Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Content

We've seen a young Pat as one-half of the family rollerskating/yo-yo duo Dreamwheel & The Child, but I don't believe we know much about the beginnings of his friendship (common-law acquaintanceship?) with Roast Beef, Ray, and the rest. Here to satisfy everyone's endless desire to learn more about Pat Reynolds is this vignette documenting the first time Beef became aware of his dynamic young schoolmate.

B-Roll Strip

And don't forget — the b-roll / "making-of" version of this strip posts two hours later in Tiers 2 & 3. Upgrade for a month to enjoy this and over 400 other upper-tier Achewood pieces!

Give the Gift of Bingeing Comics

It's never too late to give a gift a subscription to the Patreon to a friend or loved one or marginally respected colleague! It's dead easy: choose how many months you want to give, then get a link you can share with them. It won't auto-renew. This is an even better gift now that the archive is binge-able! (see next hot news item)

Read All Strips At Once

In case you missed it, I set up a Collection here in the Achewood Patreon called Read All Strips At Once. You can go in there and click straight through the archive, just like we used to in the old days, when the politicians' hair was brown and the burgers were turkey.

Files

Comments

Bob the Fish Productions

Yeah, it figures that Pat is the kind of person who would thrive in the literal Hell of high school

Josh Egbert

Finally, the answer to the age old question.... Has Pat *always* been a dick-zit?

Anthony Thompson

What’s the German word for reading a random entry in a random diary and seeing your exact life in intimate detail?

Achewood

Did your life once change permanently for the worse after an indiscretion at a drinking fountain?

Achewood

Through a more sympathetic lens, perhaps the anemic young striver was formed by unpleasant circumstances, such as mega swirlies, wedgies, and wet towel-snaps.

Anthony Thompson

Once? You mean like, _only_ once? Like, once so far _today_?

Achewood

He understood something dark and powerful decades before most: the survival benefits of slippery disloyalty. Not a perfect system, but good enough for one day at a time.

Thunk

The covenant

Anthony Thompson

Perhaps even somehow spawned or summoned there.

Achewood

Man, it's rougher out there than I thought

Anthony Thompson

To quote one of the greats, I have a drinking problem.

Achewood

Maybe don't lean over so far, that might relax certain things too much.

Achewood

The actual overarching point of Achewood will be, in several decades, to make everyone have total sympathy for Pat. Like a reverse Breaking Bad.

b.zap

It seems Pat already hates barbers

Achewood

School invented Pat, like the systems of the Earth invented the shapes and abilities of all its life. (And this is elementary school, just in point of fact)

Josh Egbert

The devil's greatest trick...

Matthew Miller

You can't just go about making perfect prequels like this, in public, where Disney might see and get Ideas.

Achewood

In the Chucklebot prequel, we see a AAA battery roll off a factory bench and into a strong cup of gay Mexican coffee

Tom P

it is good to know that Pat is a constant in the universe

Tom P

none can deny that Pat Reynolds of 901 Grosvenor is a Hater supreme

Achewood

Did...the world teach Pat to hate? Or was it the other way around?

Achewood

Sounds like somebody's getting ready for the next trivia contest

Eli Parker

I think the rehabilitation of Pat is the best and most thoughtful character arc of the Patreon era.

Tom P

before there was Pat, Hating waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practicioner

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

From this alone, I would guess that Pat is headed for a promising career in the CIA. Alas for him and his true future.

Josh Egbert

This Pat does make the evolution to Raise Your Hand Day make sense

Achewood

Thank you. It's been a gratifying project to explore the non-primary and conflicting dimensions of Pat and Lyle. Which aspect of his newer appearances struck you as most believable, sympathetic, etc?

Achewood

And yet all he does as an adult is repeatedly launch failed chia ventures. We are left wondering where he lost the plot.

Achewood

He still might start a social media platform that only allows bitching, and become a Trillionaire. You never know.

Jay Y

There is something threatening about introducing yourself and hearing "I know who you are." Also based on the sleuthing, Pat probably knows about Beef's Circumstances (what there is to know, mostly Grandma K. and Ms. K and Showbiz), but what his read on it is exactly, I don't know. It's hard to imagine Pat having pity or respecting Beef for not being an asshole about it.

Jay Y

The Chia Pet of Moby never made any damn sense anyway and he should have known better.

Bruce Wright

Power Telling doesn’t always pan out this well

NICHOLAS C GARNER

Gonna start a revolution? Gonna need a Pat or two.

Achewood

Yeah, it immediately indicates he has a master calculus on the social matrix of exploitable losers.

Achewood

You know it's true, it's where we get Patskyism.

Linus Mixson

It does seem baffling, within the conventions of fiction, but it is, alas, by far the most realistic evolution of events.

Zen Window

You really going to just waste "common-law acquaintanceship" on post text? That phrase so perfectly crystallizes most of the people we have to put up with in our lives that...ah, well. You know your craft, I just consume it.

Achewood

Path wasn't going to take a bath on all those non-sprouting Chia seeds, he had to sell them somehow

NICHOLAS C GARNER

Too many Pats and I worry you'd wind up with a Pat-schism.

Achewood

'twas not wasted if you enjoyed it, friend.

Chris Barrios

Some decisions you can't unmake.

Achewood

Pat is a peak example of how we'd hate someone who was exactly like us

Achewood

Pat pioneered frenemies back when the rest of us were still learning on which days we preferred short pants versus regular pants.

Lonesome Cowpoke

Pat is like if Joseph Gordon Levitt's character in Brick just did the part where he was a snitch and none of the other stuff

Achewood

Why does this dude keep coming up in my life, that's like four times this week, and on Monday I didn't even know what he looked like

NICHOLAS C GARNER

Fully on board with the idea that learning to love Pat means learning to love ourselves.

