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Three items of business this week!

1 — I am so excited to introduce you to the new character mentioned here that I can scarcely sit down for standing straight up again. This mystery person will arrive first thing next week, and completely obliterate everything you thought you knew about squirrels.

2 — Give the gift of Achewood! Patreon makes it dead-easy to give a month or more to a friend. Please help support this scene while also helping someone spend time away from the miserable news cycle, social media, and perhaps even seed oils, with some of the internet's best satire joke animals.

3 — I think I've figured out a way to put all the existing comics in a click-through carousel, so that you can re-read through them all at once, without having to dig around in the feed and open up each strip's post. Would you use a feature like this? Are there any potential drawbacks?

As ever, The b-roll from this strip posts two hours later in Tier 2 — it's well worth a month of the upgrade if you're hungry for literally several more twelve-hour days' worth of reading. There are 229 posts exclusive to Tier 2, including Ray's Place, tons of other illustrated pieces and comics, character interviews, and much more!

Files

Comments

Josh Egbert

They were all lucky to survive that first trip to Germany

Al

The last line made me laugh so goddamn hard

Lonesome Cowpoke

The notion of a carousel sounds whimsical, I say pull the trigger

Achewood

In a way it is a true carousel, filled with brainless animals

Achewood

We've all heard that jonesing tweakers are generally short on empathetic awareness of others, right?

Achewood

Todd didn't stutter on that flight either, I don't believe.

Tom P

this strip profoundly establishes the fact that the world has changed, even if we were not there to see it.

Jay Y

Sometimes they still self-identify as empaths though.

Saxton

Oh man that is mega nasty. That is dog shit.

Josh Egbert

Only once on the return flight, which could have been for any number of reasons that arent an 8 ball in his nasal pocket.

Achewood

I like to think it's only temporary, as Todd's primary form of recreation is entering retox

Miles McMahon

Todd has a family fortune!!?? (is this German Magical Realism???)

Achewood

are you intimidated by Todd's abs Saxton

Tom P

He was younger then. We all were.

Achewood

As you can imagine, whatever shadowy (twitchy?) governing body it has is vastly interested in making sure Todd gets none of it.

Stygian Gloom

I’m just as surprised by the last panel as Ray was!

Bungus Bronbo

Jesus Christ Lord Almighty please remove skinny tall todd from your plan for us

Matt Powell

I would love that feature. I have like fifteen Achewood bookmarks, as I go through the whole thing again.

Achewood

Or Jesus, or lawn furniture, or Kissinger, or the electric salvation of the dog kingdom

Achewood

I like to think he'd begun partying because he'd already been holding out for like a week.

Clench and Cheese

So now that Todd has matured into something other than an object lesson about what happens if you never check any impulses ever in your life, who will take that role (other than Beef's internal monologue?)

Achewood

We were...twenty years younger

Bungus Bronbo

Also until I see the carousel I can't imagine any drawbacks, but I also still can't imagine any drawbacks

Josh Egbert

Its unnecessary to give voice to the actual number of years.

Josh Egbert

Still better than Spirit

Achewood

Wait until we meet Jorg-Dieter. Then you, my friend, will register true surprise. And reconsider your daily costume.

Achewood

That creepy eh? Excellent, my weird halloween mood is a success

Scott Hansen

I'm not even sure that /I/ can have a German cousin

Jake McIntyre

I'm deeply uncomfortable with Tall Todd, and I'm pulling hard for this arc turning out to be a Ray hallucination.

Achewood

hey hey hey, let's not prematurely assume Todd is permanently a sober martyr now. Didn't he claim retox was his favorite thing ever?

Achewood

I'm trying to think of, like, it making it easy for someone to rip all the images at once and distribute them freely without permission. Or zip the post, or something. I don't know. I've never really touched computers in the smart way.

Achewood

Are you in some reality-gerrymandered pocket of Arizona

jordan b.

in the style of Beef: "oh shiiiiit"

Achewood

maybe he's just un-hunched from always tweaking.

Gurglepot

As someone who has been saving up posts for such a time when I need a concentrated dose of Achewood (to kick depression in the scrotum), any feature that makes bingeing strips easier would be welcome.

Achewood

I think we were all legally assigned a German cousin as part of the Smoot-Hawley act, something to do with putting tariffs on plum cakes shipped from Europe

Achewood

This errand of mercy inspires me to make it So.

rickward

if the “no more stereograms” thing is real I hope it kicks in soon for me

Achewood

A friend had to fly Spirit once. He sent me a photo of his tray table, which was the size of an index card.

