128

Alphabet
Posted on October 10, 2018 by David M Willis
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128 thoughts on “Alphabet”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    “yeah, LEARNING? not gonna do THAT forever”

  2. Darkoneko

    Narrator : “it wasn’t”

    1. Architex

      I hope that’s Bill Hader’s voice that’s narrating

      1. Fidalgo

        It’s Ron Howard’s

  3. Madock345

    Only the coolest kids get to hang out with the ice

    1. Bathymetheus

      I cee what you did there.

    2. Reltzik

      Chill. They CHILL with ice.

    3. Darkoneko

      as long as it’s not with ICE.

      1. McBogue

        Especially since Marcie’s undocumented.

        1. SpookyFox

          pretty sure it’s just her parents

        2. Crumplepunch

          Hasn’t stopped them so far.

        3. Kinoko

          Depends on whether Marcie was born here or brought here as a child. If the former, she should be a citizen. If the latter, she qualifies under DACA for a path to citizenship. Both allow her to work legally, and she’s been seen in-comic working mall security, so I would guess it’s one of the two.

        4. BBCC

          She was here when she was 5 so definitely was here as a small child.

        5. thejeff

          Even if you’d forgotten the 5 year old flashback, she’s ~12 in this one, which would qualify. OTOH, given current conditions, just registering for DACA has its risks.

        6. BBCC

          Yeeeeeeeep. Heck, these days, even just being born Latina is risky. I mean, there’ve been deportations of born citizens before but I’ve been hearing more about them lately.

      2. Daisy

        yeah I thought that was a little on the nose…
        as long as it’s not foreshadowing :<

        1. thejeff

          What do we know about her parents in the present? Have we heard any mention of them being around?

        2. BBCC

          Just that Robin was the type of person who would deport them.

        3. BBCC

          So, yeah, probably still in the States.

      3. Ana Chronistic

        Is that what’s happening? They’re abolishing ice with that global warming manufactured by China? ?

        1. Annonymouse

          Bought by wall-street and we pay the price.

  4. Golddragon

    existence is an illusion, reality is mostly empty space, humanity is responsible for its own demise. eat arby’s.

    1. Doctor_Who

      Remember, reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, byeeeee!

      1. Lawzlo

        Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so.

        1. Marsh Maryrose

          “Time is round and space is curved.” — Robyn Hitchcock

        2. Keulen

          People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

        3. Bathymetheus

          Space is not so much curved as positively bent.

        4. Kinoko

          Time isn’t made out of lines! It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round.

        5. Regalli

          Time is an illusion that helps things make sense,
          So we’re always living in the present tense.

        6. King Daniel

          Time is an illusion, and so are pants.

      2. WalkerOfSorrow

        “Most people think time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction, but I have seen the face of time and I can tell you they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am and why I say this; sit down and I will tell you a tale like none that you have ever heard!”

        — Prince of Persia

    2. foamy

      Pants are an illusion.

  5. jeffepp

    What’s wrong with Arby’s?

    1. Doctor_Who

      Everything but the sauce in my experience.

      If they just sold packets of the sauce for like a quarter each, they could do away with the rest of the menu. People would stop by after going to other restaurants.

      “Let’s go through the Taco Bell drive through for dinner, but we’d better swing by Arbys, I’ve only got fifty packets of sauce at home.”

      1. Marsh Maryrose

        The potato cakes are superb, if you get them just out of the fryer.

        And most Arby’s in my region still have the Super, even though it’s not on the menu. I don’t know why, but that red ranch sauce just does it for me.

        1. Charles Kuhman

          Haven’t worked at Arby’s for over 40 years, but when introduced, that rich red sauce on the Super was plain old French dressing. Knowing them, I would be surprised if it was any different now.

    2. Dean

      It’s a reference to the “Nihilist Arby’s” Twitter account.

    3. Tacos

      Nothing. It’s just a reference to the Nihilist Arby’s twitter account.

