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Author Q&A Thread #2 - open to non-subscribers! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-28 19:00:08
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
Q&A

Content

Please post your questions for me within twenty-four hours of this Q&A going live! (I.e., between now and tomorrow, Thursday February 29, 11AM Pacific.) I will respond over the course of the following few days, but usually within the hour. Patreon will send you a message when I reply to you.

Questions can be about anything, though Achewood- and writing-centric questions are what is largely anticipated. Surprise me. Maybe you want to know if I have mastered the "smash burger." (I have.) Maybe you think you should ask me if I want a Porsche car. (I don't, but for reasons that may surprise you.) 

Questions which aren‘t edifying for a general audience (question about an item you ordered, etc) will be pruned, but should be sent to me in a DM or email. 

If your question is mean, I will feel a sadness, followed eventually by indignance, though this progression may take many years. At some point in the distant future, and unannounced to all, I will heal. 

Files

Comments

Noah Lee

What’s Ramses Smuckles liquor of choice? How does the man with the blood on his hands imbibe?

Captain Chaos

Have you considered revamping the site to make the strips more mobile-friendly? This isn't like critical or anything it'd just be dope if I didn't have to manually zoom in on strips.

Chris Turner-Neal

I’m so pleased the old machine is up and running again. I first got into Achewood when I was displaced for Katrina, and it was such a comfort then and has been such a (positive!) influence on my own work.

Chris Hartjes

Any characters you introduced that you’d love to do over?

Cf Duddy

Which celebrities (alive or dead) would best voice Ray, Beef, and Teodor?

Josh K

You were looking for people with engineering, coding, and design experience a while back. What are some future projects you feel comfortable talking about that required people in those fields?

Frank McDevitt

Hello, sir! Long time reader, first time Q&A-er. This has been burning in my brain for years: why does Téodor call his blog The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory but then go on to proclaim that 95% of Guided By Voices output is “complete jag-off” in an issue of Rock n’ Roll Shit Fugue? Does he simply think they fell off after Bee Thousand? Is he just a bigger fan of Bob Pollard’s collabs with Doug Gillard? Inquiring minds want to know!

Mackenzie Guillory

Chris, were you aware Weezer themselves are Achewood fans? Specifically Scott Shriner? also: not to double-tap, but did you see my dogg and I's Phillipe tattoos on Reddit? We made the shop spin all of "Whiplash Smile" in tribute

Bungus Bronbo

What happened to Teodore and Penny?

Distant Egg Song

1. It seemed that the overall "voice" of the comic developed quite quickly during early-to-mid 2002. Was there a particular impetus for this and/or a catalyst in your personal or writing life that sped along its development? If this is too broad of a question, you can address the bulk of what I'm after by explaining how Roast Beef's tendency to preface his hypotheticals with "such as" came into being. 2. Do you have any advice for folks who are trying to get into a habit of more consistent practice of their artistic craft (either as a hobby or job)? 3. Which national cuisine is your favorite in terms of breakfast?

Nat Towsen

Has it gotten easier to write Cornelius over the years? How do you approach writing an older, wiser character?

Achewood

He is known to have spiraled a beer bottle through a man's transom. (Analysis indicated that the bottle was probably a golf foil-topped Michelob "Preggie," the gently rounded form the firm adopted in the mid-1970s.) Like our colleague Nightlife Mingus, he will also take a nip of Tuaca some evenings. But as he ages, he tends to decline alcohol, noting sleep disturbances.

Cy Heffley

how do you feel like the characters have grown since you first started writing? other than philippe, has anyone stayed essentially the exact same in your mind?

Achewood

Do you mean the achewood.com site? I did just have the site rebuilt from its charming 2005 standard, but are you suggesting something like a feature where the site automatically zooms to hold a single panel in the viewport, upon detecting a mobile device? I like this line of inquiry, please keep asking.

Achewood

Thank you Chris! Since you didn't ask a question, I will ask/answer one. Mr. Onstad, what shoes are you wearing? A: Some black high tops that look like Converse but are meant to seem more historical.

Achewood

To be honest, I haven't heard any interest from any publishers or other media developers, so I am way more than happy to think up things to offer people here on Patreon. I want to see if Pendleton Ward is up for a "podcast" type interview about our GOF experience, etc.

Achewood

That's a great question! I do want to reboot Emeril and Spongebath, as they had some good broad strokes and idiosyncratic details, but were only used tangentially as Beef's eccentric friends.

Lisa Taylor

I first got into Achewood (a bit late, but I made up for it) around 2010. A little later, my 10 year old daughter started reading (and fell deeply in love with) Homestuck. I grew to appreciate HS (though man that's a long haul), and thought part of the attraction to AW and HS (for both of us) was finding a brand-new, highly specific way of speaking, that infiltrated how we talked to each other. My question: have I completely lost all credibility by mentioning these two works of prose/pictures in a single comment?

Ragnarok Johnson

Do you have any particular favorite works/inspirations of magical realism?

Nicholas Williams

Nice Pete is a interesting character in that he: A. Has an iron-clad code of ethics B. Will absolutely kill the hell out of some suckers. What are the origins of this character, apart from being a deep well from which to draw tales of American Ruination? Does he have an analog in something you read long ago? Is he fun to write. He makes me...uncomfortable.

Achewood

1. I'm not actually sure if I already went over the Oni thing in the last QA, but in a nutshell, they hung on by a lifeline during Covid, then got bought and gutted by some other publisher who canceled the Achewood project as it was big, expensive, and not likely to rocket to Harry Potter levels of stardom. 2. I'm interested in that idea, where's an example? 3. Perry Bible Fellowship is the best example of what a comic "strip" (as opposed to series, and Achewood is really more of a series) can be: economic, terse, with a simple, brilliant twist. I love Nick's work. I look for developments in the comics world maybe a couple times a year. XKCD typically held a high standard of cleverness. If I remember more, I'll come back to this question and add.

