see more of her as she gets involved in the Billie/Ruth story arc.
At the least, I’m holding out until we see under her wristbands.
“I see you have agreed to date Faz. Here is a chart indicating the amount of desire you will feel for Faz as the date progresses. As you can see, it is exponential. Here are my projected estimates of the birth dates of our children. Faz will expect you to finish your education and work two jobs as well as be homemaker and child-raiser, all of which you will be happy to do, of course.”
I really Mary belongs lumped in with Blaine and Ryan more than Ross does. I’m a lesbian myself, so I do find Ross’ beliefs abhorrent, but I also have to recognize that he’s ultimately acting out of love. Dude’s got a fucked up idea of what’s right for his daughter, but he’s doing everything he’s doing, basically ruining his own life, because he thinks he’s SAVING Becky’s. He needs a shit ton of counseling, but I don’t see him as evil as I see the Blaines and Ryans of this comic strip world.
He has done as much if not more to ruin people’s lives than Ryan or Blaine. His silliness to shoot and kill makes him more of a threat, certainly. That is no love that any sane person could recognize.
I still maintain that any time you find yourself pointing a gun at someone you profess to love in order to force them to behave differently, you seriously need to reconsider your course of action or your definition of “love”.
And is something that Joyce can say now. Though not lightly.
You know, I’m going to go way out on a limb here and predict it *will* end well for some value of well. And if not it promises to be one heck of a ride.
We’ve got the driver having made a gunpoint abduction of his passenger, a skateboarding acrobat vigilante on a tow-cable behind him, and a badass biker chick with a half-crazy-angry passenger doing forward-wheelies down stairs in hot pursuit. This was after the ambush-mauling of the armed gunman by a woman doing an impersonation of a velociraptor.
If we haven’t already cleared it, I think you need to lower your bar for “one heck of a ride”.
My gut feeling is that Ross is going to be the second failed parental figure that Amber puts into hospital. The only question to answer is whether she does so directly or indirectly. Joyce and Sal are going to arrive just in time to be part of the clean-up crew.
Plus when she was inviting everybody to the secret dorm party, “Contact Amazigirl?” or something of the sort was written by Dorothy’s name. So she has to at least know she exists.
Looks like an evil, lopsided little grin to me. It makes me want to punch him EVEN MORE than I already did, which I honestly didn’t think was possible.
I strongly suspect you’ve never been rear-ended. Am I right? 😉
Somewhere around the second time I started to check out what was happening in my rear-view if I had to break hard, of only so I can brace if needed. If I have to brake unexpectedly I also flash my brake lights if I have the time (so often after the initial hard brake) to get their attention and let them notice what I’m doing.
Because if I can live the rest of my life without anymore whiplash, I will.
Eh, there’s problematic stuff sometimes (that I’ve had to learn to accept in basically everything I like), but Willis’ work is generally high quality and doesn’t have a lot of those really bad moments that make me want to stop reading, like some other series I’ve followed before.
It’s not just braking that you would want to check rear view mirrors. I’m constantly scanning around me, and mentally tracking every car around me in traffic. So, if I need to make an emergency maneuver, I can just instinctively do it because I know where cars are. (If it’s not an emergency, I double-check of course, but this means that I know where I can go in case of emergency.)
if you get injured in a car accident because you weren’t wearing a seatbelt, clearly it was god’s will. “miraculously unharmed” is totally god’s department.
So long as none of them are permanently damages, that’s fine.
If any of them do suffer permanent damage, it had better be Ross. Maybe it’d land him in some much-needed counseling, if that could even accomplish anything.
She’s seen Amber sprinting around and heard the story about the frat party but, I think this is the first time AG and Beck have been in the same frame.
Eh, I can’t really see it. Don’t think Amber’s into gals.
Though I suppose after the way Walking with Dina started it’s possible they don’t feel the need to eject each other from the room during carnal activities, and the bed does have a bunk each for Dina and Amber… I have no idea how any of the parties involved would react to that. Amber x Danny x Ethan is emotionally complicated enough without lesbians sharing the room.
I’m thinking Amazi-Girl and Danny started to get it on without even realizing that Dina was in the room, wondering if she should leave or not, while it got increasingly awkward for her to ask, until finally she just shrugged and went to bed.
Every one assumes something be and dramatic is going to cause the hospital visit. But lets look at an alternative theory.
“strip right after this storyline”
Danny: I’m playing my DS not really paying attention to where I’m going!
OH SHIT STAIRS!!
I still keep half expecting the hospital scene to be a fakeout where it’s just an establishing shot and the next panel just shows some people walking by it and that’s all.
She’s directly behind them, between the side mirrors’ fields of vision but dead-center on the rearview mirror. Either Ross has the rearview pointing at the backseat to look at his rifle, or he just never checks his mirrors.
At least he has the mirrors set up properly, if Becky can see behind them from her side. The view from the driver’s seat would be spread further from the center line of the car. Blind spots should almost completely gone. I don’t understand why people set their mirrors up so the side views are 90% full of their own car.
not checking your mirrors is the fundamentalist driver’s equivalent of a trust fall. he knows where he’s going. jesus will keep the car accidents at bay. /sarcasm
I’m gunna blame the spell corrector on this tablet. Don’t know for sure it was at fault instead on my mind, but it does enough weird that I’m blaming it anyway.
Great panel structure. What always strikes me about comics is that action sequences take up so much time and space. Things that are over in a few minutes or even seconds can take multiple strips or pages to resolve while spoken conversations that take longer take up less panel space.
This not a complaint, just an observation, mostly out of frustration that I’ve got to wait another 24 hours to get three or four more panels of action.
Pacing is always difficult in webcomics. If it were written in a way that didn’t cause this “24-hour frustration”, everything would be happening way too fast for people who are catching up on / re-reading the archives or buy the books.
I am known for my passive aggressiveness. I repeated the third grade because a took a great dislike to my teacher. She failed me. My second third grade teacher asked my mother why I had been held back. My mother responded that I had failed all my standardized tests. My second third grade teacher told my mother that I had scored in the upper 90th percentile. This was before the Freedom of Information Act. parents didn’t have to be told how their kids did on different tests and whatnot. I was forced to repeat the second grade because my first third grade teacher was a sadistic asshole. On the upside, she was committed to a mental institution the next year. I like to think I drove her over the edge.
So why didn’t they bump you up to the third grade as soon as they realized you hadn’t failed?
Teacher: “Hm, so let’s look over who I’ve got in second grade this year. Oh, I see Boxilar is repeating the grade. Wait, that’s weird– zhe did really well on the standardized tests. Wonder what was going on?” *calls Mom* “Hi, why is Boxilar repeating second grade, again?”
“Well, zhe failed all zir tests.”
“Um, no, zhe didn’t…
Option 1: “Huh. Well, see you later.”
Option 2: “Huh. Let me look into this a bit more, because it looks like zhe should have passed, and if zhe did, I don’t see any reason why zhe can’t still go into third grade this year. Seems silly to make zir repeat the grade anyways if it was just a clerical error or something.”
Unless they realized this months into the school year or something, when you would already have missed too much to be able to make up, it seems strange that they couldn’t take it to the principal and say, “Yeah, looks like zhe should have passed after all, so can we put an addendum on hir record and bump hir up instead of needlessly making zir repeat the grade? Seems like a waste of everybody’s time.”
Well, schools are sometimes a bit funny about that sort of thing. There was an acceleration program at my primary school for a year, as a result of which I and completed years 2 and 3 in one year, and several others did likewise. Then the principal ran off with a pharmacist’s wife and for a year the place was running on autopilot under the deputy. He ended the the acceleration, but left everyone where they had got up to, so I finished fourth grade. Then a new headmaster arrived who tried to make me (and everyone else in an analogous situation) repeat fourth grade. My parents refused to let him make me repeat. At the end of 6th grade I tested first in the school district (i.e. about first out of 300 kids) on the high school entrance examination, but the principal of the high school insisted that I repeat sixth grade. I had to go to a private school to avoid repeating material that I was already bored with.