    4. brionl

      The only thing wrong with Arby’s is the closest one is about 40 miles from here.

    5. BarerMender

      I ate at Arby’s once. It was awful. I didn’t try the sauce, though.

      1. Marsh Maryrose

        But how was the existential dread?

        1. SgtWadeyWilson

          Pretty much the same as everywhere else, horrible and crushing, so you might as well eat Arby’s.

        2. Clif

          You haven’t lived until you’ve had existential dread with a Jamaican milkshake.

    6. Woof

      I mean it’s still fast food, so a lot is wrong with Arby’s, but at least the meat isn’t ground and processed into meat pulp and covered in mayonnaise like the McDizzles of the world.

      1. Freemage

        The wisest words I ever learned for dealing with fast food in general were, “Mustard, no mayo”. For some reason, they’ll give you a small dash of mustard, just right to give the cardboard meat a bit of flavor, but if you let them even THINK of reaching for the mayo, the sandwich arrives with the horrible white goo oozing out of every side. Ditto for any other white sauce–ranch-based dressings, sour cream topping at Taco Bell… I don’t get why they need to dump half a bottle on everything.

        And I resent the fact that so many of the ‘special sauces’ are basically ranch or mayo with a bit of flavoring mixed in.

  6. Crusading Barista

    I always get “m” and “t” mixed up.

    1. Bysmerian

      I’m more or less okay on those two (the thumb works inward from “m” to “n” to “t” iirc). The ones I trip up on are “e” and “s”.

      1. Crusading Barista

        “S” and “e” are fairly easy.

        Think “e” as your hand making a scowling face.

        “S” for “so angry, ya wanna punch something.”

  7. Stephen Bierce

    *plays The Jackson Five’s “A-B-C” on the hacked Muzak*

    1. Stephen Bierce

      Today’s strip is sponsored by UNICEF. Won’t YOU help THESE children?

    2. Keulen

      And here I was gonna suggest Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice” for the hacked muzak.

      1. DaveM

        I was going to suggest “Waiting for a sign” by Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow myself, but cold as ice works just as well.

        1. Marsh Maryrose

          “Signs, signs, everywhere there’s signs…”

    3. UniqueSnowflake2

      How about “S&M” by Rihanna?

  8. cbwroses

    Those last two panels really tug at my heartstrings.

  9. Kyrik Michalowski

    I have to wonder if Marcie actually thought that Sal was going to come up with the money needed to get her surgery. Also, once Sal gets sent off to her Catholic boarding school, how is that going to affect Marcie? She’ll be losing basically her only friend, and the only person other than her folks who is likely to go out of their way to learn ASL. My other question is, can Marcie still get that surgery to fix her voice even all these years later or is it too late? If it is too late, maybe that also explains some of Sal’s desperation at the time.

    1. Axel

      Re the first part, I think Marcie knows, she’s been pretty grounded through everything.

      Re Sal leaving, yeah it was probably pretty fucked and also part of why Sal wasn’t supposed to keep getting in fights (so they wouldn’t be separated again- though this seems like something that would have been Sal’s idea, to me)

      Re: the last, I doubt it, because I think Sal would have just gone straight into whatever workforce she thought would make the money fastest, and definitely take any money she had at all (esp if she could touch her college fund) to put toward it (and as such also would probably by motorcycle-less)

    2. BBCC

      Honestly, I don’t think there was ever a surgery. The only indication we have thus far is Charles, and he was saying it as a ‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine’ type thing. The doctors at the hospital were already saying after she was stabilized that there was a chance she’d never talk again.

      1. Regalli

        There’s at least some possibility of surgical treatment for vocal cord paralysis, though there are other treatments that can help and that’s probably not what’s happened here. (The Googling mentions strokes and nerve damage, not probable blunt force trauma.)

