Achewood

Assetbar archive: Google Labs + Internet Self-Diagnosis

Sorry for the image quality on this old stuff. Many of the original art files from all those years and houses and ego-deaths ago have been impossible to locate—which is, sigh, just so life. Especially when it matters to you. There's a way to upscale and enhance gif image clarity, but you'll need to recommend a good app to me if you know of one, because the kitchen started smelling like fresh gingersnap cookies right as I was trying to solve this problem and distracted sorry  <...

Interview: Peter H. "Nice Pete" Cropes (pdf)

Roast Beef has begun a new interview series in which he asks the gang their beliefs about utopia and heaven. For some reason, he decided to kick things off with Nice Pete. 

The Netflix Achewood Series That Almost Was, Part 1

1.

On June 14, 2018 — my birthday, incidentally—Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time, Bravest Warriors) came to Portland to have lunch. We'd known each other ever since he'd come to a The Great Outdoor Fight signing at Meltdown in Los Angeles ten years prior. His new show Midnight Gospel was doing well at Netflix, and he wanted to run an idea by me.

Over a lunch of a watery-looking kimchi ramen (I had really hoped Portland could do be...

0009 - Return of Achewood, pt 7

In this penultimate installment of the Return to Achewood arc, we take a brief moment to show appreciation for the genius of Max Fleischer. If you were, like our special guest, born in the 1920s, there may have been no contemporary art more unsettling to you than his "jazz cigarette" approach to character design and kinetics. Here we see Lie Bot's continuing propensity to stir up trouble by flickering into disguise — this time as B. Boop. Other things happen, as well. 

0008 - Return of Achewood, pt 6

Our beloved guest from the public domain was naïve to assume that the modern world's hijinks began and ended with CornHub. It used to be that you just slapped this fellow's face on a book about sharing or the importance of finishing your toast, and the world turned once again on its oiled axis; today's consumer needs are quite different! We are left wondering, until next week: does the demon spare no one?

Also: Can you spot the one image that was created using an AI image generator? Fu...

Roast Beef's Reunion Interview With Todd (pdf)

Roast Beef hadn't seen Todd since before Covid, so he went down to an alley where Todd was often found, to check on the guy. What follows is a delightful recounting of their conversation, which ranges from the recent history of Todd's van, to whether Beef has five dollars. This latter subject is revisited multiple times.

0007 - Out-Of-Character-Comix!

I was talking with this subscriber, M.B., and he said that the "Out-Of-Character-Comix!" one-offs were among his favorite strips. It got me to thinking about the challenge of writing brief, single-gag pieces. For me, they are more difficult than long strips, as their brevity requires elegance. Alright, that was kind of an assholey way to say that I recognize that the punchy early stuff is many peoples' favorite, and I'll be trying my hand at it again.   

(Oh, and, this strip w...

The New Yorker "Sandwich Duel" (see full PDF below)

I wrote and illustrated the following twelve pieces (see PDF below) for a series that The New Yorker’s Zach Kanin (SNL, I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson) and I co-wrote in 2008. The series chronicles the ongoing war between our respective sandwich shops. Though his shop was in Manhattan and mine was in Silicon Valley, we were bitterly determined to outdo one another. This project ended up being some of my favorite writing that I’ve ever done.

I c...

0006 - Return of Achewood, pt 5

Lyle briefly interrupts our narrative-in-progress to pose a question that many have struggled with—particularly those who indulge too heavily in stews made with cured meats. The nature of the modern world begins to dawn upon our guest, who has already begun to grow wearied by its pastimes. 

Zine 8 - Gettin' Financial

Much to everyone's relief, Beef decided to cancel his planned "bitcoin" issue after creating just one page of it. He was doing some research but then was just like "fuck this," you know, like how you feel when you realize you are doing something you do not want to do, to no one's benefit. So, don't worry! The only person he knew who even had a bitcoin anyway was Ray, but Ray didn't remember where it was or what to do with it. All he knew was that it helped get him invited to parties.

Re...

Rainy Naked Coffee Dream of Darkness

Dream journal for Monday, May 15, 2023

Written upon waking

Nonfiction

Chris Onstad

-

I’m on a family vacation to Hawaii, to the island we usually visit (Kauai), but the only person I’m really seeing is my father. He’s generally in good spirits. It is sodden and gloomy, nothing like the way our trips there usually feel. I awaken in a thin pile of heather gray gym-type clothing and an undersized blanket, naked, on the dirty gray carpet floor...

