722

Clever
Posted on October 12, 2015 by David M Willis
web2015rampageNow that I have your attention with all hullabaloo that up there, this weekend I'll be in Austin, Texas, for the seventh Webcomic Rampage!  Here's a list of other folks who'll be there with me: Alex Woolfson: Artifice, The Young Protectors, R.K. Milholland: Something Positive, E.K. Weaver: The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, Michael Terracciano: Star Power, Dominic , Deegan: Oracle For Hire, Garth Cameron Graham: Star Power, Finder’s Keepers, Dax Tran-Caffee: Failing Sky, Ngozi Ukazu: Check, Please!, Amanda Lafrenais: Love Me Nice, David McGuire: Gastrophobia, Lar deSouza: Looking For Group, Least I Could Do, GABO: Albert the Alien, Melanie Gillman: As the Crow Flies, Joel Watson: Hijinks Ensue, David Malki !: Wondermark, Nikki Ward: Life in Limboland LOTS OF PEOPLE!  You should try to make it if you're in the area!  It's always a lot of fun, which is why I always make sure to come back.  Hopefully I'll see you there!

722 thoughts on “Clever”

  1. Nightsbridge

    ABORT, DO NOT PASS GO, RELOAD LAST SAVE

    Can I just say how fucked up it is that Toedad is POINTING HIS GUN where he thinks Becky is? His finger isn’t ON the trigger but one finger is extended toward it, ready to fall on top of it whenever he wants to fire, and he is POINTING a presumably LOADED WEAPON at where he thinks she is. Some of us thought he would use it to go after Dina. I don’t know that this is better

    1. Ana Chronistic

      well, that IS good gun practice, regardless of my feelings on the matter

      1. Inkblot

        Good gun practice yes

        Good father practice no

        1. Inkblot

          Oh look, he’s wearing cameo pants. Did he come fuckin’ prepared to hunt?

        2. Arianod

          What if he always does?

        3. Cedric Y. Berman

          I remember seeing those cameo pants once in the background of a shot. Must have been a cameo appearance.

        4. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          What’s the point of wearing camo trousers to go hunting if you’re gonna pair them with a fucking brilliant-white t-shirt? 😛

        5. Chris

          Perhaps he forgot his jacket in the car?

        6. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          Or he just wanted to show off how great his washing powder is at getting his whites 3 shades whiter than the other leading brands. I dunno. 😛

        7. TheEighthShader

          Hey Im the new guy :3

        8. fogel

          Wearing camo in the city if you aren’t in the military and in uniform is … well, something to wonder about?

        9. Damned Scholar

          Not if you live in the Midwest.

      2. Nightsbridge

        Hearing that toedad knows how to handle a weapon, surprisingly enough, does not make me feel better.

        1. Plasma Mongoose

          “Don’t spare the bullets, shoot the child.” – NRA Bible.

        2. Ana Chronistic

          “The shootings were a senseless tragedy, but still none so tragic as the failure for armed white dudes to live out their John McClane fantasies and save the day” – also the NRA

        3. Caleb A

          yeah lets paint a few psychos, toe dad included, as gun carrying maniacs and blame the guns. no one ever uses a gun to legitimately protect themselves. learn to think critically we don’t blame the car for a drunk driver killing someone in a car crash. guns are a tool a useful tool that deserves respect and knowledge to use but a tool none the less

        4. Androiddreams

          a drunk driver wouldn’t have killed the person if they’d been, say running down the street shouting “beep-beep!” and not actually in the car though. funnily enough it’s the car that does the killing. and honestly enough I don’t know what they’re defending themselves from. I have never been in a situation where I thought “A gun would make this better.” Is it defense from other people with guns? Because that’s a bit backwards. we should really all carry around Nuclear weapons, just to be extra safe.

        5. Kryss LaBryn

          I lived in a rural area with cougars, bears, and coyotes* and two small kids. You’d better believe I have a gun to protect my family; a cougar chewing on your kid or a pack of coyotes bent on tearing them apart do not respond at all to threats to call the police. Or Fish & Wildlife.

          If a human is threatening me or mine and I need a weapon I will use the first thing to hand which in all honestly is more likely to be a knife, sword, spear, or axe than a gun. The gun is a useful tool that is used for hunting for food, and chasing off the odd bear or coyote (you don’t see the cougars until it’s too late). I don’t have it to protect ourselves from home invaders but taking away all guns indiscriminately does threaten the safety of people sharing an environment with dangerous wild animals.

          You will never see me supporting concealed carry, though; even pistols make me nervous. Luckily I’m Canadian so only the police, Brinks guards, and the odd person who is working in the bush and got a special permit have them–and the latter can’t wear them in town.

          *Also wolves and bobcats but it’s those first three that are the biggest danger to kids. If I listed everything I had to protect the chickens from as well we’d be here all day.

        6. Rowen Morland

          Like how all world super powers feel the need to have nukes to be safe from other nuclear nations?

        7. kelticat

          My nephew once noted that the majority of gun violence occurs in urban and suburban areas. Not much occurs in the rural areas, probably because people in rural areas actually know what guns are supposed to be for. i.e not shooting people.

        8. Wait What

          A spear?

        9. extremist343

          @ Wait What Yep, primitive as you might think the weapon sounds it can actually be made using more modern materials and be quite effective at catching people off guard, not to mention: How many people do you know, who know how to defend against a spear?

        10. Gareth

          Hey now, while it is the psychopaths that ruin it for everyone, it’s the ease with which they can get ahold of guns that harms the most people. If you limit them to knives, they can hurt a lot less people, and allows the police to have a stronger weapon than them (gun v knives rather than gun v gun) meaning more of those people would survive their attacks, to be placed into a mental hospital or jail.

        11. Androiddreams

          I believe we have control laws and penalties put in place for the prevention of drunk driving. I approve of your suggestion that these should be applied to guns, and that they should take your gun license away (I hope you guys have to have gun licenses and it’s not a case of walk in off the street) if you’ve committed a series of fouls which show that you’re probably a dangerous person

        12. Li

          ^^^

          People who try to make this argument are comically unaware of how well-regulated the automobile industry is by comparison.

        13. Kryss LaBryn

          Well, in the States, apparently, anyways. Canada has more heavy regulations; it is far tougher to get a firearm’s license than a driver’s license. Which is definitely the way to go, I think.

        14. No Name

          It’s still a good idea, Li. It just needs a lot of work to make it viable.

        15. No Name

          And yes, I am aware that that is the pinnacle of understatement in the USA.

        16. qman

          In the US, you can get a car just as easily as you can get a gun. Which is to say, you find someone selling and hand over some cash. You don’t need a license to buy a car, and you don’t need a license to buy a gun. How you choose to use it, legally or illegally, is up to you, just like anything else.

          The idea that more laws will prevent people who are already breaking the law from doing anything is asinine.

        17. Rutee

          Yeah, schlub, people aren’t ‘deterred’ by their illegality – the illegality drastically drives up the price of the item. This makes them harder to get, and leads to few of them being used in crimes. Look at a country like Poland – rampant crime, but very little gun deaths, because they actually do a good job of keeping guns unavailable outside of the strict areas where they ARE legal (Such as for hunting). The mafia has guns, but the bulk of criminals? Nope. And most people who do something illegal with a gun WEREN’T planning that when they got it anyway.

          Christ.

        18. Androiddreams

          it won’t let me reply to kryss so I’ll reply to myself. there is a concession on the part of wild animals, but how many cougars and stuff do you find in heavy populated areas? I feel like people who want to do stupid shit normally find a way, but we should still make it harder for them by putting down stricter measures. then again I live in urban london, where I’ve never seen a gun (apart in the new forest in sussex where my dad’s friend was a forest ranger) I’ve fired air rifles and have never heard of a local shooting. in fact, the last time the police wrongly shot a black kid (they’re not as racist over here) we had the london riots, where most policemen then worked 16 hour shifts in riot gear and non lethal weapons. (2-3 years ago)

        19. Damned Scholar

          qman: Every car comes with a title that establishes its legal ownership. In order to drive a car, you have to have a license that you have to take a test to earn (and is renewed every few years). You also have to have insurance in case you happen to hurt someone with the car.

        20. Clif

          Hey. I NEED nukes to protect me from the government.

        21. qman

          Ruthee: Implying that “gun deaths” are somehow worse than regular deaths? That’s a loaded statistic. It’s also completely unrealistic to suggest that the US could “get rid” of guns like that. There are more guns than people in the US today. Only a very small fraction are ever used illegally. Guns are not the problem, violent criminals are. They’d injure and kill people regardless of their access to guns. The way address that is to fix the criminal justice system and the way we treat mental health issues.

          Damned Scholar: Sure, that’s what you need to do to drive on public roads legally, but it isn’t what you need to do to obtain a car legally, and use it illegally. You also don’t need a license to have legal title to a car. It’s very, very easy to go on craigslist, pay cash for a car with signed title, and drive it illegally. People do it all the time.

        22. Cait

          Statistically? Practically no one uses a gun to legitimately protect themselves.

        23. de Combys

          Then you should read what Kryss LaBryn said.

        24. Disloyal Subject

          Statistically? Practically no publicized gun use is legitimate defense.
          Fixed that for you.

        25. Ana Chronistic

          just to be clear, I’m actually kind of agnostic on gun control, since I do understand and know responsible gun owners are not a threat, it’s more that the NRA could totes be doing SOMETHING in the wake of mass shootings, like
          – promoting gun safety
          – sponsoring training courses
          – donating to mental health support
          – basically ANYTHING other than knee-jerking “guns are a RIGHT and for protection against BAD GUYZ”

        26. qman

          Mental health support is a big one, and the most overlooked in these cases. Getting help with a mental issue today is social suicide, and could prevent you from ever owning a gun, having a job, having a driver’s license, or get you forced to be on pills against your will for the rest of your life. It’s insane. Intelligent people will forego getting help because they know this.

          That said, keep in mind that these mass shootings all happen in “gun free zones” – schools, federal government property, etc. It’s much easier to shoot a bunch of people when they can’t shoot back.

        27. Daniel Taylor

          We make car drivers buy insurance to cover the possibility of their recklessly injuring someone else.

          If US gun owners – and sellers – followed the same rules as car owners, the US would have *much* less of a problem.

          As Kryss points out, Canada has a damn good reason for high gun ownership… but Canadians don’t have a mass shooting problem. That’s because they’re not dealing with the toxic fake-masculinity entitlement cultural baggage of the US.

        28. Pat

          The fact itself is surprising, though.

        29. Falen-Desu

          except that with the way he’s holding the gun, he’s probably going to miss his intended target, and even if he doesn’t miss, he’s probably going to have broken fingers, possibly broken shoulder, and his gun will launch 10 feet behind him.

        30. Opus the Poet

          That rifle is a .22 caliber, you could absorb the recoil by pinching it between two fingers.

        31. thejeff

          It’s a .223, I believe. Assuming it’s the Ruger Varminter people have pointed out.
          More kick than a .22.

        32. Screwball

          If he HAD of fired it, holding it like that, I can see it turning out more or less like this…

        33. Arianod

          And it shouldn’t.

      3. Rartorata

        Good gun practice would be to point it at the ground. Better gun practice would be NOT TO BRING A HUNTING RIFLE TO RETRIEVE YOUR DAUGHTER.

        1. Twinkle Toes the Berserker

          Geez, it’s like you want him to be reasonable or some shit.

        2. The Other Mike

          Want him to? Yes. Expect him to? No.

        3. Lin

          I was raised around guns (Montana – for non-USians, a very rural state, nearly all families have multiple guns). And the very first thing that we were taught was that you NEVER POINT A GUN AT SOMETHING THAT YOU’RE NOT WILLING TO KILL. My brother once got grounded for a month for jokingly pointing a bb gun at me (which was unloaded). If you’re trained in how to use a gun, the only way that you could do what ToeDad was doing is if you actually wanted to kill your child.

        4. de Combys

          That seems like a “reassuring gun culture”.

        5. Joolie

          THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

          I was raised in a gun-loving family.

          The first rule, EVER, is you damn well be intending to KILL whatever it is you are pointing that gun at. If you’re not intending to kill something, point that gun at the freaking GROUND.

          So that dude? Either he is not, in fact, handling a gun correctly, or he is really intending to kill his daughter. >:(

        6. fogel

          Are we sure that that isn’t what he intends?

        7. No0ne

          I wouldn’t bet either way

      4. Mr. Mendo

        Someone with experience with rifles *would* know to never place their finger on the trigger unless they were about to fire, so he’s not gone completely ’round the twist, yet.

        …which actually makes his actions worse!

        1. Ana Chronistic

          Well, realistically, were we supposed to expect it to get better?

          Toe: “…what the fuck am I doing? BECKY, I GIVE UP, I’ve come to my senses, you and your little beast girly can be yourselves and I’ll spring for the wedding!”

          yeaaaaaaah

        2. Nightsbridge

          Hearing he was probably trained just tells me that not only is he willing to shoot, but that his aim is probably pretty good too.

        3. Lumpy Frogsnuggler

          He has no sights mounted on his rifle. He probably won’t hit much past 50 feet.

        4. Nightsbridge

          Is awful in a way that I was not necessarily expecting, they say, finishing their thought ten minutes after the original post.

      5. Lumino

        The Three Rules of Gun Control:
        1) Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.
        2) Do not point at anything you do not intend to shoot.
        3) Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.

        Depending on how crazy he is, he might be following all three.

        1. piratepenguin

          4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

          There’s no such thing as a miss, there’s just hitting something you’re not aiming at.

        2. Jenny Islander

          …as the local kid learned when he “borrowed” his dad’s new bear rifle out of the locked gun cabinet, “borrowed” the ammo from the locked drawer, and went up the mountain to plink at cans with it. First anybody knew was when a hole appeared in a wall a foot from somebody’s head in a furniture store about half a mile away. Nobody got hurt–luckily.

          Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
          Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
          Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
          Bullets go until they stop in something.

        3. Damned Scholar

          Newton, who?

        4. No0ne

          SIR ISSAC NEWTON IS THE DEADLIEST SUN OF A bongo IN SPACE

        5. No0ne

          Ohhhh there’s an auto-censor. Bongo is a much better word than what I was intending there totally.

        6. hof1991

          You forgot: treat every hunter as if be were loaded. Good advice when deer hunting.

      6. coolhandluke

        Well. Good gun practice would be having it pointed at the ground until you’re ready to start shooting.

      7. Abdomino

        No, it is absolutely not. Never point your gun at something you don’t intend to shoot is one of the four rules of firearm safety. So is keeping your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire, yes, but any violation of those rules is unacceptable.

        The alternative is that he DOES intend to shoot his own daughter if she doesn’t go home with him. That’s a thought I don’t really want to entertain.

        1. Ana Chronistic

          I said good gun practice, I didn’t say a brilliant fucking idea

          (read: this fucker’s posture is 100% intent to kill SOMETHING)

    2. Riku

      His gun safety discipline is 100% spot on when what the gun is pointing at is a home intruder and not your own fucking daughter.

      1. desolation0

        I thought the problem was that she isn’t fucking.

        1. Opus the Poet

          AFAWK she did but the wrong gender, which makes it worse.

        2. John

          Willis has said that Becky and Kaitlin didn’t actually get much farther than kissing before they were interrupted. I don’t think she’s gotten past first base with Dina, either, despite Dina’s Joyce-breaking allegations.

      2. Thor

        To be technical, if you are using a firearm for home security, it should be a shotgun loaded with birdshot. Even if you are highly trained with firearms, there is a very good chance (over 50% for almost all people) that you will miss, due to the non-standardness of the situation. Unless you are at point-blank range, a direct hit with birdshot will probably not kill your target, which is good, especially if you are pumped full of adrenaline with a twitchy trigger finger, ready to fire at anything that startles you. Chances are most likely that the “intruder” is a teenager sneaking back into the house, or a family member getting a midnight snack.

        And even if you are dealing with a bone fide interloper, you still do not want to miss with anything larger than birdshot, as the wayward projectile will plow through sheetrock like tissue paper, with a much-too-high chance of striking someone in another room, in a neighboring house, or a car passing by on the street.

        If you are serious about home protection, get a dog–any kind. They are much better at distinguishing friend from foe in the middle of the night than you are, and 99% of would-be intruders will abort their mission if a dog starts barking. Also the chances of one child using the dog to kill another child are practically nil.

        1. Jenny Islander

          ALL. OF. THIS.

          I grew up in pre-video-game gun culture (get off my lawn). Guns were tools, like chainsaws: only stupid people in movies used them as weapons. The only people who kept actual kill-with-bullets guns for home protection had known bear trails near their homes. Burglar deterrents involved buckshot, rock salt, or loud dogs.

        2. Strangeshapes

          rock salt? For the really monstrous slugs?

          (Sorry to reveal my ignorance, but what do you do with salt?)

        3. Liokae

          Shotgun shells loaded with rock salt, like in Kill Bill. Salt in wounds hurts; large chunks of rough salt CAUSING wounds and then being lodged tightly in them is even worse. It’s (usually) non-lethal, but it’ll put someone down HARD.

        4. Noxx

          More myth than practice, but you can (and people have) load rock salt into a shotgun hull over a low power load as a deterrent round. Bit like being swatted with a broom. In a similar fashion, loading cornmeal over revolver loads is a satisfactory way to shoo coyotes without harming them.

        5. Caleb A

          they would replace the lead shot in a shot gun shell with large chunks of salt. the salt would penetrate the skin just like the shot and hurt like hell but be mostly none lethal because it would break apart rather the penetrating deeper you are literately salting the wound. the only problem is now you have a really pissed off person that is not a big fan of you Que revenge and or civil lawsuits.

        6. Deathstalker

          I know someone who claims to have been shot with rocksalt and described it as very painful, he used some colorful words to express it. Apparently it was in a situation not unlike this one, it was the shooter’s daughter and him. He got away from the guy and it didn’t leave any permanent damage.

          Basically a way to use a shotgun as a non-lethal weapon.

        7. Screwball

          I’ll Second Jenny’s “ALL. OF. THIS.”

