Yesterday was Monday, which means it was time for another Welcome To The Fuck Zone page! On the first week we got a NSFW pin-up of Walky and Dorothy, last week we get Sarah, and this week we get Ethan! These stand-alone artworks can be accessed by Slipshine subscribers and there’ll be a new one every week!
Next week: Marcie!
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still doing better than… hmm, would Ethan reply to Trump Tweets?
@realDonaldTrump: “Bumblebee is great, but I like Transformers that don’t get captured.”
Ethan: *foams at mouth*
@realDonaldTrump: “I know more about Decepticons than Optimus Prime. Believe me.”
Well, I mean, it takes one to know one…
I chuckled at that
Megatron would execute Trump at the first opportunity.
Hey, we see how long he kept Starscream around despite better judgements; maybe Trump could eke through if he proved useful enough.
If you kill Starscream you just get a possessing ghost. It’s safer to have him hanging around trapped in his own body.
Starscream has actual fighting and scheming skills.
Trump… well…
@realDonaldTrump “Starscream is a nasty Decepticon. Join me and we’ll make Cybertron great again.”
@realDonaldTrump: “Yeesh, what bee got in your bonnet?”
@realDonaldTrump: “No, I wasn’t SAYING that you had them, I was ASKING if you had the original Optimus Prime’s small hands.”
@realDonaldTrump: “Geez, mellow out, obviously you lost them too.”
@realDonaldTrump “star scream is my favorite autobot, and the Michael bay movies are the best representation of the characters.”
@realDonaldTrump “Yes, even the 4th one”
Mike actually isn’t enrolled in any classes, he just goes where he chooses and the school is too scared to tell him to leave
One day a school inspector comes: “What with that boy wondering the halls?”
The principal looks at him, Mike staresback menacingly.
“Boy? What boy?”
Nah, he’s been hired by a sociology researcher to help in some sort of research. Maybe on assholeism.
He is a calibration standard. The guy everyone hates so you have a boundary condition.
Huh. Mary is employable.
But Mary is hateful in a way that 48% of society votes for,
or overlooks
…. and Mike isn’t?
Mike is hateful in a way that even the people who like him hate because that’s why they like him. Mary is just an asshole who’s liked by other assholes and gives God a bad name.
18% a lot of people didn’t vote
Those people overlooked it, for one reason or another.
Meanwhile I heard that something like 14k people voted for fuckin’ Harambe. A goddamn dead gorilla. I am disappointed in America.
A gorilla killed to save the life of a small black child when tranquilizers didn’t work.
The people pissed off a gorilla died instead of a black kid weren’t ever going to vote for Hilary.
My head hurts.
~47% of those who voted. ~23% of those who are of age to vote. ~18% of the population as a whole.
How many of the ~44% of people who could vote, but didn’t, or the people who are not yet eligible to vote, might agree with them are harder to gauge from the election (though polls suggest ‘not many’), but this election didn’t validate Trump’s stated policies, especially since slightly more people voted for Hillary. (Thanks,
ObamaElectoral College!)Not everyone hates Mike, your mom loved him last night… for a nickel
Always worth remembering.
Sounds like the Belief in Rim jays
Oh Mike, never stop stirring that pot, bud. ^_^
Oh look, Shortpacked Ethan is back.
The real question is if Ethan’s online nemesis in the Dumbiverse is also Willis.
To be fair Willis is the nemesis of every DoA character at one point or another.
But evil never triumph permanently. They loves monologues too much.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
I read comics, makes the world go faster, so the evil is just a blur.
Does that include the evil that is a Willis cliffhanger?
Is this the beginning of Mike’s seduction of Ethan?
He is standing awfully close to him … Ethan can feel Mike’s breath on the back of his neck … so warm ….
Playing Don’t Stand So Close To Me on hacked Muzak.
I believe so, or at least an early stage of
…escalation.
Damned phone.
