Resemblance
Posted on February 9, 2021 by David M Willis

291 thoughts on “Resemblance”

  1. Uly

    Wait, was this actually posted… early? Am I the *first poster*!?

    Also: I’m with you, Joe. SO MUCH.

    1. poofdepoof

      Yes, no

    2. Kyrik Michalowski

      You were beaten but technically you are the first comment that isn’t saying “First.”

      1. Thag Simmons

        Okay so that makes them the first poster.

      2. Cholma

        Yeah, it’s been awhile since Willis has had to enforce the No “First!’ Posts Rule, hasn’t it? Ana has both spoiled us and saved us from those evils.

        1. Mr D

          What happened to Ana?

        2. Diane

          There’s just some days Ana doesn’t post early, and then doesn’t end up posting at all, making us all worry and concerned, but I’m sure Ana’s okay. They always end up okay. They were here yesterday, nothing could have happened. We’ll see them when they’re not busy.

        3. Deanatay

          If Ana weren’t okay, I’m sure she would tell us.

  2. Kyrik Michalowski

    It’s ok Joe, the only way this could go wrong was if you were in a comedy/slice of life comic strip or something…

    In other news, this professor seems like he’ll be interesting, if not benevolent.

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      Oh hell no, I just now realized I’m Joe, let us fix that

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        Better but what are my other options?

        1. Kyrik Michalowski

          Awwwww yeah, Carla! This pleases me greatly.

        2. tim gueguen

          And it pleases Carla as well.

        3. Exarch

          I messed around with mine for a while and when I got fuckface I decided I was satisfied

        4. Exarch

          OH NO IT’S DIFFERENT

          You know what though I’m still okay with it

        5. Casi

          Lets see if i can get julia grey again

        6. Casi

          Okay i’m fuckface, that’s epic.

        7. He Who Abides

          Hey, Casi, how’d you capitalize to get Fuckface?

        8. Tim

          I wonder if mine’s the same after all this time.

        9. Tim

          Curses, I forgot I had set mine custom.

    2. Blindness

      No nonsense, give no f##ks guy…he might actually be a decent professor if there’s no more idiocy around one of the fundies

    3. Paul Grant

      IDK, I don’t think Doc Brown is benevolent. I see him more as chaotic neutral.

  3. Thag Simmons

    Well, least he’s honest.

    1. Blindness

      I would rather have an honest professor who has an attitude problem towards idiots but is straightforward in his teaching than a laidback professor who acts fun but doesn’t teach that well. I’ve had both and I prefer no f(*&s given professor over the nice guy professor

      1. Jhon

        The problems start when the prof’s definition of ‘idiot’ is over-broad.

  4. Suet

    Biology: Where Organism Repeats Itself.

    Joe: Where History Repeats Itself.

  5. Mra

    So… He’s Rick Sanchez

    1. Blindness

      without the abusing and nearly killing your grandkid…

      1. Leorale

        There’s a whole lot of room on the spectrum between Doc Brown and Rick.

        1. VanVelding

          Rolling in, pissing people off, then giving them busy work is a move that puts him a bit closer to the Rick end of that spectrum though.

        2. JamesC

          Nah, that’s just tenure.

      2. Thag Simmons

        or the perpetual state of drunkenness

      3. zee

        We don’t know what he does in his personal life

        1. zee

          Oh i miss Joyce but this lol make the booster love thread more apt lol

        2. Rose by Any Other Name

          Thanks zee – I was gonna say that very thing.
          And now I will anyway. For reasons of personal amusement.
          Ahem.

          @Blindness: It is entirely possible that he is endangering his grandkids in his off hours. We really have no evidence either way. More research is clearly required.

      4. Deanatay

        Actually, Rick’s killed Morty several times. He just has him cloned with a full memory restore.

  6. Dave Van Domelen

    This sort of thing is why I randomly determine the lab groups, and reroll them several times a semester (so if there’s a Joyce, no one gets stuck with ’em the whole term).

    1. Clif

      So you too are a benevolent scientist.

      1. Dara

        Christ yes benevolent teaching scientist thank you.

      2. Reltzik

        That, or a scientist that prefers data sets drawn from multiple trials.

    2. anonymsly

      Joyce might be a fine lab partner, you don’t know. At least she’ll do her half of the work, which can be a high bar to clear.

      1. Despite Rage

        Been a while, but my standard isn’t finding someone who does their half. Never been that lucky. My standard is finding someone that doesn’t ACTIVELY make my job harder.

        Holy crap, I just realized I have about the same standards for coworkers that I did for lab partners. And about the same level of success…

        1. misanthropope

          and spouses!

  7. BBCC

    I mean, fair, but at the same time, she put up with YOU in gender studies so.

    1. BBCC

      Season 2 of the search for Sal continues!

