Webcomic / Roomies!, It's Walky!, Joyce and Walky!

aka: Joyce And Walky

Roomies!, It's Walky!, and Joyce and Walky! are three interconnected comics in the Walkyverse, and can be found (along with relevant Shortpacked! storylines) here, with commentary from Willis.

Roomies! began on September 10th, 1997 as a Slice of Life webcomic concerning the adventures of Ordinary College Student Danny Wilcox and his Kavorka Man roommate Joe Rosenthal. Other important characters included Danny's mixed-race Broken Bird ex-girlfriend Sal Walters; his (future) love interest Jennifer "Billie" Billingsworth; Ruth Lesse, whose dark outlook on life shook up Danny's world; and the sheltered, semi-well-adjusted Joyce Brown. The strip gradually developed both Cerebus Syndrome and a love for theatrics, culminating in Joe and Joyce being kidnapped by aliens.

At this point it re-branded itself It's Walky! and began to focus on the adventures of a Government Conspiracy called SEMME, dedicated to dealing with extra-terrestrial threats to Earth. The titular David "Walky" Walkerton, a hyperactive member of Squad 128, found himself fighting alongside Sal, Joe and Joyce, all of whom were inducted to SEMME and placed in his squad, with Stuffy Brit Jason Chesterfield, Jerk with a Heart of Jerk Mike Warner and even-more-hyperactive Robin DeSanto rounding out the central cast.

After a random collection of Where Are They Now Epilogues, Willis launched Joyce and Walky! in 2005, a Dom Com centering around the Official Couple of the verse, playing out the affairs of characters after the retirement of It's Walky!. Only strips published on Saturdays were available to the public; Tuesday and Thursday material were for subscribers only. Though initially described as "a post-apocalyptic tale of domestic hijinx", it quickly developed its own sci-fi oriented storyline based around the offspring of SEMME members from alternate futures appearing in the main universe in the present day. (Around the same time, Robin and Mike got spun off into Shortpacked!.)

This strip was put on hiatus in 2010, and later that year got an Ultimate Universe in Dumbing of Age, which transplants characters from all of Willis's other comics into Indiana University and strips off the sci-fi elements, thus going back to the original premise of Roomies!...and so the circle is complete.

Joyce & Walky! got taken out of mothballs on May 13, 2012, with sporadic updates between then and August, and ultimately ended on May 17, 2015 with the scene it left off on. In June of that year, Willis announced he and his wife had been drawing a new comic for two months, It's Pregnancy!, depicting Joyce giving birth to her and Walky's child.

Originally published on Keenspot, the entire story was eventually gradually reuploaded to its own website, with commentary under every strip from Willis. The main purpose of the site is to give people the chance to read it in chronological order, and apparently to induce a sense of despair in Willis. The reruns concluded with the addition of The Last Roomies! Story Ever, I Promise to the site in 2021.

Not to be confused with a rather staggering number of webcomics with "roomie" or "roomies" in the title.

The cast of these series is vast, but the main players in each can be boiled down to:

Roomies:

• Danny Wilcox, an ordinary college student with a tendency for unbridled panic.
• Joe Rosenthal, Danny's womanizing best friend and dorm roommate.
• Joyce Brown, a quirky innocent girl who is intent on making Danny her boyfriend.
• Sarah Clinton, Joyce's jaded pre-law roommate and Friends with Benefits with Joe.
• Jennifer 'Billie' Billingsworth, a Troubled, but Cute student with a reputation as a party girl.
• Mary Bradford (Mary Paul in It's Walky!), Sal's hypocritical 'best friend' whose moralizing towards Billie is proven hollow when she has an abortion.
• Ruth Lesse, a cynical grad student who had been Billie and Walky's babysitter as a teen.
• Sal Walters, Danny's moody, mysterious ex-girlfriend, who shows up just long enough to tell Danny goodbye because she's moving on to...

It's Walky!:

• David 'Walky' Walkerton, a hyperactive, bubble-headed medical lab attendant turned alien hunter who was once Billie's best childhood friend and is actually Sal's long-lost twin brother.
• Steven 'Beef' Walkerton, Walky's fraternal twin brother secretly Switched at Birth with Sal.
• Jason Chesterfield, the uptight British squad leader, and the only non-abductee amongst Squad 128.
• Mike Warner, a violent-minded Jerkass who delights in torturing those around him.
• Allen Rees, alien expert.
• Professor Doc, a Mad Scientist in charge of studying alien technology.
• Dina Sarazu, an unfortunate, mild-mannered paleontologist who ends up as Professor Doc's assistant.
• Robin DeSanto, a hyperactive speedster who is Mike's replacement in Squad 128 after he is nearly killed by Walky.

Their main opponents are the Purple Aliens ('Alien' being the actual name of their homeworld), led by Head Alien; the British Ninjas from a secret organization led by Jason's father Dargon Chesterfield and Jason's former lover Penny Worthington; and the Martian Empire.

Joyce and Walky:

• Becky MacIntyre, Joyce's new best friend. She is generally more sane and easy-going than Joyce.
• Dorothy Keener, Walky's over-achieving ex-girlfriend who dumped him for not being studious enough. She's moved into Walky's neighborhood and is having second thoughts about her decision all those years ago.
• D.J. Wilcox, Danny and Sal's hypothetical kid from the future. Other universes sending help for other versions of him, only to end up in the mainline continuity, is the impetus for most of the plot.
• Our universe's D.J. Wilcox, Danny and Billie's female kid, born exactly ten years from the debut of Roomies!.
• Bobby "Machete" Walkerton, another hypothetical kid from the future and seemingly the only one with the right parentage.

