268

Prom queen
Posted on February 2, 2025 by David M Willis

268 thoughts on “Prom queen”

  1. Animedingo

    Its a good deal

    1. Mr D

      (whispered at Jennifer/Billie:)
      That’s a good trade, you should take it!

      1. Dean

        She should play hardball, hold out for the dipping sauce!

        1. Michael Steamweed

          “It’s the ranch too or no deal!”

      2. Needfuldoer

        It’s free real estate.

    2. Alan Lafond

      A good deal for Walky. A severe downgrade for Billie. Trading a cow pattie for 2 McNuggets would still be a severe downgrade.

  2. Doctor_Who

    Normally if I saw a kid at prom hanging out near the punch bowl, I’d assume they plan to spike it.

    Since it’s Wally, I’m guessing he’s just going to add more sugar.

    1. Dara

      lol, accurate

      and it’ll also cover all the alcohol Billie spiked it with beforehand ^_^

      1. RassilonTDavros

        I’m pretty sure adding sugar just makes the alcohol hit even quicker.

        Or maybe it was caffeine? I forget.

        1. Dara

          Oh I said nothing about reducing the alcohol’s effectiveness. I was just talking about the taste.

        2. Dara

          (Also, just to get it out there, it’s caffeine. Hence the Rum and Coke, and most (but not all) other forms of the Highball.)

        3. Ari

          Neither sugar nor caffeine make you absorb alcohol quicker, but carbonation does!

        4. Dara

          You sure? Caffeine sure makes it feel like I’m absorbing it faster.

        5. Ymbrael

          Possibly a byproduct of increased bloodflow? Like, you still absorb it the same speed, but you feel it more cause your heart-rate is higher and distributing it throughout your body more.

    2. Pinkie

      Like Calvin adding more sugar to the chocolate frosted sugar bombs?

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Hobbes can hear his heart racing from over there.

    3. Charles Phipps

      Walky is spiking the punch with pure Mountain Dew syrup.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Or with the honey dipping sauce.

    4. Gnomedeplume

      Spike it with nuggets

    5. Proxiehunter

      He’s planning to add McNuggets.

      1. anon

        honestly i’m surprised he even showed up unless it’s something his parents forced him to go to although other than a ‘real’ suit i half expected him to have one of those ‘t-shirts with a fake tux drawn on’ tho i guess in a 2d comic like this it might be harder to see if it was just htat without a jacket/blazer

    6. Arianod

      It’s obvious that he’s dipping the McNuggets in the punch ?

      1. Charles Phipps

        I literally can’t unthink that now.

  3. DailyBrad

    Yay, Alice. I know it’s a flashback, but from time to time, I wondered if we’d ever see more of her.

    1. Charles Phipps

      Maybe we can vote her next month.

    2. thejeff

      It’d be interesting to see her again in the present.

      Living her best life without the drama hurricane that is Jennifer.

    3. Thag Simmons

      Yeah, she’s definitely on the shortlist of minor characters I’d love to see more of

    4. Lingo

      Obviously the Patreon poll is going to be flooded for votes for our man Chester here. Who? Exactly.

    5. anon

      Basedo n the title of this arc maybe it’ll circle around to her running into billiefer again and them talking

  4. Puppeteer Nessus

    Malaya was right; this is pretty dorky

    1. NGPZ

      on account of limb inflammation which warranted sick leave, when other students were going to prom, I was learning python and doing medical marijuana in the wheelchair

      in retrospect, it seemed like a better use of my time XD

      1. Clif

        Almost certainly.

    2. Needfuldoer

      And yet here’s Jennifer, on top of the world.

  5. Yeet

    oh hey are we addressing the name change more directly

    1. Jeremiah

      What do you mean “More directly”?

      1. Charles Phipps

        Something made Jennifer hate being Billie to the point it’s like her own Green Goblin.

        1. Jeremiah

          I thought it was already pretty clear she view it as who she “used” to be and wanting to distance herself from it. (Or at least pretend to)

      2. Decidedly Orthogonal

        Ms. Billingseorth prefers “Jennifer” these days. I’m not partial to her.

        1. Charles Phipps

          Given she was suicidal and alcoholic before, I can’t help think that she was actually improving.

          It just doesn’t look like that because she dumped Walky and her old friends for social climbing sleaze.

        2. GholaHalleck

          Billie dropping Walky and her old friends for sleaze is a repeated action on her part.

          She’s done it numerous times, Walky was just… Walky about it. I forget which comics he goes into it though, one of the dining hall ones.

        3. Jeremiah

          It doesn’t look like that because of literally everything she does and says. Her ditching her friends for social climbing IS her not improving.

        4. Daibhid C

          It depends what you mean by “improving”.

          Is she a better person now? Lol, no.

          Is she in a better headspace? Well, yes, a bit. Not a good headspace, but a better one.

        5. Jeremiah

          I disagree. Strongly.

        6. Nymph

          There are plenty of new and exciting ways to be self-destructive.

        7. Michael Steamweed

          New friend group; new you; new self-destruction.