      1. BBCC

        And y’all get a two parter because I wanna be a person!

        1. BBCC

          Three parter apparently.

        2. RacingTurtle

          That was pretty funny. What were the chances?

        3. BBCC

          I don’t know but amazing.

        4. He Who Abides

          How did you roll Fuckface?

        5. He Who Abides

          Nope.

        6. Deanatay

          So much Joe hate here!

        7. He Who Abides

          I honestly don’t mind Joe, I just don’t feel any real connection to him as a character.

          Someone like Asher, on the other hand, gets under my skin.

        8. He Who Abides

          Oh hey, I finally found Dina again! Just need to unlock Fuckface, and I can switch between the best two!

        9. Jhon

          The chances? There are currently 25 avatars in my collection. There is no Ethan. There will be another grav shuffle when he returns.

        10. zee

          Grav buddies!

        11. BBCC

          Yay!

    2. Lingo

      Very True … not that her preconceptions about gender were much better.

    3. Thag Simmons

      she swapped him for Dorothy immediately when they were tasked to work together

    4. Rectilinear Propagation

      Oh man, I so hope Joyce says something similar before this conversation ends.

    5. King Daniel

      Let’s see who I get today!

      1. King Daniel

        Uhm…eh?

        1. King Daniel

          This is acceptable for today!

  8. Lingo

    This … was inevitable. But I’m pretty surprised Walky is not also in this course.

    1. Rani

      He probably is and cut the class.

      There is, in fact, no empirical way of determining what classes Walky is or isn’t taking at any given time, until he flunks out of college and collapses the waveform.

      He’s Schrödinger’s Dumbass.

      1. Dara

        yaaaaaaaaaaas Schrödinger’s Dumbass xD

    2. JenGen

      Lots of colleges have a general science requirement that can be fulfilled by a multitude of offered courses ( I was able to take online courses from my local community college and get them to count for my uni) so he may be taking another class. Or he was able to test out of it by taking a certain number of science classes in high school or did well on an AP course.

      1. anonymsly

        Can confirm! And they can be pretty easygoing about what counts as STEM class. IIRC I covered some of my science/math credit requirements with a philosophy class. (Logic. I loved it in the parts of my souls that loved trig proofs.)

      2. Needfuldoer

        Walky’s a telecom major, he’s probably taking the 101 level science class or filling the credit requirement with something else. Dina and Joyce probably need this class as a prerequisite for their majors, Becky’s here for minor/double-major credits, and Joe’s here because plot.

        (I was in telecom, and didn’t have to take biology. Got plenty of math classes though, Walky’s screwed once he gets to calculus.)

    3. Lingo

      I made this comment primarily because I thought Willis wouldn’t resist pairing Walky and Professor Doc back together.

  9. Katerly

    He’s got a point.

    1. Katerly

      Haha! Holy shit i got the best icon for this.
      Ahem,
      ‘Hello. Joe here…I have a point’

      1. Transgressingwaffle

        Nice

    2. Jhon

      If you want to waste some empty hours, go to TVtropes and look up ‘Dumbass has a point’.

      1. woobie

        NO.
        Not until the long weekend.

      2. Demoted Oblivious

        So… Valentines day. XD

  10. Nono

    Joe’s undeclared right? I was wondering what combination of subjects would land him here.

    1. Mordecai

      He’d probably hide his actual interest behind a joke about anatomy.

      1. Sunny

        To walk in his father’s footsteps and become a podiatrist?

        1. He Who Abides

          I believe that Richard’s specialty is “bone doctor, oy oy”.

        2. Sunny

          He is. I was more thinking of going into a medical profession in general.

        3. Deanatay

          Osteologist, and yes.

  11. MrSmith

    Yes! The two best, most interesting, well rounded characters together at last!

    1. UrsulaDavina

      Black hair red hoodie glasses person and blonde hair blue jacket person.

      They truly have had the most significant character arcs!

      1. Deanatay

        There’s some def chemistry going on in Panel 3. And I don’t mean the main chars in the background.

      2. MrSmith

        As my niece so succinctly puts it: no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

        1. woobie

          Is she two?
          Because I was trying to feed a 20 month old earlier.
          Her success rate is about 20%, mine is currently 60% (at getting food into her mouth).

  12. C.T Phipps

    I admit, I am very excited about Dina hating this class and having her beliefs challenged.

    1. quixoticmaunster

      Why would Dina hate a science class?

      1. Blindness

        he’s pretty much the kind of person who would call her on her attitude about science and theories being shoved down the throats of others…so he’d clash with her which she would hate

    2. Derek

      what beliefs would she have challenged?

      1. C.T Phipps

        Bio-centrism. Physicists and Biologists clash all the time.

