Forget that. She wants a man who won’t stare at another woman’s breasts. Therefore she’s in every right. I know my special lady harmed me when I even said hello to my cousin….. All I did was hug her!
Given how extreme her beliefs are, I’d wager her minister’s the only one who even skimmed it. “Judge not” is kinda the red-headed stepchild of Jesus’ teachings among fundies.
I’d say pretty much anything from New Testament apart from “Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior” is unknown to fundies, but I don’t want to start a flame war.
Not really. There’s a place of torment (Hades in the original Latin) in Jesus’ parable about Lazarus and the Nameless Rich Man (although it’s the only time someone in one of Jesus’ parables was named, so scholars debate whether it’s officially a parable). There’s also the pit in which The Beast and his False Prophet are going to be imprisoned in Revelation. Finally, there’s the Lake of Fire, with the capacity to destroy body and soul (you are a soul, you have a body).
Hell and Heaven is mentioned all throughout the Old and New testament, but in the Old testament it’s more accepted than explained. It’s hinted, but they generally assume you already know it’s around.
@TheSoundDefense
The Bible is very specific with judging people, who you can judge and how.
Christian people cannot judge outsiders, even though letting people know what you believe and why is completely acceptable. It is practically ground into you that you MUST judge your brothers and sisters in faith. Not publicly at first. You take them aside and talk to them privately. If they don’t listen, then you get a friend and face them again. If they still brush you off, you get a group of three people to tell him that what he/she is doing is wrong. If they still continue to do it, you meet him/her with the whole church, and if they still refuse you, they are kicked out. Churches are supposed to watch each other as well, to make sure they don’t stray. Unfortunately people don’t do this often anymore.
I dunno if anyone else is having this issue, but for me the homepage seems to be changing later and later. I got to this page through the Twitter link, and the homepage still shows “Drinks” to me.
Click T Campbell’s name, it’s the one on the upper left. A webcomic called Penny&Aggie. Fairly good story, but the cast is overlarge and some of the character design is less distinctive than it should be, IMO.
The babies they make grow to be 50 feet tall and made of pure angst. Their fists? Skeleton armies. Their feet? Cheap Transfyrmers Knockoff Toys made of pure lead.
Grr, role reversal! Mike’s no longer a bastard, he’s just a violent guy. Where’s the cold, heartless soul-destroying? All he’s doing is breaking faces!
How so? I actually like this: it shows that, while she is still trying to hold onto what she learned at home, she is beginning to develop her own person. She may be a good religious girl, but she’s still a girl; Joe’s lucky she didn’t start punching him when he started talking about lust and staring at Connie.
Yeeeah, because allowing some guy to beat the hell out of another is a perfectly religious thing to do. How would she react if he punched out Mike in self defence? Get all preachy and self righteous? Nah, this really makes Joyce unlikable to me, and has huge double standards.
Wait, she’s still a girl and this makes wanting to beat someone up totally justifiable because them womens are just like that when they feel jealous? Thinking it’s acceptable to violently assault someone for looking at another woman isn’t some kind of malfunction in Joyce that she needs to get over before someone presses charges, but just part and parcel of being female and nobody should expect any better from her?
Joyce was cute and interesting initially, but yeah… she’s just getting psycho. Honestly, best way to resolve this all is to have Sal drag her out for a crash course in modern social standards.
Or do they have an AA (“Amish Anonymous”) group on campus?
I feel awful for thinking “If Joyce dated Walky She’d be cured of this psycho phase of hers” because technically Willis doesn’t have to put them together since this is another universe and all…I mean, I get women can be uber jealous…but the last panel was a bit much (staring was wrong but he was constantly getting punched beforehand anyway…) ^^;;;
Is it odd that I’m happy with Joe and Mike’s behavior, but it’s Joyce who I’m disliking right now?
Honestly, if this is going to be the way Joyce acts with all her dates (particularly if Mike is chaperoning), she’s going to be really lonely. I mean, no matter how cute she can look and act, who gonna wants to go out with the bible-thumping girl with judgmental tendancies, who tries and converts you against your will, and brings along a chaperon who beats the ever-loving heck because he’s bored but actually claiming its to deal with the boy’s lustful thoughts?
Hmm… there’s a republic or Bobby Brown joke in there, but honestly, I can’t pull it together. Nerts.
I bet Joe wishes he was having Walky’s night too! Hell, so do I!
Yeah, that thing was always hard for me to digest, and am I wrong or did it not really ever get any proper attention afterwards? People pretty much just went on with their lives.
You shall scan no other gourds before thee, for Joyce is a jealous date…
In a world where Ruth and Mike and Joe can act out as they do without realistic consequences, I don’t have an issue with Joyce running toward similar levels of unacceptable. It isn’t inconsistent with the levels of crazy or conflicted we’ve seen from her thus far.