        8. Chubseus

          Maybe better, maybe just sideways. How did Ethan put it? Sometimes, when we’re already reduced to cinders, we create a new self to destroy.

        9. Sirksome

          Jennifer is actually improving. Even without her alcoholism Jennifer was incredibly depressed almost all the time. Sure Jennifer isn’t hanging out with the people we like and that has doubled down on her most obnoxious traits, but her worst day now is still better than some of her previous good ones.

        10. Yumi

          She had started to improve before the timeskip. She does seem unpleasant but fairly stable right now, though also in a vulnerable position where she’s becoming more socially isolated.

        11. thejeff

          Part of the problem is that she quit drinking and went to therapy right before the timeskip, so we didn’t get to see much of her in that state. She’s definitely better now than at her worst, but I think her end state last year was the best she’d been. Not drinking, opening up to people, both our main characters and especially Walky, but also even to her new floormates.

          Now her only real social circle is people who we know are only pretending to like her.

        12. Jeremiah

          It’s not that she isn’t “hanging out with people we like” is that she actively shunned the people who might actually care about her for shallow social climbing and pretending that somehow make her mature. It’s not that her traits are “obnoxious” is that she is actively sabotaging her own growth. She is absolutely not better off now that she was before the time skip.

        13. thejeff

          She actively shunned the people who do care about her, especially Walky, for a group that’s only pretending to like her for their own reasons. And she just dropped the one there who seems to actually like her, because he wasn’t feeding her need for drama.

  6. RassilonTDavros

    Oh hey, it’s Alice! We don’t see very much of her, so that’ll be interesting.

    An interesting trainwreck, that is. A real rubber-necker.

    1. Thomas

      Oh hey, it’s Alice!

    2. Proxiehunter

      Pretty sure it’s not going to be a train wreck. It’s going to be a car wreck.

      1. Needfuldoer

        We’ve already seen a slice of it, maybe this will be more of that story.

        https://www.dumbingofage.com/billie/

  7. pickonecard

    oh, more Billie? shame.

  8. Charles Phipps

    I like Alice.

    I’m sorry she doesn’t have a bigger role. I’d like to see her join Raidah’s group.

    1. Sirksome

      I’d love to see more Alice too but I can’t get behind her joining Raidah until I’m sure she actually values her friends beyond their potential connections. Did she actually see Asher as a friend? Or Carl? We know she doesn’t really care about Jennifer. What about those two girls she’s never seen hanging out with anymore?

      1. Charles Phipps

        I just suggest them because Alice hanging around them would be the perfect way to make Jennifer know she’s no longer welcome.

        1. Thag Simmons

          Alice can definitely do better than hanging out with worse Billie though.

        2. Sirksome

          Part of me wants to believe that’s not really what Raidah is like deep down and that the breakup with Jacob probably hurt her and lead her to doubling down on her worst traits. Much like what has happened with Jennifer recently. Raidah seemed to really care about Dana and was even more open and sociable with Sarah before the bad blood. She wasn’t always so callous and calculating with her relationships.

        3. Archieve

          hard to say as we don’t see anything of first year radiah besides brief Sarah flashback but we do know thst she seemed calls and calculating before getting with Jacob and during ( trying to befriend Joyce at the mall just to hurt Sarah, using Jacob’s insecurity about his bothers love for him to get him to focus on her instead of Joyce) so while she was hurt by Jacob’s breakup it wasn’t the cause.

        4. Archieve

          callous*

    2. Thag Simmons

      My long shot hope for Alice has always been that she hooks up with Daisy, because I think the only way Daisy gets a win like that is if the comedy lost from her no longer being perpetually single is less than the comedy/drama gained from Jennifer’s boss hooking up with Jennifer’s ex

      1. Vanessa Pinter

        Great idea, I like it. I’d love to see them both be happy.

    3. Bryy

      Why? The last we saw of Alice, she called Jennifer out on being a shitty person.

      1. pope suburban

        I agree, Alice would have nothing to do with Raidah. The group still at least tolerates Jennifer, and Alice isn’t interested in revisiting that relationship. And Alice seems focused on personal growth, which kind of precludes spending time with an inept social climber and her douchey circle.

      2. Adam Black

        she wasnt exactly being a princess herself. Seemed Hateful snobby, self absorbed drama queen and blamed Billy for her own cowardice and ghosting.

        1. eh, whatever

          Link, please, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.

        2. Needfuldoer

          That sounds like an uncharitable reading of the three-comic scene that starts here:

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/wally/

        3. thejeff

          Link would be here

          It’s a really harsh take at best. Seems like the car crash woke Alice up to the problems and Jennifer didn’t see them. Cutting off an alcoholic for your own safety when they almost got you killed once is not “cowardice”.

        4. Mark

          Can’t argue with any of that. One could call it cowardice, not to circle back to save a fellow human being from herself, but one could also call it a realistic evaluation of the probabilities.

        5. zee

          Also being a literal teenager right out of highschool

        6. clif

          I wonder what an illiteral teenager would be like.

