Wow this is not what I expected, this is seeming more and more like Mike is not going to survive. While I have no particular attachment to Mike, I feel bad for the Amber and Ethan.
I’m curious what Ethan’s words will be, and whether he wants to say them in front of Mike’s parents.
Think of Mike as a song played on the hacked music thingy.
Is a song forever?
Heck, yeah. Mike is a fundamental essential leitmotif and a force of nature. And his nature is such that Mike won’t die unless you don’t want him to. So if Mike dies, it will be all your fault for not wanting Mike to die.
It doesn’t do any good to fake wanting him dead. Mike knows how to read a room.
She’s just assuming Mike’s dead now right? I mean nothing has changed on the Mike status for like the last three months for us readers so I can’t really get invested in the he’s dead narrative yet.
Mike has been threatening and apparently also blackmailing Blaine with knowledge about his mob job. Blaine has been talking with Lester until Lester was satisfied he knew for good what he needed to. The hospital was evacuated. Finishing Mike off would have been a matter of pinching a few tubes.It is a reasonable assumption.
Mike being dead would take Amber and Ethan out of the plot forever while they kept trying to deal with that. This ain’t Louisiana man, I ain’t buying it.
The rule was no deaths for characters which will cause prolonged grieving for the main cast. Toedad and Blaine dying will cause some drama and some grieving but not nearly to the extent of say, Ruth dying. Mike is on the fence on that, because there are at least 2 people who would grieve(not counting his family) and they’re main cast.
Some1
There is only one solution, kill everyone who would grieve a previously killed character and end the comic on a sort of Hamlet note.
King Daniel
“Goodnight, sweet super.”
KSClaw
Well I didn’t need my heart this early in the morning anyway
Geneseepaws
Who needs a heart
When a heart can be broken?
King Daniel
“You can build me up, you can tear me down;
You can try but I’m unbreakable.
You can do your best, but I’ll stand the test;
You’ll find that I’m unshakable.
When the fire’s burnt,
When the wind has blown,
When the water’s dried, you’ll still find stone;
My heart of stone…”
DaveM
Wipes the dust off the hacked muzak and puts on Blondies “Heart of Glass” (apropos of nothing of course:-) )
Ross does fit as a bit more of a fringe case than Blaine – both Becky and Joyce clearly have some Complicated emotions about him – but whether that rule was broken with Ross or will be further broken with ‘two main cast members grieving and everyone else forcibly confronted with youthful mortality’ (‘cause losing a peer hits differently even from losing a parent in that particular respect,) not sure.
(And again, Mike living does still offer new story routes Blaine and Ross didn’t… but him dying does, too.)
thejeff
I do hope he lives. I’d much rather see Mike dealing with the consequences of his realization than getting away with a redemptive death.
So this has nothing to do with the comic, but this guy shows up when I search David M Willis and I kind of think he looks like a version of Willis from an alternate universe where he got his degree in accounting. https://www.redzonerealtygroup.com/jacksonville/our-team/david-willis/
… Did you make a Ruthanort avatar just for this comment? Because if so, I love you for it.
Delicious Taffy
Oh, I made this about a year ago. I also have a few Joyce ones.
Ron again
I noticed the specific style you’ve had with your Joyce avatars, where they have grey hair and orange eyes. Now that regalli mentions it with a name, I can’t help but ask if it’s a reference to something.
Delicious Taffy
KINGDOM HEART SPOILERS
In the Kingdom Hearts series of video games, people basically have two parts to their being – the body and the Heart. Losing your heart creates two beings – the Heartless (made of your heart) and the Nobody (made of your body) (yes, I know it’s backwards). An especially powerful Heartless or Nobody can retain most or all of their original self’s physical appearance, often with slight differences.
The franchise’s main villain, Xehanort, possessed a younger guy at one point, but he got his butt kicked by that guy’s pissed-off soul and lost his memories. Then the amnesiac Xehanort became the apprentice to a scholar called Ansem the Wise. At some point, Xehanort committed identity theft on Ansem, then he willingly separated himself into a Heartless and Nobody. The Heartless kept the name Ansem, but the Nobody added an X and scrambled it up, renaming himself Xemnas.
Xemnas started a secret cabal called Organisation 13, with the secret goal of turning its members into clones of Xehanort. Over time, some of them started gaining Xehanort’s features, like darker skin, silver hair, gold-orange eyes, and pointed ears. Each new member also got an X scrambled into their name, as a way to track them remotely somehow.
