Betty
Posted on March 21, 2021 by David M Willis

180 thoughts on “Betty”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Oh, classic Roomies! strip, how does Willis redraw thee? Let me count the ways…

    *gets “awaiting moderation” throttled trying to post more than one link*

    eh, it’s like three anyway

    1. Wack'd

      Off the top of my head, there’s the Sep 10 2007 Joyce and Walky!, the Sep 10 2012 Dumbing of Age, and a partial homage in at least one Shortpacked!.

      1. RassilonTDavros

        We also get Sal’s side of the conversation here, and a partial homage in the final Roomies! strip.

        1. Wack'd

          I’m losing my touch!

        2. Clif

          Just so there is a link. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/06-strange-beerfellows/fifteen-2/ .

        3. Ana Chronistic

          y’all forgot http://www.itswalky.com/comic/ten-years/

  2. Thag Simmons

    We are going to overdose on meta in these next plotlines

    1. Mra

      probably

    2. VanVelding

      Hope so.

    3. Charles Spencer

      Yeah, hopefully it won’t get it the way too much for those of us who don’t know the references.

      1. Lys

        Get in the way? No no no, it’s showing you the way! To boldly read all of It’s Walky! where no one outside the DoAverse hath quoted before

        1. Charles Spencer

          I tried It’s Walky a few years ago. I couldn’t get into it at all. I felt like I was missing backstory, and it was all too dark for my tastes.

          I got farther with Shortpacked but the talking car lost me.

      2. Needfuldoer

        Don’t worry, those who do will contextualize the references in the comments (whether it’s asked for or not).

    4. ValdVin

      I disagree with your characterization of meta as ever being too much.

  3. Sirksome

    You plant the seeds and a decade later when it pays off people think your a genius! Respect the process, Doris!

    1. Sirksome

      Also Joyce is way better at this than I thought. That’s silhouettes, use of negative space, shading, interesting shot composition, and panel layouts. She’s supposed to be a beginner!?!?

      1. Ray Radlein

        Also, simple character designs and bold lines easily reproducible on cheap newsprint

      2. RassilonTDavros

        I would joke about her previously having written and drawn Spry Slurs for her high school newspaper, but unlike Willis she actually was just flat-out home-schooled so who the hell knows where she got the skillz.

        1. John

          This is her best attempt at copying the early work of the guy who created Dexter and Monkey Master.

        2. Rowan

          Can you tell me what this is a reference to?

        3. Rowan

          NO I AM NOT BEING JOE

        4. Rowan

          ok, Lucy’s cool

        5. Jason Rivest

          Yeah she is! 🙂

        6. Jhon

          She’s NightGirl!

        7. Sunny

          Gravatars are but fleeting. Do not give a fuck about who they depict.

        8. Demoted Oblivious

          And yet Face with honesty thy given Fucks whence fortune and fate do impart upon thee a delightful conjunction of same.

        9. BarerMender

          I was stuck as Galasso for a long damned time.

        10. Needfuldoer

          This is basically the first strip of Roomies! (the first Walkyverse comic), but with Joyce Julia substituted for Danny and brunette Dorothy Doris for Joe. Even the artwork is similar.

          http://www.itswalky.com/comic/and-now/

        11. a/snow/mous/e

          but what is “Spry Slurs”?

        12. John

          Willis drew a comic called “Sly Sirs” in high school.

        13. Needfuldoer

          But since Joyce is in college now, I guess we’re skipping that one.

          (Unless it turns out she was drawing a Sly Sirs analogue in her high school years, just for her own amusement. That would explain her previously unseen, “not good but competent” cartooning skill.)

      3. Deathjavu

        I imagine it’s not easy to intentionally add specific mistakes back into a drawing style that has evolved past them. I think this is better drawn than the strip it’s aping, though I did not go through the trouble of finding it to check.

        1. BBCC

          http://www.itswalky.com/comic/and-now/

          The OG strip.