        7. Thag Simmons

          Jared, 19, never fucking learned how to read.

        8. thejeff

          Leaving your alcoholic abusive partner is cowardice.

          In some sense.

        9. Charles Phipps

          Yes, in the sense of requiring bravery.

          And yes, I get that’s what you were saying.

        10. thejeff

          Generally leaving an abusive partner takes more courage than staying

        11. zee

          Damn Adam Black projecting shit that never happened onto a character in the most uncharitable way possible? Crazy, never seen that before /s

        12. Charles Phipps

          That’s like me having a horrible interpretation of Ruth or trying to set up a crack ship!

        13. Thag Simmons

          That’s probably the most uncharitable read you could make of the scene.

          Like yeah, she could have handled it better, but by the end of that interaction she’s holding back tears. I can’t really say I’d have done any better in her position

        14. Vanessa Pinter

          Agree. Aside from the slight she’s giving Walky here (who was always too dorky for a HS cheerleader to ever treat a human being) she seems relatively polite, sober, and self-preserving. Best for her to get on with her life and meet new people, maybe once she’s grown a bit and matured she can learn Walky is fun guy.

    4. anon

      IDK if alice was in the car when the DUI or whatever happened but that’d def add to the ‘heaviness’ if she had gotten like a limp or semi permanent injury from when it happened or so

  9. Jeremiah

    Are we at the airport? Because I see some baggage incoming!

    1. clif

      More like bus station, because nobody is allowed to take flight. Or maybe a train station because the fixed past has the plot on rails. Though I imagine we’ll get to see some exciting new scenery along the way.

  10. Bittersweet

    I refuse to believe anybody actually liked Billie enough to vote her prom queen lol. (I know she got her big head from somewhere but still)

    Idk, all the popular kids at my school were kind and pleasant people to be around. Judging by others stories, I was probably just lucky.

    1. Jeremiah

      Replace “like” with “think she is hot” and you get it.

    2. Charles Phipps

      Billie lives in a pseudo-Nineties where the Mean Girls thing was still a popular trope and it was more important to be pretty as well as rich than kind.

      21 Jump Street had the joke when they go back to high school, all the popular kids are nice and science interested.

    3. Nono

      She was the person you went to when girls needed help; sneaking them into abortion clinics, giving them a cover story against the parents, etc.

      Yeah she was a bit of a bully, but her popularity wasn’t unearned. That plus confidence gets you a long way in high school.

      1. Vanessa Pinter

        True, she probably was loyal and would go out of her way for people.

    4. ian livs

      You were definitely lucky. There were definitely *some* popular kids who were genuinely nice, but most of them… well, they were nice to certain kinds of people.

    5. Yumi

      Yeah, Homecoming Queen my senior year (my school didn’t have prom king & queen) also got the senior superlative for Nicest Girl. She also got into Brown (though she went to a good in-state school instead).

      But like Nono said, Billie did seem to do somethings. Her “Head cheerleader, problem solver” attitude wasn’t from nothing. If I didn’t really know someone, but my friend told me she once helped them out a lot, there’s a decent chance I’d vote for her (depending on the options).

      1. BBCC

        Yeah, she was the one who took down abusive boyfriends, snuck girls into abortion clinics and scouted out parties for roofies. I’d imagine that that gave her a pretty good reputation.

        1. thejeff

          At least among her circle of popular cheerleader friends. She was also a big party girl which helped in other ways.

    6. True Survivor

      Billie didn’t start out all that insufferable, that is more a recent problem exasperated by her break up with Ruth. Last semester she was a drunk, and a bit dismissive of those she considered dorks, but she had yet to become so embittered or ruthless in her pursuit of status and popularity. If I recall correctly, we get clues that in high school she was far better – hanging out with Walky, and as she was already popular, less desperately Machiavellian. Her only real flaw in high school was her alcoholism, which probably only made her seem cooler to her peers at the time.

      1. Yumi

        One time I was in an art class in high school, and these two girls were talking about how they had been drinking into the night and hadn’t fully sobered up yet (it was 1st hour), and this other student was commenting on how responsible it was of them to come to school anyway. I was bewildered.

      2. Rabid Rabbit

        Well, being Ruth-less does seem to have exacerbated some of her tendencies.

        That being said, in high school she used to shove Walky into lockers.

      3. Coatl

        It’s possible that there are more details that we don’t know, and something tells me that the next strip will show a little more of that.

        1. Michael Steamweed

          I’m expecting Billingsworth family issues and pressures.

      4. thejeff

        She didn’t hang out with Walky in high school. Her and her friends bullied him. She did the whole “I don’t know you, nerd” thing.

      5. Needfuldoer

        She became ruthless after Halloween.

    7. DashWallkick

      Billie is very pretty, curvy, and is the “cool friend” who does illegal shit for you. She absolutely would be popular in high school. Which is exactly the issue she’s stuck on.

    8. Regret

      The whole prom and prom queen election thing isn’t a thing here, but from what I understand about social dynamics in school-like environments it is a recognition of dominance, not popularity. Basically, if you can scare or pressure enough people to take your side, you win at school.

