248

Asma
Posted on July 20, 2025 by David M Willis

248 thoughts on “Asma”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Asma: FINALLY a strip all to myself

    and yet

    =_=

    1. Longshot97

      Jokes aside, it is genuinely incredible how much emotion is conveyed like this.

      1. Taigan

        Yes, but Iā€™m having trouble parsing what those emotions are exactly. ?

        1. Mano308gts

          From left to right:

          Anger.

          Everything seems perfectly normal- too perfectly normal, like everything done has changed or impacted precisely nothing. (In a bad way)

          Beginnings of grief over how ineffective the protest was, how quickly the systems change to shut it down and drown it out.

          Racing grief over the incapacity to generate any positive impact via healthy channels.

        2. Steamweed

          Yeah, I think this is an accurate read.

        3. brumagem

          I’m also reading a non-zero amount of “Oh cheese, what if this had no positive impact on the world at all AND ALSO I get fired? or kicked out of college??”

        4. Kelibath

          I more picked up traumatised worry over “should I stay in this role and keep taking their tainted money?”

        5. Badger

          And of course nowadays, there are other comes even far FAR worse than those. šŸ™‚

        6. Wack'd

          my guess is: bad

        7. Leorale

          I read it as, it hits her that all of this was bonkers and the world is broken — not just in pretend Bulmerian politics, but even moreso in the cops tear-gassing her and other students — while she has to act like everything is normal.

        8. Heatth

          It is how I read to. Specially because she has to work for the very same entity she was protesting against 2 minutes ago.

        9. Steampunkette

          Add on: As a member of a visible minority, likely associated with the conflict, she’s likely to be targeted over the event. Moreso if she was the only person wearing hijab present.

          And we didn’t see anyone else wearing hijab.

          She very likely, very reasonably, fears retaliation, arrest, expulsion, and even Trumped up charges of terrorism.

        10. Arianod

          Trumped up with a capital T.

        11. Steampunkette

          You noticed! <3

        12. Steamweed

          I think that ‘t-word’ is going to show a usage shift in the next few years. Decreasing usage of one meaning; increasing usage of another.

        13. CrimsonStorm

          Yeah I get a twinge of discomfort whenever I play a card game with a trump suit nowadays…

        14. Taffy

          At least with cards, you can swap in “trap” and have a Yu-Gi-Oh! connotation that still makes sense. Other uses can fend for themselves, I suppose.

        15. NGPZ

          dude it already has,

          republicans have worked over the past 20 years such to make it so that “terrorist” is shorthand for “Muslim”,

          or to speak with a sharper, more accurate edge,

          any non-white person who they think is gonna blow up a plane ?

        16. Proxiehunter

          NGPZ Wrong T word. They mean the name of the great orange buffoon.

        17. NGPZ

          I see

          hardly the only time in history that’s ever happened to a word,

          “tyrant” was once a Greek word just meaning “ruler”, with obvious historical context giving it it’s meaning we know today

          and yes, “Trump” will indeed be ingrained as a horrific icon for years to come, much like the toothbrush mustache it will likely remain a symbol beyond redemption, at least for our foreseeable lifetimes.

        18. thejeff

          I still say we need to revive the old British slang use of Trump.

          As in a loud fart.

        19. Decidedly Orthogonal

          > any non-white person who they think is gonna blow up a plane ?

          “not human.”

          FTFY. You got the idea, but let’s not pretend they actually care about having an excuse to justify their hate.

        20. Thag Simmons

          She definitely wasn’t

        21. Mr D

          Let’s not forget, she has to work for the people who ordered the gassing of the protest.

        22. Mr D

          E:F,B.

        23. Laura

          Translation?

        24. Proxiehunter

          Google suggests Electronic Flight Bag but that doesn’t make any sense. I wish people would recognize that not everyone speaks acronym.

        25. Kyulen

          I’m also not sure what that acronym means.

        26. Rectilinear Propagation

          At first I thought they were correcting a misspelling but that doesn’t work either. I think maybe that reply was unintentional.

        27. Clif

          Options E, F and B in that order.

        28. Ana Chronistic

          “edit: fuck, beaten” (to the comment)

        29. HueSatLight

          I think it’s the opposite. She faces peril for speaking up, but it’s always hanging over her that the people she’s trying to help are facing much worse, and there’s little she can do.

          And because this thread went on a scapegoat direction, anti-genocide protesters face bipartisan danger.

        30. Kyulen

          I feel like any time DoA strips get into political topics these days, a lot of the commenters here assume it must be about something the current president is doing, even though this story arc was made last year under the previous president. And protesters against the evil things the US government does have been opposed by the political leaders of both major parties in this country for a very long time, many decades in fact.

        31. Frelance

          This was supposed to be a bastion of western liberalism, not somewhere to be literally fighting gun battles against government oppression.

        32. SaK

          Indiana University? Indiana? University. A bastion of Western liberalism? Are you sure? A bastion? of Western liberalism? A university in Indiana? A public, state-funded university, that state being Indiana?

        33. morleuca

          According to all the screaming the right does on the subject, all colleges are bastions of liberal thinking.

        34. Taffy

          Well yeah, they have to tear down any place where someone might learn something that’s not a misquoted Bible verse or government propaganda, otherwise the masses might not be 100% ignorant, violent yokels.

        35. someone

          Well I bet that university is still teaching heathen anti-American notions like “the world isn’t flat (it’s technically an oblate spheroid)” or “humans are eukaryotes” or even “there are languages other than English and you can learn them”.

        36. Clif

          Well you had me till you got to the last one, but that’s a step too far.

