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This may be deeply confusing for some, a deep cut for others, and, for a very few, a long-awaited, dared-to-hope dream come true. I like to imagine those in the lattermost camp also hold a torch for Scrambles, Taffy, and Feckless Ted Cobb (whichever one he was). Which reminds me, I should do a "Third Stringer, Where Are They Now" series.

If you're new to this guy, or just want a refresher, check out these three strips. And then Ray's eulogy here.

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Comments

Daniel M Ford

I would love to know Leo's legs day routine.

Josh Egbert

That's some tough language for an angel

Achewood

Blessed Are The Mantonio-Rememberers

Dan Gibbins

Love a deep cut character return. Poor Scrambles, he was lost.

Matt Mitchell

I do hold a torch for Scrambles! I always felt bad for him.

Achewood

HE'S SO MOTHER FUCKING ANGRY

Achewood

You'll find out at noon in the outtakes!

Brady Mullis

On Friday, Leo Fontanette died in a corn field. One of my favorite alt-texts of all time.

Derek Adams

I guess Leo finally earned a chance to graduate up from getting endlessly t-boned in a civic between craft stores

Achewood

Not all who wander are basking in the ecstatic adventure of existence

Achewood

I believe there was one more reference to him a teens strip, like in a poster on a telephone pole.

Achewood

Ray's front porch is a far less cinematic second death, but I didn't think to have Ray discover his dead body in the Caddy in the cornfield 19 years later until just now. Damn.

Achewood

Where was this line from? I thought I'd found all the Leo stuff but this rings a bell

Achewood

Come on, man. I've given you like 293 reasons not to like Todd.

Achewood

I ONLY FRIKKIN DIE **DOUBLE DEATHS**!

GruntyGinMan

Blister uses cusses all the time tho

GruntyGinMan

Slightly past the veil, Ray doesn't see No-No and Trouble Man snapping Leo's neck.

Derek Adams

The wrap-up to Lash of Thanatos! I only remembered it because I happened to see it during a recent random-comic spree

Achewood

Well I'll be damned. Thanks. Yeah, there are two Jo-Ann superstores in their area.

Tom P

Ray ought to consider a job as a professional exorcist, if he can kill even the dead

Alex Schlesinger

A conversation between Leo and Blister must be hell on the ears/caps lock.

Achewood

as cory and zell slowly creak and pad away

Achewood

If you think about it, dead people *should* be pissed. They died!

Adam McIsaac

I always thought a Leo Fontanette Cadillac license plate frame would make good merch.

Omnithea

Recognized Leo immediately. He owes me an acre of corn.

Thomas Williams

The first row of panels had me laughing. From the Dolby 5.1 on, I was howling. Thank you!

Achewood

Even the suffering can't suffer him

Achewood

I can only type them when my wife isn't home, the clacking is so vigorous

Travis O.

I love that the glory and light of Heaven wasn't enough to quell Leo's anger over one sunbaked CD.

Achewood

Wow, yes, this would be a perfect piece of merch. Plus an embroidered black polyester polo with too long of short sleeves. Always tucked in no matter the girth. Nice.

Achewood

Love hearing it, thanks Thomas!

Sedric and Charlie

It was during the Return Of Penny arc. I, too, have held Scrambles close to my heart all these years

Achewood

A guy that angry can't change. It's, like, in his telomeres or whatever. Plus that CD was something like twenty-six bucks

David Mandeix

Man I am genuinely torn here. Is RAY screwing up the friendship, because he can’t separate his ego and need to succeed from his pet project of musicals? Or is BEEF screwing up the friendship by being sucked into the world of writing musicals/ entertainment and placing his success over helping his friend? I see so many parallels to their early science fair days. Ray is competitive and wants to succeed, but generally shies away from the introspection needed to effect the changes required to be successful. Beef is smart and capable, but remains wracked with anxiety and is so dopamine starved that he is driven to ruinous decisions even when in the throes of success.

Achewood

That's it, thanks. Yeah, not a lot of the later strips got transcribed so I can't search them.