      1. Nymph

        Nah, at my school the Prom King and Queen were genuinely lovely people who also happened to be in the running for valedictorian and members of a lot of clubs in school (yearbook club, cheerleading, in band, etc) so they just knew a lot of people and were nice. No bullying or scaring involved lol.

        1. Regret

          Ah, I never said scaring and pressuring were the only option, I said if you can scare and pressure enough people you win. It is technically possible for someone to win without using those techniques, though it does require either absence of bullying (which is unlikely but not impossible in school-like environments, since people are not robots and sociology is not physics) or effective protection against existing bullies, which often requires violence.

        2. Nymph

          You said it was “a recognition of dominance, not popularity” which was just not the case at my school personally. As for the rest of your musings on power dynamics all I can say is that teenagers must be terrifying where you’re from. Or you’re pulling the info from overdramatized YA shows. Either way, I’ve seen it happen just by popularity plenty.

        3. Regret

          Popularity is a subtype of dominance.

          Wait, what definitions are you using of popularity and dominance?

          To me dominance is the power to control others and popularity is the reputational wealth that makes others want to do as you please, so obviously popularity is one way to control others.

        4. Yumi

          If popularity is a subtype of dominance (not my stance, but going with it), then what do you mean by “a recognition of dominance, not popularity”?

          Real weird conversation.

        5. Nymph

          Yeah, I think they got disagreed with and didn’t know how to handle it so they started with the “Nu-uh YOU’RE wrong.”

        6. Yumi

          Some schools are like that, but many aren’t. The “technically possible” suggests that it’s a way that the very occasional person manages against the odds, instead of just the default for a lot of schools.

    9. Kyulen

      The “popular” kids in my high school were almost all athletes and cheerleaders, though some of them were involved in other school activities too. I assume the popular kids were nice to other popular kids, but they weren’t so nice to those who weren’t popular for whatever reason. I was a nerdy kid who wasn’t good at sports, and (though I didn’t know it at the time) autistic as well, so I was definitely not one of the popular kids.

      Usually the candidates for prom king and queen at my high school were a bunch of popular kids and one boy and girl from the school band and/or choir. I was in the band, and most of my high school years the band and choir kids won the vote for prom king and queen because we voted as a group for our boy and girl, while the popular kids were split between voting for several popular kids.

      1. Needfuldoer

        That’s just preparing you for real-world politics.

        1. Kyulen

          High school prom king and queen elections didn’t prepare me for how terrible real-world politics is.

        2. NGPZ

          In any case, remember the important lesson our brotha MLK reminded us when he was in Birmingham Jail:

          That we have a moral obligation to break the rules when following them does not lead to justice. ✊?

        3. Vanessa Pinter

          Good reminder. Look back a few centuries and our fellow Americans persevered through some truly awful laws and governance.

    10. Nobby Nobbs

      I didn’t even recognize any of the names on my prom court ballot. Maybe she was just the person the most people knew?

    11. anon

      wouldn’t be surprised if the vote was rigged but i also would half expect walky to win prom king as like a troll move/vote lol

  11. Newlland(Henryvolt)

    Walky, had no date and no interest to be there. But probably went only because he knew she was going to win and since it meant a lot to her he went to give moral support.

    1. Jeremiah

      And for the sash. Never forget the sash.

      1. Charles Phipps

        He’s unwittingly there to chaperone an already alcoholic Jennifer.

        1. Jeremiah

          And the sash! Why don’t nobody respect the sash?!

        2. Clif

          It’s Walky, to coin a phrase. There was free food. The sash was a target of oportunity.

        3. Michael Steamweed

          Don’t worry, Jeremiah. I got you. We both know the Truth: it’s all about the sash.

        4. Jeremiah

          Finally someone who understands!

        5. Lingo

          Free food, and yet he brought his own McNuggets. (I’m assuming McDonald’s didn’t cater this prom.)

        6. anon

          lol i never went to any proms but i can’t imagine the catering being too good given the standards of school cafeterias but depending on the school i can imagine sometimes these events going all out.

        7. Lingo

          Well for one thing, if the McNuggets are free then Walky doesn’t have any negotiating power here 😉

    2. zee

      His mom probably wouldn’t have let him skip tbh

  12. Cattleprod

    Time to play which unknown character is Chester. Old guy has dialogue, but he might never appear again and one of the people in the background of panel one might do stuff later.

    1. HueSatLight

      there was a character model on tumblr, iirc. Not the old guy.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Found the Tumblr post. Chester is indeed the guy in the white suit behind Alice.

        https://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/755556040453554176

    2. RassilonTDavros

      I believe Chester is the guy above Alice, with the freckles. If nothing else I remember Willis posting this guy’s character model with a name on The Bad Place last summer, and not any of the other new characters seen here.

      Old guy kinda reminds me of how Hank looked in some of his final Walkyverse appearances, though the shape of the nose is different. Wouldn’t it be wild if he turned out to be, like, Joyce’s grandfather or something?