        37. Clif

          I mean personally I’m still working on English.

        38. J

          you haven’t been to Bloomington, have you?

        39. JWK

          Really?

    2. FlamestAndLight

      hi Ana, hadn’t seen you in a while (you were probably just lower in the comments) but it’s good to know you’re alive

      seems a bit silly to worry about someone on the internet who doesn’t even know me but I was *shrug*

    3. Yet_One_More_Idiot

      She ran all the way back to avoid any of the cops catching her. Police brutality is something we didn’t need any more of in those strips.

      So glad she didn’t suffer an….

      ASMA ATTACK

      ….excuse me, I’ll kick myself out now.

  2. Sirksome

    She was front desk lady this whole time?!

    1. RassilonTDavros

      She’s been tagged this whole time!

    2. SarahTerra

      Jennifer hasn’t yet 100% ruled her out as being Amazi-Girl. She’s never seen them at the same protest together.

      1. cain

        AG doesn’t wear hijab. This doesn’t dissuade Jennifer’s theories. Asma’s hijab could be her Clark Kent glasses!

        1. Taffy

          Being taller and browner, though?

        2. someone

          Makeup and high heels.

        3. Taffy

          I guess if she wanted to be a racist, she could do that.

        4. Yeet

          when joyce said amazi-girl is white re:jennifer thinking she was sal, jennifer dismissed it as unthinking prejudice
          reasonable instinct on her part I guess

        5. Thag Simmons

          She already suspects that Amazi-Girl is Sal, who is taller and darker.

        6. Banana Slamma

          Honestly, a better disguise than just glasses and being clumsy.

  3. NGPZ

    back to the grind I guess

    and Walky’s funny phallus-shaped packages

  4. Wack'd

    she takes them here, she takes them there, she takes those pliers everywhere

    1. Opus the Poet

      Those are bolt cutters, not pliers.

      1. SarahTerra

        You’re 100% right of course, but I just had to use limb loppers to unscrew a spare tire, so they can SOMETIMES be pliers.

      2. CallynD

        Those are side cut pliers for modeling, scaled up to the size of bolt cutters. Those blades would never cut chain.

        1. jubs

          Yeah, this kinda annoyed me as well. Those are very clearly some form of precision side cutters (not just modeling fwiw, those are also used in electronics etc., anything that needs accurate flush cuts) scaled up, nothing like actual bolt cutters. The jaws are way too flimsy, and they’re lacking the kind of hinge mechanism a bolt cutter of that size would (or should, if it’s not crap) have.

        2. CallynD

          Fair, I’ve used mine for electronics as well but the artist has a page on the Transformers wiki and I’ve never heard of him doing anything more maker-y. I bet Willis has precision cutters to work on Gunpla and Transformers kits, not cutting wires and the like. Also, he fixed them to be bolt cutters now.

        3. Clif

          I just assumed they were made out of unobtainium composite alloys..

      3. Needfuldoer

        Those aren’t bolt cutters. Bolt cutters have a hinged part near the jaws to multiply your biting force through leverage.

        These are bolt cutters:
        https://www.harborfreight.com/24-in-bolt-cutters-60699.html

        That’s a giant pair of flush cutters, which are small and used for snipping zip ties and component leads after you solder them.

        1. Pergola

          Thanks for the link. I’ve never been to a protest where bolt cutters would have been useful, but these look reasonably priced.

        2. bhtooefr

          There are various bolt cutter designs with folding handles, too, which one could put in a backpack so you’re not obviously carrying two foot long bolt cutters. (Also, Harbor Freight’s Pittsburgh-branded tools are… definitely not well-made for hard use.)

        3. Needfuldoer

          Okay now they’re bolt cutters.

      4. J

        I don’t understand the implication of her having bolt cutters? (or things that are clearly *supposed* to be bolt cutters)

        1. Taffy

          The implication is that she’d use them to cut bolts or other metal stuff, like anyone else who had them. Stuff like fences.

    2. Ray Radlein

      Is she in heaven? Is she in hell?

  5. Gin

    Ya got time to scream ya got time to clean.
    Back to work!

    1. C.T Phipps

      “You’ve never vacuumed your room?”

      1. Wack'd

        kuleshov effect suggests she’s upset about the genocide and the day’s events but really she’s just thinking about the state of walky’s floor

        1. C.T Phipps

          “Why do I feel like the destruction of my relatives culture was just the backdrop to a lesbian coming of age?”

        2. Ben

          Sucks to be Joe…. in his position I’d feel I’d been played by someone who needed to grow up quite a lot.

        3. Buck Ripsnort

          Umm, right– JOE, who wasn’t even AT the protest as far as we know, should be the real focus here.

        4. Astariel

          Of course! Everything that happened today was all about Joe, at least according to a large part of the comments section.

  6. C.T Phipps

    Possible Asma thoughts:

    * Oh wow, that Amber girl is going to be facing a lot of prison time.

    * Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown those protestors to the ground to help my escape.

    * I am so fired.

    * So I believe my bosses are abetting genocide and still have to go to work today.

    1. mindbleach

      “Decino was right. You can just leave.”

      1. C.T Phipps

        “Was it really the right time to make out during the beating of innocents by the police?”

        1. Laura

          “A kiss behind the barricades”…

          https://www.davidrovics.com/songbook/behind-the-barricades-2/

        2. Laura

          (*Played on the hacked Jumbotron Kiss-Cam*)

    2. RassilonTDavros

      She could very well have family in Bulmeria.

