I never quite understood that. I’d think it would be domestic violence, and creepy jealousy at that, the way Joyce and Mike teamed up to beat the tar out of Joe on their first date. I never understood why there are no consequences for Joyce, even when she said, “Our fists were instruments of the Lord!” (*Barf.*) Seems like she’d be more sensitive to self-righteous religiously motivated violence, and look back on her own prior actions more critically, after what she went through with Becky’s father. But when she just looked at Joe with those big puppy-dog eyes and said (words to the effect of) “But… a girl can’t REALLY hurt a boy, can she? Not really.” (Again, too lazy/inept to look up the original strip/quote.) And all is seemingly forgiven. At most, Joe demonstrated mild irritation before going back to being smitten. It’s this whole stereotype that women can’t be abusers. “Questionable Content,” by Jeph Jacques, has a similar trope: a lady punches a guy (even to the point of bruising or serious injury) and it’s a punchline. A joke. I don’t get it.
…But it was sweet of Joe to share an anecdote about her friend, let Amber know she’s not alone (and that she’s not the only punchy/assaultive member of her peer group).
John Smith
I’ll be honest, that anecdote feels more like a lead up to “So anyway, Danny is right and it’s great that he’s dead.”
probskay
i think it’s a bit more of a “Joe was being an objectifying creep” and “Joyce was being an unreasonable religious purist” so that both of them were being gross and wrong in that situation. there’s also a lot to be said about webcomic time, because those strips were…. so long ago lol. the violence was over the top and played mostly for jokes. Both characters have had arcs of growth where they changed alongside the tone of the comic. I think it’s very fair to be critical of those original events, but Joe did need something to help knock him out of his womanisation and Joyce is learning to be less repressed herself
Laura
How long ago has it been in comic book time, though? Is it still early Spring semester of freshman year?
That is why I stopped reading QC to be honest. By the time I quit I remember Marten effectively reduced to little more than character development for everyone else.
jmsr7
I have good news about QC then: Faye cuts that shit out, and the comic gets MUCH better. The Faye-bubbles arc alone is worth the price of admission.
That said, i think Yay is my favourite character.
alongcameaspider
Unfortunately Marten is even less of a character then he was before, seemly solely there to be “Claire’s boyfriend” until Jeph remembers he’s supposed to be a main character again
ESM
Martin’s been vestigial to Questionable Content ever since it stopped being a love triangle, which was pretty early on. I think the only reason he hasn’t been written out altogether is because Pintsize needs a place to stay.
Andy
I don’t see why it’s a problem. Stories need conflict and Marten is an easy-going dude who has a stable job and is in a stable healthy relationship. If he was the main character, he’d still be fairly ancillary to everyone else’s stuff, or it’d be a pretty boring comic. As it is, everyone else still has conflict and so the comic focuses on them, because they’re actually driving things forwards
Crazy Lou
I like that Marten’s moved on from the focus because it means that he’s allowed to stay the cool, chill guy that he became over time. Honestly if he wasn’t there to go “This is a thing now? Cool.” the comic’s tone would have probable gone off of one deep end or the other by now.
BarerMender
Yes, Yay! I love her so much. I love Emily, but Yay is the queen of my heart.
BarerMender
Oops! Love THEM so much.
Needfuldoer
I still read it every day out of habit, but if you asked me to summarize the last couple years’ worth of plot I’d have nothing. Sometimes I get the feeling the comic writes itself into a corner, and gets bailed out by introducing new characters (with increasingly eccentric names and interests) to hyperfocus on for a few months. It’s more “vignettes about a small New England mill town” than an overarching plot.
Bridgebrain
I view the plot as “exploring the AI-Human future but not an apocalypses”
The rest of the plot is just a delivery vehicle
drs
Then even later QC gets much worse, IMO.
Needfuldoer
Agreed. I think the Faye/Bubbles arc was the last plot thread that felt planned in advance and fully executed to a satisfying conclusion.
Once the repair shop was established, the comic went back to aimless meandering.
thejeff
I like a lot of the places it meanders to though, so I don’t really miss big plot arcs.