          Another non-lethal option is a beanbag shotgun round. Has the mass to hurt like crazy, even drop a person, but because it’s a flexible bean bag, it doesn’t penetrate the skin, just punches it really hard.

        8. Jenny Islander

          They use solid rubber bullets at relatively low velocity to shoo away bears at some parks: kick ’em in the butt and they (usually) run.

          Noisemakers are also a good option. Air horns, vuvuzelas, dogs…a big loud dog is worth its weight in gold. A little loud (woofy not yappy) dog that is not visible from the entry points is worth a big dog’s weight in gold and costs less to feed.

        9. Arianod

          Someone put this in gold letters on a plaque where everyone can read it, please.

        10. Leorale

          I strongly agree.
          Readily available guns are also an enormous suicide risk.

        11. buckybone

          Ding ding, you just used my go-to argument against easy access to guns…suicide is very much a spur-of-the-moment thing, making it harder to attempt really does reduce the rate of it happening.

        12. Kryss LaBryn

          Yes! If you feel you MUST have a weapon on hand in case of midnight intruders–get a sword. A nice, sharp sword.

          Can’t hurt someone who is supposed to be there unexpectedly. No risk of long-range damage to an innocent from bullet ricochets or misses. Best of all, unlike both a gun and something like a baseball bat, anyone who grabs it and tries to wrestle it away from you will have very nasty damage to their hands. Plus, hey, if you can use a sword properly, great; if you can’t, though, as long as you hit them with the edge it’ll do damage and even a smack with the flat will hurt (if you want to learn for free join your local SCA).

          Plus actually it seems to scare the shit out of burglars to come face-to-face with someone with a sword. One guy I knew actually kept a sword mounted horizontally just above his front door; one day someone accosted him at his door and demanded he put his hands up. He did. Then he grabbed the sword.

          He won.

        13. Opus the Poet

          Still needs some training to use correctly. guy in South America was untrained when 3 people broke into his house and all 3 survived. They will be horribly scarred all over their heads for the rest of their lives, but they’re alive.

        14. Hijean

          That sounds like a pretty good outcome to me. I mean, murder is presumably not the goal here, right? And getting your face sliced up is going to be a pretty good deterrent to continuing to rob someone.

        15. Jacknoir

          both hunting and personal defense in the name of self reliance are
          valid reasons for gun ownership but they are not the reason why the 2nd amendment exists.

          The right to bare arms was penned by men who had just won a war for independence from a corrupt and tyrannical government. As part of the process of forming a new government a system of checks and balances was put in place to limit the power of that new government. the second amendment was one of those checks and balances, the last line of defense if you will against the newly formed government becoming just a corrupt and tyrannical as the old, should all else fail the people would need the means to free themselves once more from tyranny and for that they would need to be armed.
          not to stop a common robber or rapist but to give the people the means to defend themselves from atrocities carried out in the name of the law by jackbooted soldiers who are “just following orders”

          look at the erosion of rights and freedoms, the invasion of privacy and ask yourself if that is any less a concern today than it was in the 1770s?

        16. thejeff

          Alternately, it was to ensure an armed populace from which to call up a militia to put down insurrections, like the Shay’s Rebellion, preceding the Constitutional Convention and the Whiskey Rebellion just after. The Whiskey Rebellion was much more easily quashed, since the federal government could actually raise a militia, rather than rely on private efforts.
          Also, again to ensure an armed white populace to control slaves and forestall and stop potential slave revolts.

          In fact, given the competing interests and philosophies among the drafters and the compromises necessary to pass the Constitution, probably all those, including yours and others, played a role.

        17. Jacknoir

          The context differs but the Idea’s the same, If the people are to govern themselves then they need the power with which to do so.

          hopefully it’s something that will never have to be used but it’s still better to have that option and not need it than to need that option and not have it. rather like a first aid kit or a spare tire…

        18. thejeff

          And by the people governing themselves you mean the federal government raising a militia to put down a tax rebellion and the use of armed force to guard against slave uprisings? Cause I don’t really see what context makes that the same as anything I’m going to support.

          Unless it’s so broad as just “be prepared with guns in case you need them for whatever”, in which case hunting down straying daughters fits just as well. [desperate attempt to wrestle the post into relevance]

        19. Rutee

          …I’m sorry, what planet are you from again? On Earth, the nascent US was formed in anger over completely justified taxes, and ultimately was born of a desire for complete autonomy, with the bill footed by the English Crown. Had the colonies received the ‘representation’ they claimed they wanted, they would have 3 parliamentary seats, and those laws would still be passed. The cries for ‘representation’ fall on deaf ears given just whom the bulk of the states chose NOT to give that representation to on independence – landed white men. A few states permitted women the vote, a few states recognized non-white men (specifically).

          Individual instances of outrage were generally horrible. The Boston Tea Party was not some high-minded revolt against unjust taxes – those taxes materially raised the quality of life for the people there (They came with killing a monopoly – it was now actually reasonable to buy tea legally for the common person, and it was cheaper than the smuggled tea from before). The Tea Party was anger by local merchants who had connections with smugglers, thus allowing them to be the sole ACTUAL source of tea. With the breaking of the LEGAL monopoly and a cheap tax, they suddenly were no longer the ACTUAL monopoly, and were very pissed about that. “But those taxes were raised without representation”! Yeah, so was the defense of the colonies – Meriken militias were woefully inept in the Seven Years War. Given that Britain won the conflict in general, I’m not sure what would have happened had French forces dominated in the colonial theater, but it would certainly have lead to material harm for the people who lived there, for at least some time. Britain footed the bill (and the actual human military cost) of that war, even in the Americas – to complain about taxes raised to help pay for the deficit caused – even without representation – is churlishness even without accounting for the fact that those taxes were generally levied as fairly as possible (at least on the legal level).

          Probably the worst outrage was the Proclamation of 1763, wherein Colonists were told not to move further west than the existing colonies – after refusing to pay taxes, Britain could, quite bluntly, not afford forts in Native American territory (And to be quite clear – this is land the British had agreed belonged to them, and which they on some level did want to keep in native hands). Without the ability to pay for forts (Denied because Meriken are fucking whiny babies who hate taxes), the citizens couldn’t be protected from the consequences of breaking treaties (colonial militia only operate within a colony, you see), and when those citizens did it anyway and died, welp, their survivors were pissed (as were racist jerks who felt Native lands were really their own, as were wealthy landowners who wanted to expand even further out west)

          Continental forces also conducted the war with a roughly expected level of jackassery – it never ceases to amuse me how Meriken tell ourselves that the British were so horrible in the war, spreading stories of how British commanders might force an individual to do something as awful as – gasp – lead them through a pass. But where the Continental forces were victorious, tory civilians – people who’d never raised an arm against them, and who were just as much citizens of the colony as they were, merely ones who for any of a dozen reasons (Including greed! The Tories, and the British Crown, were not saints either, by any stretch.) chose not to support rebellion – were evicted from their property (distributed predominantly amongst the already wealthy landowners) and forced into exile.

          Those militias were not authorized to protect the ‘common man’. The Continental Congress and the States already decided the ‘common man’ can fuck himself – the electoral college was devised with the express purpose of keeping the uneducated from having a proper vote, in addition to the unlanded (Typically not given the vote anyway, though that was decided on a state level). They wanted votes filtered through the upper class, because they wanted control filtered through the upper class – hence the talk of a ‘well-regulated’ militia; this was to be more of the same. But yes, it was viewed as the ‘last line of defense’ against a corrupt government by noted dead white men who had their experiences colored by what they just went through, and wrote a particular thing. Unlike many other things those noted dead white men said, it was not obviously horrible, and I understand how it persisted. But we have had nearly 250 years to observe the effects. Those noted dead white men were wrong; the harm generated by those weapons does NOT equal the ‘tyranny’ they protect us from by their mere existence, and at any rate although tricky, actual rebellions still get their hands on real weapons. The prevention of firearms only briefly stops REBELLION – what it ACTUALLY stops, is murder. That the country lacks the political will to stop their own murder at their own hands is tragic (I remind you, the constitution is allegedly a living document that can be changed. I mean, it can’t REALLY be changed, but it allegedly can be), but is not a sign that those noted dead white men were actually correct. It merely means it will continue to happen. Over, and over. And there’s not a god damned thing we will do to stop it.

        20. Rutee

          whoops, that’s ‘unlanded white men, along with pretty much everyone except landed white men’, for who they chose not to give representation to.

        21. Jenny Islander

          There are enough true stories about SCAdians and related hobbyists using edged metal as a deterrent to fill a book. I think my favorite is the one about the person who had a delivery job that took him to some bad neighborhoods. So he always carried a combat-ready replica of a warrior’s axe. He said that everybody and his brother had guns, but anybody who would carry something like that was seen as too crazy to deal with.

    3. Durandal_1707

      Oh god, I knew Dina would be the target of this, but I didn’t think it’d be because she’d be dumb enough to try to rush a guy who’s probably like 6 times her mass and has a gun.

      Dammit Dina, you do know that you’re not an actual dinosaur, right?

      1. Undrave

        At least she’s now way too close for him to use his gun on her…for now.

        1. Durandal_1707

          I can’t imagine she’d be too difficult to shake off.

        2. Joshua503

          I’d rather Dina have stayed hidden, if only because a loaded gun is a dangerous thing to hold onto in CQC, especially in a university campus, and even more so when there’s another person in the close vicinity, who will probably come back due to hearing a fight.

        3. Arianod

          The good thing is that Toedad is probably aware of the danger too: if he is lucid enough to keep his finger off the trigger, chances are he’ll throw the gun aside while dealing with Dina, who isn’t going to let go easily. Then he’ll have to get the gun again; all that is time that Dina is buying for Becky to get away and for other people to intervene. So she might have had the best idea… except for the fact that she’s bound to end up with several broken bones at the very least :(((

        4. Kryss LaBryn

          The rule of thumb in these cases, I understand, is if they have a knife, run away; if they’ve got a gun, run towards them. And then jump them.

          A gun (especially a rifle) is a distance weapon; right now it’s virtually useless to him except as a club, and even for that it’s not in position. This is probably the best thing she could have done, barring escaping completely, which of course when someone with a gun is chasing you is in no way guaranteed.

          Also I can’t believe none of you have said “Clever girl” yet. O.o

          Clever girl.

        5. Bagge

          Clever girl

      2. airyu

        I think to Dina though she is making good on her own internal promises to protect Becky. Plus, to be fair to Dina, having a gun in one’s face doesn’t exactly make one objective. I can’t say this might not be my gut reaction, even if I regret it later, because I wouldn’t be thinking 100% clearly in a situation like this.

      3. Benwhoski

        The good news is that Dina’s superpower is going unnoticed when she isn’t actively trying to be noticed. She can maul ToeDad, slip back into the woods, and be invisible again.

        1. Durandal_1707

          That only works in social settings around people that don’t really care about her, though (being all caught up in some drama of their own). I wouldn’t rely on that when there’s a nutcase actively hunting you down.

      4. Cerberus

        As the alt-text notes, this was going to happen. Dina has already demonstrated that her aggressive stance is to emulate raptor behavior. She has been demonstrated to appreciate Jurassic Park on an entertainment, if not an accurate Paleontological level. And well…

        She made a promise to protect Becky.
        http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/likelike/
        A promise that she did not make lightly as a factor of her limitations. In her eyes, this is a key component to being a good girlfriend and a good person. To do everything in her power to waylay Becky’s father so as not to jeopardize her life or her housing and to protect her in any way possible. Is this complete bass-awkwards and dangerous? Will it end with her getting beaten up or shot? Quite probably and while seemingly romantic, it is a guarantee that this is not what Becky would have wanted as Becky understands her father is dangerous and wants her loved ones to be safe.

        But it is definitely what Dina would feel she had to do, intelligence of doing so not-withstanding. It is her duty to protect her mate and her loved-ones in her eyes even though that is not true and there are key differences between dinosaur mate behavior and human romantic interactions. And so logic and reason take a back-seat to ill-advised badassery.

        And I really hope she escapes mostly unscathed.

        1. Lasenna

          I just wanted to congratulate Will on easing the tension with this something as funny as this great Jurassic Park reference.

        2. Lasenna

          Sorry I should have said David, I just said Will because I was thinking Willis.

        3. talantus

          Yeah. Dina developed her own style of martial arts. Jurassic fu ^_^

        4. shazz_smifff

          I said Dina was a rapter 2 days a go, of course the tactic she’s employing requires at least two other rapters.

        5. Disloyal Subject

          Becky’s elsewhere; that’s one.
          Amazi-girl and campus police are almost certainly not here yet, even if they’ve beem contacted and deployed immediately after, so we’re still one raptor short.
          Cue Sal.

      5. Amake

        She could bite his nose off before he lets go of the gun. If that doesn’t take the fight out of him, there’s still eyes, groin, mouth and throat.

        And I think she should. We’re looking at a known gay-hating man six times her size who brought a gun to look for his lesbian daughter. There is nothing she could do at this point that isn’t valid self-defense.

        And I think she would. Dina doesn’t kid around much.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          I hope you’re right. The quicker the violence is ended, the sooner we can relax.

        2. Screwball

          Never underestimate the lengths a person will go to for someone they care about. I’ve heard some scary stories…

    4. chatokun

      There’s a lot of talk about pointing the loaded gun at his daughter, but I’m wondering if it’s possible it could be tranq instead? I know those usually look different though… but it is a thought.

      1. saki

        There’s no way a guy like Toedad even owns anything but deadly ammo.

        1. Riku

          Eh I know plenty of red necks who have bb guns or something to let their kids use. There’s also the possibility that it isn’t loaded and he just brought it for intimidation

        2. saki

          I have trouble imagining Ross doing that, but that strong opinion of him is based a lot on all of the conclusions I drew when I saw him pull out a gun and immediately assumed it was loaded. But it is a possibility, huh. .-.

        3. Calmcalamity

          The problem is that it looks very similar to the Ruger No.1, and I don’t think he’s the type to make empty threats.

      2. Ana Chronistic

        from the Wikipedia article (with Vladimir Putin as the main image, huh):

        Tranquillizer darts are not generally included in military or police less-than-lethal arsenals because no drug is yet known that would be quickly and reliably effective on humans without the risks of side effects or an overdose. This means that effective use requires an estimate of the weight of the target to be able to determine how many darts (if any) can be used. Shooting too few would result partial effects only, while too many can kill the target. According to James Butts, Santa Monica, CA Chief of Police, “Tranquilizing agents don’t affect everyone uniformly. Therefore you cannot predict whether or not you have a sufficient dose to tranquilize the individual. Second, any tranquillizer will take time to enter the bloodstream and sedate the individual. If someone is advancing on you with a deadly weapon or a threatening object, there’s no way a tranquillizer would take effect in the two to three seconds it would take someone to seriously injure you.”

        (hope that coded correctly, never used it here before and no preview)

        1. Ana Chronistic

          “cite” does nothing! Good to know.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquillizer_gun

        2. Cholma

          I can read the quoted text just fine in your original post, so whatever you used, worked for me.

        3. Nightsbridge

          Maybe Willis fixed it?

        4. Kamino Neko

          The quote worked fine. The cite didn’t.

        5. Blob Marley

          Can we focus for a second on the fact that the gentleman being quoted is named “James Butts”?

        6. Andrusi

          Afflicted with terminal Butts Disease, presumably.

        7. Ana Chronistic

          I was gonna crop before that but decided that was too good not to leave in.

      3. Marie

        A tranq is pretty scary and kidnappy, so I could picture it even though I can’t see him buying it

    5. Cerberus

      When one’s property is possessed by a Satan that thinks that property can say no to one’s rightful owner, one must be prepared to act at a moment’s notice and end that Satan… by any means necessary.

      Which is to say, yes, it’s a whole frightening level of fucked up and I think I’m going to be filled with dread until the moment that Toedad is safely restrained by an authority figure.

      1. Jacknoir

        more likely just that his daughter would be better off dead than gay, sort of like how you’d shoot someone in the head if they were bitten by a zombie or a vampire(the non sexy kind).

        wrong yes certainly, unthinkable no.

    6. DJTsurugi

      no no it is fine, you are correct that is a seriously fucked up thing he is doing. also I am laughing my ass off at Dina and her antics, why I gotta love Dina so much? ~<3

    7. Allan

      He could be packing salt rock rounds or rubber bullets, but still. Dick move bro.

  2. Ana Chronistic

    eew she touched him

    “It tastes like feet!”

    (also, Dina, you’re awesome but please don’t be this dude (although he’s super awesome))

    1. saki

      Friends reference?

      1. Kinoko

        “I wasn’t supposed to put beef in the trifle!”

        1. Ana Chronistic

          I read that as “I wasn’t supposed to put beef in the rifle!” and that gives me hope for a better outcome! XD

  3. Tom

    Go for the cuticles, Dina!

    1. liahansen

      CUTEicles more like am i right

      1. John

        Pretty sure the giant toe doesn’t have cute anything.

        1. Perish Song

          It’s got a cute daughter…

        2. desolation0

          Cuteness of Becky coming from that thing is almost enough to make you question evolution.

        3. Opus the Poet

          Becky’s mom must have been a super hot redhead.

        4. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Recessive genes, my friend, recessive genes.

        5. That Damn Rat

          Actually it proves it, as that’s a significant mutation. Toe-dad himself for that matter seems deeply abhuman himself, as he doesn’t appear to have a mouth, just feeder tentacles masquerading as a mustache.

        6. John

          I’m actually not convinced that Becky is really his daughter. There’s no resemblance. Maybe she just takes after her mom. Or maybe they had a red-headed mailman…

          Maybe he suspects that, too, and that’s part of the reason he’s such a dickhole to her.

        7. inqntrol

          Anyway,the mailman would make a better father than Ross.

        8. Bagge

          Let’s check the list.
          Q. Is the mailman currently chasing Becky with a gun?
          A. If “No”, the mailman is a better father than Ross.

        9. Cerberus

          Mailman has just won Father of the Year award simply because his competitors were Blaine and Toedad.

        10. Joshua503

          @Cerberus New contest! Who’s a worse father: Blaine or Toedad?