        Just because you believe in science, doesn’t mean you agree how it’s applied. I say this as someone who works at a university.

        1. thejeff

          Who’s the physicist here? Prof. Brock is teaching biology, which is Dina’s interest.
          It’s certainly possible we’ll see some conflict here, but there’s no real evidence for it yet. Or even for which of Dina’s beliefs you think need challenging.

        2. Rose by Any Other Name

          Yes, but he took an anti-biology stance in the previous comic.

        3. thejeff

          Did he?

    3. Rectilinear Propagation

      Is there any reason to think that Dina has inaccurate beliefs about Biology? Did you mean Joyce?

      And if you did mean Dina and there is something she’s wrong about, wouldn’t she accept a well reasoned, scientific argument?

      1. Blindness

        maybe her unyielding sticking to how things should look regarding dinosaurs instead of accepting that theories might be wrong and they might not be like she believes?

        1. Chris Phoenix

          I think if she saw actual scientific evidence that dinosaurs weren’t how she believed / scientists used to think, she’d change her mind. Her intransigence is directed at the statements of people who don’t bother to learn the science, or distort it deliberately.

        2. King Daniel

          Yeah, it’s not her that “believes” many prehistoric dinosaurs to be feathered, for instance; the evidence is pretty overwhelming at this point, with everything from marks in Velociraptor arm bones to many being preserved with fossilized feathers (in a few cases, we even know what color or colors they were). A couple of years ago, they even found an actual dinosaur tail, feathers and all, trapped in amber. That’s not a “belief”, that’s fact.

        3. Regalli

          I’d be interested in hearing her current stance on Spinosaurus, given the recent publication about its tail and the subsequent ‘no it was a wader’ paper. That argument’s gonna last for a while yet. (My personal opinion is ‘don’t get too attached to anything Spinosaurus, but the January 2020 paper overlooks some other details so I’m currently leaning more towards crocodilian-style ambush predator while expecting further bombshells soon enough.’)

      2. C.T Phipps

        Frankly, Joyce being challenged is a strawman that’s not funny anymore just sad.

        No, I’d like to see Dina have her views challenged and it’s about time. College is about learning.

        1. Giguioto

          If you had any experience with yoing earth creationists, you know very well that Joyce is the accurate portrayal of one

        2. Jon

          That doesn’t mean it isn’t getting worn out.

          The recent “debunking” conversation was interesting because of how detached/jaded Joyce was and how riled-up it got Dina! I want to see more of that.

          Also, if Dina gets this angry about being “implicated in Sarah’s wizardry” (which is, let’s face it, a patently absurd level of anti-superstition), I have trouble seeing how she reconciles Becky’s clearly-still-strong Christianity.

        3. Rani

          that awkward moment when you realize an entire demographic has become an overused trope IRL

        4. Regalli

          I think we will definitely be seeing more tension with Dina, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it’s interpersonal (with, as suggested, Becky) and not necessarily this guy. She seems perfectly happy in this strip, so it could be she’s reading it as the ‘life is in some ways an arbitrary distinction and there is no hierarchy with humans on top’ a lot of people were taking it as yesterday and not as nihilism. (And given her interest in paleontology, ‘evolution is not a straight line and we are not the best’ is a sentiment I would fully expect from her.)

          Now, if he’s a terrible teacher IN GENERAL and not just in the dropping this one bombshell to start off the class, I could absolutely see her hating him for being ineffective and/or reductive. But so far we’ve seen more snapping about the magic thing than Doc Brock. I’m game for an exploration of Dina’s own snappiness and ability to hold grudges as flaws.

        5. thejeff

          Yeah, dinosaurs were obviously the peak of evolution, not us.

        6. C.T Phipps

          “Evolution doesn’t have levels!”

          “Lies!”

  13. Spencer

    Notice how Joe does not flee from getting paired with Joyce when pressed.

    This is because they are in love and destined to be together and already married.

    1. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

      This makes me laugh so much, and is what I came to say, but better!

    2. Regalli

      Yep!

    3. Mordecai

      JoJo(?) shippers are out here playing the long game.

      1. drs

        JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures

      2. Spencer

        If only we could track down the handsome genius who first came up with that ship name.

        I wonder where he is now.

        1. Mordecai

          Okay if that was you, then handsome genius is accurate, well done! I actually remember when people first said it here, just not who.

        2. Spencer

          I’m pretty sure it was me yeah but the important thing is that I take credit for it.

      3. Deanatay

        We are a patient bunch.

        1. Mordecai

          We really are.

      4. Rose by Any Other Name

        NANI!?!

        Yes, I know this joke was made by someone else yesterday, but fuck it.

        1. Pedantic Jerkass

          Yare yare daze.

