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The "Making-of" clippings version of this strip posts two hours later in tiers 2 & 3!

It is a truth long held that history is written by the winners. Or, in this case, by Ray Smuckles, who seems to have turned his musical about Leo's death into the story of his own absolution for said death. Given Leo's conduct both before and after his passing, it is far easier to imagine that instead of forgiving Ray for killing him, he would simply continue to scream at Ray until he got bored, pulled out an automatic weapon, shot him in half horizontally, and then kicked the halves a lot, until his little white golf shoes got bloody and he became enraged all over again.

Files

Comments

Bob the Fish Productions

Well, Beef's back to speaking in smaller font with little or no punctuation, that's a good sign. Probably not for him, though.

Morgan

It's nice to know that despite the inflation of the last few years, the going rate on apologizing to a chochacho has remained at six hundo

Achewood

The bar was set fairly high. In the mid-eighteenth century, owing somebody a six hundo could break your entire family for generations, so it was a much stronger discouragement to offend your chochachos.

Achewood

We're talking wine list AND the oldest steak in the house

Achewood

Indeed. There seems to be diminishment about him in multiple ways. Discuss. I won't spoil it.

Dan Gibbins

Sure I want the conclusion but "Ray didn't realize the angel corpse was still there" is a delightful button

drewb

I appreciate roast beef's commitment to keeping his chat system up to date, and refusing to surrender to the tyranny of a Zuckerberg-owned appliance, or whatever Discord is

b.zap

RETICULUM

Achewood

I mean, in TV shows the angel corpses always turn translucent then completely disappear, right? Leo must have broken some rule.

Achewood

He even added that little clock at the bottom since last we saw it. And I bet the thing is loaded with keyboard shortcuts just like his beloved vi

Achewood

A code word most hilarious to boys in junior high

Clench and Cheese

Ray is an object lesson whether he wants to be one or not

Shawn Warren

I hope Ray calculates for inflation when there is a six hundo situation nowadays

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

Ray genuinely apologized to Beef and not just to summon him to deal with the Leo thing? Is his little freakout for real? Did he not know Leo and his thicc thighs would still be there? ohhhh shiiiiit

emitydna

I am so happy they are on the mend. A computer could never understand the anxiety I felt over the dissolving friendship of these comic strip cat men and that is why AI will never replace me.

Bruce Wright

Beef has always just naturally seemed like a lower-case guy

Distant Egg Song

Learning that Ray actively types out ellipses in his chats to let the other participant know that he's still waiting for a response is a character trait I didn't anticipate, but in retrospect makes sense. I suspect it's a habit he had to develop over a lifetime of having to manage groups who willingly name themselves things like "Sugar Loadzz."

b.zap

It is never not hilarious

Achewood

His favorite one is the parable of the grower (not the shower)

Achewood

From a reply lower in this thread: "The bar was set fairly high. In the mid-eighteenth century, owing somebody a six hundo could break your entire family for generations, so it was a much stronger discouragement to offend your chochachos."

Achewood

He was raw to his dude. Even a classic low-touch player like Ray can see a beam of light now and then. Perhaps it was some golden tabloid in that chamber.

Achewood

I do love when tensions arise between characters — or in the case of Philippe and Lyle when a bond forms — and people actually care about it. Amazes and makes me very happy, every time. I always think of Achewood as a place primarily for jokes and am very relieved when wider experiences are appreciated.

Achewood

In a management book titled "Leaders Don't Speak," Ray learned that a carefully crafted silence can be even more powerful than words. Chapter two (there were only two chapters), on digital communications, covered the impact of ellipses in visual media.

2scrogz

Leave it to Ray to get stoned and forget about the angel-corpse on his porch. Maybe the boys can reunite over burying this little inconvenience in the woods...

Achewood

Code Islets of Langerhans proved too much for Ray to remember

Achewood

rebellious in his eschewal of capital letters when writing, young Beef also formed his lower-case g's using the "two connected circles with an ear" style.