Her own “impure” thoughts aren’t helping here either.
Yeah, most of DoA thus far has fallen under the “wacky, consequence-free hijinks” tone category.
That said, I can understand the viewpoint of those who’re coming down on Joyce, because there have been some dramatic and realistic moments: Doreen breaking up with Danny, Joe revealing why he doesn’t want any zany Parent Trap schemes to reunite his parents, Billie showing genuine loneliness when she’s alone and her guard’s down. It’s too early to tell whether those elements will be as frequent within the strip as the “wacky” ones, whether they’ll overtake the comic mostly or completely as in Roomies and It’s Walky (I hope not!), or whether they’ll be confined to isolated arcs, for variety, as in Shortpacked.
Analysis concluded. Outcome: reserving judgement on Joyce, for now.
Man, Dorothy is forgettable…you called her Doreen, and I had to consult the cast page to remember what her name really was when I started to correct you…
As I see it, Joyce based this decision on a combination of guilty and jealousy. She’s considered thoughts about Joe that she doesn’t believe to be proper. She’s troubled to find that Joe has a very different view on the subject. She’s embarrassed that things aren’t working out as she’d intended with either the date or the chaperone. And now she’s (badly) expressing hurt and outrage that Joe, who she’s trying to defend, would entertain the sort of thoughts for another woman that she’s trying not to harbour for him.
She’s contemplating making an exception for him, and coming to a more certain realization that she wouldn’t be making an exception of herself for him.
It doesn’t justify what she’s said, but Mike is still the one doing the punching. Considering the comedy of the situation, it barely sits above the border of telling Mike she no longer cares what he does.
We’ll see if she regrets this next strip. Even if she doesn’t, was there a better way to resolve this situation? Without this, we’re left to wonder why Joe’s stuck around through this.
I’d rather not think it’s because he’s planning to manipulate Joyce’s guilt. I doubt that, but if Joyce was feeling guilty enough that she felt she’d have to make this up to Joe somehow, that might skew her thinking to suggest something of the sort.
Let’s not forget that Mike is playing on her emotions here either. That still doesn’t excuse the words, but all we’ve got is words and inaction right now, directed toward a guy who seemed resigned to deserving that last punch.
The situation is far too crazy to allow for any character to pretend to be the sane one.
Well, Joe was planning on converting her to post-virgin status, so he struck me as a douchebag from the door, and what woman can say they haven’t seen the man they’re dating check out another woman’s rack and wished she had a Mike there to knock him out?
And none of this “sheltered girls wouldn’t act that way” crap, I KNEW a highly sheltered girl raised by over protective parents and she was the most tempermental, fickle, violently vindictive bongo you ever met. Because she was sheltered she had no concept of how to act in the real world.
I am amused to see the womanizer getting a good face punching, and I love Mike. XD
See, yes Joe was kind of a jerk in wanting to joe her but I don’t think that gives her right to a total beatdown. Nor does the fact that he turns to see the server and her rack is at eye level so he can’t help but to look. Yes he probably stared a bit longer than he should have but Joe isn’t the kind of guy who ogles waitresses on a date. If was really that much of an asshole, I feel it would have showed up by now. On this date, he’s offered to change into something nicer, revealed emotional problems, and try to make non-religious conversation (even though he was derailed by her mentioning of lust) He doesn’t seem like such a bad guy
Me. I’ve never actually wanted to punch my fiancé and it’s not because he walks around with his head in a bag. Women are not a hivemind and there are plenty of ways to show you’re upset with a date’s behavior without trying to knock his teeth out (or getting someone else to do it for you). That Joyce took Door Number 2 says something about Joyce, not about women in general.
Sure Joe wanted to go to bed with her. But that’s all he wanted to do, there’s as yet no reason to believe he couldn’t have gotten over being shot down, and he hasn’t actually laid a hand on her yet, still less done so inappropriately. Of course that hardly means he wasn’t being kind of a dick, but he has done absolutely nothing to warrant this level of abuse. Even if he will in future Joyce is still out of order here.
GALASSO IS NOT STOPPING THIS BECAUSE HE FEELS THAT BOTH THE GIRL IN YELLOW ATTIRE AND THE YOUNG MAN IN THE BLACK SHIRT CAN BE USEFUL IN HIS MULTIVERSE-DOMINATION PLAN.
Wow. That is…that is not how the world works, Joyce. You just don’t do that. I get being upset about discovering one’s date has no problem with obvious checking-out of other people, but this is uncalled for.
Personally, I agree with the wacky hijinks theory. I think Willis just wanted to make a cute joke, he probably didnt expect the backlash against Joyce’s character currently. But only time will tell.