    4. RacingTurtle

      brb, subscribing to Spencer’s newsletter

      1. Mordecai

        Wait do they post Joe/Joyce stuff? Where may I find that?

    5. Needfuldoer

      They could both do worse. (And Joe has.)

    6. Diane

      I am so okay with this. Joe and Joyce are good for each other, in the end. (Avatar roulette GO)

  14. Gon

    I’m with Joe on this one, he might be an ass but no one deserves Joyce as a lab partner

    1. Gon

      Oh hey, I got Doc Brock

    2. Blindness

      She’s about the worst to get even if she might be smarter than the average person…

      1. Rowan

        You have the perfect avatar for this comment

  15. robhagen

    So it’s Doctor Arkeville?

  16. Lori

    The fourth panel is so cute here, I love it!!!

    1. RacingTurtle

      That really is a great facial expression!

  17. TrueVCU

    For once, Joe has a point

  18. Johan

    Joe is gonna partner with Rachel.

  19. Lanie

    Oh, I’m pretty excited for this arc! I like how Joe and Joyce interact, and I’m kinda wondering if they might start getting along well enough to unpack some divorce support tips together?

    1. Lanie

      I worded that awkwardly. I meant tips for how to deal with your parents divorce.

    2. DinaJoyce

      I’m shipping them now. I feel like they could complement each other very well as Joyce adjusts to her new worldview with less stigma around romantic relationships and Joe adjusts to viewing women as real people worth getting to know, not just sex objects.

      1. DinaJoyce

        Either that or it will be a total dumpster fire as they try to push each other too much too fast. It will be interesting either way

      2. Mr D

        You sure about the shippin’? Your name says otherwise :V

  20. Yup

    I didn’t even know there was a rule against ‘first’ anymore. Sorry. Also, I welcome Joe and Joyce back together again!

  21. Pizzawiz

    So is not Doc Brown evil or not caring.

    1. Dara

      I think he actually gives a fuck – at least, has certain strong opinions – but has to deal with too much bullshit he can’t handle so acts out both being evil _and_ not giving a fuck as a defense mechanism.

      1. Blindness

        He’s a typical college professor in a low-level class: same BS each semester, same kinds of students, same issues…he grew numb to their problems and tells them right away that he won’t let them be idiots in class

        1. BBCC

          My low level class profs were always super super nice, but I’m sure it must be aggravating to deal with certain types you get all the time (like Creationists in bio).

  22. Stephen Bierce

    *plays Oingo Boingo’s theme from the movie WEIRD SCIENCE on the hacked Muzak*

    1. Geneseepaws

      Aha! Thank you. I was wondering what would go with today’s comic.

    2. Deanatay

      *casually slips the LP for Huey Lewis’ “Power of Love” into the next slot on Stephen’s playlist*

  23. Deadjolras

    God, I missed Joe and his dynamic with Joyce so much.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Yeah, there’s a lot of unexplored territory between them (ifyaknowwhati’msayin hurp durp).

  24. pjeseb

    Me, Joe’s Lawyer: Joe, you aren’t legally obligated to partner up with the first person to make eye contact with you.

    Joe: *reveals the DoA Moderate Character Contract he signed before the series began*

    Me: *reads*

    Me: Well, shit.

    1. Rectilinear Propagation

      Do they have to practice their landing strategies?

      1. King Daniel

        Joe: “By no means does this make us friends.”

        1. Josh Spicer

          I genuinely enjoy how you all just devolved directly into RWBY references.

        2. Deanatay

          *erases the first ‘d’ from ‘devolved’* Fixed that for you.

  25. Rani

    “There’s one important distinction between us. Doctor Emmet Brown is a benevolent scientist.”

    This fucking guy

    Between him and Professor Robin, they’ve effectively turned the cast’s curriculum into a fucking Galasso’s subsidiary.

    1. Wizard

      Thus unfolds the next phase of Galasso’s agenda of conquest. First, pizza (and subs). Now, IU. Tomorrow, the world!

    2. Thag Simmons

      It’s good to have more interesting teachers. Previously you just had Leslie really, and while she’s the best bean it’s good to get some variety

      1. Deanatay

        Well, we had Amber’s Intro To CS teacher that switched genders halfway through last semester…

    3. Keulen

      Better to have interesting teachers than boring ones. I have no idea if Robin will actually be a good teacher of political science, but I suspect Not Doc Brown will be a pretty good science teacher.

      1. Sunny

        Robin will definitely teach her students a lot, and everything will be useful for understanding or working in politics. It just probably won’t be the things on the course’s curriculum.

    4. Needfuldoer

      So does this imply Professor Brock knows he’s fictional (or just not alive, because nothing is alive)?

  26. Regalli

    So yeah, tenured, has to teach 100 level classes and hates it, has zero fucks to give.