        I think there might be experimental treatments to reconstruct vocal cords for people with laryngeal cancer, but they seem to only be options when it’s only part of the vocal cords that was removed during surgery. Picking up the pieces after an accident seems less likely to get good results. And such things all seem to be pretty new – since everything being worked on is so small and precise, it may not have been practical without lasers. So, expensive.

        There is some research from 2015 I found about lab-grown vocal folds to replace lost ones if that’s what was wrong, but they weren’t up to human testing yet. They’re probably not on human testing now, and if so it was being conducted at the University of Madison-Wisconsin.

        Yeah there is no way surgery is a practical solution to this.

        1. BBCC

          That’s about what I figured, yeah, especially if the doctors were already on the ‘possibly permanent’ train just after stabilizing her. It would help more if we knew specifics about what happened.

        2. Regalli

          Yeah, I’m certain if we were going to hear the specific diagnosis we would have already, but at least seeing what actually went down would give us some idea of what might have happened. (We don’t need to hear the doctors to guess how bad Sal’s knife injury was based on what we saw and where it hit, after all.)

        3. BBCC

          We might learn what happened more specifically, but yeah, I think we’d’ve heard a specific diagnosis by now.

    3. Regalli

      Marcie’s face last panel suggests not really. I get the sense every so often that Marcie is pretty much okay with her disability in the present day, but Sal is still harboring all this guilt and beating herself up over it even though Marcie doesn’t want that. (We still haven’t seen what happened to injure her, but I seriously doubt Marcie blames Sal for it as much as Sal blames herself for it. The broken promises about fighting are a way bigger deal.)

      Yeah, Sal moving is gonna suck. Either Marcie is stuck with video calls for conversations with her best friend, or she somehow convinces her parents to move to Tennessee. I doubt Marcie will be pleased with this scenario.

      Brief Google says surgery tends to be within the first three months of speech loss, but is sometimes delayed a year depending on circumstances. But I don’t think that page was focusing on serious injury as the cause, so it might be different in that circumstance. Also I’m betting things would be complicated by a patient as young as Marcie, particularly taking puberty into account.

  10. Marsh Maryrose

    That’s a tarantugun on Marcie’s skateboard, right?

    That explains why Sal has a tarantugun tattoo. But not why Marcie has a tarantugun-decorated skateboard.

    1. All-Purpose Guru

      David told us at the beginning of DoA that Sal’s tattoo was a tarantugun.

      1. Cholma

        Marcie & Sal are obviously fans of “Dexter & Monkey Master” as well! I mean, who *wouldn’t* be a fan of that show? Even aspiring presidential candidates like it!

      2. Marsh Maryrose

        Yep. But he never explained why.

        We know that Ultra Car (as a cartoon series) is canon in the Dumbiverse, as is Dexter & Monkey Master (ditto). We also know that outside of the Dumbiverse, tarantuguns appeared in the video game Ultra Car: Obsticon Onslaught.

        What we don’t know is this: what significance do tarantuguns have in the Dumbiverse? Are they part of D&MM, or part of UC, or part of some as-yet unrevealed comic or cartoon series?

        I don’t think we’ll ever know, because all that we need to know is that tarantuguns visually represent a shared bonding experience between Sal and Marcie. The narrative arc is rarely furthered by revealing the MacGuffin.

        1. BBCC

          We also knew Sal watched the show with Walky, even if she denied knowing what Tarantuguns are to Carla in patreon strips (which, tbh, would make more sense if it had something to do with Marcie – Sal’s never been shy about talking about things she liked before even if it doesn’t gel with the stereotypical biker – she did it with Apples to Apples anyways).

  11. BBCC

    Cute shit here:

    A) The spider on Marcie’s skateboard reminds me of Sal’s tattoo and that is, quite literally, the most adorable thing ever.

    B) They apparently use ‘M’ and ‘S’ to sign each others names. I find that adorable.