        2. Jenn

          Oh my god, thats amazing!

        3. John

          It totally is.

        4. Wack'd

          Joyce including teeth is the big tell.

        5. Regalli

          http://www.itswalky.com/comic/and-now/

          Well there’s no barely-off-panel sexual harassment, for a start. And the subsequent strip doesn’t have Joe coming in through the window, just starts with him back in the room. So yeah, definitely technical evolution but this is still very much The First Roomies Strip. (That Julia does in fact look better than Original Roomies Joyce, checking. Less of the Big Poofy Forehead Hair Thing a lot of Roomies characters had.)

        6. Regalli

          http://www.itswalky.com/comic/i-hate-math/

          For reference there, especially since we’ve all linked the first one by now. Looking at the silhouette shot versus the side views in the Roomies strip is… striking.

        7. Jeff K!

          Jeez, that just sent me back. I’ve seen the first strip many times since, so the effect has been blunted, but the first Joyce strip had me remembering the smell of my high school computer lab where I shouldn’t have been reading webcomics…

        8. ValdVin

          That sent me further back, to being in college before there were graphing calculators. (For those who took a course without them: You’re not missing much by doing it all with a TI-30.)

        9. Deathjavu

          I mean, some of my math professors didn’t let us use calculators at all for the tests, which was actually probably a good idea.

        10. Jhon

          You had calculators?
          We had to draw our graphs in the snow.

        11. Clif

          And it was uphill both ways.

        12. ValdVin

          Well, I don’t know what kind of math courses you’re referring to, but I remember physics, and fields&waves. When it came to calculus or DiffEq a calculator wouldn’t have improved my results.

  4. Rainhat

    [Dances gleefully]

  5. y3k

    We’re being pulled into the recursive singularity. THE ENGINES CANNO TAKE IT, CAPN!

    1. Nancy Potts

      If this is in a Scottish accent, that no-t-cannot has an official spelling – cannae. Wild, right?
      The engines cannae take it, Capn!

      Fwiw:
      Do not = dinnae
      Will not = winnae

      I don’t mean this as a correction – just a neat fact.

      1. Needfuldoer

        It’s more specifically a reference to Scotty from TOS.

        To be fair, James Doohan was from Vancouver and his parents were Irish…

    2. davidbreslin101

      My favourite is “disnae,” for “does not.” Confusing when you’re talkng about animation…

      1. Clif

        My favorite is dinnae soar in Icarus and the Time Machine.

      2. Nancy Potts

        Yes disnae! I forgot about that

  6. C.T Phipps

    I predict Dan will be the only member of the cast never adapted since Joyce does not remember he exists without his hat.

    1. Needfuldoer

      The polar opposite of their Walkyverse dynamic…

  7. Octopus Ink

    OK, fine!
    I’ll go fetch my cosmic 4th wall metatext spackle for all these cracks.
    (I keep expecting Rod Serling to lean into frame and start narrating.)

  8. RassilonTDavros

    THE SELF-PARODY HAS BEGUN!

    Initially thought I was on the wrong page.

    1. Transgressingwaffle

      Same

      1. Clif

        Not saying.

      2. BenRG

        I kind of thought that maybe Willis had accidentally uploaded an old Roomies strip instead of today’s DoA. Then a laughed out loud.

    2. King Daniel

      Ssmes

      (which is what my keyboard initally decided to spit out instead of “same”)

    3. Deanatay

      Parodiception!!

  9. Cattleprod

    Just after midnight, I load up both DoA and the J&W rerun in separate tabs. I saw this first and got really confused.

  10. drs

    Is “President Doris” actually her name? First name ‘President’, middle name ‘Doris’, last name unknown?

    (Like Fuhrer President King Bradley where it turned out ‘King’ was actually his first name, though maybe not the first name he was born with.)

    1. Thag Simmons

      Her last name is Kenner.