It was violence caused by a desire to uphold a particular religious standard.
C.T. Phipps
I feel like if you attribute the gender roles and feelings on sex purely to religion you’re being dangerously reductive.
Spencer
where do y’think she learned them patriarchal gender roles and feelings on sex, bud
alongcameaspider
I mean in general you’re right
In Joyce’s case specifically though I’d absolutely attribute it solely to religion
thejeff
In general, you could at least have an interesting conversation about it. We could consider broadly how religious attitudes towards gender roles and sex have shaped society and been shaped by it in turn and how that affects even people not raised in a religion. Like Dorothy’s concerns about how her sexual needs will be seen.
But this is Joyce and the entire main plot of the comic is about how she deals with having been messed up by her childhood in a cult. She literally says “Our fists were Instruments of the Lord.”
You’re completely right. Religion is absolutely unoriginal and quite frankly not at all pivotal to the development of the ethos of a community. Instead, religions are just a reflection or the founder’s prejudices. Therefore, no, religions are not the problem. They’re just the part that delivers the problem to the next generation as a bundle of lessons served up to corrupt the innocent! Therefore, religion itself is certainly not the problem.
Laura
Quote: “Our fists were instruments of the LORD!” -Joyce
FWIW, I don’t think either webcomic has used that trope in a long while.
I’m having a hard time actually figuring out what your objection is, though. The stereotype of women being physically weak, or that slapstick comedy is weird when gendered?
Like, QC never depicted Marten as shrugging off Faye’s hits. And DoA has had Amazi-girl since the beginning. So I think you have a point in there, but I can’t figure out exactly what it is.
alongcameaspider
Wasn’t there an arc in QC relatively early on where there was a female vigilante beating the shit out of womanizers and she was treated like a straight up villain?
And I remember Faye being genuinely apologetic when her shit got too much
Laura
Yes, I recall that QC arc — but the vigilante was trying to run men over on her moped (IIRC), which is significantly more dangerous than punching. But punching is not excusable.
Maybe Faye apologized once or twice, I don’t know. To me that doesn’t matter whether a person apologizes, if they are never held accountable for it and if they keep on doing it as a pattern. Like for example that time when Faye went to the hospital due to alcohol poisoning. She opens her eyes and punches Marten clean out, and that’s the whole punchline. And he doesn’t even mention it the next morning, just keeps showing sweet concern for her. I don’t like treating people as if they are entitled to hurt others just because they may have experienced oppression or violence or trauma in other contexts.
…And, Mike was right. Amazi-Girl’s hobby is problematic, too. She’s better off now, playing roller derby, where the violence is expected and consensual.
GreyICE
I mean there’s flavors of punching friends. My wife might punch me in the arm when I’m being a jerk but that doesn’t mean she’s beating the crap out of me.
Does everyone think that everyone is throwing Mike Tyson haymakers here?
Laura
Given the little stars of pain in QC, I got the impression that Faye hit Marten pretty hard. But sometimes people hit and hurt while they think they are just hitting lightly.
alongcameaspider
On the hospital punch
No part of that strip was a punchline, the entire moment was meant to be dramatic, I imagine she punched him because she wasn’t fully aware of what was happening at the time and Marten doesn’t bring it up because he knows that (and also his defining character flaw is he’s a bit of a doormat)
And her being quick to punch is something she gradually gets better about, honestly don’t think she’s punched anyone in rl years
Laura
Well, that’s good. I did see one a few years back where she tries to punch Marten and then stops herself, and says, “Sorry, just a reflex,” and he congratulates her on stopping. I mean, that’s progress. She has her jerkish moments, and Bubbles calls her out on them occasionally, but apparently they still love each other regardless of each any flaws, so hopefully that’s a good thing. And Bubbles really is too big and strong to be hurt easily by a physical attack.
Laura
Thanks for checking in. What bothers me is the idea that women can’t be abusers. It makes light of domestic abuse, as if it doesn’t “count” when perpetrated by women. I always took QC as treating Faye’s punching of Marten as if it were a joke somehow, or occasionally something that he “deserved” for some smart-aleck comment.