Achewood in Japanese

My business partner BP grew up in Japan, so we had us some good ol'-fashion fun translating Achewood strips into Japanese. Instead of "achewood" as the masthead, it now says, "ai-ku-boku," with the kanji letters translating as “sadness-hardship-tree,” which I particularly like. (エイクウッド, or Eikuudo, is the "read phonetics," or katakana pronunciation set, of "Achewood.")   

You also have to turn the comic around backwards to translate it, and, since they...

Dispensary Daze

In the attached piece, Roast Beef describes the time that he, with Ray's encouragement, practiced selling marijuana to a man who was probably already going to say yes. (The man we are talking about is Téodor). This piece offers well-delineated insight to just what it is that Golden Tabloid does to make Beef feel like the universe is not constantly that part where Indiana Jones is about to get crushed by the giant stone door.

(1,254 words, a meaty enough read)

0005 - Return of Achewood, pt 4

Though they may plausibly have emerged from the same craftsman's workshop those many years ago, Cornelius and our mystery guest could not be more different. Ray Smuckles, however, assumes that they have an identical intellectual velocity. We lose valuable time as Ray attempts to explain the vicissitudes of the present day to an elderly man whose loins, he suspects, no longer tumesce with vinegar and heme. 

Happy Personal News Dept: I'm Engaged!

I'm engaged!

But Chris, to whom, we ask. And can you please announce this as a comic involving Philippe and not you.

Two years ago Saturday I had my first date with Lauren, and on the second anniversary of that occasion, I proposed. It did not happen in a Frank Sinatra restaurant, on bended knee, as a tuxedo'd waiter brought a Tiffany & Co ring in an oyster shell. But it did involve one knee, bended, and I believe one of the cats was looking. 

If you follow...

Assetbar Archive: Stephen Fry, Roomba Dead Man, Route 66

They said to mete content out carefully, deliberately. But there is so much archival material to share that I decided to recklessly launch with three Assetbar classics today, and just get this ball rock-and-rolling. Based on the poll I ran not too long ago, you said you would not get mad if I sent out a lot of stuff, so I must hold you to this "Internet Promise." I want you to get good—no, excellent—value in exchange for your support, so look for a strong finish to the m...

0004 - Return of Achewood, pt 3

As Ray Smuckles slowly uses the toilet (standing), he muses upon and then quickly confronts the very nature of death ("No."). Our mystery visitor arrives and provides him with first-hand perspective on the experience. We begin to learn things about a certain congenitally miserable animal which some had likely suspected all along.

0003a - "A Diversion!" (Rough Draft)

This is what the rough draft of an Achewood comic looks like, before I spend weeks workshopping the dialogue and eyebrow movements with the technicians and fellow artists at the Zinkmann Cartoonist's Center in Vail, Colorado. (Although, truthfully, it's mostly on Zoom these days.) This draft is crude, and I strongly caution you against reading it, but I did promise that in the Author's Tier you'd see all aspects of the sausage-making, not just the nice part where the smiling butcher (me) prou...

0003 - A Diversion!

In this momentary departure from the story arc already in place, Lyle and Téodor come to strong words over the nature of psychopharmacological distraction. Professional readers will note that Lyle still wears his "Registered Asshole" glasses (title legally assigned August 27, 2007). Next week we return to the story already in progress. 

Should I post "lost" / rare old stuff in with all the new material?

Achewood has had many archives and appearances outside of the main site: WebComicsNation, Assetbar/Fanflow, and various incarnations of the Honor Club, to name but a few. Our Discord users have suggested it would be nice to see these things on the Patreon. I'm considering adding them, but only in addition to the original material you've already been promised, and only if it's the Will of the Community. Examples would be the big color stories from the Dark Horse magazines, the...

0002 - Return of Achewood, pt 2

In a thrillingly on-time update (I kid; these updates are loaded long in advance), Ray continues to declare corporeal discomfort so great that he must be served by others. His long-suffering friend Roast Beef walks down the hallway in his stead, in order to discern the identity of their visitor. This is also a continuation of the story arc; but will next week be a classic, "Achewood one-off"? Either way, we'll see you here. 

The (Condensed) Story of the RayBot.Help Launch Day

Thank you, Author's Tier subscriber! (I would auto-populate your name here, but there is a certain intersection where The Mammal Privacy & Decency Act of 1933* meets Computer Variable Technology,** and I am not comfortable navigating it on my own.)

Speaking of navigating, our team (Jason, David, Ben, and me) got RayBot off the ground yesterday in classic tech launch fashion, or what I c...

Your Achewood Comics Are _Not_ Being Written by AI

I've seen a few people draw an inaccurate conclusion from the Verge article about the relaunch of Achewood, and the RayBot.help project: namely, that new Achewood will be "written by or with AI." 

This is absolutely not the case! I am experimenting with AI, separately from this content, and not on...