It’s not, I think, that the people themselves are malicious, it’s just that the school system is a bureaucracy, and therefore inimical to human decency and common sense.
I honestly don’t know. This apparently happened after Christmas break of the second year. I found out about it much later. My second third grade teacher apparently got curious and pulled my records when I had read through the whole third grade reader and was sneaking Tarzan books into class. They realized what had happened, but I guess it was too late to move me to fourth grade. Mom and dad let it slide and I think my teacher gave me higher grade work, but again, I’m not sure.
Perhaps not. If a list was brainstormed, edited, and handed off to Becky, she might have prioritized inviting those she could identify and worried about asking questions if she had time afterwards.
Even if someone’s explained anything to Becky, seeing a chick in a jumpsuit and cape is peculiar enough even when she’s not attaching herself to automobiles.
“Huh. There appears to be a superhero hanging off our bumper.
“Welp. Time to buckle up, then. Also, IU is awesome.”
I mean, she’s pretty obviously a superhero. Even if Becky somehow wasn’t aware of real-life superheroes, dang, there’s a superhero on the bumper. Things are looking up. Better brace for action. Even if she doesn’t actually know about Amazi-girl in particular.
“man, i can’t believe how shitty my life is getting aga–uh. is that…what the hey? ok. this is fine. everything is fine. nothing to see here dad i’m just casually putting my seatbelt on for no reason.” – becky’s internal monologue, probably
Next panel: Amazi-Girl climbs up the rope, opens the trunk, gets in, closes it, folds down the rear seats, grabs the gun, stops the car, and saves everything forever.
There will be no complications.
No one at all will die in a rolling mass of steel, burning combustibles, and melting flesh.
Ah Willis you’re telling us to hold onto our butts… JOKE’S ON YOU! My ass is glued to the chair with anticipation! No wait… Damn how am I going to get to the can.
Ahhh, yes, Becky, one weekend on campus is not quite enough to learn how absolutely weird things can get around here. Hopefully you’ll be able to stick around to learn.
Now… imagine her facial expression the next time she looks in the mirror and see Joyce, without helmet, on the back of a motorcycle, coming down on them like Hell’s Angel! 😀
Normally I’d make a grim quote about hope being the first step on the road to disappointment.
Under the circumstances, I’m just happy Becky’s not ready to throw her life away quite yet.
‘Conflicted’ I’m not sure about but, yes, definitely distressed. I don’t think he really knows what he’s doing and is mostly making it up as he goes alone.
I kinda feel bad for the guy too. I think he knows exactly how bad he’s fucking up his own life right now, but he’s powering through it because he still thinks it’ll be worth it if he can “save” Becky.
Okay, Becky; now what do you do? Exactly how much to you want to avoid anyone getting hurt because the chances of that outcome are decreasing by the second!
Oh, and: “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”!
I love this strip’s panels. From defiance and hopeless to ‘ohh, seat belt time’, to ‘better play this cool’.
Some of the mirror comments confuse me. I drive using all 3 mirrors: both sides and the rear view. I’ve got a camper shell on my pickup, and all 3 mirrors are sorta vital for safe exit/enter off the freeway and for backing up/parking.
The rear view saved my butt coming down a fairly steep hill. Some fool came bearing down on me at 90 miles an hour (in an 18 wheeler) when I was doing 55. I removed myself from his path fast. Turns out his brakes were gone. He made it to the bottom okay and ran it off the road on purpose so as not to run it thru the little town at hills bottom at that speed. He was okay. Taught me to rely on my mirrors at an early age.
Now, then lets just hope Toedad keeps those beady little eyes straight ahead with no thoughts to safe driving with those mirrors of his.
I am confused because the view in that mirror looks like either light is bending around the rear corner of the car, or AG swerved something fierce during that middle panel.
She’s only one car length behind, and keeping to the “center”, so she’s not far away enough to show in the middle of the side mirror, even if the mirror is very long (and it doesn’t matter how the mirror is set or who is looking into it, that’s just a straight line joining the middle of the mirror and the rear corner of the car – I am making some simplifications based off dimensions of some random cars from quick googling, but it seems like she would have to be at least three or five car lengths behind to even have a chance to be visible in the middle of the side mirror).
I will take narratively-mandated physics-defying amazing feats for $100, please.
I’m thinking that Amber will haul herself along the rope and then up onto the roof of the car. then she throws some spiked jacks under the tyres and it’s medium-speed spin-out city.
I spent 30+ years writing about crime for various newspapers. Ross’ behavior is consistent with those people, many times not a criminal type, who just spiral out of all reasonable control. One wrong decision follows another until the person faces only bad decisions. Extricating yourself from one of these spirals is almost impossible.
I think that this is why a lot of so-called ‘spree killers’ suicide at the ends of their rampage – They have followed an every worsening decision tree for some time until they reach a point where the only choices that involve them staying alive are literally unbearable to them. This is why I think an attempted murder-suicide by Ross if his vehicle is stopped or surrounded by police is very possible.
An alternate explanation is that once you have decided on suicide, all sorts of possibilities open up that were oout of the question before, when you had to worry abou consequences.
I do not see this going well for Amazi-Girl. Willis has claimed that there are no SFnal technologies in this version of the Walkyverse, so neither should there be any expectation that costumed superhero wannabees will be any less fragile than every other human being.
She’s every bit as fragile, just more skillful and with insane reflexes which makes her even more awesome than if she were invulnerable to anything except criticism.
I’m going to dispute your numbering. I think we have panel 1 where Becky is pissed at life, panel 2/5 which is Becky’s view of the mirror, panel 3 where Becky’s eyes have widened while the rope angles left from Amazigirl. On the next line we have Becky’s face as what she is seeing sinks in and the rope angles right from Amazigirl as she pulls the rope in hand over hand. Then we cut away to the mirror view in panel 2/5 and when we cut back in panel 6, Becky’s seat belt is fastened and has a hard to read expression on her face.
That’s a strange way of numbering the panels, as there are clearly only five panels in the comic.
My way of reading it: Left column (panels 1 + 2), middle panel (panel 3), right column (panel 4 + 5).
In the second panel (down left) she is still frowning, but as she can do nothing else, she let’s her eyes wander.
Panel 3 (middle panel) she is noticing the customed vigilante following her car and is very surprised (but no longer frowning) in the nest panel (panel 4, upper left).
The mirror shot shows a longer rope behind AG. She’s reeling herself in. Now, Becky has to formulate a plan to keep Fundie from noticing, and maybe get him to slow down. My guess is to fake illness. “Pull over, I’m going to throw up” is my guess. Trust me, Dad’s are programmed to react to that one. A bathroom break might also do the trick, but his fear of a possible escape attempt might over-ride that one. Either way, you can see the gears turning in the last panel. Tactical planning, fear, and hope all at once.
“No, you have a bullet and the hope that, when you’ve fired it, I’m not still standing. Because, I assure you, if I am, you will be unconscious before you can reload.”
Trust me, Dads react to that phrase like one of Pavlov’s dogs reacting to a bell. I didn’t recognize the signs the first time my daughter was car sick. We had to clean out the car seat and buy her a new outfit. The one she was wearing was tied up in the store bag in the trunk. After that, I was stopped on the side of the road at the first little “urp.”
Also, the wheel surfaces and bearings on her skateboard are going to be heating *very* rapidly. Either the road surface will get gummy and it’ll turn into a snowboard without edges, or the outer race of the bearing will melt the inside of the wheel, causing the urethane portion to come off suddenly.
No, I got the part where she is holding on now. I am questioning the part where she initially got the hook on the car. She was p late to the scene, and all she had was a skateboard…
Wait, who passed what? *clicks back with an annoyed eyeroll because pages load S L O W L Y on my shitty connection*
I’M SORRY I MISSED SEVERAL PAGES AND DIDN’T NOTICE BECAUSE OF HOW THE STORYLINE JUMPS AROUND
also, I wasn’t nitpicking like ‘this is impossible’ >-> my suspension of disbelief holds find, I just thought it would be fun to discuss… but welp, I missed stuff and this was already addressed )=
Okay, so the part that I questioned was that the place where the car would be going at reasonable catch-up-able speed was also likely to have other people who’d question Amazigirl attaching herself to it.