      1. Clif

        Why does Chester deserve a name and the rest of the unnamed characters don’t. Obvious conclusion is that we will be seeing Chester again.

        1. Michael Steamweed

          Chester might have been in the same car with Billie and Alice. ABC, right? Alice, Billie, Chester, and the tree.

        2. Needfuldoer

          ABC

          Always
          Be
          Crashing

          Wait… no.

          He probably plays some role in this flashback/interstitial vignette. There’s also a prom night flashback character model for Asher, so he’s probably going to appear too.

        3. DashWallkick

          Tomorrow in fact, thanks to the patreon preview.

      2. Poskie

        Considering Joyce’s grandfather has Alzheimer’s and only sort of remembers who she is, he either took an incredible fast downward turn or he’s comedically regressed into reliving his high school days. I know which one I’m hoping becomes a spinoff comic!

  13. Sirksome

    Yay! A Jennifer storyline! I hope she isn’t destroyed emotionally.

    1. Thag Simmons

      Unfortunately I think this is that sort of flashback. She’s got a rapidly approaching date with a chestnut tree

    2. thejeff

      We know how this flashback ends, so I wouldn’t count on that.

      1. Clif

        Two weeks of flashbacks which end up with her waking up next to Ruth seems a long shot. The timing seems wrong.

    3. Lingo

      I see what you did there.

  14. NGPZ

    it ain’t the trainwreck we were expecting to see first, but hey I’ll take it XD

    1. BBCC

      She said her DUI was at a party at the end of senior year. I expect it was either a prom after party or a party shortly after, as it’s my understanding prom in the US is around the end of the year.

      1. thejeff

        I thought we knew it was prom, but I’m not sure where I got that from. Could have just been an assumption.

    2. Michael Steamweed

      Not a train wreck, but a car wreck.

  15. Suet

    Chester? I barely know ‘er! Oh snap I actually don’t know Chester

    A Miley Cyrus track? …Lemme write my name in the sand rq.

  16. Charles Phipps

    So what are the odds someone dumps pigs blood and Billie slaughters everyone with telekinesis?

    1. Thag Simmons

      I mean Billie would have been the one dumping the pigs blood on someone else, let’s be real

    2. Zero

      Low, but not zero.

      1. Clif

        Zero. Walky is still more or less alive.

        1. thejeff

          So’s Alice.

  17. HueSatLight

    A few too many strips in the last chapter, or else Willis could have pulled a Dumbing Day prank.

    1. Lingo

      Right? We were so close!

  18. Speedball

    Peaked in high school, did we?

  19. Doopyboop

    As an ‘ugly nerd girl’, prom wasn’t something I was really interested in nor attached to. But, I have to admit that a couple of my friends did do a fabulous job helping me with my hair and make up. And even though I didn’t have a date, a guy who I’d had a longtime crush on throughout high school gave me a dance. He was gay so, clearly I wasn’t his type, but I still think fondly of that dance and appreciate that he gave it to me. It’s sad to see how happy Billie is here, knowing what is likely to happen to cap off the night…

  20. BBCC

    Enjoy it, honey, your life’s gonna change rapidly pretty soon.

    1. BBCC

      And once again swapping out to avoid Julia Grey.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Awww! What’s wrong with Julia Grey? She’s such a totally cool original character who’s not some Mary-sue type! 😀

  21. Amelie Wikström

    I just realized my school might not have been normal in that we didn’t have any kings and queens. There was a vote to elect the student council . but it was seen as a job only nerds wanted. All I know about Jennifer’s life I learned from Carrrie.

    1. Zero

      The prom queen is a different thing. It’s not any kind of actual authority.

      1. anon

        @zero : i vaguely remember seeing posters and voting for like some ‘student council’ thing (some guy even made a badge even tho i doubt he was serious /a ‘dorothy’ type of person) and that seemed more liek ap opularity contest too. actually, outside of like animanga ‘student councils’ (and even then it doesn’t rly touch upon it versus being a setting for romcoms/stories set in high school, i don’t think i’ve ever heard of teh student councils accomplishing anything in the ones i went to, at least our senior high had like a ‘newspaper’ but yeah)

    2. Nymph

      Yeah we had both. Student council had responsibilities and got to make minor decisions about what we fundraised for, Prom (and Homecoming) Kings and Queens were just celebrated for a night and got a picture taken together. Not the same thing at all.

    3. eh, whatever

      Your school simply wasn’t American.

      1. Yumi

        Do you mean that as a joking “not upholding the American Way of high school popularity contests” or as literally thinking a school that doesn’t have these things must not be in America? Because there are definitely high schools in America that don’t do Homecoming/Prom King & Queen.

        1. clif

          Yes, but are they really high schools?

      2. Amelie Wikström

        It’s funny cause my school was in fact nowhere near America.
        (Also how did I get three typos into that little post?)

  22. EtchJetty

    friends of mine and i headcanon walky as an any/all trans woman and comics like this are Very much helping LMAO

    if you wanna be prom queen walky… you can be………..