---

These series provide examples of:

Roomies!

• Aliens Steal Cable: And are pop-culture junkies...
• Arc Words: "Act with integrity... No regrets."
• Art Evolution: This is what the first strip of the entire canon looked like. This is the latest strip of Dumbing of Age. Same artist.
• Ascended Extra: Billie. She started as a background character living with Ruth and was revealed to be both her childhood friend and the Roomies! cast's One Degree of Separation to Walky a year or so later.
• Author Avatar: Danny begins Willis' trend of these, but as he realized by the end of It's Walky's run, it was actually Joyce all along.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Danny and Billie. I'm enjoying this way too much.
• Book Ends: The comic begins and ends with Danny on the phone with his girlfriend and scolding Joe for climbing up out the window to the girls' dorms, trying to get him to think of the consequences. The first time, Joe's response shows his obliviousness to the concept of dealing with your actions; the second time, Joe has actually considered the potential ramifications (if only the favorable ones) and decided to do it anyway.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin'':
  • Drink one beer, and you'll proceed to get totally drunk and a close friend of yours will GET KILLED saving you from your own stupidity.
  • Also lampshaded and averted much, much later ("Alcohol killed Ruth." "No, Ruth killed Ruth.")
• Cerebus Syndrome: Ruth's death brought the strip's consequence-free hijinks to a screeching halt.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Joyce started out as one. Worth noting that she was jealous over someone that wasn't actually hers.
• Creator Cameo: "If I don't get a girlfriend in the next five seconds I'm gonna jump out the window." This was an accurate portrayal of Willis' mindset at the time, and the first of many. Willis makes multiple background appearances throughout his comics, and later on becomes Ethan's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis in Shortpacked!.
• Disneyfication: Parodied with Roomies! issue two, which has Danny, Joe and Joyce watching "Disney's Hansel and Gretel".
• Early-Bird Cameo: Dina, moreso than the rest of SEMME—she appears in one panel and judging by her surroundings hasn't even been recruited yet.
• Fallen Princess: Billie, a former Libby-esque Cheerleader, has a hard time adjusting to her loss of status upon entering college where no one cares how "cool" you supposedly were in high school.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Ruth saves Danny from being hit by a semi, at the cost of her own life when it hits her car instead.
• How Unscientific!: See below.
• I Have Brothers: Joyce has five,^note or so she thinks, as one of them is actually a closeted trans woman all older, which she used early on to explain her uncharacteristic fighting skills until the Alien plots kick in.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Danny, word-for-word several times with Joyce.
• Irony: Ruth learned her "act with integrity" motto from her adulterous father.
• Info Dump: From this scene in Roomies! issue two, for those unfamiliar with the comic:
  Joe: What are we doing tonight?
  Danny: Joyce wants to see a movie.
  Joe: Joyce? You mean that studious, churchy girl? The Joyce who followed you home and claimed you as her own? Even though you're dating Sal, who's currently still in high school?
  *both Aside Glance*
  Danny: That was...informative. But yes. Joyce.
• Kavorka Man: Joe, to the point that later Fanon would speculate that part of his Abductee powers was enhanced pheromones.
• Killed Off for Real: Ruth
• No Fourth Wall: Crossed with Bizarro Episode. It lasted about a week before the closing of the strip's first year.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Ruth carrying a ten year old Walky, who has just been returned by the Aliens, as she walks in on her father and Billie's mother, who are having an affair.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: Anything involving Joyce/Sal and SEMME.
• Punny Name: Whitney Howard Lesse, Ruth Lesse, Dick Lesse.
• Shout-Out:
  • The title of the first book collection. Roomies! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Beer.
  • The second book has two: the original title was Roomies! Giant-Sized Cerebus Syndrome, with the cover as a take-off on the Giant-Sized X-Men cover, but the print version is titled Giant Size Acts of Integrity, due to Willis' disagreement with Dave Sim's current sociological views.
• Take That Me: David Willis' commentary on the "Bring Back Roomies!" website. He doesn't let an opportunity pass by for him to make fun of his old art or his (and therefore his characters') former fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Both played straight and subverted : Joyce seems to be the only human who can stand The Sound of Music, but once the aliens realize this they show her porn instead, which screws her up for the long term.
• Tsundere: Billie, toward Danny.
• Vomit Discretion Shot:
  • Joe pukes in his popcorn bag when he sees that Disney's version of Hansel and Gretel made the titular characters a couple.
  • After Mary Slut Shames Billie at a party, Billie punches her in the face so hard she gets concussed and throws up.
• Yandere: Joyce, toward Danny.

It's Walky!

