That strip above is from much earlier, but in today's strip, Joyce's dad has once again arrived at the scene of the crime - so much crime! But how much does he know? And how is he going to react? All we can do is speculate, but that speculation should have some solid base in his actual history as far as we've seen it...
So it starts badly when a chance meeting with the Keeners and particularly Dorothy raises red flags during the (Book 3 Chapter 4) strips covering the Freshman Family Weekend. Dorothy's mother is surprised to hear that Dorothy's been to church with Joyce since shes...
That discovery, and her parents' reaction riles Joyce who only wants them to love the person she loves, and leads directly to passive-aggressive prayer. Led by Hank. Who is the one who voices concern over Dorothy's atheism and parrots anti-semetic evangelical talking points. Bleeurgh.
The rest of the day passes harmlessly enough (if you discount Ethan and Jocelyn's continued closeting) but then there's the second encounter at Showalter fountain...
This time it's Carol who takes the lead in hostility towards the Keeners, but when Joyce turns their religion back against her parents' it's Hank who follows his daughter's lead - choosing her over bigotry, just as Joyce has chosen Dorothy over their objections. I've labeled this scene before as Joyce's primary turning point. I think it's Hank's, too.
Following Becky being kidnapped by her father at gunpoint (Book 6 Chapter one), Joyce calls her mother to tell her she supports Becky, has no problem with her being lesbian, and nor should Carol. Carol calls back, glad that Joyce is safe, but then uses the same phrases as Becky's father, and tries to justify his actions. Nevertheless, Joyce agrees to go home at the end of the week and spend a weekend with her parents. She's terribly stressed about it, and so Becky goes with her. Hank comes to pick her up:
This scene has echoes of the moment at the start of the Freshman Family Weekend strips when Carol rushes to embrace her 'baby'. Hank's 'Apple Store' comment underscores his innate conservatism. Then Becky appears and for a moment, things are tense.
But Hank is aware that she's been through hell because of her father, and immediately embraces her, too. He has... thoughts about her appearance, but he doesn't dump on her.
And there we have it; he's struggling to accept stuff, but he knows that this is Joyce (and Becky's) journey, and so he just has to sit back and... be humble about it. Literally, to de-centre his self when it comes to their lives.
In the car-park he gives Joyce the keys to drive them home, framing it as them doing him a favour - but this is also another evidence of him trusting her to be adult. And during the drive home, he treats her like an adult further, opening up to her about his own feelings for Becky's father and basically telling her he's proud of her actions.
Back at the house, he tries to moderate Carol's hostility to Becky over the dinner table, and and then the next morning Joyce overhears him trying to calm Carol's fears that Joyce will be "seduced by unbelievers and lesbians..." When Carol says that she want's to take Joyce out of college, Joyce steals the car for the day, driving around in circles with Becky (and breaking into Becky's old house for her social security number and birth certificate, and raging at her oldest brother in a restaurant...) to avoid having to deal with the threat. Then when they get home that evening, their attempt to sneak in is derailed by the dog...
Again, Hank attributes his defense of them to his own pride, but barely hidden beneath that facade (and the very real annoyance he feels at their actions) is the fact that he is defending them. He believes in them.
But he's still not really pushing back against his own core beliefs. Yet. Then he overhears this at church the next morning...
So when Joyce disappears from worship (having noticed how some of the things Becky's father said are echoed in the worship songs), he follows. And discovers that he and his daughter have a lot in common.
Hank gathers up Becky and Joyce, and returns them to the college where they find that Billie and Ruth's suicide pact has been discovered and everyone's in the health centre. Becky's panic at this news prompts Hank to trust Joyce with the information that Becky's mum didn't die of cancer, like she'd been told, but had killed herself. He takes them to join their friends.
These are classic Hank moments. And in the strips that follow, we learn that he's helped Becky set up a bank account. He isn't perfect, but he's doing what he can; he's the foil to the 'evil dads,' Blaine O'Malley and Ross Macintyre.
Then in Book nine, Chapter three, we see that Joyce's parents' church (with Carol front and centre) is trying to bail out Ross, and accept support from Blaine to do so. This leads directly to the horrendous events of book ten in which Joyce and most of her friends are kidnapped by the evil dads, Ross is killed by Blaine, and Joyce is kidnapped by him AGAIN before Amazi-girl/Amber clean his clock for good. Then the parents of most of the affected kids rush to the scene and some of them bump into each other in the foyer...
The Keeners (via Dorothy) ask Joyce if she would be ok seeing her dad, but not her mum as they are currently, uh, not a 'package deal'. And Dorothy points out that he's visibly crying out in the hallway. Joyce goes to him and he embraces her, wordlessly. They all go to lunch together (sans Carol, who is busy wrestling Ruth), and Hank reminisces about the titty-bear who used to decorate Galasso's before it was Galasso's. Then Blaine is shot at the hospital, and they rush there to see if Amber's ok, and to check on Mike.
And that's the last we see of Hank before the timeskip. He's not shown up since then until today, though his walking away from Carol has become divorce, and he's texted Joyce to ask if it was her 'brother' at the protest.
I think it's clear that Hank is essentially a nurturing man. He hates the lies and self-centredness found in too many churches, he owns that it is wrong to the Walkertons, and he apologises to the Keeners for his judgementalism. None of that means he's left his faith behind like Joyce has done; he may be adapting it to new truths, like Becky. Or he may be keeping it compartmentalized so that it can still spring out and trip him up. But even if that's the case, the consistent thing about Hank is that he treats Joyce with both affection and respect; as an adult, not as an erring child to be corrected. He's de-centred himself repeatedly and responded to Becky and Joyce with kindness, openness, and respect.
But how will he handle Joyce being so cheerfully seduced by the godless and the lesbian? How will he cope with discovering that his son Joshua is his daughter, Jocelyn? We don't know - these may be several bridges too far for an essentially conservative man. But... he values the potential for character evolution. Let's see if he can embody it.
You know Hank, divorce gets kind of a bad wrap but I think you should consider it. There’s like— you know there are some churches that are cool with it! And even the ones that aren’t might agree that your wife sucks