“With loving hands /
Knowing evil will prevail”
-The Flaming Lips
My thirst for that Ethan is real.
if your thirst for that ethan isn’t real i don’t trust you
But Ethan isn’t.
Well, you could have been anything that you wanted to
And I could tell..
The Way You Do The Things You Do
I relate to Ethan on this all too well. Except with the canonical sense of Nintendo Game or various Game Mechanics
These are uploaded months in advance. I wonder if Willis knew he was going to be prophetic.
I wonder if this is the start of Mike’s plan.
Nobody ever went broke betting on there being flame wars after an election, but it’s the extra “evil triumphs when good men do everything” that’s the cherry on top.
Mike has broken the fourth wall, and found a way to be a jerk to the readers directly.
Mike tweaked this comic while it was sitting in the buffer.
Edmund Burke must not have been a Transformers fan.
He movies are better than the cartoon.
While The Movie was better on average than the G1 series as a whole (in part due to things like B.O.T and Carnage in C Minor), I’d dispute that Predacons Rising is better than the rest of Prime. Prime really holds up well as a series, pretty much objectively.
Nope, Megan Fox > Prime
*Reads alt Text*
Quick! Is John Goodman doing something right now??
Probably sleeping, considering it’s 12 am in sthe US (well in some parts of the US is 12 am)
9PM here in Cali, where Mr. Goodman probably lives.
Where John Goodman lives it’s 9 PM.
But John Goodman is relatively mature and probably is in bed by now. Especially if he is filming anything tomorrow.
Wait, doesn’t evil triumph when transformers do nothing?
I dunno, most evil seems to be the results of decepticons or predacons or vehicons or Unicron or some other transformer doing soemthing…
So, Decepticons triumph when Autobots do nothing.
“evil triumphs when good men do nothing”
Damn still relevant. Did you time these strips for the election just in case?
Something to do: wear a safety pin… and mean it. (And if you’re light-skinned, accessorize with a rainbow flag, Black Lives Matter pin, and/or something else a white supremacist wouldn’t ever wear.)
? I don’t think I understand – what’s the safety pin significance?
I believe it’s ether a show of solidarity for all the people terrified about the explicitly threatened oppression from the reich wing – or an explicit and active promise to materially aid such people, underground-railroad style, if the need should arise. I’m honestly not sure which.
I don’t personally have the resources (or physique) to physically defend anybody, so I don’t wear a pin. There have been no riots in my area and there is no sense of fear in this region that I’m aware of, so perhaps my milquetoastness doesn’t matter.
Yep, the safety pin is a promise to make yourself a walking, taking safe space for marginalized folks, especially those targeted by Trump and company. Usually that means that if you see an uncool situation, you are prepared to step in and deescalate it, including, if needed, taking punches for somebody. You’re ready to put yourself in harm’s way, today. That is understandably hardcore so if that isn’t you, that’s totally cool, there are other important ways to help!
I’ve pinned one on the lapel of my duster. As a Vermonter who doesn’t actually get out around other people much, I doubt it’ll ever be anything but a show of moral support for my at-risk friends, but that has value in itself.
But if it comes to it… I’m a big guy with more than twenty years of armored combat experience. I can take a hit.
But I feel like it might be better to treat the safety pin as more of “I support you” rather than “I’ll take punches for you,” because honestly what’s scary (as a Jew) isn’t “someone might attack me,” it’s “would anyone even care if Jews started being persecuted? Would they sit back and let it happen like they did in Nazi Germany?” And not sitting back doesn’t necessarily mean physically standing in front of me taking punches. It could mean protesting an anti-Semitic government action. It could mean painting over swastikas. And, if push comes to shove, it could mean helping people get out of the country or hiding them (though I think Muslims are in much more danger of needing that than Jews are).
It grew out of the post-Brexit concerns in Great Britain.
A man put a dish of safety pins out on his counter with a note to take one and pin it to your shirt as a promise that you are a walking safe space. All the usual reassurances about the various -isms that people are worried about, that you’ll be a nonjudgemental safe space for them.
