209

Summon
Posted on November 16, 2021 by David M Willis

209 thoughts on “Summon”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    I FIGURED IT OUT

    Amber has a Mike Stand

    1. Sirksome

      His only ability is fucking people’s moms though. So it should be really interesting to see her use that in battle.

      1. Fnord

        Perhaps it also forces the target to pay a nickel?

      2. Chronos

        I’m 99% sure there are weirder stands that have been used effectively in battle.

        1. Doongus

          I could list them, but alas, “weirder” is subjective.

    2. Bruceski

      Since they’re all named after songs… Motherlover.

      1. The Wellerman

        In reference to the name of this arc, how about Dark Parade?

        Just imagine the awesome powers that could go with that!!!

        ?

    3. powerpowerpow

      Never seen Jojo so I assumed this was a pun on mic stand

      1. Spriteless Auntie

        You know what? That’s better and I want another season with Stands named after mythical figures just so we can get a Mike Stand

        1. Decidedly Orthogonal

          A little late don’t you think? We’ve already had the Mike drop. Although I get that sound techs prefer stands for preventing exactly that.

          But no, he’s not a stand. He’s an angel. In the end there will be three more. This will be the only Michael angel though.

        2. King Daniel

          Michael angel, oh?

        3. Decidedly Orthogonal

          You get a pizza!

        4. Tim

          Do not tell you the next one.

        5. Chronos

          Huh. Usually, when I think about angels and anime I think of them attacking Tokyo3, not your psyche.

        6. Ana Chronistic

          non-sequitur, but my husband made me a Lemonade Stand named Country Time

          …dang, thought I had it online still, oh well can’t be buggered to find it now!

  2. Doctor_Who

    Dina enters, drops off two bowls of Froot Loops, and leaves. Amber doesn’t pick up on the implication until much later.

    This is the start of Dumbing of Age’s transition to a supernatural mystery series where Dina uses her psychic abilities to put the spirits of the dead to rest, Amazi-Girl is her sidekick, and the ongoing arc is that Dina really just wants all the tedious dead humans to leave her alone so she can focus on contacting the spirits of dinosaurs and fill gaps in the fossil record.

    DoA: Dina of Afterlife. Coming this fall to the CW!

    1. A Red Balloon

      Psychic? Spirits?

      Also, monsters? Tingling?

      Oh, this should be VERY fun! ?

    2. Thag Simmons

      Did the Supernatural guys ever fight a Dinosaur necromancer? I know Buffy didn’t.

      1. carms

        There’s a dinosaur necromancer in one of the Tortall books. Enjoy!!

        1. Thag Simmons

          I know the Dresden Files books had him resurrect Sue the T. rex for a bit, which is awesome, I’m just wondering if any TV shows had used that plotline.

        2. Miri

          Is it true necromancy if a goddess temporarily “lends” (thrusts upon?) you powers that bring back a semblance of life, because she wants to use you to crush an empire/at the very least overturn its monarchy because the current emperor thinks people should worship him as he can destroy their lives far faster than any god?

          And Daine could have gone make the people skeletons dance, but she’s People inside. And the young girl in a cold fury riding at the head of an undead dinosaur and mastodon army (then shapeshifting into a hyena) to hunt down the ruler is the sort of thing those that saw it and lived Would Not Forget in a hurry.

          Ozorne was a fool.

        3. Rayndel

          As much as I’m an Aly kind of girl, that book out of the first three quartets is probably my favorite. That cool rage of grief was just perfect.

      2. The Wellerman

        I think it was some kind of cartoon-looking kid who possessed a giant dinosaur plush that looked SUPER fake and half-assed on behalf of the producers if you ask me.

        If Dina of Afterlife DOES happen, it could really do some justice to that scene.

        Plus, I think Dina and Amber becoming Dream Walkers would be AWESOME!

      3. Edwin I Callahan

        One of the Buffy novelizations featured zombie dinosaurs from the local museum. Forget the title.

    3. Lingo

      DoA: Dead on Arrival (at Dina’s doorstep)

    4. Geneseepaws

      @Dr.Who: Thank you very much. That completes my day.

    5. Chronos

      You joke, but CW might actually *do* it.

  3. Sirksome

    Greatest failure? Amber might need to get over herself a bit. Mike made his own choices.

    1. Thag Simmons

      I mean he was killed trying to save her from her evil dad. Even if he made his own choices, it’s not an unreasonable thing to feel guilty about.

      1. Sirksome

        Blaine also made his own choices. Like you couldn’t stop him from making his own stupid choices. So I do actually think it’s pretty unreasonable to feel guilty or responsible for his actions. Is Amber also gonna start hallucinating Ross too?

        1. Doctor_Who

          Amber didn’t actually know Ross that well, and it’s been a while since she saw him, so she might not be able to hallucinate him with much accuracy.

          Maybe if Mike takes off his shoe, his big toe has a mustache and randomly spouts bible verses.

        2. Sunny

          That is something I can easily imagine Mike doing.

        3. Clif

          Have we ever seen Jennifer remove her shoes?

        4. milu

          or Fuckface?

          wait

        5. Thag Simmons

          I’m not saying the hallucinating your dead friend’s ghost is reasonable, but that’s different than feeling responsible for someone’s dying because they were your friend.

          Amber tried to stop her evil dad from hurting her friends, and mostly succeeded. The point where she failed is going to be a sore spot.,

        6. Raven

          That’s the problem with guilt. It doesn’t care about logic.