Love the panel layout! The pacing is great! Its those little things that make this comic my favorite (along with story/cast/humor/etc)! The tab is always open so I can refresh and follow comments, too. If I don’t have time to read comments, I scroll to look for Willis’ icon, so I don’t miss any Word Of Willis tidbit.
Actually for all we know Ross is normally Mr Safety when it comes to driving but he’s having an off day what with “having to” abduct his “wayward daughter” at gunpoint so he’s too busy internally freaking out or focusing on the next stage of his awful awful plan to remember his seatbelt or check the mirrors.
Anyone want to guess how fast they’re actually driving?
Toedad originally didn’t want to stop for stop-signs (in case Becky jumped out), but she did encourage him to “drive carefully”, and the cops didn’t take notice of him. Not sure how the streets are around there with regard to traffic congestion and traffic lights, but they could be going at a [i]reasonable[/i] speed (i.e. not highway-speed.)
if joyce is a modern college student, how does that work? did doc
brown go back from the year 2100 or something to 1970? or did you
mean granddaughter?
In answer to the speed question, I don’t really know but the passing scenery seems a little blurred and what I thought were speed lines to either side of Amazigirl seems to actually be motion blur as well. So not slow.
I just really want to see Amazi-Girl hop onto the top of the car. Somehow. I dunno how that would work BUT DAMMIT I STILL WANT TO SEE IT. Let a girl dream.
Good to see that Becky is safely buckled up. Amber is still in quite the precarious position.
Sal is now accounted for by the preview panels, and Joyce has been accounted for, so it continues to look likely that Amber is the one who ends up in the hospital.
Of course, Toedad isn’t buckled up, so it could be him as well.
Let’s not forget that Toedad is speeding through red lights. If the cops get on his tail, as well as those three girls, there’s no way someone isn’t winding up in the hospital.
What do you reckon the chances are that Toedad collected Becky’s things from Anderson when she was expelled, and still has them in the boot of his car? After the wreck Becky might have her own clothes and toothbrush back.
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well, that answers the seat belt question
I guess the sight of Amazi-Girl kinda makes the “fatal car accident” idea a little more real
Becky: seat belt and checks mirrors
Ross: no seat belt, does not check mirrors
Why is the mirror angled so Becky can see out of it anyway? She should only be able to see the side of the car from the passenger side
The way you’re “supposed” to angle your mirrors does actually let people see out from the passenger seat.
Yup yup. If you’re in the driver’s seat, it lets you see what is behind and to the right; if you’re in the passenger seat, it lets you see behind the car.
Right. Ross should be able to see Amazi-girl in the top mirror, though.
That presumes that Toe Dad is in any way a good driver. He probably thinks having Jesus as his co pilot to take the wheel is enough
I totally love this comment. It made me laugh.
He’s also pissed off and not thinking or acting rationally.
This goes for big things, like threatening his daughter and university students with a gun, but also for minor things like checking his mirrors and generally paying attention while driving.
He has other things to think about. Unlike the left hand mirror, the right hand mirror compresses the field of view. It makes objects appear further away and you can see behind you from a much wider range.
Tunnel vision has set in. He has one goal, and that’s to keep anyone from taking Becky. His only thought right now is to get to the highway and go back home out of Satan’s reach. Nothing outside a tiny sphere of comprehension will be noticed.
does she do the daredevil “confessing my sins and vigilatism” to a a priest thing
I think Ross is showing classic symptoms of ‘Fundie-vision’, which prevents him from seeing anything with does not agree with a fundamentalist world-view. Atheist superheroes are probably completely invisible, to him.
Omigosh Amazi-Girl has a SUPERPOWER!
ATHEISM GOOOOOOO!
Is Amber an atheist? Is Amazi-Girl? They could differ in their views! 🙂
Like any good guilt-based superhero, Amber O’Malley is Catholic.
LOL. Is she a practicing Catholic? I can’t imagine what confession must be like for her…
Gah! Shoulda known with the Irish surname!
Ah! But, is _AmaziGirl_ Catholic? *reaching*
I would still suggest, however, that a Catholic superhero would be as invisible as an atheist one, to one affected by Fundie-vision.
Guilt-based superheroes. Ahem. We’re all Lutheran.
But we’re not proud of it.
Or, maybe, Amber just happened to swerve to the right when Becky is looking in the mirror. Check the backseat center-line and Amber’s position in the frames.
Unless you have blind spot mirrors, in which case you can see everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Q0cBdmcUM
Even when the mirror is angled correctly, you can see a little bit of what’s behind the car if you crane your neck the right way.
realistically, even Ross shouldn’t be able to see Amazigirl out of the side mirror since she’s directly behind them. to answer your question, though, it’s because the story needs Becky to notice Amazigirl before Ross.
Isn’t she looking at the passenger side mirror?
Since I never use the right side mirror, it is angled so my wife can look at herself in it. She would see Amazi-Girl either.
This is bad. Like seriously, so bad. You cannot drive safely without looking in your sideview mirrors. Please start using both of your side view mirrors.
My bf never would, because when he would look to the right, he would turn his whole head around to actually check in the blind spot, which is better than the general practice of exclusively using mirrors (unless you have the aforementioned blind-spot mirror MAYBE).
You’re supposed to turn your head to check your blind spot, and use the mirror to check the rest of the way down the road. One to make sure you’re not going to ram into anyone while changing lanes, and the other to make sure nobody’s coming. It’s the same on the lefthand side.
Because it’s the side mirror
But she doesn’t buckle the seat belt until sometime between the fourth and fifth panel. She knows that the fertilizer is due to hit the oscillating air circulatory device very soon now….
I google searched ¨fertilizer is due to hit the escillating air circulatory device¨
and google came up with Shit hit the fan.
It’s learning….
Still none on Toedad. I’m guessing/hoping that comes into play at some point.
It also settles the question of submission. Not that I thought that was in doubt.
Ross: “I see you have finally given up on thoughts of escape. Does that mean you are ready to submit to the will of The Lord?”
Becky: “No. Are you?”
*Becky yanks parking brake. Ross crashes through window*
I don’t imagine that scenario going very well for Amazigirl though…
Plus, a parking brake isn’t typically powerful enough to stop a car quickly. Make it lose control, yes, but he’s not going to crash through the window unless that causes him to hit something.
Yeah, I figured that, but I’m using dramatic license here, gimme a break. 😉
Yea, but slamming the car into park would do that quite effectively, assuming that it is an automatic, of course.
Slamming your car into park while going much more than 5 mph isn’t likely to accomplish much except permanently ruining the transmission.
Amazi-Girl leaps onto the trunk of the now-stopped car, lets her momentum lead her into a somersault over the cab, lands with both feet in the small of Ross’ back (now spreadeagled on the hood), then leaps off – onto the skateboard, which passed harmlessly under the car.
This reads like some shit that would happen in a Batman movie. I like it. (And yes, it’s as unrealistic as flipping a semi by driving under it with a tow cable. :p )
to be honest, i didn’t notice that in the last panel until you pointed it out. did becky do it because she somehow knows about amazi-girl, or is she just aware that things are about to get a little weird?
Things have already gotten a little weird. They’re about to get a little oh-crap.
… dammit, they already did that too. CURSE YOU FAILED DELIVERY!
relax. you don’t have to pay for a failed delivery. also, free garlic bread!
She just saw her in the mirror. Look at her eyes in panel 4 (top right).
Panel 1; Well this sucks big time, having to decide between getting kidnapped by Dad at gunpoint or watching the Cops blow his brains out…
Panel 2; *Probably picks up movement in peripheral vision* Huh, what was that?
Panel 3 (middle); *becky-vision* (Toedad might have to clean his mirrors…And repair his car…And pull his head out of his ass…)
Panel 4; WTF is that girl…
Panel 5; OK shit’s getting real weird real fast…
Even if she never heard about Amazi-Girl during her brief stint on campus, the sight of what is obviously someone attmpting to be a costumed superhero in the rear-view mirror would clue her in that weirdness was about to ensue.
