Dumbing of age. Doa

Tonight's strip.

Poor Lucy. It must be tough to be in her situation. It's easy to assume a former cheerleader would be as mean as Malaya.

Explain this strip to someone who has never seen this comic before.

Lucy, the girl wearing glasses, is an awkward shut-in who got berated and abandoned by her previous roommate.

Billie is a former cheerleader and used to rub it in everyone's faces. Moving in, she seems intimidating to Lucy, who is afraid she'll be like her previous roommate.

Lucy tries to be helpful and welcoming, without realizing she's being overbearing.

The letters are loose on the uniform because Billie's crazy RA removed the letters until she got her roommate agreement. The psycho RA gets a crush on her and fixes the uniform. They're dating now, for some reason, so Billie moved dorms after Ruth almost got fired for dating one of the girls on her floor. She misses her already.

Billie is a former cheerleader/alpha bitch who got knocked down a peg and is struggling to find a place for herself at college. Lucy is a cheerful girl who is trying to make friends but is overcompensating since her prior roommate disliked her. Basically, it's a great setup for some really hard lezdom and I hope to God a drawfag agrees with me.

Dang, this feels like part of an idea split across multiple strips. I rag on Willis for his out of nowhere last panel jokes, but this one is so weak it just feels like a half an update.

Former cheerleader (Billie) is moving into dorm room with Lucy. Lucy notices her old uniform and finds out she used to cheerlead and is somewhat put off (probably because cheerleaders were mean to her in the past).

Lucy offers to fix the letters that were removed by Billie's tormenter turned lover Ruth. Billie reacts strongly as it is now seen as a memory of her interactions with Ruth. Lucy then offers to bring Billie coffee and Billie interrupts her and will probably tell her to: relax, give her space to get settled, not worry about doing her favours, take a few deep breaths or some combinations of the above.

It's a good thing Billie's moved into an environment where being a High School Cheerleader is still a big deal.

Spoiler: No one will care that you played HS sports or were a HS cheerleader a year or two after high school.

There's also the weird thing that, now that Billie & Ruth are in separate buildings there's no longer any Conflict of Interest or whatever.

Billie's also literally just across the parking lot, but Ruth's acting like she's Gone Forever and moved to Antarctica.

when did this Lucy character come around?

I'll still never understand how Willis thinks a fatass shortstack could be a cheerleader, let alone head.

Lucy is another Shortpacked callback, originally from a one-off strip about New 52 Starfire, & later introduced as a "Season 2" regular before Willis realized no one cared about any of his new characters.

She was basically a chocolate dipped Amber.

When Willis decided he wanted to show how terrible Malaya is in comparison to one of his nicer characters.

so in the last month or so?

Pretty recently. I'll say within the last year.
She comes from Shortpacked, where she was the replacement for Amber.
I mean, the more unreasonable thing is having a shortstack being a superhero.

I feel it should be noted that despite seven years passing in real life they're only on the second week of October. He's on full MegaTokyo time.

She wasn't a fatass while she was a cheerleader, plus it's high school cheerleading. Unless we're talking about one of those insanely sports obsessed schools like they have in Texas it's just going to be basic routines and shit.

Wasn't she a bit of Joyce too?

>Billie's also literally just across the parking lot, but Ruth's acting like she's Gone Forever and moved to Antarctica.
Considering the comic's pacing, she might as well be. That ten minute walk across the parking lot would take six months in Willis-time.

You're exaggerating! It would be more like 3 months. Geeze.

WHERE'S THE FUCKING JOKE, WILLIS?

It'd be a week worth of strips involving random gags that had a week of lead-in that ultimately culminates in a single strip of Billie at the entrance to the dorm before shifting away without resolution or payoff and two months later there would be an offhand reference to Billie visiting Ruth or possibly a joke about loud sex.

and another Billie/Ruth Slipshine comic.

He's depicted a girl with the same body type scale the side of a building, do backflips, and support her own weight in the air by pushing against walls with her hands and feet.

Lucy's DoA incarnation still has some of her nerd girl roots, since "Likes Toon Starfire" seems to still be a defining character trait. Other than that, not sure if she's been seen much in DoA prior to this.

Bless this Thread with Mary.

...

...

We are not worth of her presence.

One thing I noticed is Lucy's hair is terrible.

Willis is pretty lazy with black hair, it doesn't get highlights a lot of the time and just looks like an amorphous blob. Here Lucy's hair does have an upper highlight, but it's kind of impossible for me to tell what it would correspond to.

The bottom implies curls or tresses, but the top comes off as if it's just wavy. And then he put that one indent in on the right side of her face... for no reason. The top doesn't belie any corresponding part and I don't even know why there would be a single indent instead of a few. It's hair, not a damaged hood. I guess it could be a scar but the skin isn't discoloured accordingly.

At least there's no forelocks or ear wisps, but jeez it doesn't really represent anything.

That's most likely because Willis has no idea how to draw black hair and used a cop out method so you'd recognize black hair at a glance but he wouldn't have to put any effort into the whole thing. Classic Willis.

>And then he put that one indent in on the right side of her face... for no reason.
You see indents like that when a person is suffering from traction alopecia along a part line.

>it's kind of impossible for me to tell what it would correspond to

I think it corresponds to "I'm gunna do something to zazz this shit up a little, so it doesn't look like an amorphous blob of black."

Aren't there usually wisps of hair in that case? Also wouldn't the indent be not quite so defined? I've definitely seen that sort of thinning and I don't think it's as abrupt as he's choosing to draw it.

You'll sometimes see people trim the remaining hair to make it look like an intentional style choice if the affected area is small enough and positioned right. The issue is that given Lucy's implied hairstyle it's supposed to either be a center part, in which case the indent would be obscured, or he's got her hair pulled back, which would mean she'd need to drop a ton of edge control gel to get an indent like that. The only other option is that Lucy's supposed to have a side part.

The indent is where her hair is parted.

The part makes enough sense, but that little piece there isn't representative of it enough. It should be visible further back than just near her forehead.

>The indent is where her hair is parted.
I'd believe this is his intent, but like i said the rest of the colouring and shading doesn't reflect the part. The top of the hair is completely flat, when adding a dip corresponding with the indent would complete the image of a part.
The highlight could also be broken into two curves to show the separate sections of hair and the complexity without having to change the whole silhouette.

Also when she turns the indent doesn't really follow the shape of her head as much as it should. If it's that vertical in panel 1 it should be going more diagonally back in panel 4 and 6.

It's not like Billie's highlight work is any better, it's just a fill over a wiggly curve, but I think the general shape of the hair makes a bit more sense in her case.

I just think it's stupid that Billie has that dumb forelock. With how much she cares about fashion, there's no reason for her to have something that looks stupid like that. She would keep her hair mostly the same length or in layers, but there's no reason to have a short bit of hair on her forehead.

And if asked directly about it he'd grovel and rail against his Tragic Christian past and the innate racism he's trying to counter.

And, ya know, ignore the fact that he can only draw three hairstyles.

Lucy's got a lot of Generic Nice to her. The only other thing I've seen of her is when people mention female and/or black comic creators to her she declared them Exceptions to The Rule when criticizing comics.