I told you
on May 13, 2018 at 12:01 amWhoof, that was a girls-getting-hurt-resulting-in-making-boy-protagonist-feel-things twofer! Both Joyce and Dina! Right in a row! Just rippin’ off that Band-Aid.
Walky’s rage isn’t a part of his Dumbiverse incarnation. In case you haven’t noticed, rage is a pretty common problem in the Walkyverse! Sal, Joyce, Walky, Amber… these are all folks who are pretty quick to violence, flip of the switch. It took me a long while to realize that a personality that’s eternally poised on the edge of anger is… not… normal…??? Apparently I grew up in this soup of Borderline Personality Disorder before I knew that was a thing, and for the whilest while on some level I just thought that was how people are. Say the wrong thing, suddenly Defcon 1!
So, you know, here’s Walky’s trip of it. And it’s probably the most severe.
But I decided in Dumbing of Age that this wasn’t going to be a part of him. I scaled back the angry moodswings quite a bit on everyone. I gave that stuff solely to Amber. (Though Joyce retains some non-life-self-sabotaging iteration of it.)
Anyway, this is why Walky doesn’t like being called Walky! GOOD SHOW, EVERYONE.
I like the small detail of seeing Alan having saved his own life by duct-taping the leak in his helmet.
…oh, the green dinosaur toy on the desk
I mean, hey, it’s pretty good that you knew at this stage that even if all people are like that, they shouldn’t be, and that’s a flaw you can show people recovering from (or needing to, at least.)
I feel like a lot of folks, faced with something ugly in people, just kinda shrug. You get a lot of shows and movies where the moral is just “eh, people gonna people, it sucks but what can you do.” Maybe there’s some angst.
It’s a good early sign that you’re a good storyteller and moreover someone who’s willing to push past what you know about the world to something better–even if, most likely, no one reading at the time knew it.
How did Joyce and Walky get back off the ship after this?
We saw (from Ruth’s POV of the events of this same day way, way back) that Walky was ‘ported back to the backyard whence he was kidnapped sans breathing. Presumably, Head Alien recovered enough to mind-wipe him and Joyce before then getting them off his spaceship.
PS: Yeah, if you look close you can see Head Alien reaching for the Mind Wiper in the first panel, so I’m pretty sure now that that’s more-or-less what happened.
While poor Alan is slowly reaching for the duct tape…I feel bad for the guy, but at least he redeemed himself in some way down the road.
Not to mention giving him a much less traumatic reason for being so darn childish.
It does seem like almost everyone at SEMME has anger issues.
Alan and HA don’t have tags.
Regardless of all the manpain stuff this is just a really solid page. The juxtaposition of the childish and the horrifying is just so great
Looking back, that explanation clears up a lot of head-scratching moments for me!
Something tells me that Walky is going to be spending some time in Sal’s old rubber-walled room.
“They’ll discover that, under the goofiness, he’s just like you.”
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/let-me-set-this-straight/
I can’t believe that it’s only just occurred to me that Dina was the woman in the refrigerator for Walky.
I’m so glad that Willis’ writing has gotten so much better over the years.
To be totally fair, that trope refers to women killed off solely for the angst of the male protagonist. I’d argue that Dina’s death was the culmination of an arc that was entirely her own. (There IS a character much later that DOES get legitimately fridged, but thankfully Willis recognized that and saw fit to correct it.)
Walky’s reaction is selfish and self centered, but that’s a reflection of his flaws, not the story it’s happening in.
Fucked up the tags. Second line is mine.
Except unlike the originator of that term, Dina was not created for a few comics specifically to be killed in order to advance the plot.
Mike needs medic
…fuck i never noticed the dinosaur toy ;-;