Douglas Wykstra

The Leo Fontanette story was my first awareness that you could damage a CD by leaving it in a hot car. Still no idea whether this is specific to 5.1 remasters, the parts of the American Southwest that get hot and dry enough to turn any car into a sauna, or both. Happy to see Leo again, and it seems correct that he got his foot stuck on like his third stride down the noble eightfold path. A little off-topic, but were 5.1 remasters the height of American AV-decadence? "Finally, a CD designed to be listened to exclusively inside the beige stonehenge of overpriced speakers your wife made you put in the basement room because you couldn't figure out a way to hide the cords to her satisfaction."

Sedric and Charlie

Elsewhere Roast Beef is angrily venting his spleen to Shortcakes the Leprechaun, who has been hired to translate his work for foreign markets

Nicholas

Holy shit. Leo Fontanette, one of the great death scenes of all time. Straight-up eulogy for peak American empire. Beach Boys and everything

b.zap

Rockin wings bro

Jaimeson Birse

The Dude's Mutiny ultimately repairs the broken Small-Times Covenant

Achewood

an excellent consideration. I can only offer that there was no way Leo was going to contact Beef, at least not in a way that would have left Beef emotionally capable of breathing without shivering for the rest of his life. And that would probably have disqualified Leo from getting less-stubby wings.

Bungus Bronbo

Scramble's only defining characteristic is that he's lost. If he ever showed up again he'd be found. Bringing him back would probably be committing a dude's mutiny or whatever.

Ian Stewart

Oh no, did poor Leo shout himself back to life only to realize he WON'T be doing any volume in the all-new, ultra-luxury, factory-direct-only Cadillac Celestiq? I hope some conscientious manager already took care of installing a bank of complimentary EV chargers at Leo Fontanette Memorial Cadillac, otherwise poor Leo could be shouting his way back and forth through the veil of death like it was a revolving door.

Spyguitar

I would absolutely put that on my car

Bungus Bronbo

Is there any way to add in the missing transcribed comics? I guarantee the community would put all the dialogue together at minimum. or is Oh No Robot un-updateable?

Achewood

From the cart path to the 8-fold path, a Leo Fontanette sub-musical

Kiaayo

dogg you can't be teasing scrambles like that

Achewood

Guys with 5.1 home systems were the height of annoyance. I'd always have to sit there and act like the "sound stage separation" of Pink Floyd or Ween or whatever was just really, really special to me

Achewood

Shortcakes actually developed a remarkably limber prosthetic and now translates to ASL, a beautiful story of Leprechaun triumph

Achewood

Can't you just see the golden grain rustling under that Tom Petty sunshine, as the Caddy slowly parts the waves?

Achewood

This should be carved in dark wood in an ancient room

Achewood

"Being lost isn't a personality, Scrambles"

Achewood

I saw a Cadillac Lyriq suv at the golf course this week and I was like, "This is some straight-up golf course shit"

Joshua M

Little-known fact: The Leo Fontanette call is still part of the OnStar call rep training curriculum

Achewood

Scrambles has been lost for nearly twice the typical lifespan of a dog. But, this is the Achewood Spaghettiverse, so who knows

Achewood

PLEASE PLACE ALL COMPACT DISCS IN THE OVERHEAD STORAGE SYSTEM. CADILLAC CAR CAR SEATS CAN GET VERY HOT.

Conor Nelson

No less than once a week I will see a guy walking and think to myself "rockin thighs, dude"

Achewood

Hm. If I order 250 they're only $3 each! I could see selling...twelve of these.

Bruce Wright

Man, now I want a dozen full-sized wings

Conor Nelson

Last time we saw Beef get money was in his card making days and he quickly relinquished the windfall. I always thought he shoulda held on to the dough there a little longer. Now we are seeing that perhaps he was right the first time around.

Achewood

Oh No Robot is kind of a ghost ship. There was an upstart group that came along later to rectify this, but I don't think it amounted to much. I would compensate someone who wanted to clean up the old transcriptions and build a new system to host fresh ones, incl. Patreon ones.

Pubdoggy

Back in time I asked you to ‘do’ an Achewood leaving card for my colleague and friend, Blair, who was moving back to NZ. I asked for it to feature Scrambles. The card did not feature Scrambles, but you did include a note saying Scrambles was dead. Good times.

Achewood

Wingstop is open TODAY! (I had a friend who owned a few of these, so I came to appreciate them. He died, but until today I had never put the "death/wings" connection together. I'm going to tell Lauren.

Achewood

You must live in a nice area.