        7. Rinn

          I have some terrible new for you.
          If one of your friends dies, you’re going to feel like it’s your fault no matter what rationality says.

      2. justin8448

        There’s a difference though, between feeling guilty about the role she played in his death and ignoring all the other circumstances and people in that situation and making it all about her and her failure.

        1. Thag Simmons

          But the thing is she did fail, even if she isn’t predominantly to blame, had she done things differently her friend could have lived. She could have saved him.

          That is not an easy sort of grief to live with.

    2. StClair

      Yeah, this is familiar territory. She’s previously declared that she’s so broken, no therapist has ever seen anything like her or could possibly fix her.
      Which just makes me want to pat her head and say, in my most sweetly condescending voice, “oh you sweet summer child.”
      (Which would be the worst thing, of course, but still.)

      Part of getting older is finding out that not even your trauma/damage is that special or unique.

      1. StClair

        (imagine we had an edit button, and that the first ‘sweet’ was either deleted or replaced with ‘saccharine’. :p)

        but yeah, this is Amber, who tries to make everything about her and her trope-laden personal narrative, and gets confused and upset when the real people she tries to shove into those roles and boxes refuse to play along.
        … lot of that going around lately.

        1. Miri

          The alternative is assuming what you know is normal and only recognising your trauma as such in your late 30s…

          OK, there are various alternatives, but that’s been a fun aspect of this month in my life…

        2. Human Bean

          Well, her trauma might not be *completely unique*, but several people in this comment section have pointed out that finding a therapist for DID is extremely hard.
          So she’s not all wrong?

        3. thejeff

          Plus that attitude is not just a trope, but an actual part of her mental illness. A pretty common one, honestly. Just another thing her brain weasels are lying to her about.

    3. Jamie

      It’s really not a bad thing to feel guilty when someone dies in your vicinity, no matter how responsible you actually are for it.

      Like, I’d much rather someone feel guilty about it, and have to work through that, than be completely okay with it.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Survivor’s guilt is horrible at the best of times, but in a case like this, where you could have saved them? I can’t imagine how painful it’d be.

        It’s not the sort of thing you expect someone to just get over after a couple months

    4. justin8448

      I appreciate Spencer pointing out a few comics back how Amber always makes everyone else’s problems all about her. I’ve never really seen this character trait much before and didn’t really understand how it worked. But now that I’m clued in to it, I really see it here and other places.

      By the way, thanks Spencer!

      1. thejeff

        OTOH, Mike lies. Even brain Mike.
        He lies in ways that play off your fears and traumas, but that doesn’t mean he’s not lying.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Brain!Mike is an avatar of Amber’s own mind, everything he says is something she thinks the real Mike would’ve said.

        2. thejeff

          And while Amber obviously knows her own mind and weaknesses, that doesn’t mean she’s the best judge of her thoughts and motives.

      2. Spencer

        Finally, my long winded character reads are validated.

      3. Spencer

        Although it’s less Amber making those problems “about her”, like someone else’s suffering is unfairly burdening her, so much that when Amber does wrong by someone she can’t just accept it as a mistake to be corrected, she uses it to further justify being an irredeemable monster and why her current course of action is for the best. Every mistake she makes in her pursuit of objective, rigid moral perfection doesn’t dissuade her from that folly, it drives her deeper into self-loathing spiral of black and white thinking.

        Amber punches her dad and enjoys it. This is not cathartic, it’s actually because she’s Just Like Him.

        She flipped a lunchtable at Ethan and called Joyce a bongo. They did not appreciate this, so Amber is Just Like Her Dad and also Joyce is allowed to keep dating him, with Amber’s explicit blessing after Joyce drew all those dicks on the whiteboards because Amber let Ryan get away.

        She’s privately expressed guilt for how she treated Danny and a few times that she misses him, but she’s never apologized for it because to apologize would imply it is something that can be corrected.

        Sal is the monster who drove Amber mad, humiliated Amazi-Girl, and corrupted Danny. Amber tracks her down, Sal hits her first (because stalking) so Amber is completely morally in the clear to attack, and then a bunch of yokel Republicans start calling Sal a dangerous thug and immediately</i< Amber defends her, because Sal is suddenly the victim of dehuminization. Sal leaps to her defense against Ryan and, without missing a beat, Amber is now someone who has caused her pain and grief that Sal never deserved, Amber tries to hand Sal power over her by giving her a means of tracking her down at any point in time, and this ultimately culminates in the truth of Amber's identity coming to light and her and Sal fighting, where Amber is flat out hoping she gets murdered. Amber’s completely unable to accept that Sal did anything wrong to the point of blaming Asher for causing the robbery instead of Sal herself. It’s not that Amber needs to hate Sal forever for this, it’s that Sal immediately leaped from Monster to Innocent Victim, because Amber can’t process it any other way.

        And with Ethan in particular it’s been going on since before the series. Amber failed to protect him from Sal she abandoned him at the start of the series to decompress from the summer spent defending him from their hometown, she flipped the table, and Ethan doesn’t even know how to say he’s mad about anything around her as she goes and beats people up all night because he’s so concerned about what it’ll do to her to the point that Mike lands in the hospital and Amber had no idea because she had been blacking out when Amazi-Girl was in the driver’s seat. Ethan can’t ever be upset with her because he knows Amber will just use it to make herself feel worse, except that inability to hold her to a standard means that Amber never got to learn it’s okay to make mistakes.

