Dumbing Of Age is a campus based sitcom strip from prolific cartoonist David Willis, a condensed universe featuring a number of his characters at Indiana University. Maybe I shouldn’t be jumping into it right away without familiarizing myself with Willis’s other strips, but my good friend Bradley/Mozenrath suggested it, so here we are.
I had heard of “It’s Walky” before, but this is more or less my introduction to its title character, who happily locks himself inside a fantasy world that might be normal in comparison to some or the stuff that goes on at this college. He has a love for his favorite cartoon “Dexter And Monkey Master” that can easily make even the most obsessed fanboy or fangirl feel better about themselves. All of you Bronies, Sherlock fans, whoever- be happy you’re not this kid.
The real star is Joyce Brown, a cheerfully naïve but open minded fundamentalist. There isn’t much emphasis on what exactly her study habits are, most of the focus is on her ups and downs trying to make friends with the various eccentrics in the dorms and solving their various problems. This usually ends in some sort of major jolt to her worldviews.
Joyce eventually catches the eye of an insecure but well meaning boy named Ethan (along with his brutally blunt friend Mike), as well as some understandably odd looks from her more cynical roommate Sarah. She also gains the support of ex-high school it-girl Billie, the bookish Dorothy and also some unwanted tension between her and Amber, a normally quiet girl who moonlights as the far bolder superhero Amazi-Girl on the side, much to the confusion of her friend Danny. There’s also Joe, a proudly sex-obsessed ladies man who spends a lot of time commenting on everyone else’s weirdness (and ignoring his own issues).
Willis’s art is well done and expressive, though he tends to make almost all of his characters- Joyce especially- look painfully cutesy, and it often makes it feel weird when the storylines move into the heavier moments. It’s not a major distraction, just something I noticed. Luckily the dialogue is hilarious, self-deprecating and smart, so that more than makes up for it.
The interactions in Dumbing Of Age– just about all of them- subscribe to the old adage about every good relationship originating from some sort of conflict. Almost everyone’s given some sort of background and reasoning for how they approach things. It was because of that I found myself growing to like a lot of the cast overtime- a couple of our heroes seemed like complete jerks coming out of the gate, but were eventually revealed to have some sort of reason as to why they were acting that way.
So it took a while for me to really get into it, but I definitely enjoyed it, and I’ll probably be checking out other stuff Willis has dropped. Not drop as in “oops, I dropped this”, it’s like an album “dropping”, debuting…only it’s a web comic. You know what I meant, just click here to check it out.
Also, every time Joyce says a word, I keep hearing Hynden Walch (Starfire from Teen Titans), I swear to God.