Ian Stewart

I think there's actually two things that people don't mention directly to Leo: one is his sculpted thighs, the other is the fact that the Cadillac business is propped up by the endless volume of fleet trucks passing through his GMC dealership next door

Douglas Wykstra

I always assumed the format was more designed for guys who were rich/tech-forward enough to buy a surround-sound system for their TV, but cheap/hidebound enough to say, "Why should I pay even more for a stereo when I have $5,000 worth of speakers in the TV room?" A luxury indulgence disguised as a thrifty value proposition for the McMansion class.

Achewood

I used to have 3x the personality problems

Mike Duquette

Not to make it about me, but four years after Leo died, I started a still-running website devoted to remastered and expanded music reissues and box sets. It’s entirely possible one begat the other, along with my actual career of working in and around such artistic machinations. Perhaps this corn was ME all along.

Achewood

DON'T YOU DARE CALL CADILLAC A VANITY APPENDAGE ON THE GMC BRAND DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH VOL...vol... [dies]

Bruce Wright

Just had a heart calcium test, and it concentrates the mind wonderfully on that connection. *sigh*

Achewood

Between these guys and the Bang & Olufsen set, there could be a really great sitcom that ran for only three episodes

Crumbles

WELCOME TO FONTANETTE DENIGRATION COMBINATOR 3.0! PLEASE SELECT ALL BODILY PARTS AND FUNCTIONS YOU WISH TO INCLUDE IN YOUR LANGUAGE MODEL, YOU DIARREAH FUCKWIMPLE!

Achewood

I have a script going somewhere about how if you grow up like Beef you always treat money with suspicion because, like a father, you know it isn't going to stay around.

Achewood

don't be so humble, share the URL!

Achewood

Surely this is a project in every introductory CS course

Adam McIsaac

Might save by adding a Bob Calcavecchio Chevrolet version to the order.

Achewood

Now that I've discovered how fun it is, Leo Fontanette will die in a utilitarian way near the end of every story arc.

Achewood

sigh indeed and nobody wants that "grilled wings" BS

Irving Washington

Can't wait for the last panel of this arc to be the Lord saying, "The End! No moral."

Ben Wilinofsky

He went to HEAVEN! A Cadillac dealer with a rage problem! He should be so quiet he remains invisible lest a clerical error be discovered, and rectifried (rectifrying is one of the punishments for guys who ate sinfully in Hell, where they deep-fry your rectum while it is still attached and make you eat it.)

Achewood

I think it was Ford-Plymouth-Nissan, just to make things sadder

GruntyGinMan

And yet...still better than the only EVs I see with in-state plates in West Virginia (Cybertrucks)

Achewood

I was wondering if anybody would call BS on Leo Fontanette going to Heaven. Perhaps he was actually extremely Catholic and did all the technically correct stuff with the beads and sprinkly water.

Achewood

That's going to be the last panel of Achewood

Oppido

This has me wondering whatever became of Darin' Aaron Magoo. He seems like the sort of lost soul who would've eventually washed up at Ron's mushroom retreat. Unless one day he finally Dared too hard, and went on to his reward.

Josh Egbert

Leo absolutely reeeeks of a guy who paid for absolution.

Ian Stewart

Unironically, I see very little but praise from people who bought GM EVs. Kinda shocked that they dropped the Chevy Bolt for a couple years; looks like people got shouty enough to get them to bring it back.

Achewood

how dare you mock the aesthetically-preferred SUV of Khufu

Ian Stewart

Oh man... Khufu used to be a tastemaker, but he fell off so hard now he just Poopoo

b.zap

"Today Leo Fontanette died watching Teodor eat a realm of ass"

Achewood

Thank you! The "calories" tie-in was too juicy to ignore

Achewood

How did you get early access to the noon strip?

Ryan Boyle

If you judge a comic's success by its volume of reader comics, this one was a winner. Leo taught me to never compliment calves.

Achewood

that's the one -- thank you Amy!

Achewood

In America, we have no protocol for straight men complimenting other straight men's bodies. So when it happens, the entire house of cards collapses and all parties spend several decades in private confusion.

Grant's Tomb

Of course Fontanette is a dude to misconstrue a compliment so bad he dies.