    Not cute shit:

    A) Sal, I know you’re trying to be optimistic, but I don’t think calling something very likely to be permanent temporary will help. Or calling the new language she has to use forever ‘easy, right?’ for that matter. I partially blame Charles because THIS IS WHY WE DON’T GIVE KIDS FALSE HOPE.

    B) Marcie’s face in the third panel and Sal’s in the last one. I’ll be over here crying somewhere.

    Stuff that made me laugh

    A) Marcie looking into the camera like she’s on The Office in the last panel.

    B) I laughed really, really bitterly at the fact Marcie’s sitting in front of a box labelled ICE because the alternative was rage-y screaming about that whole monstrosity.

    1. Proxiehunter

      Sal is saying it’s temporary because she’s totally going to get the money for that operation and it will all be fixed soon. There’s no way she could possibly fail. From her point of view.

      1. BBCC

        I think she kind of needs to believe that right now, yeah.

    2. All-Purpose Guru

      Using the first letter of your name with some kind of personalized movement tends to be how one signs one’s name in ASL. For example, I knew a guy named Michael who used M– but dragged the “M” across his upper lip because he had a rather luxurious mustache. My cousins did similar things but I don’t remember the motions they used (it was long ago.)

      1. BBCC

        I knew the personal movement part, but I didn’t know the detail about first initials. Makes sense.

    3. Regalli

      Charles strikes me as That Dude Who Has No Idea How To Communicate With Kids Versus Adults, like that one Tumblr post about the writer’s kids asking their (childless) aunt what that big red lever says and she just directly translates the ‘pull’ part instead of explaining it’s a fire alarm.

      Which is a mostly-funny-apart-from-the-evacuation story when it’s an aunt with a young kid (everyone was fine, but the museum they were at was understandably peeved and said aunt’s not taking them on outings alone any time soon,) but Charles is her dad. Charles had twelve years to figure out how Sal’s brain works, how she’ll take the guilt from the ambulance bill on herself or how maybe giving a twelve year old the blind hope of ‘some surgery to fix it’ without any research or consideration for cost isn’t the best idea. At best, Charles has literally never figured out how to communicate with his daughter and is unaware how badly his missteps affect her (since we know he doesn’t learn as of Family Weekend.) At worst, he just doesn’t care.

      When an autistic person who thinks real time conversation and social expectations and nonverbal cues are hard thinks you’re failing as badly as I think Charles is, you have seriously screwed up. If it really is thoughtless good intentions and not active disregard for how she takes things, do better! You’re hurting your kid! If it’s malice, go fuck yourself.

      (Not really an artful way to put it in, but this whole comment made me think of the Into The Woods finale – ’Careful of what you say, children will listen.’ When the ambiguously dead witch gives you parenting advice you actually seem to need, you have a problem. She wasn’t very good at parenting either.)

      1. BBCC

        This sums up my feelings about Charles.

        1. Regalli

          If it were one thoughtless remark, maybe I could see him being okay. But we have a trend of him not reading Sal’s emotions AT ALL, and the most recent interaction we saw with them together chronologically was by far the worst. (And the hair remark just keeps getting more awful the more we see of his interactions with her or how he knows how long it takes. It was already supremely awful!) He’s gonna need at LEAST a Hank-level arc to try and redeem himself in my eyes, and I don’t really think he’ll be pressed to try.

        2. BBCC

          Do not get me started on his comment on her hair or we will be here all night. Seriously, who the fuck starts off a chat with their estranged daughter they don’t seem to have kept in touch with by saying ‘Hey, kid, I see your hair’s curly again. Too bad, you’re pretty with it straight. Oh, you’re leaving? Why ever for? Ah well, bye kid, see you in another 5 years, maybe.’

    4. JessWitt

      My mind went there too when I saw the ice box. Flipping hell.

    5. Tan

      I’m going to partially disagree on Sal calling learning sign language ‘easy, right?’. Sal is learning sign language for Marcie, so playing down the difficulty can both reassure Marcie that she isn’t being a burdensome friend and help to motivate Marcie in her own efforts. Placing the emphasis that it’s a fun thing they’re doing together rather than a difficult task forced upon them by circumstance. Now it’s certainly possible to go too far with that to the point that it dismisses Marcie’s effort, but I don’t think we’re there from this comment.