  4. Schpoonman

    Oh my god, fuck off, Mike.

    1. Sirksome

      But this version of Mike is actually a figment of Amber’s imagination so…fuck off Amber???

    2. Thag Simmons

      Mike did fuck off, he’s dead.

      This is instead the personification of Amber’s self-loathing, which yes absolutely needs to fuck off.

      1. BarerMender

        I’m still not completely convinced Mike is dead. I keep expecting him to show up in witness protection.

        1. Thag Simmons

          I’d rank Mike showing up alive in witness protection as about as likely as the actual Head Alien showing up, and a little more likely than Guns showing up.

          Which is to say that I don’t think it’s going to happen.

        2. Delicious Taffy

          I keep telling you fuckers, he’s been piloting Jennifer like a meat Gundam since the time skip.

        3. Thag Simmons

          Well, obviously. It hasn’t been particularly subtle.

          That said I think ghostly possession is more of an undeath thing, rather than a still alive thing, and it’s definitely not a thing witness protection does

        4. thejeff

          Nope. Jennifer was Mike all along. She’s just given up on the pretense now.

        5. Sombrero

          Tropes never die.

        6. Icalasari

          I’m just imagining him showing up in the literal last panel of the comic to a sea of shocked faces. No explanation

        7. Opus the Poet

          You mean as Booster.

  5. woobie

    Pobrecita Amber.

    1. woobie

      ugh no

  6. Icalasari

    Yep, convinced on my “He’s a introject style Alter” theory

    1. Amy

      100%. Amber is pretty clearly plural(probably traumagenic) with AmaziGirl as an alter. Mike here seems to be another alter.

      1. Perdellian

        Based on what I’ve learned from talking with some plural friends of mine, I think the term is “factive”?

    2. Kella

      Agreed. This sounds like MANY a conversation we’ve had with (now ex) persecutors.

  7. RassilonTDavros

    …of all the ships I was expecting might be explored post-time-skip, Mike/Amber was definitely not one of them

    1. Clif

      Crack ships are always the best.

    2. Rose by Any Other Name

      ….
      Slipshine Presents: The Most Epic of Hatefucks 2

      **20 pages of Amber masturbating**

      1. milu

        hahaha ^^

      2. The Wellerman

        This gives me another idea!

        We have yet to see if I’ll make it happen though….

    3. Keulen

      They definitely make a better couple in the Walkyverse.

  8. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Yeah knowing Amber wanting a constant reminder around of the time she fucked up worse than she ever had before would be something she would force upon herself.

    1. StClair

      Absolutely.

      1. Clif

        DOA:12 I Would Cut You Completely Out of My Brain if I Could.

        1. Clif

          And I am rewarded with Lucy. Jacob to go.

        2. milu

          there’s no Jacob grav, so i assume you mean Jocelyn.

        3. Clif

          I used to see a Jacob grav and he is still on the cast page and so I assumed one still existed.But going back, I haven’t seen one in some time, so your probably right. But I haven’t seen a Jocelyn avatar recently either, that I recall.

        4. milu

          oh i thought you actually meant Jason and i was being silly. ah well, joke’s on me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  9. anonymsly

    Ghost!Mike looks like he’s been obviously photoshopped into the scene, all flat colors and stiff angles, it’s freaking me out a bit. As I expect this is how it’s supposed to look and feel, well done!

    1. Mr D

      Last time he showed up he also looked like this!

    2. Needfuldoer

      Mike’s been flat since he fell off the fire escape.

      (Too soon?)

  10. Wendy

    Just out of curiosity, is this the type of thing people mean when they say Mike is “abusive”?

    1. Rani

      No, Mike would literally do things like blackmail Amber’s abusive dad into spending more time with her…specifically because he’s an abusive dad and would make her miserable. That was him at ten years old.

      Transcending death just to squat in his victim’s head and boil her in unwarranted guilt-that’s new.

      1. Wendy

        Where did he do that? I’m wondering if I’m either recalling that wrong or if our interpretations of what exactly happened are different.

        1. Thag Simmons

          Here

        2. Regalli

          He was twelve/thirteen when that occurred, but Of Mike And Men’s flashback storyline shows him attending her birthday party (and only really showing interest AFTER he saw Blaine acting shitty towards her), sneaking off into the kitchen to find Blaine’s receipts and financial information including ‘this receipt for a Korean barbecue place’ (implied to be either a date with Yuri or his mob handlers,) and using them to get Blaine to drive Amber and Ethan for an upcoming band field trip… the one which ended with a stop at a convenience store at just the wrong time. When Blaine confronted Mike after said Field Trip of Doom and threatened him, Mike claimed that he did so hoping Blaine and Amber would make each other miserable all day, rather than as an actual Doing Something Nice For Amber that backfired, and offered Blaine the keys to his house to kill his parents for all he cared.