        11. That Damn Rat

          Blaine, definitely Toe-Dad may be a lunatic, but he at least think he’s doing the right thing. Blaine on the other hand simply on a power trip. He doesn’t really care about the course of Amber’s life, just about having power of her.

        12. Nightsbridge

          @Joshua Toedad, because while Blaine is abusive, he has never coming after his daughter with lethal force.

        13. Nightsbridge

          come*

        14. liahansen

          i think there’s probably a cap on how bad of a dad you can be, and they’ve both reached it

    2. Shade

      That’s it Dina de-groom his mustache!

  4. airyu

    I wonder if toedad has see jurassic park though. I would think there’s too much of “satan’s influence” or whatever in it for him.

    1. Doctor_Who

      That movie blatantly depicts SCIENCE!

      Also the “Man kills god, man creates dinosaurs” thing might rub him the wrong way.

      1. pendrake

        “Dinosaurs eat Man…Women inherit the Earth.”

        1. Kitschensyngk

          Somehow I think he’d be even less for that.

      2. Perish Song

        Plus all the dinosaurs are lesbians/transgender.

      3. Durandal_1707

        The movie also is centered around a theme park, which is yet another manifestation of the hedonistic worship of pleasure and entertainment which has replaced devotion to Jesus in this godless age.

        … I’m not kidding, this is a real thing that they were bongoing about when this movie was new.

        1. Durandal_1707

          Okay, this time I’m pretty sure autocorrect didn’t do that. We may have a swear filter on this site. 😛

        2. No Name

          We do, but only for that word. It happened at the last Kilo-comment comic.

        3. Durandal_1707

          Oh drat. I was planning on pasting in George Carlin’s list of forbidden words to see what they’d all autocorrect to. 😛

        4. Arian

          I did a similar thing on another site once. I quickly edited out any word that didn’t autocorrect, but it still annoyed the admins of the site a lot. They threatened me with a black mark for the only time on any web forum, and were not impressed by my defence, which was, “But… FOR SCIENCE!”

        5. Durandal_1707

          Who ran that site, Toedad?

        6. Wizard

          Yeah after one particular strip the comments were getting on Willis’ nerves, so now “witch-with-a-b” autocorrects to “bongo”.

        7. evilmidnightlurker

          It’s kind of a shame that doesn’t autocorrect to “wongo-with-a-b.” 😀

        8. chiscii

          perhaps the filter needs to be swongoed a bit 😛

        9. Ari

          Hm. Which comic?

        10. Ana Chronistic

          It was a Roz comic IIRC, but it could’ve (should’ve?) been Mary, too

    2. I Write Monsters

      A family of Hasidic Jews was in the theater I saw Jurassic World in. To them, a T-Rex is on the same level as E.T., and the genetics is Star Trek technobabble.

      1. Cassidy Moon

        Also on this level to them: equality for queers and women. So that’s cool.

        1. Ari

          Yep. As someone who grew up queer in a VERY Jewish area, I find it irritating that the general public doesn’t criticize discriminatory attitudes within the Jewish community the way it does with Fundamentalist Christians.

        2. thejeff

          Probably because fundamentalist Jews are far more of a minority in the country than fundamentalist Christians and thus have much less of an effect on the rest of the country. They also tend to be more insular.
          As bad or worse for their own family members, but much less noticeable to the rest of us.

        3. Inkblot

          A lot of Jews these days are reform as well. It’s where you take all the bits of the Torah that aren’t nice to other people (along with other things) and chuck them out. The orthodox Jews don’t like the reform Jews either!

        4. thejeff

          Oh definitely. At least in the US, Jews tend to be liberal and generally pretty secular.
          Nor are all Christians crazy fundamentalist types either. But the fundamentalist Christians have a louder voice than their numbers justify, while the fundamentalist Jews are quieter than their numbers justify.

    3. Gangler

      Probably wouldn’t let Becky watch it because then The Devil could get her at a developmental age, but probably also allows himself to enjoy diverse media as a devout adult of unshakeable faith. Dude’s not worried that a sci-fi adventure flick’s gonna turn him into an evolutionist or anything, but Becky’s still young and easily confused in his eyes.

      1. Pat

        Also, I doubt he applies the same rules to himself as to the women he owns.

  5. EvergreenFir

    I love you Willis

  6. liahansen

    OH NO ITS CUTE BIUT NO NO NO DINA NO

  7. Doomrider

    Pictured: Toedad

    Not pictured: The hundreds of kicked puppies and burned orphanages he left in his wake since the last time we saw him.

    1. Joe

      Dang, that’s a big forest.

  8. CommunistCanada

    Dina is best Raptor.

    1. whedonsaur

      Beky’s best pal ‘blue’

  9. inqntrol

    Maul his ass Dina!

    1. Disloyal Subject

      I’d much prefer she maul his face and arms.

  10. Undrave

    EYES! THROAT! GENITALS! NO MERCY!!!!

    Too bad she doesn’t have a gnomestick…

  11. AnvilPro

    I don’t know what I find stranger: That Ross both knew that line and figured that now was the time to reference it, or that Dina decided to tackle a big guy holding a gun.

    1. Ana Chronistic

      it might not be an intentional quote–girls can be clever, after all

      1. Blue

        Seconded. I don’t think he saw Dina before she jumped him.

        Now, how Dina felt about the inadvertent reference, however…

    2. John

      She’s probably safer there than she would be at range, honestly. Trying to shoot someone with a long gun in a grapple is awkward at best. And this lets Clever Girl bring her sickle-like claws into play.

      And Willis was clearly referencing Jurassic Park, but I’m not sure butthole dad was.

      1. quix

        While it’s generally true that faced with a gun, a grapple is a better option than fleeing if you’re within range, that also assumes that:

        A: You aren’t a tiny person in an area of heavy cover and concealment.
        B: Your attacker couldn’t strangle you to death with two fingers.

        1. SDGlyph

          Toedad does look more irritated by Dina’s attack than actually concerned.

          (Or it could just be that AFAIK we’ve never seen him open his mouth. Maybe he doesn’t even HAVE a mouth; maybe that moustache is a set of feeder tentacles or something. Why not Zoidberg?)

        2. MeHael

          Haha! Now the rubber band is on the other claw!

          Woowoowoowoowoowoowoo….

    3. Lurlock

      I’m now convinced that this punchline was the sole reason Willis decided to give Toe Dad a gun in the first place.

  12. otusasio451

    Dina’s been wanting to do that ALL HER LIFE, hasn’t she?

    1. inqntrol

      Soon she will become the apex Predator.

  13. ANormalPerson

    Please let this man go to jail. He deserves it.

    1. doubleW

      I’m hoping for an accidental gun-drops-blows-off-own-leg, myself.

      (the stray pellets sink into a nearby tree, of course)

  14. Opus the Poet

    Someone’s going to get shot like that Dina, and I just hope it isn’t you.

    1. Jefferies Tube

      And now you have me worried that Dina’s last words are going to be “I’m sorry this was the best I could do.” to Becky.

      … last words before shes taken to the hospital

      1. notlegato

        >to the morgue

        FTFY

        1. Opus the Poet

          Word of God in this comic is that nobody dies, so hospital.

  15. QF

    In a shocking plot twist, it’s Dina who kills Toedad and not the other way around.

    (Really hoping she doesn’t die, but if it comes to this at least she’s going down in style)

    1. SzL

      He did promise not to kill characters. I think. But comas are probably allowed :/

      1. Kamino Neko

        No, they’re not for the exact same reason killing is out.

        1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Yes, but no one would grieve for long (the reason deaths are out of the picture) if toedad was in a coma. Becky would be shocked, sure, but I think the shock of finding out that he had a gun would offset that quickly

    2. liahansen

      the next strip is just her tearing out his throat with her teeth. The ultimate dinosaur rp

      1. Cholma

        And then Becky & Dina run off together to live a life of bliss on La Isla Bonita. (no, not Isla Sorna or Isla Nublar, that’d be silly)

    3. Tenchan

      I too hope as hell that it’s Toedad in the hospital instead!

      According to Willis, no one will die in DoA. But there does exist fates worse than death, so…

    4. airyu

      It’s still up in the air if Dina is the one who gets shot. That’s a long gun, and Dina is super close to ToeDad.

    5. moby

      Maybe Toedad will drop the gun as he’s getting tackled by the Dinaraptor! And then she picks it up and rolls away and threatens to shoot the Toe!

      TOE v. RAPTOR

      1. Disloyal Subject

        Seems almost like an asymmetric fight worthy of the Souls games. I hope Dina is good at dodge-rolls.

  16. Stephen R. Bierce

    In Yer FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

    1. Mom

      Don’t get shot in the FAAAAAAAAACCEE!

      1. Tacos

        Unless it’s Toedad’s face. In which case, fire away.

    2. FishBonePendant

      Bite his FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

    3. inqntrol

      Eat his FAAAAAAACE!(wait,that would taste horribly)

    4. Undrave

      TAKE HIS FAAAAAAAAACE!

      It’s what Optimus Prime would do!

      1. No Name

        Wrong franchise, Undrave.

        1. Undrave

          I’m sure the Raptors are fan of face meat as well.

        2. Disloyal Subject

          Dina’s gonna squash him to beryllium bologna.

      2. Screwball

        “I’ll rip out your optics…”

  17. Plasma Mongoose

    If she wore the right hoodie, she could have shot venom in his face.

    1. inqntrol

      Poison spit? Didn’t think of that,it would be cool and helpful.

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        Plus it would have made for an extra JP reference.

        1. Undrave

          But it’s not scientifically accurate and Dina will have none of that! She will kill you scientifically or not at all!

    2. Mattyos

      He’s too shitty a human to deserve a Nedry death…

      1. No Name

        Oh, I’m sure Nedry suffered.

        1. Mattyos

          He got eaten alive by a Dilophosaurus after it spit acid in his face…which is again too good for Toe-Dad McAsshat.

        2. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Also, according to the toy line, Nedry gained a superhero’s physique from that. Apparently, superheroes are canon within the JP-verse.

        3. fizzywafflezsuperstore

          Nedry could feel his own intestines just before he died…

          I’m pretty sure that is painful.

      2. Kintrex

        I could see him try to make Dina fetch a stick.

  18. CriticalQuit

    I can’t believe it was all just a set-up for this joke.

    Really hope that’s all it comes to.

    1. Mollyscribbles

      I’m reminded of the ‘Jesus take the wheel’ from Shortpacked that made everyone wonder if the character had been introduced in the first place for the express purpose of making that joke.

      1. TJ Pittsburgh

        I’m fully convinced that Willis planned that line all the way back when he introduced Leslie as a grocery store cashier throwing away Amber’s superfluous plastic shopping bag!

  19. AgentKeen

    RELEASE THE RAPTOR!

    (Oh god, Dina, be careful)

  20. Synnerman

    I think Dina has been infected by the Amazigirl Complex.

    Next in the Willisverse: The adventures of Amazi-Girl and Dino-Girl.

  21. SzL

    I… I called it way more than I meant to. Omg Dina, please be OK!

  22. Mr k

    Blaine when he hears about ToeDad: “Hey I’m not the worst dad in the strip now”‘

    Anyway, I hope the fucker gets his ass arrested.

    1. AgentKeen

      “Ha, you got your butt kicked by a WAY tinier girl than me! And you had a gun!”

      1. inqntrol

        ,,You are a disgrace to our society of bad parents!”

        1. Needfuldoer

          All I can picture now is a PTA meeting at the Legion of Doom headquarters.

    2. Opus the Poet

      I’m hoping his ass is the only part still alive to arrest… yes I know that didn’t make any sense.

      1. inqntrol

        Will that ass start levitating and shit on people?

        1. Cholma

          Somewhere, Cyclops just flinched!

      2. Safgaftsa

        Have you never heard of the deadly butt-removing raptors?

        1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          I’m pretty sure that’s a kind of maggot, not a bird.
          …
          Maggots are still nicer and prettier than toedad, though.

        2. Kryss LaBryn

          Also more useful.

    3. Mollyscribbles

      Blaine and Toedad will meet up in the hospital, because that’s the best place to stash horrible parents. Keeps ’em out of the strip for days (that is, months) and you can quietly hope the hospital bills are bad enough to give them additional pain.

  23. Aislashu

    Gosh frickin dang it first Young Protectors now this and arsgh DINA DON’T YOU DARE GET SHOT.

    1. TJ Pittsburgh

      “The Young Protectors” was going too slow for me, so I stopped reading months ago. Is it time to start catching up?

      1. anonymsly

        It’s been doing side stories for the last several months, I think. Depending on when you stopped reading you might not have missed anything in the main plot.

  24. Heavensrun

    oh god my sides the laughs i can’t stop oh gods why did you do this to me i’m dying willis

  25. Ashley

    It’s been a while since I’ve been so worried for a fictional character a I am for Dina in this comic.

    1. Boojum

      I’m torn between being worried for Dina and Becky, and thinking this is the greatest DoA strip ever.

      1. Kryss LaBryn

        Willis’s wife called it as the greatest DoA strip months ago. 😀

        1. xKiv

          Not for a while.
          Source: Willis in yesterday’s comments.

  26. Taigan

    RE: Alt text.
    No. No I did not.

    1. Rutee

      Same here.

    2. airyu

      I think the alt text just refers to the line “clever girl”.

    3. Tenn

      Ditto.

    4. Screwball

      *Hangs head in shame* Same here…

  27. Twilightomens

    I love Dina so much more now she truly is a clever girl

  28. FishBonePendant

    OH GOD DINA YOU’RE SO FUCKING CUTE BUT CUTENESS DOES NOT GIVE A DECENT AC BONUS PLEASE BE OKAY (more screaming incessant worries)

    1. Lucina

      No, but she is Small, incurring a +1 AC bonus. She also seems pretty fast/flexible; her Dex might give her a bonus, too.

      1. Gedd

        Attacks with ranged weapons also provoke attacks of opportunity!

      2. AlchemicWings

        She’ll need that dex bonus, firearms hit Touch AC. Not that her shirt is providing any noticeable armour. Let’s just hope she rolls high on her grapple.

        1. Opus the Poet

          Or that she’s taken a feat that allows Dex to be used in grapple checks.

        2. MeHael

          She needs that prestige class that gives you a chance to dodge grapple attacks from an opponent two sizes larger than you, because Toedad is definitely large.

        3. Disloyal Subject

          Unfortunately he’s well within Medium’s size range, but if he took the Jotunbred feat to get Powerful Build a DM might rule in favor of counting him as Large for Dina. It would help to explain his face.

  29. Valis_kr3

    Called it. More or less.

  30. Perish Song

    Gonna be honest, I did not think I would laugh out loud during a scene where a bigoted father is chasing his daughter through the woods WITH A SHOTGUN.

    Well played, Mr. Willis.

    1. Heavensrun

      Rifle, but yes.

      1. Perish Song

        WITH A RIFLE.

        1. Heavensrun

          (Thumbs up for accuracy)

      2. fogel

        VARMINT rifle, at that.

  31. Tenchan

    Nooooooooooooooo!!! Dina don’t be a hero!!!!

    1. Lone Wolf

      It’s not covered by the health plan!

    2. Possumly

      don’t be a fool with your life

    3. fizzywafflezsuperstore

      Just wondering: Do you say that in the same way as someone would say:

      No, Ruth! Don’t act with integrity!

  32. NinjaNick

    Called it.

  33. ozaline

    This made my night, thank you.

  34. lime sheep

    god damnit

  35. Kole

    I’m having a hard time suspending disbelief for this entire arc, it just… feels really out of place with the rest of the story.

    1. Nightsbridge

      . . . How? Willis openly looks into family drama, abusive parents and queer oppression, like, all the time, constantly. What’s there to suspend?

      1. Rutee

        This bit, right here. I mean, I don’t think the guy you respond to feels that only this is unbelievable. But this genuinely is.

        1. AgentKeen

          I mean, this is a comic with a girl that regularly dresses up in a bright costume to be a vigilante on campus (and solve the mystery of the Whiteboard DingDong Bandit). And this isn’t the first time that Dina’s protectiveness has displayed as her acting like a dino, and people don’t always react logically when in danger.

        2. Rutee

          You’re acting as though I *don’t* suspend disbelief for Amazi-girl not getting Amber thrown in jail. Welp, spoiler alert.

        3. Nightsbridge

          He didn’t say that THIS COMIC broke his suspension of disbelief, he said this ENTIRE ARC.

        4. Rutee

          Sure, but you asked where you could plausibly need to suspend belief at all.

    2. Viktoria

      Yeah, so much of this has been too much too fast. Becky runs basically instantly when she sees him, he immediately goes to lethal force in response, and now Dina has gone on the offensive rather than doing either the smart or the shy thing that you’d expect from her. I’m not saying it’s all unbelievable, but if people took a bit longer to come to their way too intense decisions or had slightly better reasoning, maybe I’d buy it more.

      1. Pat

        Becky didn’t run instantly. She stood up to her father defiantly, but suddenly decided to bolt at about the same time he went towards lethal violence–and threatened Dina.

        Seems like she knows him well.

      2. Kole

        yeah this, exactly. The pacing is just… weird, to me. Basically the second toedad got out the gun everyone’s reactions felt very … fanfictiony? I’m not saying a writer has to be on top of their game 100% of the time to continue being a good writer, I’m just saying I feel like this arc could have been executed better.

        I’m not even saying a christian dad pulling out a gun on his lesbian daughter is something I couldn’t see in the realm of possibility, but what I am saying is that it feels like a weird plot direction to go in when you’ve already blatantly stated no one is going to die over the course of the comic. So… why pull this? This plot device means nothing if I’m not afraid for the characters lives, honestly.

        It feels gimmicky at worst and badly paced at best.

        1. Pat

          This is hardly the only case of fiction where the protagonists are placed in mortal peril and that’s part of the story, but the audience still knows they are going to survive.
          Like, anything with a single protagonist. Them not surviving is an extremely rare plot twist, even if the plot follows perfectly.

    3. Usayasha

      Is it because we have a girl with a history of pretending to be a dinosaur as a coping method using her coping method to directly assail a dangerous and abusive father figure in an attempt to save a love interest, where as we usually have a girl with a history of pretending to be a superhero as a coping method using her coping method to directly assail a dangerous and abusive father figure in an attempt to save a love interest?

