New storyline time! We’re five-days-a-week for the duration, as usual.
Let’s try not to generate 600 posts about this one. Or maybe we should! Who has opinions about hamster life cycles? Anybody?
Shortpacked! by David Willis
Toys are serious business.
Convention appearances:
Calgary Expo Calgary, AB: April 26-28
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
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Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
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The Book of Biff
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Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
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Dinosaur Comics
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Not Invented Here
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Aww… =(
But what about the babies?
[I mean the incest babies, or are those Willis's]
Amber’s Snkrs and Ani are based on our first batch of hamsters who had the same names. Our current batch of hamsters are the incest babies. They are also, uh, nameless. Because they all look the friggin’ same. And are about two years old… (Though roborovskis live longer than dwarfs.)
Did Mike get a haircut?
No, he is Mike’s evil twin brother. And just think on how much of a dick Mike is, then cower in fear that he’s the good one.
If Mike had an evil(er) twin, the entire Walkyverse would be enslaved by now.
It’s probably just to avoid the way it would look with the’s leg of Amber’s speach bubble overlapping his hair.
aww +’(
Awwwwww.
*huggles her* Poor Amber. Someone, quickly locate a potion to expand their life!
To some people Hamster’s are a flaw.
Hamster’s what? I mean, what is it that is possessed by hamsters that is a flaw? It couldn’t be a contraction, because ‘hamster is are a flaw’ makes no sense…
I tolerate hamsters, but simply can’t stand the hamster agenda pro-hamster people bombard me with all the time. I mean, sometimes I visit someone’s house and there’s like, you know, a hamster cage in their room! Gross! They should just hide it so people like me don’t have to deal with that kinda stuff. I mean, normal people like dogs and cats!
And can you believe how those pro-hamster people are pushing their agenda on our schools? They are teaching OUR children about hamsters! They are even making children’s books about hamsters! I hear some schools (mainly in San Francisco, of course) even have hamsters IN the classroom! Where will it stop? When will they stop trying to BRAINWASH our children into being pro-hamster?
WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??
I’m not allowed to think of the children – court order.
Noooo! Not the hams! You can’t have them, God, they are under the protection of Amazigirl!
Surely between Mike and Robin they have enough connections to SEMME to arrange for the hams to be resurrected whenever they die.
And I’m absolutely positive that the secretive government agency will have no problems whatsoever in wasting martian technology for 9 months at a time to make immortal hamsters for a random toy store employee who just happens to know two of their more grating former members.
Less than 9 months. If I recall, the only reason it takes that long is because that’s how long it takes for a human fetus to develop into an actual, biologically-functioning, human.
Of course, could be wrong there.
Yeah. For hamsters it’d be just a few weeks. But… expensive. Oh yes.
they resurected mike (probably). surely resurecting some cute little hams would cancel that out?
It turns out they didn’t resurrect Mike. Mike is immortal as he is A**hole incarnate. Destroying the body is like applying Preparation H to hemmorhoids. Only temporary relief. You know he has returned when someone’s Mom suddenly has a new number on thier phone contact list and is a nickel richer.
The old convention says that you cannot bring back people who have reached the end of their natural lifespan. Whatever passes for “natural”.
And then there are the side-effects. Does the government really want super-powered hamsters running around?
I don’t think that’s a side effect of being revived, I think it’s just because they had those powers in the first place.
Willis, you bastard.
Comic Book Time isn’t in effect here?
Sadface.
DOA is Willis’s only strip so far to use Comic Book Time.
I was about to say, the entire Roomies!-It’s Walky!-Joyce and Walky! superseries used IRL time as opposed to comic time.
For some reason I had a feeling that a character was going to be killed off. I just never guessed it would be the hamsters.
NOT A DREAM!
NOT A HOAX!
NOT AN IMAGINARY STORY!
My little doggy will be fifteen this August. He’s… not as fast as he used to be, not as playful, can’t really jump down from the footrest so well anymore… but he’s still the baby. He’s going to be the baby until the day the unthinkable happens. And that day is coming closer and closer.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y185/Ridureyu/scottyclaimschair02.png
Someone hug me, please.
my maggie dog is 14 too so I will gives hugs if I can get em as well
My dogs are still young (I think) so I’ve got enough hugs to go around.
*Hugs each of you individually*
Damn if I can’t remember what it’s like to watch a pet grow old.
Awww! Such a sweet face.