That, but I also kind of interpreted it as “oh, there’s a chance I could get out of this. Suddenly dying isn’t the most attractive option”
Glad I’m not the only one that jumped to that conclusion from her facial expressions.
And even if that’s the only thing Amazi-Girl accomplishes today, she’s done good.
… Seat belt. Glad you mentioned that, ‘cos I’d managed to miss it!
Oh my
Becky. I gotta warn you. You’re life… it’s about to get a little weird.
ABOUT to?
your*
but yes.
Your butt, yes.
butts disease has struck again
No no, Mr. Random was grammatically correct. Becky IS life.
Yes. I totally did.
I like it. Nice use of non-verbal characterization and all that good stuff. 😉
amazi-girl heroically ensures that citizens always buckle up
Between crimes, she just wanders around campus and gives safety tips, like in the PSAs they used to stick on the end of 80s cartoons.
Or she tries to beat up her old nemesis on the flimsiest of pretenses.
I like to think that was a one-time deal out of desperation when she thought she was about to be exposed, and that otherwise she wouldn’t have gone after Sal the way she did.
It did contribute to Sal’s decision to help Joyce intercept this asshole, though, so there’s that.
It’s so much better if it isn’t though. What if all of Amazigirl’s time offscreen is getting into cartoonish battles over Sal littering?
Remember kids, Amazi-Girl says: Never pet a burning dog!
And knowing is half the battle
CLICK-IT OR TICKET, bongo!
PSA: Remember to Check Your Mirrors Regularly
You’d think that, but…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjGXn249Fc0
“GUMBALL RALLY” FOR THE WIN!!!
😀 GUMBALL RALLY!!!! (didnt expect a reference to that here!)
best car movie EVAR
I liked “Gumball Rally,” but I prefer “The Cannonball Run.”
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
Cue Dina.
Best. Page. Ever.
/sarcasm.
*OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR*
*plays Styx’s “Snow Blind” on the car stereo*
Curses, now I won’t be able to get that song out of my head for the whole week.
You mean this one? I love learning about Earth music, & how it apparently gets stuck in your heads…
*AND TEND TO LOOK LIKE A VIGILANTE*
Mirror, mirror, on the car! Vigilante rising star!
Where is a manure truck when you need one?
YES
I was not the only one who was watching the first BTTF on tv last night was I
A lot of people have been watching BTTF over the last few days.
“SHIIIIT!”
… wait, no, that doesn’t work, ToeDad probably avoids swearing.
“SHOOOOOT!”
… That just has unfortunate implications, considering recent events.
“CRAAAP!”
… That might work, though it might be too close to swearing. I’m not sure what the rules are.
“Oh poop…” *Insert collision here….*
Put your head down and start talking about mom to distract him.
This should be amusing
I hope it is. After what I just went through tonight, I think I’m gonna need a weeks worth of laughs.
This might not be the best site to hang around for a week or so, then… Or maybe it will be. I expect it’ll be at least a two weeks before we get a chance to see Joyce beat down Ross, though.
Maybe. I’m expecting unexpected cooperation between AmazIgirl and Sal, shattering the I pass between them, or at the very least leading to grudging respect.
Um, unless I missed something, she STABBED sal’s hand, that’s not something you forgive easily.
When Joyce demands cooperation, she gets it right now.
Eh, Sal doesn’t realize she did it, and AG thinks of herself as above such petty feelings (those are reserved for Amber). A detente may be possible.
After Sal held her best friend hostage. Not that she’d realize tho, she didn’t recognize either of them after meeting them again in person (not in any costumes). Amber/Amazigirl is the only 1 of the 2 (3? Not yet, but kinda getting there potentially…) who knows the connections.
That said, I can see a potential team up against a greater enemy…
Again, some really nice panel structure.
Yeah. I read it as being both the second and fifth panel. And then the expression and seat belt in the last panel literally made me laugh out loud.
True copy and paste skills.
When you are able to conceptualize and convey story so fully and brilliantly through a character’s small shifts of posture and expression, you can “copy and paste” (your super-complicated and detailed car setting) all fucking day, for the *win.*
+9000
+ ∞
I love how much willis lets the characters break the fourth wall, they havent in this one, but I think http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/navel/ is breaking the fourth wall.
How does that break the fourth wall?
Do you know what “fourth wall” means?
Because that’s just three characters talking to each other.
It breaks the fourth wall because the Dr. Pepper is strategically placed relative to the “camera”
It is literally placed up against her torso. It’s strategically placed relative to everything.
Breaking the fourth wall requires the characters to address the audience. The fourth wall is the screen you’re viewing them from. If Walky admitted he was in a webcomic while looking at the camera, that’d be breaking the fourth wall. The Animaniacs and Freakazoid have a lot of examples.
By that logic any time something happens to be placed facing the camera it’s breaking the fourth wall. In this case she’s putting the bottle in front of her navel, which happens to be facing us. It also happens to block her navel to Joyce, too, so the comment isn’t breaking the 4th wall a bit.
0 for 2 attempts. Must go to remedial troll school.
Yeah, have a good look at today’s panels again. No copy & pasting, all with different details, including the cape, different each time. And as others have pointed out, including Mr Willis himself, she was holding it against her body, not just between 4th wall & belly button…
We’ve seen you try trolling around here a few times, now you’ve even directly annoyed Mr Willis, my might wanna ease up on the trolling before you get banned. And changing Gravatars won’t help, he knows how to find out you IP address. Remedial Troll School might be a good idea…
but what if I change my IP? :3
Nahh thats too much trouble to go through, I didnt meant to offend anyone, I didnt intend to troll, and I certainly didnt intend to incur the wrath of willis. Im sorry if stating my opinion on fourth wall breaking offended anyone for whatever reason.
I got rid of you because you flooded my comments with like a dozen shouts of “RAINBOW” at random other commenters, which took me a too-large portion of my day to remove from my website. Changing your IP so you can post again doesn’t enamor me of you, either.
Wait, what?
AND BEYOND!!
Structure in terms of the arrangement of the five panels. The symmetry plus the larger angled shot in the middle dividing the moments… it’s solid. As for the “copy and paste” take a closer look and note the nuance. It’s quality work – because sometimes quality is in the small things, not the large.
Becky: Yeah, I think I’m gonna need my seatbelt.
So… he’s going through that windshield? Sounds good. Bonus points if Ryan is nearby and gets some more glass embedded in his face.
Toedad crashes through the windshield, hits Ryan, and the car careens right through the wall of Blaine’s hospital room.
Mary sees this and dies of shock.
i think he’s saving that for the finale.
if not, fanfic idea! toedad/ryan/blaine/fiery death is my new otp!
But that’s 4! OT4.
If he crashes throught the windshield, can we start calling him mosquitoesdad ?
And the rest lived happily ever after….Ok,time for a Slipshine!
I don’t think being a bongo (Mary) is really enough to warrant death
Mary sees this and is so confused she accidentally agrees to go on a date with Faz.
…I think I accidentally made it worse.
Mary is my number 1 most likely dumbing of age Character to pull a heel face turn. Second is Faz (problem is he was only in the strip once)
Mary’s the least likely to do so. Willis already tried to make her a good person. Didn’t work, being a horrible person is just whop she is.
I think that’s why there might be a chance. There’s villainous characters, sure, but Mary’s the one character who just feels intentionally completely two dimensional, and that we’ll start to see more of her as she gets involved in the Billie/Ruth story arc.
At the least, I’m holding out until we see under her wristbands.
Replace Faz with Daisy and it works.
I dunno, Faz _is_ the ultimate punishment.
“I see you have agreed to date Faz. Here is a chart indicating the amount of desire you will feel for Faz as the date progresses. As you can see, it is exponential. Here are my projected estimates of the birth dates of our children. Faz will expect you to finish your education and work two jobs as well as be homemaker and child-raiser, all of which you will be happy to do, of course.”