Some think it’s charming. Others think it’s virtue signaling. At worst, it’s harmless, except for a couple of holes in your shirt.
And then slowly Mike starts putting his “Seduce Ethan” plan into effect. At least he’s keeping his promise to leave Danny alone 😉
…and then I realized I’m dating an Ethan, except video games instead of Transformers. (I say affectionately, I like people who are passionate about a thing.)
You can have the best of both worlds! Get him into the Transformer video games!
…. I say with no malicious intent whatsoever.
You get the beeeeest of both worlds!
Someone is wrong on the Internet.
That might just be the most-linked-to xkcd strip of all time.
You’re probably right.
My personal favourite strip to link to is “Ten Thousand”, though. I love linking that to everyone who “answers” a question with a variant of “Google it, stupid”.
Haha, yeah that’s a pretty good one.
All Mike has to do is mention an interest in Chromedome & Rewind, and Ethan will fall like something something that falls.
Today in DoA: Mike uses his psychic powers to comment on the election from three months ago.
I started to laugh and then I started to cry.
SAVE US, JOHN GOODMAN, PLEASE
(Puts on white robe and tapes two swirly pastries to my ears)
“Help me John Goodman, you’re my only hope”
Ethan’s telling it like it is.
Unlike some people…
Mike no. Mike don’t you dare.
Why won’t people stop being so goddamn amazingly wrong, is what I’d like to know.
“Someone is wrong on the internet.”
I can’t make up my mind about this. On the one hand, ha ha funny and we’ve all been there when it’s about trivial things, like who would take the other in a fight, Tails or Luigi. On the other, I wonder if most of the anti-science “movement” comes from ill-meaning idiots being ignored to the point where they build a following of other ill-meaning idiots until the well-meaning idiots and fools start thinking dangerous thoughts like “well, X amount of people can’t be ALL wrong, can they?”.
Well yes. Yes, they can.
For the record, it’s Tails. Tails would totally whup Luigi in a fight.
I mean cmon, Tails can fly!
What power-ups does Luigi have access to?
Now this is an interesting thing to consider, most would say it’s common knowledge that arguing on the internet is a pointless waste of time whether it’s about toys or white supremacy. However I can attest and I’m sure others can too that even when you argue with someone whose opinion you did jot change and they did not change yours, sometimes you do learn something.
Maybe that something is something as stupid as another thing you don’t agree with or maybe it’s something that actually changes your perspective on life a little.
So arguing on the internet is not always a COMPLETE waste, but at the same I’d say it’s not healthy to do it all the time and let it affect your real life stress (I may or may not be guilty of that myself *cough*)
So what’s the healthy medium? when is it alright to engage people you blatantly disagree with and when is it good to walk away?
The only thing I’ve learned from arguing on the internet is that a lot of other people are fixed in their wrongheaded opinions, to the degree that logic and valid argument literally has no effect on them. Which to say that arguing on the internet has changed me a little – it made my soul die.
I personally have never encountered a time on line or in real life when argument was not a complete and total goddamn waste of time.
Not that I expect that to change your opinion on the matter, of course.
I’ve learned a lot from watching arguments on the internet, and reading such arguments definitely formed a lot of my opinions. Never forget the lurkers.
Besides I think it’s pretty clear that even though people almost never change their mind from a single argument within that argument, people can and do change their minds from thinking long-term about points brought up in arguments they’ve had.
I can attest to having made at least two good friends through arguing on the internet. And often I do learn new things, on either side of the argument, as long as the ad hominem attacks don’t begin.
Evil triumphs. Then Carla throws a pie in its face. (That’s my new life motto. ;; It is what gives me hope right now.)
So what is the appropriate something to nothing ratio that John Goodman needs to participate in to make sure evil fails? Cause I think he needs to start working overtime right about now.