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: 3D models were used for some of the robots and spaceships. They looked really out of place.
• Abnormal Ammo: Monkey Master has Arm Cannons that shoot monkeys. This is about as effective as it sounds. They're also initially wielded on both sides of his elbows, further decreasing efficiency.
• Action Girl: Sal, primarily, though Joyce, Daisy, Lith, and Linda would count too
• Action Mom: Linda Walkerton, eventually becoming the second Big Boss of SEMME.
• A God Am I: The Wanderer, better known in-universe and out as "The Cheese" due to looking like he's made of it.
• Aliens in Cardiff: Lampshaded in the anomaly arc.
• Alpha Bitch: Billie's high school persona. She comes to feel guilty about it.
• Anger Is Not Enough: During the Britja raid on SEMME, Dina gets enraged by a Britja telling her not to take them destroying all her work personally because it's "just a bunch of science", and tries tackling them, only to get casually swatted aside.
  Britja: Rage, Ms. Sarazu, but no power.
• Anyone Can Die: By the end of the strip, about a third of the major characters are dead.
• Arc Words: "It's the rain..."
• The Atoner: Sal. Somewhat subverted, since this is usually defined as wanting to go out and do something to atone. Sal sits in prison when it is implied she could break out, and is forced to escape by circumstances.
• As You Know / Info Dump: Lampshaded. "Hey, boss, we know all this."
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Walky.
• Author Avatar: Walky continues the trend started by Danny.
• Back for the Finale: Sarah returns to help Bart O'Ryan attack SEMME, and later helps Joyce and Walky.
• Back from the Dead: Tony, Head Alien, Linda Walkerton, David Walkerton.
• Badass Boast: "Heh. My name's the Cheese and I can kick your butts."
• Badass Normal: Jason, the only non-abductee member of Squad 128.
• Battle Trophy: After killing Dargon and taking over his paramilitary organisation, Penny takes to wearing his eyepatch as a personal affect.
• Berserk Button: Well, a lot of them, but honorable mention to Dina, who had been steadily falling into despairing over her own uselessness when one of the Britjas pressed it when he was setting up a bomb to destroy S.E.M.M.E.'s intelligence and research files.
  "Hey, kid, don't take it personally. It's just a bunch of science."
• BFG: Joyce's cannon.
• Big Bad: Head Alien.
• Break the Cutie: Walky, Joyce, Linda...
  • Joyce in particular could be the poster girl for this trope.
• Break Them by Talking: One of Head Alien's favorite tactics.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: It takes a mere sip to get Sal and Walky passed out.
• Cat Fight: So many, most involving Sal.
• Call-Back:
  • To Roomies!, multiple times. For example, the incident Billie's describing in panel one can be seen here.
  • Danny reacts to Sal sneaking into his room in Roomies! the same way he does seeing she's become a genocidal maniac in It's Walky!, and her response is similar too. In the former situation, she was pretending to be her former upbeat self to keep Danny from the pain of her parents death, in the latter his appearance helps confirm that she's pretending to be genocidal to convince herself her convictions mean something.
  Danny: Sal?[!]
  Sal: (with forced smile) Hiya!/Hi, Danny!
• Cerebus Retcon: Pretty much everything.
  • Using The Sound of Music as torture goes from being just plain Suckiness Is Painful to having a subliminally-painful, Scanners-like effect on abductees imprinted on them in youth, and Joyce's immunity becomes a plot point.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The Darker and Edgier trend of the series worked much better than in Roomies, but still drove away several fans.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The Power Booster Rod, introduced back in Roomies.
  • The resurrection chambers.
  • The Dup-o-Matic from Melonpool, first when it creates Anti-Joyce, and as revealed much later on, Anti-Head Alien.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The Cheese is (Linda's once-mentioned ex) David.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Sound of Music
• Contractual Genre Blindness: Head Alien just enjoys playing the Villain too much for his own good.
• Cover-up Purchase: When Joyce and Walky try to buy condoms, they get too nervous about buying them, so Joyce has the idea to get other items so the clerk thinks they're just doing a science project. She gives up on the idea when she realizes the items she grabbed-plastic handcuffs, feathers, Vaseline-just make them look worse. Said clerk, fed up with their hesitancy, just suggests they buy the economy pack so they don't have to buy condoms again for years.
  Chloe: Crazy Canadians.
• Creator Cameo: At its subtlest. Look in front on Monkey Master's left arm, the one that's not holding Aliens. (Warning, comic contains spoilers!)
• Crisis of Faith: Joyce has one as her attempts to renew her Christian faith clash with the weird hijinks going on around her and Walky's complete lack of interest in the subject. It comes to a head when an infuriated Walky shuns her after she insinuates that Dina is in Hell because she died an atheist, causing her to break down, run out into the street and tearfully scream at God. She even goes as far as using the Power Booster Rod to find the Cheese and ask him if God even exists. He's dumbfounded that she'd think he'd know the answer.
• Crossover:
  • With Melonpool, twice, and both times it had a lasting effect on Walky's storylines.
  • And another with Fans!, which seemed more concerned with advancing both character sets' emotional arcs.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Both Joyce and Walky.
• Dark Action Girl: Sal, through much of the series.
• Death Is Cheap: Averted, despite the heroes having access to a Martian Resurrection Chamber by the end of the comic. Only one person can use it at a time, the process takes nine months, and you need a sample of DNA from the subject. And the martians are very thorough when it comes to preventing their enemies from returning, so most of the SEMME agents who died in the finale are staying dead. It's very fortunate that Joyce happened to have...acquired some of Walky's genetic material shortly before the battle.
• Death Is the Only Option: In the finale, Walky has to die so he can enter purgatory and get nudged up into the brain of the Cheese, a God-like robot that's the only thing powerful enough to stop the Martian invasion. Similarly, Alan must kill himself by intangably entering the Cheese in order to get the Head Alien out of control.
• Defiant to the End: Mike goes out hurling a "your mom" joke at the Martian eating him.
• Destructo-Nookie:
  • When Walky and Joyce finally resolve their UST, motel room furniture pays the price.
    "Man of steel, woman of steel, bed of kleenex."
  • Earlier, we got a PG-rated version with Walky and Dina.
  Walky: SEX?! We were cuddling!
  Jason: You put a hole through the wall, Walkerton!