      1. NGPZ

        I do, and I worry sick about their safety every day and try so fucking hard not to spiral T-T

        1. Laura

          ?ā¤ļøā€????????

          Here’s some relaxation music for stress:

          https://insig.ht/1lSitZ8oaVb

        2. Laura

          In case that link doesn’t work:

          https://m.youtube.com/healingvibrationsmedia

    3. Laura

      “…You know, I was standing right there when that masked weirdo in a cape tackled that cop, ostensibly intending to try to protect *me*. And I was probably the most recognizable person at that protest. Not too many other folks dressed like me there. And I am kind of the public face of the college administration, to the dorm residents and visitors here.
      …I wonder how long it’ll take for the cops or the administration… or both… to ‘take me in for questioning’, over that incident.”

      1. Alongcameaspider

        This brings up a point I haven’t seen talked about very much

        It’s likely Amazigirl did a ton of harm to the movement with her actions. Yes they were to help character we know and love, but at the same time she’s essentially handed the authorities what they need to justify increased crackdowns on protests like this to the public

        After all now they can say the protests got violent and point directly to Amazigirls actions as proof of that (while conveniently not mentioning that the cops escalated first because the media will always take the most pro-cop stance available)

        1. Silphael

          The authorities don’t need anything to justify increased crackdowns.

          Also, if anything, Amazi Girl’s outfit is *very* recognizable and shows that it was one single person which wasn’t even there earlier.

        2. thejeff

          They don’t need anything to justify more crackdowns, but plausible excuses help minimize the public backlash. To the point that provocateurs go out of their way to create such excuses.

        3. alice

          the thing that makes me hesitant is, cops don’t need help justifying themselves, if all else fails they can just make something up. it’s not that cops are master propagandists (although when that’s the case it definitely helps), it’s that police extremely valuable (without police, individual capitalists would each need to raise their own private militias to defend their claim to resources, and that would be such an inefficient way to concentrate wealth!). so unless a cop fucks up the narrative so bad that it’s necessary to sacrifice a couple “bad apples” to appease the masses, the wealth of your nation is implicitly invested in marketing whatever story any cop settles on to defend their choices. when resisting this, the risk of your actions being used as a pretense for escalation is just one variable among many, and often outweighed by necessity. ultimately, responding proportionally to threats is not escalation, while it pays to be mindful of how mass perception of “proportional” and “threat” is distorted to serve the powerful, there’s only so much you can do to defend that truth before you’re stuck having to justify every breath of air you draw on this earth.

          on the other hand… amazi-girl is not exactly navigating this dynamic carefully and thoughtfully. she doesn’t seem to have been coordinating with the organizers of this action, or researching the impact of political violence throughout history and what factors determine its utility in a given situation, and i doubt she’s channeling deep political instincts to make some sort of reasoned tactical decision in the moment, she’s an unrelated person having a mental health crisis in a setting where this will have unpredictable consequences. Amazi-girl saying cops are “just punks with guns” could be a very powerful statement (it’s literally true), but in the context it was said i think it’s clearly meant to read as just a brave but terribly naive one.

          so idk i do agree with your statement but feel like i wanna add a qualifier in response to what i perceive as a broad cultural tendency to take the principle underlying it too far.

        4. Laura

          This. Yes. It’s been a long time since I protested much, but, when I did it, any act of mass organized civil disobedience (like, say, setting up tents to at least imply preparation for long-term occupation of campus land) begins with mass meetings, discussions of strategy, establishment of ground rules (or at least of factions with their own ground rules, such as Radical Pacifists vs. Pink/Silver or Tactical Frivolity vs. “Black Bloc”, if those terms mean anything to anyone anymore) and ā€” often ā€” preparation and logistics planning (e.g., food, water, medical care, legal observers, immigration support…) including means of group communication and role-play for nonviolence training, to help people stay calm and avoid reacting even in the face of extreme provocation. This kind of planning would take place, even with mass demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people.

          Again, I don’t know whether anyone does this now ā€” most of this was pre Web 2.0 / pre-social-media ā€” but that’s how it used to be.

          Anyway, if such things are still done these days, I don’t get the impression that Amazi-Girl attended any of these meetings or discussed her course of action with anyone, given that she had initially intended to patrol “everywhere else,” staying away from the protest.

        5. Proxiehunter

          Well, Radical Pacifists seems self explanatory but the only other one I’m familiar with is the Black Bloc. Gods bless and protect the noble Black Bloc.

        6. Laura

          Pink/Silver and Tactical Frivolity were associated with Samba bands, queer folk, and magick / magic. Long, long ago and far, far away.

        7. Taffy

          This Tactical Frivolity sounds exactly up my alley. Protesting with whimsy, I’m 100% for that.

        8. Laura

          Yeah, if you are interested, this website has the history and some of the music:

          https://www.rhythms-of-resistance.org/about-us/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/

          https://www.rhythms-of-resistance.org/about-us/pink-silver/

          https://www.rhythms-of-resistance.org/diy/decision-making/

          Keep in mind, this did not start in the US, so when they say, “libertarian,” they don’t mean like the US Libertarian party. It’s just another word for liberatory or liberationist.

        9. Taffy

          Amazi-Girl is immune to consequences.

        10. The Queer Agenda [frog memes]

          Pigs lie anyways, even with thousands of witnesses who contradict their bs press release. They attacked first. The only thing different from my experiences is usually they give the warning to disperse half an hour AFTER firing chemical weapons at the crowd. Might as well save who you can.

        11. someone

          This is where you get a clash between super-hero tropes and how the real world works.