Jay Y

If you've already answered this elsewhere, feel free to point me to that, but your literary influences are well known, so I'm curious, what comics inspired you and why comics as a medium given the time you invested in the character blogs?

Achewood

Ray: I always heard him as Chef from South Park, but more sensual. Of course, we had Steve Howey do him for the Netflix thing, so go figure. Beef: Noel Fisher did Beef, and absolutely killed it. I hope people can hear it someday. Tremulous, harmed, but with breadth and the ability to explode. Teodor: A ziplock bag with two egg yolks inside.

Achewood

The projects were TBD based on the talented people that contacted us. That's how the Raybot.help thing started -- a handful of extremely skilled AI engineers were also fans, including Jack Clark from Anthropic. We didn't work with him directly, but I had a fun idea session with him in SF. We also began talks with clothing designers, toy makers, and the like. I haven't had the time to put heat under most of those for now though, since developing the new material for Patreon has been a (wonderful) full-time job.

Achewood

I know that name! Good to hear from you on down the years, Frank. The explanation is, the incredible songs they *do* release are so powerful that they obviate the disappointment in the rest of the catalogue. A good way to think about GBV is this: we all say a lot of sentences each day. We need to, in order to get to the occasional zinger. If we just waited for the zinger, people would think we were largely mute. GBV cannot afford to appear inactive, or their tax ID will lapse, and Bob will have to go back to pitching high school baseball.

Achewood

1. I saw that they follow on X, but they haven't been in touch about a Téodor-themed song collab. I'd love to chat with Scott if the's the responsible party. 2. I did not see these tattoos! How can I see them?

Achewood

I haven't committed this to canon yet, but you can fairly assume that he wasn't developed enough as a man to hold the interest of a woman who was further along as herself. Great question, and now it's fodder for development in the In-Universe pieces. (I want to do one-off comics for a while before starting another storyline.)

Achewood

1. Once Ray, Beef, and Pat came along, I found that their voices came much more naturally. Interestingly, there are stuffed animals for pretty much all the prior characters, but the cats were just invented, so perhaps that's why they were more personal — I wasn't forcing a voice to fit some physical object. I know that sounds like a terrible answer, and it probably is, but I just thought of it. Another answer is that I had never done any consistent work in comics before 2001, and so by 2002 I had warmed up a bit and felt like it was going somewhere, so I put more resources (brain calories) into it. 2. Of course! Get up early, before distractions, and work at it for several hours each day. This is a tired old truism, but it's a truism for a reason: you have to show up for the muse, not the other way around. Creative work has to be as habitual as any other work. 3. Some form of the Full Ulster. I don't need the entire motley assembly, and can usually do without the tomatoes and mushrooms, but that's my scene. I can do avocado and mama lil' peppers with sprouts on gluten free bagel if under duress, but in my heart I want a lumberjack (shepherd?) pile.

Austin

How do you decide which characters will 'write'/frame the recipes in your cookbooks? Any versions of a vol 3 slowly simmering in your rough drafts?

Ben Wilinofsky

You said that your characters are often loosely based on people in your life. Is Showbiz a family member, an amalgam of family members, or a sort of avatar of how people in your life have experienced their family?

Nathaniel R

Always wondered: Are you a fan of the prose stylings of the late Cormac McCarthy?

Achewood

Cornelius is actually difficult to keep in check, as a voice, because it has the greatest ambition and sophistication. It's easier to tell if a system is off the greater its complexity. As to his wisdom, it's easy to sound wise if you edit ferociously and publish minimally. I've gone through troves of old unreleased Cornelius writing that will never see the light of day because it's just hot air. Lukewarm air. Talking for its own masturbatory pleasure.

Gordon Shumway

1. Are Roast Beef and Molly still "a thing?" 2. Is Cartilage Head still "a thing?"

Thickolas

If CH is alive while the most important marriage in comics is dead, I'm suin'

Michael Akey

As a follower of Achewood from way early times, and having loved the GOF from the first (*which is most definitely A Thing) have you thought about a longer story arc of an early GOF to bring some of the incredible character names to "life"?

Achewood

The challenge is to keep the character true to archetype while also allowing natural room for compelling growth. My instinct is to err on the side of staying true to form, while allowing the characters to explore new dimensions within certain arcs or strips. For example, in the last comic where Beef is feeling "kind of happy," I actually struggled with whether I should allow that. Ramses developed a ton in the Netflix series, but sadly I'll have to reformulate all that content as strips. (I guess it's not that sad, as it's a lot of content that I think is really good.)

Achewood

I don't know Homestuck, but you have established tremendous credibility with me by mentioning the other comic. I do always enjoy hearing that the turns of phrase in the comic have become native dialect with people. I'm not sure what that means, but it feels positive.

Achewood

I read a little magical realism in high school, and maybe in college. Only enough to recognize the fundamental of the genre, which is that goofy stuff can happen if you want it to. It's quite liberating if you're stuck writing some character-driven thing about two professors eating bread, and you're getting bored with it, then suddenly in the bread they see the face of Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX).

Thickolas

I hold out hope they're at least still in one another's orbit.

Achewood

I grew up in a small, deeply-rural mountain town called Twain Harte, in the Yosemite area. At the fringes of that existence are taciturn, uneducated mountain men who drive enormously heavy 1960s iron trucks and wear old check-print wool shirts. They have heavy logging boots. I don't know where they go at night, but there is probably a lantern, and some beans. They aren't around all "our stuff." So, they have a different approach.