          Now, granted, because he only ever discussed his motivations to Blaine, a man even Mike recognized was a real piece of shit and who was actively threatening him at the time, that information should be taken with a grain of salt. But at the same time, the way he subsequently treated Ethan and Amber and what he said about Amber during the rooftop fight about ‘winding her up and pointing her dadwards’ is… not helping the case that he WASN’T terrible all along, and personally I consider the best evidence he was bluffing to be the fact that that’s a bit evil mastermindy for a thirteen-year-old compared to ‘genuinely misread the situation, tried to do something nice to help with her anxiety, backfired horribly’. (On the other hand, he also engineered the whole ‘getting their shitty math teacher fired because she was having cybersex with a student athlete’ thing in some way or another at around the same time. Hopefully, the student football player he was befriending did NOT get involved with this teacher at Mike’s suggestion, but it’s very much not explained. If he did that might actually be worse than intentionally putting Amber and Ethan in a long car trip with her abuser hoping she’d be abused.)

      2. Lingo

        That’s what he said his intention was … but I personally think he was lying in that instance to get Blaine off his back. I think he was doing it in a misguided attempt to try to make him a better father … by forcing him to spend time with Amber. Yeah, misguided.

        1. Needfuldoer

          That was my read on it, too. “You’re up to something, be better to Amber or I’ll expose you” was probably where he was trying to go.

        2. Rani

          I have no reason to give him that benefit of the doubt; the text certainly doesn’t. Mike’s personality is that of a born-and-bred vindictive sociopath and nothing about his actions suggests otherwise. The best that can be said about his character development is that Ethan managed to fuck some of the bastard out of him shortly before his end, and what little was left sufficed to attempt a botched heroic sacrifice that only managed to force AG to ditch Blaine to get him to a hospital.

        3. thejeff

          He did have recognition of how awful he’d been to Amber just before that sacrifice. Not clear how botched it was either: Amazi-girl seemed to be in serious trouble right beforehand.

      3. BarerMender

        Mike didn’t blackmail Blaine to be abusive. That was his story to Blaine. You know, to keep his family from being killed?

    2. King Daniel

      Generally we mean things like Mike comparing Amber to her father and saying she’s doomed to turn into him, concocting an elaborate scheme to mentally torment Walky so he could record the sounds of him crying (and then play the recordings to his friends while claiming the crying was for something completely different), or trying to drive a wedge between/break up Dorothy and Walky on multiple occasions.

      You know, abusive things like that.

      1. Wendy

        Riiiight.

      2. thejeff

        During the fight with Blaine and Ross he also explicitly says he’d “been poking Amber’s bear for five friggin’ years. She’s multiple time bombs. Just wind her up and point her dadwards.”

        Then a couple strips later he hears Blaine rant and realizes he’s been doing the same thing, with the same excuses.

  11. Ghastly

    I would make a Brain Ghost Dirk joke, but let’s just go with the more wide-reaching Spider-Noir “This is a pretty hardcore origin story”.

  12. DailyBrad

    Ahh, I see.

  13. TemporalShrew

    Mike, you’re a *terrible* Final Fantasy summon.

    1. Dave Van Domelen

      Not as bad as Titan-Egi.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Look, we don’t need to talk about Titan-Egi. Garuda and Ifrit do that behind his back enough as it is. Even Selene gets in on the action.

    2. Kyrik Michalowski

      He isn’t the worst summon of all, after all if you give him a nickel he’ll fuck someone’s mother.

      Yojimbo requires a large amount of money to be useful.

      1. Spriteless Auntie

        Well, Yojimba will tank a hit for a nickel. He’s like a subby mike.

  14. Rani

    Did Amber and Mike even hang out that often during the Season 1 timeframe?

    1. thejeff

      No. Only when Ethan brought him along. I think Amber had pretty much written him off, only tolerating him for Ethan’s sake.

  15. Mr. Random

    Yeaaaaaah, you need therapy.

    Lotta people should get it, but you NEED it.

    1. Needfuldoer

      She thinks she’s beyond help because “no therapist is equipped to deal with” her issues. That’s the mental illness talking, but it’s also not completely untrue because of the rarity of the issues she has to deal with.

      (Also, yay Gravatar-comment synergy!)

  16. Dave Van Domelen

    I didn’t catch it yesterday, but nice how Mike is deliberately “comic booky” with flat colors and rougher line work, as if he stepped out of It’s Walky’s color strips.

  17. BBCC

    Look, Mike, your ship sailed in another verse. Shipping only goes so far. 😛

    1. BBCC

      HOLY SHIT YAY I’M NOT IN ANOTHER WALKY STREAK.

      1. King Daniel

        Twinsies?

        1. BBCC

          Twinsies!!!

        2. Clif

          Sure, why not?

        3. Clif

          I’ll have two.

      2. JBento

        Next you’re going to be Danny, just so you can be LITERALLY EVERY DUDE IN SAL’S LIFE, without ever being Sal.

        1. BBCC

          *Cries because it’s probably true*

        2. Clif

          There, there.

  18. Nayann Martinelli

    Feeling responsible for things out of your control simply sucks, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.
    Unfortunately, convincing people they are not to blame for not having reality warping powers sure is hard.

    1. Miri

      But if I could control or change X I would do and things would be better as a result so surely it’s my fault if I can’t and proof I’m lazy and useless?

      … Yeah, it took a lot of work to get out of thought patterns like that :/

  19. Bagge

    Stop having a point last-panel-mind-Mike

  20. Yotomoe

    I definitely think a lot about that sorta dehumanized way I live my life. Like I view things that happen to me in a weird 3rd person perspective. Like my uncle and grandma died and those are just like…facts about me. I just can’t process that as anything other than just a fact. I almost don’t like bringing it up because I feel I’ll be tempted to use it for ammunition instead of the sentimental feelings I should have.