        12. Deanatay

          Itā€™s true, even in comics, the divide between ā€œdefender of good and justiceā€ and ā€œdangerous vigilanteā€ is usually painted right around ā€œattacking a police officerā€.

        13. Buck Ripsnort

          The difference between Spider-Man (usually shot at by cops) and say, Batman (works with the police, doing things they physically and legally can’t).

        14. thejeff

          Though plenty of heroes find themselves on the wrong side of the law from time to time. Even Batman, despite his ties to Gordon, is often in conflict with the corrupt Gotham police.

          But yeah, they rarely just attack police officers, preferring to just escape, even when they’re on the run from cops.

        15. Yeet

          in my experience the cops just do violence if they don’t like the theme of a protest and then say things got violent so they need to get violent more often

          they basically leave the ones they like alone though, oddly enough, no matter how many laws get broken

        16. Proxiehunter

          I’m having trouble thinking of a way in which things go better because she allowed innocent people to be beaten with nightsticks.

        17. Laura

          Better nightsticks, tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, pepper spray, flashbang grenades, LRADs, and the rest of it… …than lead bullets.
          For those who wish to live, of course. Sometimes, after experiencing police brutality like that, the choice to live can feel like a toss-up.
          But for those who do prefer (even post-brutality) survival, the so-called “less-lethal” “crowd-control” weapons are still less lethal than straight up live ammunition.

        18. Laura

          I’m not justifying the cops’ actions, of course!
          Nor condemning Amazi-Girl’s.
          Just commenting on how the longer-term risks of having been adjacent to such actions might affect Asma, that’s all. Just weighing all the circumstances.

    4. alice

      where is point 2 coming from? asma did something indistinct with the bolt cutters and the fence, whatever it was clearly assisted in the escape, i don’t see any evidence of her throwing anyone to the ground. was this meant to be purely hypothetical? just seems like an odd suggestion

      1. Bittersweet

        You missed the strip where she physically grabbed mustache man and suplexed him backwards into the cops after tripping Joyce and Dorothy so that they couldnā€™t run off into the sunset? It was pretty wild, she laughed the whole time.

      2. Laura

        It was a joke.

        1. alice

          to be fair, as a person in a comments section it’s my sacred duty to misunderstand jokes.

    5. Silphael

      * Time for sabotage, I guess.

    6. Disastroid

      “How am I going to break this to Walky and Joe?”

  7. Wraithy2773

    Hugs for Asma.

    1. Doctor_Who

      Hugs and a Home Depot giftcard, so she can acquire more tools.

      1. The Queer Agenda [frog memes]

        Hugs, giftcards, some comfort food for sympathy and fuel.

  8. Looney

    asma šŸ™

  9. C.T Phipps

    I’d like some complicated twists about the protest that I’m sure Willis hasn’t already started laying the groundwork for. Like, for instance, I’d love to find out that Raidah was heavily involved in organizing it.

    Not entirely because it would annoy the posters who want her to be pure evil.

    1. Laura

      I want this to have happened too. I bet Raidah was organizing legal support for the protests.

  10. Sirksome

    Asma didnā€™t get to make out with her best friend turned sudden lover! For her this is just a terrible day!

  11. Cholma

    Asma uses her secret telepathic powers to find out if Amazi-Girl was arrested or not.

  12. Animedingo

    I hope she has her inhaler after all that

    1. Laura

      Asma. Take a breath. Go up to your dorm room. Take a shower. Change your clothes. Sitting at the front desk while smelling of tear gas is going to be a ded giveaway that you were at the protest and may have left after things got rough.

      …Just take a minute to wash the gas off your skin. Trust me, you will feel better.

      1. Laura

        Hmm. This dress looks a little bluer and the dress she wore at the protest looked a little grayer. So maybe she did change clothes. And just still had her jacket and the bolt cutters on her, even after changing.

        But yeah, that coat still needs to be washed thoroughly. Best not to wear it with that chemical residue on it. You don’t want that stuff around you long-term.

        1. Needfuldoer

          There’s a color tone shift between indoor and outdoor scenes, because it’s winter.

      2. AmĆ³s Batista

        I wonder of it was the first time things went bad in a protest. I wonder if it’s her first protest.

        1. Laura

          She seemed pretty steely-eyed through it all…

      3. Animedingo

        It was a joke

        Asma

        Inhaler

    2. Olofa

      Asma inhaler? ISWYDT

      1. Animedingo

        I think youre the only one who did

  13. Bryy

    I love this.

  14. Leorale

    Oh no: Asma is the unknown thief who stole Danny’s bike way back in It’s Walky!.
    Willis never misses an opportunity to recontextualize old characters. It was Asma all along.

    1. TrueVCU

      The Circle Closes

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Pretty sure that was in Roomies! actually, but same diff.

      1. Yeet

        it almost happens again in dumbing of age but amazi-girl saves it

    3. Laura

      Not as a thief, but my initial thought was that, as a front desk worker, she might run into college kids saying, “OH, shoot, I locked my bike up and lost my key!” Or, “A student has bolted their dorm room shut and campus staff need to get in to check on them.” Sotheby’s bolt cutter may have completely ordinary and job-related practical use.

      1. Laura

        *”So the bolt cutter…”
        Not likely from Sotheby’s (UNLESS…)

        Darn you, Autocorrect!

  15. AGV/Ruby

    Welp, time to continue as “normal” in spite of The Horrors

    1. Dara

      This one. This one right here. Everybody acts like everything is normal and meanwhile the world burns down.