I really Mary belongs lumped in with Blaine and Ryan more than Ross does. I’m a lesbian myself, so I do find Ross’ beliefs abhorrent, but I also have to recognize that he’s ultimately acting out of love. Dude’s got a fucked up idea of what’s right for his daughter, but he’s doing everything he’s doing, basically ruining his own life, because he thinks he’s SAVING Becky’s. He needs a shit ton of counseling, but I don’t see him as evil as I see the Blaines and Ryans of this comic strip world.
He has done as much if not more to ruin people’s lives than Ryan or Blaine. His silliness to shoot and kill makes him more of a threat, certainly. That is no love that any sane person could recognize.
Love takes many terrible forms. Do you really mean to say that Blackbird and I are insane?
Well, OK. I am. But Blackbird?
True insanity shows itself when the insane uses perfect grammar.
Willingness*
Actions matter more than intentions. Plenty of evil has been committed in the belief that it is for the victim’s own good.
I still maintain that any time you find yourself pointing a gun at someone you profess to love in order to force them to behave differently, you seriously need to reconsider your course of action or your definition of “love”.
Amazigirl + Crazy Fundie with a gun + Sal and Joyce on a motorcycle = Not tragedy?
Well, comedy equals tragedy plus time, and Willis drew all of these months ago…
As an interviewee said earlier today on CNN, “it’s a three-syllable word that begins with cluster”
And is something that Joyce can say now. Though not lightly.
You know, I’m going to go way out on a limb here and predict it *will* end well for some value of well. And if not it promises to be one heck of a ride.
We’ve got the driver having made a gunpoint abduction of his passenger, a skateboarding acrobat vigilante on a tow-cable behind him, and a badass biker chick with a half-crazy-angry passenger doing forward-wheelies down stairs in hot pursuit. This was after the ambush-mauling of the armed gunman by a woman doing an impersonation of a velociraptor.
If we haven’t already cleared it, I think you need to lower your bar for “one heck of a ride”.
My gut feeling is that Ross is going to be the second failed parental figure that Amber puts into hospital. The only question to answer is whether she does so directly or indirectly. Joyce and Sal are going to arrive just in time to be part of the clean-up crew.
Does Becky even KNOW about Amazi-girl? I can’t recall if she was told
I think she does. I mean, Sarah told her the incident at the party and Amazi-Girl was there.
Plus when she was inviting everybody to the secret dorm party, “Contact Amazigirl?” or something of the sort was written by Dorothy’s name. So she has to at least know she exists.
Heck with whether AmazIgirl was mentioned offscreen. Mom, what we all want to know is what you thought about Mike.
And what’s with the nickels?
Same thing everybody’s mom thinks of Mike: how fast can I get change?
He fucked MY Mom.
Whoa.
Momception.
BRRRRAAAAAAAAWW– *muffles self*
That line underneath his mustache REALLY makes it look like Ross is whistling.
I didn’t notice it until you mentioned it…now I can’t unsee it
Looks like an evil, lopsided little grin to me. It makes me want to punch him EVEN MORE than I already did, which I honestly didn’t think was possible.
Becky knows exactly what’s about to go down.
I’m surprised Toedick hasn’t noticed Amazi-Girl hitching a ride. Is he not checking his rearview?
Evidently not.
Why would you look behind when you’re breaking ? it’s the other car’s job to get far enough and avoid you.
I strongly suspect you’ve never been rear-ended. Am I right? 😉
Somewhere around the second time I started to check out what was happening in my rear-view if I had to break hard, of only so I can brace if needed. If I have to brake unexpectedly I also flash my brake lights if I have the time (so often after the initial hard brake) to get their attention and let them notice what I’m doing.
Because if I can live the rest of my life without anymore whiplash, I will.
Reading Willis comics doesn’t give you wiplash?
Eh, there’s problematic stuff sometimes (that I’ve had to learn to accept in basically everything I like), but Willis’ work is generally high quality and doesn’t have a lot of those really bad moments that make me want to stop reading, like some other series I’ve followed before.
…That wasn’t the kind of whiplash you were talking about, was it?
I was joking, you know.
It’s not just braking that you would want to check rear view mirrors. I’m constantly scanning around me, and mentally tracking every car around me in traffic. So, if I need to make an emergency maneuver, I can just instinctively do it because I know where cars are. (If it’s not an emergency, I double-check of course, but this means that I know where I can go in case of emergency.)
Not wearing seatbelts.What could possibly go wrong?
Dana could come barreling up from the front in full raptor mode?
No seat belt, Toedad? Tsk tsk. 😛
Go, Amazi-Girl!
Ross cares very little for his or ANYONE’S safety right now, I know I should know this by now considering the gun but wow.
I’m surprised he’s even bothering with steering. He should just put the pedal to the metal and let fate decide if they make it home or not.
So…. let jesus take the wheel? :https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xOHgPrxSwZY
Oh wait no that not the one I was going for, this fits the mood better :https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iN-PTL58MEQ
He doesn’t care if it rains or freezes, long as plastic jesus is riding in his car..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khf3t1GQZMw
Plastic jesus is a holy bar.
Space raptor jesus.
GOD IS HIS SEAT BELT!
… yeah, okay, not even the fundies are that crazy. Strange line not to cross, but I stopped trying to find any consistency in their beliefs years ago.
Clearly Jesus took the wheel.
if you get injured in a car accident because you weren’t wearing a seatbelt, clearly it was god’s will. “miraculously unharmed” is totally god’s department.
He probably wants to not have to worry about taking it off if Becky makes a dash for freedom.
Nope, they totally is that cracray.
At this point, it’s gonna be a couple of someones going in the ambulance.
So long as none of them are permanently damages, that’s fine.
If any of them do suffer permanent damage, it had better be Ross. Maybe it’d land him in some much-needed counseling, if that could even accomplish anything.
Only thing for likes of him is the slammer.
Quick, somebody make a Toy Story reference.
*Waylon Jennings* It was about this time that the MacIntyre girl realized that things were about to get weird.
Next comic: Inexplicable Toedad car aerial barrel roll.
…. er, wait, that’s not Toy Story.
Over a creek.
Hakuna matata!
What a wonderful phrase!
Echinodermata!
A bilateral phase,
Then radial symmetry
For the rest of their days!
“And I’m packing your ‘angry eyes’ just in case.”
YES THANK YOU THAT’S THE FIRST THING I THOUGHT OF
Also:
“You are a sad, strange, little man. And you have my pity. Farewell!”
that’s the face of “Well… that’s the last thing I thought I’d see tailing us.”
“a masked janitor with a cape on a skateboard? thought for sure it’d be joyce with a telekinetic jetpack”
Opportunity, must formulate means of escape.
Does Becky know about Amazi-Girl?
She’s seen Amber sprinting around and heard the story about the frat party but, I think this is the first time AG and Beck have been in the same frame.
Becky’s next girlcrush: imminent?
Becky x Amazigirl x Ethan x Danny? I dig it.
(note: also x dina)
Eh, I can’t really see it. Don’t think Amber’s into gals.
Though I suppose after the way Walking with Dina started it’s possible they don’t feel the need to eject each other from the room during carnal activities, and the bed does have a bunk each for Dina and Amber… I have no idea how any of the parties involved would react to that. Amber x Danny x Ethan is emotionally complicated enough without lesbians sharing the room.
On the other hand, who says that Amber and AmazIgirl have he same preferences?
I’m thinking Amazi-Girl and Danny started to get it on without even realizing that Dina was in the room, wondering if she should leave or not, while it got increasingly awkward for her to ask, until finally she just shrugged and went to bed.
And it’ll be awkward for a while, before she discovers that Dina IS Amazi-Girl.
I imagine it could be awkward for Amber as well.
toedad is toetally oblivious.
Let’s hope it stays that way for a might longer.
Maybe check your mirrors every now and again, Toe dad. Christ. You’re one of those guys that ruins my morning commute, ain’t ya.
Just because it ain’t real wine.
Two thoughts here: First, shit’s about to get seriously weird.
Second, where’s Dina?
still in the woods i guess SHIT THE HOSPITAL I KEEP FORGETTING
I hadn’t even thought of that. Why hadn’t I even thought of that?
