Plagued with a sense of normalcy
on July 9, 2014 at 12:01 amFIRST OF ALL: ROOMIES! BOOK 2 IS ON SALE FOR LIKE FIVE BUCKS RIGHT NOW, IN CASE YOU MISS IT ALREADY
So here we are, the first page of the “revised” It’s Walky! that I drew back in 2005 or so. Maggie was all like, dude, early It’s Walky! looks not-so-great, but what if you redrew the first storyline to sell as a graphic novel or something? And I was all, huh, that sounds like a good idea, why not. And so I started doing it. I had just started Shortpacked!, which updated M-W-F at the time, and I hadn’t started Joyce & Walky! yet, and so I had some spare drawing hours to burn.
Since it was intended to be published as a stand-alone, I needed to establish some foundational things that you’d need to know going in, what with the absence of Roomies! to set you up for things. And so here is the first page. We get some important looks into the cornerstones of late Nineties culture — your Bill Clinton, your Matrix, your Sluggy Freelance. You get the idea. It also kind of lampshades how important Walky is a little too much too soon, but whatcha gonna do.
oof world trade center
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Discussion (91) ¬
Initiating Program.
Rewriting History.
Remembering plot threads.
Organization seeded.
Alien threat lifted.
Time forwarded.
Destinies tied.
Timeline rerouting.
Set point, December 25.
1999.
Initiate
Year Zero.
Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttt’ssssssssss
WALKY!
For some bizarre reason I tried reading that to the theme of Road Rovers.
Maybe if this were the plot to Road Rovers, it would’ve lasted more than one season~
IRROATDTS1IYIW?
Worst acrostic ever. >_>
Funfact: At the time this ran, in Sluggy Freelance, which is STILL running, a bunny was setting a trap for Santa Claus, but Mrs. Claus was caught instead. She pulled out guns and proceeded to shoot the bunny.
I really like that webcomic.
It’s starting!
It’s time!
It’s finally here!
…It’s Walky!
Wiigii! It begins!
L’il Walky is adorable.
DoA Dorothy agrees… 😉
Huh. I assumed the narration here had some sort of original-strip equivalent, because naturally I had no idea about the graphic novel thing. But it makes sense that it wouldn’t, I guess.
I wonder how big the split was when this thing ran online. I do know from Wayback Machine that as early as 2001 the Roomies! and It’s Walky archives were fully integrated with one another, but was this always online with the understanding it was a continuation or was there some attempts to distance the two?
As I recall it just started with a bunch of people on a rooftop.
Wait, is that a spoiler?
It doesn’t, actually.
I peaked ahead.
That’s how the original strips start. (Experimenting with different Gravatars!)
Or… maybe they don’t? It’s been a long time. I’m confused.
All right! To this day I’d have to say that It’s Walky! is my favorite webcomic of all time. It’s one of those comics I can binge-reread every few years, and it holds up surprisingly well after all these years.
Some people are happy that It’s Walky is back…but I’m sad cuz that means we can no longer link to the archives anymore.
http://www.joyceandwalky.com
whole thing’s still there for now :3
Spoilers.
And now I’ve renamed my bookmark
Me too! But I alphabetize my webcomic list, so now I’m going to be confused for a week, since now this site is between Hijinks Ensue and Multiplex, when I’m used to it being in between Penny Arcade and Shortpacked.
Ah. I made it easier for myself by keeping the “Bring Back” tagged onto the front–still accurate, if less injokey, seeing as these are reruns after all.
See, I always order my webcomic bookmarks chronologically, by update day i.e. a Monday tab with everything that updates Monday, etc.
Ha, me telling the Doctor about chronologically organized things…
I order mine chronologically, but by update time. So this is still up near the top with the other reliable midnight updates.
Ooh, thanks for the reminder!
RSS feeds, for reals. Save yourself tons of headspace and heartache.
Re: poll… screw Danny, I miss Billie. Monkey Master just isn’t the same.
Set your own Gravatar and be whomever you want to be at all times!
On the internet, nobody knows you aren’t a cat.
As much as I’d like to be Robin (or Leslie) on this site, I’d rather not be Robin/Leslie elsewhere on the internet. Hence the problem with actually setting a Gravatar. However, I am happy with Dina – far better than my previous Howard avatar.
What LeslieBean4Shizzle said. I could set up some more emails to keep them separated, but I’m too lazy.
And I kind of liked that I’d been just randomly assigned Billie both here and in the last two DoA gravatar reshuffles.
Monkey Master’s not a bad deal, though. Looks like he’s as good as it gets in this grav batch.
I know, right? The profile pic of Jason was perfect for my personality. Joyce is somewhat less perfect.
I have to agree. I dunno if Monkey Master suits me.
Well see, now I have to post just to check who I am now. So much for lurking
Great… I’m Joe now. Which means I have to stop lurking and hit on anything that seems even remotely female.
*walks up to random person, waggles eyebrows*
How you doin~
[Unholsters enormous gun]
So Willis, does your spouse’s persuasion mean the redraws will go beyond the first story arc?
Nope! Thank God.
Dang. The first appearance of Monkey Master is just… well, if I had a personal wish about a section to get redrawn, it would be that section. The original no-elbows version, I mean.
It’s Walky! was like the third webcomic I ever got into (the first two being RPG World and Avalon High if I recall), and was what really got me hooked on the medium.
Though I love Dumbing of Age to death, sometimes I miss the silly sci-fi plots, and seeing the Walkyverse’s main couple dating other people still throws my brain for a loop. Willis’s writing really develops a lot from the “shame era” of Roomies, and I really like the art style he settled into by the end.