      1. Mollyscribbles

        Not exactly. I mean, she did participate in an attempt to change things — and being there with a pair of bolt cutters at the right time probably helped a lot of people escape.

        More, “The world is on fire in ways I can’t directly do anything about and I still need to do laundry.”

        1. Dara

          Everybody else around her, to be more specific. Correct: she is out there. Almost everyone else she knows is not, and is pretending none of it is happening and/or doesn’t exist.

          And she still needs to do laundry, of course.

        2. Mollyscribbles

          I guess what I’m saying is more . . . everyone needs to act like things are normal, to one extent or another. Keep going to work because you need to pay for food and shelter and regardless of how much you care about a thousand other causes, being homeless or hungry on top of that won’t help anything. Keep making dinner, doing laundry, buying groceries . . . you can’t make a stand for a cause if you don’t have a stable base to stand on.

    2. Kyulen

      That’s definitely how it’s felt a lot of the time for the past few years. I wish more people were aware of how bad things are and what needs to be done to make a better world.

  16. darkoneko

    -pat pat from afar as best as she wants-

  17. Cattleprod

    Nothing unusual about having bolt cutters at the front desk, mail can be hard to open.

  18. StClair

    She has a whole lot to process.
    Or attempt to.

  19. John Campbell

    You never know when you’ll need a good set of bolt cutters.

    I keep my tools, including my armor repair kit, in the trunk of my car, because if I’m working on stuff at home in the garage, it’s right there, and if I’m not at home and I need a tool for something, it’s still right there. I’m constantly surprising people with the useful things I can pull out on a moment’s notice. Why, yes, I do have compound metal shears and a drawknife handy, why do you ask?

  20. Tessea

    I hope she has a good circle of her own friends that can help keep her spirits up.

  21. Freezer

    That is the face of someone unprepared for how real shit got.

  22. Taffy

    Asma, internally: “Okay, that cop invasion was harrowing, but that kiss was hot like fire.”

    1. Rodrigo

      There are very few bachelors left for her in this comic. Would she date Booster?

      1. Nymph

        Nah, Booster needs to date Amber, it’ll be so twisted. Maybe Walky could be a good fit if Dorothy actually splits up with him. He’s a goofball, Asma is a good serious woman with aspirations (which is mostly his type). They could both teach each other things, and it would be a potential source of conflict for them both. New crackship for me!

        1. Nymph

          Even if I WOULD like to see Walky date a dude next, I would be happy with… Wasma? Asky? Okay the ship name needs word, but the black cat/orange cat vibes would be immaculate.

        2. Nymph

          work* not word.

  23. SarahTerra

    More spoken words in that exchange with the blondes than in the previous twelve years or so, then she gets her own entire strip and says nothing out loud – but says a LOT all of a sudden.

    Still holding out a little for Asma having a superhero utility belt that would make Amazi-Girl seethe with envy.

  24. AmĆ³s Batista

    when adrenaline pass out and you have to reflect in your own acts. I’m sorry you may have to be pushed into this, Asma

  25. Gnoka

    Asma gets to be a character 2k25!!!

  26. Megan

    this arc isnt focusing on asma enough, said the detractors, not realizing that this strip continues every day and doesnt just stop at a certain point that you can get mad at

    1. not someone else

      This arc was already focused entirely on Asma, said the commenter, not having read the artist’s comments where they literally said “yeah, the detractors have a point, I need to focus more on Asma, good thing I have a huge buffer”.

    2. not someone else

      Like Willis literally made the hard decision to listen and understand they- like literally everyone- have perspectives they’re ignorant of and to change things when something rings wrong. It’s not easy to drop your artistic ego and work with other people like that.

      Don’t go revising shit to ruin their good work.

      1. alice

        oh that’s genuinely so encouraging. i’m curious what the move is gonna be, i’m not sure one can really mitigate the structural issues with just representation after the fact, but that’s sorta the nature of a sequential publication like this. i guess that’s the scary thing about committing to a many year long sequentially published story, you’re locked in to whatever problematic decisions you’ve already made and you just have to do the best with what you have. which tbh is a pretty interesting (if uncomfortable for the author) metatextual(?) narrative in itself. (did i use the cool word right?)

        1. TerribleTransit

          The move appears to be finding places in the buffer to either replace strips or insert new ones. That’s the thing about Willis’ buffer, they have complete editorial control over it. Removing unimportant strips to showcase underutilized characters is absolutely allowed (and gets more patreon bonus material in the process), and no one’s probably going to throw a fit if a year-out panel preview doesn’t debut exactly when planned.

    3. Mel

      David said themself on Bluesky that they realized they needed more Asma because originally she was scheduled to next appear a year from now and the comments made them realize that wasn’t the right move. This is an update based on the criticisms

    4. Wack'd

      putting aside the already-addressed fact that this is a late addition (presumptively the first of many), as addressed

      i do think there’s a fine line between reasonable criticism and what might be termed a “paranoid reading”. it’s unambiguously true that many people these days react to serialized media as though the most recent installment is the final word on whatever opinions the work might be trying to express. but that’s. not really what happened here, i do not think.

      dumbing of age has run for fifteen years. in that time, raidah has accumulated about two and a half month’s worth of material. asma, nash, and sayid combined have accumulated a hair over two months. that’s all the rep there is for characters we can safely assume have southwest asian or north african (or “middle eastern”) heritage.

      i think it is entirely fair going into a plotline nakedly emulating pro-palestinian protests to be skeptical that the sort of characters you’d want to see there would be meaningfully involved. that’s not paranoia, that’s using past experience to predict future results. i myself was hopeful going in that this protest might illuminate asma’s character, only to become increasingly dismayed as we got strip after strip focusing solely on white characters, using the background of a genocide to resolve their entirely unrelated romantic drama.

      you’re right that the strip doesn’t stop at the point you get mad. but it doesn’t stop at the point you get vindicated, either. what if asma’s not in the rest of the arc? what if the strip had proceeded as planned and asma doesn’t come back again for an entire year? the strip continues, and the anger continues to be justified. it goes both ways!