    1. V

      lmaooooooo same thought at the exact same moment

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Oh shit I didn’t even register that, I must be losing my edge

  23. V

    so you’re saying that walky wanted the prom QUEEN sash??? :thinking: :thinking: :thinking:

    1. Mark

      Other possibilities:

      Billie has been distancing herself from Walky, he feels a bit cut off from his longtime friend, and he just wants to be a part of this moment.

      It’s a comment on fame. “Enjoy your moment all you want, Billie, but in the end it’s worth about two chicken nuggets.”

  24. Jesse

    She could have had two nuggets for the stupid prom coming sash?! This is why her life went downhill.

    1. thejeff

      Did Walky bring his own box of nuggets to prom? Or are they just part of the buffet there?

      Offering part of the free food as a swap makes it even funnier, I think. But he’s got a box and bringing them is funny too.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Unfortunately, I’ve had to chaperone many proms. They don’t usually have boxes like that for food. Walky totally brought those nuggets with him.

  25. Sirksome

    It might be a lot to hope for, but with Jocelyne around, Tony suddenly showing up to hopefully dick down Sarah, and Alice appearing even if just in flashback gives me hope that some new characters are popping into the romance roster. We really need that. If Dorothy and Walky break up again he might end up banging his sister or Danny.

    1. Doopyboop

      I’m… pretty sure Walky would not do that with his sister….

    2. Nymph

      Man, I am hoping that’s a typo and not just a super weird thing you said there.

      1. Sirksome

        It’s not a typo. I’m kinda confused why no one gets the joke considering the comic itself has mentioned this several times. It’s even the title of a book. But sometimes you swing and you miss. I’ll try to do better next time.

        1. Yumi

          I got it… I suppose you might need to mention Danny and Sal breaking up too? Or that’d he might just have to go after Danny since his ex wasn’t an option this time.

        2. Michael Steamweed

          Walky always getting Danny’s exes. But not in this case. So that means Sal and Dan are stuck with each other.

        3. zee

          Oh right, bc the dating pool is so shallow rn. Got it. The friend group is pretty incestuous in the sense of constantly interdating (like that one video about the mane 6 from Friends). I get your point sirk

        4. Doopyboop

          I just personally don’t find incest funny.

        5. thejeff

          Like he said, it’s come up a few times in the strip itself, so it’s not that weird a commenter would mention it.

        6. Doopyboop

          It was brought up with the joke being “you can’t date my ex now that she’s your sister” and not this version in the comment that’s literally “man Walky might just have to fuck his twin sister.” which I think is different.

        7. Taffy

          I’ll fuck your dad if you’re not gonna.

        8. Doopyboop

          He’s a widower so I don’t think he’ll be interested unless you get my mom’s ghost involved.

        9. Doopyboop

          I can make this even weirder honestly, he also has a colostomy bag so if that’s what you’re into I mean…

    3. NGPZ

      RowleyWavingAndLookingDown.gif ??

    4. Taffy

      Honestly, I put better odds on Danny, and not even for the obvious reason.

      1. zee

        Every day walky gets closer to trying dick for the hell of it

        1. Proxiehunter

          Or for a slice of pizza.

  26. IntangibleMatter

    Walky, don’t lowball her.

    Four at least.

    1. Michael Steamweed

      Or (and hear me out on this), three nuggets and a dipping sauce.

      (ranch, not the other stuff. they’re crap.)

  27. Bryy

    *doesn’t know who Alice is, looks up Alice’s first strips*

    Wow. Ok.

  28. Icalasari

    No wonder she has such unrealistic ideas on how reality works

  29. Victor Riley

    I guess we’re going to see that car wreck that’s been alluded to… oooch, this may hurt the feels.

  30. DashWallkick

    yes yes yes Billie suffering story arc, put it in my veins.

    1. Bryy

      This is leading into her car crash. I not sure this is what you exactly want.

      1. Jeremiah

        Did they stutter? Put it in my veins too!

      2. Taffy

        [Banging on a table with a fork and knife] Car crash! Car crash! Car! Crash! ??

      3. Michael Steamweed

        They just want to see a train wreck.

        Er, car wreck.

        1. clif

          But only in slow motion. If it happens in real time it’s too fast to appreciate properly.

  31. HueSatLight

    TIE fighter

  32. M!a

    “…and then I awoke, back at Indiana.

    It’s just not fair! I still have Daddy’s money, big tits and a willingness to put out! Can’t they see I’m still better than they are?”

  33. Carla's #2 Fan

    What’s the name of the prom? I can’t puzzle out the first word.

    1. Proxiehunter

      Looks like Under the Stars.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Agreed. Under the stars.

        1. thejeff

          Judging by the monster and the Tie Fighter, I think Walky helped out with the decorations

        2. Carla's #2 Fan

          Judging by Kit Fisto, so did Billie/Jennifer!

          And thanks folks! I was thinking the rest was “in the stars”, but it starting with “under”makes way more sense

  34. JessWitt

    If this is a Jennifer-centric storyline I wonder if this chapter was originally going to be called “I’m The Problem It’s Me”.

