Monthly Archives: September 2010

Normally I avoid reviewing new comics; at least, until they’ve established themselves and shown they’re not about to suffer from the webcomic heat death called hiatus. I’m bending this rule for two reasons: first, David Willis is an established cartoonist who’s been putting comics on the web since before I started reading them (let alone reviewing them). He’s earned a pass on this. And second? Dumbing of Age is a delightful homage to Willis’ first (and in some ways best) work: Roomies.

That’s not to say that It’s Walky or Joyce and Walky aren’t good comics. (I’ll pass on Shortpacked; it was more miss than hit with me, and I almost never bother to check on it anymore. Though I must admit, the recent “crossover” with Something Positive and Girls with Slingshots with the hairless kitten was amusing enough, and if Willis ever had the S*P chibi catgirls swarm and devour the intestines of Head Alien I’d probably be cheering right along with everyone else.) But there was something special about Roomies; I don’t know if it was the college setting or the gradual slide into dramatic storytelling.

Dumbing of Age doesn’t bother with previous continuities. We don’t have alien abductees (yet) (though considering Walky and Sal know they’re siblings in DoA, I’m doubtful the aliens will be here; at least, not in the same capacity), and Walky is actually taking college classes with the others (though he’s not run across Joyce yet). Hell, if you look in the background here you can see Mike and Dina (the hat-girl who got blown up in IW); DoA gives Willis the chance to pull out all the stops and bring back old favorites.

Along with the reboot comes new art; Willis has gone full-out, designing multiple outfits for each character (seeing that normal people don’t have five of the same outfit in their closet). Willis also brings 13 years of artistic improvement to the series, giving DoA a significantly improved look over Roomies (and, for that matter, It’s Walky). I especially appreciate the effort Willis is putting into backgrounds; far too many comics skimp on backgrounds (though considering how much actual work goes into the art I can understand their lack in even well-established comics).

There’s not really much else to say. Dumbing of Age is a bit of a reimagining of Roomies, so we get such things as Roomies-era Joyce (with the innocence and naivety that led to such delightful phrases as “premarital hanky-panky!”) but brought forward to the 21st Century with Facebook and related social networking media (and really effective cyberblocking software). Another shift from Roomies lies with the focus of the strip, with Joyce taking over the primary character role from Danny; how long this lasts we’ll have to wait and see. Much as Joyce started to muscle in on Danny’s turf in the original Roomies, so too do I suspect we’ll see other characters shift the focus more and more from Joyce. In the meantime, I definitely recommend this strip; considering we’ve had 11 updates to date, the archives won’t take long to peruse. For now.

Addendum note: Reading Roomies is not required to get into Dumbing of Age. As continuity with his previous webcomic series has been tossed out the window, DoA is an entirely new beastie that homages its past, but is not burdened by it. Just in case I went off on a tangent instead of making that clear….