My two dogs are both still pretty young (older one is fouetté years and the baby is seven months), but my two house rabbits are getting up there.
Hugs for you and therapy bills for Willis for making my husband and me relive the death of our little ham Igoo.
I’ve seen that dog somewhere before…
Sad, my dawrf hamster died in December, they are always babies.
I have opinions about the false-positive ban page I kept getting when I tried to see the comic. Really scared me there Willis, I didn’t even post a comment on the last comic.
I had a pet hamster that died on me once. His name was Gizmo. Honestly….I’m getting a little emotional just thinking about it…..
I wouldn’t ban you! Yer my boy!
And, yeah, I had to go check in on our hamsters while drawing this. They’re also nearing the end of their lives and I’m still a little superstitious.
The Drama Tag rears its ugly head again.
It’s not often I feel bad for Amber on both comics…
Both whats the other one???
Amber is also a character in Dumbing of Age, Willis’s new college comic. It’s like the Walkyverse, but with no alien invasion and everybody went to school together.
cool ill read it tomorow
I’d feel more sympathetic if that hamster had vowels in its name.
You… you vowelist!
The other hamsters are named “Ruth” and “Dina.”
Did either of them know Ruth?
Awww…. ham hams go bye bye
I know the feeling of losing a pet. In my case, 2 tortoises.
Poor Amber and poor hamsters. Two years? That’s a horribly short lifespan. None of the full sized hamsters my family had when I was a kid lived super long lives but only two years is terrible. Poor things.
You know, Mike’s actually not being an asshole this time.
That is a bit odd.
That’s only because he’s speaking the truth.
I actually have very strong opinions about hamster lifespans. I think they should be longer.
You think he isn’t, but in fact he’s responsible for the short lifespan of hamsters. And the passage of time. Mike’s assholishness is cosmic.
He doesn’t have to be in this case – it’s already hurting her enough to realize her babies are getting old and will be gone in less than a year. =\
Well mike did mention the date she got the hamsters which will make amber more upset because now she’s going to be watching to see if either of her hamsters too see if they will be on there way to purgatory.
The hamsters are Catholic?
As the fabled bear.
Interesting Willis by your strips I see that that there is some dark cloud hanging over you considering that your last two strips are very grim.
Hamster life cycles are a tool of the new world order that wants to put lizard people in our water supplies using chemtrails.
Your comment wins you one (1) Internet. Would you like it gift-wrapped?
In tinfoil, please.
Makes me wanna go out in the back yard and dig up my old hamster for old time’s sake.
….Well, really I’d just like to check the degree of decomposition, but I’m sure the plight of Anakin and Snkrs factors in there someplace.
This is going to be so sad…
I have now gotten everything I wanted out of this comic.
You wanted dead hamsters? That’s oddly specific.
The question I wanna know is, how old were they when she got them and what is the in-comic date of this particular.
I know this is a late reply, but it’s worth replying to. In MOST comics, the current date is usually hinted or stated at some point. A good deal are known for being somewhat off, usually reprsented by noticable changes in climate and such to represent a time of year rather than showing a calendar. This comic however seems to be directly linked to our present. This would mean the hamsters are about 18 months old out of two years. If you were to put that in ‘human years’ against a life expectancy of 70 (which is lenient for old age death), that would put them at about 52 years old.
So they are the equivient to my age then? Now I really do feel old.
The thing that I’m confused about though is this:
The comic has supposedly been set in our present, but wasn’t there a time skip during Robin’s sugar high? Or was the time skip just that short?
I don’t think 1 strip equals 1 day. This isn’t 24.
That’s the downside of having hamsters as pets, the short lifespan. As a coworker said when I showed her hamster pictures and she decided she wanted some, “Two years?! I’ll be crying all the time!”
As regards Golden hamsters, it is amazing they live as long as they do since the ones in the U.S. come from a single litter brought to the UK in 1930. Descendants of that litter were brought to the U.S. in 1938, and there is no record of further wild stock being imported. So Golden hamsters are seriously inbred here in the U.S.
BTW, Mr. Willis, can we have some hamham gravatars for SP! and DoA please?
Stores don’t sell them much older than a few months – that’s just the turnover rate, they come in once the litters get old enough to start having strong desires to kill one another, and usually don’t stay in the store much past two months after that.