      1. ESM

        You could also criticize that Asma is only getting screen time because this is an Official Muslim Story For Muslims, and I’m sure whatever a old white guy writes about the experiences of being a Muslim woman in the modern day will have plenty of stuff people will criticize (Hopefully he spent more time researching that then his did researching what bolt cutters look like!). And those criticisms will likely be fair! To some extent there’s no winning when you’re a cartoonist making a daily rom-com webcomic with bouts of superheroism that’s also expected to offer cogent political analysis in real-time despite the comic being written nearly a year in advance. There’s really nothing Willis can do that won’t get both serious thoughtful criticism and bad-faith attacks in equal measure.

        But them is, as they say, the breaks. No one forced Willis to introduce Israel Bulmeria and Palestine conspicuously unnamed victims into the comic, and one one forced him to use it as the backdrop for a major bomb thrown into the white atheist romcom storylines where one of the characters is incidentally Jewish. I think readers should be willing to give ol’ Willis a bit of a break when he’s spinning so many plates and I also think Willis should be (and is, to be clear, I’m not mad at him) ready to get a lot of…passionate…feedback when introducing extremely charged political events into a comic where the serious political stuff and the wacky superhero stuff have never fully reconciled tonally.

        1. not someone else

          *looks up pictures of bolt cutters, squints*

          …Oh. Are they called that because they have bolts on ’em?”

        2. Proxiehunter

          No, they’re called that because they’re for cutting bolts of lightning to the propper size.

        3. C.T Phipps

          I don’t see any real difference between Asma getting the “Muslim” story than Leslie and Becky getting the lesbian story. They get the story because it’s relavent too them.

        4. NGPZ

          100% to all of this ??????

          Speaking as someone whose personally affected by the conflict going on in and has family in “”Bulmeria””, I DEFINITELY expect Willis to improve on how he covers serious topics like this in comic (basically same way I personally want autism mommies and autism speaks and RFK hatespeech and shit autistic folk gotta put up with also talked about in comic),

          but at the same time, in the moment I really aint gonna judge him that bad for this error because,

          1. the storyline aint even totally over yet

          2. given like ESM says, he expected to offer cogent political analysis in real-time, the year long buffer, sliding timescale, romcom antics and other factors, to consider in the format of a daily webcomic, as an author Willis does NOT find himself in an enviable position ?

        5. NGPZ

          like, what’s even a “slice of life” webcomic when LIFE is an actual tumultuous historical period?

          what if a “slice of life” webcomic or close analogue existed during the likes of say, China’s Great Leap Forward, had there been technology and audience at the time which could actually made this possible? do you not think the author would run into the same basic kinds of obstacles, in a world where there really is no going back to “normal”? @-@

        6. Yak

          An author during the Great Leap foreward would be risking their life, too. Angry commenters would be the least of their worries.

          Funnily enough, there were “slice of life” ish stories written during and about the black plague epidemic in Europe. I think it’s not unusual at all for people to want to do this sort of thing. Focusing on the parts of your life that aren’t historically significant can be very helpful.

  27. saltchocolate

    Psyched for an Asma storyline!

    1. NGPZ

      yee yee yee <3

  28. Kyulen

    I’m glad Asma got away safely.

  29. alice

    why do they look like scaled-up Hakko CHP micro cutters

    1. CallynD

      Because Willis makes more Gunpla than he needs to cut pieces of chain. But that’s not what bolt cutters look like.

      1. Taffy

        It’s what those bolt cutters look like.

        1. Wack'd

          “do tires sink or float?”
          “sink, obviously. you just saw it happen”

        2. ESM

          They’re pliers from Home Depot. One of the first image results for “wire cutters”. Bolt cutters are more rounded

        3. Taffy

          It’s what those bolt cutters look like.

        4. alice

          shit maybe they are actually heavy duty wire cutters, not bolt cutters, that could make more sense for chain link fence. i still don’t think they scale like that (the point of that style curved handle is to add bulk for more comfortable one-handed operation, right? this thing is like a foot long, i’d expect the handles to be straight for most of their length)

        5. Random832

          Ultimately we don’t actually know how the fence segments were connected together. Some of the examples I’ve seen online use some kind of sheet metal bracket that I feel like these could handle, even if the angle might have been a bit awkward. Heck, if they were in a hurry and didn’t account for anyone having tools (or for their tactical situation going badly enough that they couldn’t cover anyone messing with the fence) it might have been zip ties.

        6. alice

          that makes sense. from Asma’s perspective, if u have a big a big cutting tool and there are fences, bring it just in case it’s useful. my main contention isn’t that Asma’s choice of tool doesn’t make sense, it’s that the hypothetical tool manufacturer’s choice of handle design doesn’t make sense (and that i think it’s a very funny little nerd moment that they probably have a pair of micro flush cutters lying around that they used as their reference)

        7. ESM

          The page has been updated with correct bolt cutters, rendering my comment silly. I appreciate the new alt text though, it’s a good joke.