    1. ollie

      I both empathize and sympathize immensely. May their memories be blessings, and I hope you’re able to find the time and space to delve into the emotions of that, eventually. I know for me, there are some deaths I’ve only really Sunk In and Grieved well over a decade later, and there are some I haven’t gotten to really Feel about, yet.

    2. thumb

      I’ve felt that way myself for most of my life. In regards to your family passing away, this is how it feels now. There’s no wrong way to feel about it. One day your perspective might change and you might feel differently about those facts.

      In regards to using it like ammunition, that’s the sort of thing I would tell myself to not talk about it with people. Fact is though, if you need to talk about it, you should. Even if it feels like you’re trying to score points. Because talking about it is more important. And sometimes, people knowing this about you is important too. So they can navigate your emotional space without bumping into everything or tripping over their own feet.

      I hope that makes sense.

  21. The Wellerman

    Something terrible just went though my mind.

    What if Mary or some other religious fanatic tried to “exorcise” Mike from Amber?

    To say the least, I think that’d be an absolute DISASTER.

    1. Regalli

      That would require someone to KNOW Amber has a Survivor’s Guilt Brain Ghost. Ethan does, but I sorely doubt it’s public knowledge even among her close friends, much less Mary of all people.

      1. The Wellerman

        Yeah I guess so.

        But still, to see Amber get tangled into some kind of trouble like that might be rather interesting to see, and even fittingly symmetrical — after saving her friends all these years as Amazi-Girl, her friends save her.

  22. Joyfulldreams

    …Damnit, I actually really do miss Mike.

    He was an asshole but he did always inject something interesting or at least funny into the story when he showed up, often times by virtue of being an asshole.

    I really, REALLY would have been invested in a storyline where he had this near-death experience but survived, and strived to become a better person, struggling all the way. Perhaps he could have become permanently physically disabled in some way and became physical disability rep for the comic, which…while certainly not an IDEAL candidate for representation of almost any kind, would still have been nice? The comic doesn’t have much rep for that particular demographic.

    1. Joyfulldreams

      Maybe I’m just a sucker for redemption arcs. Maybe I kind of feel like an awful person dying instead of having to live with the consequences of their actions and bypassing all of the work required to make up for it is cheap.

      Maybe I’m like Ethan and I just liked Mike idk. :c

      1. RacingTurtle

        You’re not alone. Is missing Mike a bit messed up? Yeah. But we’re here to watch people make questionable choices, so we might as well make a few of our own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        1. Clif

          Hey, those of us with inner smartasses need representation too.

        2. Dragonfire

          It’s okay to like fictional assholes.

        3. Thag Simmons

          Mike’s not even that bad. I mean how many murders? How many war crimes?

        4. King Daniel

          Depends, are we talking Walkyverse or Dumbiverse?

        5. Thag Simmons

          I mean I think even Joyce and Walky are war criminals in the walkyverse*, so obviously the Dumbiverse

          (*I don’t remember if they actually specifically violated the geneva conventions)

        6. King Daniel

          Yeah, but Walkyverse Mike was especially egregious – he once curb-stomped a toddler at an anti-Iraq War protest just to demonstrate that the protesters were “hypocrites”.

        7. JBento

          Joyce literally murdered anti-Joyce because she didn’t like her, so.

        8. The Wellerman

          Wait, how exactly did she do that again?

        9. Spencer

          Shot her clone in the face.

          Sal’s the one who almost blew up the entire North American continent that one time.

        10. The Wellerman

          Wait, was she still inside Joyce’s head? Did she just lucid dream up a gun or what?

        11. Clif

          Anti-Joyce had her own separate cloned body. Near as I recall, it was thanks to the head alien.

    2. StClair

      whereas I found original/actual Mike insufferable.

      The really ironic thing is that I find myself actually liking this hallucination of him. Amber’s thinking is usually really messed up and has little bearing on reality, but everything this aspect of her has said seems to be entirely accurate and surprisingly self aware.

    3. Minim

      I didn’t like Mike very much at all but I would have loved to see a redemption arc for him as well. Redemption arcs are beautiful things, they give us hope that we and the people around us can also change and become better people.

    4. JBento

      I’m not saying Mike fixed things, but I AM saying that if Mike had been around for the latest Joyce/Becky thing he would’ve saved us like 5 strips – either they’d fix it or the whole thing would have exploded so spectacularly they’d never talk to each other again.

      1. Sombrero

        That’s the problem with killing Mike. Not the character, if there was a character behind the trope that was Mike we are in fact better with his dissapearance. What we miss is his function as an expository device, the one-asshole-greek-chorus that provided us with some external perspective to allow the characters to be their usual dumb selves feely. Now we have just partial substitutes. Booster did that for the timeskip, but it seems that Willis is reluctant to misspend this new promising character as just NB Mike 2.0. Ghost Mike is still doing it, but just for the sake of Amber’s arc. Dunno, maybe the solution will be Amber impersonating Ghost Mike for the sake of the rest of the cast.

        1. Sombrero

          *freely

    5. Spencer

      I used to think it was a mistake to kill Mike off, in hindsight I’m pretty sure for me that was exclusively because he was a queer dude and sleeping with Ethan and catching feelings is when I started caring about him in the slightest. Except now I don’t think that really stacked up in the face of Mike’s death being the only interesting development a redeemed Mike could inflict on the cast.