2scrogz

Is this why society is circling the drain? Inflation has lowered the impact of a "six hundo" to the point that the average cho feels ambivalent about being a dick and not waging peace? Perhaps the sociologists in the chat can chime in.

Achewood

From a reply further down: "I mean, in TV shows the angel corpses always turn translucent then completely disappear, right? Leo must have broken some rule."

Oppido

I've never attempted a full pie-chart breakdown of how I appreciate Achewood, but it'd be some combination of jokes, delightful language, character relationships, and overall philosophy (being in trouble is a fake idea, etc). And the "character relationships" wedge wouldn't be small.

b.zap

Reticulum is like a spell Harry Potter practices into a sock, alone

Achewood

Man that made my mind go a couple different ways

Achewood

You need to shine the special bat signal that’s shaped like an office decorated mostly in old file cabinets

Oppido

By my count, Ray is now the third character in the Achewood canon to single out a "boy dog's ass" for particular disparagement (Beef, blog, 8/28/05; Lyle, strip, 10/07/16). I'm not here to defend the honor of BDAs, but I would love to ask any of those three guys to name the ways they find girl dogs' asses relatively meritorious.

Joshua M

Feel free to ask Beef or Ray but I would personally not ask Lyle unless I was real sure I was going to be ok with hearing the answer.

Bungus Bronbo

Panel 2 is an entire contained personality.

Josh Egbert

I wonder if it was the super cusses

Josh Egbert

"Sometimes love is wondering if you trapped an innocent person" is such a haunting & profound line, I dont go a week without thinking about it.

GruntyGinMan

We just watched "Dogma" last night so what I think we have here is that Leo's wings were ripped off and he transmuted into a human leaving the corpse on his stoop.

Walter Cooke

The "character relationships" are why we come here.

GruntyGinMan

Damn I like how Chochachos has turned into a word of Dudes across the centuries, rippling out both into the past and future.

emitydna

I'm not sad and crying at work now- I'm just learning to weep the weepy-weep way

A. Hamster

I learned about typing out ellipses for dramatic effect in the cutscenes from Ninja Gaiden (Nintendo Entertainment System, 1988).

A. Hamster

The steak from the little chamber that spins around like where Batman keeps the Batsuit

A. Hamster

I enjoy the idea that in the time it took Ray to write an entire musical, an angel corpse lay there perfectly preserved (e.g. not picked over by crows or carried off by a large dog)

Jenn

The return of the six hundo. Respect

Crumbles

I just want to call out how much I appreciate the depth of Ray's expression in panel 6.

Anthony Thompson

It’s Achewood ESTATES dude, it ain’t that kind of suburb.

A. Hamster

True. Where live, the body would also remain untouched but I would get an email from the HOA about it

Theo Freedom

Paul Castorzano has no more to teach you.

b.zap

Dobby can't watch unless he pays $100

Achewood

It's not that any dogs asses are nice. But boy anything is more gross. We don't even learn to wash until we are 23!

Achewood

An intriguing observation. Please expand.

Achewood

Those shameful drumettes are still there in the last panel though. Tune in next week!

Achewood

I imagine these duded invented this device about the same time Ray and Beef Chat 1.0 was released.

Achewood

To be fair, a great energy was moving through Ray at the time, and he wrote the musical in very short order. But yes, most people would probably at least have put the corpse in the foyer before launching into their latest musical.

Achewood

There is a description of the history of the six hound down somewhere in the first comments today.

Achewood

You know that wasn't the first mouth I attempted to draw that way. Or that I even knew how to get where that mouth needed to go in the first place.

Achewood

Some say Braveheart was the first chochacho. Some say it was Jesus. I don't even think that word originates in our dimension or galaxy, personally.

Achewood

Dammit now people know my website as a place where people are thinking about Dobby beating off

Achewood

He was probably also sexist at Heaven Safeway on multiple occasions.

Achewood

You know that steak is going to cost you dearly when they build a little panopticon for it.