    2. Bicycle Bill

      I remember back in the day when Garrison Keillor would talk about one of the residents of Lake Wobegon, Senator K. Torvaldson.  According to the story, he wasn’t elected to anything or was even a politician; his parents had named him “Senator” because they liked the sound of it.

      1. ValdVin

        Hah, yep. His parent were immigrants IIRC.

    3. Varangian

      Excuse me his name is Jugemu Goko no Surikire Kaijarisuigyo no Suigyomatsu Unraimatsu Furaimatsu Ku Neru Tokoro ni Sumu Tokoro Yabura Koji no Bura Koji Paipo-paipo Paipo no Shuringan Shurigan no Gurindai Gurindai no Ponpokopi no Ponpokona no Chokyume no Chosuke Bradley and you will put some respect on his name

      1. Spencer

        How amusing, my name is also Jugemu Goko no Surikire Kaijarisuigyo no Suigyomatsu Unraimatsu Furaimatsu Ku Neru Tokoro ni Sumu Tokoro Yabura Koji no Bura Koji Paipo-paipo Paipo no Shuringan Shurigan no Gurindai Gurindai no Ponpokopi no Ponpokona no Chokyume no Chosuke Bradley.

        1. Deanatay

          Weird, mine is Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern- schplenden- schlitter- crasscrenbon- fried- digger- dingle- dangle- dongle- dungle- burstein- von- knacker- thrasher- apple- banger- horowitz- ticolensic- grander- knotty- spelltinkle- grandlich- grumblemeyer- spelterwasser- kurstlich- himbleeisen- bahnwagen- gutenabend- bitte- ein- nürnburger- bratwustle- gerspurten- mitz- weimache- luber- hundsfut- gumberaber- shönedanker- kalbsfleisch- mittler- aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm.

        2. Shen Hibiki

          And I’m Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

        3. Clif

          You killed my translatorbot. Prepare to die.

        4. Axel

          When you go out, do people always shout?

        5. Roborat

          I was waiting for this. I am also very impressed you went to the effort to get the whole name correct.

    4. hof1991

      After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people named their children Mister and Miss so white folks had to call them that.

  11. Wack'd

    I think I know how this has to end, and it’s with Joyce and Walky both being beaten by Tom Chestnut and his comic about a robot catgirl who plays video games.

    1. C.T Phipps

      She’s going to hire Mary instead as her anime fundamentalist cartoons are treated as satire.

    2. Deathjavu

      I’m all in on Dina winning with Dinosaur Comics.

      1. Diner Kinetic

        ^options the poll should have had, but didn’t^

      2. Wack'd

        People keep suggesting that, ignoring that Walky points out Dinosaur Comics already exists earlier in this very storyline, and also Dina owning a Dinosaur Comics shirt.

        1. deathjavu

          I missed those references. I just keep saying it because I think it would make for maximum comedy

        2. Needfuldoer

          Great artists steal.

    3. Rabid Rabbit

      Or, just to make the commenters scream, Malaya, who seems to have some actual artistic skills, according to the art prof.

      1. Regalli

        On the one hand, we have no inclination Malaya has either the time (as a roller derby player) or the storytelling skills and inclination to draw a comic.

        On the other hand, I would in fact read The Daily Adventures of Fuckface. (To save on time, every strip is the same three panels of Fuckface sitting in a tank, turning his head to face the audience, and turning back to previous position. Every day. There is no internal monologue, or background, or dialogue revealing offscreen shenanigans by Fuckface’s unseen owner. Just an iguana, sitting there.)

        1. Regalli

          Also only ever submitting a single strip and getting paid $5 per day would probably be the one way this gig pays anything resembling fairly.

        2. Sporky

          So it’s Garfield but way better?