Alexander Basek

Does Ray have any thoughts or feelings about NA beer?

Sam Wilson

Ever thought about making some in character Spotify playlists other than Beefs workout mix? I would specifically love to see Tèodor’s trying way to hard mix for a romantic interest.

Achewood

I grew up reading stacks of the old paperback books like Peanuts, Balanesçu, Garfield, etc. But I realized recently that the deepest comics influence I have, in terms of why I actually started, was MAD. My dad always had old issues from when he was younger, and they were excitingly subversive. It was subversive material a kid could access, because straight-up books were beyond me. Then in college when I wrote for the Chaparral I rediscovered my love for combining subversion and comics. As to why I started doing comics as a newish adult, I'd seen MNFTIU and thought it would be a fun, easy way to have a laugh, because I knew all the graphic design and publishing tools. Getting a start as an actual prose writer wasn't a thing online yet, but publishing comics seemed like a surer bet.

Lisa Taylor

"Being in trouble is a fake idea" is a concept I have woven into my parenting approach and I am grateful for it.

Ben Wilinofsky

Are there story lines that just don't sit right with you after they are done? Is there a desire to return to the time and place and "fix" them, or a desire to flee the scene and never return? How do you deal with a published piece that, months or years after, you have some unresolved feelings about?

Achewood

I do have a Vol 3 in the works, with at least two dozen entires. God, cookbooks are a lot of work. The next one will probably be straight-to-PDF, unless there is significant call for a handheld version. Which character gets the recipe is typically a function of the nature of the recipe in question. Ray would never do something as ambitious as Téodor, for example (at least in terms of knowledge and technique; Ray would definitely try to deep-fry the world's longest lobster tail). Or, a recipe will seem to have a particular back story, and that story will be appropriate to Cornelius, for example, because it contains a classical French element that you'd only have seen tableside several decades ago.

Jay Y

Good call on MAD. That's a touchstone for me. My ma's then-boyfriend bought me a sub and I enjoyed it but it wasn't until they started republishing the earliest issues and I got introduced to fellows like Wally Wood that it really started to blow my mind.

Achewood

I've never been asked this about Showbiz before, so this is a fun one. Growing up in Twain Harte, a small and deeply rural mountain town, there were lots of this kind of "skeezy shitball" guy around. Really constitutionally minimal guys — the kind of organism that can live off frozen pizza and Jolly Ranchers. The earliest Showbizzes I knew, however, were friends of my cousins on my mother's side — scuzzy dudes in their own right, who listened to KISS and farted socially, as SOON as the farts were available. One night one of them, who had one of those Volkswagen bugs with too big of an engine for them to put the rear hood back on, stole some restaurant takeout food that we'd bought, jumped in his car with it, and sped off cackling with his middle finger in the air. This was okay, somehow. That might have been the birth of Showbiz. Come to think of it, it seems Todd, Lyle, and Showbiz were all born of that singular gesture.

Achewood

I haven't read any but it does get suggested often enough for me to remember his name. What's a good place to start? Does he have anything about a cat who is so sad that he can't order takeout?

Achewood

1. Oh yes, I'm getting them back in the picture in the coming weeks. 2. CH cannot actually die. But he takes patience by the readership; I didn't want Patreon subscriptions to suddenly plummet to zero once he showed up and started prancing around with sherry and a Napoleonic pistol.

Achewood

The Netflix project had me developing a virtual tome of backstory for the GOF, and your question reminds me that I should mine it heavily for more content. Did you see the Salmonwood piece that just went up in the In-Universe tier? That was a solid slab of GOF lore. Thank you for the kind words Akey! Akey-wood.

Achewood

He's surprised by how aggressively the market has developed in the last five years. He thinks there's a play to be made there, but not until it's legal to put THC varietals in the blend. He gets bored with competing in established commodity spaces pretty quick.

Achewood

Ah, this is exactly the kind of thing that Achewood should do. Great suggestion! I will have to figure out how to create these and make them public; perhaps there is a button in their app experience.

Gordon Shumway

I am glad that the depressed cat is still with the understanding Welsh peasant revenant cat, and am warily eyeing the margins of every new strip knowing that *he* still lurks in those liminal spaces.

Sam Wilson

Spotify and Instagram are basically the blogger equivalents of now a days and probably more manageable from a creative standpoint. Glad to see you back. Thanks for the decades of entertainment!

Achewood

Great question. I see the GOF as a pretty respectable first draft, but when I re-approached it for the Netflix project, I could see just how flimsy it was. It was a great experience to flesh out the years far before and far after it, and the character motivations much more deeply. But I'd have to re-do that arc separately, while leaving the original in place, because you can't fuck with a story that so many people are so invested in. It would be like trying to make additional Star Wars movies. Some arcs I don't like to read just because of what I was going through at the time. I notice, though, that when I do, they are meaningful instruments of analysis, and they bring out different types of understanding over time. For this reason I'll keep them all as they are, as we see different things in work — good or terrible, and in our own work or in others' — as we age, and if the work changes, then its ability to serve as a valuable reference point is eliminated.

Michael Akey

Salmonwood. My next estate will be named Salmonwood. Salmonwood on the Heath.

Captain Chaos

Yes to both: I am referring to achewood.com and also a feature that auto-zooms to panels. You could make it a Patreon feature even.

Tegumante

The characters make Achewood the best thing on the Internet. This is a fact. They talk differently to anyone I know. Also fact. They might perhaps be just as compelling if their language was more commonplace, I don't know that. But in truth the language in Achewood is extraordinary and a great part of the appeal. My question is: do you mostly just come out with it as we read it, or do you rewrite, edit and polish a lot? Do you agonise over words and phrasing, or does it just flow out of you, fully formed, like Venus from the waves?