I think that this Joe is getting a bad rap from his behavior the other universe. Even then, I think we’re often harsh. OK, he has one thing on his mind, but he may be successful in getting it frequently because he seems to actually be responding to what his date says instead of talking to himself in spirit. He doesn’t assault girls, doesn’t drug them, doesn’t (that I recall) try to get them drunk so they’ll do something they don’t want to. True, his conversation with Sarah about Joyce established him as a jackass, but on the date his behavior is ok. He accepts Mike’s presence. (I know; it’s a comic). He actually asks her to tell him about herself, and he seems to be listening to the answer (such that it was). A college freshman? Ignore Connie, who came upon him by surprise and touched his shoulder? Maybe you other guys, but not me at that age.
After he knocks Mike out good. I like Mike in general, but Joe totally needs to put the smackdown on him before laying the verbal smackdown on Joyce. It just has to happen.
I agree, and that’s what I’d do. Of course, now it’s the next day and we KNOW what happened, but I still can’t really fault Mike. He’s just being Mike, he’s a force of nature. Joyce is being, well, entirely too much like the girls I went to college with.
It’s a comic. Violence here is like violence in Something Positive… or Tom & Jerry. Or the Three Stooges. It’s slapstick. It’s played for laughs.
Joe is manipulative. It’s obvious Joyce is not the kind of girl to hook up with a guy. And it’s obvious he’s not looking for a relationship, much less marriage. Yet, he still pursues her.
Why?
Because he’s confident that if he’s charming enough, he can get her to let her guard down and sleep with him. Yay intercourse!
And, in the absence of Mike, it’d probably work. Maybe not on the first date. But eventually.
And then he’d move on to hist next Conquest (pun intended), leaving her hurt, like it happens way too often in real life.
So, this strip is funny because we believe Joyce defenseless and yet found out she was more than a match for Joe.
Just like in Tom & Jerry, the mouse always beats up the cat. It’s an unfair double standard, but then, who would laugh at, or root for, a cat beating up a mouse?
Except, Roz (as that’s your avatar), Joe is usually fairly obvious, if not completely straight forward, in what he wants out of a girl, as are most men who are like him in real life. The problem stems from women who are naive (pronounced stupid) enough to think that they can change people.
Joe probably knew going in to this that nothing was going to come of it, but he agreed to take her on a date, and he is a man of his word. He could have, and probably should have, refused when Joyce hired Mike, but he didn’t because he’d already agreed.
Is Joe a horndog? Yes, we all, including the characters in the story, knew that going in to this.
Has he behaved like one on this date? No, he’s been attentive and supportive to most of his date’s ideas and conversation.
Does he deserve to have the living tar beat out of him for noticing Conquest’s half-bare breasts that she basically shoved in his face? Not in the least. We don’t know how long he actually looked at them. It seems like a long time only because that was the last panel of the last strip.
For the record, I dislike most people (not just men do this after all) like Joe, because they are dishonest about their intentions. Joe isn’t.
If Joe was 100% honest, direct, straightforward, blunt, no ambiguity at all with his intentions, there is NO WAY Joyce would have gone on a date with him. “I think you are hot and I want to have sex with you, but I don’t want to be tied down, I also want to have sex with a lot of other women afterwards, you cool with that?”
Joe is obvious to the audience. But as you have pointed out, he doesn’t act like a horndog while on a date. Is it because he wants to get to know Joyce as a person, establish an emotional connection? Bullshit. It’s a process he has to go through to get into her pants.
I don’t think he deserves to get beat up. But it doesn’t bother me, for the reasons I stated above. Joyce was definitely the underdog in this situation, the power rested with Joe. Cat vs. Mouse, you expect the cat to win. Coyote vs. Road Runner. Hunter vs. Rabbit. And so on. A reversal of it is funny. Notice how Joe, though unconscious, isn’t bleeding or anything. The next day, Joe is a bit glum, or maybe very glum, but he gets over it fast. He wont end up in the hospital, he wont have psychological trauma like might happen to a real-life victim of assault. Like Elmer Fudd, he heals quick and gets back on the chase.
On the other hand, if he had gotten his way with Joyce, she would have ended up very hurt. Even scarred. This would have been a dramatic turning point in the comic.
I was touched by the part when he talked about his parents who yell a lot. Probably the first time in DoA Joe had any depth to him. I would like it if Joe and Joyce became platonic friends, realizing they are not right for each other romantically, and ground each other in a healthier reality.
Having them become friends… maybe a strained friendship at first as things are slowly patched together through their interactions with the whole crew. However, it would be more of a “Umm… hey…” kind of interaction rather than anything significant.