    But eee, Joe/Joyce interactions once more! (My I-Actually-Think-This-One’s-Plausible Joyce OTP.)

  27. Savail

    I like how Joe’s just “resigned” himself to having Joyce as a partner even though there are probably still other available people in the room. It reminded me of his conversation with Jacob in the previous semester about how she was going to continue growing and becoming better.

    1. Kernanator

      He knows he’s part of the cast. He cannot escape to pair with a rando, only with named characters.

  28. Bicycle Bill

    A long, long time ago, I seem to recall reading a sci-fi short story in ALIENS constructed the Earth and seeded the strata with dinosaur bones and other fossils to artificially age their creation.

    1. Agemegos

      Douglas Adams had something of the sort in the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Golgafrinchams built Earth on commission from the white mice, and placed the fake fossils. They were preparing to do it again towards the end of the first series, but the mice cancelled.

    2. Jane

      That reminds me of that one strange novel by Terry Pratchett… (spoilers ahead) Where people creating planets for future colonists enjoyed putting in little “easter eggs” in their creations to confuse future scientists, like a dinosaur skeleton with a sign protesting nuclear power. And then they discovered an impossible flat planet on the back of a turtle, and eventually came to the realization that the planet was the equivalent of their own practical jokes, their universe having been created just like the planets they were seeding.

      1. Ray Radlein

        Strata! It reads like a weird sort of zeroth draft for Discworld in a way

        1. Ray Radlein

          (though it’s more properly a riff on BDO novels like Ringworld and Rendezvous with Rama)

      2. Needfuldoer

        Once we develop the technology, you know that’s going to happen.

        Humans just can’t help but hide little inside jokes in our work. Just look up Moon Museum and the “diagrams” in some of the Apollo EVA workbooks.

        1. Jhon

          And on microchips. That you can’t even see without an electron microscope.

  29. Jane

    “Dunno, there’s other folks here.”

    What, is Joyce Dotty to you now that you can be with your girlfriend?

    /joking

    1. Sunny

      Is Dorothy even in the class?

  30. Moon

    if somebody in-strip says he looks like rick rickandmorty i will lose my mind (not sayng this negatively at all)

    1. Needfuldoer

      Or they start calling him “Professor Plum”.

      (The students are too young to reference “Reverend Jim”.)

  31. DailyBrad

    Why must Joe look all hot and Bruce Wayne-y here?

    I do like Joe and Joyce content, so I am curious where this goes.

    1. DailyBrad

      Ooh, I get Joyce? I can dig that. Carla, Amber, now Joyce, feels nice after being Galasso for what felt like 12 years.

      1. King Daniel

        That ain’t Joyce Brown, that’s Julia Grey!

        1. drs

          Perfect icon for that.

  32. theKOT

    So does Joyce pretend to hate Joe more than she actually does because she thinks it’s expected of her? Or is this an actual reflection of her feelings?

    1. DailyBrad

      She doesn’t hate him. Unless something changed over break, they are at loggerheads sometimes, but she also crashed with him at Becky’s party and didn’t seem weirded out by that or anything. He’s also the friend she’s gone to about parent shit in the past, so I could see her doing that during the divorce.

    2. Prince Mech

      Given she seems to trust in him to the degree of emotionally confiding in him via text message, I think she’s fronting a bit.

  33. Proto

    I know Joe’s going for a sexy five o clock shadow vibe but his whole look right now looks more like “I woke up late and put on the first thing I saw before running here”

    1. Leorale

      It’s entirely plausible that he did wake up late and wore the first thing he saw.

    2. Diane

      He’s even been called out on it by Booster, so who knows. Maybe he just doesn’t like shaving.

  34. Blindness

    Doc speaks the truth: he’s heard it all before, so save the jokes and get down to business. They have months to get things done, but they have to start right away to have time to actually do it right

    1. Rabid Rabbit

      And he’s doubtless been hearing it for decades.

      Seriously, would any of these kids have actually seen that film enough for them to still be commenting on the resemblance?

      1. AbelUndercity

        And now he’s hearing rumblings about this “Rick” guy, but he hasn’t bothered to find out who that is.

      2. BBCC

        People see movies older than they are all the time. I’ve seen that one for crying out loud.

        1. Rabid Rabbit

          Sure, but at “cultural touchstone” level?

        2. BBCC

          Yeah, most people get “Back to the Future” still.

  35. Bagge

    Why is Leslie the only teacher at this place who doesn’t feel the need to antagonize their students?

    1. Regalli

      New Alex is perfectly fine!

      And Penny as far as we know didn’t antagonize her students. She antagonized Jason, but that’s fine since they were fellow TAs, and she SCREWED her students, which is terrible but different from antagonizing. (If that sounds like damning with faint praise… it’s Penny, so.)