        3. Regalli

          I suppose a bit like those ‘Garfield but without Garfield’s lines’ strips, but again: There is only one strip. Maybe if Daisy insists on variation, Malaya will prominently add a bowl of fruit slices to the side and sometimes there will be one fewer slice. Maybe one week it’s just the Fuckface staring directly at you panel for several days. (I’m assuming Malaya decided this was enough of a hobby to get a tablet and is drawing digitally rather than manually redrawing these panels. Alternately, they photocopied the one strip and keep making copies to submit.)

        4. Clif

          But in the last strip Mike runs in and kicks him out of the panel.

        5. Regalli

          That’s the finale, kicking off successor comic Malaya Vs Mike.

          Just the longest action sequence Malaya can draw before she gets bored with near-contextless violence. So it’ll last like, five years.

          Maybe six, if there’s enough material from making Fuckface a Kaiju.

  12. C.T Phipps

    I feel like Willis wants to draw Joyce’s comic instead of Walky’s.

    (Because it’s awesome)

  13. DailyBrad

    Snrrk, I love it.

  14. BBCC

    Hey, watch the 4th wall, Willis!

    1. Proto_Eevee

      the 4th wall is dead and never coming back

      1. Wack'd

        Diegesis is overrated.

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Yeah, Linkara’s already had to move once in the middle of a pandemic. Who knows what horrible punishments Viga will unleash if it happens again?

      seriously though what does it say about me that I can no longer hear the phrase “fourth wall” without thinking of Linkara

      1. BBCC

        You have taste in comic reviewers? 😛

  15. Agemegos

    Lamp?

    1. Deanatay

      Their name is Assistant, or That One. This is actually where they and Doris meet for the first time, they will be instrumental in her rise to power.

  16. Proto_Eevee

    is Joyce’s comic also gonna include bad star trek references?

    1. Keulen

      No, it’ll only include good Star Trek references.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Has Joyce even seen Star Trek? Carol probably would’ve banned it because it depicts a hivemind collective as a bad thing.

        1. Clif

          Pretty sure the Federation is depicted as a good thing.

          For the truth, just ask Elim.

        2. Needfuldoer

          I meant the Borg, but you’re not entirely wrong either.

          DS9 probably got banned though; the premiere episode all but establishes Sisko as Bajoran Jesus.

        3. Clif

          Well, yes, but it was only so Bajor would eventually take its rightful place in the Church Federation.

  17. Bryy

    oh my god

    it’s so beautiful.

    1. Clif

      Sh! If we let Willis know that he’s bringing us joy, he’ll have to compensate.

  18. Stephen Bierce

    *plays “Black Betty” on the hacked Muzak*

    1. jeffepp

      Bam-a-lam.

  19. MrSmith

    I’d read it

    1. Clif

      But would you subscribe to Joyce’s patreon?

  20. Regalli

    I wouldn’t be shocked if Walky gets the job, if only because Willis is using the meta jokes so quickly they risk running out, but.

    Does dunking on Roomies ever truly get old? I love everything about this strip. Julia’s sunglasses being essential, and also the only way we could differentiate her from a Roomies-era Joyce drawing. Doris literally just being Dorothy with dark hair (drawn in what honestly looks more like a J&W!-era style to me but honestly I can’t totally gauge given the posing anyway and of course, we don’t have a reference for that design in Roomies.) The fact that the only thing Joyce can come up with for establishing Doris’s presidential ambitions is electoral college votes, specifically. The fact that ‘Betty’ has been slotted into the role of Sal, thus not actually implying she’s Julia’s love interest because intent is clear but at the same time I am 100% bringing it up in the continuing saga of Joyce’s Unintentional Biness.

    It’s beautiful. I love it. Now I want to see Walky doing the exact same strip but with Gary the T Rex and a legally-distinct Monkey Master pastiche.

    1. Wack'd

      I mean, there’s also the fact that both WV!Sal and DOA!Becky have run away from home and watched their parents die, in roughly that order.

      1. Regalli

        … You know I actually hadn’t thought about that but damn, that is in fact a parallel there.