Achewood

Your avatar is perfect for a comment which suggests that you too see the world only as unresolved stereograms. Please always come in and mention various absurd visual issues, as a character here

Matt Mitchell

Oh man, exciting. I’m into Tall Todd!

Achewood

An interesting interpretation of the facts as we see them. It does raise the existential question, however: "If Todd is just drugs in a nervous system, what even is a Todd?"

b.zap

Ray's lips as he contemplates der einschüchterndeichhörnchenrelativ

Josh Egbert

All I can say is that flying them feels like how I felt as a kid wearing store brand shoes instead of something with a logo.

Jenn

Yes to #3 and Todd is freaking me out

Bruce Wright

Or else this is an imaginary story, like that time when Lois Lane killed Superman with a kryptonite xylophone.

Matt Mitchell

Achewood is necessarily surreal and hallucinatory, such moves are absolutely consistent, in my perception at least. Not everything needs to be explicable and smooth and sensible in the modern Netflix style.

Achewood

Thank you Jenn! If that is truly you, behind the decommissioned avatar

Achewood

I love how the word for squirrel sounds like "acorn"

Achewood

It felt right to me. I want to maintain a universe where such blurrings of reality are commonplace.

Achewood

That sounds made up, but also hilarious, like a Mr. Show sketch

Josh Egbert

Mine is named Hans & his family calls me Sacha

Achewood

you can tell their plastic water cups have been through the wash

Jason S

This is pretty much the description of every '50s - early '60s Superman comic, especially the Jimmy Olsens

Josh Egbert

They have pillow cases but no pillows so they fill them with empty stroopwaffle wrappers from carriers who provide treats.

Colin Sueyres

Germany cannot have Magical Realism. As close as it can get is German Bauhaus Expressionism.

Distant Egg Song

There's an interpretation of this comic that says all of the squirrels we've seen were high on something.

Travis O.

Ray did not, as it turns out, Know Todd

Travis O.

Also: I am very on board with the concept of Item 3!

Bungus Bronbo

You could do it in chunks at a time... like a masterpost of, like, 6 months of comics at a time. That'll make it a little harder. But even now I'm currently able to right click and save the picture. I'm not sure a carousel would enable bad actors to do something they aren't already able to do.

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

Does it have to do with poop? I am willing to admit I could be wrong but I will bet a shiny nickel that it is poop. Also I would love to have access to easily clickable things.

Bruce Wright

Lois Lane #65, May 1966. "The Musical Murder of Superman." Again, it was a Kryptonian xylophone, in case this doesn't make sense.

Abby

I would love the click-through carousel, and I can't wait for this new character!

Jay Williams

I am horrified but I cannot look away. Jorg-Dieter must take squirrel sex to new and previously unforeseen depths of depravity. Way beyond simply constantly getting it just on at every opportunity, totally unprotected and everything

Eric

I second and am not able to imagine a drawback, unless perhaps you can only click forward

Adam C Knapp

Turns out that the reason for this is that acorns are named after squirrels. In middle English, squirrels were called "aquerne". The word squirrel comes from the French.

Achewood

Todd's cousin's "thing" does not have to do with poop. Maybe I need to branch out a little more if this is what people assume. (ass-ume! hahahahah)

Achewood

Eric, Patreon spent a lot of money developing a "back" button last year and I am part of a very rarefied group that has been selected to test-use it

Achewood

Indeed, Ray only thought he knew Todd! What Ray knew was high-ness.

Achewood

Thank you for all the cosigns, Chos

Achewood

That's why they were all the same size. When a squirrel gets sober, he approaches godlike stature.

Achewood

Man, inspiration must have been pretty thin around the DC desk that month. "Let's kill superman with a xylophone" reeks of some writer's kid having a xylophone lesson. How did they force him to tap out a tune on the deadly thing?

Achewood

Hans drinks very thick milk on his muesli and he can cycle to the Pyrenees

Achewood

Ah, Britain. I've been there. Tried not to look at the clocks. Paid £36 (thirty-six quids?) for a fish entree at a "gastropub," which I still think is an ugly name for a bar.

Dan Gibbins

Learning so many things about Todd. And excited for the new character. Also, there have been several great storylines since Patreon started, it'd be great to have an easier way to re-read, so the carousel would be a plus.

Jay Y

The middle initial in Todd T. Squirrel must stand for Thibault or Traugott or Torger or something funnier than I've come up with Googling male German names beginning with T.

RavenWorks

I was getting ready to write a comment about how it's stressing me out not to know whether Ray found any toilet paper or not, when it finally sunk in what he meant about the moustache-half

Achewood

I have a lot of Russian state spies subscribing all the time, to send my comics to the Kremlin for free. Ultimately you just have to throw your hands up. What I'd probably do is, yes, divide them into sets of several dozen or more, for ease of maintenance, updating, and adding new ones. They'd live in their own collection, I think.