• Deus est Machina: The Cheese isn't God, but given that he can see through all time, has complete telekinesis, and that freezing him in time causes reality to deteriorate, he may as well be.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Before coming to the main universe Dargon Chesterfield condemned his home universe to eventual heat death by intentionally refusing to evenly trade energy from the universe he and the rest of his organization were traveling to. All because The Wanderer didn't leave him enough time for Jason to be born there, thus making him detectable by the other universe's version of The Wanderer.
  The Wanderer: No! Our universe will die a slow energy death! What motive do you have against the countless innocents that inhabit your native world?!
  Dargon Chesterfield: You robbed me of my heir. I will rob you of your future.
• Ditto Aliens: Justified - we never see the Purple Aliens or Martians outside of their protective suits.
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Jack Daniels: When he gets drunk, Mike turns nice! Dina puts this to effect to try to get some validation for herself via a relationship with Mike, but it involves keeping him constantly drunk and turns out very badly once events cause the booze to wear off.
• Double Entendre: Especially in the storyline appropriately named 'Innuendo'.
• Dramatic Shattering: Subverted and promptly lampshaded:
  Walky: No mind wipe for you. Ever. (tosses mind-wiper to the ground, it bounces) Well, if that broke it would've been really cool.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Walky, especially in the gender-bending reality-warping storyline. Both Jason and Tony comment on his similarity to Sal (understandable, given they're twins).
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: Hoop inexplicably becomes a zombie when he's apparently killed. A zombie controlled by the Martians, who also turn most of the crew of the Destiny into zombies too.
• Eyepatch of Power: Dargon Chesterfield milks this trope for all it's worth. After she kills him, Penny even takes it to wear herself.
• Expressive Mask: The Purple Alien's helmets
• Expy: Sal is amazingly similar to Rogue of the X-Men. She speaks with a Southern accent, discovers her long-lost brother is her teammate, is one of the strongest members of SEMME, is emotionally conflicted and constantly switching sides, and even wears gloves. Also, quite a few things, like her trauma at her parents being killed, her dark brooding nature, and disdain for doors are taken directly from Batman. Lampshaded.
  • Word of God is that Beef is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • Between the name and the hairstyle, Professor Doc is so blatantly one of Dr. Emmett Brown that Joe confuses him for the real Christopher Lloyd the first time they meet.
• Failed Moment Of Drama: When Joes asks why Robin dislikes him so much, Agatha begins telling him. Other Rachel explains in one sentence, much to Agatha's displeasure.
• Fantastic Racism: Toward Alan and the law-abiding Martians; in the epilogue, toward now-assimilated aliens.
• Faux Horrific: COUNTRY MUSIC!
• Flight: Part of what makes Joyce special is that she can use the flying pack effectively.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Over my fossilized remains!
  • In this "vision," how many arms did you have?
• Freudian Excuse: Sal. She's shuttled around the country by her adoptive parents on SEMME orders, tries to run away, and gets struck by her mother when she comes back, and then Head Alien murders them. [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking Plus, she had to put up with Mary.
• Funetik Aksent:
  • Sal has a distinct Southern accent which is quite well-rendered in the speech bubbles.
  • Averted with Jason: though he apparently does have an accent, it's not phonetic.
• Gambit Roulette: Britjas, just...Britjas.
• Geeky Turnon:
  • When Walky makes himself over as an adult to impress Dina and win a bet with Joyce.
    Walky: Hello, Dina. My shirt is pressed. My shoes are tied. My posture is straight.
    Dina: *Beat, performs The Glomp on Walky
  • Danny's fondness for Billie in glasses recurs several times.
• Genki Girl: Robin.
• Gender Bender: During an Unpredictable Results episode.
• Genre Savvy: Danny. While talking with Sal, he mentions that he's planning to ask Billie to marry him. Sal asks if she can see the ring. His response? "Hell no. I know how this works. I show you the ring, and Billie walks around the corner."
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Averted: when Sal was incarcerated, she could easily have broken out if she'd wanted to, but remained because she knows she deserved it, and eventually had to escape when swept up by circumstances.
• Gigantic Gulp: The "X-TREEEM MUG!" storyline.
  • Becomes a fine Brick Joke. In the last panel of the last strip we see a flash-forward of Joyce and Walky sitting together in old age - the giant mug is still right by Walky's side.
• G.I.R.L.: Not done, but referenced here.
• Godly Sidestep: The Big Cheese claims to know which religion is the correct one, but refuses to tell anyone, claiming that if you don't figure it out for yourself, you won't understand the answer.
• Government Conspiracy: SEMME. Eventually revealed to be involved in an even bigger conspiracy with the Martians and JFO. Dargon Chesterfield created SEMME specifically so that he could build an army out of the abductees, who were themselves the product of a joint effort between Linda Walkerton and the Head Alien.
• Glurge Addict
• Great Way to Go:
  • Dying in a fire is bad, but also sort of cool. If it's while in the middle of an orgy in which one is the only male^note and straight...
  • The Head Alien's last words are "my favorite death"^note Well, "Mmy fvrt dthhh" as he's literally stabbed in the back.
• Half-Identical Twins: Sal and Walky
• Heroic BSoD: Many, most notably Linda during the final fight with the Britjas.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Dina.
  • Possibly Mike as well, as he shoved Joyce out of the way before facing the Martians alone.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Mike.
• Hilarity Sues: Done completely straight and deadly serious.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: But it doesn't work the last time Head Alien tries it.
  Sometimes...ya gotta take one for the team.
• Indecisive Parody: It doesn't really know if it's a comedic series or a dramatic one. It's a mix of both.
• Insistent Terminology: Monkey Master, who hates being called a monkey - he's a giant robot ape, after all.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Beef, whose lines are always rendered as some variation of "grunt." While he rarely speaks up, nobody seems to have any trouble understanding him when he does.
• Is That What He Told You?: Another tactic Head Alien often used.
• I Want Grandkids: Joyce's mother, to an astoundingly embarrassing degree.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Mike Warner. Also doubles as a Heroic Sacrifice.
  Mike: *as he's about to be eaten by a Martian* You call this tentacle violation? Your mom's better at this. That's because she's a prosti-* SKLRCH*