In short, I occasionally make a Gravatar of a character’s Nobody and give them a name in the style of an Organization XIII member.
clif
Wait! He called it Organization 13 instead of Negativeland?
Regalli
Naming’s weird, Kingdom Hearts is weird, the Organization are generally (with a handful of Explicitly Weird exceptions) treated less as distinct entities and more as The Worst Possible Version of Yourself, and – I cannot stress this one enough – Xehanort is a pretentious little shit.
Ron again
Thanks for explaining 🙂 and sorry for responding this late
Dammit, I’m attached to Mike. He buried everything under his “Extreme Asshole” camouflage in order to keep Blaine from figuring out who to strike in order to hurt Mike. Don’t you fucking kill Mike, Willis!!!
I’m gonna guess that Mike isn’t going to die, but also won’t wake up before the comic ends. I mean, the time frame of this comic in universe is incredible small so it wouldn’t be that strange for someone to be a coma for that length of time.
For months? (Which would still put him out of the comic for like a decade, but.) After about five weeks, it starts getting… rather less likely. Not impossible, but a lot less likely.
Though especially with the head and spinal trauma implied, sooner is definitely better. (Honestly even if he wakes up before this storyline’s through I can see him being out of the strip for the foreseeable future with recovery – he’s gonna need a LOT of bedrest and a LOT of physical therapy to regain muscle functioning after that bedrest.)
IIRC there’s a time skip coming, and we don’t know how far ahead it’s going. There’s snow and winter apparel in the previews, so maybe Mike starts coming out of it in the next couple chapters.
It hasn’t been made clear what his injuries are, beyond the coma. He might not need much, if he recovers from that.
Or he could have permanent disabilities or take months recovering as you suggest. It’s been left very unclear.
Regalli
Yeah, we just don’t know. There’s some implications (between ‘coma’ and ‘yeah he looked ROUGH in those flashbacks’) that there’s something but who knows if that’s a TBI or he’s broken, like, all his ribs but not piercing anything and an arm.
(Me dumdum. Posted twice. Sorry Willis, please cancel the other if needed)
I think so too.
I recall Willis writing somewhere a few years ago, answering a question why Mike didn’t show up in the story that often compared to his Walkyverse counterpart, that he had “dispersed” Mike’s assholiness across several characters in DoA and he had no need – or way – to put him in the frontline very frequently.
So in a sense, DoA Mike is not necessarily a “main character” anymore, and maybe putting him into a coma is a way to put him aside without impacting too much the main storyline.
122 thoughts on “Into”
Ana Chronistic
“give him a bag of nickels and say it’s all the moms he fucked returning their payment as a thank you for his service”
Concolor44
Um … okay. Kinda harsh, but then that does sound like a Mike thing to say.
Opus the Poet
This is why Willis needs to set up an upvote system. Also, toss Mike a nickle just because.
David Alexander McDonald
Toss a nickel to your Mikester.
Deanatay
O’ college of Dumbing
elebenty
Maybe instead up upvotes he’ll let you give folks nickels.
RowenMorland
Mike’s body sailing down a waterfall of nickles into the beyond.
Axel
I’m so relieved that she told Ethan (and did so quickly)
Kyrik Michalowski
Wow this is not what I expected, this is seeming more and more like Mike is not going to survive. While I have no particular attachment to Mike, I feel bad for the Amber and Ethan.
I’m curious what Ethan’s words will be, and whether he wants to say them in front of Mike’s parents.
clif
Think of Mike as a song played on the hacked music thingy.
Is a song forever?
Heck, yeah. Mike is a fundamental essential leitmotif and a force of nature. And his nature is such that Mike won’t die unless you don’t want him to. So if Mike dies, it will be all your fault for not wanting Mike to die.
It doesn’t do any good to fake wanting him dead. Mike knows how to read a room.
Also, he fucked your mom.
Geneseepaws
For a NICKEL!
Alaric
It certainly seems as if Amber thinks Mike’s not going to survive. But Amber’s not omniscient.
Kamino Neko
What she is, in fact, is depressed and prone to thinking that anything she touches turns to shit.
Alaric
Exactly.
Regalli
And DESPERATELY in need of mental health support.
BBCC
Amber stop making me sad.