      1. airyu

        This 100%. There’s zero ways that Amazi-girl is less believable than Dina rn.

      2. Viktoria

        Amber has martial arts training, rage issues, and a history of violent behavior. Dina weighs 12 lbs and has a history of hiding behind doors. Also, Ross has at least one gun. This is very OOC, and not funny enough to justify killing the mood the way it does.

        1. AgentKeen

          She also has a history of being protective of people she cares for.

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/theraptor/

          I’m not saying it’s the same scale, but it’s not totally out of nowhere.

        2. Pat

          Or Becky specifically: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/easiest/

        3. Airyu

          Plus, she managed to tie up Faz with Amazigirl’s hook. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/return/

        4. Pat

          See, she has combat experience!

        5. Nightsbridge

          I think you and I both have very different measures of how effective Dina is going to be as an attacker.

        6. winter

          I don’t know about you, but I expect that Dina will be a very effective attacker, even though there is absolutely no justification for why she should be.

        7. Nightsbridge

          Time will prove one of us right. Very quickly.

        8. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          I wouldn’t be surprised if she has been training herself in various physical skills since childhood just for the sake of imitating dinosaurs better.

        9. Disloyal Subject

          “Absolutely no justification?” She has a decent knowledge of biology and poor understanding of some social conventions. The former tells her where to strike, and the latter lets her do so without holding back at all. Couple that with adrenaline-boosted rage at a threat to her mate, and Ross could be in for a world of hurt.

        10. John

          Have you read It’s Walky? The whole thing, not just the part that’s been posted in the re-runs so far? Sacrificing herself for the things she cares about is totally in character for the Dina I know from there. She may not have any notion that she can defeat butthole dad here, but if she thinks that distracting him even briefly will allow Becky to escape, I think it’s in character for her to do it. And apologize for not doing better.

          And we have Willis’s assurance that she’ll survive it this time.

        11. Deanatay

          As I said two days ago, heroism is about need, not capability. Can she stop ToeDad? Probably not. Does ToeDad need stopping? Absolutely YES. Therefore, the hero(ine) attacks.

        12. Elisto

          I’m tiny and my personality’s a bit like Dina’s, but I’ve jumped in front of someone trying to attack my best friend. It was not a rational idea and totally ineffective – just resulted in me getting punched in the face – and no, the person didn’t have a gun, but that was still my instinct. So no, this isn’t necessarily out of character; a person’s size and behavior in every day situations have little to do with their gut reaction in a fight-or-flight situation. You don’t think about those details like lack of training or physical size…your brain kind of turns off rational thought in the moment. If anything, it takes training *to* think about those things.

        13. Benwhoski

          I, too, have done the “jumped between a dangerous person and someone who needed protection without thinking about it”. It worked out better in my case, but only because I wasn’t the only one to do so, and the attacker didn’t seem to like the odds given that it was now him vs. four women, instead of him vs. one.

          It still probably wasn’t necessarily the “rational” thing to do. I had no way of knowing others were going to step in also, and I really didn’t even think about what I was going to do or how I was even going to defend _myself_ let alone someone else.

        14. Failed by the System

          Did you forget ?

          And knowing Willis I realized that there wasw likely a comedy break coming soon, so risked keeping up… for noiw.

      3. winter

        I honestly find the Amazi-girl situation pretty unbelievable as well, but that was weaved so directly into the premise of the comic early on I just don’t question it. Dina, on the other hand, I thought was a more realistic character once, so this is a bit jarring.

      4. Cerberus

        Yeah, this is 100% in keeping with Dina’s character.

    4. Yotomoe

      For me, I’m struggling with several things I would like to see fleshed out more. I feel like Becky and Dina happened really fast. I feel like the situation with her dad Escelated to quickly. All of the important things have been happening in about half the speed I feel like should be dedicated to them, and it causes a lot of the characters to feel very flat. If there’s any overarching criticisms I’d say,”The plot feels too fast” and “The way it is written makes me increasingly aware that this comic is being written by a person”. I get the feeling some things like Becky and Dina getting together or Becky’s shitty dad were in Willis’ head for a while before he wrote them, and so for him while this all seemed spaced out and a natural progression, for many members of the audience it not only catches people off guard but it just leaves them in a state of disbelief. It almost feels like this is building up to a twist or some other sort of unexpected payoff by how everything is set up.

      1. winter

        Dina and Becky’s relationship… I’m conflicted. It sorta makes sense to me that their relationship moved quickly – they’re both new at love and Becky’s also on the rebound. But I also think the comic wants me to take their relationship more seriously than that. And also it probably takes more than 2 days to not be ‘Oh, no! I signed up for kisses, not crazy gun toting parents. I’m getting the fuck outta here!’ in this situation.

        Maybe it will all pull seamlessly together, but idk. Even if it doesn’t, we’ll move on to some other plot.

        1. SmokedToast

          …This isn’t even “my girlfriend needs protecting” guys. Did you forget about the time Dina let BLAINE into her room and put her roomate in a dangerous situation? And then vowed not to do the same after realizing Toedad was a threat to her friend?
          This is about not making the same mistake. This is about making whole new mistakes. But it’s not the relationship being rushed, this is very much about Dina trying to prove to herself she can protect the people she cares about, be they friend, girlfriend, or roommate.

        2. winter

          Yes on the Amber/Blaine thing. Wasn’t considering that fully.

          This is about making whole new mistakes. <- I'm not sure you're right about this, but if you are I'd be very pleased. I don't want Dina to get hurt, but I do hope she somehow realises confronting somebody with a gun like this is a bad idea.

        3. Deanatay

          Remember, she may not fully realize he’s wielding a gun. She’s been hiding in the bushes, waiting to strike, and he’s a pretty big guy, so she may not have seen it, or had much time to process the danger.

        4. Cerberus

          This.

          Part of this is her naive ideas of mate protection based on dinosaur habits.

          But a lot of it is wanting to make up for her mistakes surrounding Blaine that were mostly the result of her being too passive in the face of abusive authority figures. This isn’t so much a better method per se for her own safety, but it is part and parcel of her trying not to make the same mistake.

    5. Smiling Cat

      Family members and acquaintances are the second largest source of gunshot deaths in the world, behind suicide and well ahead of mass shootings. And generally speaking, you don’t get a tangible warning before it happens.

      Everything about this story arc is horrifyingly plausible.

      1. Yotomoe

        That’s a fair point. That being said, that kind of statistic is kinda similar to the fact that you’re way more likely to die at home than outside. Or that the kitchen and the bathroom being the two deadliest rooms in the house. It makes sense your parents are way more likely to shoot you because if you have a gun in your house you’re incredibly likely to be shot by a family member even by accident.
        Mass shootings don’t happen as often as someone wanting to kill themselves or family accidents or even the cases where a family member HAS just tried to shoot their other family member. I am not even remotely surprised by this statistic but that doesn’t make me feel any different about my opinion of the comic.

        1. Smiling Cat

          Fair enough (though I should point out that the statistic of being killed by loved ones is actually referring to deliberate murder, not accidents, accidents are lower on the scale).

          I get your point about wanting more context for all of this, too.

      2. Cerberus

        Add to that the fact that most mass shootings stem initially from the shooters attempt to target either someone they knew who they feel slighted them in some manner (mostly by no longer being held to heel by their abuse) and that adds a whole ‘nother layer as well. This is terrifyingly common and yet very rarely spoken of in fiction.

        1. Smiling Cat

          It’s routine. Not sensational enough for fiction. A lot of times it’s not sensational enough for non-fiction media unless there’s a “hook” to grab ratings.

  36. Wiz

    Curse you perspective shots, I still don’t know if its a double barreled shotgun yet.

    1. Heavensrun

      It’s a rifle. Commenters the other day recognized the specific model.

      1. fogel

        A varminter rifle, yes?

      2. miz

        I know absolutely nothing about guns, so help me out here: people in the comments keep correcting each other and debating shotgun vs rifle, but my preliminary google searches keep telling me that the difference between the two is inside the barrel. What exactly are you guys seeing that’s letting you decide??

        1. John

          As Heavensrun says, someone in the comments the other day identified the actual model of gun (a Ruger No. 1 Varminter, which looks right to me), which makes available a lot more detailed information about it.

  37. Inkblot

    Y’know, there’s a preview panel coming up of Joyce looking like she’s running somewhere, with a look on her face that I interpreted as fear. I hope that nothing too unbearably bad happens, but we’ve already got a crazed zealot with a gun on campus grounds. Outlook not good.

  38. JessWitt

    That’s gutsy, Dina. Hope the cavalry’s coming.

  39. a4lbi

    DON’T DO THIS TO ME WILLIS

  40. Ridureyu

    I really hope this isn’t going to result in horrible mood whiplash tomorrow night.

  41. Dalrint

    Dina’s gonna get shot, isn’t she…

    1. Disloyal Subject

      At that range, a hefty smack is more likely, and I don’t know whether Ross would bother firing on her once she’s down. He could still do some serious damage with a fist, elbow, riflebutt, et cetera, though, if she doesn’t incapacitate him first.
      If the gun does go off for whatever reason, it’s going to attract attention.

  42. saki

    OMG YES hahaha jeezus Dina and her Dina-ness just made all of the tension form the last couple days disappear! XD Man, Willis, that was awesome.

    Not that everything’s suddenly solved or anything. Just… I love this strip.

  43. Lucina

    I AM LAUGHING BUT ALSO CRYING????

  44. Mkvenner

    I should have seen this coming.

    1. Mkvenner

      I didn’t imagine Dina was this stupid.

      1. airyu

        She’s not stupid. I don’t think rational forward thinking planning is a thing when your girlfriend’s father comes after you with a gun.

      2. JessWitt

        Love makes stupid people of us all.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          As do rage, fear, and determination to avoid past mistakes.
          I’m hoping this isn’t stupidity so much as a calculated risk; she’s caught him off-guard and has a clear shot at his eyes. Damaging those will make escape much easier.

  45. Arkantos

    You brought the gun into this just so you could have this strip, didn’t you Willis.

  46. Cody

    This feels anticlimatic compared to the rest of the current arc.

    Who cares, it’s a fight scene!

  47. Raen

    …I did not see this coming.

    Yet, I’m infinitely glad it came.

    …just as long as she doesn’t get herself shot. Which, Willis being Willis, I’m about 86.466% sure she will.

    1. Rartorata

      Let us pray for the 13.534%.

  48. ImperialGeneral

    Oh crap, Dina’s gonna die again isn’t she?

  49. gkheyf

    …ok, that was pretty fun, but we can’t forgive Ross for it. Agreed?

    1. fogel

      Für Sur

    2. Nightsbridge

      Aye captain, we cannot.

  50. Solenoid

    You caught him by surprise! Quick! Tear out his eyes! He won’t be able to aim if he’s blinded.

    1. Disloyal Subject

      Difficult. Poking or ripping them open is an option, though.

  51. fogel

    No one is yet using Dina face in panel 3 as a grav? I am stunned!

    1. NoHeart6265

      I would but I’m too fond of my own.

      1. Dreadhawk177

        Mine has enough guns in it..

        1. inqntrol

          Mine has a…..I don’t even know who is in my gravatar,probably a demon or something like that.

    2. saki

      I just changed mine like literally three hours ago. But I’m definitely saving this strip so I can use Dina’s raptor face later. :3

    3. Tacos

      I like my grav too much to ever change it.

    4. Nightsbridge

      . . .

      1. No Name

        I was about to say, Have you seen Nightsbridge lately?

  52. nothri

    Dear Willis, I officially have to reprimand you for what would normally be a funny and hilarious joke basically completely negated due to the fact that this situation is just that horrific and terrifying and all I can think is that she’s in immense danger right now. Consider yourself damned, sir.

  53. caesaria82

    LMAO. I mean, this is still all super awful, but this made me actually laugh out loud. JUST HOPE DINA DOESN’T GET HURT.

  54. Heavensrun

    Countdown to someone using panel 4 for a gravitar…

    1. fogel

      Happened at 12:01 in REAL time …

      1. Disloyal Subject

        I don’t see any ToeDad gravs around. Count the panels again.

    2. Bicycle Bill

      Probably later than that, but once applied the gravatar applies to all posts from that person no matter when they were originally time-stamped.  See Nightsbridge’s posts in yesterday’s thread, for example.

  55. yuripuppies

    oh no Dina no

    no amount of hilarious dinosaur references could make this okay, WILLIS

  56. Maveric1984

    DOWN GOES TOEDAD! DOWN GOES TOEDAD!

  57. MrZombieScordo

    I wanna be happy about the clever girl line and the raptor attack, but.. I’m still focused on the whole hunting his daughter with a gun thing.

  58. saki

    Kids: Do not try this at home.

  59. detective boomwolf

    There’s a decent chance Dina may take a bullet by the end of this. And that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Which is why all I have left to say is GO FOR THE EYES DINA! HE CAN’T SHOOT YOU IF HE CAN’T SEE!!

    1. saki

      He couldn’t aim, but he could still shoot. At this point I have no doubt that he would just shoot in everywhich direction until he ran out of ammo if he were blinded.

      1. Blue

        MY VISION IS IM-PAIRED

        1. saki

          *wants to acknowledge awesome DW reference but doesn’t know how other than like this*

        2. ninja_jesus

          DALEKS HAVE NO NEED FOR TOES

      2. Chris

        It has a single shot capacity (the firearm in question seems to have been pretty much definitatively identified) so all she has to do is disable him from reloading it, and avoid being further away from him than the length of the barrel when it goes off. It’s much safer to be closer than barrel length to a rampaging long-arm armed madman than further away but still within range.

        1. BenRG

          I’m thinking that it won’t go off. Becky will need it to be loaded when she comes upon her father beating Dina to death.

        2. Disloyal Subject

          I hope not. Ross is a dick, but no one should have to make the decision to fire on family.

        3. xKiv

          And have her live the rest of her life with the trauma of having killed another human being (even if he counts only barely)?
          Or worse yet, *without* the trauma?

  60. Mr. Mendo

    And after it was over, Dina said it would have been more accurate if she’d been the size of a chicken!

    1. Durandal_1707

      Compared to him, she pretty much *is* the size of a chicken.

  61. VinzKlortho

    Welp, the comic has fulfilled its purpose. Pack it up folks.

    1. saki

      Nonono! It can’t end before I know what happens of the Amber-Danny-Ethan situation!

      1. John

        Amber and Ethan make a Wonderbread sandwich, they all live happily ever after the end.

    2. Bicycle Bill

      If Willis does decide he can’t top this and lets the comic end after the buffer clears, then all I can say is “Damn you, Willis!!”

  62. Dreadhawk177

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CfNarCjSHM

  63. Sam

    Hahahaha. This one was quite good.

  64. Lordess of Madness

    I don’t think Becky would mind the laying on hands in prayer thing. So long as it’s females doing the laying on of hands.

    1. Disloyal Subject

      Technically he said ‘over,’ not ‘on,’ or I’d have made a similar joke too.

  65. CapedLuigisYoshi

    Just to echo like three other people already on the page: I can’t believe I’m laughing at a strip where the context is a giant homophobic toe chasing down his daughter with a gun.

  66. newllend(henryvolt)

    And there it is.

  67. Rartorata

    These are some real thick woods. Like, jungle-thick. I don’t remember Bloomington being in the Amazon. Methinks Carla has much to answer for.

    1. saki

      Comicbook nature?

  68. dailybrad

    That pious barrel-chested bigot
    Thought he knew all there is to be know’d
    He could not fathom this pintsize deceptress
    Would get the jump on Mr. Toe’d!

    1. Arian

      *applauds*

  69. tim gueguen

    The next strip better include a link to the classic Star Trek fight music.

    1. No Name

      Wrong franchise, tim.

  70. Proto

    Fess up Willis, how long have you been sitting on that punchline?

  71. vlademir1

    So I get that this is supposed to be funny, but the only thing I can think is “Dina, you idiot. Don’t go on the offensive against the mentally ill man with a gun.”

    1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

      I’m pretty sure that this isn’t because of mental illness. He’s just a complete and fucking asshole. Mentally ill people are less likely to hurt people and more likely to get hurt, statistically.

      1. vlademir1

        I’d be willing to describe him as showing signs of going through a psychotic break likely induced by stress from recent events in his life piling up. I suspect under more normal circumstances he’d be no worse than Joyce’s parents. To my PoV, therefore, ‘mentally ill’ seems quite apt.

    2. Disloyal Subject

      Best defenses and all that.
      She can’t realistically get herself and Becky out of range without a high risk of him noticing one or both of them, and while being hidden was good, it didn’t help Becky. Too close to shoot is therefore a good place to be, at least relative to the alternatives, and attacking from concealment gives her the edge. Hopefully it’s enough.

  72. FriendlyNeighborhoodDave

    I shouldn’t have laughed at this, but damn it, that was unexpectedly funny.

  73. JessWitt

    Time YOU said your prayers, TurdDad. Empress Clobbersaurus will have your mustache hanging on her wall.

  74. Tacos

    I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, Dina is being awesome but on the other hand, I’m not sure she can do much against somebody at least twice her size and built like a brick.

  75. MegaMarshmallow

    Hold on one second… by ‘Put our hands over you in prayer’, does that mean that Becky has been… please let me be misinterpreting that. If not I want to see toedad be destroyed because that is… I think I am going to be sick. Please someone tell me I am wrong about this.

    1. Viktoria

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/takeittogod/
      I think this is what was meant, more-or-less.

      1. saki

        Beat me to it. Oh well.

    2. saki

      Don’t worry, you’re likely wrong. What Foedad is talking about is almost certainly something like Joyce’s parents did back when they found out she friends with an atheist; http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/takeittogod/ .

    3. Bicycle Bill

      “Put our hands over you in prayer” probably means something like this.

      1. Bicycle Bill

        memo to self: when it takes you more than two minutes to respond to a post, click and refresh the remarks before posting.

    4. random832

      It could be referencing a legitimate-ish religious practice that doesn’t have anything to do with what you think it is.

    5. Just A. Thinker

      They’d place their hands on her head while she is kneeling, then pray while in that position. It isn’t sexual, she wouldn’t be naked.