Every one assumes something be and dramatic is going to cause the hospital visit. But lets look at an alternative theory.
“strip right after this storyline”
Danny: I’m playing my DS not really paying attention to where I’m going!
OH SHIT STAIRS!!
I still keep half expecting the hospital scene to be a fakeout where it’s just an establishing shot and the next panel just shows some people walking by it and that’s all.
Dorothy: Well time for my yearly checkup
Yeah, because Willis loooooves drawing new backgrounds for the hell of it.
Well, he covered up that house recently.
But think of ownership many “Damn you, Willis “‘s he could get from such a magnificent fake out.
How the bleep did “how” morph into “ownership “???
if only someone had warned him about the stairs
It keeps happening tho
*like*
That would be hilarous.
She’s inside of all of us.
Ugh, I don’t feel too good *XenoDina bursts out of my chest*. Ohh, there she was.
It looks to me like Amazi-Girl is keeping to Ross’s blind spot. Clever girl.
Doubt she actually is actively trying to. More like Toedad is oblivious as hell.
She’s directly behind them, between the side mirrors’ fields of vision but dead-center on the rearview mirror. Either Ross has the rearview pointing at the backseat to look at his rifle, or he just never checks his mirrors.
At least he has the mirrors set up properly, if Becky can see behind them from her side. The view from the driver’s seat would be spread further from the center line of the car. Blind spots should almost completely gone. I don’t understand why people set their mirrors up so the side views are 90% full of their own car.
That’s because they like they car (” )
“Oh sure, the lady superhero shows up to sweep me off my feet and away from my evil dad THE DAY AFTER I GET A GIRLFRIEND.”
This comment, I like it. Another!
Play it cool, Becky. Play it cool. Don’t let Toedad know what’s happening here.
You’re lucky I’m not superstitious, because I’d be incredibly pissed at you if I were.
“Hey dad. You know what’s really gay? Checking your mirrors.
not checking your mirrors is the fundamentalist driver’s equivalent of a trust fall. he knows where he’s going. jesus will keep the car accidents at bay. /sarcasm
For once, Toedad’s psychopath-stare is useful.
Just wait until Sal and Joyce show up. Assuming Amazi-Girl can hang on for the entire trip.
Sure, just throw one more layer of chaos onto the heap.
Dana in full raptor mode.
Second time this day you write about Dana “in full raptor mode”.
Are you confusing her with Dina?
Because Dana is another character!
I’m gunna blame the spell corrector on this tablet. Don’t know for sure it was at fault instead on my mind, but it does enough weird that I’m blaming it anyway.
Dana is so last year …
Great panel structure. What always strikes me about comics is that action sequences take up so much time and space. Things that are over in a few minutes or even seconds can take multiple strips or pages to resolve while spoken conversations that take longer take up less panel space.
This not a complaint, just an observation, mostly out of frustration that I’ve got to wait another 24 hours to get three or four more panels of action.
That’s quite a passive-aggressive ‘observation’ you’ve got there.
Pacing is always difficult in webcomics. If it were written in a way that didn’t cause this “24-hour frustration”, everything would be happening way too fast for people who are catching up on / re-reading the archives or buy the books.
tl;dr: “Just sayin'”
I am known for my passive aggressiveness. I repeated the third grade because a took a great dislike to my teacher. She failed me. My second third grade teacher asked my mother why I had been held back. My mother responded that I had failed all my standardized tests. My second third grade teacher told my mother that I had scored in the upper 90th percentile. This was before the Freedom of Information Act. parents didn’t have to be told how their kids did on different tests and whatnot. I was forced to repeat the second grade because my first third grade teacher was a sadistic asshole. On the upside, she was committed to a mental institution the next year. I like to think I drove her over the edge.
So why didn’t they bump you up to the third grade as soon as they realized you hadn’t failed?
Teacher: “Hm, so let’s look over who I’ve got in second grade this year. Oh, I see Boxilar is repeating the grade. Wait, that’s weird– zhe did really well on the standardized tests. Wonder what was going on?” *calls Mom* “Hi, why is Boxilar repeating second grade, again?”
“Well, zhe failed all zir tests.”
“Um, no, zhe didn’t…
Option 1: “Huh. Well, see you later.”
Option 2: “Huh. Let me look into this a bit more, because it looks like zhe should have passed, and if zhe did, I don’t see any reason why zhe can’t still go into third grade this year. Seems silly to make zir repeat the grade anyways if it was just a clerical error or something.”
Unless they realized this months into the school year or something, when you would already have missed too much to be able to make up, it seems strange that they couldn’t take it to the principal and say, “Yeah, looks like zhe should have passed after all, so can we put an addendum on hir record and bump hir up instead of needlessly making zir repeat the grade? Seems like a waste of everybody’s time.”
Also, wow, your teacher was a dick.
Most teachers are dicks, one way or the other.
Spoken like a future teacher.
Well, schools are sometimes a bit funny about that sort of thing. There was an acceleration program at my primary school for a year, as a result of which I and completed years 2 and 3 in one year, and several others did likewise. Then the principal ran off with a pharmacist’s wife and for a year the place was running on autopilot under the deputy. He ended the the acceleration, but left everyone where they had got up to, so I finished fourth grade. Then a new headmaster arrived who tried to make me (and everyone else in an analogous situation) repeat fourth grade. My parents refused to let him make me repeat. At the end of 6th grade I tested first in the school district (i.e. about first out of 300 kids) on the high school entrance examination, but the principal of the high school insisted that I repeat sixth grade. I had to go to a private school to avoid repeating material that I was already bored with.
It’s not, I think, that the people themselves are malicious, it’s just that the school system is a bureaucracy, and therefore inimical to human decency and common sense.
I honestly don’t know. This apparently happened after Christmas break of the second year. I found out about it much later. My second third grade teacher apparently got curious and pulled my records when I had read through the whole third grade reader and was sneaking Tarzan books into class. They realized what had happened, but I guess it was too late to move me to fourth grade. Mom and dad let it slide and I think my teacher gave me higher grade work, but again, I’m not sure.
Action needs more room. Otherwise it looks weird.
Does Becky know about Amazi-girl? I don’t remember there being a part where somebody explained Amazi-girl to Becky.
Wasn’t she on the invite list for Joyce’s party? I’d imagine that would have required some explaining as Becky was in charge of the invitations.
Perhaps not. If a list was brainstormed, edited, and handed off to Becky, she might have prioritized inviting those she could identify and worried about asking questions if she had time afterwards.
Even if someone’s explained anything to Becky, seeing a chick in a jumpsuit and cape is peculiar enough even when she’s not attaching herself to automobiles.
“Huh. There appears to be a superhero hanging off our bumper.
“Welp. Time to buckle up, then. Also, IU is awesome.”
I mean, she’s pretty obviously a superhero. Even if Becky somehow wasn’t aware of real-life superheroes, dang, there’s a superhero on the bumper. Things are looking up. Better brace for action. Even if she doesn’t actually know about Amazi-girl in particular.
FINALLY
While this isn’t even related to the comic, I should highlight that the Tumblr currently has Joe/Jacob makeouts.
You’re welcome.
I misread that as Toe/ Jacob makeouts.
Poor Jacob. On the plus side, irony for Ross engaging in homosexual behavior.
Wha— huh???
Link, plox.
Here you go: http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/131862206787/lets-draw-some-kickstarter-reward-art
It makes me happy to see that even before she saw Amazi-Girl, Becky had not been totally defeated. There was still defiance in her face/body language.
*grasps butt firmly with both hands*
Ahahaha I love my gravatar
“man, i can’t believe how shitty my life is getting aga–uh. is that…what the hey? ok. this is fine. everything is fine. nothing to see here dad i’m just casually putting my seatbelt on for no reason.” – becky’s internal monologue, probably
*Cue Batman BGM*
Replace “Batman” with “Amazi-girl”.
Things are really getting banana…nananananananananananananananana BATMAAAAAAAAN
Next panel: Amazi-Girl climbs up the rope, opens the trunk, gets in, closes it, folds down the rear seats, grabs the gun, stops the car, and saves everything forever.