Regalli
Seriously. Oh, honey.
She’s so resigned to it, too. =(
Sirksome
She’s just assuming Mike’s dead now right? I mean nothing has changed on the Mike status for like the last three months for us readers so I can’t really get invested in the he’s dead narrative yet.
David
Mike has been threatening and apparently also blackmailing Blaine with knowledge about his mob job. Blaine has been talking with Lester until Lester was satisfied he knew for good what he needed to. The hospital was evacuated. Finishing Mike off would have been a matter of pinching a few tubes.It is a reasonable assumption.
Ray Radlein
Yes, but Blaine would absolutely never have admitted anything important about Mike to anyone else in the mob.
Opus the Poet
Mike is the Shroedinger’s cat of comic strip characters.
Chris
I thought his last words were something about bust freds.
CMasta1992
Mike being dead would take Amber and Ethan out of the plot forever while they kept trying to deal with that. This ain’t Louisiana man, I ain’t buying it.
Marsh Maryrose
One of the most epic lines in the history of ERB, A+ reference
BBCC
+1
Doctor_Who
Agreed, that battle left no question about who won.
Mra
Can’t we get a break from death?
MrBookBoy
Uh oh, red background
Needfuldoer
She’s replaying the flashback from the beginning of this chapter again.
FacelessDeviant
I see a bad moon on the rise!
Mra
If Mike dies Danny can forget about ever talking to Ethan again.
Ray Radlein
He can also forget about ever talking to Mike again
clif
Not necessarily. Ask Amber.
Jo Giggles
Mike dying would go against Willis’ hard rules for the comic. He will be back. ….right?!
Mra
What are his hard rules, and why didn’t they stop him from killing Toedad?
I know Toedad was an asshole, but still, look what it did to Becky
Kyrik Michalowski
The rule was no deaths for characters which will cause prolonged grieving for the main cast. Toedad and Blaine dying will cause some drama and some grieving but not nearly to the extent of say, Ruth dying. Mike is on the fence on that, because there are at least 2 people who would grieve(not counting his family) and they’re main cast.
Some1
There is only one solution, kill everyone who would grieve a previously killed character and end the comic on a sort of Hamlet note.
King Daniel
“Goodnight, sweet super.”
KSClaw
Well I didn’t need my heart this early in the morning anyway
Geneseepaws
Who needs a heart
When a heart can be broken?
King Daniel
“You can build me up, you can tear me down;
You can try but I’m unbreakable.
You can do your best, but I’ll stand the test;
You’ll find that I’m unshakable.
When the fire’s burnt,
When the wind has blown,
When the water’s dried, you’ll still find stone;
My heart of stone…”
DaveM
Wipes the dust off the hacked muzak and puts on Blondies “Heart of Glass” (apropos of nothing of course:-) )
Zatar
I think at the beginning of the previous arc Willis said he’d be breaking hard rules.
Regalli
Ross does fit as a bit more of a fringe case than Blaine – both Becky and Joyce clearly have some Complicated emotions about him – but whether that rule was broken with Ross or will be further broken with ‘two main cast members grieving and everyone else forcibly confronted with youthful mortality’ (‘cause losing a peer hits differently even from losing a parent in that particular respect,) not sure.
(And again, Mike living does still offer new story routes Blaine and Ross didn’t… but him dying does, too.)
thejeff
I do hope he lives. I’d much rather see Mike dealing with the consequences of his realization than getting away with a redemptive death.
Regalli
Same.
Some1
So this has nothing to do with the comic, but this guy shows up when I search David M Willis and I kind of think he looks like a version of Willis from an alternate universe where he got his degree in accounting. https://www.redzonerealtygroup.com/jacksonville/our-team/david-willis/
Delicious Taffy
Looks like Willie’s Nobody. Let’s call ’em Vaxdid.
Regalli
… Did you make a Ruthanort avatar just for this comment? Because if so, I love you for it.
Delicious Taffy
Oh, I made this about a year ago. I also have a few Joyce ones.
Ron again
I noticed the specific style you’ve had with your Joyce avatars, where they have grey hair and orange eyes. Now that regalli mentions it with a name, I can’t help but ask if it’s a reference to something.