“Criticism of the Duluth Model has centered on the program’s insistence that men are perpetrators who are violent because they have been socialized in a patriarchy that condones male violence, and that women are victims who are violent only in self-defense.”
Oh great, more essentialism. “People with this phenotype are always like this, people with that phenotype are always like that.” For all the talks about broad spectrum and complex identity, it’s quite depressing how often people who should be expected to be progressive falls back to this simplistic model that wants to assign people a role (the villain or the victim) based entirely on what they look like rather than their actual story.
Jamie
Thanks for clarifying. I’d agree that that’s a problem in general, though I have trouble agreeing with the comics being examples of it. But that’s probably more a case of my being relatively uneducated in this subject, and also I haven’t done the archive dives necessary to refresh myself.
It’s a double standard. Society has a lot of them and Joe has probably internalized a bit of those toxic masculinity concepts. The whole “women are the physically weaker sex and thus can’t abuse men” Not sure how that translates when said women is using another man to commit that violence by proxy though? Joe was very creepy in early DoA but taking that night literally and metaphorically on the chin was pretty impressive by early Joe standards.
Laura
Hmm, looks like I included too many links in my reply, because it’s in “awaiting moderation” limbo. (Never have I done anything in moderation…)
So rather than include all the links, I’ll just say:
My impression is that Joyce and Mike both piled on, at the end, hard enough to leave marks, and that Joyce later admitted to hitting Joe but minimized her actions by saying that she was too weak to have really hurt him:
Starting from here and then going forward until their conversation in the elevator the next day.
Laura
For reference, here is the subsequent elevator conversation.
Roe
I was wondering why I didn’t rem,ember this, but since I apparently read it 11 years ago, I’ll forgive myself
In cartoons, it’s common for the consequences of physical violence to be downplayed for comedic effect.
Nova
Yeah, but their point is – Only for women in these comics. If a male character punched one of the female characters it would not be downplayed for comedic effect. And, if it was, the comment section would be up in arms. Rightfully so.
Is it really too much to ask that we don’t laugh at guys getting abused?
Pearl
Not really. The strips where Mike punches Joe are immediately followed by ones where Billie punches Ruth in the face, and they’re dating now.
Pearl
Or like they were for a while.
And besides a one-time incident isn’t “abuse” it’s just a guy getting punched in the face for being a creep, which Joe was actually doing.
Laura
Yeah… Billie and Ruth was super problematic, and presented as such.
Pearl
Joyce being problematic is the point of the entire comic.
Laura
Yeah. That bothers me. I don’t really know what to make of it.
Real-life punching — or even open-fist slaps across the face can have such serious consequences. They can cause long-term cumulative traumatic damage to your brain and cervical spine. I wouldn’t wish a punch on anyone, and I’d have a hard time forgiving anyone who punched someone in the face. Even in play — it’s so easy not to know your own strength and hurt someone by accident.
Laura
… I have some history around this kind of thing. Part of why this strikes a nerve.
Spencer
It’s not real life punching because they are cartoons.
QC is a series that established that Cartoon Punching is fine and causes no lasting consequence. Whether or not the audience found it funny, how that joke got played out, and how it was indulging in “it’s funny for the Feisty Female Lead to punch the Doormat Male Lead” often enough that the funny bits drained it was just some shy dude getting smacked around and everyone involved didn’t want to have it anymore, least of all the author.
DoA had these exact scenes with Billie/Ruth and Joe/Joyce, more specifically the latter. Joe gets smacked around and we think it’s funny, and then we get to their next Gender Studies class and it’s “actually this is deeply inappropriate and Joyce was motivated by a patriarchal gender standard into believing she could cause no harm” and so we stop laughing at “girls punching dudes” as a baseline for comedy. Dorothy once slapped Walky upside the head when he insulted Joyce, except that was funny because it was in a single panel and Walky had no facial expression, so it’s shaped by context.
So “punching in the face for comedy” stopped being a universally Funny thing for this series, but then it was still funny when it happened to Billie for a while. Ruth would kick the crap out of her, but Billie would be kind of shrill and annoying so there’s at least some give and take where a moody jerk gets thrown into chairs. Then Ruth slams Billie into a wall and kisses her and it’s not funny and sorta retroactively stops, and so Ruth doesn’t hit Billie again.