For reference, these are solitary, dry climate creatures and they detest company of any kind, once allowed to make a personal space. Thus adding a second dwarf hamster to a singleton, even if it’s the opposite sex, has about a 1/3 chance of ending up with Hannibal Lector style antics.
I mention this because I suspect Mike tolerates them only because they are about as antisocial as him, and more violent about it.
I’m actually exaggerating there – nothing Lector ever did comes CLOSE to what I have seen dwarf hamsters do to each other.
???
Wow. Um, there is only *some* accuracy with this info; Dwarf hamsters (specifically Russian and Winter Whites) are cold climate animal. They live in warrens like rabbits and, like rabbits have complex communities. Yes, they will have territorial/mating competitions to the death, but, if you have a non-related m/f pair *of the same species* they will live harmoniously for their entire lifespan. They will mate, and the male will help the female raise the litter(s). When they are old enough, the offspring need to be separated from the parents (and each other) to avoid inbreeding/mate competition-kills.
Otherwise, it is usually because humans can’t tell dwarf hamster breeds apart (or, in some cases don’t care) and put them together, resulting in distressingly grisly murders.
“Regular” hamsters are (to a genetic root) Syrian hamsters, and basically “all in the family.” This is why you can introduce (and immediately separate again) different “breeds” of hamsters for the purpose of breeding a certain colour strain (black bear, teddy bear, silk, dalmation etc). But yes. Syrian hamsters are what are described by NickD, and should not be housed together for longer than mating purposes.
How do I know this shit?
Worked for a petshop owner who despises the irresponsible breeding/care practices of local breeders/suppliers and decided to put her university degree to good use and breed her own happier, healthier hamsters for her shop.
awww… No! Do what Least I Can Do and Something Postive do. Make the rule that adorable should not be allowed to age and die! Pwease…?
You mean like have them lose all their hair and gain shapeshifter powers?
Umm… no… I said they’re not allowed to age and die. I never said anything about turning into Bald Plastic Man
Davan made Choo-Choo Bear promise not to die in Something Positive.
Meanwhile In Least I Can Do, they made the law that while humans can age and die, the animals were immune.
Ouch! the cycle of life is a cruel mistress T.T
I DO NOT HAVE STRONG OPINIONS ONE WAY OR ANOTHER BUT I WILL MAKE DAMN SURE YOU ARE AWARE OF IT!
OPINION!!
I have the image of you sitting at an eight foot wide keyboard as if at a church organ, hitting the giant keys with overhand strikes from your fists…
Personally I’m picturing CWR typing this death note style. Huge exagerated movements that take his hands up into the air between every keystroke. Every dynamic camera angle in the book in steady rotation while a choir sings of destruction in the background.
Relevant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddgn0C1Xs1A
I AM MELODRAMATIC! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!
NOW I EAT A BANANA!
OPINION!
That should have read “I peal a banana… AND EAT IT”
just my OPINION though
I don’t know what I want, but I’m willing to fight for it!
PEELING IS FOR WEAKLINGS!
A harsh criticism of strippers indeed.
@ Person
You… peal it? Like a bell? I did not know bananas were so… *sonorous.* All I ever got from a banana was a muffled *thwud* if I dropped it.
(ewww… bruised banana. Welp, put in the blender! Smoothie, yum!)
awww….amber’s expression in the last panel just breaks my heart.
OH NO! Who will drive
the Big OAmber around like a robot now?Paradigm CityAmber’s apartment will soon be without its protector!That makes me insanely sad.
2 years, a little bit more if you’re lucky.
Though this was the case for my gerbils. I miss my princesses. (T^T)
Having lost a few pets myself I really feel for Amber here.
I am not a fan of hamsters as pets. They don’t seem to enjoy being petted or picked up. They need to constantly have their cage cleaned or it will smell like a pee bomb. They don’t seem to be very happy lying around in pin shavings or other fluff much. They run in a wheel to keep from dying of atrophy. I don’t think we have much to offer hamsters nor do they offer us much. It’s like having a little prisoner held in solitary for the duration of its life who hopes you’ll just put the food down and fix the way the water bottle hangs and then just go away.
At least cats and dogs seem to want us around and actually seek our company.
Psh, hamsters live forever compared to my pets of choice… I’ve got a dozen or so fruit flys. That’s heartbreaking. By the time you’ve come up with a name for one of them, you’ve got to add a numeral to it.
And this is why ah prefer guinea pigs. They live 4-5 years, sometimes longer and in some rare cases almost as long as a large dog!