Achewood

Great idea. I'll discuss it with my dev. Thanks!

Achewood

Refresh men, what was that? (Funny, I was just talking about Gilligan's Island last night, apparently Lauren thought it was "unbearably boring.")

Nicholas Williams

Teodor seems to be a real piece of shit these days, perhaps even a focal point for some sort of authorial ire. A few years ago his life seemed to maybe be on the upswing, van-terror aside. Any plans to send the feckless lad on a hero's journey?

Nevin

Are there any current comics you read/enjoy?

Achewood

That is insanely cool. Is this like a "ride or die chochachos" matching tats situation?

Achewood

I'm sure he at least stalks her IG using a non-blocked account.

Achewood

But what happens when the kid needs to be in trouble? I was in trouble a lot as a kid, and it made me stop wearing golf spikes on the new deck.

Achewood

You're right Sam I should probably just conduct some character interactions in a Venmo feed.

Lisa Taylor

Ha -- well, when one has an anxious child, one tries to help them feel less like the world will end if they make a mistake.

Sam Wilson

🐱🚬💨🙀🚘💀 worse ways to make a buck.

Caleb Gerard

Do you still employ the driving sandwich? More serious question, thr blogs were instrumental in helping me fill in the gaps of understanding the characters, but it was always awkward to go to a different site for them. in my dreams I see a sort of annotated achewood collection with the day's strip surrounded with everyone's blog for that day, but that way madness lies I think. with current web tech, had you considered a way of congregating everything on a new site, with the blogs appearing as sort of drop down underneath the page, along with other authorial notes or insights from your current perspective? Plus it would be a travesty for the blogs to die whenever Google decides Blogger is unprofitable or whatever.

Achewood

Thank you! In truth, it's both. A good long Cornelius sentence will just float into awareness and need no rework; a sequence between Téodor and Lyle might get rewritten in 75 passes over the course of eight cumulative hours. A strip takes about 8-16 hours to complete; more if it's greater than two rows / more ambitious. That's why making this thing a daily was never going to work. Some strips get started weeks before they're mature; I have several going at once.

Achewood

Téodor's getting a breather after that last workout with Tina and Elon Musk. If he does anything heroic, it will take so long that everyone will lose interest. Maybe his lesson is that not all men are heroes.

Achewood

While I am certain there are good comics being made, I don't follow any on a regular basis. I looked at the comics section in the Portland Mercury last week and wanted to shoot a potato gun up my own butt. I mostly look for new pants sales at JCrew.com

Achewood

I hear that. "Reading the kid" was not a thing in the 70s. I was pretty certain that when I was punished for doing something wrong, the overall potential of my life had just been decreased in some significant way.

True Tales of the Illuminati

I'd love to read more about Emeril and Spongebath. My question was actually going to be about what those knuckleheads are up to these days

Zander Cannon

What was your process of creating the visual style or the strip? Specifically, the style of panel composition, the word balloons, the typeface, etc. Was it all intentionally planned, stumbled upon, borrowed from an earlier project, or a combination?

Achewood

I love how at this point I would definitely lose any Achewood trivia contest. What's the driving sandwich reference? It sounds like an idea I might have had at the Portland Mercury — but that was more a "drivin' cookies" period of my life. Iced oatmeal Franz, IIRC.

Achewood

MNFTIU was simple black and white clip art, as were Jerkcity and some others that proved you could get away with next to nothing. (Frankly, Peanuts and Garfield were pretty minimal too.) I drew the first strips with an optical mouse, not even a tablet, so they were necessarily formed by the limitations of that technology — draw some endpoints, pull some handles. Maybe freehand a line here or there, but have to clean it up. And I drew them in Illustrator, so they all had a consistent line thickness. The speech bubbles were more or less what I remembered from the generalized "comics page." The typeface, Blue Highway, seemed like a good legible font without an overload of personality, although it was a *terrible* choice because it does not have italics or even a usable comma. (The comma looks like a period, so I use the comma from the Georgia font.) The rest comes from my anxiety about drawing and lack of spatial awareness.

Caleb Gerard

sorry for the double barreled question, but will Penny and Polly return? I thought they both suffered ignominious vanishings.

eventheseleaves

Hey Chris, sort of a sequel to the Showbiz question someone asked above, but, without getting too uncomfortably personal, would you say as a child you were From Circumstances, or merely had cause to observe Circumstances yourself (which based on the description of your hometown seems equally likely)? I ask because as someone from the former camp, what has always stood out to me about your work is that it’s one of the most evenhanded and accurate depictions of childhood poverty, both its initial experience and the lingering adulthood effects. Poverty in art is usually either Honey Boo Boo grotesque cartoon or like sheer Dickensian misery, but in Beef you really nailed the honesty and humanity (normality?) in a way I always found remarkable even on top of all the other remarkable things to be found. The Christmas laundromat strip in particular is still my favorite piece—you exceptionally captured the experience of being a poor kid where fucked up things are happening and maybe you know they’re fucked up but also they’re all you’ve ever known so you don’t really approach them with any special concern but more of just a “this is what happens” resignation. I found it really beautiful and it’s always the first strip I show to people to try to turn them on to your work. Anyway, just always wondered if stuff like that originated from a first hand place, or instead merely the observational artists’ eye, which in many senses would be even more remarkable.

Amit Katz

What's your favorite characters that didn't get the popularity/traction with the audience? In other words what characters would you want to write more for, but don't get the reaction that you hoped for.

Eli Parker

Is there anything from Achewood's history that you would like to be able to erase because it's become annoying to write around?