Achewood

You're assuming it's sex. Or, *just* sex. It might be sex and organic vegetable delivery services, or somehow involving sex with the TSA.../the whole TSA at the same time, hypnotized by a demonic xylophone played by superman/

Achewood

This is a somber warning that the Teuts would simply not brook unpredictable shenanigans.

Achewood

so that's where the full garbage bag of single-use trash I generate on every single flight goes

Achewood

The ironic twist here is that squirrels don't even eat acorns. They eat meth brownies. And I'm not sure that's fully-qualified irony. It might be Alanis Morrissette irony.

b.zap

Language is some cocaine magic realism for sure

Achewood

I'm pretty sure it's just Todd.

Achewood

I am the most happy of any of my happinesses that somebody finally caught this. Thank you RavenWorks!

Song Club with John Krane

Also explains why all the squirrels around my house are constantly asking me if I'm going to the gas station.

Bruce Wright

No, no, Lois was playing it! As she thinks on the cover, "Ha! ha! I swore I'd be the death of you, Superman — and I am! The combined vibrations of Luthor's piano and this Kryptonian instrument are finishing you!" Man Ray and Breton only thought they were surrealists — the early sixties DC bullpen was way ahead of them

Zen Window

looking forward to todd's reversion to mean his sober adventures nothing more than a hazy fugue state to him that's my secret, cap, i'm always high

Achewood

It sounds, based on her internal monolog here, like they really had to spell out what was happening in the panels, like the art wasn't doing enough of the heavy lifting. Is that how it was, with the old comics? (I am no comics scholar, but I did love MAD as a kid, my dad had a bunch)

RBM

“Todd can be aware that other people have thoughts” is the kind of thing that makes Ray my favorite secretly deep character

Achewood

I think I can get this adventure wrapped by xmas, so I can do a week or two of those unusual short strips, like usual

Achewood

Thank you. He does have his more insightful moments, but it wouldn't be as fun if Ray were insightful all the time. He never would have had more than one date with Tina, bought an Escalade, started an unproductive social group with Akkolade and Bensington Butters...well, he wouldn't in any way be Ray, I suppose.

Omnithea

Todd temporarily has the strength to bench press a 7-11. Nobody tell him that.

severecorvid

Long Todd gave me a visceral feeling of dread for a second or so

Mike Duquette

Pacing my drawing room muttering “Long Todd…long Todd”

Bruce Wright

Well, it was a cover, so yeah, they're underlining things for the casual viewer. If it had been a seventies Marvel cover, the words KILL and/or DEATH would appear a lot

Achewood

Man, when I got sober I definitely didn't get PCP-level strength.

Achewood

yesssssss, mission accomplished

Achewood

Long Todd...maybe we need to see sober Todd (Long Todd) go on some alternate universe adventures. The name wags the dog, but that can be just as valid a generative exercise as anything.

Achewood

Ah, so my first thought was "but surely they re-used the drawing for the panel from the story itself as the cover, because re-drawing it for the cover would have been a huge drag," not instinctively realizing that some cartoonists actually like to draw.

Omnithea

There is no way you were on what Todd was on. Tod-El is free from Rao, the Red Sun.

Achewood

This is true. I just don't have that level of hookup. Except, I am at Lowe's every other day, and I imagine he's huffed his way down every aisle.

Anthony Thompson

“🎶 Don’t drink and drive this holiday season🎶” or GTFO

tossrock

Cleanliness is next to godliness, eh

Tim Hulsizer

"Taller When I'm Sober" with a graphic of Long Todd could be a t-shirt design, hmm

Nick Culp

This one is so good man

Linus Mixson

This one is peak form. Really impressive.

rickward

I don’t want to give away all my secrets, but you know how some people have irritated maternal figures in their lives who tell them that if they keep making that face, it’ll get stuck that way? Turns out if “making that face” involves eye-crossing, dopamine agonists, and dopamine reuptake inhibitors, they ain’t lyin’. My vision is slowly reconverging. IMAX movies help.

rickward

Regarding point 3, I just re-read all of the new Patreon strips at once (well, at twice, due to a break for sleep and labor), and the only part of the experience that irked me was not having a “read from the start” link to the first Patreon strip on hand. Otherwise, I had no navigation problems. I imagine that if I wanted to re-read the Ray and Pat’s Road Trip arc, I might get similarly irked by a lack of links to the first strips of each arc, but I gotta tell on myself here and admit I haven’t looked for arc links yet—they might already exist.

Michael G.