• Ladykiller in Love: Joe, first with his crush on Joyce and then with him starting to fall for a nerdy girl in a chatroom. It sets off his character development arc, and he eventually becomes a more well-rounded person because of both instances.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The mindwiper.
• Lets Wait Awhile: Though in Joyce and Walky, it's not so much "Wait until the time is right to have sex" as much as "Wait until Joyce can think about sex without going catatonic or psychotic."
• Like Brother and Sister: Walky and Billie are revealed to have been this before Walky was recruited to SEMME, having grown up together and maintained a strained friendship through high school. She seems genuinely happy to see him when he meets up with the Roomies! characters early on.
• Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: We found Phil, the Destiny's janitor, trapped in a closet, and he helped us escape using a variety of common household tools.
• Loud of War: The aliens use The Sound Of Music as a form of mental torture.
• Love Martyr: Dina.
• Luke, I Am Your Father
• McNinja: The 'Britjas'
• Mistaken for Gay: "Innuendo"
• Mood Whiplash: Oh dear sweet lord, SO MUCH. Routinely switches from grief over main character deaths to Toilet Humor. Oddly, this can heighten the dramatic effects—the characters are so used to that sort of thing by the end of the comic that they move on faster than the reader does.
• More than Mind Control: Beef, the long-lost Walkerton sibling, was part of the squad that supposedly got brainwashed when they went to England to investigate the JFO. Only he wasn't brainwashed. Merely disgruntled.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Billie against Sal.
• Mysterious Parent
• Never Bareheaded: Dina is never seen without her trademark safari hat, even when sleeping or suspended upside down. In the entire series, she takes it off exactly once: when she is about to die.
• New First Comics: Willis began redrawing the first storyline, "Year Zero," in 2005, to allow new readers to skip Roomies! However, this effort ran into Schedule Slip and was eventually abandoned halfway through for the sake of prioritizing new material. Willis eventually finished it for the rerun site... in 2014, leading to an Art Shift reflecting nine years of Art Evolution within the redrawn story.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: After Dina's death, Walky beats Mike so badly that he has to be hospitalized, spending most of that time with his face completely bandaged.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: "Yes. Yes! He put me in his 'tummy prison.' I'm not making this up."
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Head Alien is a pretty funny guy... who also happens to singlehandedly ruin several characters' lives.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Walky may be ditzy and hyperactive, but he's not nearly as dumb as he acts (he was a straight-A student). He simply prefers to play the fool to avoid responsibility, and he has trouble breaking the habit of a lifetime when responsibility is ultimately forced upon him.
• Oedipus Rex
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • Walky is called "David" a small handful of times in the strip's entire history (mostly by his mother.) Doubly ironic as everyone calls him "Walky", which is a nickname he doesn't even like (he insists people call him "Walkerton") due to its association with repressed memories.
  • Billie also qualifies, mainly because she hates her real name.
• Painting the Medium: Aliens speak in orange-yellow, octagonal text boxes. Monkey Master and other mechanical characters speak in rectangular text boxes (and the Cheese's are yellow.) Martian text boxes are deep orange with bizarre, scatter-shot shapes.
• Pet the Dog: The only time Mike shows any display of emotion for his fellow human beings other than abject hate (as long as he isn't drunk) was when Dina died in front of him.
• Perverse Sexual Lust: Trope Namer.
• Punny Name:
  • Dina Sarazu, who loves dinosaurs.
  • Peter Paul (husband of Mary).
  • Alan, who's an Alien.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: When we see the effects of what happens when someone gets mindwiped one too many times.
• Redemption in the Rain: Walky's "it's the rain" speech.
• Reel Torture: The Head Alien's preferred torture is forcing people to watch The Sound of Music. This is treated as horrific by all characters except Walky and Joyce, who both like the film. When Cerebus Syndrome hits, this is played more seriously as the Head Alien first forces Joyce to watch porn (which warps her innocent mind) and later uses The Sound of Music to keep prisoners helpless while he starts mass-executing them.
• Separated at Birth: Sal and Walky.
• Shoot the Dog: Sal shooting Tony, in a Story Arc appropriately entitled "Kill Your Friends".
• Shout-Out:
  • Walky seeks inspiration for how to effectively lead his team, and it comes crashing through a window. Turns out Willis was making references to Batman even before he started parodying him explicitly.
  • The news-header in the last panel here refers to two of the Fensler Film spoofs on And Knowing Is Half the Battle ("Pork chop sandwiches!" and "Nice catch, el blanco nino").
• Shrinking Violet: Dina, although she sadly doesn't get a Beautiful All Along moment.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Joyce, to the point where it becomes a Running Gag.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: Joyce has doubts of God's existence, so she uses the Power Booster Rod to contact The Wanderer, who is utterly baffled as to why she would think he would be able to answer.
• Sibling Rivalry: The ultimate source of Beef's tragic Face–Heel Turn.
• Spy Catsuit: Lampshaded.
• Summon Bigger Fish: When Joyce uses the Power Booster Rod to attract the attention of The Wanderer after SEMME is attacked by the Britjas.
• Super-Speed: Robin - she once ate over 1800 doughnuts in under an hour, in fifteen Tim Horton shops around a certain town in Canada.
• Super-Soldier: The Abductees.
• Super Window Jump: Sal. Frequently lampshaded.
• Switched at Birth: Sal and Beef
• Take That!: A story takes place in a time-frozen small town in Canada, taking place in large part in a high school, where a fish can be seen floating in midair. c.f. Avalon.
  • Another take that to Avalon in the announcement of Dumbing of Age:
    "I do intend to finish [Joyce and Walky!], and not, like, end everything with a text story where everyone becomes lesbians."
• Tempting Fate: Lampshaded.
• There Are No Therapists: Lampshaded at least once. After the series ended, Willis even did a storyline about it.
• There Was a Door: Sal. It became a Running Gag with her. She even Lampshades it while using a door as a blunt instrument on Billie.
  Sal: Folks're always tellin' me to use the door.
• Throw-Away Country: Invoked by the Head Alien, who figures no one would notice if he just froze Canada. "Goddamn was I right!"
• Time Stands Still: The Head Alien creates a device that can do this and tests it on Canada.
• Title Drop: It's Walky.
• Took A Level In Bad Ass: Billie actually dares to challenge Sal over Danny and manages to give a surprisingly good account of herself due to martial arts training and a childhood spent fighting with Walky. (It helps that Sal doesn't want to fight, or hurt Billie any more than she has to.)
• Totem Pole Trench: Joyce and Dina use a more specific version to pretend to be Jason.
• Translation Train Wreck: Translations of Martian speech come out this way.
  Excellent. They wish also do battle. This is satisfy.
• Tsundere: Sal, towards both Tony and Jason.
• Two Words: Added Emphasis: "Four words...your twin sister, Sal."
• Unexpected Successor: Walky's mother becoming head of SEMME.