        Now I really want Joyce to get the job just so we can see a Betty and Julia version of the Power Booster Rod scene, both as a sucker for platonic love saving the universe and because there is a RICH well you could plumb out of that tying into the Dumbingverse characters.

        1. Sombrero

          -Betty?
          -Hi, Julia? (drops Rooster)

      2. RassilonTDavros

        WV!Sal pretty much got split into three: DOA!Dorothy (dumps Danny when college begins to work for the government), DOA!Becky (childhood friend who runs away from home, shows up at college unexpectedly, loses parents, and harbors ultimately-unrequited love for the protagonist), and DOA!Sal (general Sal-ness).

    2. Clif

      Disagree. There is no end to the number of metajokes. There is an extremely rich backhistory to riff on.

    3. Needfuldoer

      Dorothy was a late J&W! character. Adapting her Doris to the early Roomies! art style probably would’ve made her less recognizable.

      1. Regalli

        Agreed. Doesn’t mean I’m not curious as to how the Round Face-Framing hairdo would look with the Roomies Poofy Forehead Thing, though. (Probably awkward, but the curiosity remains.)

  21. Bendy

    So Julia Grey now has to go on for long enough for Joyce to do the dumbing of age style reboot where Julia is in college again and draws a comic for her college paper until we reach infinite recursion.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Nah, this is Roomies!, where it all started. She’s not due for a DoA-style world reboot for over a decade.

      1. Clif

        A decade their time, which has to be at least a couple of centuries in ours.

  22. Lia

    sick silhouette shot tho

  23. Sporky

    Whoa, this threw me for a loop. For a second I was like “wait, I just looked at Joyce and Walky?”

  24. brionl

    I predict it will be neither Joyce, nor Walky that gets the job, but dark horse candidate Mary with a strip about Hymmel the Humming Hymnal.

    1. brionl

      Also, if Maggie hand lettered that, I commend her penmanship.

    2. Jhon

      Actually lettered in Maggie Comic Girly..

      1. brionl

        I would buy that font.

  25. Spencer

    …

    I want a Julia Gray spinoff.

  26. ESM

    My favorite of the changes between Joyce Roomies and the actual historical Roomies is the way “college” is underlined both times. You can FEEL the “Enh? Wokka wokka!” coming off this strip

  27. Sporky

    I wonder how much easier this was to draw than current Dumbing of Age strips.

    Then again, it’s one thing inking over an old strip you made almost a quarter-century ago. Creating brand-new material that emulates the style of your old work is a whole other thing, and probably harder.

    1. Thag Simmons

      No colours, so substantially easier I assume

    2. RassilonTDavros

      I think the first panel border might be straight-up traced.

  28. TheKelliestKelly

    I was comparing this stirp to the original Roomies! strip and I noticed the line art on that lamp is really crisp. Good job, Joyce

  29. V

    genuinely thought I had clicked onto itswalky where the old roomies strips are archived for a sec lol

  30. TheKelliestKelly

    Here’s Joyce’s first appearance in Roomies (not counting the “College Ho” prequel) for anyone else who wants to compare early Joyce to Julia Gray.

    http://www.itswalky.com/comic/i-hate-math/

  31. Kernanator

    Willis has disappeared up his ass so far that he’s become a Mobius strip.

    I mean that in the most admiring way possible.

    1. Jenn

      A mobius… comic strip? 😉

    2. Sombrero

      Ah, the Mobius phase of butts’ disease!

  32. Kamino Neko

    Doris is already less annoying than Joe.

    And I assume Betty is Julia Grey’s Becky…

  33. jeffepp

    Willis, there’s no need to be down on yourself. Your handwriting is plenty girly.

    1. ValdVin

      As a southpaw that reverse slant looks familiar. Any chance that Maggie is left-handed?

  34. Tarpo

    Uncredited Collaboration.. tsk

  35. Bicycle Bill

    Willis, I don’t know how much control you have over the ads that come with the website, but there is one for some sort of air purifier/filter that comes in from the riight-hand side and covers almost 25% of the screen.  Please try to find some way of getting rid of it.