Ray is that dude that will always pay attention. What he does after that is a mystery to the world.

Nicholas Williams

So we’re gonna meet Jorg-Dieter Jorg-Dieter Jorg-Dieter Jorg-Dieter Jorg-Dieter T. Squirrel?

Andrew Reynolds

Todd's current body shape makes me very uneasy. Click through carosel, yes please!

s b

like a Tall Grey encounter

aurant

are we about to experience…German Magical Realism??

balbert

Yes please to a click-through carousel!

Henri

That’s not Todd

Oppido

You know, there was Cartilage Head, and there was Zell and Cory, and there was Trouble Man and No-No, and Pat's microdose trip, and Ray's Hendrix mannequin, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting. But nothing has unsettled me quite like Tall, Articulate Todd. That's a compliment. An ideal installment to run on Halloween.

Henri

Roast Beef is what men think they should be. Ray is what men should be.

Strange Matter (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-20 10:00 Ray is realizing that todd has been a person this whole time - that has got to be jarring on the conscience
2025-11-01 01:28

Jimbobalinski

I would very much like a way to read the new strips the same way I read the old ones. At least it isn't a single scroll of identically sized panels like so many modern web comics are oriented on their demonic websites.

Achewood

That’s a nice head scratcher, although people might typically assume it means the opposite of falling down drunk

Achewood

I like this angle, except for the ray is a fool part?

Achewood

Correlation not causation? Because Todd is not a heaven-type dude in any way.

Achewood

To be fair, Todd hasn’t typically been the sort of person you want in your head very often, or given much evidence of empathy. But there’s a little squirrel heart in there somewhere, and it’s pumping pure adrenalized Burnett’s.

Achewood

Heard. Thanks Jimbobalinski!

Achewood

Thank you. It made me feel wise weird too, so I knew it was on the right path.

Achewood

Perhaps. I cannot say yet. But what is Todd, in the end, if he manifests mainly as bad street drug interactions?

Achewood

Or…just German realism? They can get up to some pretty strange cares in those winter basements.

Achewood

I knew it was on when I drew him and felt like I was having an involuntary hallucination.

Achewood

Did you read them on desktop and enlarge them as you went through the feed? What was your process?

Achewood

Ah, thank you. Yeah, it felt free and weird like those original times. Liberating.

Andrew Gillies

A continuous scroll would be great, Patreon isn't ideal for comics

Henri

I don’t know. Spicey Grampa is leading us through the uncharted underbushes of Germanic orderliness. Like a case study in yin/yang; I feel we are taken for a ride to discover how meticulous engineering finds its solace in Scheißeporn (I learnt this from South Park) and other even worse forms of terminal escapism. This Todd might represent that stoic backbone of hardened steel, that cannot even fathom its own eventual crumbling, for that is not a logical thing to envision. It’s all Schnitzel Schnitzel Schnitzel, until the garden shears come out.

Kayla Unknown

Long Todd is a particularly haunting design.

GC

When he stood up I *shrieked*

Donovan Cole

Sober Todd is perfect for Halloween. I don’t trust him.

cody

For someone new to the game or looking to run through a chosen arc end-to-end, #3 would be a game-changer.

rickward

My process was on an iPad in portrait orientation using Safari; my understanding is that Patreon has an app, but I do not want any more notifications or location trackers, so no app for me. At first, I would load from the menu that would appear bottom right of the screen next to the comments and manually pinch and zoom the web page to resize and center the comic so I could read it comfortably. When I discovered that tapping the gray around the comic would open an image formatted and optimized for my screen, I just did that instead. Much faster to get me where I needed to be (seeing tears of joy/pain from Lyle’s eyes). Love the higher resolution art and text, wish that the old strips could be seen/saved in that higher resolution (I have sent MANY friends the “trouble is a fake idea” and “guess who got y e l l e d a t” panels via text over the years).

rickward

Reader since December 2001, grateful that you choose to return to it from time to time and share with us. Whether you’re calculating every letter and Bézier curve for maximum effect or merely a divine wind chime vibing in a Pacific breeze, you have given me and countless others much joy through anxious young adulthood well into doom-laden middle age.

Brian Horstead

I'm worried that sober Todd doesn't have a voice of his own. He's like a mix of Cornelius and Emeril.

Alexander Rediger

"Todd can be aware that other people have thoughts?" Lol

Datura

an arc and it's a TODD arc, we're so back (even if it's only a 3 strip arc! but those old times I do miss them so.)

Datura

todd was a normal man until he took his first brisk lungful of mirror polish

A. C.

This is a remarkable and expert handling of a sudden change in characterization that can surely only work within Achewood. Excellent