It is good to see some depth to Joe, though. It would honestly make sense, though, for him to have a higher purpose in his college career than simply to bang anything on two legs (and possibly four). You could add depth to him by showing his academics, or the drive for attending college beyond the social side.
I’m a fairly new reader. Just wanted you to know that this was a deal-maker moment, for me. The change that comes over Joyce when she says “…get him” is fantastic. Well done.
I love how much people are looking into Joe’s value as a person when he’s getting punched every couple of seconds. Granted, he’s now unconscious, but something’s better than nothing.
Quick note: Connie seems to be less of a slut than in the main universe. After all, she didn’t offer to sleep with Joe when she was taking his drink order.
With the exception of Jacob as her perceived offering, Conni didn’t slut it up unless ordered by Galasso, which was where the sense of abusive father came about =/
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No, Joyce! Stay good!
Forget that. She wants a man who won’t stare at another woman’s breasts. Therefore she’s in every right. I know my special lady harmed me when I even said hello to my cousin….. All I did was hug her!
Sounds like a very healthy relationship!
Your avatar makes that even funnier.
Lan, here’s a website you might be interested in:
http://theabusedhusband.com/
Your special lady is in the wrong and you are encouraging her.
But Joe getting punched for leering is good.
Has Joyce ever read the New Testament? Like, ever?
Given how extreme her beliefs are, I’d wager her minister’s the only one who even skimmed it. “Judge not” is kinda the red-headed stepchild of Jesus’ teachings among fundies.
I’d say pretty much anything from New Testament apart from “Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior” is unknown to fundies, but I don’t want to start a flame war.
All I know is wear a hat in church, be quiet, and tear out your eyes if you feel lust! 😀
/flamewarbegins
Nah, both testaments are very…skimmed over, to say the least.
What, you mean this New Testament?
Walky really is having the best day ever.
At least two people are have a good evening.
Yeah, that reminds me: I could only eat forty five McNuggest last week when I ordered those.
It did NOT help I ordered a double cheeseburgers and fries. BLEH…gonna be a while before I order nuggets again…
Daggone… I’m not sure why, but I’ve never laughed harder at anything you’ve drawn. Best punchline ever.
Was there PUNch intended there?
Punchline in the FAAAACE
It appears the strength of Mike’s punches is directly proportional to the amount of lust Joe is feeling.
Walky’s night reminds me of so many of my college nights.
Yessss Joyce. use the power of the dark side. >=D
She’s very fickle.
Joyce: tough on lust, light on assault.
if we’re going with sins it probably should be:
“tough on lust, light on wrath”
Lucky Walky when I ordered 40 mcnuggets I got home to find they only gave me 20
You should have specified that you wanted them all at once!
Remember, punishing sinners with physical violence isn’t a sin!
…that’s how it works, right?
For the Bible tells me so.
That reminds me, I need to play Bioshock again.
Three words: Sodom and Gomorrah. Two words: The Flood. Last word: Hell.
Is Hell actually in the Bible? I thought it just appeared in the supplementary material.
Jesus mentions it.
Not really. There’s a place of torment (Hades in the original Latin) in Jesus’ parable about Lazarus and the Nameless Rich Man (although it’s the only time someone in one of Jesus’ parables was named, so scholars debate whether it’s officially a parable). There’s also the pit in which The Beast and his False Prophet are going to be imprisoned in Revelation. Finally, there’s the Lake of Fire, with the capacity to destroy body and soul (you are a soul, you have a body).
@Bill M.
Hell and Heaven is mentioned all throughout the Old and New testament, but in the Old testament it’s more accepted than explained. It’s hinted, but they generally assume you already know it’s around.
@TheSoundDefense
The Bible is very specific with judging people, who you can judge and how.
Christian people cannot judge outsiders, even though letting people know what you believe and why is completely acceptable. It is practically ground into you that you MUST judge your brothers and sisters in faith. Not publicly at first. You take them aside and talk to them privately. If they don’t listen, then you get a friend and face them again. If they still brush you off, you get a group of three people to tell him that what he/she is doing is wrong. If they still continue to do it, you meet him/her with the whole church, and if they still refuse you, they are kicked out. Churches are supposed to watch each other as well, to make sure they don’t stray. Unfortunately people don’t do this often anymore.
Wow, I never knew Joyce could be so malicious. Poor Joe may be a manwhore, but I still feel bad for him right now!
I’m hoping he gets to make out with a sympathetic conquest as a result. Poor Joe.
I dunno if anyone else is having this issue, but for me the homepage seems to be changing later and later. I got to this page through the Twitter link, and the homepage still shows “Drinks” to me.
It’s the universe balancing it out for the people who have that problem on P&A. >_>
My friend and I have had that problem too, in increasing amounts lately.