Achewood

also, on the new achewood.com, if there's a blog on the same day as the strip, a link to it appears below that strip. Working in the annotations from the Dark Horse and Oni projects along with each strip is an awesome idea though! Thank you.

Achewood

Great question, and they are absolutely fair game for revisiting. Questions like this remind me that people actually care, even about the minor characters. Nobody goes away in Achewood, though some (Scrambles) wait too long to return.

Nathaniel R

He wrote a lot about abject poverty (and humanity otherwise in extremis) and the state-of-nature (a)morality that emerges from it. He explored capital-V violence from about every possible angle. But it's not these themes that keep me coming back, it's the language: poetic and otherworldly. If you ever dig in, skip the Border Trilogy and go big and hard with something like Blood Meridian or Suttree

Jay Y

JERKCITY hghalaglhalghalghag

Achewood

Great question, thank you. Economically, I grew up in an unflashy segment of the middle class; as far as I knew we were comfortable, but kids seldom know everything. Family was intact and stable, food on the table, a birthday party, that sort of thing. But a person's ability to derive the experience of Circumstances is not necessarily tied to firsthand experiences of such; I knew other kids who were bad off, and I have the habit of transposing myself into other positions in order to feel them out. That said, one can also fabricate the experience of Circumstances for one's self simply as an exercise in self-pity, of which I cannot be the only guilty practitioner. Spending a few decades as a slowly-dying drunk definitely helped with the real-world pathos development, though, I'll say that much. That was invaluable in terms of knowing horror.

Achewood

I had always hoped that Roast Beef would find his place with the readership, but people are always like, "More griddled corn salesman!" "More of that little salesman who gives samples of griddled corn!" While we were doing the Netflix series Noel Fisher did such a tremendous job with Sondra Smuckles (as placeholder voice; he was not cast as her, that was Maria Bamford) that I wrote an entire series pitch for her as a younger woman.

Nathaniel R

Just dug up an odd quotation from Suttree that captures what I'm on about here. Here we have a racehorse in gallop ,"brisket heaving and muscles sliding in clocklike flexion." Jesus Christ could that be described any better? "One spring morning timing the lean near-liquid progress of a horse on a track, the dust exploding, the rapid hasping of his hocks, coming up the straight foreshortened and awobble and passing elongate and birdlike with harsh breaths and slatted brisket heaving and the muscles sliding and brunching in clocklike flexion under the wet black hide and a gout of foam hung from the long jaw and then gone in a muted hoofclatter, the aging magistrate snapped his thumb from the keep of the stopwatch he held and palmed it into his waistcoat pocket and looking at nothing, nor child nor horse, said anent that simple comparison of rotary motions and in the oratory to which he was prone that they had witnessed a thing against which time would not prevail."

Nathaniel R

In Suttree a dude also gets his bone on with several watermelons in case that sells it any better than the quote.

Achewood

I find that by simply ignoring universe-building errors, I am able to sleep peacefully at night and suffer a minimum of flack in my inbox. The idea of the "Underground" where the non-human characters had to go to be themselves, out of the view of humans, was obviously never referred to much over time. For the most part they just exist in their own world, and seldom encounter the human world, so a separate geographical realm hasn't been necessary. Could we say, though, that any time we see them out of the house they are clearly in the Underground? Or does that conceit not stay in consistency with the comic as it's played out over the years?

Achewood

Also, I have never visually or mentally resolved how Ray wears a thong while also having a tail.

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

What sort of ambient scenting do you prefer in your living/creative spaces? Any favored incense, candle, plant, inorganic substance, cleaner, food? Or do you prefer a neutral/nothing type of smell indoors? I have found creative people to be very definite about smells.

Achewood

I don't like distractions of any kind, be they smells or a thing that moves or a cat fountain burbling due to low water. (What sort of creature cannot refill its own water?) People who are able to concentrate and produce masterpieces in coffee shops will always indicate to me that our species has extraordinary breadth. As long as an area doesn't smell like fish has been cooked, or wet or dry animal food, though, I can typically get moderately complex things done.

Spyguitar

Here in Minnesota, where we legalized edibles several years before flower, it's now in fact possible to find an NA beer with THC involved at at least one brewery. I haven't tried it, but the brewery in question (Bauhaus Brew Labs, if anyone is curious, no I'm not affiliated) makes good stuff otherwise, so it's probably at least fine.

Achewood

That horse racing paragraph is like having to learn a new language, and while I certainly admire the brain that can work so uniquely with the language, I have to ask myself, when I encounter such writing, if the juice is worth the squeeze. Well-articulated observation (David Foster Wallace) has to actually go somewhere (see, Not David Foster Wallace), so your assurance that a character in this author's employ also bones watermelons gives me hope that purchasing his novel will be a sound investment. Although I do protest the use of the word "brunching" when referring to the motion of muscles. It is impossible not to picture scrambled eggs coming from between the muscles, and therefore the scene becomes one of horror and revulsion.

Achewood

Did I write the Emily Dickinson thing or is that a popular meme?

Achewood

I'm going to have to think long and carefully about what those two men are now doing. It could be one of the more glorious developments of the hiatus if done correctly. They might both be manservants to Lang Lang now.

Kevin VanEvery

This is probably asked somewhere already, but do you have a favorite strip? Mine is the one with Ray getting rained on inside the RV.

Achewood

Happily, this changes over time. Today, when I ask myself this right as you have asked it, I come back to myself with, "Todd and Magical Realism in North Korea." It's a good reminder that sometimes you just have to throw a handful of dice and see where the story goes. But generally speaking, I can't hold all...1600?...strips in my head and evaluate them together. One thing of which I am proud, at least, is that I can still go into the archives, start reading, and get a laugh. Sure, there are groans, cheap outs, and things which in my eyes fail, but that any of it has stood my test of time reassures me it wasn't wasted time. Great question Kevin, thank you!