  35. All-Purpose Guru

    The crown is made of paper clips

    1. Michael Steamweed

      It’s an odd crown. My schools all had a more typical looking crown.

  36. Elf grrl

    New character CHESTER just dropped.

    1. Kammon

      Which one is Chester? The Guy on the left? The Guy on the right? ‘Principal Calvin’?

      1. clif

        Apparently the guy on the right.

  37. Shakes

    Queen Fish of Little Pond.

    1. Michael Steamweed

      Yeah, very much a rude shock when the big fishies in the little ponds get to the too-damn-big-oceans of university campuses. All HS status is seen as childish and meaningless, and university status is a whole bunch of very different games.

  38. Veronica

    As someone from a country that does not have prom kings or queens, the idea of a school having an offical popularity concert seems… beyond messed up????

    1. Mark

      It kinda seems that way to some of us who do live in countries that have prom royalty.

    2. Da Boy

      To be fair is it all that different from elections to Student Councils?

      1. Yumi

        Student council elections are also largely popularity contests, but the result is that the winner has some responsibilities to carry out and a (often very) small amount of official power within the school.

        Neither are usually as dramatic as portrayed in media.

        1. Da Boy

          Pretty much. My point is that both are popularity contests and the Prom one has way less meaning so there isn’t really any reason to treat it too seriously. It’s just a bit of fun that has meaning for a single evening.

      2. Michael Steamweed

        Former public school educator here. The prom courts were always student chosen with only faculty guidance. While the student councils were student elected, the candidates had to be responsible for actual work that benefited the school. I had to approve or deny the candidates (based on academic, discipline, and extra-curricular records) before the elections began.

      3. Veronica

        Yeah we don’t have those either.

  39. Kyulen

    I wonder which character is Chester. First time they’ve appeared in DoA according to the tags, and I don’t remember a character with that name in the Walkyverse, though it’s been a long time since I read the comics in that universe.

    1. thejeff

      Assumption would be it’s the only unknown speaking character

      1. Kyulen

        Maybe that guy, but I think Chester could just as likely be one of the guys standing behind Jennifer and Alice in the first panel.

        1. thejeff

          Apparently it is – someone pointed out an old Tumblr preview.

  40. darkoneko

    Did that really happen, tho ? :think:

  41. Rabisch

    As someone who lives in Europe, I admit that I can’t understand why Americans do these prom. In years I think I’ve only once seen the event described as a moment of fun that marks the end of high school and the transition to a more adult life. For the rest, movies, comics and TV shows describe it as a humiliating disaster in many ways or, as in this case, as something that divides people into those who are worthy and those who are not. Maybe the reality is like the only positive example I’ve seen and the rest is just for exaggerating for drama. But if it’s the opposite, maybe it would be time to abolish them.

    1. Mark

      I’d guess that it started out as a fun rite of passage and degenerated into something else, as so many ceremonial traditions do.

      1. Mark

        Also, movies comics and TV depictions of social events are usually entertainment, not documentary, and tend to focus on the exciting and dramatic while ignoring softer emotions.

        Also also, I get the impression that screen writers cluster toward the humiliating-disaster end of the prom population and are writing it out. That would probably be me, if I’d gone on to write prose rather than code.

      2. Mark

        Further guess: it started as something organized and moderated by the adults, to usher young people into adult society and manners. Then the teens took it over and, well, I remember what I was like as a teen,…

    2. Nobby Nobbs

      Honestly? At my school it was just a slightly more formal school dance, and since the appeal of school dances to me was always to wear a dress that was fancier than anything else I owned and see my friends fancied up it was pretty fun. The post-prom party was fantastic though, since it was an attempt by a pretty rich PTA to come up with something more fun than underage drinking and driving so they spring for a bounce house, burrito bar, and blackjack for raffle tickets.

      I bet prom sucks absolute ass at high schools that do the whole Breakfast Club/Mean Girls clique thing, but I’ve never been able to work out how widespread that is. Didn’t see hide nor hair of it in my school, but there may have just been too many people. It’s probably worse in small towns.

      1. Yumi

        At my high school, there was apparently a “popular group” that called themselves The Great Eight, and I didn’t hear about this until a couple years into college when I was talking to someone who was in the same grade at the school as me. It was, like yours, a big school, and there are so many groups with their own dynamics that you’re just not aware of a lot of them.

    3. Tan

      It is ultimately just a fancy-dress dance with one’s high school peers. Any meaning beyond that is purely what the individuals put into it. If it involves bullying and cliques and such, it is only as an extension of the existing social dynamics that would be there whether prom existed or not.