Who knows if all this trouble will make Joe give up on Joyce, or want her more.
I think we both know the answer to that. XD
What is your avatar from?
Click T Campbell’s name, it’s the one on the upper left. A webcomic called Penny&Aggie. Fairly good story, but the cast is overlarge and some of the character design is less distinctive than it should be, IMO.
alicemacher’s avatar is the character lisa, and she’s awesome
…and in a strange twist of fate, Joyce’s trip to dark side ends with her falling in love with Mike lol
That fourth panel really makes them look like a couple, doesn’t it?
The babies they make grow to be 50 feet tall and made of pure angst. Their fists? Skeleton armies. Their feet? Cheap Transfyrmers Knockoff Toys made of pure lead.
Joe should’ve listened to Optimus Prime and just gotten McNuggets. Booyah!
This is really making Joyce totally unlikable. Grrr, what a jerk.
Grr, role reversal! Mike’s no longer a bastard, he’s just a violent guy. Where’s the cold, heartless soul-destroying? All he’s doing is breaking faces!
I think Mike has precedent for beating up people because a girl wants him to, actually.
This Mike is young. He hasn’t yet mastered the fine art of soul-destroying. That’s why he’s in college. His major is Soul Destruction.
How so? I actually like this: it shows that, while she is still trying to hold onto what she learned at home, she is beginning to develop her own person. She may be a good religious girl, but she’s still a girl; Joe’s lucky she didn’t start punching him when he started talking about lust and staring at Connie.
Yeeeah, because allowing some guy to beat the hell out of another is a perfectly religious thing to do. How would she react if he punched out Mike in self defence? Get all preachy and self righteous? Nah, this really makes Joyce unlikable to me, and has huge double standards.
Wait, she’s still a girl and this makes wanting to beat someone up totally justifiable because them womens are just like that when they feel jealous? Thinking it’s acceptable to violently assault someone for looking at another woman isn’t some kind of malfunction in Joyce that she needs to get over before someone presses charges, but just part and parcel of being female and nobody should expect any better from her?
Wow.
I believe the PC thing to say is “you just have to understand the roots of ‘Female Rage.'”
That phrase gets tossed around a lot during riots and looting, so I figure it must be acceptable in these circumstances as well.
Not seconded…
Seconded!
Joe hasn’t stared at anyone’s breasts. Mike just said that so he could punch Joe some more.
Also, the lust? Joyce brought that up.
I was initially kind of surprised at Joyce, and then I remembered the time she blew her clone’s brains out for being a little slutty.
I’m trying to imagine what Joe and Sarah will say to each other the next time they meet.
“Why didn’t you warn me about Joyce!?!”
“I did warn you!”
“You didn’t tell me she is insane!”
Yeesh. Joe’s face is going to be a bloody mess before the evening’s over, isn’t it?
Oh, I’m sorry. I meant Joe’s FAAACE.
This strip is perfect.
joyce is freaking vindictive!!! and totally agree with the new testament comment above me somewhere. some christian.
Joyce was cute and interesting initially, but yeah… she’s just getting psycho. Honestly, best way to resolve this all is to have Sal drag her out for a crash course in modern social standards.
Or do they have an AA (“Amish Anonymous”) group on campus?
Sal needs to jump in through the window RIGHT NOW. 🙂
sal?
I’m curious about Mike’s strength. Joe’s a big guy and Mike doesn’t have any super powers so I chalk it up to one too many sucker punches.
Mike’s powers are multiversal.
Mike has Bastard Power. He’s always just strong enough to cause severe inconvenience to whomever he is fighting.
Poor Joe. Nobody deserves that. I hope Conni calls the cops and gets Mike and Joyce arrested.
So… Is joe dead? That punch was a date ending punch, not a chaperone punch.
I feel awful for thinking “If Joyce dated Walky She’d be cured of this psycho phase of hers” because technically Willis doesn’t have to put them together since this is another universe and all…I mean, I get women can be uber jealous…but the last panel was a bit much (staring was wrong but he was constantly getting punched beforehand anyway…) ^^;;;
Crazy ass fundamentalists. So much for God is Love. Oh, and WOO MIKE!
Is it odd that I’m happy with Joe and Mike’s behavior, but it’s Joyce who I’m disliking right now?
Honestly, if this is going to be the way Joyce acts with all her dates (particularly if Mike is chaperoning), she’s going to be really lonely. I mean, no matter how cute she can look and act, who gonna wants to go out with the bible-thumping girl with judgmental tendancies, who tries and converts you against your will, and brings along a chaperon who beats the ever-loving heck because he’s bored but actually claiming its to deal with the boy’s lustful thoughts?