My mom met John Goodman when she worked at a New Orleans hotel, oh over thirty years ago. He was drunk and pretty rude; must have been an off day for him.
Oh it’s a Ethen strip good I wanted to bring this up. I’ve been thinking, Ethan as a character has made some great mistakes in my eye’s and it felt like I haven’t gotten past those mistakes like I’ve done Joyce because unlike Joyce I felt like Ethan didn’t think hard on all the choices he’s made throughout this story. I felt like Ethan didn’t really regret leading on Joyce as much as Joyce was regretting trying to turn Ethan into what she wanted him to be, it was more like he was disappointed that didn’t work out the way he expected it to be. I guess that’s why I can’t get past it.
It’s not like I didn’t try to understand the character because for the most part I did, I do have some empathy for Ethan as much as I still don’t like him, starting out his ex / girlfriend had not only gotten over the breakup but try to support him and even though his parents didn’t like him coming out they were starting to accept it to just begrudgingly. Ethan on the other hand I guess things are moving too quick for him so he wasn’t able to love himself enough yet to be open with his sexuality so for the meantime he decided to go back in the closet I can understand that. It was just the way he did it is what done pissed me off.
But after the year we’ve all had which has been crazy (we all kow the reason way). I’ve come to realization, there are worser people out there. I’m always looking for the best in people and there is plenty of good in Ethan considering he always means well I just let some of his stupid actions cloud my judgment of him with nothing but frustration and anger and I’v finally decided to come to terms with it. I take back a few things I’ve said about him like calling them assholes multiple times the reason why is probably because there are people out there who are more deserving of it.
*why
Ethan is a Big Foot. He needs to be with his people.
When I saw a big blob of text, I was expecting another rant, but was caught off-guard by thoughtful introspection.
I’ve got nothing but respect for this.
There is not a single character in DoA that isn’t flawed. Just like there’s not a human out there that isn’t flawed. If they are at least trying to be good, I find it hard to consider them assholes.
I really enjoyed Mike in Shortpacked but I’m getting extremely bad vibes from the start of this storyline/subplot. The DoAverse is too real for me to really be comfortable with this kind of Mike antic. We didn’t have to deal too realistically with the fallout of his malice in SP! and I really want something good for Ethan to happen when everything that’s gone down so far has been either terrible or good but qualified by some flaw like ‘but Amber would flip so I can’t’.
I’m not seeing it. This appears relatively tame for Mike. He’s pointing out that arguing about transformers online is a waste of time, and When could be doing something constructive. He’s being a little ride about it, but that’s pretty standard for Mike. And while I think we’ve all gotten into those kinds of arguments at some point or another, I also think back on when I did and can see that the argument really accomplished nothing but getting me mad.
Mike is beginning his plan to seduce Ethan, which means he’s starting the plan by putting Ethan down. Standard behaviour for Mike, sure, but the context makes it a new kind of awful.
Also I wonder if the guy isn’t arguing with online it’s supposed to be a depiction of me every time I bongoed about him in this comment forum. I’m either self-absorbed or just paranoid… probably both.
You make 5000 dollars a month from patreon willis and you never made the dexter and Monkey Master comic. Yet now you are making a new page for slip shine every week.
Haven’t we already had this particular comic about twenty times now?
This plus the recent Leslie/Robin drama is basically Shortpacked!
Only if you consider “Ethan argues on the internet” to be the same strip/joke. In which case you have a far more broad sense of the term than I do.
Not nearly as often as “Amber plays video games”, “Dorothy does homework”, “Dina talks about Dinosaurs”, or “Character X engages in established hobby Y“
Next you’ll tell me characters might engage in their interests MORE THAN ONCE. We all know nobody would do such a horrible thing!
Dorothy studied once already, she’s finished all studying forever.
Sorry Marcie, Malaya, and Carla, you don’t get to skate anymore. Rule of one hobby occurrence says so.