Mike Duquette

*gasp*! We’re at https://www.theseconddisc.com, a place for marveling over Dionne Warwick archival sets and arguing over why your least favorite albums have been re-released so many times.

Grant's Tomb

Or it took me absolutely years and also this strip to figure out Beef was sarcastic about those rockin' thighs dude.

Matt Mitchell

Lost for 13 years! Maybe he got lost again. Poor guy.

Achewood

No, Beef just had zero idea of how to behave around wealthy people in a specialized environment. He wouldn't have dared be himself and crack sizzly little japes.

Achewood

Excellent! And I admire the jazzy graphic design of the search bar. Okay, knowing what you know of Ray and Roast Beef, which remastered re-releases would they enjoy most respectively?

Miles McMahon

I didn't know how much I wanted to see Leo again. Also, I'm glad I read the comments because my first thought was that Leo died in capital-H Heaven which means he came back to life on this earth. But just straight-up dying again is probably better.

Andrew Gillies

Personally I'm holding a little candle for Silent Bird Wallace

Achewood

ah, nice one. With Antonyne back in the picture, this could be a thing. Maybe they meet at Jersey Mike's and Silent Bird orders it Silent Bird's way, and Antonyne is amazed the clerk knows exactly what to do.

Achewood

From what we can tell, Ray has a genuine dead body on his doorstep. Tune in next week!

Crumbles

That sounds right, the student likely just changed the name and shipped it to him. Leo doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would care though, he was only thinking about how many units he could move.

Nicholas

Beautiful. Exactly

Achewood

Guys' got a future in this biz

Achewood

It might be part of his breed standard.

Achewood

I'm guessing the guy who checks you in at a medium-nice dentist where you think you remember bamboo-something-or-other in the lobby but aren't sure.

GruntyGinMan

I'm obviously glad that it wasn't, but "Life it is cruel, but at least it is life, at least for awhile" in the Phillipe Goes Home arc would have been a good last panel too.

Achewood

Or did he die back to death? Tune in next week!

Achewood

hell of emotions in that line

2scrogz

Ray is going to have a helluva time explaining to the DoorDash driver, and subsequently Sergeant Bill down at the station why there is the dead, mini-winged body of Leo Fontanette on his front porch...

Achewood

I would imagine DoorDash drivers are experienced with just "leaving the food bag by the body."

Achewood

But yeah, Sergeant Bill might not look so kindly on this if Ray hadn't treated him to a new Callaway driver down at the club.

2scrogz

Also, Ray's line about "writing with a plot" at the end strongly implies that he once tried and failed to make coffee with cold water. Presumably his housekeeper was sick that day. I suspect he eventually became overwhelmed with caffeine-withdrawal-headache and fatigue, and retreated to the couch to burn one and watch Braveheart.

Jeff

lol I say “rockin’ thighs, dude” to my wife all the time because of the original strip

Achewood

well, I wrestled with this a bit because you make cold brew with cold water, but that takes overnight, and Ray would only have invented this process while deeply stoned, on accident.

Achewood

It takes a special person to be married to a cho

Distant Egg Song

Leo's wheel of Samsara is spinning like it's on a jet-powered shopping cart. Chaotic, unbearably fast, but always sticking to the same trajectory.

Achewood

shopping cart loaded with handles of Stoli, collins mix, and salted nuts

zaratustra

If you die when you're already dead you go to Superhell. It totally sucks there.

Achewood

If you told me Superhell was already a mid-90s straight to DVD movie I'd give you five dollars

Ben Wilinofsky

That's going to be the last panel on my tombstone

A. Hamster

I have seen it effectively done in the gym locker room among presumably straight men. It went something like YEAH BRO YEAH YEAH BRO FUCK YEAH GAINS and ok that may have been foreplay

Matthew Miller

Join us next week in double Cadillac heaven.

Bill

"But, this is the Achewood Spaghettiverse, so who knows" in the Achewood cosmological etymology, does this suggest that the origin of the universe in Achewood is a sort of time/steak continuum?

Oppido

Leo Fontanette's death is our new roommate.

Achewood

Dwight Yoakam is there, on loan from the terrestrial.

Achewood

GAINS is this night time club around the corner where you can always hear the bass of the dance music from outside, and all these guys with great shirts are usually in the area

Achewood

The blazonry on our night uniforms is the Möbius Steak (skirt steak), gules, on field argent, crest of Todd, rampant reguardant.