Hmm… there’s a republic or Bobby Brown joke in there, but honestly, I can’t pull it together. Nerts.
I bet Joe wishes he was having Walky’s night too! Hell, so do I!
This Joyce disturbs me. A sheltered girl would not act this violently and vengefully.
The walkyverse Joyce is very dear to me, so this disturbs me a lot.
She probably thinks this is what non-Christian people do all the time.
http://www.itswalky.com/d/20010406.html
Just saying.
Yeah, that thing was always hard for me to digest, and am I wrong or did it not really ever get any proper attention afterwards? People pretty much just went on with their lives.
She nearly got jailed for it, but managed to escape going to court due to impending doom afaik.
Yeah, the scandal of it sort of led to the downfall of SEMME just in time for the Martian invasion. It was kind of a thing.
WRATH
Or maybe envy,
Wow, Joyce just went from sympathetic to zero in two panels.
I think she’s jealous.
Which is a siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin
Also we have the same name. Bros.
You shall scan no other gourds before thee, for Joyce is a jealous date…
In a world where Ruth and Mike and Joe can act out as they do without realistic consequences, I don’t have an issue with Joyce running toward similar levels of unacceptable. It isn’t inconsistent with the levels of crazy or conflicted we’ve seen from her thus far.
Her own “impure” thoughts aren’t helping here either.
Yeah, most of DoA thus far has fallen under the “wacky, consequence-free hijinks” tone category.
That said, I can understand the viewpoint of those who’re coming down on Joyce, because there have been some dramatic and realistic moments: Doreen breaking up with Danny, Joe revealing why he doesn’t want any zany Parent Trap schemes to reunite his parents, Billie showing genuine loneliness when she’s alone and her guard’s down. It’s too early to tell whether those elements will be as frequent within the strip as the “wacky” ones, whether they’ll overtake the comic mostly or completely as in Roomies and It’s Walky (I hope not!), or whether they’ll be confined to isolated arcs, for variety, as in Shortpacked.
Analysis concluded. Outcome: reserving judgement on Joyce, for now.
Man, Dorothy is forgettable…you called her Doreen, and I had to consult the cast page to remember what her name really was when I started to correct you…
Maybe we should all just go back to Blonde Amber…
D’oops! And I’m usually good with names… >.<
As I see it, Joyce based this decision on a combination of guilty and jealousy. She’s considered thoughts about Joe that she doesn’t believe to be proper. She’s troubled to find that Joe has a very different view on the subject. She’s embarrassed that things aren’t working out as she’d intended with either the date or the chaperone. And now she’s (badly) expressing hurt and outrage that Joe, who she’s trying to defend, would entertain the sort of thoughts for another woman that she’s trying not to harbour for him.
She’s contemplating making an exception for him, and coming to a more certain realization that she wouldn’t be making an exception of herself for him.
It doesn’t justify what she’s said, but Mike is still the one doing the punching. Considering the comedy of the situation, it barely sits above the border of telling Mike she no longer cares what he does.
We’ll see if she regrets this next strip. Even if she doesn’t, was there a better way to resolve this situation? Without this, we’re left to wonder why Joe’s stuck around through this.
I’d rather not think it’s because he’s planning to manipulate Joyce’s guilt. I doubt that, but if Joyce was feeling guilty enough that she felt she’d have to make this up to Joe somehow, that might skew her thinking to suggest something of the sort.
Let’s not forget that Mike is playing on her emotions here either. That still doesn’t excuse the words, but all we’ve got is words and inaction right now, directed toward a guy who seemed resigned to deserving that last punch.
The situation is far too crazy to allow for any character to pretend to be the sane one.
Well, Joe was planning on converting her to post-virgin status, so he struck me as a douchebag from the door, and what woman can say they haven’t seen the man they’re dating check out another woman’s rack and wished she had a Mike there to knock him out?
And none of this “sheltered girls wouldn’t act that way” crap, I KNEW a highly sheltered girl raised by over protective parents and she was the most tempermental, fickle, violently vindictive bongo you ever met. Because she was sheltered she had no concept of how to act in the real world.
I am amused to see the womanizer getting a good face punching, and I love Mike. XD
See, yes Joe was kind of a jerk in wanting to joe her but I don’t think that gives her right to a total beatdown. Nor does the fact that he turns to see the server and her rack is at eye level so he can’t help but to look. Yes he probably stared a bit longer than he should have but Joe isn’t the kind of guy who ogles waitresses on a date. If was really that much of an asshole, I feel it would have showed up by now. On this date, he’s offered to change into something nicer, revealed emotional problems, and try to make non-religious conversation (even though he was derailed by her mentioning of lust) He doesn’t seem like such a bad guy
I feel like most of us are stereotyping Joe….