      2. alice

        hmm this is gonna be a problem 400 years from now when they graduate and Danny gets a job as a sailor

    2. alice

      dammit they fixed the bolt cutters! tone doesn’t work well on the internet, i promise you i just thought they were funny

      1. alice

        this reminds me of the time i pointed out how cute and endearing i found my grandma’s weird pronunciation of a certain word, and they she got embarrassed and fixed it šŸ™

      2. Taffy

        They look the same. Nothing changed.

        1. Yumi

          Taffy’s gonna Taffy.

          Because this is the kind of thing that could be distressing to some– there were times in my life where I could see this triggering feelings of unreality– I just want to clarify that the bolt cutters did change. (https://web.archive.org/web/20250720041114/https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/asma/)

        2. Proxiehunter

          I don’t think that goes to the old one anymore because I can not see a difference between the two.

        3. Taffy

          Big red hobby snippers, right?

        4. Taffy

          Am I the one being gaslit here? That’s the same picture I’ve got on this page right now. Like, I wasn’t even doing a bit there, it’s the same picture for me in both instances.

        5. Taffy

          I’ve been accused of being on this website “every waking hour and then some”, and since the comic went up, those cutters haven’t looked a pixel different whenever I’ve refreshed the page.

        6. Yumi

          Ah, then it might be a cache thing on your end. It’s a different image now. I’ll screenshot both in a minute.

        7. Proxiehunter

          Yep, cache issue.

        8. Yumi

          Comparison: https://imgur.com/a/L3OOgFN

        9. Taffy

          Aha, after a cache reset, it finally shows that second one. I knew this wasn’t evidence of my insanity.

        10. alice

          summary: they made the handles straight and removed the compound hinge. not gonna lie. silly as they are i kinda want a pair the giant CHP cutters (but please, with a better-hardened jaw, why are not-hundreds-of-dollars side cutters so shit?)

          as an aside, anyone know some good, not-super-overpriced side cutters that don’t disintegrate after a week of usage? I know the higher end of hakko’s CHP line advertises a better heat treatment, but i’ve never tried them due to price. If someone who hangs out in old dumbing of age comments threads has found a weird brand that’s unreasonably good for the price i’d love to know about it.

      3. CallynD

        The alt text cops to the mistake, if anyone ever has a problem with your comment you can point them at it. It’s all good.

  30. Versen

    Yup. Been there, still there, will continue to be there I might as well be looking at buying land /there/.

    The struggle is often thankless and can feel overshadowed by the personal problems of those around you who either aren’t clued in at best or ravenously hostile at worst.

    And yeah we carry on, because someone’s got a do it.

  31. IntangibleMatter

    Yeah no Asma take all the time you need that was fucked up

    1. Arianod

      I’m just glad she didn’t get arrested

      1. SarahTerra

        *grits teeth* She could still get arrested, or otherwise punished by the admin.

        1. Taffy

          You’re under arrest for doing your job at your place of business.

        2. Throwatron

          I mean, that’s pretty much ICE’s MO, so

        3. Taffy

          Yeah, and they can all burn alive for what they’ve done.

  32. Reltzik

    I’m not sure what chemical the cops sprayed her with, but it looks like it’s literally melting her face.

    …. what? Feelings? Since when do cops spray people with feelings?

  33. DashWallkick

    “Oh. Right. I could’ve been disappeared.

    aaaaaaaaaaaaand there’s the traumatic reaction.”

  34. PedanticJerkass

    Well, I suppose it’s reassuring that she’s just calmly (calm-ish-ly, at least) returning to her desk. If she’d witnessed Amazi-Girl or someone getting beaten up and dragged away to jail or getting gunned down, I doubt she’d be this relatively passive.

    1. Laura

      Could be. Sometimes people just try to return to their normal routine while in shock or in denial.

      1. Taffy

        It can be a good reflex to have. Falling back on The Usualā„¢ can help you stay grounded while you’re processing Big Emotionsā„¢, giving you the comfort of familiarity to keep things from getting too big. I find that if I let myself stay in the Big Emotionsā„¢ on their own for too long, it can start to feel like I’m expected to fix the problems singlehandedly, and then I start freaking out about how the fuck I’m supposed to even start, and then the Bad Thoughtsā„¢ get really loud. Routine is good.

        1. Laura

          Right on, right on!

  35. Acher4

    DoA!Traumas all around!
    <..>

  36. Risky

    I realize other interpretations are available but part of me still wants to read the last panel as deep lesbian craving born of loneliness, perhaps her paramour is at a different college. It’s the lip biting, which again could mean other things but sooo much of the sicko storyline conveyed barely restrained lesbian lust through lip biting.

    1. BorkBorkBork

      ALL OF US: Oh no, poor Asma; can you even imagine the trauma… and here, all alone, having to deal with all the hatred and violence for daring to defend others… I just wish I could go give our girl a hug right now… She’s so brave and strong.

      ASMA: Fuck, why can’t I stop thinking about that hot ginger chick from Ivy Tech Community College? Do I still have her number?

      1. Taffy

        Asma: That tear gas was the exact same color as her nail polish. Damn it.

