Here’s Billie’s real first appearance. Â I didn’t expect her to become a real character. Â Her entire existence at this point was grown out of a throw-away gag in a story I wrote in high school. Â Walky was having an argument with Big Boss and brought up his friend Billie to prove some dumb point about girls with names that sound like boy names.
So I put her in this strip as crowdfiller to please myself, as I so often do. Â I figgered she knew Walky, since that was the only “established” thing about her (in my brain and no where else). Â And then I made up two other people on the spot.
Anyway, she becomes really really important.
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SPOILERS: I’m guessing you also didn’t know that two of the characters in this strip would end up married to each other.
No idea.
Funny how characters evolve, huh? You been doing it for the better part of two decades, right Willis? Keep up the good work.
I’m more curious about… nah, I’ll just wait for those strips to come up. Shouldn’t be too long.
Who, you mean Ron and Carly? Their wedding storyline was so moving! I cried.
Don’t blame you, it was some of Willis’ best work.
Ron and Carly ended up being rather less important.
Hey, having a car is an important characteristic in any college story. Even in real life, it’s important enough that any circle of friends needs to have at least one person with a car.
And if you are at college, and none of your friends has a car or a license, GET ONE. It will make your life so much easier.
Oh wait, you said they ended up being LESS important (than Billie). That’s 100% true.
Well, if Ron didn’t exist Danny would be dead. That’s pretty important.
Nah, Ruth would just have used Billie’s car.
Then Ruth would have dwrecked Billie’s car instead of ron’s and Billie would have eviscerated Danny for being responsible !
so yeah; no Ron equals Dead Danny. Who said he wasn’t important ?
… and hum, are you sure Billie has a car ?
So what exactly are Ron and Carly up to these days?
Their eyes in heroin.
I am now picturing them in a room filled with heroin needles to the point where nothing below their eyes is visible. Carly is glaring at Ron and asks, “Did you have to put them all in the attic?”
Oh, god, my soul hurts from laughing at this.
And heeeeeeeere’s Billie’s other defining characteristic!
She wants a beer. In 1998 Roomies!, that means she’s a lush.
In 2013 Dumbing of Age, she’d definitely want more than one.
I’m very curious to see how your ideas about alcohol evolve over time.
Let’s talk about that last panel here. What’s going on there? Is the joke that Danny doesn’t like beer, or that they are all too young to drink alcohol and Danny is the only Reasonable Law-Abiding Good Guy? Or something else entirely? Young!Willis’s mind is a mystery to me.
I believe it’s ‘beer is evil’ based on later events. Otherwise I’d just have assumed Danny didn’t want to break the law
I think the joke is Ruth says Danny will have lots in common with them, and then in the next panel Danny is the only one who doesn’t want a beer.
Well, seeing as Billie is the same age as Danny, who is only in his second year of college, the second one is probably it.
Also the “Beer is EEEEEEEEEEEVILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL” thing.
Billie is actually one year younger than Danny, and thus the same age as Howard/Sal/Walky. You’re not allowed to live off-campus if you’re a Freshman, though, so that’s kind of a plothole.
Maybe she technically has an assigned dorm room, but rarely if ever actually uses it? I’m not sure about IU, but I don’t think that my college would have made any effort to make sure that the student was actually living in their dorm room, so long as the residence fees were getting paid.
That’d mean that the Billingsworths were paying both residence fees and rent at Ruth’s place, of course, but that’s just money. Way easier to provide than love.
Really? Huh. I didn’t know that.
Were there any exceptions made for Freshmen still living at home with the folks?
My university (Portland State) might be a glaring exception (though likely not the only one), being as it’s smack in the middle of downtown, so most Freshmen not living on campus commuted in by bus.
So while Willis was in high school, making Roomies!, he knew about Walky and Big Boss? Was Roomies! always supposed to lead into It’s Walky!, or was that a later idea?
Haven’t you noticed the aliens that keep getting mentioned? Something like It’s Walky seems to have been the plan from the start.
Yeah, but it’s like, I dunno, Goblins or Bob and George — it gradually develops from one tone to another as it goes, so it seems like the author came up with stuff as he went and just had things progress from what he already had, rather than having a consistent style from the beginning.
Of course, it’s possible that the author planned everything out, it’s just that when he started writing/planning he had a different work in mind than when he finished, which may be what’s happened here — the aliens are used more as a running gag or comic relief here, and their ‘torture’ is played for laughs, like endless tapes of the Sound of Music. Later, though, the Sound of Music is still used for brainwashing, but in a much more dramatic fashion — so it’s pretty much the same thing, but in a different tone.
Sound of Music torture is NOTHING to laugh about, Notebooked. It is a very serious thing.
Willis made Roomies! while he was in college — although he did a similar comic called Sly Sirs in High School, and almost all the characters are from his “Ultracar” stuff he did as a little kid.
I don’t know how early he came up with the It’s Walky! Stuff, but while in High School he created a set of “Walkerton” video games featuring a prototype version of the It’s Walky! Cast (which was my first exposure to his stuff).
And… And… And… WHY THE HELL DO I KNOW THIS OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD…
Oh, huh! I know I’ve seen some of the walk cycles from one of those games, but I always thought that was an unfinished project. Are they still around somewhere?
Willis is in your head… You belong to Him now, forever and ever.
I DID NOT LEARN THESE THINGS ON PURPOSE. I just don’t forget things I read.
Which was super handy in college, and completely useless in the rest of my life.
In that case, did you know that snakes and lizards all have two penises, and alternate between them for each new sexytime?
Have fun remembering that for the rest of your life.
“And that kids is how I met your mother”
lol
Oh, boy here we go.
Yknow I don’t drink I’ve seen way too much of the negative side of booze to find i appealing, but I also don’t think it’s “Evil” like Willis ’98 goes on about in this story.
Like everything it’s about control and not drinking a case over the course of a day.
I just can’t stand the smell or taste of alcohol, no matter how mild people tell me it should be in whatever drink it is. Which is fortunate, because it apparently has some nasty interactions with some synthetic hormones.
Originally posted:
October 19, 1998
Panel 1 is giving me strong Peanuts flashbacks.
I’m wondering if we’ll see Danny try to kick a football and Sal yanking it away from him.