Kevin VanEvery

I'll read that one again - thanks Chris!

Ian Stewart

As a fan, I've learned over the years that rigorous world-building consistency is enjoyable while it lasts, but demanding it long-term ends up being a fool's errand. (see: Star Trek, Star Wars, just about any other corporate-owned franchise that gets dragged out of cold storage to generate cashflow) The older underground strips still have their own charm, and the occasional appearance of an out-of-scale human such as the recent return of the author self-depiction is a fun way to shake things up. If anybody gives you shit about it, gesture vaguely towards Waid and Morrison's concept of Hypertime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertime and also nudge them about how seriously they're taking the strip with the talking cat wearing a thong.

Achewood

A creator's ego will force them to defend the idea that they had it all planned from the get-go, but this is indefensible and arrogant. I started this thing for fun and more or less sketched the world out as the tale was told. So yeah, one operating principle here — and I hew to it imperfectly, as with all values — is that the characters can die, start over, reappear as having a different basic concern, etc, because "this is a comic strip, and it should be fun more than it should be a religion." Thanks!

Eli Parker

I definitely never think about the underground stuff unless i'm currently reading a strip about it, Achewood doesn't really seem to be the sort of thing that would be enriched by having an answer to every question. I don't know if I'll be able to unsee the problem with Ray's thong/tail situation now that you've mentioned it though.

Achewood

What is it about fictional universes that readers can demand such zero-sum unified theory, when in real life we don't even know how a banana works

Eli Parker

I gotta assume that imagining worlds with order and rules that can be fully understood is an escapist thing.

Adam Whybray

Is Little Nephew ageless like Philippe?

Formica

Have you ever encountered an Achewoodism in the wild? Like, talking to someone who is unaware of your art and they call an uncomfortable joke "rough chuckles" or the like. (I have spread that one as far and wide as possible; simultaneously evocative and concise.)

Achewood

This is a good question, but like the question above concerning "the underground" and hard universe rules, the answer might be squishier than is desired. Philippe is five, and it seems he always will be; however, which of the characters are truly older than at the outset of the strip? In essence, the purpose of LN is not to develop according to a chronological age, but rather with respect to whatever horrible youth trend seems to have gripped the impressionable in a given period, and pissed me off.

Achewood

Only rarely, and often in a form that is slightly adjacent to but plausibly inspired by the Achewood original. In such cases I must merely wonder if I too wasn't just building on some raw material to which the rest of our writers and speakers also had access, and I tamp down the hubris. However, once I hear a presidential speech in which the speaker refers to his "rad chilies," or see a McDonald's item named "The Robert L. 'Spongebath' Dane French Fry/Onion Ring Cart Basket Combo," I will know I have truly arrived, and should also seek counsel.

Adam Whybray

Thank you for a satisfying answer!

John Robinson

I work for a prominent ampersanded bookstore. When McCarthy died last year, it was on a day I was scheduled to work in the evening. I called the store, asked to speak to a particular member of the senior staff, and told her about it. The reason I mention it here is that when I got her on the line, I prefaced my comment with "So this is A Thing", and it was entirely because of the way Achespeak has suffused my own manner of speech. No regrets.

Achewood

I enjoy the idea that Achewood may have given the word "thing" a second shot at life simply by capitalizing it.

elton mesquita

How well does Achewood, uh, percolate outside the US? (Question prompted by me being a little guy from Brazil who knows a tiny basketful of improbable people who know and love Achewood).

Achewood

I can infer from merchandise sales that Achewood connects quite well in Canada, the UK, and Australia. Outside of the English-speaking world, it has a humble foothold among the Scandinavians (perhaps due to my Norwegian last name), and I could gather the German readers at a modest Stammtisch. Other than that, Achewood seems to enjoy very little purchase on the globe. Perhaps, Elton, I ought to introduce a dance-crazed steak salesman named João, in order to gain greater foothold among your countrymen? Would that work?

Chadwick Crawford

Suttree is the most Roast Beef of his work for sure

Achewood

"brothers of consequence" is a great phrase Some good salad in there. You ate the right grapes son

Caleb Gerard

haha, it was such a small thing I didn't know if you would even remember it, I think it's from one of your personal blogs, about giving yourself something to occupy mind/jaw space while driving. I was trying to come up with something that didn't dissolve into "please spoil the next two years of your output please."

Achewood

I wonder if a talented computer programmer reads this and can easily automate the recreation of the blogs on the achewood.com server, so they never have to die

Caleb Gerard

despite having never worn a thong nor a desire to start, the most logical answer to me is, he wears it backwards and pokes his tail out the Y-front. I have no idea if thongs have Y-fronts.

True Tales of the Illuminati

I've always enjoyed Beef, Emeril and Spongebath's trashspotting group, and sometimes practice it a bit myself as I walk to work on a fine trash day morning. Was trashspotting something drawn from your own life, or invented in the writing process? If the latter, how did that idea develop?

Distant Egg Song

Thank you! I'm pretty amazed that Beef's voice came about more-or-less whole-cloth, seeing as how I've never really read or heard anybody who talks like him before Achewood. On the topic of your breakfast decisions, I will say that one of the smaller things that I appreciate Achewood for is its constant reminder that American and European cuisines have avenues that I have yet to explore.

Nevin

I would like to recommend the work of Simon Hanselmann.

Achewood

As a lifelong fan of the simple pleasures of a Sherlock Holmes story, and a man who walked his neighborhood looking for validation of his alcohol consumption in the recycling bins of others, it was only natural that the inductive voyeurism would give rise to some kind of Achewood content. Write what you know, you know?