Also behaviourally guinea pigs are better pets as they are non-solitary (unfortunately this can also be a problem. You can’t own one guinea pig as they can actually die of lonliness, however males hate each other if you introduce them to each other too late. You gotta buy them both at once or buy two females or be ready to have babies by getting a pair!)
Also unlike hamsters guinea pigs are shyer explorors. you’re less likely to have them try and escape from you at the drop of a hat!
Also they’re larger, just big enough for a nice cuddle!
My piggie lived from February of ’04 to just past his sixth birthday in Feb ’10.
as the pround owner of 8 guinea pigs (Lion, Big Kate, Liz, Corage ,Harvey, Dent, Red and Coward) I agree!
Hooray for guinea pigs!
Rats are, BY FAR, the best small furry pets. I say this having kept hamsters, mice and gerbils. I don’t really know much about guinea pigs except they seem like furry lumps. And, they are considered a delicacy in some South American countries. Rats are like small dogs. By this I don’t mean they are like Small Dogs. (Small Dogs suck!) Rats are like tiny Large Dogs. They aren’t nervous, nippy or skittish. They actually enjoy your company. Domesticated rats are smart and clean. They are as different from wild rats as dogs are from wolves. And, they make good parents if you choose to breed them.
I’ve had hamsters, gerbils, and rats. The rats were by far the most cuddly of my rodenthine pets.
I second that. Rats are clean, social, playful, and so smart it’s almost scary.
Rats are, indeed AWESOME. Their lifespans are fairly short, though. Seems really unfair for such a smart creature. Degus (day-goo) are also extremely smart, best in pairs and have a 5-8-year lifespan, give or take. They are low-altitude communal rodents (foothills of the Andes, originally, now widely-available as captive-bred), and males have been known to adopt the offspring of a chosen mate.
I won’t write more coz it’ll be too long a post, and I already did one of those above.
Get a copy of Barron’s (publisher) Degu book.
Very, very cool little cuties.
Sea scorpions or Eurypterids also would have made really fantastic pets but unfortunately they all died out about 250 million years ago. The horseshoe cabs that supposedly replaced them are total bull#@#$. What a rip off.
In the word crabs the r is sometimes invisible.
This is why I prefer little black kittehs.
I can sadly attest that hamsters do not live long.
But as long as you give them pieces of walnuts and pecans, sunflower seeds, a used paper towel tube, and a wheel, they can live a lifetime’s worth.
I’m starting a new job today. I had cinnamon rolls for breakfast – and my week is already ruined. NOT THE HAM-HAMS! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! (ooooooooo)
NARBONIC CROSSOVER! ARTIE GOT A LONGER LIFESPAN! IF IT WORKS FOR GERBILS — wait, no, the hamsters there were evil.
517 left to go!
A hamsters life span should last as long as it takes to skin and roast them. Before serving in a nice little sandwich.
Smells Like Hamster Love!
http://www.maniacworld.com/not-exactly-hamster-love.html
Well at least they didn’t get eaten by the mobile pink singularity, or does it only eat transformers?
The Singularikitty lives in Leslie’s house, while Amber and Mike have their own apartment.
Oh yeah. Whatever happened to the Singularikitty?
SK is dueling metabolisms inside of Robin as we speak.
I don’t care that my cat just had his tenth birthday, he’s still a kitten!
One of my daughter’s rats is 2 and a half now. He’s getting Old Rat Tumors. And, he’s acting just like Amber’s hams. Their little bodies just haven’t evolved to live as long as we can keep them alive.
Of course this page won’t get 600 replies.
The comic is not about homophobia.
(which is why the previous comic got so many comments to begin with XD )
The bad part is that since the previous page seems to be locked for replies, I’ll never get the answer I was expecting about “speculations of biological reasons for homosexuality” which seemed really interesting. -___-
Are the hamsters gay in this universe?
Name ONE confirmed for heterosexual character in this comic
Ronnie, unless I missed a storyline somewhere.
Does Galasso and Conquest count?
Conquest has been shown to have in interest in having sex with girls, so she is clearly bi.
Galasso doesn’t even know what a gender is, so he is either panasexual or asexual.
This acknowledgement of Shortpacked!’s lack of Comic Book Time just caused another realization.
Mike and Amber started dating in June of 2009. They’ve been together for Two Whole Years!
Somehow I figured that one would have murdered the other by now.