      Like, what do you redeem him for? Being a horrible shitfucker, yes, how do you redeem him for that? He was a teenage edgelord who thought he had life figured out and doled pain and suffering onto Amber, Ethan, and Walky, those were his main targets among others, in order to teach him a lesson. If he had lived he honest to god would have stopped, the Mike that Ethan wanted existed as of now, but, like, what does redemption mean for Mike when he’s not himself as a person, he’s redeeming himself to his peers?

      Ruth abused her dorm because she was a depressed alcoholic who had the hots for Billie. She stopped her actions and from there we got into what motivated her to do it, her toxic romance with Billie, and even as she redeemed herself for that she has Rachel standing off to the side going “you are a total piece of shit” so there’s a tangible acknowledgement that Ruth’s actions aren’t totally forgotten, they’re just forgotten by the ones not affected.

      Joe’s getting in on this too, where the Do-List comes out and we get a whole story of all the women on campus hating him, but more importantly we under how his whole persona was to protect himself from his parents’ divorce and realizing how much he hurt Joyce makes him put a stop to it. Joe’s not really redeemed since Sal’s still happy to refer to him as List Bro and there’s this undercurrent to his friendship with Joyce where she doesn’t believe he’s capable of being actively helpful or liking her, which he feeds by helping her and then finding some sarcastic joke to keep up the charade as her Shallow Friend to avoid saying out loud that he’s doing it because he cares for her.

      Or, both these characters did something wrong, except that wrongness was rooted in personal histories that influenced both their actions and behaviours. Mike just decided at age 13 that he was hot shit and that fostering Amber’s anger and trauma was what’s best for her. Now he stopped, except there’s nothing to redeem him for because he realized he had done wrong, all that’s left is to redeem himself to the people around him, but how does that affect Mike? What part of his personality is changing? What part of Mike needs to change that he wouldn’t just immediately change it there and then?

      Yeah of course you can redeem Mike, it’s a story, a blank canvas made of dreams where anything can happen, but for story purposes his death provides a new arc for Walky and a status quo shift for Amber and Ethan dealing with the fact that the Mike they wanted existed this whole time and they never even got a chance to see it. There’s no way to write this with Mike alive, except what does an alive Mike bring to the story when his interactions with the entire cast were bullying them, and thus they’d have no reason to forgive him the way Rachel doesn’t forgive Ruth, but instead of it just being one character relationship it’s all of them. Even the question of whether or not its worth forgiving Mike is weird, because “forgiving or not forgiving Mike” is something the other character does without Mike’s input.

      Redemption stories are nice, but Mike was in a unique position where dying provided the most worth to the rest of the cast.

      1. Thag Simmons

        I don’t think a Mike redemption would be as simple as flipping a switch. Mike was a sharp kid who thought he had it all figured out, and that he knew better than everyone else, which justified him being a manipulative asshole to everyone in his life. He made that a central pillar of his identity and then he realized he was wrong, and now he’s got to figure out what he’s going to do with himself.

        You could do interesting stuff there, but I think it’d be difficult within the ensemble structure this comic has. Mike’s a challenging character to write dramatically and he’s only minimally connected to the rest of the cast.

        Although, I think a problem we’re having here is that we’re jumping this hypothetical arc from character and plots beats that were written in order to set up Mike’s death. I don’t know how much of his later character stuff was written with his death as a consideration

    6. thejeff

      I do hope that even with Mike dead, Ethan and Amber’s arc lead to them dealing with just how toxic he was to them. Easy to let that slide, with him being the heroic dead now.

      On a more thematic level, I would hope that in a comic where “I’d die for you” has been highlighted as part of abusive parenting, we don’t take a character literally dying for someone as unalloyed heroism.

      1. milu

        counterpoint: Carol never actually put herself in a position to die for Joyce, she told her she would die for her. The abusive part is not the readiness to die for someone (which could be an admirable thing to do, though circumstances and motives still matter) but using that sort of scary rhetoric to justify supporting violence done TO the other person. “I would totally die for you, that’s how much my actions are disinterested and for your own good”. at least that’s how i remember it?

        Mike was abusive for sure but you can’t accuse him of lovebombing his friends to raise their threshold of tolerance to his abuse.

        1. thejeff

          No, certainly not.

          Ross did put himself in a position to die for Becky though, even in the first kidnapping. Particularly, to be shot down in a hail of police bullets in front of her while trying to “save her soul”. He absolutely was willing to die “for her”.

          You’re right that it’s not necessarily abusive, but I do think it’s interesting that such a big focus was made of it and later another abusive character does in fact die for one of his targets.

        2. milu

          all those things are true. and i guess Mike dying for Amber would make it harder for her to remember and reckon with how messed up his behaviour was.

      2. Regalli

        Yeah, I’m hopeful that with Ethan reintroduced and Amber getting her first real focus story since the timeskip, we’re maybe starting down the path towards ‘Mike did one good thing for us and I do think he genuinely meant it, but he was a consistently shitty friend for five years before that.’ Slowly, I’m sure, but hopefully down that path nonetheless.

    7. Keulen

      I also would’ve liked to have seen a Mike redemption arc, though considering how many people he’d been an asshole to prior to realizing it, that would be rather difficult for him to apologize to everyone he hurt. I definitely feel like I enjoyed Mike as a character a lot more in the Walkyverse than in DoA.