There will be no complications.
No one at all will die in a rolling mass of steel, burning combustibles, and melting flesh.
No one ever needs seatbelts again.
Ah Willis you’re telling us to hold onto our butts… JOKE’S ON YOU! My ass is glued to the chair with anticipation! No wait… Damn how am I going to get to the can.
i was fantasizing about Becky jumping out of the car into Amber’s arms and then i was like
wait a sec
i know this
https://youtu.be/pjWza_YImEg?t=1m27s
Warning: Insanity In The Mirror Is Closer Than It Appears
So, one and a half Jurassic Park references? What’s the legal limit per month?
Now they need to up the BTTF references to keep up. Hmm, how about Sal saying, “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
honestly if Joyce starts muttering “must go faster” I’m going to …
…do something.
It’s going to be a 2x reference combo, I think.
Ahhh, yes, Becky, one weekend on campus is not quite enough to learn how absolutely weird things can get around here. Hopefully you’ll be able to stick around to learn.
POKE FACE INTENSIFIES
/sitting straight in your seat to maximize survival chance in the very likely case of a crash.
That face:
I am not sure what to do with this information~
Well, she did put on her safety belt.
Becky must have just realized how crazy this place is.
You know, upon reflection.
Please never stop your puns
Caaarrrloooooos…
We have witnessed the rise of a new legend.
Maybe Toedad will let it slide away.
(Radio plays “Hakuna Matata” as this happens)
…toy story joke
I thought you said “radiohead” at first and I was like “I didn’t realize they covered that…”
Now… imagine her facial expression the next time she looks in the mirror and see Joyce, without helmet, on the back of a motorcycle, coming down on them like Hell’s Angel! 😀
Becky: *horrible, horrible thoughts… is that a superhero? …maybe it’s not time to lose hope just yet.*
Good call to buckle up. Rough ride ahead.
Oh hey, look who just found a shiny sliver of hope to play with.
Normally I’d make a grim quote about hope being the first step on the road to disappointment.
Under the circumstances, I’m just happy Becky’s not ready to throw her life away quite yet.
I feel bad for Ross. He seems so emotionally distressed and conflicted these past few pages.
‘Conflicted’ I’m not sure about but, yes, definitely distressed. I don’t think he really knows what he’s doing and is mostly making it up as he goes alone.
I kinda feel bad for the guy too. I think he knows exactly how bad he’s fucking up his own life right now, but he’s powering through it because he still thinks it’ll be worth it if he can “save” Becky.
I don’t. He lost every bit of possible sympathy several strips back.
I really like the look of this page. Very striking.
+1 ditto
He’s a lousy driver if he didn’t notice her in his rear-view mirror. Seriously, man. Check your blind spots!
Hasn’t this entire arc been a metaphor for the need to check your blind spots?
…..oh. my. GOD.
Okay, Becky; now what do you do? Exactly how much to you want to avoid anyone getting hurt because the chances of that outcome are decreasing by the second!
Oh, and: “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”!
Oh shit, there’s another guilt bomb for her to handle – she tried to keep her friends safe, but by doing so drew them into danger.
I love this strip’s panels. From defiance and hopeless to ‘ohh, seat belt time’, to ‘better play this cool’.
Some of the mirror comments confuse me. I drive using all 3 mirrors: both sides and the rear view. I’ve got a camper shell on my pickup, and all 3 mirrors are sorta vital for safe exit/enter off the freeway and for backing up/parking.
The rear view saved my butt coming down a fairly steep hill. Some fool came bearing down on me at 90 miles an hour (in an 18 wheeler) when I was doing 55. I removed myself from his path fast. Turns out his brakes were gone. He made it to the bottom okay and ran it off the road on purpose so as not to run it thru the little town at hills bottom at that speed. He was okay. Taught me to rely on my mirrors at an early age.
Now, then lets just hope Toedad keeps those beady little eyes straight ahead with no thoughts to safe driving with those mirrors of his.
They are confused because Becky is in the passenger seat and can see behind them in mirrors set for the driver.
I am confused because the view in that mirror looks like either light is bending around the rear corner of the car, or AG swerved something fierce during that middle panel.
She’s only one car length behind, and keeping to the “center”, so she’s not far away enough to show in the middle of the side mirror, even if the mirror is very long (and it doesn’t matter how the mirror is set or who is looking into it, that’s just a straight line joining the middle of the mirror and the rear corner of the car – I am making some simplifications based off dimensions of some random cars from quick googling, but it seems like she would have to be at least three or five car lengths behind to even have a chance to be visible in the middle of the side mirror).
I will take narratively-mandated physics-defying amazing feats for $100, please.
Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are.
I worry about what will happen to Amazi-girl when the car stops…
I’m pretty sure that Amber has a plan in place. Whether or not it will work, it’s a plan.
No plan survives contact with the Toe.
Well this will be the moment when
this webcomicAmazi-Girl jumps the car!Every time I read this strip, I love Becky’s expression in the last panel more and more. It sort of just yells: “… Wut…?”
Ah, so Ross did graduate from the ‘stare straight ahead and ignore everything around you’ school of driving.
Also, two more JP references in one strip? 🙂
Never stop the Jurassic references.
That is all.
Anyone else thinking about that one scene in Toy Story 1? No? Just me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlD5uvOt_Sw
Now she just has to get close enough to toss the smoke pellets under the front tires.
Great story-telling with pictures. Love it.
One reason I went off Alan Moore was the words … too many words.
Yep. Visual story-telling is the schnitz.
Momentum will catch up with Toedad when he stops.
I’m thinking that Amber will haul herself along the rope and then up onto the roof of the car. then she throws some spiked jacks under the tyres and it’s medium-speed spin-out city.
I was thinking smoke pellets under front tires to simulate a serious mechanical failure.
I mean, that gun has been on the mantelpiece for I think multiple years now, it’s about time for it to go off.
Internet-gener 😛
Wouldn’t they be past where the pellets hit by the time there’s enough smoke to see them? The car’d need to be stopped for that.
The blast of smoke would look like a bearing going wrong. Also, I didn’t say that plan would work.
Or something similar.
BTW, if anyone needs help holding on to their butts… I’m happy to help!
We’ll keep your application on file
I spent 30+ years writing about crime for various newspapers. Ross’ behavior is consistent with those people, many times not a criminal type, who just spiral out of all reasonable control. One wrong decision follows another until the person faces only bad decisions. Extricating yourself from one of these spirals is almost impossible.
I think that this is why a lot of so-called ‘spree killers’ suicide at the ends of their rampage – They have followed an every worsening decision tree for some time until they reach a point where the only choices that involve them staying alive are literally unbearable to them. This is why I think an attempted murder-suicide by Ross if his vehicle is stopped or surrounded by police is very possible.
An alternate explanation is that once you have decided on suicide, all sorts of possibilities open up that were oout of the question before, when you had to worry abou consequences.
Plus his head looks like a toe.
As Becky’s day moves from terrifying to surreal…
If that was Dina on the skateboard car-skiing, would we have seen a big T-Rex in the side mirror?
Dina wouldn’t need a skateboard. They’ve clocked the t-rex going 70 mph
I do not see this going well for Amazi-Girl. Willis has claimed that there are no SFnal technologies in this version of the Walkyverse, so neither should there be any expectation that costumed superhero wannabees will be any less fragile than every other human being.
She’s every bit as fragile, just more skillful and with insane reflexes which makes her even more awesome than if she were invulnerable to anything except criticism.
At least she’s looking happier in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Panels 🙂
“Hey, maybe there’s a chance we’ll both get out of this alive without me having to go to a creepy conversion camp!”
I’m going to dispute your numbering. I think we have panel 1 where Becky is pissed at life, panel 2/5 which is Becky’s view of the mirror, panel 3 where Becky’s eyes have widened while the rope angles left from Amazigirl. On the next line we have Becky’s face as what she is seeing sinks in and the rope angles right from Amazigirl as she pulls the rope in hand over hand. Then we cut away to the mirror view in panel 2/5 and when we cut back in panel 6, Becky’s seat belt is fastened and has a hard to read expression on her face.