    1. BBCC

      You need to report the ad to Hiveworks. They’ll get rid of it.

  36. Xccj

    Hah for a moment I thought there was a rerun strip or something. Fun homage!

  37. AbacusWizard

    “You all look so familiar somehow…”

  38. Kaz

    Willis, how does it feel to roast past-you?

    1. Clif

      He’s had experience.

  39. Major Matt Mason

    Spring is sprung
    The grass is riz
    I wonder where
    The humor is!

    1. Needfuldoer

      Burma-Shave

    2. Roborat

      Eat at Arbys.

  40. Bagge

    Needs more Betty.

  41. Raen

    So I’m guessing Julia and Betty dated in high school and are still nominally dating?

    1. RassilonTDavros

      I could absolutely see Joyce being willing to acknowledge this totally-not-a-fictionalized-self liking ladies, without acknowledging it in herself.

      Granted, I really hope we don’t dredge up the Joyce/Becky ship because a) Dina, b) they’ve both said they consider each other sisters at this point, and c) Joyce suddenly realizing she’s had feelings for Becky all along would undercut the hell out of… basically all of Books 5-6 IMO.

  42. Keulen

    I don’t know why after the meta of the previous strips with Joyce and Dorothy talking about Joyce’s comic, but I didn’t see this coming somehow.

    1. Clif

      Oh ye of little faith.

  43. Teddae

    joyce, it would be optimal to make joyc–I mean julia and doris end up together in the comic

  44. BenRG

    About 11 years from now, Julia and Doris will by lying on a rug together and wondering about how different their lives might have been in just one or two things had been different at the time they first met.

  45. StClair

    I find myself wondering if phones have reached an evolutionarily stable form, or if in another 20 years, people will look at that first panel in the same way that Danny and the handset looks to us now.

    1. Daibhid C

      “Oh, yeah, I remember when combadges were those things you had to hold.”

      1. Clif

        In the really old days the combadges had wires attached, which made it really difficult to walk around.

      2. StClair

        One of my favorite bits, in an episode full of them, is when Ben Sisko slaps his chest… and then remembers, oh right, they’re still using flip phones in this century. (Meanwhile, Dax is smiling and waiting for it.)

  46. Acher4

    For a second while the site was loading I was like
    “Wait i clicked on Dumbin not It’s Walky”…. oh…. OOHhhhhhhhhh

  47. Nenja

    I hope Joyce gets the job so we can get more of this.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Second.

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Thirded.

  48. Juanoku

    Well that caught me off guard, and in all of the right ways

  49. Suet

    It’s Dumbing

    It’s Julia

    Julia of Space

    Let’s have a look at more strips, shall we?

    1. Kamino Neko

      Dormmates!

  50. sillygoose

    With a guest appearance of You/Aide in the background!

    1. Deanatay

      It’s That One/Assistant in Joyce’s world.

  51. Rabisch

    Dorothy see herself in that character and she don’t like it.

  52. Lone Duck

    Great comic, not sure the format will be suited for a college newspaper? My money is that Joyce and Walky will both be given the job, forced to work together leading to hilarious circumstances.

  53. Deanatay

    Dorothy suspects she’s being called out here…

    1. Clif

      Dorothy suspects no such thing.

      She knows.

  54. Dutch

    NO THIS IS TOO META BRAIN CAN’T DEAL

  55. bcb

    Oh my Cheese, this is perfect!

  56. Mo

    what the hell, it’s not even september 10 yet

    1. Clif

      March 21 is the new September 10.

      You have to allow for the effect of covid affecting the procession of the equinoxes disrupting the time streams.

  57. Antonio Tyler

    Joyce, you have a future in comics if you keep at for…8000 days

  58. Amazi-Stool

    Lamp is here!

  59. StClair

    and Betty, when you call her, you can call her Al

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.