Delicious Taffy
KINGDOM HEART SPOILERS
In the Kingdom Hearts series of video games, people basically have two parts to their being – the body and the Heart. Losing your heart creates two beings – the Heartless (made of your heart) and the Nobody (made of your body) (yes, I know it’s backwards). An especially powerful Heartless or Nobody can retain most or all of their original self’s physical appearance, often with slight differences.
The franchise’s main villain, Xehanort, possessed a younger guy at one point, but he got his butt kicked by that guy’s pissed-off soul and lost his memories. Then the amnesiac Xehanort became the apprentice to a scholar called Ansem the Wise. At some point, Xehanort committed identity theft on Ansem, then he willingly separated himself into a Heartless and Nobody. The Heartless kept the name Ansem, but the Nobody added an X and scrambled it up, renaming himself Xemnas.
Xemnas started a secret cabal called Organisation 13, with the secret goal of turning its members into clones of Xehanort. Over time, some of them started gaining Xehanort’s features, like darker skin, silver hair, gold-orange eyes, and pointed ears. Each new member also got an X scrambled into their name, as a way to track them remotely somehow.
In short, I occasionally make a Gravatar of a character’s Nobody and give them a name in the style of an Organization XIII member.
clif
Wait! He called it Organization 13 instead of Negativeland?
Regalli
Naming’s weird, Kingdom Hearts is weird, the Organization are generally (with a handful of Explicitly Weird exceptions) treated less as distinct entities and more as The Worst Possible Version of Yourself, and – I cannot stress this one enough – Xehanort is a pretentious little shit.
Ron again
Thanks for explaining 🙂 and sorry for responding this late
Van Jealous
Not to be confused with David Wills of the group NEGATIVLAND.
https://uglyradio.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/radio-lost-and-found-for-042816/
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
I can’t handle watery-eyes Ethan in the last panel (or watching Amber cry)
Geneseepaws
There’s no sensation to compare with this,
Suspended animation, a state of bliss.
Can’t keep my mind from the circling sky…
Just an earth bound cryptic guy.
elebenty
Guess what video I have to find before bed now….
Geneseepaws
Sorry, didn’t intent to do that.
Bathymetheus
There’s a video?
Those are lyrics from a Mike Oldfield track. I didn’t know there is a video.
thejeff
It’s a Pink Floyd song – “Learning to Fly”, off of A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
paleotectonics
Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly.
Bunny
Dammit, I’m attached to Mike. He buried everything under his “Extreme Asshole” camouflage in order to keep Blaine from figuring out who to strike in order to hurt Mike. Don’t you fucking kill Mike, Willis!!!
Some1
I’m gonna guess that Mike isn’t going to die, but also won’t wake up before the comic ends. I mean, the time frame of this comic in universe is incredible small so it wouldn’t be that strange for someone to be a coma for that length of time.
Regalli
For a few weeks? Not out of the question.
For months? (Which would still put him out of the comic for like a decade, but.) After about five weeks, it starts getting… rather less likely. Not impossible, but a lot less likely.
Though especially with the head and spinal trauma implied, sooner is definitely better. (Honestly even if he wakes up before this storyline’s through I can see him being out of the strip for the foreseeable future with recovery – he’s gonna need a LOT of bedrest and a LOT of physical therapy to regain muscle functioning after that bedrest.)
Needfuldoer
IIRC there’s a time skip coming, and we don’t know how far ahead it’s going. There’s snow and winter apparel in the previews, so maybe Mike starts coming out of it in the next couple chapters.
thejeff
It hasn’t been made clear what his injuries are, beyond the coma. He might not need much, if he recovers from that.
Or he could have permanent disabilities or take months recovering as you suggest. It’s been left very unclear.
Regalli
Yeah, we just don’t know. There’s some implications (between ‘coma’ and ‘yeah he looked ROUGH in those flashbacks’) that there’s something but who knows if that’s a TBI or he’s broken, like, all his ribs but not piercing anything and an arm.
Bobcat
(Me dumdum. Posted twice. Sorry Willis, please cancel the other if needed)
I think so too.
I recall Willis writing somewhere a few years ago, answering a question why Mike didn’t show up in the story that often compared to his Walkyverse counterpart, that he had “dispersed” Mike’s assholiness across several characters in DoA and he had no need – or way – to put him in the frontline very frequently.
So in a sense, DoA Mike is not necessarily a “main character” anymore, and maybe putting him into a coma is a way to put him aside without impacting too much the main storyline.