Walky was WHAT?
on October 18, 2017 at 12:01 amChapter: Crash Course
Location: Underwater Alien headquarters
no way i’m stupid i’ll prove it look how much seawater i can swallow
Joyce and Walky!
Two xennials live in sin!
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stupid being smart
My GIRLFRIEND
Professor Doc needs me right away
WHOOP!
I think I lost her.
I don’t know where you lived, okay?
Sounds like Becky is already part of the cast in this universe.
Is it okay to visit Dina Sarazu?
beep beep beep beep
Got to get to Joyce
Mind, Joyce
Get jiggy!
Continuing, Dina’s in a coma! Meanwhile Joyce has been kidnapped whilst Walky speaks to an imaginary Mind Joyce, that speaks in slang/clues like Get Jiggy.
So I was all like
She’s dying…
Time is of the essence
Who’s the girl?
Time to get up
Being smart’s no fun, people expect you to be responsible and stuff.
It’s a total racket. Crows are super smart, but nobody ever expects them to be responsible!
Swallowing seawater?
SOMEONE’S salty!
Getting all A’s does not a leader make
But what about never going to college?
Just imagine if he did, Walky getting a Bachelors in Leaderology.
We can see Walky in college right now, and the results have yet to be favorable academically for him.
So Joyce just outed Walky?
Big Boss is down
FORGET Joe!
At least she’s breathing now
Go tell Jason
And then the magical fairy comes down
In the first decade or so of webcomics, I feel like we saw a lot of goofy brainless characters, designed to be nothing but comic relief, suddenly exposed as competent when they really need to be, despite showing absolutely no signs of this in their early history. We’re kind of in a corner here where Walky has to be competent or they all fail in an embarrassing, un-entertaining way (or die like Big Boss), so he is and always has been secretly competent.
“Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass” is the closest TV Trope, but this is more a mental thing than a physical thing. Japanese animation used a similar technique a lot, so it’s not surprising we picked up on it. And it suits the demands of a serial Web strip, which almost always exchanges some humor for drama as it goes along, but can rarely spare the years of storytelling time it would take to turn an actual moron into a capable strategist.
I toyed with something a bit similar with a few Fans characters, but the learning curve happened so quickly that I don’t think it made much difference to the series as a whole. Walky and Joyce’s goofiness/competence is central to their series, though, so their development is impossible to miss.
Despite the mild awkwardness that almost all retcons have, It’s Walky handled this sort of thing much better than strips like Schlock Mercenary, where the lead character simply gained or lost IQ points as necessary, and about as well as Sluggy Freelance eventually did, without taking nearly as long to get there.
Still, as it does for most things about Willis’ earlier series, Dumbing of Age takes the spine of this earlier idea and places it in a stronger superstructure. Walky there is smart and immature, and the narrative understands how the smarts can actually reinforce the immaturity instead of hiding behind it.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure Schlock’s brain power really does vary a lot depending on multiple circumstances.
At least there’s an explicit in-universe explanation. He literally gets brain damaged every time he loses a bit of him.
Isn’t this exactly what Dina did? I mean, you could suggest that the situation, forcing him to step up in a dangerous situation, is different. But considering what started it was “Why do you stick up for him?” and what capped it was “I’m not going to be ‘that girl who likes the moron’ any more,” it’s pretty clear that wanting her boyfriend to be respectable is high if not top of her list.
Five days later so no one will read this, but whatever.
No, Joyce doesn’t want Walky to be respectable. She doesn’t want to get rid of his goofiness. She likes his goofiness. And they’re often goofy together. She just wants him to be competent when needed. Walky can be goofy and competent. Take Walky pretending to be Sal in the Martian Embassy. That was a goofy plan. But it wasn’t a bad plan. He succeeded in his primary objective, prevent HA from manipulating Sal. The plan failed because HA could also manipulate Walky. But it was still a solid yet goofy plan.
Originally posted:
February 5, 2003
Ok, I’ve been reading this strip for almost two months now and I still don’t have the foggiest idea what is going on! Is there some kind of primer for these characters??