Achewood

I've got the intern on it now. He's stenciling an ouroboros in assless chaps onto a mug.

Achewood

The greatest fiction takes you someplace you didn't want to go and you don't like what happens when you get there.

Tim Hulsizer

Third Degrees of Separation From the Sun

Shawn Ritchie

"School is hell. People are sloppy. Leverage is survival" is some mitochondrial-level truth.

Oppido

So, were Beef and Ray already a Thing by this point, or had the Smuckles meteor not crashed into Planet Kazenzakis just yet? And what happened the first time these three all met? I'm guessing they bonded over some Toto and hell of yo mama jokes.

Achewood

When Kevin Spacey plays Pat in the film adaptation, this line will really come to life.

Jay Y

I think Lyle may have a failed children's entertainer arc in him. If the blog series about him working as a cook at a private school in Scotland wasn't that already.

Achewood

🎶You🎶Will🎶Find🎶Out🎶

Achewood

I like this. He has a soft spot for people who aren't old enough to be ruined yet.

Achewood

Yes, it's where all the best EMDR recoveries come from

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

Skills and personality not aligning usually means failure to launch. Ask me how I know.

Dickie

....spoiler alert? Please tell me spoiler alert....

Doctor Memory

"Brick" is an amazing movie; strongly recommended.

Achewood

That was the paraphrase I recognized in so many OKCupid profiles

Crumbles

Does this make up for all the times Pat shot Beef?! Will Ray apologize for the trouble they get into as a result of his drawing of Ramona Quimby?!?!

Amit Katz

Nice to see that Pat didn't need a villain arc. Some people are just born soured

Achewood

by opening up the prehistory of the Cats, we now have an additional hall of inexhaustible opportunities! Perhaps choosing a four-digit strip numbering format will not be enough to get me to the grave after all.

Clench and Cheese

Pat Reynolds, where moral acts and enlightened self-interest are exactly the same. It's a code of ethics every bit as rigid as Nice Pete's, who will kill you because you seem undignified. I imagine he got kids to fart by gutting them and squeezing their intestines, but I have no proof of this.

Douglas Wykstra

This is a glimpse into a bizarre alternate universe for those of us thinking, "Man, from 1999-2012 this guy was inescapable, and I don't think I've heard about him in the last 10 years."

Douglas Wykstra

Pats are to revolutions as those little white rocket boosters on the sides of the space shuttle are to space exploration: Good luck getting anywhere without them, but they must be jettisoned in order for you to actually get free. Thomas Cromwell, Robespierre, Patrick Henry (actually a Pat!).

Eli Parker

I don't really have a minute to go back and cite my sources, but in that arc where Ray and Pat went to a new age cult retreat I got the sense that Ray values his shared history with Pat and that he and possibly other characters remain friends with him mostly for his own sake. It reminded me of assholes who I keep in my life because even though I don't get much out of the relatoinship, I care about them and want to nudge them away from going off the deep end.

Douglas Wykstra

Turns out that "I will tell on you so hard they'll move your ancestors to hell" goes just a little harder than "I am placing you under Citizen's Arrest."

Achewood

There may be multiple curses at work on the Reynolds men. Simon seems to be a kind person; perhaps it skips a generation. Will we meet Pat's grandfather?

Douglas Wykstra

This comic actually explains how Pat became acquainted with Beef and Ray. Ray generally respects people who are 100% themselves without apology.

Achewood

You know, I can actually picture that as accurate to his character. Like, shooting a squirrel, gutting it, and squeezing small farts out of its entrails before washing his hands in the creek.

severecorvid

Not gonna lie "its the only hobby he can afford" was top form by the bully there

Achewood

Yes, and since Ray is generally immune to judgement and dickishness, he just saw Pat is more interesting than your average second-grade NPC.

Achewood

There is a lot of recreational farting in straitened communities, ngl

Nicholas

You can really hear the triumphant note in Pat’s voice as he spills the tea on Randall’s broken home, with the arms akimbo and the little eyebrow raise. Young Pat is incredibly perfect and I love him

Achewood

Thanks for the thoughtful answer. Yes, they've been around each other so long that the sheer momentum has a type of value, even if the times themselves haven't been particularly fun. It's like how if we were childhood playmates with someone or went to school with them, but don't really connect with them, we'll still hold a place for them.

Clench and Cheese

It always starts with squirrels before they move on to cats. In the Achewoodverse, that's pretty much the only possible escalation (except otters).

Oppido

Reading these four syllables in the exact same melody and cadence as "SER-en-get-EEEE"

Achewood

That is to say, Ray appreciated a fellow with a similar volume or force of personality to is own. Fame respects game, as it is said in the hard streets.

Bill

I know we've seen Pat's dad Simon but we haven't seen his mom, so I have to wonder how much of his attitude and bearing are derived from that half of his heritage.

Eli Parker

Yeah, I feel like the older I get the more value I find in those relationships that have shaped me while never having been strictly gratifying.

blair

Your friends are the people you still want around after you know what's wrong with them.

rickward

Yeah, Beef may be from Circumstances, but Pat has Seen some Shit

Datura

that penultimate line is great

FactWino

Could these flashbacks show us a young Showbiz and his place in the schoolyard? Does Young Showbiz like Pat? Almost certainly not. How would young Pat deal with Showbiz? Will I ever stop asking questions?

Matthew Miller

I ordered a "AAA Alkaline Gay Mexican Latte" at my local. Coconut cold foam with alternating stripes of pistachio and ancho chili pepper dust. Blond roast with chicory.