Achewood

He's how I imagine a cripplingly shy humble mumbly dude to sound, translated into the particular tool set of written English, then decoded by a third party, so I suppose his voice is an invention of all of us. What is the breakfast where you live, non-western-dining Chochaco? I infer that it is some sort of chicken product, if a chicken is truly the distant song of the egg.

Achewood

I read a Mogg and Ogg book by Simon in 2020 and enjoyed it greatly. If I had remembered it while writing my first reply here, I would have mentioned it. It was charming, unpredictable, and did not make missteps.

Ben Wilinofsky

Jesus man do not say sentences like "the Great Outdoor Fight feels flimsy" at me unless you want to crush all hope of aspiring artists everywhere

Achewood

Haha well, I should broaden that answer to say that setting the GOF up for an Achewood-virginal television audience meant backfilling a lot of psychological connections and motivations. I really should go back through all those scripts and create more GOF scenes that slot in. I also got started on a season 2, which came after the Salmonwood story.

Mackenzie Guillory

Thanks, Pops. You can now disregard the previous direct message I sent about the tats, hah. Q who got the other tat wants me to tell you “thanks for the years of laughs and tears.” Salut!

Distant Egg Song

I'm a fairly standard American when it comes to breakfast. I'm mostly an eggs, bacon and hashbrown guy. That being said, if I have my druthers, my ideal breakfast is leftover pad thai from last night's dinner.

Tom

You've made many oblique (and not so oblique) references to being an alcoholic, and now being in recovery. Congrats btw, that must have sucked real bad! What's your relationship with other substances now? Personally booze was never that big a thing for me (flex), but cannabis has probably lead me to many an irresponsible action, so I've been abstaining for the last few months and may continue indefinitely, or at least until well after I've got a job again...

A Cloth Map

Do you have any advice on being a good father?

Achewood

Seaside is the town with the big tourist area of arcades and taffy, but really just go to Astoria. An actual city with tons of great secondhand clothing, Buoy Fish and chips, or the ever eclectic World Cafe or whatever it’s called. Watch giant cargo ships from your table. Go to the Lewis and Clark obelisk up the hill. Be glad you live wherever the Souvlakis live and not the Oregon coast.

Achewood

Sounds like we’re ships in the night. Since legalization things like composition and dosage are knowable, so I’m quite happy on a 1mg thc:cbn or -cbg gum. That’s just about the smallest possible dose, and I feel it acutely, so I’m grateful for it. I think it costs about $1. I know you can get 10x that dose for the same price but I don’t want that. And a buck instead of a $60 bar tab is great.

Achewood

Kids need to know what the rules are, not be the ones to set the rules. It stresses them out and leads to…inexperienced leadership. And dear god I’m glad my kid was older before social media really barbed into the brain stem. Nothing but the best of luck to you. It’s very difficult and that, even if you’re doing your job right, does not let up.

jakorcuppa

any advice on if someone wanted to make a casual comic strip of their own? i try to every once in a while and then it never goes anywhere, i think i just dont have the work ethic

Stankadelic

Hi Chris, you’ve made some references to playing the guitar in the past, I’d love to hear more about that. Do you have a favorite chord?

Zerox 5

Do You Know what time Ham TIime is at My House?

william

I know this question sucks, but what happened to you around 2012? I think in an interview you said you got divorced and it seemed like times were rough? This seemed to be near the time Achewood ended as well, but post quarantine I can't remember when anything happened accurately. Shortly after I believe you launched the soda company. Either way, I'm so glad you and Achewood are back, you are routinely the highlight of my week. Thank you.

professor husband

of COURSE MNFITU is an influence on Achewood, how could i be so oblivious

Paul

Which person in Achewood would you say is the happiest? The least happy? I don't know if Philippe counts. The little shaver seems to do pretty well emotionally.

Nathan Hall

What books do you recommend children read? Anything that especially inspired you and has aged at least passably?

Achewood

Astoria Coffee House & Bistro, not "World Cafe"

Achewood

I'm afraid the words "casual" and "comic strip" can't occupy the same sentence, unless there is an obliterating conjunction (the fourth and lesser-known type of conjunction) between them. A great little panel will seem effortless, but to produce it will cost you your life. I think elsewhere in this QA I have revealed the ineluctable but disappointing truth, which is that in order to succeed creatively it's imperative to get up early, work all day, and throw away 99% of your output. "You have to show up for the muse, not the other way around."

Achewood

Stankadelic, Thank you for asking! Yes, I do enjoy playing the guitar, and have since a small age — even before I started to physically play one. I would sit in my mother's lap and form "chords" (shapes) with my left hand, and vibrate my right hand at tremendous frequency, emulating the tremolo picking of the accomplished surf guitarists of the era. Just a year or two later — I think in the seventh grade — I received an acoustic guitar and did not leave my room until I was "valedictorian of the air," a title which I awarded myself upon mastering the intro to "Riders on the Storm." (This is extremely difficult to achieve on guitar, as it is just heavy rain sounds.) As far as a favorite chord, I find that you really can't go wrong with C. It's kind of the like the front door of a house: It's where the story begins.

Achewood

Ah, another thing that sounds like an Achewood reference, but which I cannot place! I would imagine that ham time at your house is 5am on Christmas Morning, when you flint the tinder in the old range so that you can get Parson Klimacht's special maple-cured twenty-pounder cooked through in time for supper. (How far off was ?)