      1. Kamino Neko

        Jason didn’t antagonize people deliberately, either. I mean, he did so because he was a terrible teacher, but he wasn’t TRYING to.

        Honestly, I don’t think Robin was trying to, either. (Not even Roz.) She’s just…Robin.

        So, that’s Professor Brock and Previous Alex who are active jerks.

        1. Regalli

          I’m counting the tutoring sessions here, where he was absolutely AWFUL to both Sal and Walky (and… jesus fuck, I just tag trawled, actually hit on Sal their first interaction too while acknowledging that was against TA ethics, not to mention the thugs and hoodlums line,) since that was in the context of his teaching duties. ‘You’re absolutely hopeless’ in response to a quiz score is… well, if he didn’t realize that was antagonizing a student, he’s so completely failed basic social interactions I don’t know where we go from there.

        2. thejeff

          I agree he was awful as a TA, even without the sexing, but I still wish he’d stayed in that role. I’d have liked to see him struggle with and try to get better, rather than just swap over to bartender and mostly vanish.

          I get that he’s a minor character, but it seemed like he had about a half a character arc and it just got torpedo’d.

        3. Regalli

          Could be we see more of him now that Blaine’s not eating strip time with his Plotting. (The firing and Do List leak were around the point he started ramping up, and between that, the Mike/Ethan plotline, and Amber’s worsening mental health which has been out of focus since the timeskip, a lot of other subplots got backburnered. Joe, for example.) I’d certainly like to see more of the Galasso’s cast.

          I’m not particularly bummed, but then I didn’t care that much for Jason to begin with and his tutoring sessions with Walky weren’t really making headway for either of them. He’d realized he was a shitty teacher but didn’t appear to be making much effort to fix one of the biggest problems (that he doesn’t know how to teach people who don’t learn the same way he does,) and Walky was only barely trying. (Though how much of that was because Jason wasn’t making a strong effort in reaching out and thus generating a negative feedback loop… *shrug*) I think he would’ve needed to interact with another character to really progress past that wall. Could’ve been interesting, but we’ve got a lot of characters to juggle as well and I’m less invested in him than, say, Jocelyne.

      2. Mr D

        Wait was Joe on Penny’s class?

        1. Diane

          Yep! With handcuffs.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/twelvethirty/

          (PLEASE not Malaya…Friiiiick)

    2. Swissaboo

      Because they’re freshman classes

      1. Giguioto

        We have the mission to break the souls of the freshman before they can get to higher levels of education.

  36. foamy

    I believe there is at least one other differential between this prof and Doc Brown: You can see the whites of Doc Brown’s eyes. Contrast the people in panel 3 with the closeup in panel 2.

    ‘screepy.

    1. drs

      Is Doc Brown Brock related to Joyce? Those baby blue eyes…

      What does do?

      1. drs

        Ah, the s tag is the same as the strike tag.

  37. RacingTurtle

    Excellent, Becky & Dina and Joyce & Joe can study…biology together.

    *continues to happily munch on popcorn*

    1. milu

      You & me babe we ain’t nothing but mammals

      1. Rheinman

        Joe’s theme song. Or perhaps his dad’s.

  38. bcb

    FAKE NEWS!
    You’re about to be paired up as a lab partner with someone who USED to believe Satan put bones in the ground to trick you.

  39. Josh Spicer

    *claps hands repeatedly*

    Here we go!

  40. anonymsly

    Are we going to get lots of Joyce and Joe strips now? I sincerely hope so!

  41. Riss

    and so it begiiiins

  42. Rabid Rabbit

    Those guys in Panel 3 are definitely going to fuck, aren’t they?

    1. zee

      Next slipshine

  43. Orangey

    That “pair with them for the rest of semester” is really foreboding huh

    1. Orangey

      Ok, not a fan of being this guy, let’s give this a whirl

      1. Julez

        How do you change it?

        1. Regalli

          Change the capitalization in your email address, typically.

        2. Diane

          Change what letters are capped in your email.

          I just got that jerk too…I don’t even know if I tried this one yet, I’m getting all the bad today. First Danny, then Lucy (not bad, just not a fan), then Sal (Really want Sarah back), then Malaya (NO), then the doc. I am desperate.

        3. Diane

          Ugh, this WAS Dan….One letter at a time for now, FRICK.

      2. Jhon

        One day DYW will get tired of this and change things so you are stuck with your first grav forever.

  44. Yotomoe

    It’s been 3 decades and I still ship it.

  45. foducool

    ahahah Joe definitely got the short straw here XD

  46. Tricia

    So how long until Dina realizes that Becky holds most of if not all of the same anti-science beliefs that Joyce does?