Willis is the man.
That’s a strange way of numbering the panels, as there are clearly only five panels in the comic.
My way of reading it: Left column (panels 1 + 2), middle panel (panel 3), right column (panel 4 + 5).
In the second panel (down left) she is still frowning, but as she can do nothing else, she let’s her eyes wander.
Panel 3 (middle panel) she is noticing the customed vigilante following her car and is very surprised (but no longer frowning) in the nest panel (panel 4, upper left).
Oops: Should be “following the car” or “following her daddies car”.
The mirror shot shows a longer rope behind AG. She’s reeling herself in. Now, Becky has to formulate a plan to keep Fundie from noticing, and maybe get him to slow down. My guess is to fake illness. “Pull over, I’m going to throw up” is my guess. Trust me, Dad’s are programmed to react to that one. A bathroom break might also do the trick, but his fear of a possible escape attempt might over-ride that one. Either way, you can see the gears turning in the last panel. Tactical planning, fear, and hope all at once.
“Stay back! I’ve got a gun!”
“No, you have a bullet and the hope that, when you’ve fired it, I’m not still standing. Because, I assure you, if I am, you will be unconscious before you can reload.”
Important to point out that he died of bullet wounds shortly after saying that. Also that he had body armor.
He was suspicious of her suggestion that he stop at stop signs, so I’m not sure he wouldn’t assume a request to pull over was an escape attempt.
He’d also be correct, and we can’t have that.
Trust me, Dads react to that phrase like one of Pavlov’s dogs reacting to a bell. I didn’t recognize the signs the first time my daughter was car sick. We had to clean out the car seat and buy her a new outfit. The one she was wearing was tied up in the store bag in the trunk. After that, I was stopped on the side of the road at the first little “urp.”
I remember when my brother taught my dad that lesson.
Becky is thinking “Wow! Dina is Amazi-girl!”
The only thing annoying here is there’s no way you can see out the mirror as a passenger unless you put your face inches away from the airbag.
Not true with the right hand mirror. You need to experiment.
Also, the wheel surfaces and bearings on her skateboard are going to be heating *very* rapidly. Either the road surface will get gummy and it’ll turn into a snowboard without edges, or the outer race of the bearing will melt the inside of the wheel, causing the urethane portion to come off suddenly.
Either way, bad things.
Shit. She better execute her plan soon then.
It’s okay. It’s not her skateboard.
It is now! Sayid said she could keep it.
Point.
Okay, can someone explain to me how Amazi-girl caught up to a speeding car on a highway???
Also, police don’t exist apparently.
You should read back about a week.
1 They just passed police cars going the opposite direction.
2. Amazigirl is connected by a grappling hook and rope that she is slowly reeling in.
3. Sal is secretly Amazigirl.
Any other questions we could help you with?
No, I got the part where she is holding on now. I am questioning the part where she initially got the hook on the car. She was p late to the scene, and all she had was a skateboard…
Wait, who passed what? *clicks back with an annoyed eyeroll because pages load S L O W L Y on my shitty connection*
OH MY GOD I MISSED LIKE FIVE PAGES
/u_u\
thanks
*draws entire strip dedicated to showing how amazi-girl attaches to a car*
*draws the literal police in a strip*
“how did she attach to the car? and there are no police!!!!”
And how come the car isn’t breaking the 3rd wall?
Did…you mean the fourth wall? Because the first three “walls” are the comic/medium through which the story is being told.
No. Just making fun of an earlier comment that annoyed me by adding a silly comment to this one.
ok. carry on, then.
I’M SORRY I MISSED SEVERAL PAGES AND DIDN’T NOTICE BECAUSE OF HOW THE STORYLINE JUMPS AROUND
also, I wasn’t nitpicking like ‘this is impossible’ >-> my suspension of disbelief holds find, I just thought it would be fun to discuss… but welp, I missed stuff and this was already addressed )=
Okay, so the part that I questioned was that the place where the car would be going at reasonable catch-up-able speed was also likely to have other people who’d question Amazigirl attaching herself to it.
It was… lampshaded. So, that answers that.
Gotta go catch up on those comments now…
Becky! It should not take a crazy vigilante superhero to make you buckle up! Safety first!
I think she was unbuckled on the chance that she might get an opportunity to bail out.
Any news of Dina?
None. Her fate is a mystery, used by Willis to torment us.
I still believe she will pop out from the trunk and go for round two.
Sara got Dina to act as the cutest agent in the history of spying.
Or, she’s hiding in the back seat, biding her time…
We know at least that she is alive and unscarred in a preview post for January.
Love the panel layout! The pacing is great! Its those little things that make this comic my favorite (along with story/cast/humor/etc)! The tab is always open so I can refresh and follow comments, too. If I don’t have time to read comments, I scroll to look for Willis’ icon, so I don’t miss any Word Of Willis tidbit.
Oh come on! Really? Not even one comment about my Jurassic Park reference?
“Hakuna Matata” playing on the radio.
It means “no worries” for the “rest of your days”. In this context of this situation, yikes.
Actually for all we know Ross is normally Mr Safety when it comes to driving but he’s having an off day what with “having to” abduct his “wayward daughter” at gunpoint so he’s too busy internally freaking out or focusing on the next stage of his awful awful plan to remember his seatbelt or check the mirrors.
Anyone want to guess how fast they’re actually driving?
Toedad originally didn’t want to stop for stop-signs (in case Becky jumped out), but she did encourage him to “drive carefully”, and the cops didn’t take notice of him. Not sure how the streets are around there with regard to traffic congestion and traffic lights, but they could be going at a [i]reasonable[/i] speed (i.e. not highway-speed.)
I don’t know, but I bet once he gets to 88 mph we’re going to see some serious shit!
He isn’t driving a DeLorean!
He isn’t driving a train either!
Did Doc Brown make three time machines!?
Wait… Doc Brown–Joyce Brown…
Are they related!?
Joyce is Doc Brown’s grandmother.
if joyce is a modern college student, how does that work? did doc
brown go back from the year 2100 or something to 1970? or did you
mean granddaughter?
With time travel it can be either!
There was an accident with a time machine and a contraceptive.
There was an accident with a time machine and contraception pills.
Should have refreshed before psoting.
In answer to the speed question, I don’t really know but the passing scenery seems a little blurred and what I thought were speed lines to either side of Amazigirl seems to actually be motion blur as well. So not slow.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?
What? Amazigirl? Again?
I just really want to see Amazi-Girl hop onto the top of the car. Somehow. I dunno how that would work BUT DAMMIT I STILL WANT TO SEE IT. Let a girl dream.
Good to see that Becky is safely buckled up. Amber is still in quite the precarious position.
Sal is now accounted for by the preview panels, and Joyce has been accounted for, so it continues to look likely that Amber is the one who ends up in the hospital.
Of course, Toedad isn’t buckled up, so it could be him as well.
Let’s not forget that Toedad is speeding through red lights. If the cops get on his tail, as well as those three girls, there’s no way someone isn’t winding up in the hospital.
Ross isn’t speeding through anything. I even put in a “BRAKE!” sound effect over the panel of his car stopping with his brake lights on.
No-one these days lets facts get in the way of their opinions.
I’m impressed by the American engineering holding on to the hook.
If that had been a European car, the whole back end would have fallen away 🙂
It’s important to Americans to be able to tow a submarine.
Not that we ever would, you know. Just that we could.
The only one who will hit toedad is the airbag after they go off the road. That will be enough for the hospital visit for him. Seatbelts work Becky!
What do you reckon the chances are that Toedad collected Becky’s things from Anderson when she was expelled, and still has them in the boot of his car? After the wreck Becky might have her own clothes and toothbrush back.
“…WELP.”
I’m guessing I’m too late to comment on Toedad now being Towdad?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/stringent/
By about six months!
(check the hover text and then consider the length of the buffer)
You hit the jackpot when you married her. I’d remind you to never forget that, but I’ll bet she won’t let you. ;->
Yeah. I figured as much.
However since it’s in a slight differ context I will continue to pretend I was clever. -_-