    4. Bittersweet

      I had fun at prom. It’s an excuse to get dressed up and dance in public. It’s only not fun if you take it too seriously. My prom was masquerade themed, I made my own mask and went as the Red Death.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        *approval in english-major intensifies

    5. zee

      As an non American who’s school did prom: they’re fun. Prom and your wedding are the only two maybe reliable events in your life where you’ll get to dress up super fancy with all of your friends. In my case, one I just love fancy gowns and feeling pretty. Two, typically in my county once you graduate grade 11 you come back for grades 12 and 13, similar to the British O level/A level system. But my schools “A level” program was way more intense than I could handle, so I was leaving for good to study the much easier regional program. My date was a friend who was moving back to Spain in a couple of months, my besties date was another best friend of ours who moved to Florida the year before but flew out to go to prom with us. It was a last hurrah for us bc we’d be scattered all over come September. I still keep those photos pinned above my bed

      1. Yumi

        That sounds nice.
        I think sometimes people put too much pressure on prom to be some phenomenal thing, but for a lot of us, I think it’s just a nice time. Your friendships, which for a lot of teenagers are these incredibly important relationships they’ve built, are going to change after high school, and approaching prom as a special celebration to have as you approach that ending can give it a lot of meaning.
        Also, excuses to be fancy are kind of fun. I used to throw parties at the start of winter break for my close friends, and the dress code was “pointlessly fancy,” which often meant it was another chance to wear an outfit you bought for a special occasion and then weren’t sure you’d ever wear again.

    6. Zamperla

      Well y’see adults go ‘aw i had a prom : )’ and trying to put a stop to it would raise a huge ruckus because We Have One Every Year And It’s Traditional. And the kids who arent into it usually just don’t go. So. It’ll probably still be going on for the next century.

  42. Peep

    I zoom-enhanced on the car crash panel of this strip https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/billie/

    And the strap of Alice’s outfit there sure looks the same as her dress here ? If we get a better look at Billie’s hair and she’s got a little ruffle in it….

    1. Peep

      On second look, I guess it could also just be their cheer uniform, though. It’s got the same thin striping on either side of the sleeve.

      1. zee

        Pretty sure the crash happened on prom night so yeah

        1. Peep

          Was that confirmed somewhere? Alice just says Jennifer got blitzed and crashed a car, nothing about prom night, but admittedly I can’t be bothered to go through every strip featuring Jennifer or Walky to see if either of them ever gave more to the story.

  43. Da Boy

    Memory or an Alcohol-induced nightmare?

  44. Hof1991

    I hope Alice is living a nice quiet life. With Mandy, Sierra and the polycule.

  45. Michael Steamweed

    Clearly this is Walky’s flashback. He’s bitter that Billie didn’t take the deal.

    1. Tan

      This was actually Nightguy’s original origin story as a villain. It lasted for about a week and a half before Walky forgot about it, later reviving Nightguy with a largely glossed over heel-face turn

      1. Steamweed

        So Walk, er, Nightguy’s had like 3 or 4 origin stories. Walky keeps forgetting the canon and comes up with new crap.

        Why blame such ambiguity on having multiple writers, when you can just blame in on the character? Genius!

  46. Amós Batista

    Low profile Walky. Gladly he’s in a better place than her.

  47. nightpool

    Really through me for a head trip considering i just happened to reread this set of strips last night, I was frantically going between today’s strip and yesterday’s trying to figure out where the “last strip” I had remembered seeing before this one was. Ultimately convinced myself I was in some sort of groundhog’s day loop where you were posting a new strip every hour and deleting the old ones or something

  48. Charles Phipps

    It’s so sad to see Jennifer using that awful name imposed on her.

    I’m glad she’s abandoned its abuse and society telling her she has to go by it.

    1. Jeremiah

      Lol.

      1. Charles Phipps

        Religious scholars of the Book of Eaton assume that Jennifer giving up Billie as a name was a sign of how she had undergone a religious experience on the Road to Indianapolis.

        When, in fact, Jennifer is just the Roman version of Billie.

        1. Jeremiah

          Is this a bit? I am assuming this is a bit.

        2. Charles Phipps

          Joyce, Becky, and Willis would probably get it.

          But yes, it’s making a big deal out of Billie versus Jennifer as a name.

          Religiously so.

          Also, Shortpacked reference!

        3. Jeremiah

          Honestly I could has mistaken the first comment for a serious one.

  49. Proto

    Frankly, Amazi-Girl is a more believable premise than Walky going to prom.

    1. Charles Phipps

      His mom made him.

  50. wakeangel2001

    “prom queen” is the shorter way of saying “the girl who peaked in high school”

  51. HueSatLight

    No queens no kings no masters!
    Prom autonomous collective!

    1. Mark

      We will no’ be fooled again!

  52. Azu

    love clicking a character tag and finding that it’s a person that hasn’t appeared in so long that the art style changed noticeably, which I imagine is not dissimilar to Willis’s recent sentiment about buffer length

  53. Zamperla

    Yeah i can see how this kind of moment would sorta. Ruin your brain for a while when The Events and then College happened.

    1. Skewbrow

      Quite. When the community thinks (too) highly of a person that can get to a teenage brain. Sometimes happens to jocks, too. If the whole town is behind you, a loss of perspective may happen. This a part (but only a part) of Backman’s nice piece of fiction about a small town in Sweden, sold on their hockey team. https://www.goodreads.com/series/214081-beartown

  54. Steelbright

    OMG Jennifer trauma flashback let’s goooo

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