Swerve!
on October 18, 2013 at 12:01 amMan, I am really glad Ruth is narrating this, because otherwise I have no idea what’s supposed to be going on.
Man, I am really glad Ruth is narrating this, because otherwise I have no idea what’s supposed to be going on.
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No idea what the art in the second panel is.
There’s some interstate lanes, and the back of a highway sign, and a car, and I think that’s Optimus Prime at the bottom.
It’s the third panel that has me completely baffled.
Third panel is supposed to be from inside the truck’s vantage point. There’s some hands pushing hard right on the wheel.
Okay, yeah, I see it. That’s the inside of the windshield, and the headlights of the oncoming cars. And that dark shape in the corner must be one of Optimus’s fists.
I just realized I can’t tell whether Ruth is buckling up after unbuckling from leaning out, deliberately unbuckling, or buckling up now after not having buckled up in the first place.
The latter.
Pardon my Klatch, but I can’t tell which of the three options is “the latter”. Unless the third would be “the lattest”?
Latter always refers to the last option, no matter how many have been listed. Though it’s technically only supposed to be used when listing two options, so if we cared about grammar rules (which we don’t cuz they dumb), the correct response would have been “the third,” as opposed to “the latter.”
A rather perfect name for this strip.
No, I hate this part. Not now, why Willis why?
Get it out of the way early, get it out of the way often.
I can ftaste the impending doom already.
The ftaste is strong with this one.
“Do you know a word that begins with the letter ‘F’?”
“Fsteak.”
May the fork be with you.
Excellent.
Your futile existence has no mea~aning~!
If I stop reading Roomies here, nothing bad can ever happen!
It’s just fiction. You don’t have to accept the ending they give you.
No, wait, Optimus Prime, stop! He’s not a Decepticon! He’s a jerk, yes, but that doesn’t make him a Decepticon!
Don’t be roboracist, Kernanator, Autobots kill too.
well look at the color. it’s obviously nemesis prime. that jerk
if it was optimus the collision would be with danny.
Wait, Ruth, you’re only now putting your seatbelt on?
Yeah, Ruth – Click it or Ticket!™
Clunk-click!
I know, right? She’s the smart immature one and she hops into a car to chase down a drunk driver and doesn’t fasten her seat belt? That’s just asking for a human cannonball achievement.
I believe a large mass of metal is what’s going to kill you Ruth. That and Danny.
No Ruth, Optimus Prime, not Swerve.
I didn’t realize Ruth’s parents were a car accident.
Okay, I burst out laughing at that one. I feel bad.
Doubly potent if you know the backstory in the Dumbiverse!
“… They said they died in a car crash.”
“Your parents were a car crash!” (Not quite as memetic as “You’re a wizard, Harry” and having to work off the top of my head, but still.)
Yeah, I originally had to reread this like 5 times the first time through to understand what was happening. SO MUCH HATCHING!!!
NEEDS. MORE. CROSSHATCHING.
If you hatch one more time I’m gonna be cross.
Man, still not prepared, am I?
We were never going to be prepared.
You know, Danny gets a lot of hate for what happens next, because he was out driving drunk. And that’s fair, because, you know, drunk driving.
But rereading this strip, it makes me think that the accident is all a result of the truck losing control, entirely incidental to Danny’s idiocy. Am I wrong about that?
Ruth seems to think it would help if he swerved. Maybe he’s too drunk to realize you should avoid hitting semis head on?
He’s just blundering into an accident, rather than causing one. Pretty much classic Danny.
I’ve always given the truck the largest share of the blame, but the fact remains that if Danny were sober he presumably wouldn’t have continued blithely driving straight towards it and what happens next might have been avoided.
Yeah, the truck caused the accident. But if Danny hadn’t gotten drunk, stolen Ruth’s car, and gone out for a DUI – which are all blameworthy acts – neither he nor Ruth would have been there to be involved in it.
Of course, if Ruth hadn’t made her own stupid decisions, this night could have ended with Danny dead, and Ruth all sad, blaming herself for it, and getting comfort sex from Billie. Which would clearly be the best of all possible worlds.
(At least until Sal blows it up.)
Without Danny to fetch Walky could have confronted her himself and bought the time needed for the Cheese to show up.
Or maybe Sal snaps when she finds out that Danny’s dead, and they lock her up – somewhere that’ll actually hold her – before they discover the PBR.
Would this be suicide or vehicular manslaughter?
I’m sure it will all end well.
Of course it will end well.
I mean, Roomies is just a familly friendly humor comic about a college, not a dark sci-fi epic. Nothing can seriously go wrong … unless the writter would happen to be a sadistic monster ?
Nah.
Of course not! Why do you think his twitter handle is “ThankyouWiliis!”
Thank you for the clean-comic posting, Willis. I had been reading the panels -entirely- wrong. The whole situation makes a lot more sense now.
The art upgrade really enhanced this one — I had no idea what was happening first time I read this strip, the only exception being Ruth buckling up. I still think that’s a bit weird. She knew she was going after a drunk driver, and while she may not have been expecting anything special to happen, maybe she should have foreseen unusual circumstances.
*notices the redraw on Tumblr*
It’s not too late! C’mon, man! If you can redraw it, you can change it! You have that power!
He also has the Touch.
That would be this redraw. You’re welcome, readers of the future.
And just for completeness, here‘s the non-Tumblr link.
Are we about to witness the drama tag being pulled for reals?
I want the next comic to be a one-panel look at what Danny’s doing/thinking during this 10 seconds. I just want to see him drumming on his steering wheel with his eyes closed, or staring at the oncoming headlights and thinking “C’mon headlights, I’m clearly morally superior to you, why isn’t my passive-aggressive quipping causing you to change your direction?”
oh no…
It’s time, isn’t it…?
Hold me
Ruth’s fine, someguywithakatana. Ruth’s safe.
She’s gone to a better place. A place where Billie wears glasses and has curvier curves. A place where Danny is just some loser that one of the girls on her floor dumped on day one. A place where the art is like the redraws all the time. A place without regrets.
I’ve been dreading this ever since the reboot started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07So_lJQyqw
Originally posted:
March 17, 1999