    6. No Name

      It’s like that paladin spell in D&D, Lay on Hands.
      And yes, I’m using D&D to explain a Christian practice.

      1. John

        I’m pretty sure that paladin ability has been the source of more cheap innuendo than anything else in D&D.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          I’d say Bards in general have resulted in more than a single Paladin class feature, but maybe not by all that wide a margin.

    7. EvolutionistX

      Unless he has some very unusual definitions going on, it just means that a bunch of people get together in a circle, put their hands on your head/back/hands, and pray really hard.

    8. BenRG

      Don’t worry, it’s a traditional exorcism ritual common to African, West Indian and southern US Christian sects.

  76. Edupoet81

    Gah, DINA DON’T GET SO CLOSE TO THE MAN WITH THE GUN!

    I don’t think she actually saw the gun until the last panel after she’d gotten her roar going. Or maybe she did, and she’s taking the hero route, putting Becky’s safety before her own. That’s admirable and all, but this development scares me all the same.

    David Willis may not be killing off any characters in this universe. That doesn’t rule out lost limbs, paralysis, coma, traumatic brain injury, vegetative state….

    DINA IT’S NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU TO MERELY ALIVE, I WANT YOU FUNCTIONAL, AND YOU’RE IN EXTREMELY CLOSE PROXIMITY TO A MAN WITH A RIFLE!

    I was deeply worried for Dina following the last update. I’m even more worried for her now.

    Incidentally, Joyce’s dad will be coming to the school during the next story-line. He may be pulling her out of school because he sees her hiding Becky as evidence she’s been corrupted. Another possibility is, Joyce begged her father to come and get her and bring her home because she’s so traumatized by whatever’s about to go down right now. We’ll find out eventually, I suppose. January 31st, 2016 seems a loooong way off right now.

    1. Someone

      My hope is we have Joyce dad and Beckys dad fight to the death. I don’t think Joyce’s dad would be happy with Ross pulling a gun out at his daughters college.

      1. Edupoet81

        Yeah, Joyce’s dad seemed the more reasonable and sympathetic of Joyce’s parents, especially based on his response when Joyce made that speech defending Dorothy. Joyce’s mother still appeared annoyed while he was hugging his daughter. Also, Joyce has his eyes, which feels significant to me.

        I was just looking over that preview panel again, making the most of my sub-par ability to read faces. He appears more concerned than angry to me. This lends credence to the latter of my theories. I suspect Joyce asked him to come and get her.

    2. EvolutionistX

      I recall Willis stating once that it would be a massive pain in the butt to draw a character with a broken leg, and thus would be unlikely to do it.

      1. No Name

        You forget he has a history of making his job harder for himself than it needs to be. He recently drew an entire building just to cover it up with speech bubbles.

    3. saki

      She won’t be put in a coma or a vegetative state for the same reason no one’s gonna die; the mourning would take forever, which would make it unnecessarily difficult to get other things moving in the story.
      Doesn’t mean no one’s gonna get shot in the foot or something though.

  77. Romanticide

    I still want to go: Go Dinah Go! but on the other hand I really fear for her safety D:

  78. showler

    Is it wrong of me to hope for a cheap stereotype and Dina is, like, a badass ninja or something?

    1. Jess

      I hope she was trained by ninja rick….

  79. NotAnElf

    Just remember you promised Dina lived in this universe!

    1. James

      Coming from Willis, I’m pretty sure “they don’t die” is worryingly specific.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        In a dystopic and lesbian-ridden Bloomington, a terminally wounded paleontologist returns to the university as a powerful cyborg haunted by submerged memories.

  80. YachtPartySuicide

    As much as I want to like today’s update, part of me remembers that Dina was martyred in Its Walky and is really nervous about her being in mortal danger here. I feel like this is an update I will enjoy reading much more in the future when I’m rereading archives and already know that Dina’s safe and fine and this isn’t going to be her heroic last stand.

    Because, like, I know that’s true right now. I know it is because if not the sheer force of the “damn you Willis” would break the world and I don’t think David wants to cause the apocalypse yet. But it’ll be a much less tense update for me once it’s confirmed.

  81. Yotomoe

    It’s nice to know that Toe dad is actually just kind of an insane maniac instead of just an overbearing christian parent. I mean he is just holding out a gun against 2 teenage girls. He also seems to have no plausible fear of being arrested for aforementioned gun or kidnapping, seeing as how Becky is a legal adult and I’m not sure if he has the authority to just take her anywhere, especially not at gunpoint. I honestly wish he was played a little less straight or maybe flesh him out right now. As he stands at the moment he’s not really a person. He is an obstacle, a conflict. Something that is to be avoided and is a danger. And it’s not really that I don’t believe people like that exist. It just feels rather convenient, storytelling wise, for a person to just be awful and crazy, especially one of the character’s parents just feels like a wasted opportunity. But who knows. There’s a chance maybe Becky and him will have a conversation once this calms down where she and him have a conversation, and while he may refuse to accept or believe her he becomes aware that he no longer has control over her life. Or maybe even does the whole “hate the sin not the sinner thing” which would be pretty shitty but not so much “Insane” as it is just being a conga.

    1. winter

      Yes, it feels a little too convenient for me too. If only every awful/unpleasant person in your life was this crazy, then you wouldn’t have to feel shitty or conflicted about cutting them out of your life. Comparatively Ethan’s relationship with his mother, Joyce’s relationship with her parents, etc. are more interesting, imo. I wish we were covering that instead.

      1. nightsbridge

        … So you would like for more of the exact same kind of antagonists?

        1. winter

          I was thinking more that we could pitch Toedad altogether, and focus more on the old antagonists that were actually interesting.

          But, yanno, there are people who think this is interesting. And it’s Willis’ decision in the end. I’m just babbling.

      2. Ranthog

        Except the threat of violence, either direct and physical or social and economic, is very much a real concern within the LGBT community when coming out. So much so that there are university staff paid (at least at my uni) especially to help students plan coming out to their friends and family. These plans aren’t just about how will you pay tuition next semester if they disown you. It also covers physical safety and making sure there is someone there to rescue you or call the cops if need be.

        I wish this were some sort of rare insane parent, but it is common. (Albeit usually this happens behind closed doors.) The fall out and the conflict this sets up is very interesting, and I think for some of us has a little too much resonance with some fears we have.

        1. Cerberus

          This. To some it seems that this is meh, I’ve never encountered anybody like that, zero stars, unrealistic. To others it’s the real stories that make one terrified to come out or ones own experience with parents or people they have encountered in life.

          To me this is very healing and real and powerful. But I imagine to someone more disconnected from my very uncommon life experiences, this storyline can feel a bit alienating… Though that being said, given that this storyline is rarely told, I’ll admit to not feeling too bad about said alienation.

      3. Cerberus

        It’s not actually much easier to cut them out when the person is just all-around awful. There’s still a lot of social pressure to forgive them because “they are your parents” and there’s a lot of consequences for pulling the trigger on removing toxic family from your life including loss of support and potential losses of ancillary family members.

        Which is why a lot of people don’t, even when their parents are unbelievably awful (like beat them regularly at a young age or spent years of their life emotionally torturing them or sexually molested them when they were children). While not that awful, I ran into a lot of issues trying initially to cut out my shitty dad out of my life while trying to maintain and keep the other parts of my family as that just meant he moved to trying to angle them all against me until he succeeded in fully isolating me from my entire family.

        I chose to accept that and stop fighting to reconcile but that means that I have literally no safety net if I was ever to have a period of unemployment or illness and have a lot of disconnection to a lot of familial traditions and had to say goodbye to and lock away a lot of memories of a different time.

        Hell, in this strip, we see more of the direct ways it can be difficult to cut a toxic person out. Because just because the kid says, nope, fuck you dad, I’ll risk homelessness does not mean that the parent will idly stand by and accept it and won’t try their hardest to try and ruin their disobedient child’s life even more.

        In fact, that’s a pretty common behavior of toxic horrible parents. Because accepting a necessary and hard act on their child’s part to protect themselves would involve admitting one was a bad guy and that can’t be the case, so instead we get shit like this.

        1. Ranthog

          I think stories like this are also very important to understanding the LGBT community and subculture. These are the sorts of stories that give me shivers.

        2. winter

          My issue with this is not that this level of violence or awfulness is unrealistic, but that the level of insanity Ross is displaying makes him boring.

          As Ranthog said, this type of thing usually happens behind closed doors, and that is for a reason – the reason being that most abusers are sane and have a human sense of self preservation. They don’t want to be called out on their bad behaviour. They don’t want to get arrested. They want to be in an environment that they’re controlling, so that they can rationalise and justify what they’re doing is not wrong, often with their victim’s reassurances. They want to convince the people around them that they’re in the right, so they can alienate the support network around you.

          From the beginning, Ross has been undermining his own goals. Pulling a gun on Becky in a crowded street is unlikely to garner the response that Ross really wants. This was never likely to make Becky follow him home or meekly admit he was right – it’s likely to end in filicide and him arrested.

          Ross is not acting like a human who’s thinking of the most effective way to cow Becky, which would probably involve a lot more coercion, self-righteous delusion, and physical and social isolation before he pulled out the physical violence. He’s acting like a caricature. He’s does not have human motivations or goals. He only need play the villain.

          And I know there are people out there who really are psycho and undermine their own motives by pulling guns in public, not as a last resort, but from the get-go. But, to me, there’s a more interesting story somewhere else.

          And this probably does hit on the real fears of alot of LGBT people, especially those raised in more conservative environments. And when somebody is pulling a gun on you, it doesn’t matter to your emotional response how or where or why it happened. I think Willis has captured that emotion well. But from my current position of safety, understanding the hows and wheres and whys of it happening are more important. The real Rosses of the world are who I want to understand here. How can a human being with feelings justify disowning or harming their kid for being gay? Clearly people who aren’t psychopaths do these, because otherwise alot more LGBT kids would be safe. I think exploring why is important – as is understanding that normal, rational humans can do horrible things that that normal and rational part can’t ever justify.

          And maybe that’s not why everybody else is reading this story, and that’s okay. The things I care about don’t have to be what the comic covers. But just looking at your own story, and I think it’s obvious that real life is way more complex than what we’re being shown here.

          And, I’m not sure how to say this, but I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough time, btw.

        3. mo

          Yeah, I can agree with this. I don’t mind that Ross is unambiguously hateable (a character with his goals pretty much will be) but as soon as he pulled a gun on campus it pretty much gave us a guaranteed end result. Unless something weird happens, Ross is going to be in huge legal trouble and he will be out of Becky’s hair permanently. You generally don’t get away with chasing people through the woods with a gun on school grounds. And with Willis’ assurance that no one will die, I’m not worried. I just hope no one gets seriously hurt.

          I do really like this arc though. Becky’s problems are very real and I think that this is a great and very necessary part in the story, I just think Ross as a character could be better from a storytelling perspective.

        4. Cerberus

          I think we’ll actually see that story when Jocelyne is outed or comes out at least from the same sort of religious perspective as Toedad minus the violence. We’ll probably also see a version of that story with Ethan’s mom now that Ethan is out again and possibly with Ruth’s grandpa? depending on what flavor of emotionally abusive the voice on the phone is.

          I don’t know if it’s a storyline that is interesting to you but this is a pretty on-point arc for covering how individuals rationally choose to enact great violence on their loved ones and others for perceived slights and out of a failing desire for control of an escaping loved one. Not the kind of Blaine mindset that tries and put on a good mask, but some of the mindsets of people like the Virginia Tech shooter who go out and hunt down a former loved one and then expand that to a whole school or the mindset of the murderers of Matthew Shepard. Flimsy rationalizations and existing prejudice combining to justify great violence.

          As a person who has had someone debate whether or not to bother committing a hate crime on me and my girlfriend at the time, I’ve often been interested in how that mindset operates, but I fully acknowledge that that might not be something that catches your interest.

        5. Ranthog

          Keep in mind that Ross has tried to deal with this in private. He has already likely attempted to keep Becky in a form of abusive captivity in an attempt to ‘fix’her. The unspoken threat I got from Becky’s dialog is that if she went home, she wouldn’t likely get another chance to leave until she was fixed. Not to mention Becky specifically skipped talking about what happened to her between being pulled out of school and showing up on Joyce’s doorstep. There is probably something (or many somethings) that happened she doesn’t want to talk about.

          Not to mention Ross has been trying to find Becky and I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to get Joyce’s parents and through them Joyce to help bring Becky home.

          So this is a big escalation, but it isn’t from zero to public shooting. Even in this scene he did at leas attempt to talk to Becky first and only resorted to violence when she ran. I was surprised he pulled a gun, as I thought he’d attempt to physically kidnap her (he looks like he could do so easily). Both result in a big police response.

          Of course, to the normal person this still seems odd, but one has to remember being a zealot has always been one of Ross’ traits. One of the problems with fundamentalists is that they provide many comforting absolutes in a world full of grays. Indeed, the belief structures are inherently brittle and have little flexibility to them.

          Ross likely feels he has direct and absolute authority over Becky until she marries her husband, and he is obligated to protect his daughter from all threats. (Again, this has been noted as a pattern by the level of control he’s exerted to protect her from the evils of society.) To do anything less would to be to turn away from God, and Ross can’t do that. Nor can he wait too long lest Becky become more sick because of her “choice” to become gay. So we see here his terrible love and duty towards his daughter.

          This sort of think makes sense to a zealot. In Ross’ case he wasn’t able to compromise his need to “protect” his daughter.

      4. Blue

        Judging by the preview panel for January 31, you can look forward to more of Joyce’s relationship with her parents, at least!

        1. winter

          Yes! I am really excited about Hank showing up again!

          And I’d absolutely be more down for more of Ruth and Ethan’s family life, too, like Cereberus suggested.

          Gotta count my blessings.

    2. EvolutionistX

      Yeah, but sometimes, people really are just awful.

      1. Yotomoe

        I’m not denying that. But let me say this. Even the most asshole bigoted dick are people. To Quote Guardians of the Galaxy “I don’t believe anyone is 100% a dick”. And when I feel someone is kinda written that way it sucks me out of the character. They just don’t feel like a person. If he was replaced with an axe murderer or an escaped lion at this point, I don’t feel like I’d feel any different about him.

        1. Ranthog

          I don’t believe he is written that way here. I don’t think the concern over his daughter’s welfare is insincere. I get the feeling he’d go to any length to keep her safe. Any length. Of course, a lot of his characterization has been done through Joyce and Becky, and a few scenes with him before this.

          While it did escalate quickly, I think it is possible and believable to see how he thinks that he’s the hero of his own story. I’m sure he believes that God will grant him the strength to prevail in saving his daughter’s life from mortal danger. He must protect her from danger out of concern for Beck and her soul.

          Its pretty twisted, but I don’t think it is crazy.

        2. Cerberus

          He’s very much the hero of his own story, going into the very heart of dangerous secular education to save his daughter from literally Satan trying to steal her soul.

          Ironically, there is a very interesting parallel between him and Dina. Both will go to any lengths to “save” their loved one (Becky). Both are willing to commit a level of violence to achieve that goal and both have a skewed perspective on what will best achieve their aims.

          It’s just Dina’s approach is moral if not wise, her overall goal is good, and she would probably not escalate to actual murder and Toedad’s is immoral, potential deadly to a lot of people, and thoroughly poisoned by his faith and his faith’s perspective on a biological reality.

          And thus only one will get what she wants even if she is harmed and scarred by it (even if the scars are only the mental trauma scars of having a man threaten you and your loved one with a gun [my gf still carries emotional scars from the time someone debated whether or not to commit a hate crime against me and her because of me, so they tend to stick around.])

    3. Spencer

      See, I think it works for Becky’s story that Ross is just this overwhelming wall of hate, and that’s because he’s a plot device. And that’s not criticism; Blaine was a plot device. All the parents are plot devices. Sometimes you need characters who only exist and react in a specific context.

      In the same way that the Keeners only exist to provide a foundation of support for Dorothy, or how the Walkertons only exist to be overbearing around Walky and neglectful of Sal, Ross is here to be an obstacle to Becky.

      If Ross was a real person there would be a point in his life where he was nice to Becky, and she would have some minute form of fond recollection. If we got that here, where the storyline was about how Ross is trying to destroy Becky’s life, it wouldn’t develop him more, it wouldn’t add an element of tragedy; it would take away from our perception of Ross as antagonistic force.

      It’s rooted in meta discussion, but Ross can’t be anything but what we have here to have this story work, for the same reason that Blaine needed to be an absolute monster of a parent to justify why Amber is the way she is today.

      1. Yotomoe

        I disagree. It doesn’t HAVE to be this way for the story to work. It has to be this way for the story to work…simply. If Ross was a person and not just an antagonist the outcome of this exchange would have to change to suit that.
        To compare with one of my favorite manga, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Dio Brando is a wall of hate. From the second he appears all he does is try to ruin Jonathan’s life and Kill his father. But we still get to see how he thinks, His vulnerabilities, and his overall character feels more real.

        Let’s say when he found Becky and Dina and he went through a short internal dialouge where he began to worry about his daughters soul, or in turn how it would make him appear if she doesn’t come back with him and stays with a her girlfriend. We already know how bigoted is because he talks like a Straight Camp bible sermon anyway. But because you never see him talk or act like a person, he feels too flat. Even Blaine, as evil as he appeared, wasn’t just a wall of evil. He felt like a dick, sure. But his main motivations seemed to be either to guilt trip his daughter or to just assert his authority over her in a way to convince her to spend less of his money. If you recall, Blaine didn’t even start the altercation. Amber did. Had we not known that Blaine was once an abusive man who cheated on her mother and hit her, I’d almost argue that his reactions would be somewhat justified. From simply what we’ve seen from Blaine in the actual comic universe, he is very emotionally manipulative. And while he looks as if he is pretty strong and willing to throw a punch, over the course of all of his appearances we never see him do so once. What makes Blaine a better villain is that Blaine feels like the kind of guy a girl could have grown up with all her life and only SLOWLY realized he’s an asshole.
        Becky’s dad feels to me like the kind of guy that even if she was the most brainwashed child ever, after about 14 years she’d realize he’s fucking nuts. And maybe that’s how he’s supposed to be? But the way he fits into Becky’s story feels so much less thought out to me than how Blaine was. But that’s just my opinion.

