So as I was finishing last week's edition of The Classic, I was reading my comics and I came to Dumbing of Age.
David Willis' comic is a quasi reboot of his many other comics, none of which I've read (I've seen maybe 3 strips of Shortpacked, maybe). I say quasi reboot because he turned back the clock on all of them and sent them to college. There they deal with the common tropes of college and a lot of LGBT stuff because. . . I guess because it's topical, but that's hard to say because again, I've never read any of the other comics.
Then someone pulled out a gun.
Backing up. Becky is Joyce's is best friend from home. Becky randomly arrived at the school to visit Joyce, but mostly she was running away after being kicked out of the all Christian school she was sent to because, well, she's gay. Her father came looking for her and it looked, initially, like it would be a hijinks thing where he would nearly catch his daughter, but something would get in the way. Pretty standard stuff, and if well done could be a pretty funny running gag.
Then he randomly spots her and pulls out a shotgun. Considering this was just after a series of actual shootings on college campuses, I have to wonder at the timing of this. I know most comic artists don't keep extensive buffers (Howard Talyor is an exception rather than the rule), so it's possible that Willis decided to change this route right after the real world events happened, it could also just be a coincidence.
It's kind of ballsy to take on such an event directly, even if the opening move was a Jurassic Park joke. The point is that such tragedies are hard to joke about, at least right away, and given the more realistic nature of Dumbing of Age, odds are good this will not have a good ending, something even pointed out within the comic itself.
The storyline isn't over yet, but it's likely not going to have a happy ending. I suspect that someone will be shot (not killed, shot, there is a difference), and originally I thought it might be Joyce, but that's probably a bridge too far at the moment. Still, when it ends, I'll try to follow up on it.
Until next time kiddies.
David Willis' comic is a quasi reboot of his many other comics, none of which I've read (I've seen maybe 3 strips of Shortpacked, maybe). I say quasi reboot because he turned back the clock on all of them and sent them to college. There they deal with the common tropes of college and a lot of LGBT stuff because. . . I guess because it's topical, but that's hard to say because again, I've never read any of the other comics.
Then someone pulled out a gun.
Backing up. Becky is Joyce's is best friend from home. Becky randomly arrived at the school to visit Joyce, but mostly she was running away after being kicked out of the all Christian school she was sent to because, well, she's gay. Her father came looking for her and it looked, initially, like it would be a hijinks thing where he would nearly catch his daughter, but something would get in the way. Pretty standard stuff, and if well done could be a pretty funny running gag.
Then he randomly spots her and pulls out a shotgun. Considering this was just after a series of actual shootings on college campuses, I have to wonder at the timing of this. I know most comic artists don't keep extensive buffers (Howard Talyor is an exception rather than the rule), so it's possible that Willis decided to change this route right after the real world events happened, it could also just be a coincidence.
It's kind of ballsy to take on such an event directly, even if the opening move was a Jurassic Park joke. The point is that such tragedies are hard to joke about, at least right away, and given the more realistic nature of Dumbing of Age, odds are good this will not have a good ending, something even pointed out within the comic itself.
The storyline isn't over yet, but it's likely not going to have a happy ending. I suspect that someone will be shot (not killed, shot, there is a difference), and originally I thought it might be Joyce, but that's probably a bridge too far at the moment. Still, when it ends, I'll try to follow up on it.
Until next time kiddies.
Willis actually has a 3-4 month buffer on Dumbing of Age at any given moment.
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