Meanwhile you’ve got Mary and Mary’s been slapped in the face so hard that it left an imprint of a dick. This is actually funny, except it fell kind of flat because Mary had yet established herself as a character who really deserved it, but then last year we got Dina aggressively hompking Mary when she starts being a jerk and it’s funny even though Dina is engaging in technically what is physical violence and harassment of Mary and I laugh because Mary throws wild cartoon faces. Or there was that time Amazi-Girl held her arm out and Malaya fell down and Marcie thought it was hilarious, and then a few years later it became impossible to laugh whenever she punched people because the cartoon superhero mythology Amazi-Girl had built up evaporated.
Physical slapstick is a valid form of comedy for cartoons and it’s something that gets harder in situations that seem analogous to reality, which is probably why manga gets away with it so often; characters getting smacked there turn into cartoon silly putty before reshaping back to reality. It’s something that has to be shaped by context, where establishing what’s physical slapstick and what’s Actual Violence is important for the reader, but then just because it’s a joke doesn’t always make it a funny one if a story fails to both properly contextualize them as well as run the joke into the ground.
Thag Simmons
Yeah, the level of violence that can be played for comedy is pretty variable. There’s comedies that can get away with characters getting exploded or shot in the face as a joke, even though both have extreme and often fatal consequences in real life.
Laura
Wow, cool! Thanks for the deep dive! Thumbs up. 🙂
Roe
Not sure why people are trying to argue with you or ignore your real experience with violence—I’m sorry. violent comedy still normalizes or downplays violence in real life. it definitely desensitizes people.
Partly I think it was “early strip weirdness”. The tone on DoA hadn’t quite settled yet and the violence in that strip would have fit better in SP!.
That said, it still did some character stuff for both Joyce and Joe and it was called back to more critically many times after. Even at the time, the “girls can’t hurt boys” thing read to me as a character trait of Joyce’s, not authorial truth. It also kept coming up throughout their early relationship, usually obliquely, eventually leading up to the “what was I, before I hurt you” bit.
Honestly my biggest problem with that sequence is that it’s our only look at Joe on a date and Joyce is so awful it makes him look good by comparison.
To be fair, Joe does call her out on it and after her saying that “girls can’t hurt boys” does she come to realise that actually, maybe that’s not right.
As someone who’s a fan of classic slapstick, when you bring a real life perspective to comedic violence it does make you think “why is there no consequences” But I mean it’s not like I mind when Nami hits Luffy, or Blooma hits Goku Or slapstick waifu hits bumbling MC #20. I dunno. I guess I can’t defend it but it’s a trope I’m pretty fond of.
I mean, complaining about web comics for not being 100% realistic like this is kinda like complaining about Taco Bell not being 100% Authentic Mexican Food, because neither are ever SUPPOSED to be that, you know?
146 thoughts on “Funny story”
Sirksome
In the moment it was funny. In hindsight it might’ve been an assault. In Mike is dead now memory it’s back to being funny.
alongcameaspider
Oh it was definitely assault, but Mike is dead and he’s crushing hard on Joyce so there’s not much to do about it but laugh really
alongcameaspider
Joe is crushing hard that is, realized that might not have been 100% clear by the way I typed it
Yet_One_More_Idiot
I think that maybe Joe’s funny story just accidentally and temporarily broke Amber. She needed an emotional release, looks like that’s it! xD
Laura
I never quite understood that. I’d think it would be domestic violence, and creepy jealousy at that, the way Joyce and Mike teamed up to beat the tar out of Joe on their first date. I never understood why there are no consequences for Joyce, even when she said, “Our fists were instruments of the Lord!” (*Barf.*) Seems like she’d be more sensitive to self-righteous religiously motivated violence, and look back on her own prior actions more critically, after what she went through with Becky’s father. But when she just looked at Joe with those big puppy-dog eyes and said (words to the effect of) “But… a girl can’t REALLY hurt a boy, can she? Not really.” (Again, too lazy/inept to look up the original strip/quote.) And all is seemingly forgiven. At most, Joe demonstrated mild irritation before going back to being smitten. It’s this whole stereotype that women can’t be abusers. “Questionable Content,” by Jeph Jacques, has a similar trope: a lady punches a guy (even to the point of bruising or serious injury) and it’s a punchline. A joke. I don’t get it.