        1. Cerberus

          But we have seen his perspective and him trying to act from what he perceives to be an accepting and humble manner:

          Here he is begging for help to find his wayward daughter:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/searching/

          Here he is explaining his rationale and perspective and showing genuine if not a twisted version of love and vulnerability (especially in panel 4), not to mention a hint that this escalation began when her mother died which was recent :
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/pokeman/

          Here he is expressing gratitude to being helped:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/easiest/

          Hell, after his first encounter with Dina there was a not-insignificant number who thought he came off loving and sympathetic enough to believe that he was being mistreated by Dina and that he may have been the true hero of the scenario just trying to treat his daughter right who may not even have left for the reasons she said.

          In his mind he tried to be kind and loving and vulnerable and got his car towed and put on a bus out of town and all sorts of other inconveniences for it and so now he’s putting his foot down against Satan and showing his full strength to shock his daughter into doing what he feels is right. Heck, we even see that directly in the second panel. He’s still “willing” to do this “without force” if she “drops this silliness”, but the threat is escalating as it becomes more and more likely that he isn’t going to get what he wants.

          As far as the brainwashing, well, when you grow up with abusive parents or this type of intense religious culture that reinforces it, it’s really easy to believe a lot of messed up situations are normal. My gf has a physically abusive dad who has beaten many of his girlfriends over the years and has beat her growing up, but she still cried when he nearly ended up in the hospital recently, because growing up that was her dad and how important family was and how much her dad “loved” her when “she stayed in line” was very much drummed into her. So even though she has done work for domestic violence centers and has a psychology degree and understands abuse on a deep level, she still carries that automatic regard and deference and a difficulty shaking the idea that that background was a normal and typical raising environment (she is baffled and dismayed by how “quickly” I accepted my parents on-again/off-again disownment as final).

          For Becky, denied any form of contact with the outside world and surrounded by people who reiterated her father’s worldview, I’m sure it was unpleasant but “normal” and we can see the scars of her survival mechanisms:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/downer/

          And it was only when she couldn’t reconcile her realizations about herself with that duty she was trained in that she Huck Finned and said to Hell with it all and ran.

          Which isn’t even to say that isn’t when she recognized her parent was toxic. My ex was designing a plan to escape the second she was 18 as early as 13 and I have current students who have similar long standing plans and I know a lot of people from that Pre-millennial dispensationalist rapturist culture who had made a choice that their desires or their interests or their friendships were more important than what their parents chose to believe in, who nonetheless had to sneak and hide and play the dutiful child for many a year simply to have a familial safety net and support.

        2. Ranthog

          Not to mention this is Becky’s story and not Ross’. We’ve also been told a lot about Ross and his action from scenes involving Becky and/or Joyce. Some of the time the hints were in what wasn’t said. Its just been spread out.

          Also, the story arc is not over.

        3. Disloyal Subject

          “This is Becky’s story and not Ross’.”
          This, a thousand times this. People don’t always behave reasonably, and Ross is pretty emotionally charged right now; expecting depth and nuance out of a person taking extreme action is a bit silly. It doesn’t mean he’s a flat personality, just that he’s focused.

  82. James

    Dammit Dina raptors took on prey in PACKS, you should know this!

    1. Someone

      Im hoping that somehow Dina managed to contact, Ruth, Ethan, Amber, Danny, Walky, Dorothy, Sal and what the hell Jason (probably not him) and there all lying in wait.

      1. Mada

        Honestly I’d just like to see toedad get smashed in the face by an oven pan-wielding Galasso a la Home Alone.

        1. Someone

          Gassalo is directing them.

        2. AgentKeen

          Where’s the Sarah and her Old Testament bat?

        3. Someone

          Dammit I knew I was missing someone

        4. Mada

          In class. I’d noticed yesterday that every prior strip in this segment specifically showed where the biggest asskickers were and how they specifically weren’t in the immediate area.

        5. John

          I dunno… I’m having trouble pinning down exactly where Dina and Becky are. Can’t find adequate woods in fence-hopping range of the street – and with that little fence to hop – in the area I think they’re in. But I was last able to precisely identify their location at the noodle place where Danny had dinner with the devil, and they were headed back to Showalter Fountain to meet Joyce.

          The direct route between those two places takes them right past the Sample Gates, where we’ve previously seen Sarah walking back from the class we last saw her in. Sarah probably does not have the Wrath of God with her, though – nowhere to hide it in that outfit, unless she’s got Highlander genes.

          Sal just left Joyce at Showalter Fountain, and is presumably still somewhere in the vicinity, walking back to where she left her bike.

          Amazi-Girl is probably in the Amazi-Room in Read Hall, licking Amber’s new Transformer. Read is maybe a quarter-mile from Showalter Fountain, though in the opposite direction from the noodle place. Six minutes by Google’s walking directions; probably a fair bit less as the Amazi-Girl flies. Though of course there’s leaping-into-costume time.

          Ruth and Billie are probably also in Read, though likely still sleeping off their drunk.

          … man, I’m using Google Street View to cyberstalk fictional teenage girls. My life took a weird turn somewhere.

        6. thejeff

          As of a couple days ago, when Toedad first showed, Word of God said:

          Right now, Dina and Becky are at the edge of Dunn Meadow, just having crossed over from 6th St.

          Since, this isn’t exactly meadow, I’d guess they’d actually made it to the woods around the Kirkwood observatory. Looks decently thick, but with paths.

        7. John

          Yeah, that was my best guess, too, but I couldn’t find anywhere that those woods were close enough to a street that butthole dad might have been driving on, without intervening buildings, to fit the visuals. I guess Willis took some artistic license with the landscape.

        8. Disloyal Subject

          It would be pretty cool if Galasso were on his way back from a delivery and decided to take action against a gunman chasing a ‘prospective minion’ who picked up an application earlier. He’s probably strong enough to restrain a blinded and maimed Ross when Dina’s done with him, too.

    2. John

      … and that’s when Haruka and Ryou came out of the woods on butthole dad’s flanks…

    3. Gamaran Sepudomyn

      Actually, raptors were probably solitary hunters.

    4. Lucina

      This has come into dispute; the assumption that they hunted in packs was made based on a few trackways of dromaeosaurs walking with each other. That could mean many other things than just pack hunting.

  83. Mada

    Oh that third panel is SO becoming a gravatar.

    1. Mada

      a gravatar in need of adjustment it seems.

      1. Someone

        I like it

      2. Nightsbridge

        I think we now need to fight over who can use it.

        1. inqntrol

          Just let us prepare the pit first,ok?

  84. Darth Cariss

    Welp, this is the reason Dumbing of Age was created. Congrats, Willis, on finally reaching your goal.

  85. Crazy Potato

    I was hoping this would happen and my only thoughts were “…. yessss ….”

  86. Badeyes

    BOOOM!! And thereafter Toe-Dad was known as Toe-less Dad.

  87. Derek

    This kind of destroyed the tension like a fart in a slasher movie. If the intention was comedy it’s sort of genius, but if we’re supposed to be taking this seriously it doesn’t work.
    Im not sure if we’re still supposed to be afraid of Ross and how he might hurt Dina

    1. nightsbridge

      If an untrained girl attacking a man over twice her size with a gun doesn’t freak you out, I honestly don’t know what would.

      1. Derek

        It’s the one-liner reference from an 80’s movie that kills it.

        This comic derives its tension from the fact that it’s grounded in reality (to a certain point of course) and in real life, no one starts quoting Terminator or Ghostbusters when they’re in such an explosive situation like this.

        1. Lucina

          an 80’s movie

        2. Derek

          1993, sorry. Still a kid’s movie like Ghostbusters. Would we take Ross seriously if he completely unironically quoted the biblical proportions line?

        3. SDGlyph

          Heh. It was only funny in Ghostbusters because Venkman was basically riffing on the type of tribulation histrionics Ross and those like him come out with in absolute seriousness.

          (And Ghostbusters was a PG-rated film on release; sure I remember it being a 15 certificate in the UK but IMDb says it was just bumped to 12A (i.e. PG-13) on re-release. Sorry, couldn’t resist!)

        4. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          He probably isn’t intentionally quoting JP. He probably hasn’t even seen it.

        5. JPS

          Ya it’s not like many people saw that old dinosaur of a movie when it came out. Probably barely broke even at the box office. Silly 80’s movies.

        6. Greenygal

          Being a popular movie doesn’t mean he’s seen it, any more than it meant his daughter had seen Frozen.

        7. Lucina

          This guy’s probably only ever watched the entirety of Veggietales and The Passion of the Christ. You think he’s an expert on secular media?

        8. espanolbot

          90s movie, mate.

        9. Derek

          Jurassic Park 1993
          Oops, you’re right, but my point still stands.

        10. Disloyal Subject

          “No one starts quoting […] when they’re in such an explosive situation like this.”
          I have a hard time believing that. Smartassery is a great coping mechanism.

    2. Cerberus

      I don’t know, given how much fear and anxiety this plotline is stirring up (I’m super interested, it’s just really personally affecting and intense), I rather welcome the brief comic relief to cut the tension slightly.

      1. Rutee

        I’m torn. I was seriously considering skipping out entirely for being too much my nightmares, albeit with a more religious shooter. So on the one hand, this comic relief makes it easier to keep going for now – it is no longer the stuff of a cold sweat and wakeup.

        On the other, on some level, it bothers me. Can’t really win this, so it’s okay either way, out of hand.

    3. SDGlyph

      Yyyeah, I hate to say it but I’m feeling the same. I mean, none of the situation has gone away and everything here is both completely in-character and kind of awesome on the ‘when you think about it’ level – see comments above on Dina’s thinking and previous incarnations – but on the surface level a bit of ill-timed comedy threw me out of the scene. (See also: Lucas)

      Can’t win ’em all, and really it just highlights how goddamn well the rest of the arc has been done. On to tomorrow!

  88. OnyxIdol

    Aahahaha, this was unexpected and hilarious XD

  89. Bicycle Bill

    Sometimes the little ones can beat the big ones, especially if the big ones don’t expect it.
    David v Goliath, for example, or Judith v. Holofernes.

    1. Bagge

      Compsognathus vs Peter Stormare

    2. Durandal_1707

      Citing something from non-fiction would probably be more convincing.

      Of course, this comic is fiction too, so eh, maybe you have a point.

      1. Bicycle Bill

        I went with the Bible because of Becky’s upbringing.  She would know both of these examples.

    3. Gamaran Sepudomyn

      I would say goose versus jet, but that has the unfortunate implication that Dina will die as well.

      1. Opus the Poet

        Me vs pickup trucks. I’m 2-0-1 lifetime in death matches.

  90. Smiling Cat

    Take the eyes Dina! Thumb, fully extended, thrust in along one side of the eyeball, all the way in until something important pops out. If you can, get your hand around whatever comes out and pull.

    Seriously, kid, you’ve got the body of a twelve year old and he’s a mountain. Go for the cheapest shots you can get.

    1. NCP19

      Last time the words “mountain” and “eyeballs” were in the same sentence, it did end well for a certain someone in Game of Thrones.

      1. NCP19

        not*

        1. Smiling Cat

          Cersei enjoyed the outcome. Though that is an exceptional example why Dina shouldn’t play around in this fight.

  91. Mara

    Just let me say one thing

    YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
    Go, Dina!

  92. Kitschensyngk

    On the one hand, hope Dina doesn’t get shot.

    On the other hand…

    GO FOR THE EYES!

  93. Arkantos

    You know, now that I think about it, he would have had to have owned this gun already or have bought it from a very stupid private seller if he got it within a day of being sent upstate.

    1. Arianod

      It was probably in his car all along.

  94. Benwhoski

    Oh God. I desperately needed this brief break from the suspense.

    I mean, I totally expect things to get bad again, but for now I can be all WOO! I WANT TO BE JUST LIKE DINA WHEN I GROW UP!

  95. moby

    Go go Dinaraptor go! Just don’t get shot!!!

  96. Bagge

    Fabiola Gianotti, director-general for CERN: “…and as you can see, the Awesomometer now has the additional capacity of 500 MegaRipley, an increase of about 20 % which means that… all needles are now in the red and there are lots of little lights flashing. OK, what’s going on?”

    Technician: “There is a code ”clever girl’ in a US campus.”

    Director-general: “God dammit, Dina. Alright, connect the aux…”

    Technician: “FUCK”

    Director-general: “Get a grip! For Science!”

    Technician: “Sorry, It’s just… I’ll put it on the main screen.”

    Director-general and assembled scientists: “FUCK”.

    Director-general: “…Fine. Re-align the cyclotrone. Tell the evolutionary biologists they can have that 70 million year time window they always wanted. Start the Jurassic Park theme. That fucker is going DOWN.”

  97. Tyramisu

    A question. Is it possible that Dina has some martial arts training? Like Raptor style kung fu or Dino bending?

    Ok all joking aside, is it possible she has training?

    1. Dean

      No matter your level of training, it is seldom a good idea to fight a person who is three times your size and has a gun. This is not a Batman comic.

      1. Chris

        I only hope she uses everything at her disposal: her nails, her teeth, every bit of her rage. It’s her only chance and she’s smart enough to know it. GO FOR THE THROAT, DINA!

    2. Opus the Poet

      She managed to get Faz thoroughly tied up, so the possibility exists. Her parents might have done it to help her mental development.

  98. pjeseb

    Yeah, a few people called this last Saturday.

    Also, holy shit. 250 comments in two minutes?!

    1. pjeseb

      Nevermind, somehow it’s been a whole hour.

  99. Triniking1234

    Screw you, alt-text. I didn’t see this coming.

  100. Bagge

    I was JOKING Dina, it was a JOKE. It is not a good idea to raptor-charge a man with a GUN.

    …But damned if it isn’t awesome.

    I think that between Jurassic Park and Amazie-girl, Dina doesn’t have the best role models for how to handle a crisis. She is terrified and panicking of course, just like Joyce and Becky, but the way she is told to deal with these situations is like an action movie…

    1. Ancestral Hamster

      … And the reason it works in the movies is because it is scripted that way and the protagonist has script immunity. Real life ain’t so clean-cut.

      1. timemonkey

        Good thing this is scripted fiction and not real life then.

    2. Cerberus

      Yup.

      And I wish it wasn’t so clear cut that she was about to receive a private tutoring lesson on just how much not like real-life narrative fiction is. She’s grabbing onto all she knows to try and live up to the ideals of her ideology and her mentor, but that’s not going to make her bullet-proof or any more able to knock that slab of rancid beef to the ground.

    3. SDGlyph

      Yes. Now that the initial moodkill has passed and the strip’s been percolating for a bit, I’ve been thinking on how Dina (much like Joyce, really) has a very strong narrative idea of How Things Are Supposed To Go, or more precisely What I Am Supposed To Do. I figured the “Understood” line when Becky said TD couldn’t chase them both had more than one reading, but you can see the line of thinking: Then I shall ensure that he chases me, because that is how I may atone for my previous mistake, and because that is what I must do to protect Becky. I shall become Velociraptor.

      Oh, Dina.

  101. The Aussie Bloke

    If she’s smart, she snapped a pic/took a recording of him and called the cops when she saw the gun.

    Re: Alt text – Yes. Yes we did.

    1. Marie

      I think Becky has her phone

    2. m2iCodeJockey

      After Beckasaur dashed into the woods, he pulled a weapon, in full view of one of the couples on the other side of the road. They noticed.

      Otherwise, Beck has Dina’s phone.

  102. Linkara

    I thought this might result.

    NOW BITE HIS DAMN NOSE OFF.

    1. NinjaNick

      Even better, bite his ugly FAAAACE off.

  103. Jake

    WILLIS, THIS IS SERIOUS! DON’T PUT DINA IN DANGER JUST TO MAKE A JOKE!

    1. BenRG

      +1 Ditto – The wheels cleared the shark’s dorsal fin by a good 12 inches.

  104. Saaaam

    Go for the eyes!

  105. Bagge

    Ross, do you really believe any of that shit that’s coming from your mouth? Do you believe that there is a possible future in which you and Becky drive away from this together? Are you really deluded enough to believe that even if no shot is fired you can just walk away from this?

    …or are you just trying to flush Becky out so you can shoot her? Are you planning for your LAST WORDS to your CHILD TO BE LIES????????

    Ross, I really didn’t think you were capable of being more despicable.

    1. TheHabbadasher

      I get the sense that Ross, like many a prejudiced fundamentalist, doesn’t really get how other people work. Especially if those people don’t fit with his narrow little worldview. I have no doubt that he is in fact deluded enough to think that he and Becky are gonna be driving away together. In his mind all of this is perfectly justified. He’s doing it in the name of God after all. I’m not sure he’s self aware enough to understand how all this looks to Becky. He’s totally unwilling to consider any perspective other than his own. He’s unwilling to see any of this from her point of view.

      1. Cerberus

        This.

        His mind works like so:

        Becky will see reason and return to her proper place, because that is what Jesus has chosen for her and that is what is Right and so she will choose to do Right because he raised her to do Right as soon as he is able to reason or shoot his way through the way that Satan has clouded her from being able to see what is Right.

        But he will win in the end and convince her, because his faith is Strong and he is Right and so God will favor him and give him the strength to part through Satan’s lies. Because by being inflexible and not giving into Satan’s foul ideas of accepting sin, he is proving how Godly he is and that will strengthen him and allow him to break through to anyone not fully lost to the taint of sin.

        This is all pre-determined. He has already won. He just needs to stay firm and escalate his position and then all will work out for this world is just and fair and good things fall onto those who deserve it and likewise for bad. And since he is Good, he shall be rewarded for his faith by being allowed to demonstrate his faith by saving his daughter from Satan himself.