Nicholas Williams

I feel like it’s also maybe a mid 90s Japanese skate wear company who put out extremely baggy plain t-shirts that now resale for $20,000 each.

Clench and Cheese

I have a feeling that my last words will be CUNT! CUNT! CUNNNNNNTTT! now

Oppido

I like to think Aaron's got Steven the really strong waiter waiting (strongly) at home for him.

severecorvid

The fact he dies and turns into a normal corpse is extremely funny to me

Kayla Unknown

I guess I have two birthdays this year. Rest in... is he resting? Whither now, Leo? What dark plain do you roam?

Bungus Bronbo

There's no reason this can't still happen

2scrogz

Probably gonna take another new car for a family member for Sgt Bill to help Ray dispose of the, er, situation, though. Maybe a tricked-out mini-van for the grandkids to ride around in, as I assume Bill Jr. is now of family-having age. Ray would need to broach this quite delicately. Hella raw situation and such.

Eric

Ghost Leo having sweaty armpits is the kind of loving attention to detail that makes Achewood such a gem.

Nate

Even in heaven those calves are still ROCKIN

A. Hamster

I read that as “rampant regurgitant”

A. Hamster

Wings and Thighs: an Original Recipe for Disaster

Achewood

The last one has to be quieter, with the nnnNNNnnn "last lunge at life" in the middle. Free tip.

Achewood

And now Ray has a real, legally complicated problem on his hands/porch. Tune in next week!

Achewood

Rest In Peace certainly doesn't seem appropriate for Leo, does it? Rest in Calories seems rude. "Rest, Just Rest, Already" might be the line.

Achewood

Thank you. Didn't want to overdo it with the spittle flecks and neck veins, so I'm letting Leo's armpit do all the talking here.

Achewood

Yeah, I always imagine heaven as a fairly level plane so I'm not sure where he's getting that definition. Maybe just from always walking for nineteen years, since he didn't have the good wings yet.

Achewood

Oh man I am definitely going to Wingstop for dinner after reading the word Wings for the last week straight.

Achewood

The new Cadillac Cadillaq minivan with breakaway ceiling-dongle USB chargers (to minimize risk of hanging) and at-seat SodaStream nozzles would be nice.

Achewood

am considering rewriting it based on that misread

Nate

I didn't die and go to heaven to walk uphill. I suppose I've also envisioned it as a pretty flat place.

2scrogz

LOL leave it to Ray to accidentally re-invent (or think he originally invented) cold-brew. That damn Smuckles curse of success! One imagines a regional franchise of lucrative cold-brew cafes followed shortly after. The house blend is called "Ray's Roast" or something. A small is $8.

J. Alex

This strip canonically implies that heaven is back up and running after that whole "Burning down" incident. Good for them!

cody

Gotta make sure you stick the landing

Professor Hazard

these aromas... add pool table felt and this is the most divorced a dad can be

Achewood

Those would be the notes in Calvin Klein "Eternity" if there were any truth in marketing

Achewood

He just called it old brew, completely missing the boat as he poured it down the drain and started over.

Professor Hazard

I suffer from being able to only hear Blister's voice as a Chipmunks pitch-shifted Patrick Warburton

Brandon Rahhal

I can't un-glue the twin ideas of the Heaven I've been sold since the jump, and the belief that Leo Fontanette is not the kind of man that would breach their pearly gates. Just goes to show what's really important in life/death, I guess.

Achewood

We're all quite proud of the work they've done. You can track their progress on their web page, but it's buried in a fairly byzantine site and I can't reliably find it one day to the next.

Achewood

To be fair, Leo seems to have been in some kind of very, very long limbo, what with the stubby wings and the lame assignment of going back to deal with people he actively disliked so hard that he died. But, I should be quick to point out, Achewood's heaven / afterlife might operate kind of like the one in the Beetlejuices, so the logic chart also looks like of like a piñata full of index cards that say "What?" and "Maybe!"

Sam Julian

Writing coffee with a plot is like making coffee with hot water. Never heard anything that rang truer.

Achewood

Today's coffee plot was that "Bulletproof" butter and MCT oil stuff. It makes me feel like a long log, slowly, slowly rotating as it floats through endless space.