    8. zee

      Same, he was a fun character. I was dying to see his redemption arc 🙁

  23. V

    Man, I miss Mike. Time to go reread Shortpacked!

  24. Amós Batista

    https://amosbatista.com/dumbingofage_graph update.
    Changelog of version 1.1:

    – Fixed some missed classes on style.
    – Inserted links to repositories.
    – Raised character threshold to 7. Now, the graph loads much faster.

    I want to thank Milo, who took time to revise the page content. And also, for the suggestions I’ll consider for this graph.

    1. AGV

      This is great

    2. milu

      well shit if i’m going to be credited with reviewing your text then i’m gonna have to keep doing that whenever you add anything =)

      ok done.

      1. Amós Batista

        No, no, no, no! Don’t worry about it.

        Open Source golen rule: you help if, whenever and how you want. You already helped me a lot, for real.

        1. milu

          oh no, that’s not it, it’s more that, well, my good name is at stake now!!!

    3. milu

      anyway, the loading time is way better now, ~1 second, which makes this useable!

      …on the other hand, there’s still some weird things.
      i know you don’t show characters who appear less than 7 times, but do you also not show edges connecting characters who have less than 7 strips in common? that’s a bit counter-intuitive. i feel like for this graph to be informative it would have to tell me about obscure facts, like whether two characters have met at least once.

      1. Amós Batista

        It makes sense. I’ll have to study first about vis library to improve its perfomance.

    4. JessWitt

      Bookmarking this chart. Good job on working on this, Amos and milu.

  25. Bicycle Bill

    Of course, I needed to go to Google to understand the Gwen Stacy reference…

    1. Bicycle Bill

      And there’s no way I will ever get all the Transformer references, either.

      1. Needfuldoer

        I just nod and go “uh-huh” at those.

    2. Zaxares

      For latecomers who may also not get the Gwen Stacy reference, Gwen Stacy was Spider-Man’s first love who wound up being killed by Green Goblin. He later found love with Mary-Jane Watson who is arguably his greatest love, but Spider-Man always regretted not being able to save Gwen and considers it “his greatest failure”. (Although you could also argue that Uncle Ben’s death is a good tie for that title.)

      1. Mr.Morningstar

        I think with Uncle Ben he eventually understands that he was just a dumb kid who couldnt have known the consequences of his (in)actions. Of course it still haunts him.

        But with Gwen he was right there, already a superhero and wasnt able to save her.

      2. JBento

        This is of course compounded by the fact that originally Gwen died technically NOT because GG threw her off the bridge, but because of the sudden stop when Spidey webbed her, which snapped her neck.

    3. Delicious Taffy

      What, you don’t have an encyclopedic array of readily-accessible knowledge of comic book events at the front of your mind at all times? Psh. Rookie.

      1. milu

        Aha! for once i’m not completely baffled by a superhero reference thanks to this obscure anarchist punk-rock Italian band which i stan who somehow made a song about Gwen Stacy ^^

      2. Needfuldoer

        Not sure about Bill, but that space is full of M*A*S*H references for me. :\

    4. Spencer

      I like Spider-Gwen for rehabilitating the image of Gwen Stacy but that idea’s also kinda run out of steam thanks to Marvel being Marvel.

      Hot take: One More Day should have went through with reviving Gwen.

      1. StClair

        Hotter take: OMD was a mistake top to bottom, rooted to one guy’s personal issues and desire to reset the status quo.

        1. Spencer

          It was, but if they were gonna go for it they shoulda gone all the way and restored the love triangle.

          If there’s one character that could actually sell the idea that you’re breaking up Peter and MJ, it’s Gwen. Instead we just got a slew of boring new characters that had to prove in teal time they were better as romantic interests than Mary Jane Watson, a character who was never intended to be anyone and was simply too popular for Stan Lee and Steve Ditko to ignore.

          Mary Jane was the OG Best Girl, and was Best Girl so hard that the guys making Spider-Man threw their hands up and made her official.

        2. zee

          That’s less a hot take more the general consensus

  26. Thomas

    Amber has a cardboard cut-out of Mike in her room, obviously.

  27. Rabisch

    Well… At least she doesn’t do that when Dina is in the room.

  28. Amós Batista

    The mere presence of Mike makes me questioning if atheism is the only belief thing that’s real in Doa.
    And if Mike is a product of Amber’s mind hallucinating due sleep deprivation, this also make me wonder: how much any religious or supernatural experiences (like glossolalia) are just standard neural activity…

    1. JBento

      I mean, the big belief systems are all mutually exclusive and all of them are exclusive with atheism, so only of them can be real. Last I heard, Willis was an atheist, so if I had to bet, that’s where my money would be.

      HOWEVER, Mike’s presence is not evidence for any of them. Even if heaven and hell and whatever were real, that would not preclude brain-borne hallucinations.

    2. milu

      I’m not sure what you’re saying: is glossolalia a possibility for any human given the right sort of stimuli? Or does it reveal an underlying neurological disorder? I don’t know, but Wikipedia says it’s a “non-neurogenic language disorder”; and: “Most people exhibiting glossolalia do not have a neuropsychiatric disorder.”

      If you’re unaware, Amber is widely believed to have a condition known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) which is another possible explanation for her hallucination, and why it’s very vivid where most people under similar conditions of lack of sleep would suffer no more than peripheral vision glitches.