        And this is terrifying, because it means that absent being locked up, he will not stop or cease in his attempts to cure or attack Becky and her loved ones. In his head, he had two options, cutting out the sinful from his life and his thoughts so their taint would not corrupt his soul or bringing her back into the fold by any means necessary. And he genuinely views the latter as his only real choice and his duty owing to his “failures” to properly train her in the proper female role. And so to stop at any point and switch to the other method of handling it would be to surrender a loved one to Satan knowingly which is clearly an evil act. So he will never stop and even if arrested, will probably continue to mail threatening or “correcting” letters to her. This will just be Becky’s life and that will create radiative damage to any type of stability she tries to build.

        See here how even her little hard-fought pile is all under threat from this attack. That’s now going to be a constant for her entire life.

        1. Bagge

          It’s truly terrifying.

        2. Nightsbridge

          Well, HIS entire life, at least. After that, hopefully it will slow down. She’s young. He’s not.

    2. BenRG

      He has faith that God will bless his actions. It’s a bit like how the ISIS guys in Iraq and Syria seriously expect to go to heaven for raping all those girls and throwing people off of the roofs of tower blocks.

  106. ninja_jesus

    So, joke aside, and aside from the pretty interesting fact that Dina’s response in a dire situation is to fight, this will not end well. Will he kidnap her and literally hold her hostage? Especially at gunpoint? That’s unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable.

    I wonder what Joyce is up to. If she’s good at anything, she can really rally a crowd around her. How many people will show up to support Dina and Becky at Joyce’s request?

    1. Cerberus

      In a traumatic situation, there are 3 responses, fight, flight, or freeze and you really don’t know until the situation how you will respond. Becky responds with flight, Dina with fight, Joyce with freeze. These aren’t moral pronouncements, just how the roulette wheel falls. All have their dangers and their consequences and I have a feeling we’re about to see all of them all at once this story arc.

      1. timemonkey

        Joyce is a fighter as well.

        1. Nightsbridge

          Mhm, at least at first. Panic attacks may have skewed that slightly

  107. Brian

    I love Dina’s serrated teeth.

    1. Cerberus

      All the better to rip out a femur.

  108. JetstreamGW

    Ah, I see, we’re playing the deadly situation for laughs. I like it.

    1. m2iCodeJockey

      “…knew this was…”
      GAAAAAAHHHD-dammit…

  109. kay

    IF HE SHOOTS DINA. 8|

  110. Lapin

    Get the gun out of his hands, Dina. Clever girl.

    Now grab it and run. You’re smaller, younger and way faster than this asshole.

    1. Benjy

      And then the cops arrive from that phone call of the two students who saw Toe Dad and his gun, and then go after Dina thinking she was the shooter.

      1. Kamino Neko

        A 5′ tall scrawny Asian girl is mistakeable for a 6′ tall white man with no neck?

        1. Benjy

          Even discounting the potential racial bias, being called in on a school shooting will probably lead to a “shoot potential threat first, investigate later” scenario. It’s why a few men who were armed in that college shooting in Oregon didn’t get involved, because they knew the cops could mistake them for the shooter. Plus, the police wouldn’t know if it was just one man or a group attack.

        2. Kamino Neko

          …

          What kind of idiots are running 911 in your area? You get a description immediately.

    2. NinjaNick

      Dina should just yank the rifle out and toss it in the forest. Then, kick toedad in the nuts and run like the wind.

      1. Benjy

        I like this idea

      2. m2iCodeJockey

        Good plan but, I think the order of those actions could use rearrangement…

  111. 6Qubed

    I love a good JP reference as much as the next huge old nerd, I am still extremely nervous because this time around 1.) the giant murderlizard had friends the first time, 2.) the giant murderlizard this time around is an admittedly adorable but nonetheless smaller asian girl, and 3.) the man with a gun is still a man with a gun.

    And layered above all of this are the sinister machinations of Dave “Damn You” Willis, webcomic purveyor and freelance Eater of Hope.

  112. Vi

    I’M VOTING FOR DINA IN THE POLL IN THE HOPE SHE WILL NOT DIE.

  113. Bagge

    How on earth did Willis resist the temptation of naming the strip “clever_girl”?

    1. Bicycle Bill

      I’m surprised he even named it “Clever”, because even that is telegraphing the joke right there.

  114. Robocott

    That’s “-raptor” checked off. Now let’s hope to high heaven she can show us the “veloci-” part.

    1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

      Sadly, Velociraptors probably weren’t built for speed. On the other side, they may have been good at short sprints, and hopefully that’s all Dina will need right now.

  115. Benjy

    Well, I was right about Dina going raptor on him, at any rate.

  116. brasca1

    There is no Dina only Zool.

  117. Gamaran Sepudomyn

    The problem here is that raptors go for the neck, and toedad has no neck.

    1. DarkoNeko

      Oh no !

    2. Disloyal Subject

      His spinal column has to be in there somewhere.

  118. lumen

    gg

  119. Tofusmith

    I did not know that this was coming!

  120. Gamaran Sepudomyn

    Also, I’m pretty sure toedad is picturing Dina as this: http://www.headinjurytheater.com/Entertainment/da%20devil%20dinosaur.jpg

  121. DaffGrind

    God Damn You Willis!!!

  122. Deathjavu

    Dina always wins the “who do you want to see more of” polls, but this time it’s just because we want to make sure she’s still alive and unharmed.

  123. LBD "Nytetrayn"

    I did not see this particular scenario coming. I feel embarrassed by this.

  124. bearpelt

    i actually did not know this was coming and i usually hate this joke but i was so terrified that we’d get a school shooting murder scene that this was such a relief anyways

  125. DarkoNeko

    I’m glad I randomly caught that one scene on youtube, haha, else I’d never have gotten the ref.

    But oh my god Dina, that was stupid. I know you care about Becky but that was so, SO stupid 🙁

    1. DarkoNeko

      Going to melee against someone who could snap your spine with a single hand ? really ? 😐
      aaargh. *pulls hairs*

      1. Gob Hobblin

        Buddy, it’s not the size of the Dina in the fight: it’s the size of the fight in the Dina.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          JUST WHO IN THE HELL DOES HE THINK SHE IS?

  126. Crumplepunch

    I am concerned for her safety but god damn that is hilarious.

  127. TheLurkerAbove

    Willis, you magnificent bastard. You managed to turn a serious situation into a joke. I laughed.

  128. Torra

    Like what the fuck man, this is just beyond fucked up now. The fact that he’s calling for his daughter while *pointing a gun into the trees* is just literally crazy, unless he was using this tactic to lure out Dina? Even so though what the hell toedad, jesus. Are you planning on murdering your daughters girlfriend??? Jesus christ

    I hate guns anyway, you don’t really see them ever in the UK, so whenever I see someone holding a loaded gun (usually abroad with security/police) I always feel really unsettled until I’m away from them. ugh.

    We know that Dina’s not going to die or anything, but remembering those preview panels, I’m hoping that she doesn’t get hurt in any sort of way :c

  129. Gamaran Sepudomyn

    Geese and ducks are much smaller than Dina, but they can still easily break arms and mangle a person’s face badly enough to require surgery. Let’s see what she can do.

    1. Arianod

      Geese have goddamn good fighting instincts; I bet Dina has never been in a fight before. There are a few things she can do that could mess Toedad up, but the chances are he’ll kick her off before she can do anything. Her best bet is probably to hold on to him with all her strength before he can get her off him, and I’m not sure how well that’d work.

      1. Chris

        However, Dina is smart, and she’s incensed. She knows he’s armed, she knows she has to hurt him and she has a lot of built up rage from science denial and top that off with this ass is literally hunting her very first love. Dina will hurt him; my only fear is that she doesn’t hurt him enough.

        1. Arianod

          She’s already made him close his eyes in the last panel: his guard is momentarily off, so she has a chance.

  130. espanolbot

    Hm, so now the countdown to see who’ll end up in the hospital in that one preview panel begins… 🙁 Hopefully not Dina or Becky, obviously.

  131. Sabrine

    THIS MOTHERFUCKER WITH HIS TOE LOOKING ASS WENT FROM HUNTING DOWN HIS DAUGHTER TO LITERALLY HUNTING HER WHAT THE FUCK.

  132. EyYoVinny

    Comic has officially jumped the shar..erm dinosaur.

  133. BenRG

    Okay, I know that a lot of fans have wanted this moment but, I’m afraid, it’s a bit too silly for me. Yes, I’m saying that it’s silly in the context of this strip with its’ masked vigilante.

  134. shadowsneakz

    What is the number one reason, for a day off work for Becky’s dad? Oh, so let me tell you: DINA ATTACK! DINA ATTACK!

    Ahh, Weebl references.

  135. BenRG

    PREDICTION: The person at the hospital is going to be Dina. Ross is going to beat her half to death before the campus police, Joyce, Sal and Amber arrive and dog-pile him. She gets 10/10 points for courage but minus several million out of ten for sensible thinking.

    On the flip side, no-one is going to believe that the gun is hers. Lacking any kind of mitigation, Ross is probably going to be sampling the Indiana penal system for 18 months or so.

  136. Megatron

    It’s just a jump to the left.

  137. Willoughby Chase

    Dina, you idiot.

  138. Victor Riley

    Now that I see the gag in play… I’m surprised I didn’t see it coming. 🙂

  139. Zaxares

    Yep, I saw that coming.

    But seriously, what is WITH Toe-Dad? How is bringing your GUN to your attempt to convince your daughter to come home so you can pray the gay away going to help?? Do you honestly think that will make her feel safer?

    1. BenRG

      He’s sane enough to realise that she’s going to say ‘no’ and that he needs to have some means to coerce her.

    2. SDGlyph

      He’s not trying to convince her; he’s giving her an order.

  140. SDGlyph

    Also: no, alt-text, I didn’t see this coming. I probably should have, and I suspected that Dina’s “Understood” a couple of strips ago meant more than just “OK”, but I didn’t see it. Gah.

  141. Animaniac

    Well.. She’s just doing the best she could do.

  142. Kocel

    Well, Dina, on the bright side, gun shot scars are pretty cool! You’re gonna get a lot of street cred!

    … On the other hand, shotguns at close range are really, really bad news. Like, I hope he only wings her on the leg or something, and even that is gonna be really severe. I’m sure Willis will cut away or something but I’m still gonna wince.

    Good thing Toedad didn’t bring something with a clip, though. At least he only has two shots at a time, that’ll give the girls more time for someone to come help.

    1. DarkoNeko

      Hopefully he didn’t also bring a hunting knife.

      1. BenRG

        Or a heavy-calibre pistol in his waistband.

        1. DarkoNeko

          I’m not sure why he’d have put a rifle in his car if he already had a gun handy.

        2. BenRG

          Different performance envelope and also ‘backup’.

          I understand that trying to hit anything at significantly further than 10 or so yards with a pistol is difficult, especially if it’s moving. A rifle gives you much better accuracy at range or if you need to hit a moving target.

  143. Strife

    Eh. New character, exposition and character development for a fanbase-favorite secondary character…
    The dread poll…
    The rifle…
    Somehow I knew it would end badly.

    So long, Dina. Or maybe Becky comes back to help and then gets fired at instead. “What have I done?” will Toedad say, damn the Willis on this day :/

    1. BenRG

      One possible scenario is that Becky comes back to find Ross beating Dina into a pulp. Being a good American girl whose daddy taught her to shoot to protect her family from the Gubbmint’s black-uniformed stormtroopers, she picks up her dad’s gun and blows two 223-calibre holes through his centre-of-volume. Even to protect her girlfriend, that’s a difficult thing to live with.

      Yeah, I could see a “I killed my daddy” self-destructive guilt arc in Becky’s future.

      1. Strife

        That’s an interesting possibility but wouldn’t Becky go to jail from doing this?

        And Dina would now become the lesbian dinosaur girl whose gf is in prison, it’s a lot distinctiveness for an already quite standing out character. Wel, not that there isn’t a character in DOA who doesn’t stand out, mind you.

  144. Drakkin the Alien

    *you are not taking her away from me!
    /translated from raptorish.

  145. bsrlee

    1. The rifle as drawn is a(Ruger No.1), its a single shot and it has no sights in the comic – the little bumps on the barrel are where you are supposed to mount the telescope. Mr Fundament is a doofus with firearms.

    2. If Dina is up with her dinosaurs, she will do the Iguanadont attack – they had a huge thumb spike, perfect for eye poking. Peaceful herbivore my batata.

  146. Marie

    I’m really worried this is going to end anticlimacticly and then Dina will be threatened with assault charges

    1. Tatz

      He’s chasing both Dina and Becky with a gun. Pretty sure they can spin that as self-defense, and if chasing his daughter with a friggin’ gun seems like a rational choice to Toedad, I’m willing to bet he has prior offenses under his belt.

      1. m2iCodeJockey

        Not likely.

        Cannot buy (unless lives in a state with no checks) and would have lost the ones he already owned.
        Some places, they make a special trip to collect if you are so much as accused and only return them if you’re cleared.

        The one he has looks like a Varmiter .22, most likely came from a big named store.

    2. segnosaur

      Not sure how anyone would ever consider laying charges against Dina. Obviously, Toedad was the one who initiated the violence here… he brought a gun onto university property. (This was witnessed by people in the background of a previous strip.) Any attempt to ‘fight back’ or disarm him would probably be considered justified.

  147. BenRG

    Re.: Poll. It’s interesting; I don’t like Mike at all. However, he has subtleties and some oddly redeeming features. I’d really like to know (in non-comedic terms) what makes him the man he is. Is he just thoroughly unpleasant or is he coping with something (even if it is the highly-intelligent social misfit trying to cope with human stupidity)?

  148. chris73

    Ok so this is funny but if this were real life then the most likely outcome is Dina gets absolutely wrecked by Toe Dad, in fact the best you can hope for in this situation is that she only gets wrecked a la Blaine style and not wrecked then shot

    But its also a comic so hopefully we’ll get a happy ending until the next dram unfolds

  149. Hopeless Savage

    Did you seriously create this entire storyline just for this one joke? Because that would be amazing.

  150. Pink Freud

    Dina is…..a velociraptor, Dina is…..a velociraptor, Dina is……a velociraptor nooooooow (to the tune of Sheena is a Punk Rocker by the Ramones, thank you, thank you)

    1. Crumplepunch

      A friend of mine had a school band with a song called “Santa is a velociraptor”.

      I had forgotten about it until now.

  151. Retrikaethan

    unless dina has some super secret ninja martial arts training and a plan on how to disable and disarm toedad, i have no idea how this could end well without the ending being on toedad’s terms. ending badly, either dina rips his throat out with her teeth, or toedad does what we’re all scared he wants to.

    1. segnosaur

      Remember, the human body is actually pretty frail in many ways. Lots of squishy parts that can be seriously injured with just fingers (e.g. eyes). And some bones can be broken with ~25 pounds of pressure when applied in the right way.

      Nine times out of 10, someone like Toedad would have the advantage. But, he was surprised, and in the last panel he is falling backwards (an unprotected fall has its own dangers… it can be disorienting, the head could hit the ground causing brain injury. Since he has his hands full he has no way to break his fall. And since Dina was on top, her weight might cause some ribs to break.)

      Not saying that Dina would still win in that situation, just that she wouldn’t necessarily need martial arts training to disable toedad… just one or 2 things to go her way during her attack.

  152. Spencer

    😐

  153. erejnion

    Oh no you won’t. Now I am afraid to even continue reading this comics, I greatly prefer a universe where I’m sure Dina is alive to a universe where I’m still reading DoA.

  154. LordHaw

    I didn’t see this coming…but it certainly broke the tension.

  155. Chris

    Am I a bad person that my first words of comment were “Hurt him, Dina.”?

    1. HiiroArana79

      …Ruth inexplicably comes from nowhere and takes the bullet and dies. Becky wakes up in the hospital and must face her own feeling of guilty. Billie struggles with sobriety …

  156. Blindeye

    It’s been 22 years since Jurrasic Park.

  157. JohnnyCarcinogen

    Who uses a Ruger no. 1 to hunt people?

    1. Scoops

      Well you just grab what you have available. You’re not always going to have the chance to shop for a people-hunting gun.

      1. Bicycle Bill

        Any gun, even a ‘harmless’ BB-gun, can be used as a people-hunting gun.  As has been proven far too many times in recent history.

      2. Bicycle Bill

        Some are just better than others.

  158. Arturo

    I have the feeling Willis planned this whole story arch only so he could do this strip XD

  159. The Phantom's Belch

    Nope. Toe-head deserves it.

    On the plus side, it looks like she managed to get him to drop the gun. Barrel-down in the dirt, no less, so firing it has a very real chance of the gun exploding from the bullet not being able to move when the powder goes off. Can’t tell if that’s a shotgun or a hunting rifle, though.

    1. BenRG

      Those in the know in yesterday’s thread said it’s a Ruger Model-1v double-barrel hunting rifle.

  160. Losloslos

    Uh…given past tragedies in Willis’ comics I find myself intensely, deeply concerned for Dina’s safety right about now, especially with her being my favorite character in everything she’s appeared in.

    1. Toes14

      Agreed. Dina’s great, but a 98 lb girl versus a 250 lbs male religious zealot with a gun does not bode well for the girl, unless she’s some sort of martial arts expert. Is tomorrow the day we discover Dina is also a 3rd Dan black belt in Aikido, or a Kung Fu master? (Iguanadon style, Stegasaurus style?)

      1. segnosaur

        I had posted an earlier comment about this the same time you were posting this.

        While in most cases, Toedad would easily beat Dina, in this case its not assured. The human body has many vulnerabilities… eyes, throat, etc. that can easily be injured. And many smaller bones can be broken with just 25 pounds of force. Toedad is also falling backwards in the last panel, which also causes some risks… (brain injury when the head hits the ground.) Plus, since he has Dina falling on top of him, he could have some ribs broken. She may be small, but even 100 pounds could crack a rib.)

        It would be no guarantee that Dina would successfully disarm Toedad, but she wouldn’t necessarily need to be a martial arts expert… just have one or 2 things go her way in the fight.

  161. Robbzilla

    Dad carrying a rifle? Seriously? #toofarwiththefundyjoke

    1. Spencer

      Zealous Christian fundamentalists always react completely rationally with their gay kids.

      #thisshitactuallyhappens

  162. Jimmy

    The only reason Willis gave Toedad a gun was for this moment, wasn’t it?