Josh Egbert

You wonder what Ray's albacore guy could rustle up.

A. Hamster

I am pretty sure Andrew Lloyd Webber would not have moved the corpse, and also that one corpse is a slow day for Andrew Lloyd Webber

Achewood

Who said you can’t put a pistol on stage without eventually going off? I imagine the same goes for a decomposing corpse.

Crumbles

I can feel it just looking at it, and I mean that seriously. I can only imagine the Aaron Sorkin level 'dialoging with yourself in a mirror' that goes into that shit, let alone distinguishing between "exhaling a slow unclenching of your anus" vs " preparing to sip from a deep, thick milkshake." But please skip over the Sorkin-level rails? High 5, playa.

Achewood

I will skip the huge piles of fancy drugs, if only to keep myself from writing an embarrassingly naïve version of The White House

Crumbles

Excellent! Sorry to get political, everyone. I'll call President Philippe and set up a meeting.

Achewood

President Philippe’s advice to anyone is always *never* get political! He only does it so nobody else has to.

Jeff

Even in death, Leo’s got rockin thighs, man.

Douglas Wykstra

Leo Fontanette appearing to Ray from beyond the grave to intercede in human affairs on command from God, and leaving a perfectly-preserved corpse that does not putrify, are close enough to official Vatican-sanctioned miracles that we must contemplate the disturbing possibility that Leo is now a canonized saint. Presumably the patron saint of rockin' thighs and luxury SUVs, of which the need for a patron saint is exactly proportional to Leo's fitness for sainthood. Still, probably doesn't hurt to wear a medal bearing his likeness on leg day. Not to tell tales out of tier, but some of Chris's posts from his trip to Rome make me wonder if he isn't interrogating his fundamental dislike of not just musicals, but two things that are the object of mass veneration by a surprisingly robust (though lately diminished) segment of the world population. Weekly-strip subscribers, pay a few extra dollars and you too can clumsily psychoanalyze one of your favorite cartoonists in a place where he can see it, and will hopefully understand that you're mostly just riffing because you didn't have enough to do at work this week.

Douglas Wykstra

I just want you to know that my comment is this comment's fault (I made it its own thing because it grew into that).

Achewood

It's as interesting for me as it is fun for you! The zenith of my annoyance with all things Roman Religion might have been the tale of the 16th century nun whose body "refused to decompose." Of course, you could only go see it if you were properly credentialed, our sanctimonious tour guide said. "What a crock of shit," I said, to my wife. But, you raise the valid point that we may be meeting Saint Fontanette soon!

Justin Schardin

I would love to see the version history of Ray_and_Beef_chat with all of Beef's annotations and just-so structure.

Achewood

/** * * like this right * **/

Max Crowe

I absolutely want to know what Beef's Git commit messages look like

zaratustra

half of those are just making it work after whatever microsoft does to windows each time

Professor Hazard

speaking of how things are at achewood estates, doctor onstad i have to ask you, are the estate houses 50% smaller because cats live in them specifically? I asked this because I realized how small Ray's toilet would be from his island party comparative to a cat, comparative to a human, and now i can only imagine that Ray's mansion is a full mansion but like overall the size of a singlewide trailer

Nikolai Joseph

Is Beef coming from the gym or is this just part of his new aesthetic (“Apathleisure”)?

b.zap

Even rockin White Sox cannot diminish those extremities of Leo Fontanette

Achewood

One time Beef built a virtual Windows machine that infinitely auto-rebooted to the blue screen of death after five seconds. He named it Windows ME

Achewood

I applaud you for "apathleisure." The explanation for Beef's unexpected outfit is coming next week!

Achewood

Ray had small appliances installed when he took over the place. It's hard to explain, but even harder to make up, which is why I don't get into that aspect of it a lot. But if I had a weekend and some Super Game Logic Chos I bet I could hammer out the rule set and background of the achewood universe.

Achewood

I bet he has some extremely interesting bycatch he doesn't advertise...