Love can have strange effects on people.
So can hate.
I just finished rereading Joyce and Walky then I see your post under it telling everyone your going to finish it but in the meantime enjoy other of your comic strips but I’m wondering how you plan too finish Joyce and Walky if your always drawing up new strips for SP and DOA?
And dont get me wrong I enjoy all you webcomics but i feel that your starting to get in over your head with all these different projects going simultaneously and that you won’t be able to finish your original webcomic.
…finish?
Aaaaaaand… once again, my comments wont show up. One did with the “awaiting moderator approval” thing, but that disappeared and now NONE are showing up, what gives?
This one of all of them gets posted >_>
Anyway, as for my original message:
I can sympathize with Amber on this one. My first pets were gold fish and those things… do not live for a long time…
Poor Rocky and Bullwinkle
Go with a beta. Sure they’re the least entertaining domestic fish there is, but my mom had one that lived almost six years.
I have 2 beta fish at my home, though they’re my sister’s. I’m actually not much of a fish person… they’re just so… boring. But the goldfish were the first pets I had and I got to name them and everything >_>
If I were to get a pet now, I’d get a kitten… though I honestly don’t really trust myself with pets <_<
Is it wrong that this comic made me go and look at hamster today?
…. Willis, you are an asshole. When my gerbils died I was a wreck for months, you can’t do that to Amber!
I’m in favor of hamster lifecycles. Last thing we need is to be overrun by hamsters.
They’re easier to control than Tribbles, and just as cute.
This is why I stopped owning pets after my schnauzer died. I barely HAVE any feelings, I’m not willing to subject the ones I DO have to that kind of pain again.
Also, just to get the response numbers up… this is more proof that just because something occurs in nature, that doesn’t make it all sunshine and gumdrops.
Just be glad nobody in this strip has an orangoutan.
My Dwarf Ham (his name is Pintsize after the QC character)
http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j424/Gomiboy1/0250c467.jpg
http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j424/Gomiboy1/b0638d82.jpg
I had pet rats when I was a kid. And don’t say ewe; they’re very clean and respond to affection in much the same way a dog would. I’m not sure the valididty of this, but I remember hearing that rats are the only rodents that can laugh when tickled.
I had one named Whiskers that got out of his cage once; we spent about an hour looking for him until my mom whistled to bring the dog in, he ran out into the middle of the room and stood there till I picked him up. From then on if he got out he’d come back just by wistling. There’s probably at least two years worth of my life where half the pictures of me have a rat asleep on my head.
Anyway, that rat must have been at least five years old when he passed. Rat’s are only supposed to live three years, so there were about two years of agonizing suspense before he went.
While you’re all over there being sad about pets & stuff, I’ll stand over here realizing this may be the start of a new story arc…”Fishen’ Chicks”…
And Bart is in his 40′s by now
I had a pet Chinchilla for at least 8 years, and he died in the last few months. Losing a pet, no matter how small, is really sad
I may have to take a break or skip this arc of the comic if it gets too emotional XD It’s still a pretty sensitive thing… I miss him 
Both my hamsters died within 18 months of buying them.
Hamsters suck.
awww.. animal lifespans can be a bitch.. With rodents it’s understandable, as if they lived any longer we’d be overrun.. but what’s the excuse for octopodes? Dammit, I want more octopodes. That intelligence gets wasted.. and stupidest of all, if you castrate em they live way longer.
Whales need to take a page from hamsters and start breeding like crazy so we can eat them without guilt.
Oh and what do parrots and tortoises think they’re doing outliving us? Arrogant beaky bastards.
This…will not end well.
125 comments eh? I think we could hit 500 on this one easy, somebody should piss some people off, or I could get into an argument with Willis XD
(I’m joking… Please don’t hurt me >_>)
WHY YOU LITTLE *shakes fist*
Seeing pets go is a bitch. My first dog had to be put down because of cancer, it can be really saddening.
I never had a rodent as a mascot, but my aunt loves animals and had hamsters, a guinea pig, a white rat, a night monkey. I have a dog that is more than 15 years old, and that is surprising because supposedly, the biggest and the smallest breeds have the shortest lifespans, and she is smaller than a cat. In my house also lived a blue-forehead amazon for more than 20 years, but we had him/her in a tree and a strong windstorm made him/her fly and we never found him/her. Sometimes a couple of those fly over my neiborghood and I hope one of them is him/her…