• The Unmasqued World: The Aliens come out of hiding and attack Denver about halfway through the series.
• Unpredictable Results: The Head Alien's time-freezing ray, which at first seems to just cause Gender Bender but makes reality gradually more wibbly the longer it lasts. The fact that the ray was used to freeze the Cheese, who is functionally if not literally God in the Walkyverse, may have had something to do with this.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Willis had way too much fun with Joyce and Walky's. By the time it was released it had the force of a small thermonuclear device.
  Man of steel. Woman of steel. Bed of Kleenex.
• Unbroken Vigil: Seen here. (The Sound of Music lyrics he's singing are what brought her out of it last time she was comatose.)

• Unsound Effect: CROTCH KICK!
• Unstoppable Rage: Often, and usually after Head Alien has pushed one of them a little too far.
• Upper-Class Twit: Subverted: Jason is British and upper class, wears a bowtie almost all the time, and had a rich and powerful father, but is in fact more serious and competent than most of his squad.
• The Voiceless: Marcie. She isn't actually mute, but she definitely is in another universe.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sal, much of the time, verging on Knight Templar in places[1]
• We Named The Dog Indiana: Joyce's dogs, Walkies and Daniel. Both times, she had been mindwiped of the respective boy's existence, and it was unintentional. When introducing Walky to her parents, they believe Walky was named after the dog. He retorts with an Indiana Jones reference.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The Purple Aliens, whom the SEMME agents happily slaughter by the saucerful.

• You Say Tomato: Walky cracks up because of how a British character pronounces his name.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: After Danny asks if he, Joe, Rachel and uber-nerd Howard are on a suicide mission, Joe outlines why it's not and explains intangibility by bringing up Kitty Pryde.
  Howard: Nerd! Nerd! One of Us! One of Us!
  Joe: Now I want it to be a suicide mission.

Joyce & Walky!