Laura
…But it was sweet of Joe to share an anecdote about her friend, let Amber know she’s not alone (and that she’s not the only punchy/assaultive member of her peer group).
John Smith
I’ll be honest, that anecdote feels more like a lead up to “So anyway, Danny is right and it’s great that he’s dead.”
probskay
i think it’s a bit more of a “Joe was being an objectifying creep” and “Joyce was being an unreasonable religious purist” so that both of them were being gross and wrong in that situation. there’s also a lot to be said about webcomic time, because those strips were…. so long ago lol. the violence was over the top and played mostly for jokes. Both characters have had arcs of growth where they changed alongside the tone of the comic. I think it’s very fair to be critical of those original events, but Joe did need something to help knock him out of his womanisation and Joyce is learning to be less repressed herself
Laura
How long ago has it been in comic book time, though? Is it still early Spring semester of freshman year?
Grimey
That is why I stopped reading QC to be honest. By the time I quit I remember Marten effectively reduced to little more than character development for everyone else.
jmsr7
I have good news about QC then: Faye cuts that shit out, and the comic gets MUCH better. The Faye-bubbles arc alone is worth the price of admission.
That said, i think Yay is my favourite character.
alongcameaspider
Unfortunately Marten is even less of a character then he was before, seemly solely there to be “Claire’s boyfriend” until Jeph remembers he’s supposed to be a main character again
ESM
Martin’s been vestigial to Questionable Content ever since it stopped being a love triangle, which was pretty early on. I think the only reason he hasn’t been written out altogether is because Pintsize needs a place to stay.
Andy
I don’t see why it’s a problem. Stories need conflict and Marten is an easy-going dude who has a stable job and is in a stable healthy relationship. If he was the main character, he’d still be fairly ancillary to everyone else’s stuff, or it’d be a pretty boring comic. As it is, everyone else still has conflict and so the comic focuses on them, because they’re actually driving things forwards
Crazy Lou
I like that Marten’s moved on from the focus because it means that he’s allowed to stay the cool, chill guy that he became over time. Honestly if he wasn’t there to go “This is a thing now? Cool.” the comic’s tone would have probable gone off of one deep end or the other by now.
BarerMender
Yes, Yay! I love her so much. I love Emily, but Yay is the queen of my heart.
BarerMender
Oops! Love THEM so much.
Needfuldoer
I still read it every day out of habit, but if you asked me to summarize the last couple years’ worth of plot I’d have nothing. Sometimes I get the feeling the comic writes itself into a corner, and gets bailed out by introducing new characters (with increasingly eccentric names and interests) to hyperfocus on for a few months. It’s more “vignettes about a small New England mill town” than an overarching plot.
Bridgebrain
I view the plot as “exploring the AI-Human future but not an apocalypses”
The rest of the plot is just a delivery vehicle
drs
Then even later QC gets much worse, IMO.
Needfuldoer
Agreed. I think the Faye/Bubbles arc was the last plot thread that felt planned in advance and fully executed to a satisfying conclusion.
Once the repair shop was established, the comic went back to aimless meandering.
thejeff
I like a lot of the places it meanders to though, so I don’t really miss big plot arcs.
BarerMender
Agreed.
C.T. Phipps
How was it religiously motivated violence?
Jeff K!
It was violence caused by a desire to uphold a particular religious standard.
C.T. Phipps
I feel like if you attribute the gender roles and feelings on sex purely to religion you’re being dangerously reductive.
Spencer
where do y’think she learned them patriarchal gender roles and feelings on sex, bud
alongcameaspider
I mean in general you’re right
In Joyce’s case specifically though I’d absolutely attribute it solely to religion
thejeff
In general, you could at least have an interesting conversation about it. We could consider broadly how religious attitudes towards gender roles and sex have shaped society and been shaped by it in turn and how that affects even people not raised in a religion. Like Dorothy’s concerns about how her sexual needs will be seen.