Sal can’t ride her bike or play video games anymore – them’s the rules (though she’s a rebel, so watch her – she’ll be sneaky!)
Hope you liked looking at slash Lucy and Amber, you never get to do that again.
Mike, you can’t fuck with people anymore. You have had your chance and you SQUANDERED it.
Becky, Walky, you can’t act like goofballs anymore.
Joe, Roz, no more fucking (or activism for you, Roz).
Ruth and Billie no longer get to watch tv.
Mary can’t be a total asshole anymo-
Crap. I ruined the running gag by making it good. Dammit. Dammit.
Your posting made my IRL better this morning. +100 bonus points to you.
I’m so glad to hear that and I hope your day continues to get better <3
and it served the narrative each time. This isn’t a joke a day strip. DYW is going somewhere with this.
Or maybe not. The next page shifted focus to Billie. Maybe this really was a one-off joke that he’s done before.
And otherwise, later we presumably get: why is everyone so down on Ethan about this? It doesn’t happen all that often.
ooooooooooooh dear. Is Mike about to give you something to do with your time……? This is it, this is the Danthan misery plan
I think that any remaining doubt that Mike knows Ethan well… possibly too well for his own comfort… is dispelled by this strip!
He knows him well enough to make him miserable, at least. I really think the only reason he and Amber hang around Mike is that they’re going to the same college. Otherwise I don’t think there’s any indication he helped Ethan through the summer like Amber did, and Mike was the one who convinced him to dive back into the closet.
Looking back through the archives, Amber hasn’t been shown hanging out with or even talking to Mike since he was a total butthole to her.
Amber already has a voice in her head telling her she’s doomed to abuse her loved ones. That position is filled.
Yes, but Mike only ‘convinced’ him back into the closet because itw as the only thing Ethan wanted to hear. Mike was doing the opposite. I’m not sure any force on planet earth would have prevented that catastrophe.
What Mike said: “It was a real boneheaded move, admitting to Amber that you’re gay. Imagine if you hadn’t. Sure, you’d be living a lie and having unfulfilling sex, but you wouldn’t be living this miserable, isolated existence with some blond asshole as your only friend.”
Whatever Mike may have thought he was doing, telling Ethan “coming out of the closet is the reason you’re miserable and lonely”–directly after Ethan confessed his fear that he was going to be alone forever–is not, in fact, a good way to convince him to be open about his sexuality. Someone who actually cared about Ethan staying out of the closet would have told him that there were other gay Jewish nerds in the world, that he’d be able to find friends at college who didn’t care about his sexuality, and that he could probably go find either a LBGTQ meetup or a cartoon geek meetup right now if he liked. Maybe it would have worked, maybe it wouldn’t have, but we’ll never know because Mike said the opposite.
That part about being Ethan’s only friend is fucked up. He’s blaming Ethan’s sexuality for Amber needing time apart from him to heal from the summer.
Just die in a fire, Mike.
Man, John Goodman’s lazy ass ain’t been doing shit in 2016.
His voice work for Hound was the only saving grace in AoE so I’m willing to cut him some slack
Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane is about perfect for 2016. Spooky guy who tells you he is there to save you from the bad outside world, but maybe you need saving from him even more.
SEEM like Mike isn’t really Miking him
Fuck, this one hits hard after last week…
-curls up into a ball-
Get a boyfriend, then you can yell together.
Oh God
I just realized Trump is a real life Shaun Burger from ‘Megatron’s Master Plan’.
Is…is there even the slightest remotest chance that Mike genuinely cares for Ethan? Enough not to chew his ego to bits with a false seduction?
…maybe? Please?
Sorry, it’s right on Mike’s character bio.
Probably not in this case. Especially given that Ethan is only now registering that men can find him attractive, having Mike pull the moves on him, the first man to ever do that, only for it to be a plan to make both him and Danny miserable is going to sting.
Although I guess it’s hypothetically possible Mike falls for him the same way he did Amber in Shortpacked!.