    1. milu

      Does she though? She’s been all about science being rad and wanting to become a scientist since she met Dina. De-radicalization comes in many flavours, it seems that while Joyce dropped the god part before she had the courage to examine her creationist education, Becky went hard for science without losing her entire faith, most conspicuously the sexual purity part of it.

      1. Jon

        Yeah but she’s still got really strong faith, which it just seems would get to Dina more than it seems to — or at all, really.

        She gets mad at Sarah for being unreasonably happy without evidence, but her Explicitly Christian girlfriend gets a pass?

        1. thejeff

          She got mad at Sarah specifically for attributing her unreasonable happiness to magic and especially for dragging her into it as well. This is more like tricking someone into a church ceremony than to just believing yourself.

        2. milu

          What thejeff said, and i think we’ve yet to see Dina get worked up over people for believing in a non-interventionist god, as opposed to believing in the absence of a god. Both propositions are equally untestable, as she would know.
          Then again teenagers are not necessarily that subtle, so we’ll see

    2. zee

      Did you just completely erase from your mind that these two bonded over becky ASKING dina to deprogram her regarding all the fake science she was taught as a child? You can be a christian -a devout one even- without being anti science.

  47. Ray Radlein

    You say that like Doc Brown wasn’t collaborating with Libyan terrorists

  48. Keulen

    I’m kinda hoping Joyce no longer believes that Satan put dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us. That would be a weird thing for an atheist to believe, even if she’s only been an atheist for a few months.

  49. milu

    I’m not sure how being lab partnered with a fundie is such a terrible thing to happen to you. I would personally be so curious as to how they would deal with an evolution 101 and i would gladly take a front seat. (Maybe thats cause i have equal love for biology and sociology.) Also Joyce is nice and smart and I think studies decently hard. So how is this a bad situation for Joe? Maybe he’s just pulling her leg.

    1. thejeff

      While it might be interesting from that sociological perspective, they’re also likely to have lots of completely wrong ideas about the material that you’ll be stuck helping them work through in time you could be using to learn the new stuff yourself.

      1. milu

        eh, i guess. then again if being a good student is in fact Joe’s priority here, my experience is that far and away the best way to become proficient in a subject is to have to teach it to someone else. But sure, i see your point

        1. Regalli

          Doing a group assignment solo tends to be a frustrating amount of work, because group projects are designed for you to split the load. (Particularly frustrating when you have a partner and they’re not pulling their weight, but I had a professor for an online class once who gave us extremely long review worksheets – think ‘eight pages of questions’ if I’m remembering right – that she suggested we find partners for. Again, ONLINE class. It was exhaustingly tedious.)

          Teaching it to someone else is even worse in the time and effort expended department. Joe probably has three other classes to do work for, carrying group assignments or teaching Joyce are both way more trouble than he’d have time for.

    2. Rabid Rabbit

      It might be interesting to watch, but not interesting to be actively involved with. Making sure you sit next to Joe and Joyce to see how it goes? Sure. Be Joe in that situation? Maybe less so.

  50. DarkoNeko

    No matter what Joe says, I’m sure he could have found someone else if he actually tried 😀

    1. Lone Duck

      I don’t know, could still be some aftermath of his Do-List getting out.

  51. milu

    Also, hey real talk do you folks pronounce Dina’s name Dee-na or Die-na?! I always assumed the former but suddenly I wonder

    1. Minim

      It is Dee-na.

    2. Needfuldoer

      Dina’s name is pronounced “DEE-na.”

      1. milu

        ahahah that bad huh XD
        guess i missed all of the other times this was brought up
        thanks 🙂

    3. Jhon

      It’s in the About/Read Before Posting thingy. Because it’s a FAQ.
      /condescension

  52. Lone Duck

    I mean, Joe’s good. He’s got some misogynism, but not the kind that would leave Joyce doing all the work. He’ll do his fair share. They’ll bicker, but they were already doing that.

    1. Zaxares

      Things are starting to blur together now, but wasn’t Joyce at one point carrying on lengthy text conversations with Joe anyway?

      1. thumb

        Sure, but Joe is still Joe. There may have been a falling out during the break, but I always thought they were fine being honest with each other because they also were clear on their boundaries. Which this may be crossing, albeit not by design.

  53. AbelUndercity

    Now Joe, that’s not entirely fair. Those bones might have been put in the ground by God to test our faith.

  54. Sombrero

    What do you mean Doc Brown is fictional, Prof Broc?

  55. Ellegos

    They say Doc Brown, but all I can hear is Werner Herzog.

    Weird.

  56. Daibhid C

    So, we’re not going to learn who yelled “FIRST OF ALL” yesterday?

    I mean, the obvious assumption is Joyce, but I like to think Dina was totally aghast at Brock’s unscientific assertations.

    1. Regalli

      Probably just some nameless student, given we don’t have followup.

