do YOU love achewood, too?

You mean awesome last panel

Also, the reappearance of the dude from Lyle's past in the fish contest panels makes me happy

http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=12022010
^so accurately assesses my mindstate and recent cajoling into taking a three month pottery class with the gf that it's kinda spooky

i got a couple of chuckles from the 'free' chapbook, but mostly i got the sense of a sad family life

yeah, that shit is GRIM

he's the guy who sucks

and he's got depression

how much to read into the reference to a "brain problem" in the meta tag?

i love this guy as much as anyone and interviewed him years ago and buy his print collections whenever they come out but it's pretty obvious he does not want to draw this strip anymore and i kinda wish he'd stop instead of just getting increasingly cranky and half-assed about it.

I don't know if he knows what else to do, and there is still a fanbase

It's pretty tricky

no, yeah, he's often made bitter remarks about how if he stopped "nerds in honda goldwings" would crucify him. i appreciate the difficulty.

pretty sure what he wants to do is write, which is why the strips these days are so often just huge blocks of illuminated text. i mean, i don't know where his money comes from or how important it is to his family that he keep writing the strip, but if it's not absolutely necessary i kinda think he should stop and write his novel or whatever it is he wants to do. (also he's been dropping hints about adult swim for years, but that's obv out of his control.)

i mean it's not really any of my business of course but the strip is so infrequent and seems so grudging and depressed (and no longer all that funny about depression, like it's trapped inside depression instead of being able to observe it properly) it just makes me unhappy now.

what he should do is push roast beef off a waterfall, like arthur conan doyle.

Push him off on a Roomba, though.

sounds like relationship issues have him in a "why bother" loop which i can totally sympathize with

I get a sense that he tried to kill Teodor this past year and couldn't bring himself to stick the knife in, as it were. Anyway,

it's pretty obvious he does not want to draw this strip anymore and i kinda wish he'd stop instead of just getting increasingly cranky and half-assed about it.

is OTM I think.

i don't know where his money comes from

he's been very clear and open that it came from selling T-shirts and hot sauce and POD collections for years and years. doubt the Dark Horse editions are making up for all of that now he's stopped.

weird how bleak that chapbook feels without ever being too directly grim about anything. couple throwaway gags about power struggles and sex not having, one about staying in bed. but there's an overall tone of unhappy aimlessness and emptiness. a place devoid of joy.

plus i don't think i ever quite realized how much dude can't draw. no sign in that thing anywhere that he even likes to draw.

dude went from "depression-prone" to "actually depressed"--what can u really say.

Yeah, that was interesting. xp

he moved to portland, people. not getting out of bed sometimes is sorta SOP up here iirc.

re the drawing: i think cartooning is something he kind of fell into, as a way to write strange ornate very in-character dialogue. (although i think there are lots of places in achewood where his clip-art minimalism can be really striking.) in the last year or two (probably from beef's wedding on) the drawings have become less and less relevant, except in those occasional weird chris-ware-aping things. he's also done a lot more prose work elsewhere which i'm glad of because i'm sure it makes him happier than the strip does, but personally i'm not a huge fan of his prose -- think his linguistic gift lends itself mostly to voice and character, and when he's writing as himself it just reads like mid-level "shouts and murmurs" (writing for which btw he told me a couple years ago was a big ambition of his).

re portland: ha yeah i'm up here too and i kind of worried about him when he announced he was joining us. notice that he does way more complaining these days about hipsters/memeculture than he used to in california.

anyway when i say "he should stop doing the strip" what i really mean is "i hope he succeeds in finding something more fun", and i'd totally watch the achewood tv show, if it ever happened.

when he's writing as himself it just reads like mid-level "shouts and murmurs" (writing for which btw he told me a couple years ago was a big ambition of his).

otm; kind of lol, mostly sad

clay, you beat me to that exact post by 31 min

mine mighta had a cuss or somethin i guess

if i want to love this can i just read randomly or do i need to start someplace?

lol knew I was missin somethin

either way, don't move to pdx kids

if i want to love this can i just read randomly or do i need to start someplace?

― toastmodernist, Saturday, January 8, 2011 12:00 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well really you should start at the beginning and read straight through

i don't know How to start at the beginning, the wesbite is an insane mess. I do want to though.

http://m.assetbar.com/achewood/uua7X4JNk

start here and click forward. go with god my friend.

u lose the alt text this way, but still

just getting around to the chapbook and uh dang

yeah, that shit is GRIM

― predeep natsvitika (forksclovetofu), Friday, January 7, 2011 3:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^otm

dude went from "depression-prone" to "actually depressed"--what can u really say.

― call all destroyer, Saturday, 8 January 2011 04:17 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

um did I miss something or is this just basically projecting and kind of nagl

i think you missed something

really tho? I mean when he does talk about his personal life it's in oblique terms iirc... I don't have access to the subscription stuff if that makes any difference

i mean there's been enough little scraps of evidence that i'm pretty sure that it's part of the story.

in any case i have no idea how that would be "projecting" on my part.

I remember him saying in an interview he didn't have depression, he was just writing Roast Beef off friends he knew.

Onstad just needs to put King Chochacho's medallion back on.
It was bittersweet seeing lil scrying Phillipe @ the start of most recent comic. Haven't seen that little otter in far too long.

i love him

oh hey it came back

wow, that is some abstract shit

I liked it

I did too, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

was it really anymore abstract than your average pearls before swine?

Really looking forward to his next interview.

p lame, imo

i liked it too

Until he starts updating this thing at least weekly, I'm not really sure he's back.

http://s.assetbar.com/one_asset?b=S~cfd4f5a32442ff25864a8357965235a41&a=S~846