      As for calling it temporary… Well. We as readers know it’s not, but Sal still honestly believes it (or more accurately, her dishonesty is toward herself rather than to Marcie). She’s convinced herself it will somehow work out that they’ll get the money for the surgery, the surgery will work, and Marcie will be talking again like ‘normal’.

      1. BBCC

        Oh, I’m definitely not mad at Sal for this one. I’m just saying, Marcie seems to have slightly more realistic ideas here and while Sal definitely means well, Marcie might not appreciate it.

        I’ve been pretty honest about saying I don’t think there was ever a surgery available (pretty sure the 65K is the medical bills – the ambulance by itself was 2K) but Sal’s definitely clinging to that hope spot, which means it’s going to hurt more when the fundraiser fails. This is why we don’t give kids false hope, Charles!

  12. Siyajkak

    Was having them sit in front of a ice box that literally says ICE intentional? Like the whole system of immigration enforcement and anti-immigrant sentiment looming over them?

    1. Phil

      Ah, I see you’ve activated your ReadTooMuchIntoEverything.exe program.

      1. Bathymetheus

        Au contraire. ICE looming behind Marcie is entirely too symbolic to be accidental. Plus, we know Mr. Willis likes to do that kind of stuff.

  13. Derek

    Marcie still has a bandage on her neck from her injury, and yet she’s already learning how to sign? maybe they’re both quick studies?

    1. All-Purpose Guru

      Picking up enough ASL to converse doesn’t take that long. The basics of fingerspelling and the basic “what, where, who, how, when” can easily be learned in a week. Like most languages, it’s the vocabulary that takes a while.

      1. Regalli

        Plus a couple really basic words – I have never retained finger-spelling after quick school rundowns, but I can do ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘thank you’ without trouble, and hello is super easy.

  14. abysswatcher1993

    I don’t know about eating at Arby’s, Willis. There’s mysterious lights floating over there watching us while we pretend to sleep.

    Welcome to Indiana.

    1. carms

      And now, the weather
      *hacked muzak*

      1. Marsh Maryrose

        Death is only the end if you assume that the story is about you.

        1. DaveM

          “To die but not be forgotten, that is Immortality.” – Lao Tzu

        2. Clif

          But not dieing works better. Wonder why no one’s tried it .

        3. abysswatcher1993

          But if you didn’t die you would float in space along with JFK and his wife.

        4. UniqueSnowflake2

          “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” —Woody Allen

        5. abysswatcher1993

          Isn’t Woody Allen a pedophile?

    2. Annika

      Wtnv reference!

      1. abysswatcher1993

        You are a person of culture.

      2. Roborat

        Thought it was, but wasn’t entirely sure.

  15. JessWitt

    I choose to believe Sal got her tattoo to cement her friendship with Marcie.

  16. Bagge

    🙁

  17. Dellaran

    OK, this is going to keep bothering me until I ask… Why can’t Marcie whisper? If the injury is just to her vocal folds, that shouldn’t stop her from whispering. So what happened to her?

    1. BBCC

      We don’t know. Apparently it is possible to fuck up your vocal cords so badly you can’t talk at all though.

      1. Needfuldoer

        It can happen, here’s an AMA on Reddit by someone who was rendered mute after an adulthood accident.

    2. Needfuldoer

      My guess is she took a puncture wound that caused permanent nerve damage. Even if the muscles and cartilage healed to exactly the way they were before, they’re still ‘disconnected’ and won’t work without some kind of neurosurgery. She may not have any control over her larynx at all. It would be like trying to talk while exhaling like you’re fogging up a window.

    3. Agemegos

      Damage to the recurrent laryngeal nerve on each side would completely paralyse her larynx.