  37. KM

    A Hijabi’s LGBTQ story is probably pretty complex and sensitive to tell and shouldn’t be thrown about lightly imho

    1. KM

      This was a reply to Ricky above

      1. alice

        if you have relevant experience i’ll happily defer (and feel free to either disregard or rebut at your discretion), but if we’re just 2 secular whites speculating on the appropriateness of this, my gut response is that we other and mystify Muslims too much already, and while it’s a generally good idea to avoid doing people a disservice with poorly considered representation, excessive caution runs the risk of painting “the” Muslim experience of queerness as so innately weird and fraught that we can’t ever relate to each other as queer humans. The thing guiding this intuition overall is, I suspect there’s a sizeable contingent of Muslim queers who are tired of being asked how they reconcile their queerness and their faith and just want to have a normal conversation about some normal gay shit.

        i do think it would be unwise to try and depict the same sort of coming-to-terms-with / coming-out story without some amount of consultation (just because that coming-to-terms process is fraught for basically everyone, with a lot of cultural input into its exact form), but that’s a small piece of a much larger picture of a queer life, and we manage to tell stories about other parts of that picture all the time; from my limited perspective i don’t see why Muslims should be an exception.

        1. KM

          My main concerns would be such a story would be very difficult to avoid intensity of both good and bad faith comments unless the writer expends significant effort to consult with and navigate opposing views on the matter. Now given the demo is what it is i suspect some form of progressive Islamic voice would be given priority and hopefully be rallied around, but we’ll see.

          I’m not American, but I’m from a Muslim country that’s ~65% Muslim (I’m one of the other 35%) so my perspective is probably also colored by my experiences in a society where mainline Sunni Islam, not Christianity* is the dominant religion in politics and society and so may not properly mesh with the situation in the US where Islam is a minority religion. Suffice to say, LGBTQ friendly Muslim schools of thought are NOT tolerated and people can and have been subject to vicious political and social persecution for such.

          *to be fair, i am also familiar with US-style evangelical Christianity because we do have them here as well – the difference is of course they do not have political power, only social power and they are a minority of a minority

        2. Yak

          The Evangelical church specifically and Christian churches generally, along with Mormons, do actually have a lot of political power in the US right now. Not an overwhelming majority in most places but enough to be very destructive.

        3. Yak

          Oh I misread your comment. Apologies.

        4. KM

          To clarify, in the context of my sentence I meant where I am, which is not the US.

        5. alice

          this makes sense. my vague perception is that in a lot of the western diaspora things are a lot more mixed, but that’s very much a perception from the outside. that may be where the comic is set, but i genuinely hadn’t considered the fact that that’s not where everyone who reads a webcomic on the internet necessarily lives (i think i was overestimating the filtering effect of it being english language, which is silly, i run into and chat with people from all sorts of non-english-speaking countries online). i can see how in a more global context the discourse is not as straightforward as i’m suggesting.

  38. Florence

    Hoping we get more asma

    1. NGPZ

      YES ^^ <3

  39. thumb

    I assume this is one of those that Willis recently made to address the shortage of Asma (more or less) in his buffer. In which case, that was really quick. Interested to see more.

    1. Rov

      If so, this strip would be replacing a strip from the buffer. Willis posts previews of strips with specific days months in advance: https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/search?q=july+2025

      1. thejeff

        Doesn’t have to replace, though it might. He could shift the dates of those strips even though he already posted them.

      2. HueSatLight

        previewed panels don’t always run on the date they were originally scheduled for.

  40. Steamweed

    The after-effects of a scary, violent situation. Let-down is real.

    1. alice

      god, thinking about the come-down i’ve had from situations a tiny fraction as violent as this, not pleasant.

  41. Mr. Random

    I’m very fortunate that while I’m a minority and a citizen, I’m someone who’s White-passing on the street and my job allows me to remain off those streets.
    I can’t imagine what other people are going through right now, with people being shipped off to literally Africa.

  42. Hazel

    When the adrenaline dissipates and everything comes crashing back in.

  43. Deanatay

    Prediction: Nash gets arrested, because racial profiling.

  44. HueSatLight

    I appreciate seeing the background characters and events.
    The protest isn’t just some pride flag colored backdrop for a couple of white kids to stumble into and have some personal dramatics in front of.

    The atrocities the protest were against are still on-going. The protest had a higher than zero, but still fairly low chance of achieving divestment by IU. It weights heavily on the people who were protesting in earnest.

    1. Yak

      I mean, the thing is that it actually *was* a backdrop for events in the story to happen. Using dramatic, violent, often thinly fictionalized real-world events to metaphorically convey the characters’ internal turmoil is a classic literary technique. It just tends to be done with “historical” events, so that the typical reader/viewer can feel some distance from it. Forrest Gump is a great example.

  45. CianM1301

    “…I need a vacation.”

  46. Tequila Mockingbird

    Willis wrote this comic a year ago, yet he knew we’d demand more of Asma… he knows us too well.

  47. Madock345

    ā€œDo I have to get new bolt cutters now these are incriminated?ā€

    1. Taffy

      The technical term is “seasoned”.

      1. Da Boy

        Battle-tested

        1. Florence

          *detective in their office with a cork board, in the centre bolt cutters*

          Who are you?!? How does it all connect?!?

  48. Toes14

    What’s with the bolt cutters? Did we see Asma at the protest? (I don’t remember seeing her, but maybe in the background?)

    What am I missing here?

    1. CianM1301

      Asma was indeed at the protest, and with her bolt cutters, they were able to cut down one of the wire fences the police had put up, and several protesters (including herself) were able to escape.

    2. Da Boy

      You missed this and next one
      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/trustees/

      1. thejeff

        Also here, where we see Asma using the bolt cutters to help them through the fence.

  49. Derek

    lol the comic has been edited since this morning, now on the first panel it looks like actual bolt cutters instead of pliers

    1. Steamweed

      The Willis did read of our words, and, lo, he found them moving! šŸ˜€

  50. Zak

    Asma has been listening to behind the bastards.

    Roberts been pushing people going and buying some heavy bolt cutters for years

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