This was the best I could do.
on May 1, 2018 at 12:01 amIt was probably like four in the morning. I’d finished coloring this strip. I uploaded it into the queue.
And, frankly, I just bawled.
I bawled and bawled. Alone, with myself and my murder. And it wasn’t just Dina’s murder. I’d murdered an important part of myself. That’s what I’d done here and there, you see. I found parts of myself that I hated, or which frightened me, and I put them in characters and tried to work through it, and sometimes they’d have to end up dead. Like Ruth. With Ruth, I was murdering my depression. With Dina, I was murdering… I guess myself. My fear of not being good at anything. My fear of other people hating me. My fear of uselessness. Every social anxiety I had, I wrapped up in Dina and then put her in a box you could see through, had her take off her hat just this one time, and had her kasplode. PROBLEM SOLVED.
Earlier, when I’d decided to try to pull this off, I noted that Ruth’s death was a happy one. It was cathartic. She died with a smile, doing something heroic, and it was a turning point. A moment of understood salvation. But I wanted a sad one. A sad death. I wanted to try sticking the knife in and twisting it.
WELL MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, I GUESS, I thought, as I sobbed to myself in the dark in my room.
I emailed T Campbell in those wee hours of the morning. I didn’t give him specifics, but I told him that I’d done a thing in my story, and it made me cry. Was this weird? Was something wrong with me? And he answered back at some point the next morning, expediently once he’d woken up, since he is a good friend. And he reassured me best he could. He didn’t know what I’d done, but he did his best to tell me that crying isn’t a crime or anything. It just means I’m invested. Probably a good sign? Like, congratulations, you have empathy.
As of this strip, my buffer was a month long. At the time, it was the longest my buffer had ever been, and it would not be this long again until Dumbing of Age. But that month finally passed, and T read this strip, same as everybody else, and I remember him saying … (paraphrased, obviously) “I didn’t think you would do THAT. Dina was the heart of your strip. Dina is obviously the heart of you. That was… that was a thing.” Or, tl;dr: “Jesus fuck, dude.”
That month’s buffer of strips, I waited it out. I didn’t draw anything that month. I couldn’t bear to.
I’d broken myself.
Ahem.
This is a good and a fine link to include. I would also like to request kittens.
HOW ON EARTH DID I MISS THIS STRIP?
Ahem.
I apologize for the outburst.
But…HOW ON EAR— ::Signs off quickly::
Re-reading the Shortpacked finale also really helps:
http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2188
Thank you for reminding us of that. Dina deserves to be happy in at least one continuity.
Also, this: http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/127759067732/i-declare-this-canon
When you think about it, it’s kind of odd how much we all connected with this version of Dina. She wasn’t exactly a main character (regular certainly, but not a main like she is in DoA). From a strictly storytelling point of view one would think it’s Walky we’re supposed to identify most with, it is his story after all, and yet Dina became one of those characters that touched all of us. Reading Willis’ description of her and what she represented to him really sheds light on why she works so well. They say you should write what you know, and what does anyone know better than their own insecurities?
Knowing it was coming I’ve been dreading this strip, but I must admit it’s good to know that this was just as a powerful a moment for the author as it was for us and that she wasn’t thrown away on a whim simply for dramatic effect.
Yeah, there’s just something really heartfelt about this version of Dina. She struggles with herself and even does some seriously messed up things, but… all of that just builds up perfectly into this one amazingly horrible moment. It’s legitimately one of my favorite parts of It’s Walky, just because of how effective her whole arc is at making you feel.
You know, I’d forgotten when I read the hat arc in DoA that Dina didn’t take off her hat in IW until her death. I don’t think I noticed the alt text on DoA either, or if I did, I didn’t connect it to this.
And, to Willis – I too have bawled over the moment when I killed a character of mine that I loved. Or, to put it another way, I know those feels.
The first time I read Roomies/IW! all the way through, this was the strip that really got me. I’d been keeping up with Shortpacked! since shortly after it started, and knew Dina was going to be gone somehow (since by that point basically every other major SEMME member had shown up at least once), but… I never expected this.
It was so unexpected, and so raw, and knowing you yourself hurt from it isn’t surprising. It’s just that kind of moment that sticks with you.
Even Mike Warner is utterly shocked by this to the point of no mask.
I was going to comment that too.
The thing that gets me about this comic is that Dina’s last words are perfectly tragic. An apology for not being able to do better. For not being better. She dies full of regrets and that is all too human to me.
The only thing that could possibly make this strip sadder is that story.
I got my start with Shortpacked, because I liked funny Batman and Transformers jokes. When the continuity started showing up, I decided to check out Roomies and It’s Walky. Dina quickly became a favorite, and I couldn’t wait for her to show up in Shortpacked.
And…eventually she did! That was like the Futurama Seymour retcon. I swear my heart started beating again for the first time in years.
I would say this is one of the greatest strips Willis has ever written, it somehow manages to feel drawn out and sudden all at the same time. We know she’s going to die, but he gave us just that slight glimmer that Walky would reach her in time, and he doesn’t, and all that hope he gave is snatched away in an instant. Also, it’s not sad because she dies, it’s sad because she died in a way that made her story feel incomplete.
I actually read the original run of It’s Walky, but after all these years I remembered very little of it. But I remembered this one.
I agree; it’s probably the greatest strip Willis has done.