  18. BenRG

    “This is just temporary, you know.” – That was the hope that sustained Sal for so long and I think losing that hope broke her on several ways.

  19. figureaddict

    The feel’s!

  20. Mr. Random

    …i’m suddenly wondering if this is the tragic backstory of how Sal paid for her Motorcycle.
    After finally saving enough for the operation, it’s already too late to treat Marcy’s injury due to, scar tissue or something.

  21. Mr D phone posting

    The return of Ghost arms

  22. Kaidah

    We can all see where this is heading, and much as I enjoy Lil’ Sal and Marcie strips (there’s an idea for ya, a Lil’ Walkyverse series), I think I liked the thought of Sal robbing the store out of a misguided cry for attention more than as an altruistic act of desperation to try and help Marcie. It just feels a little too cliche in my head (the badass character really has a heart of gold, etc..). I kind of liked the idea of a character with a bit of a shady, even criminal, background they learned to overcome and was made better for it.

    1. rtmq

      I would argue that “I robbed the store because maybe then they’ll sit up and take notice” is less believable than “I robbed the store out of desperation when no one was willing to help my friend and it’s the only way I know how to help them (because I’m a child)”

      Just because her shady, criminal background has an altruistic motive doesn’t mean that she can’t still have a redemption arc. Learning how better to help people without resorting to violence/crime is a perfectly valid option, to my mind.

      1. Darth Apatheus

        Why not both, you can have a cry for help and be trying to help someone at the same time.

      2. BBCC

        I always figured it was a cycle. “Walkerton parents suck > Sal gets angry > Walkerton’s suck dealing with that > They argue, Sal gets ignored > Sal lashes out > Sal gets in trouble but her parents have to pay attention > Sal tries to be a ‘good daughter’ and please them, they ignore her for Walky > rinse and repeat’ on a large and larger scale until things escalated to the robbery.

    2. Regalli

      I’m betting even if Sal robs the first store for Marcie, Marcie doesn’t want it. Leaves the option that the second robbery is a desperation thing where Marcie isn’t really the priority – or at least not Marcie’s actual desires.

    3. thejeff

      I basically agree, though we’ll see where it goes. There’s probably some unexpected turns left. May wind up winning me over.

    4. BBCC

      Story’s not over yet. We know at bare minimum she didn’t wear a mask to the second one because she wanted to get caught, so I’d bet we’re going to see some grade A fuckery from the Walkerton parents soon.

  23. Mel

    Man, I finally have the see the strip thing a day ahead level pledge but I’ve realised half my fun is the comments. Am.. am I insane now?

    1. BBCC

      One of us! One of us!

  24. meerkatsr

    oh awesome someone else who appreciates niahlist arbies! ^_^

  25. Remmington Steele

    Today’s comic is brought to you by the letters S and M.

    1. Roborat

      And the number 65,000.

    2. Emperor Norton II

      S&M…. Hmmmmmm!

  26. Yake

    Ya know, “Crazy Beautiful Life” by Ke$ha is a hella DOA themesong for the less depressing bits.

  27. Bill Hardy

    I notice that the sign for Sal’s name is an “S” making a stabbing motion to the body. Or am I reading that wrong?

    1. All-Purpose Guru

      It’s either that or an S with a punching movement. Not sure which way the speed lines are going.

  28. Col

    I just now noticed that the spider on Marcie’s skateboard is the same on Sal gets a tattoo of later.

    1. All-Purpose Guru

      It’s a tarantugun. Read up there ^^^

  29. FLUFFYWOLF

    AND NOW THE WEATHER

  30. C.T Phipps

    I GOT IT!

    Sal was contacted by a vision of the Head Alien who offered to pay for Marcie’s surgery if she sacrificed the Tall Black Haired BouTM to the evil god. Sal tried to do it but failed.

    Now, years later, she has a chance to finish the sacrifice by killing the boy who looks like Nightwing!

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