But this is Joyce and the entire main plot of the comic is about how she deals with having been messed up by her childhood in a cult. She literally says “Our fists were Instruments of the Lord.”
Arawn
You’re completely right. Religion is absolutely unoriginal and quite frankly not at all pivotal to the development of the ethos of a community. Instead, religions are just a reflection or the founder’s prejudices. Therefore, no, religions are not the problem. They’re just the part that delivers the problem to the next generation as a bundle of lessons served up to corrupt the innocent! Therefore, religion itself is certainly not the problem.
Laura
Quote: “Our fists were instruments of the LORD!” -Joyce
Jamie
FWIW, I don’t think either webcomic has used that trope in a long while.
I’m having a hard time actually figuring out what your objection is, though. The stereotype of women being physically weak, or that slapstick comedy is weird when gendered?
Like, QC never depicted Marten as shrugging off Faye’s hits. And DoA has had Amazi-girl since the beginning. So I think you have a point in there, but I can’t figure out exactly what it is.
alongcameaspider
Wasn’t there an arc in QC relatively early on where there was a female vigilante beating the shit out of womanizers and she was treated like a straight up villain?
And I remember Faye being genuinely apologetic when her shit got too much
Laura
Yes, I recall that QC arc — but the vigilante was trying to run men over on her moped (IIRC), which is significantly more dangerous than punching. But punching is not excusable.
Maybe Faye apologized once or twice, I don’t know. To me that doesn’t matter whether a person apologizes, if they are never held accountable for it and if they keep on doing it as a pattern. Like for example that time when Faye went to the hospital due to alcohol poisoning. She opens her eyes and punches Marten clean out, and that’s the whole punchline. And he doesn’t even mention it the next morning, just keeps showing sweet concern for her. I don’t like treating people as if they are entitled to hurt others just because they may have experienced oppression or violence or trauma in other contexts.
…And, Mike was right. Amazi-Girl’s hobby is problematic, too. She’s better off now, playing roller derby, where the violence is expected and consensual.
GreyICE
I mean there’s flavors of punching friends. My wife might punch me in the arm when I’m being a jerk but that doesn’t mean she’s beating the crap out of me.
Does everyone think that everyone is throwing Mike Tyson haymakers here?
Laura
Given the little stars of pain in QC, I got the impression that Faye hit Marten pretty hard. But sometimes people hit and hurt while they think they are just hitting lightly.
alongcameaspider
On the hospital punch
No part of that strip was a punchline, the entire moment was meant to be dramatic, I imagine she punched him because she wasn’t fully aware of what was happening at the time and Marten doesn’t bring it up because he knows that (and also his defining character flaw is he’s a bit of a doormat)
And her being quick to punch is something she gradually gets better about, honestly don’t think she’s punched anyone in rl years
Laura
Well, that’s good. I did see one a few years back where she tries to punch Marten and then stops herself, and says, “Sorry, just a reflex,” and he congratulates her on stopping. I mean, that’s progress. She has her jerkish moments, and Bubbles calls her out on them occasionally, but apparently they still love each other regardless of each any flaws, so hopefully that’s a good thing. And Bubbles really is too big and strong to be hurt easily by a physical attack.
Laura
Thanks for checking in. What bothers me is the idea that women can’t be abusers. It makes light of domestic abuse, as if it doesn’t “count” when perpetrated by women. I always took QC as treating Faye’s punching of Marten as if it were a joke somehow, or occasionally something that he “deserved” for some smart-aleck comment.
Twitcher
What you’re talking about is the Duluth Model of abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duluth_model#:~:text=Criticism%20of%20the%20Duluth%20Model,violent%20only%20in%20self%2Ddefense. I think Willis knows that women are capable of all sorts of violence, what with his “sainted mother” being the way she was.
someone
“Criticism of the Duluth Model has centered on the program’s insistence that men are perpetrators who are violent because they have been socialized in a patriarchy that condones male violence, and that women are victims who are violent only in self-defense.”