Me. I’ve never actually wanted to punch my fiancé and it’s not because he walks around with his head in a bag. Women are not a hivemind and there are plenty of ways to show you’re upset with a date’s behavior without trying to knock his teeth out (or getting someone else to do it for you). That Joyce took Door Number 2 says something about Joyce, not about women in general.
Sure Joe wanted to go to bed with her. But that’s all he wanted to do, there’s as yet no reason to believe he couldn’t have gotten over being shot down, and he hasn’t actually laid a hand on her yet, still less done so inappropriately. Of course that hardly means he wasn’t being kind of a dick, but he has done absolutely nothing to warrant this level of abuse. Even if he will in future Joyce is still out of order here.
GALASSO IS NOT STOPPING THIS BECAUSE HE FEELS THAT BOTH THE GIRL IN YELLOW ATTIRE AND THE YOUNG MAN IN THE BLACK SHIRT CAN BE USEFUL IN HIS MULTIVERSE-DOMINATION PLAN.
To be fair, any night not getting punched in the face is an awesome night. The McNuggets are just an added bonus.
Wow. That is…that is not how the world works, Joyce. You just don’t do that. I get being upset about discovering one’s date has no problem with obvious checking-out of other people, but this is uncalled for.
Yes, Joyce…. let the hate….. FLOW through you! Soon, your training will be complete……
RELEASE THE CRACKIN’ (of Joe’s jaw).
D
Soon we will discover whether there are any cops in the DoA universe.
I’m betting ‘no’, but I’m willing to be surprised.
Maybe the cop will be another familiar face. Maybe Robin.
Walky has head alien bedsheets.
Once again, Willis teases us with awesome things we cannot have.
Poor Joe, stuck with Mike beating the sin out of him instead of washing the virgin out of Joyce.With his penis.
That’s right Joyce, give into the Dark Side.
Y’know Mike, I think instructing a psychopath to beat up on your unconscious date constitutes “inappropriate behavior”.
Just a thought.
Sociopath, not psychopath. He’s apathetic, not necessarily insane
The transition to Walky made me laugh. Now I just wonder if we’ll have a full on fist fight between Mike and Joe.
Personally, I agree with the wacky hijinks theory. I think Willis just wanted to make a cute joke, he probably didnt expect the backlash against Joyce’s character currently. But only time will tell.
I like the implicit acknowledgement that 6 months into this comic, we’re only on Day 3 (Tuesday).
. . . I want Mike’s job.
I think that this Joe is getting a bad rap from his behavior the other universe. Even then, I think we’re often harsh. OK, he has one thing on his mind, but he may be successful in getting it frequently because he seems to actually be responding to what his date says instead of talking to himself in spirit. He doesn’t assault girls, doesn’t drug them, doesn’t (that I recall) try to get them drunk so they’ll do something they don’t want to. True, his conversation with Sarah about Joyce established him as a jackass, but on the date his behavior is ok. He accepts Mike’s presence. (I know; it’s a comic). He actually asks her to tell him about herself, and he seems to be listening to the answer (such that it was). A college freshman? Ignore Connie, who came upon him by surprise and touched his shoulder? Maybe you other guys, but not me at that age.
Well, the Ruth Avatar is better than my last one.
Welp, looks like it’s about time for Joe to get up and walk out.
If he can. Looks as though Mike may have knocked him out cold.
After he knocks Mike out good. I like Mike in general, but Joe totally needs to put the smackdown on him before laying the verbal smackdown on Joyce. It just has to happen.
I agree, and that’s what I’d do. Of course, now it’s the next day and we KNOW what happened, but I still can’t really fault Mike. He’s just being Mike, he’s a force of nature. Joyce is being, well, entirely too much like the girls I went to college with.
Joe was warned. He should never have agreed to go on this date in the first place; lusting is all he was planning on doing anyway.
It was her FIRST date! It was supposed to be PERFECT! And now you have RUINED it!
So tragic.
It’s a comic. Violence here is like violence in Something Positive… or Tom & Jerry. Or the Three Stooges. It’s slapstick. It’s played for laughs.
Joe is manipulative. It’s obvious Joyce is not the kind of girl to hook up with a guy. And it’s obvious he’s not looking for a relationship, much less marriage. Yet, he still pursues her.
Why?
Because he’s confident that if he’s charming enough, he can get her to let her guard down and sleep with him. Yay intercourse!
And, in the absence of Mike, it’d probably work. Maybe not on the first date. But eventually.
And then he’d move on to hist next Conquest (pun intended), leaving her hurt, like it happens way too often in real life.
So, this strip is funny because we believe Joyce defenseless and yet found out she was more than a match for Joe.