• After the End: The comic's tagline describes J&W! as "post-apocalyptic." Given that said apocalypse was averted, it's debatable how well the description fits.
• Alternate Universe: Hoo boy. The villain's entire plot revolves around building an army out of the future kids of potential pairings, and that's just for starters...
• April Fools' Day: 2008 had Ultra-Car getting hit with a missile, Joyce and Walky inside declaring their hatred for each other, and Head Alien and Monkey Master having a Dance Party Ending.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Monkey Master disbelieves Head Alien II's existence and exploits. Head Alien II assumes this is the reason until Monkey Master tells him it's because "that would mean you actually succeeded at something".
  • Played straight later: Even after all he's seen and done, Joe still denies the existence of Danny's alt-future kid DJ.
  Joe: Am I the only one who refuses to dignify this retarded development?
• Back to School: Played Straight. Joyce was abducted by SEMME before she could finish college and Walky never started, so both start taking courses once the war's over. The plot never focuses on it, granted...
• Back from the Dead/Back for the Finale: Head Alien I. "That's right, I'm original recipe. Wanna dance?"
• Bad Job, Worse Uniform: Sal and her job at Pluto 9571.
  Sal: These antennae can be used as stranglin' instruments.
  Walky: Than we shall remain silent.
• Benevolent Boss: Joe, as head of Rosenthal Industries. Danny works for him.
• Best Woman: Danny implied he would've ended up Joyce's maid of honor if Becky hadn't popped up.
  Danny: I'm off the hook?
  Walky: You're off the hook.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: How the alt-universe future kids end up, for the most part.
• Burger Fool: Sal ends up as one when forced into the working world.
• Call-Back: Sal calls Joyce's use of her jetpack cheating when recounting one of their It's Walky!-era fights to Becky. Later, whilst fighting the brainwashed alt-future kids, Joyce gleefully refers to the use of her jetpack as cheating as she and Walky fly into battle.
  • Joyce mocks Walky with his dialogue from these comics when he returns from his first day of student-teaching (which of course requires him to wear a tie.)
  Walky: I'll have you know this is a clip-on.
  Joyce: You look adorable.
  • When Joyce and Becky are having an argument, Joyce won't agree to let Becky in until Becky admits she's beautiful, smart, and queen of the ponies.
• Call-Forward: The wedding arc gradually became a prequel—it takes place in 2010, but by the time it concluded it was 2015, and Shortpacked! had long outpaced it and concluded. Therefore, Joyce and Walky!'s allusions to those "later" events qualifies—for instance, we get to see Amber and Mike's as-of-yet-unconceived daughter as one of the future kids, and the "first" appearance of Joe's alternate-universe portal.
• The Cameo: Joyce logs onto a pony chatroom in the hopes of finding a new friend to be her maid of honor, only to become discouraged and give up. Amber is on the same forum.
• Cerebus Retcon: We get an explanation for the duct tape restraints. Apparently it worked on the abductees when they were kids—and when they got old enough to escape, mental suggestions were planted in their brains creating a psychological inability to break the tape.
• Chekhov's Gun: Duct tape.
• Crossover: With Shortpacked! for the wedding. Robin is officiating, and Mike is invited. They bring Leslie and Amber as their plus-ones and they all show up in Ultra-Car.
• Clue from Ed.: The Rubber-Band History version of The Unmasqued World arc comes with the following note from Willis.
  Longtime It's Walky! readers may find this scene familiar. Sort of.
  Hint: Things are different.
• Crack Pairing: Invoked with the alternate-reality kids for the future. Some of them have really bizarre parentage—the kid of Doc and Doc's clone and Harold and a tube sock are some of the less bizarre examples.
• Dead Guy on Display: The final fate of Head Alien I's body—in the Smithsonian, no less.
• Doppelgänger: Rachel's been swapped out for an Alien in a robotic Rachel suit.
• Faint in Shock: Danny and Billie both faint when faced with the reality of D.J.'s existence for the first time.
• Fantastic Racism: Lampshaded and subverted.
  Head Alien II: Hey, you stupid monkey! Those were the guys on our side! C'mon!
  Monkey Master: All these humans look alike!
  Head Alien II: ...That's sort of a cliche, don't you think?
  Monkey Master: I'm serious. They're all wearing the same damn outfit.
  Head Alien II: Oh. Well. Point taken.
  • Played straight (well, straighter) in a different instance—Sal is furious to discover most of her co-workers at Pluto 9571 are Aliens and is sent to sensitivity training.
• Flash Back: An extended one happens early on, which introduces us to Dorothy and tells the story of how Walky became an honor student in high school.
• First-Episode Twist: Jason and Sal don't last, which is why Sal now lives with Joyce and Walky.
• Friends with Benefits: Jason and Sal try this for a while after their relationship falls apart. It doesn't work out.
• Fourth-Wall Portrait: Walky takes a life-drawing class and is criticized by his professor for "making up anatomy."
  Joyce: Were you drawing lips again?
• The Fundamentalist: Becky's dad. He's used to show how far Joyce has come.
• Gift of the Magi Plot: Well, half of one, anyway.
• Grand Theft Me: HAII eventually pulls this on Dorothy as one last resort—only for it to work out for HAI instead.
• Goggles Do Nothing: The alt-future kids all wear goggles, but mostly on their foreheads. What purpose they serve is never explained, but given that the kids bitch at each other for stealing each other's looks they're probably just there for aesthetic reasons.
• Got Me Doing It: Joyce now also uses "wiigii" instead of "woo-hoo", and probably picked it up from Walky.
• Groin Attack: A self-inflicted one, based on bad advice from Joe regarding the application of Icy-Hot.
• Friendless Background: Jason's employers are very happy that he comes from one of these.
• Halloween Cosplay: On occasion, with the most memorable instance of Joyce being just a word away from implying Walky was dressed as David Willis. Walky quickly clarifies that his costume is actually Harry Potter.
• Happily Engaged and Living Together: The titular duo. While Joyce does become a tad paranoid when Walky starts hanging around Dorothy, their relationship is remarkably drama-free and all of their arguments are petty and short-lived.