Ow.
*hugs*
I knew this was coming for the last few strips. Didn’t make it any easier to read though.
Some say a good artist emotes themselves through there work, some say a good author is willing to put there cherished characters through the wringer. As an end result of doing so you get something that feels real even if it’s for a moment and even if that feeling isn’t the most pleasant you can still say the story made you feel something.
When I first saw this I felt…well I can’t really say on one hand I had my gripes about Dina but on the other I still had feeling of she’ll shock because I was expecting it plus there was that feeling of ” I know I don’t like her but did I really want to see your dead?” The awnser was no no I didn’t. But it still happened and it happened when you least expected it because that’s how life works or in this case a good imitation of it.
Famous last words for such a lovely character. She did all she could. I first read this comic a few months after her demise and yet it was the most tragic thing I’ve read out of a comic strip.
Meanwhile, DoA Dina just got one of those random, inexplicable chills down the back of her neck.
I think this was the only strip to ever make me feel guilty. I didn’t like this Dina much, but I never really wished for her death. But when it happened, I was glad it wasn’t anybody else. That’s what I felt guilty about.
Dina was my favorite character. I actually thought about just skipping this one, because it really hurt the first time.
David said at the time that this one tore a hole in him; it tore one in me too.
I don’t think that Mike and Walky would ever stop reliving this moment. For years to come, Amber and Joyce would have to hold them and assure them that it was going to be alright.
You don’t think this is why Mike took the job at McAwesome’s, do you? An excuse to get drunk on a daily basis? Is a he a “numb drunk” as well as a “nice drunk”? (The reason Walky never became a drunk is because he cannot hold any liquor whatsoever.)
I’m not sure but I do get the impression, forward of this point in the Walkyverse continuity, Mike was desperately looking for someone to punish him and kill him painfully.
Oh, damn. Never thought of that. Either of those.
I knew this was coming, yet it is still so sad
If sound can get through the glass, then I’m not sure the explosion would be contained.
The word balloons have zigzag tails. Intercom is on.
When us internet comics guys were getting into the field, I remember a lot of railing about the endless sameness of the comics that we weren’t. Superman would never stay dead, Garfield would never grow old and make that final visit to the vet. Maybe we were unsophisticated and learning as we went, maybe we’d never be considered “real” comics by certain readers, but at least we’d be free enough to do the things we saw those other guys not doing. So take that, Grandpa.
Yeah, turns out killing important characters is really hard.
I’ve managed to kill a few important, “main” cast members in my career, but even in those instances, the “core” cast, the characters who were part of the series at inception, tend to survive. This bothers me on some level, because I feel like it’s more natural and sends a better message for the new to supplant the old. But it’s tough to do it any other way.
It’s not just the fact that they’re your personal Horcruxes, although that’s definitely part of it. It’s also the fact that you’ve gotten readers to invest in them and their survival. Death retroactively colors any other story they’re in where they survive the threat of death and/or grow. It even colors the stories where they fail but keep on going. Where there’s life, there’s hope, and even given a life as bad as Dina’s was getting, there was some chance that she and those who wanted to help her could turn things around for her. As a reader, I certainly clung to a little hope on that front.
I have mixed feelings about Dina’s return in Shortpacked. Like her incarnation in Dumbing of Age and especially the recent strip where [redacted for non-Patreon subscribers], it’s probably an indicator that David has shed a lot of his self-contempt as the years went on, and that’s certainly a good thing.
But there’s no denying the power of this moment, and I’m glad it wasn’t reversed in any meaningful way when other It’s Walky characters were still in play. It may have hurt to do this, but it mattered.
The first time I read this, I only felt slightly annoyed, because I never expected her to STAY dead in a comic where ressurections are a thing.
By the time I realized she wasn’t, too much time had passed for it to have any impact..
I knew she was going to die, but I really didn’t think she was going to die yet.
I thought we had more time.
I wonder when you did decide to pull this off, Willis? I remember you saying Ruth was introduced with her dramatic end in mind. When reading It’s Walky! for the first time, I somehow had the impression Dina was like that – maybe not right from her first drawing, but from when she started being developed as a character instead of an extra body.
I mean, you can sometimes see where this strip wings things, but this never felt like that. Dina is brought into things with just enough success to make her a person to care about. Then she’s hammered into a Charlie Brown, the sort nobody likes in universe and so everyone outside sympathizes with. Then this is the apotheosis of that. Then…I forget where it goes next.
The moment itself made one heck of a flashbulb memory, though. Maybe Gwen Stacy was like that for people who were there, I don’t know; for myself, I don’t remember anything else in comics with quite that force.
Goddamn. I hadn’t seen this strip before. And then the story along with it made me tear up. I’ve wished I could just blow up all my insecurities. But it would probably go about as well as it did here. What are we really blowing up?
Bawling time.
god
willis
why
Well written and well done Willis. Thank you for sharing your story and a part of yourself!
The bomb blew Dina, that post blew my feels.
Blew UP, blew UP!!!! “Blew” alone has a different meaning.
Dina
It’s bad when other webcomic artists recognize what this meant.
I. Remember this one. I remember reading it for the first time. I remember how hard I cried.
These days, tears are harder to come by. But the punch to the gut, even knowing it was coming– even rereading for my third, fourth, fifth time—
That’s never changed.