Oh great, more essentialism. “People with this phenotype are always like this, people with that phenotype are always like that.” For all the talks about broad spectrum and complex identity, it’s quite depressing how often people who should be expected to be progressive falls back to this simplistic model that wants to assign people a role (the villain or the victim) based entirely on what they look like rather than their actual story.
Jamie
Thanks for clarifying. I’d agree that that’s a problem in general, though I have trouble agreeing with the comics being examples of it. But that’s probably more a case of my being relatively uneducated in this subject, and also I haven’t done the archive dives necessary to refresh myself.
Sirksome
It’s a double standard. Society has a lot of them and Joe has probably internalized a bit of those toxic masculinity concepts. The whole “women are the physically weaker sex and thus can’t abuse men” Not sure how that translates when said women is using another man to commit that violence by proxy though? Joe was very creepy in early DoA but taking that night literally and metaphorically on the chin was pretty impressive by early Joe standards.
Laura
Hmm, looks like I included too many links in my reply, because it’s in “awaiting moderation” limbo. (Never have I done anything in moderation…)
So rather than include all the links, I’ll just say:
My impression is that Joyce and Mike both piled on, at the end, hard enough to leave marks, and that Joyce later admitted to hitting Joe but minimized her actions by saying that she was too weak to have really hurt him:
Starting from here and then going forward until their conversation in the elevator the next day.
Laura
For reference, here is the subsequent elevator conversation.
Roe
I was wondering why I didn’t rem,ember this, but since I apparently read it 11 years ago, I’ll forgive myself
Pearl
In cartoons, it’s common for the consequences of physical violence to be downplayed for comedic effect.
Nova
Yeah, but their point is – Only for women in these comics. If a male character punched one of the female characters it would not be downplayed for comedic effect. And, if it was, the comment section would be up in arms. Rightfully so.
Is it really too much to ask that we don’t laugh at guys getting abused?
Pearl
Not really. The strips where Mike punches Joe are immediately followed by ones where Billie punches Ruth in the face, and they’re dating now.
Pearl
Or like they were for a while.
And besides a one-time incident isn’t “abuse” it’s just a guy getting punched in the face for being a creep, which Joe was actually doing.
Laura
Yeah… Billie and Ruth was super problematic, and presented as such.
Pearl
Joyce being problematic is the point of the entire comic.
Laura
Yeah. That bothers me. I don’t really know what to make of it.
Real-life punching — or even open-fist slaps across the face can have such serious consequences. They can cause long-term cumulative traumatic damage to your brain and cervical spine. I wouldn’t wish a punch on anyone, and I’d have a hard time forgiving anyone who punched someone in the face. Even in play — it’s so easy not to know your own strength and hurt someone by accident.
Laura
… I have some history around this kind of thing. Part of why this strikes a nerve.
Spencer
It’s not real life punching because they are cartoons.
QC is a series that established that Cartoon Punching is fine and causes no lasting consequence. Whether or not the audience found it funny, how that joke got played out, and how it was indulging in “it’s funny for the Feisty Female Lead to punch the Doormat Male Lead” often enough that the funny bits drained it was just some shy dude getting smacked around and everyone involved didn’t want to have it anymore, least of all the author.
DoA had these exact scenes with Billie/Ruth and Joe/Joyce, more specifically the latter. Joe gets smacked around and we think it’s funny, and then we get to their next Gender Studies class and it’s “actually this is deeply inappropriate and Joyce was motivated by a patriarchal gender standard into believing she could cause no harm” and so we stop laughing at “girls punching dudes” as a baseline for comedy. Dorothy once slapped Walky upside the head when he insulted Joyce, except that was funny because it was in a single panel and Walky had no facial expression, so it’s shaped by context.
So “punching in the face for comedy” stopped being a universally Funny thing for this series, but then it was still funny when it happened to Billie for a while. Ruth would kick the crap out of her, but Billie would be kind of shrill and annoying so there’s at least some give and take where a moody jerk gets thrown into chairs. Then Ruth slams Billie into a wall and kisses her and it’s not funny and sorta retroactively stops, and so Ruth doesn’t hit Billie again.