Just like in Tom & Jerry, the mouse always beats up the cat. It’s an unfair double standard, but then, who would laugh at, or root for, a cat beating up a mouse?
(Also, wondering who my avatar is now…)
Except, Roz (as that’s your avatar), Joe is usually fairly obvious, if not completely straight forward, in what he wants out of a girl, as are most men who are like him in real life. The problem stems from women who are naive (pronounced stupid) enough to think that they can change people.
Joe probably knew going in to this that nothing was going to come of it, but he agreed to take her on a date, and he is a man of his word. He could have, and probably should have, refused when Joyce hired Mike, but he didn’t because he’d already agreed.
Is Joe a horndog? Yes, we all, including the characters in the story, knew that going in to this.
Has he behaved like one on this date? No, he’s been attentive and supportive to most of his date’s ideas and conversation.
Does he deserve to have the living tar beat out of him for noticing Conquest’s half-bare breasts that she basically shoved in his face? Not in the least. We don’t know how long he actually looked at them. It seems like a long time only because that was the last panel of the last strip.
For the record, I dislike most people (not just men do this after all) like Joe, because they are dishonest about their intentions. Joe isn’t.
If Joe was 100% honest, direct, straightforward, blunt, no ambiguity at all with his intentions, there is NO WAY Joyce would have gone on a date with him. “I think you are hot and I want to have sex with you, but I don’t want to be tied down, I also want to have sex with a lot of other women afterwards, you cool with that?”
Joe is obvious to the audience. But as you have pointed out, he doesn’t act like a horndog while on a date. Is it because he wants to get to know Joyce as a person, establish an emotional connection? Bullshit. It’s a process he has to go through to get into her pants.
I don’t think he deserves to get beat up. But it doesn’t bother me, for the reasons I stated above. Joyce was definitely the underdog in this situation, the power rested with Joe. Cat vs. Mouse, you expect the cat to win. Coyote vs. Road Runner. Hunter vs. Rabbit. And so on. A reversal of it is funny. Notice how Joe, though unconscious, isn’t bleeding or anything. The next day, Joe is a bit glum, or maybe very glum, but he gets over it fast. He wont end up in the hospital, he wont have psychological trauma like might happen to a real-life victim of assault. Like Elmer Fudd, he heals quick and gets back on the chase.
On the other hand, if he had gotten his way with Joyce, she would have ended up very hurt. Even scarred. This would have been a dramatic turning point in the comic.
I was touched by the part when he talked about his parents who yell a lot. Probably the first time in DoA Joe had any depth to him. I would like it if Joe and Joyce became platonic friends, realizing they are not right for each other romantically, and ground each other in a healthier reality.
Having them become friends… maybe a strained friendship at first as things are slowly patched together through their interactions with the whole crew. However, it would be more of a “Umm… hey…” kind of interaction rather than anything significant.
It is good to see some depth to Joe, though. It would honestly make sense, though, for him to have a higher purpose in his college career than simply to bang anything on two legs (and possibly four). You could add depth to him by showing his academics, or the drive for attending college beyond the social side.
I’m a fairly new reader. Just wanted you to know that this was a deal-maker moment, for me. The change that comes over Joyce when she says “…get him” is fantastic. Well done.
I love how much people are looking into Joe’s value as a person when he’s getting punched every couple of seconds. Granted, he’s now unconscious, but something’s better than nothing.
Quick note: Connie seems to be less of a slut than in the main universe. After all, she didn’t offer to sleep with Joe when she was taking his drink order.
With the exception of Jacob as her perceived offering, Conni didn’t slut it up unless ordered by Galasso, which was where the sense of abusive father came about =/
This hasn’t come up enough in these comments. FFFAAACCCEEE!!!!
Irony at its finest, my gravatar is getting PUNched in the FFFAAACCCEEE a lot.
Ok it’s official, I love this comic.
And the lesson for today is:
Breast Nuggets are less dangerous than Womens Breasts.
Tell me were in indiana i can get that deal.NO EXCEPTIONS.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE FARM…
I just noticed how much Mike looks like Johnny Bravo.
Get that boy some sunglasses.
Mike must be having the time of his life
I’m with Walky on this one.
I can’t stop laughing at the last panel with Walky just sitting in his dorm room, eating McNuggets.
Why does Joyce think it’s alright to go around hitting people?
I think its safe to say that this is a comic that will take advantage of physical comic relief
unless you mean her character, then thats there to show that despite her beliefs she’s still a person and prone to normal flaws.
Priorities.
Dang Mcdonalds doesnt serve nuggets for another 4 hours
Walky for the win!
If given the choice between 50 chicken nuggets and getting punched in the face, I`d go with the chicken nuggets.