Achewood

I really should write a brief, sad biography. (I don't use the term autobiography here, because it will be ghost written by a chochacho named Aramark Steve.) (Steve always has a fresh white uniform shirt on, and is responsible.) In a nutshell — where I am typically bounded, bee-tee-dubs — my drinking habit had brought me through a final swirl and down the drain, I went to rehab, was divorced, and started from scratch in many dimensions of the concept. (Except for actual scratching: I was always cleanly.) I tried to get right back to doing the comic once I had landed somewhere, but quickly decided I needed some space from it in order to build up a healthy life. It's been a long time on the sands, but I am very happy to say that thanks to reader interest and support, I have decided that this is where I actually want to be and what I like to do. Thanks for asking, and I'm very happy you enjoy the new work!

Achewood

That's a good point about Philippe. The happiness that comes at the other end of a dark teatime is fuller — the examined, challenged, hard-won happiness — and so while he is typically set to "happy," it's untested. Ray seems pretty happy. He has a lot of money, and a good, big car. So if that's your kind of happiness, Ray is your guy. Beef is only very occasionally happy, so does his happiness hit harder? Is it a better sort? (No.) But it's all relative. A character of pure happiness wouldn't be very interesting or relatable. Each has their place of happiness, even Nice Pete, but I am not allowed to describe his favorite moments here.

Achewood

I just recommend that children read voraciously, constantly, mountains of the stuff, while their giant little brains are still sticky as spilled varnish, while their coterie of ganglia still honor the wonder of each datum. I read through my father's old Hardy Boys collection front to back and back to the front again, but unless you can get the old 1920s and 30s volumes, the modern stuff has been compromised to untextured fluff. The original works showcase moral and ethical discrepancies from how we live and think now (e.g., Frank and Joe describe Chet Morton as "a horrible fatso," even though he is their best friend), and may be at too great a remove from our improving social baseline to be successfully parsed by the young mind, but for me they provided endless repetition of enfolded formulae (sentence style, story structure, character archetype) upon which to build an understanding of our language. This is not to say that One Hundred Years of Solitude wouldn't create a better brain, but children are likely to find that book extremely dull. That is a poor answer for you, though, as you requested things which haven't aged terribly. All generations of the Hardy Boys rewrites have aged terribly. The writing of PG Wodehouse is clean, happy, comical, and not of an especially lofty diction. It hasn't aged a bit, with the exception of Bertie's outfits. But, without further knowledge of how old these theoretical children are, it's difficult to make a more useful recommendation.

Paul

HA!

Nathan Hall

My kids are 10, 7, 3. The older two are voracious readers and love Trixie Belden, so you're not far off thematically with Hardy Boys! I'll look up Wodehouse, thank you for the tip.

Zerox 5

That's a beautiful ham time vision. But the reference is from an old rebus you did a million jokes ago.

Achewood

Good god, that is from the Stanford Chaparral, isn't it? In that case it's from about 1995, give or take a couple. Probably the pinnacle of my University career, that rebus.

Achewood

Ah, if you have yet to discover Wodehouse you are in for the treat of a lifetime. I envy you with both hands. Check out the Fry and Laurie enactment on Youtube, it's unparalleled British humor, the foundation of all good things we hold dear. (Well, I must credit Twain with being the foundation beneath that foundation, but Wodehouse is still a godfather of western humor.)

Dr_Salt_NEO

I know I'm late but maybe I'll get lucky. I've gotten heavily interested in the strip and read it front to back along with the blogs multiple times and something that captures me is your love of food and drinks. Do you have where/way you pick up your culinary knowledge or is it just an interest of yours that you've built up over years and years? Had some great times making your recipes and trying Ray's exquisite tastes in Stella and Ketel One.

Spyguitar

I'll second the Fry and Laurie recommendation ("Jeeves and Wooster" is the Wodehouse, but "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" is also fantastic). And if you're only familiar with Hugh Laurie as Dr. House, hooo boy are you in for a second treat of a lifetime

Achewood

I saw Hugh Laurie in a coffee shop in Portland a couple years ago. In order to confirm it was him, I took a very hard look at his left ear, then cross-indexed it with a photograph of his left ear from the Internet. I envy anyone who is about to discover the magic of the Wodehouse, Laurie, House world.

Achewood

Mitch! Your question rolled in just under the massive stone door as it slammed shut. (I actually shot at your question a few times in fear, but then realized it was asked in Friendship.) Restaurants may be epigenetic with me. My great-grandmother and her son Porky ran a smorgasbord in San Leandro, CA, in the 1960s. My great-uncle Andrés ("I am your uncle Andy!") ran the Yucca Cafe in Castro Valley, to much quieter acclaim. Family banquets at the Silver Dragon in Oakland were high points for a child who seemed to crave glycemic activity and sesame oil in his blood. Then, with the advent of FoodTV in the late 90s, it became easy to watch historic Galloping Gourmet and contemporary luminaries such as Emeril "Bam!" Bagasse (typo: Lagasse). But there was also a college friend named Dave who really brought me into the world of joyful food preparation. Your question makes me realize I should write a piece on this — and I think I will. I did develop a minor history in food journalism in 2012, so have a willingness in this area. Thank you!

Chris Barrios

You and I discussed NA options on instagram a while back but last night, while seeing Dune in Texas I had the option of buying a THC infused Seltzer which seemed very odd.

Nat Towsen

If you make a physical copy, I will buy two, minimum (possibly also maximum).

Kate S.

Adjacent to this world are the novels that Stephen Fry has written. The Hippopotamus is especially dear to me. Not masterworks of literature, but very good reads.

william

Thanks for the response. I know that process intimately myself. Glad you are here!

william

My kids love Roald Dahl.

Bungus Bronbo

Roast Beef is my favorite character, I don't ask for more of him because I know there's more on the way, since he's the troubled character for these times.

trashd

Hell Yes to Issac Rayes!

trashd

Requested also for Tidal users!