      1. Amós Batista

        To be a neurological disorder must be hard. I’m used to see glossolalia in churches a lot of time…

    3. The Wellerman

      Amazing, I am also very curious of the same question.

      Although more research needs to be done, it seems to be the most testable hypothesis, per Occam’s Razor.

      1. The Wellerman

        *Amós, I am also curious

        I could have sworn autocorrect didn’t change that.

  29. Nicoleandmaggie

    Hello new friend.

  30. Koname

    That strange moment where Willis breaks the “No repeat relationships” rule (again) specifically by having one side being a figment of the other’s imagination…. I gotta say I kinda love it.

    1. Spencer

      That just means they divorced after Shortpacked! finished.

      Incidentally, I wouldn’t get too attached to Becky/Dina if I were you.

    2. Rani

      Wait, like no repeat relationships from the other continuities, or no characters getting back together again?

    3. Thag Simmons

      The “no repeat ships” rule was “broken” for a while. Sal/Jason, Walky/Dorothy, Ruth/Billie and Mandy/Grace, those all happened very early on.

      But of course, the rule was never broken, because it was that ships wouldn’t be repeated just for the sake of repeating ships, it has to add something new.

      1. BBCC

        And as Willis gets older and sees more and more stuff he could do, he sees more opportunities to try new things. Hell, Sal/Danny just got together.

        1. Spencer

          Coming back from the Walkyverse, it’s a pretty interesting divergence.

          Both Sals like Danny for being a stable rock amidst chaos, except there’s this recurring subtext to WV!Sal’s attraction to him where it’s not necessarily fake, but it’s more that he’s aggressively normal unchanging and Sal’s never been able to have that even before she got roped into alien fighting, and her two other love interests, Tony and Jason, have that same kind of energy; they’re rocks, and you can rely on them to be predictable.

          DoA!Sal going out with Danny seems predicated on a lot of the same thing but it’s not just being an unchanging rock, it’s that he’s genuinely emotionally supportive to her in healthy and positive ways, unlike WV!Danny all but cheating on Billie when Sal drops back into his life. WV!Sal was more into the concept of him because he represented that quiet normalcy she craved, whereas DoA!Danny is someone who’s shown that he’s able to step up to that plate for Sal here, unlike how he enabled Amber’s worsening mental health thinking it was fun superhero girlfriend time.

          And while I am batting -1 on successfully predicting things, I do think it’s probably intentional that DoA!Sal’s behaviour around Danny, where she’s able to more openly emote with him and do goofy shit like climb through his window, it feels like a reverse of what went on in the Walkyverse; Sal acted like a huge clown to make herself appealing and noticeable because she kept getting forced to move around, and the reality is that she was a mess of chaotic emotion and anger. Here in DoA Sal started with that same listless nihilism that WV!Sal had buried that got horribly magnified by Head Alien, but she’s learned to channel it in healthy ways, declaring a music major when music has been hinted to be something she valued, joining roller derby despite her hatred of “organized anything”, and bonding with cast members outside of Marcie to the point where she can be giddy and excitable around Danny without feel like she’s betraying herself.

          It cute.

  31. MDFification

    It’s ’cause her take on what Mike got up to was “telling hard truths” rather than “fucking with people’s heads by any means at hand”. So her Mike-hallucination is telling her things she knows to be true but nonetheless doesn’t believe.

    Pretty helpful brain ghost overall. I bet Mike’d be happy on some level that he’s left behind a vaguely helpful legacy for at least someone, he seemed to kind of… regret how he’d treated Amber immediately before throwing himself at Blaine.

    1. StClair

      I’m going to take the liberty of thinking this was intended as a response to my comment above, particularly because I agree with everything you said. 🙂

  32. Robert Thompson

    I love that Mike doesn’t have any shading

  33. Juanoku

    AND SO THE NEVERENDING AMBER ARC CONTINUES

  34. RassilonTDavros

    So tonight we have a new Shortpacked! strip, an old Shortpacked! strip, and a Dumbing of Age strip where one half of a major Shortpacked! couple tells the other that their relationship is “pretty damn romantic.”

    What year is this

    1. RassilonTDavros

      And now another new Shortpacked!, I don’t know what’s going on but I’m very much along for the ride

      1. Needfuldoer

        Holy crap!

      2. Regalli

        WHAT.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Right?!

  35. Christina

    Mike was always destined for the role of vicious Inner Critic

  36. Josie

    I’m really interested to see if this arc is going to go down a bipolar or other such psychotic episode path or not.

  37. Brighter Side

    I didn’t know I missed Mike this much. Huh.

    1. Spencer

      y’don’t know whatcha got

      till it’s goooooooooooone

  38. zee

    If more amber is the trade off i need to make to get more Mike then fuck it i guess it’s worth it

  39. Andy

    Amber, he’s dead. You can stop letting him win now. Go to therapy and figure out who you are without him in your life and in your head.

    By he, I mean Blaine.

  40. Kestrel

    I ended up doing an archive dive the other day SPECIFICALLY to remind myself of what was happening before Mike’s death, and i realized that- had mike lived- he might not be this biting anymore. Yes, I don’t think he ever would have had a non-sharp-tongue, but I DO think he was intending to be a better friend. To know that the version of him that still lives inside of Amber is the very one he died to leave behind would probably kill him. (again)

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