Wiigii. It’s good to be back.
I think my path was Sluggy Freelance to GPF to Avalon to It’s Walky to a whole bunch of others. (I have a short attention span.)
I eventually lost interest in several of them, but IW! was one that endured. Someday I should find time to finish reading some of those to their conclusions.
PA! to xkcd to LFG!, then added The Gutters, the 8bittheater.
After that, I found two things.
One was a video detailing a guy’s top ten favorite webcomics.
Then Tv Tropes. Tv tropes.
I added two or three more by banner ads.
It’s Walky was from that random guy’s video.
I am very happy I watched it.
So many good stories.
I started with Kevin & Kell, back when there was very little else that existed, myself. I think Sluggy or Penny Arcade was next.
It’s Walky: Aliens are invading to conquer planet Earth, but nobody notices because everyone’s trying to sleep with each other.
Did you mean: Torchwood
Brilliant!
I was going to make this joke anyway.
SEMME. Outside the government beyond the police. Tracking down Purple Aliens on earth. The 21st Centry is when everything changes and SEMME is ready.
**slow clap**
Now what would happen if they switched casts?
First comic! Woooooo!!! Party like it’s 1999!!!
Aw yeah!
Mr Bow Tie? meh
“I’m so excited for a webcomic that’s not about being drunk and depressed!”
… wait, are we talking about the same It’s Walky? It turned dark pretty dang quickly.
It’s not about being depressed. It’s just depressing.
Well, Dina gets pretty depressed for a while.
So less about dealing with your depression by medicating yourself with alcohol, and more about dealing with your depression by medicating someone ELSE with alcohol.
It is exactly as (in)effective.
I always assumed that was the joke — that, to varying degrees and writing quality, they both end up about being drunk and depressed.
Yeah, day one …. again.
Goody.
And so, one of the best comics of all time starts again.
He was born! And then four years later we took this picture! A picture taken ten years before the story starts!
Let’s go!
I first read It’s Walky! all in one day, about six months after it had ended. And every subsequent read has been in binges.
It will be very interesting to experience it as a day-to-day narrative. I’m very excited to read the commentary and comments as we go!
Same here. My crazy odyssey to Willisville went This Modern World –> Duck and Cover (an old anti-Mallard Fillmore blog) –> Comics Curmudgeon –> Shortpacked! (for Funky CancerCancer jokes). And from there, I binge read Roomies! and It’s Walky! I think I missed a lot of development binge reading, so I’ve really enjoyed the one day at a time revisit.
I first read It’s Walky! all in about a week, six years after it had ended and the month Joyce and Walky! was supposed to go kaput. I can’t wait, either.
Yesss, it begins. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, since I wanted to read the retrospective version. I already know most of what happens because I read the tumblr and spoilers are kind of unavoidable there, but it’ll still be interesting to see where the Shortpacked! cast comes from.
It really is a shame that Roomies! ended on such a bizarre/dour note, I can really see how tired you were of the whole thing. At least we’re in a better webcomic now.
ahah what i got joyce as my gravatar that is like the polar opposite of me
truly these things have a mind of their own
Yay!!!! So excited!!!
Ha! I’m Jason here!
You forgot to tag Walky in this strip! That seems like kind of a huge oversight given, you know.
Characters: David Walkerton
I didn’t check earlier so I can’t prove it was already there, though
Characters aren’t in the tags on this site, they are in the Characters listing further up.
Immensely useful, given the sheer volume of characters in this thing.
The 49 of you who voted “I miss Danny” in the poll better have been sarcastic.
I tried to vote as I would’ve when I started reading in 2010, when I was super-pissed–not so much, I think, that Danny was going away, but rather that Walky was the new main character, as I found him super-annoying.
Danny: Genuinely insufferable
Early Walky: Pretending so hard to be stupid that he is also insufferable
I guess you’ve got a point, there.
I came in [briefly] for the first April Fool, to see who got the cursed assignment… came back for the Melonpool crossover… pretty much stayed by that point.
Also ended up rereading the whole thing at one point during the boringest desk job EVAR, which is how I know the originals were OBLITERATED FROM EXISTENCE to make room for the redraws that stopped just about where they catch fire [though I haven’t checked archive.org].
OMG, Sluggy Freelance! I loved that comic, why did I stop reading it? Archive binge time, see you guys in about 6 months.
Hmm, so who am I now.
Head Alien, yeah that works.
Now that I look at the banner carefully, I notice that Jason has a gun pointed at Joyce’s head and is arching his eyebrow conspiratorially. It’s almost as if he wants someone to dare him to pull the trigger.
When does this comic take place? Is it before Clinton’s second term ended? Before 9/11? Before Megatron ground the Earth’s city beneath his heel?
Hmm, it seems like it’s definitely during the Clinton Administration, but is there a way to pinpoint the date?
Also this comic definitely needs an adage or two. I should make one up.
How about “Nothing stops a standoff like a stowaway!” I figure if I keep using it, even where the context makes no sense, it will be adopted as an adage.
So, another question about the comic, a more serious one, this time. Are the first few panels meant to be a critique of American culture circa 1998, 1999? (Or is it 2000 already?) Or it an attempt to appear profound?
The exact date and time will be established in a few pages…
It’s late 1999. This will be established in-comic shortly.
Hey, new gravatars, nice!
YAY I’m not Mary anymore!
In my mind, I can hear those captions being read by Morgan Freeman.
I love that Clinton gets his own tag.
Originally posted:
December 25, 1999
That thing^