  163. spiderfan14

    I’m worried this might turn out to be like the ending of “Total Rickall” for Dina.

  164. Kirbilius Clausius

    1)Double WTF on the rifle to grab your over age daughter. Then again, if you’re insane enough to be religious-meh?

    2)If Dina ends up shot before Amazi-Girl, Amber needs to collapse under too much failure.

    1. No Name

      1) Religion isn’t insane, it’s a completely human reaction to the unknowable and inevitable beyond that is death. Fundamentalism is what you should be dissing
      2) That might actually happen, but Amber doesn’t “need” to do anything.

  165. TrueVCU

    Goddammit now Toedad has an australian accent in my head

  166. charlierw1

    yas

  167. hof1991

    Prediction. No one gets shot. Too hard to draw for Willis. Dina gets knocked out at some point and goes to the hospital. Easy to draw.

    Never underestimate the importance of DYW being able to draw something on the plot.

    1. David M Willis

      too hard to draw???

      Drawing someone getting shot is roughly 65 times easier to draw than drawing going to the hospital, because one of those involves drawing a hospital. (Though usually both involve drawing a hospital, eventually.)

      I mean, hospitals are a whole new setpiece, full of equipment and chairs and people. Drawing someone getting shot is, like, drawing a straight line through someone with a sound effect typed in.

      1. SDGlyph

        That is a worryingly specific answer.

        1. Opus the Poet

          Not really, there have been lots of people getting shot in the Walkyverse. This is just recollection on his part.

    2. Lord Stoneheart

      Didn’t people get shot all the time in It’s Walky?

      I’d base my “Dina won’t be killed” prediction on the fact the author said he wasn’t going to kill characters due to the time scale, much more than “It’s too difficult to show someone getting killed.” Because the last universe could have a pretty high body count.

  168. Alexx

    Were I an art man, I’d edit Dina out and replace her with a hand puppet that looked like her hat.

  169. Rodimiss

    No, Dina. Dina, no, this is a bad idea.

  170. Derek

    Ross cares about Becky and genuinely thinks he will help her be happy and fulfilled. Just like Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho was protecting her son by telling him all women are whores.
    It’s really scary when parents/guardians hurt their children out of their notion care rather than out of spite D:

  171. Purphoros

    I can’t help but notice that Amber is not listed in the poll.

    Is it a mistake? Is her part big enough already? Or is she maybe about to get shot? Dang…

    1. David M Willis

      The poll doesn’t include the top five characters in number of appearances. That’s why Joyce, Dorothy, Walky, and Billie aren’t on it, either.

      1. Purphoros

        Oh, that’s a relief, thanks for the info.

        Guess I’m a bad person not noticing that those were missing too. On the other hand, none of the others are likely to attack a gun-wielding psycho bare-handed… wait…

  172. Guairdean Beatha

    Fundie Dad was caught off guard. He saw Dina, but discounted the threat. When she attacked, it knocked him over. Hopefully into a rock. My guess on the story line is that the police will find one, or both, of them knocked out and haul Fundie off for prosecution, and a tighter bond will develop between Dina and Becky. It’s also possible that Becky will see what’s happening and come back to Dina’s aid. Either way, their relationship will take on a new dimension and Fundie will be out of the picture for a few years.

  173. Luchucholo

    Excuse me, I´m just a baffled European (Spanish, tho) at seeing some father looking for his daugther, gun in arms, cocked and ready. This is a bit exagerated, I mean, what is the possibility of “letal” wildlife near (very close!) a city in South Indiana, big enough to use gunshot? And the possibility of harming someone? Who´s he, some hillbilly from the West frontiers in the 1800´s?

    1. BenRG

      He’s an average member of his class – usually small-town working class in largely rural areas. Additionally, he is a religious fanatic; it is quite possible that he believes that Becky’s sexuality is an existential threat to her safety and that using a gun to coerce her or even incapacitate her so he can ‘take her to safety’ is a proportionate and loving response.

      There are, on average, about four to six privately-owned guns per person in America. Furthermore, some interpretation of the national constitution leads some Americans to believe that they are duty-bound to be armed sufficiently to resist the national army and overthrow the government in the event of it carrying out tyrannical actions.

      It is likely that Ross owns several semi-automatic pistols for ‘self-defence’ as well as at least one military-grade semi-automatic rifle and multi-round shotgun.

      This particular weapon is a very odd German-designed hunting firearm for use on small game animals and birds. It may have some manner of symbolic importance to him.

      1. Luchucholo

        Thank you for your explanation, BenRG. That gun, by the way, isn´t rare on Spain, though only for small “game” in very coveted rural areas, and with a strict gun control for hunters (the permit encompasses a psychological test, even…). Small arms aren´t completely banned, though. More like the hurdle to get one is too big of a hassle to have and use one, because of the regulations here. Obviously, you can´t exactly carry one in plain sight on the street… Anyway, that´s beside the point. It´s more like that I didn´t imagine Beckie´s father as a gun-touter. A fundie fanatic, yes, but shouldn´t he think a little about the possibility of LEO on his tails if he were to be seen like that? Well, that in case we´re speaking of somebody with at least a smidge of common sense. 😉 In a lot of things, America would seem a bit alien to Europe, but with all things explained, understanding isn´t difficult. Thank you.

      2. Nightsbridge

        Getting a gun over here is not hard, and while regulations vary state by state generally speaking, it is not hard. A quick peek at wikipedia says that Indiana gun laws, in particular, are . . .

        You need a permit to carry a handgun. You need no permit to carry a long gun. Open carry is explicitly permitted and you need no license to do it. There are no NFA laws in that state either, so he may also own shotguns, assault rifles, ect, and it would be entirely legal even with zero documentation.

      3. hof1991

        Slow down a little. One gun per capita, but only a minority own guns. Thus each gun owner owns 4-6.

    2. Guairdean Beatha

      It’s quite possible that he was on his way to, or from, a hunting trip when he found out about his daughter’s defiance. That would explain the camo pants and white shirt. He would have put on a camo shirt or jacket when he arrived at the hunting location, or have just taken them off when leaving. Considering the time between Becky’s arrival, and his, there could have been extensive travel time from the hunt. As for the firearm itself, it’s a sporting type of rifle often used for hunting. Single shot, target trigger system, and quite accurate when rested on something, not so much when used offhand in this situation. Another sign that logic has left the building. It’s use here is also an indicator of his fundamentalist leanings. Religious fundamentalists seem to be incapable of rational thought when their beliefs are challenged, especially when that challenge comes from a child. Killing a child for being disrespectful (blasphemy is the ultimate disrespectful act) is common in the Bible, and that tradition has carried forward to modern times in many cultures. It’s rare in the US, but not unheard of. Fundamentalists feel they must kill the heretic to save their soul. My hope is that staring down the barrel of a police weapon, followed by a ride in a police car and a nice talk with a judge, will serve as a reality check.

      1. Luchucholo

        I didn´t know about that. And good observation about why he could have that gun “ready” in the car. Makes sense. Still, I think by even his religious standards, that´s an extreme course of action. Maybe he feels that he “knows” what he´s doing… clearly, that´s not the case.

      2. Argon

        Don’t forget that Dina previously intercepted Toedad and sent him on a bus to Indianapolis. I feel like he probably drove to IU to find Becky and left his car behind during the side trip to Indy; once he gets back to the university he decides to just drive around the campus until he intercepts Becky. Dina’s interferance may have even been confirmation of Becky being at IU for him.

  174. Joe Beets

    Getting a gun should be no easier than getting an abortion. Apply the same rules to both because they are both constitutionally guaranteed by US Supreme Court rulings.

    1. Darwin

      Fine by me, since abortion is a medical procedure, and should be only the business of the person getting it, and the doctor performing it.

  175. Samster

    Is it just me or that’s kinda a Jurassic Park scene? I mean the one where Muldoon dies

    1. Axel

      Yeah, that seems to be the intention, especially with Dina being a Jurassic Park fan.

      1. segnosaur

        in a scene with Sarah, she explained that while she enjoyed Jurassic Park as a piece of main-stream dinosaur-themed entertainment, she could not fully endorse it because of scientific errors.

        Then she listed them.

    2. Heavensrun

      http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-the-joke

    3. Cattleprod

      On a related note, the ‘Batman’ character that appears in Shortpacked is very similar to one that’s been in various comic books, movies, and TV shows.

  176. Lulu

    I hope that Toedad won’t make a trophy from Dina…

    1. Meamoi

      I do hope that Dina makes a trophy of Toedad.

      1. Opus the Poet

        Specifically from certain organs that he can live without, but which cause a great deal of grief for others while he retains them.

  177. TJ Pittsburgh

    In happier news, Sayyid is showing up soon? (I’m sorry for obsessing, but I’m already in love with him.)

  178. jaimehlers

    He broke the two primary rules of gun use: Never ready a gun if you’re not prepared to kill with it, and never point it at something unless you’re prepared to kill whatever it is that you’re pointing it at. Using it to try to intimidate someone into obeying (as toedad is doing) only demonstrates incompetence, because you’re raising the stakes all around.

    1. Nightsbridge

      He may have been willing to shoot, depending on what Becky’s answer was, disgustingly enough.

  179. Darwin

    My question at this point is what is Dina’s plan? Swarming over Toedad might annoy him, but he severely outweighs her, is likely physically stronger than her, and he’s armed (albeit with a rifle, which at close quarters is a more difficult weapon to use than a shotgun or pistol). If her plan is to run interference, leaping out to temporarily frazzle, and then disappearing back into the foliage, that might work. The tactic, used by wolves when harrying and running down prey (wolves don’t just run up and bite, they chase prey in circles, with pack members jumping in to replace tired members, and running the prey until it collapses), might be enough to tire out Toedad, but unlike a deer, Toedad might send bullets after Dina, a situation I consider wholly unacceptable. Also, there’s one of Dina, something that does not lend it well to running him down.

    I’m hoping she’s able to scramble away and vanish into the trees.

    I really, really hope.

    1. BenRG

      It’s a semi-instinctual fight/flight response. I don’t think that she’s got a ‘plan’ beyond ‘give Becky a chance to escape’.

      1. Mada

        Here’s to hoping she does some damage to his eyes at least.

        I mean I know the Toedadosaurus Rex’s eyesight is based on heterosexuality, but still.

    2. Guest2015

      Probably bite his throat? She seems logical, she knows the good spots to go for.

    3. Opus the Poet

      Humans have been doing the “chasing the prey until it dies from exhaustion” bit for millennia as well. We didn’t start doing the “hunt from ambush” thing until we had reliable ranged weapons like bows.

      1. Darwin

        And spears. Don’t forget the awesomeness that is the spear. And yeah, Opus, you’re right. It’s how our species turned the mammoth from a thriving elephant-type creature into delicious mammoth meat. I think the running down prey thing is sort of a natural behavior for all pack hunters, or at least mammalian ones.

  180. Ashirogi

    Coincidentally, we’re watching the first three JP movies this holiday weekend, so recognizing your punchline made it all the funnier.

    (Not that it’s any big thang, but I enjoyed the hell outta that moment and wanted to pass it along.)

  181. Matt

    Please don’t kill Dina. Not again. She can’t just be the character who sacrifices her self in every universe

  182. Er45234

    Last panel, Ross is all like:
    Stop it girl, You’re so funny I can’t even hold my rifle straight.

  183. Meamoi

    He has pulled a gun without provocation of violence. Dina, anything you do now can be qualified as self defense. May evolution favor your survival. Biting face is a legal move in this situation. It is your one situation you may go full primal, use it and protect your tribe!

  184. RavenRyy

    Get right intae that bawbag Dina! Tear open his belly with your toenail and devour his guts!

  185. Doom Shepherd

    Strip needs more Carolyn Gudger. That particular scenario would cause most of Willis’s readers to ragequit, and the rest to have heart attacks. It is therefore the LEAST likely out of all possible things that could happen. Therefore by the Law of Willis Screwing With Our Expectations, it MUST happen?
    http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/gudger.asp

  186. Aaron Bourque

    …
    Now the question is, is the rifle loaded with real bullets, or with, like, tranq darts?
    I mean, either way, he intends to SHOOT HIS DAUGHTER.

  187. KSClaw

    When in doubt, go for the nards

  188. Plume

    There really shouldn’t be a joke that makes you laugh so much in such a serious situation… and yet here it is! 😀
    Well played Willis, well played.

  189. Idontcarenomore

    I’m not surprised at ‘Clever Girl’ – it was just to good to pass up. I hope she really is as good as she needs to be.

    I’ve refrained from gun comments thru over 1,000 comments. So…

    I have a handgun for ‘target shooting’ and I’ve taken classes to learn to use it right. My brother is a hunter and has several rifles and shotguns.

    My comment is: prove to me that you need an semi-automatic machine gun to kill a deer and I’ll get off your ass about all those ‘military’ style weapons you feel you need to hoard.

    1. John

      “semi-automatic machine gun” is an oxymoron.

      1. John

        I also feel the need to point out that butthole dad’s gun there is a single-shot rifle with one of the most primitive forms of breech-loading action, designed for popping woodchucks. It needs to be manually actuated and have a new round inserted into the chamber by hand between shots. It’s about as far from a modern “military style” weapon as you can get without needing to cram a ball down the barrel with a stick.

        1. BenRG

          I’m genuinely surprised by the number of firearms hobbyists who swear by their black powder muzzle-loaders!

    2. BenRG

      Ask any of them, they’ll tell you that the assault rifle is not for hunting. It is for killing the Gubb’mint’s black-armoured stormtroopers that will shortly be coming to drag them and their families off to FEMA extermination camps. Don’t laugh; to them, this is a very real and immediate threat and they’re arming themselves to defend themselves from it and to overthrow the governmental system behind it. They would even argue that this is the purpose for which the Second Amendment exists.

      1. TJ Pittsburgh

        You say I shouldn’t laugh at them, but I think the fact that they really believe it is even more reason to laugh at them!

    3. Smiling Cat

      Generally speaking, assault weapons aren’t bought by civilians for killing at all. They’re predominantly bought as status symbols or penis surrogates to impress other gun owners or make a political statement, and are statistically insignificant in terms of violent crime.

      It’s the handguns that kill people. That’s where Gun Control has to be tightest to make a real impact.

  190. Richard

    I can see it now…

    “You threatened me, you threatened my girlfriend–your DAUGHTER–and worst of all… you made me re-enact a scientifically pathetic movie!”

    (That’s Dina’s opinion, not mine, although I acknowledge the scientific shortcomings of the film)

  191. Reed

    And on the third day, God created the Remington-Bolt Action rifle, so that man could fight off the dinosaurs. And the homosexuals.

    1. Kit

      Perfect use of reference A+

    2. Micki

      Agreed, you win the Internet for the day.

  192. Lan Mikoto

    C’mon Dina tear his fucking nose off.

  193. GhostWriterL

    Oh fucking hell Willis, I let your comic gain panels for a few days and come back to ToeDad bringing a rifle onto campus to hunt his own kid?

    The sad part is that I wouldn’t think it to be bizarre to be a scenario that happens in the real world someday. I can only hope it doesn’t.

    Here’s hoping ToeDad leaves the comic for good in the same way most other psychotic campus shooters have left the world entirely.

    1. Spencer

      It does.

      Trust me, regardless of all the posts going “omg my suspenders of dirigible” this kind of treatment of LGBT youths by cruel, ignorant parents is very real.

  194. Ryek Hvek

    Well, I for one am disappointed. The camera could have cut away to Ruth and Billie sleeping off another bender, or anything else completely unconnected to the crisis, and stayed away for a few days, until all the pent up anticipation Broke The Internet.

    1. Aislashu

      Bet that’s the next strip.

  195. boomboom

    clearly just Mike in a clever Dina costume

  196. Adept Arcanist

    Oh my gosh this is too perfect.

  197. motorfirebox

    Holy shit, I just died. I am typing this from my grave. I died as I lived—laughing uncontrollably over twenty-year-old pop culture references.

  198. Screwball

    I…did not see this coming. Despite all the evidence (Dina’s love of Dinosaurs, Her acting like a Raptor multiple times, the way many like to use the “Clever girl” line on her, even the setting), I. did. Not. See. This. Coming.

    There is only 1 way I think I can punish myself for this…

    *Transforms Pretender Armour back into chest-mounted storage form, walks over to Daniel the Human’s magnet pile as a 3 foot tall Minicon, then body-slams on top of them, the annoying things sticking everywhere…*

    Damn I hate these things, feel so weird…

  199. MissTeddy

    I shouldn’t vote mike – I think he got enough face time in short packed… but he is so much fun to have around.

  200. Micki

    The difference in tone between this strip and the last few are astounding (albeit quite relieving) — please let the funny movie reference be a sign that things will all be okay. D:

  201. kelticat

    What i’m hoping will happen; Dina jumps Toedad, he accidentally pulls the trigger, his single loaded bullet goes into a tree, turning his potentially deadly long range rifle into a short range club.
    And if Dina stays close enough to him, he won’t be able to use the club effectively.

    1. hof1991

      Yes please. Though I think it’s a double barrelled rifle, hence the two triggers. But a gunshot brings help right away.

  202. yonit

    NOMORESCHOOLSHOOTINGSNOMORESCHOOLSHOOTINGS

  203. Keulan

    I don’t know why I didn’t expect that Jurassic Park reference. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t somehow.

  204. Roborat

    Nice work Sir Willis, the entire page a buildup to a “clever girl” joke. Although I am surprised an ultra fundy like toedad has seen the movie.

  205. Chillbro Baggins

    The debate over Colonel Cooper’s Four Rules already being well attended, I just want to compliment you on that Ruger No.1.

    It’s always nice when a comic artist goes to the effort to draw a recognizable real gun instead of just generic rectangles. 🙂

  206. maarvarq

    No-one else remember a recent strip where one of the comments was that Master Willis had neglected to reference this line, and he replied to the effect that he would have if he had meant to. Now it is obvious that he was holding onto it for this strip.

  207. HoneyThistle

    This would be funny if it weren’t so terrifying.

  208. Shot Dog

    In panel 4 he just realized how badly burned his hot dog was.

  209. Tony

    This is my all time favorite strip from this comic.

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