• Henpecked Husband: Danny. He doesn't seem to mind.
• Heroic Sacrifice: D.J. dies getting an organ transplant for a dying Sal, which he forced a doctor to do at gunpoint.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Dorothy's mind, like most abductee minds, is wired to be psychologically unable to break duct tape restraints—a fact Machete exploits when he tapes HAI-in-Dorothy's-body to the wall during the wedding arc.
• Hope Spot: The multitude of alternate-future kids have been chained up by Head Alien II, but one (D.J. Wilcox) escaped. The others think he'll be of some help, until...
  HAII: I see the hope on your faces, and I know the reason for it. Hell, I put it there. You know, to taunt you, if only for a few minutes. That's right—I let D.J. Wilcox escape.
  cue Oh, Crap! look on the fleeing D.J.'s face
  HAII: It should be fun.
• Hypocrite: Joyce edges into this territory when she has a mini-freakout over Walky and Dorothy hanging out. Walky points out that she pined after both Danny and Joe and he doesn't take issue with them being around.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Walky threatens Jason with this when he finds out he and Sal have been sneaking around. Jason is unimpressed.
  Jason: You may be superhuman, but I remember you have a soft neck.
• I'm Not Here to Make Friends: Jason's excuse for his lack of social life.
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Walky's right - that was a clear abuse of Joyce's power.
• Insistent Terminology: Pluto 9571 isn't a theme restaurant, it's a dining experience.
• Intangible Man/Voluntary Shapeshifting: Electric Man, and later Head Alien II.
• Internal Homage: Hey, Sal! Yeah, college is fine...
• Just in Time: Bobby Walkerton, to prevent Head Alien I from retreating.
• Lamarck Was Right: Walky's immunity to mindwipes and Joyce's extreme mathematical skill have become genetically ingrained somehow, resulting in a kid who can wipe people's mind via physical and psychic contact. Apparently, the resurrection chamber can futz around with acquired ''and;; genetic traits.
• Left for Dead: Head Alien II does this for Sal and D.J., in spite of Monkey Master's insistence that D.J. still has vital signs and he should finish the job.
• Let's Have Another Baby: Averted with Danny and Billie, whose plans for an "Obama baby" go off without a hitch.
• Married to the Job: Jason, kind of. While he does love his job, his issues are mostly unrelated to that and he considers his career choice is a convenient scapegoat for said issues.
• Meaningful Echo: Back to this Roomies! strip. D.J. uses Danny's Anvilicious moralizing as his last words to his alt-universe father, and in doing so lends them a small bit of dignity.
  DJ: I shouldn't be interacting with you to begin with. I only initiated it for my own selfish reasons. So I deserve any ire thrown my way. This was stupid, plain and simple. But hey, principles mean diddly squat without the experiences to back them up, right?
• The Mole: Dorothy and Rachel, the latter of whom turns out to be a robot replacement of the original.
• Mythology Gag: The series' ending having been heavily delayed gives the comic the opportunity to tip its hat to its reboot/successor, which was only just beginning when Joyce and Walky! was supposed to end. So, for instance, the first real appearance of Joyce's siblings includes Jocelyne, and Dorothy and Joyce's last conversation alludes to their far more positive interactions in Dumbing of Age.
• No-Dialogue Episode: Joyce and Walky's wedding ceremony—at least until Head Alien I gatecrashes.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Sal gives Head Alien II a damn good thrashing while having just undergone organ transplants.
• No Mere Windmill: Turns out Walky's mom's conversations with the Head Alien weren't hallucinations after all.
• Nonindicative Name: Subverted—Machete, who doesn't carry any sort of blade, is eventually revealed to have gotten the name from his ability to cut people's memories out of them mind-wiper style.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Sal, to Joyce.
• Overly Long Name: "I bet you never expected my army of brainwashed kids-of-your-friends from the future! ... Doesn't roll of the tongue very easily, but not everything good is marketable."
• Revenge: Joyce and Walky are ready to flee HAII's army when Machete mentions he killed Sal, at which point they charge back into battle. Jason is a little less rash but follows them when Machete says HAII recorded the killing and watches it over and over.
• Right Through the Wall: Joyce and Walky. It gets Becky's dad on their case and, well, Becky...
  Becky: What's that noise I sometimes hear in here? Stampeding cattle?
  Joyce: Scrabble. We play very loud Scrabble.
• Rubber-Band History: The Alternate Universe arc starts with a replay of the The Unmasqued World arc of It's Walky, except Joe and Joyce are together now and Walky is nowhere in sight...and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
• Self-Serving Memory: Joyce has got a bit of a case of this with regards to her relationship with Danny in Roomies!.
• Shot in the Ass: Joyce's mom. She withholds the location of the wound long enough to guilt Joyce into having kids.
• Status Quo Is God: Head Alien I, outnumbered and on the retreat, suggests this: he rebuilds his army, Joyce and Walky rebuild SEMME, and the cycle of plotting-and-thwarting continue just like the old days.
• Tempting Fate: Lampshaded.
  Joe: Everything's going to be completely different, isn't it?
  Danny: Yep. And I'm completely ready. ... Nothing can possibly go wrong!
  Joe ducks under the table, than cautiously pokes his head up
  Joe: Nothing happened.
  Danny: Told you everything is different.
  • And Played Straight a moment later—after Danny's big speech about how he feels ready for any challenge life lobs at him, D.J. shows up and claims to be his son.
• Under the Mistletoe: Joyce and Sal freak out when they find themselves under it in the Dec. 2005 wallpaper.
• Wedding Smashers: Head Alien I in Dorothy's body. Lampshaded.
  Sorry, took "wedding crasher" a wee bit too literally.''
• With This Ring: Joe fumbles it at Danny and Billie's wedding, sending Sal and Joyce scrambling to beat each other to get it, much to the irritation of the bride and groom. Sarah beats both of them to it.
  Sal and Joyce: Drama queen.

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