Meanwhile you’ve got Mary and Mary’s been slapped in the face so hard that it left an imprint of a dick. This is actually funny, except it fell kind of flat because Mary had yet established herself as a character who really deserved it, but then last year we got Dina aggressively hompking Mary when she starts being a jerk and it’s funny even though Dina is engaging in technically what is physical violence and harassment of Mary and I laugh because Mary throws wild cartoon faces. Or there was that time Amazi-Girl held her arm out and Malaya fell down and Marcie thought it was hilarious, and then a few years later it became impossible to laugh whenever she punched people because the cartoon superhero mythology Amazi-Girl had built up evaporated.
Physical slapstick is a valid form of comedy for cartoons and it’s something that gets harder in situations that seem analogous to reality, which is probably why manga gets away with it so often; characters getting smacked there turn into cartoon silly putty before reshaping back to reality. It’s something that has to be shaped by context, where establishing what’s physical slapstick and what’s Actual Violence is important for the reader, but then just because it’s a joke doesn’t always make it a funny one if a story fails to both properly contextualize them as well as run the joke into the ground.
Thag Simmons
Yeah, the level of violence that can be played for comedy is pretty variable. There’s comedies that can get away with characters getting exploded or shot in the face as a joke, even though both have extreme and often fatal consequences in real life.
Laura
Wow, cool! Thanks for the deep dive! Thumbs up. 🙂
Roe
Not sure why people are trying to argue with you or ignore your real experience with violence—I’m sorry. violent comedy still normalizes or downplays violence in real life. it definitely desensitizes people.
Spencer
No one has done this.
Laura
Thank you, Roe. That’s kind of you to say.
BarerMender
Seriously. Why did Marten put up with Faye punching him? I’ve never struck a woman, but if she punched me, there’d be punching going on.
alongcameaspider
Because Marten’s defining character trait is he’s a bit of a doormat
thejeff
Partly I think it was “early strip weirdness”. The tone on DoA hadn’t quite settled yet and the violence in that strip would have fit better in SP!.
That said, it still did some character stuff for both Joyce and Joe and it was called back to more critically many times after. Even at the time, the “girls can’t hurt boys” thing read to me as a character trait of Joyce’s, not authorial truth. It also kept coming up throughout their early relationship, usually obliquely, eventually leading up to the “what was I, before I hurt you” bit.
Honestly my biggest problem with that sequence is that it’s our only look at Joe on a date and Joyce is so awful it makes him look good by comparison.
Furubatsu
To be fair, Joe does call her out on it and after her saying that “girls can’t hurt boys” does she come to realise that actually, maybe that’s not right.
Jamie
It’s actually assault and battery.
And that night, Mike was the Energizer bunny of punching.
Thag Simmons
It’s bad but nobody was seriously hurt and there don’t seem to be any hard feelings.
Decidedly Orthogonal
OK so Ana Chronistic is sometimes away or off for a day, but she’s been absent three days now. Anybody know if she’s all good?
Delicious Taffy
Last I saw, she was on the news, flying around in some sort of self-made metal warsuit. Probably a little busy with that, I’d imagine.
a/snow/mous/e
wow sirksome called the title-text
Yotomoe
As someone who’s a fan of classic slapstick, when you bring a real life perspective to comedic violence it does make you think “why is there no consequences” But I mean it’s not like I mind when Nami hits Luffy, or Blooma hits Goku Or slapstick waifu hits bumbling MC #20. I dunno. I guess I can’t defend it but it’s a trope I’m pretty fond of.
The Wellerman
Yeah me too.
I mean, complaining about web comics for not being 100% realistic like this is kinda like complaining about Taco Bell not being 100% Authentic Mexican Food, because neither are ever SUPPOSED to be that, you know?
The Wellerman
Seeing her cheered up like that is such a happy sight ?
(if only I knew where she got that comfy shirt of hers)
The Wellerman
Hopefully it’s not exclusive to a Target store in Ohio.
The Wellerman
(seriously someone point me to her shirt it’s driving me crazy trying to search for it on Amazon) ?
Needfuldoer