  57. FacelessDeviant

    I know why the prof is so upset.

    He was frozen today.

    1. Poskie

      +1

  58. Rabisch

    Poor Joe. This looks really like the beginning of an awkward and complicated collaboration. It’s really impossible to have group of three and put Joyce with Becky and Dina? So Joyce could feel the joy to be the third wheel♡! But sadly, that’s improbable. Let’s see the what will happens with the dangerous combination of this two. Maybe, this will be like Luann and Jack being Lab partners and be a good thing.

  59. Julez

    Self proclaimed evil science professor has me concerned for many reasons.

  60. Alaric

    Joe has a point.

    1. Alaric

      And, apparently, I have a Joe.

  61. John

    I like that Bio professor more and more.

  62. Nep

    yessssssss joe and joyce i am excite

    Also, you both realize you can just…..pick someone else? Oh, you’re the only named characters in this class, nevermind, carry on.

  63. Deanatay

    Unshown Panel 4.5:

    Joyce glances around forlornly, sighs in disgust, gets up, stomps halfway across the classroom, pulls another student out of his seat, and with a louder sigh of disgust, sits down next to Joe.

  64. Ohmsford

    I made the mistake of pairing with the guy I knew already in my chem 2 class sophomore year. I wound up carrying us the entire semester.

  65. Brat

    NOW KISS!!!

  66. Rainhat

    So go find someone not in the tiny group of people you interact with, Joyce.

  67. Arianod

    Joe has ALL the points here.

  68. Moonie

    I still ship these two TBH

  69. Corey

    I thought the fictional Scientist was Dr. Wiley for some reason

  70. Heather

    I’m just wondering where the professor’s eyebrows are. Did he get a nasty shock? Or a lab accident?

    1. Heather

      idk want to be blowjob cat. Time for my first ever roulette.

      1. Heather

        Sarah’s cool, I can work with this.

        1. Diane

          GIMME BACK MY SARAH! I keep getting DANNY. >_<

  71. Beau Kirin Maysey

    *sound of students back-spacing on their document reading ‘Doc Brown?’*

    *sound of students typing ‘Rick Sanchez?’*

  72. Dave

    Oh please please PLEASE let this mean we’re getting a repeat of the BCE Roomies! strip, but with Joe not giving DannyJoyce a sympathetic reception because come on, he’s Jewish, why would he ever.

    I mean, I have no idea if BCE/CE is still in academic use, but Joe might use it as a matter of habit? I know that’s how historical dates were presented to us in Hebrew school back in the day.

    1. Huttj

      Probably depends on the field/context/audience, but one folklorist I know uses CE/BCE in her facebook posts out of habit still, because AD/BC feels really weird when specifically talking about and studying various cultures across the world in their historical context.

  73. Daniel M Ball

    I have often wondered if (from the era of It’s Walky! even) Joe and Joyce wouldn’t make a better couple.

    I mean, seriously-their vices are extremely complimentary and their virtues are really very well suited to one another.

    1. bcb

      Weren’t they actually a couple in one of the alternate universes?

  74. Fetch85

    Professor Brock? Not Professor Doc?

    How old have I gotten?

  75. Kravis

    The Dorothys of the world usually use what should be being used on them.

    It always been like this.

  76. Kravis

    *The JOYCES of the world, not the lovely Dorothys.

  77. Victor Riley

    Oddly, I didn’t think of Emmet Brown. His hair isn’t frizzy enough.

  78. ValdVin

    Who are the two folks in the foreground of the middle panel, and who is already shipping them?

    1. Diane

      I am 100% shipping them, unless they’re actually just really good friends. That’s okay too.

    2. Madock345

      I came here specifically to comment that I ship them

    3. Spencer

      I just made this post now thinking nobody did and all I had to do was scroll up exactly two inches.

      (they look cute together)

      1. Regalli

        Something about the indirect smiles. It’s nice.

  79. Jhon

    And who does Dorothy end up with?
    ( not that that concerns me or anything )

  80. Spencer

    Anyway I ship those two guys in the foreground of Panel 3.

  81. Formedras

    You know… I thought that the professor looked more like Mick from Power Rangers Ninja Steel.

  82. Cris

    I’m glad Joyce and Joe are back in panel together, I love their dynamic in and out of ship.

    1. Cris

      ….This is not the avatar I was hoping for on this shuffle.

    2. Fist_of_Life

      Me too. I’m always down for some Joe/Joyce screeentime.

  83. Diane

    If they are not together by the end of book 15, I may scream. We’ll see. They can break up again for all I care, just fricken try again, damn it!

  84. JA

    Well this ought to be good.

    1. David M Willis

      [/John Mulaney]

  85. elsendor

    incorrect, god put dinosaur bones in the earth to test our faith

    source: my batshit mother

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