Although, Word of Willis is he fell for Amber super early – as in, the time he watched her chase customers around the store for being a cute couple while she didn’t have internet access to talk to her boyfriend.
http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=111
^^ The birth of Mike/Amber as an attraction.
Tale as old as time, that one.
So romantic.
Hmm, I like that line, perhaps it would make a good song, maybe as the centerpiece of a movie.
You want to make Mike’s wood the centerpiece of a movie?!?
(Misreading of what you were replying to may or may not have been intentional.)
I’ve never related so much to anything before. Why do they bother posting if all they’re going to do is try to convince good men that MTMTE doesn’t get Megatron?
MTMTE is supposed to be the really good Transformers comic right? Can I read that without reading RiD? I kinda want to get into it but I don’t know if I can juggle two series at the same time.
The two are separate series, so you should be good, outside of crossovers.
It’s best read alongside the other but you can totally solo it. There’s only one crossover so far and, I think, one miniseries specific to MTMTE.
If you don’t mind being a bit behind, IDW do hardbacks that present all the comics (MTMTE, RID, all Spotlights, crossovers, and mini series) in an optimal reading order. Each comes in at about £30 ($50) and contains an average of 13 issues. There have been four released so far and they tend to do one every six to eight months.
That would allow you to read all the ongoing Transformers as one huge, interlinking story, without having to juggle them and worry about what fits where. And it saves you playing desperate catch up too as you’d essentially be reading a few years behind.
Anyway, thought I’d mention it as these are really the best Transformers comics have been for years and fans deserve to get the best experience of them that they can.
The best way to read MTMTE is through Comixology, where the first several trades are part of their “Unlimited” service, meaning (IIRC) that if you pay a flat fee, you get access to all of them. *checks* Yeah, $5.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial.
Which means you could blow through the entire first five volumes for… well, free, if you do it within 30 days.
https://www.comixology.com/Transformers-More-Than-Meets-the-Eye-2011/comics-series/7279?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
Seems like Unlimited is only available in the US (though maybe they make an exception for Canada IDK we’re basically they’re hat), but I’ll definitely check out Comixology. I prefer TPBs but IDW stuff is kind of expensive.
Thanks, both of you!
You got it backwards – the US is Canada’s shoes. 😉
Remarkably prescient, Willis.
Jesus Christ, Willis! You’ve been twisting the knife all fucking week! Are you trying to make us all hopeless nihilists so we’ll buy more porn?!
Oh, God, I can’t believe it’s only been a week. It feels like a year.
A different view on good people.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King, Jr.
So yeah, good people have to do something or else they aren’t good, just inert.
Mike believes himself to be a good man. So, evil triumphs when Mike does EVERYONE.
Any chance it is Danny who he disagrees with unknowingly?
86% probability on the “Damn you Willis” scale. 🙂
Ethan is me only with Harry Potter. (Man I know Ron is a Death Eater and Draco in Leather Pants is the more pressing concern but I also don’t find ‘Harry would never be an insensitive adult to his child” or ‘Snape consumes a child whole every Thursday for dinner’ aren’t too hot either.
I’m pretty sure the fandom can’t really deal with the idea of heroes being flawed at all. (And I say this as someone who hates the cursed child, or at least what I’ve read so far: but Harry being a kind of shitty parent or not caring about how werewolves are doing for themselves isn’t all that unbelievable to me… Like just because he was abused as a kid doesn’t mean he’ll be dad of the year. Harry had plenty of instances where he wasn’t all that nice to people who needed him to be!)
And…
/goes off in tangent for 5000 pages/
Seriously though, what would this version of Mike know about being a good man?
Is Jason gonna start lecturing folks on that next?
So am I the only one who keeps getting “Welcome to the Jungle” on my brain every time I see “Welcome to the Fuckzone”?
I keep hearing it as the music to Danger Zone. The Archer version, specifically.