Comics

Welcome! I plan on keeping it up, in the tradition of "posting ska everyday until I get tired of it" posts of yore. Just a knucklehead from back in the day.

Achewood is a webcomic from the aughts about the adventures of some cats and stuffed animals in achewood, California. The characters are variously alcoholic, depressed, and deluded, and speak in a unique overwritten slacker dialect. The adventures they have are usually really creative and strange, but there's a fundamental lack of ambition and direction to their lives.

Warnings if you choose to check it out:

Its from the aughts, the r-slur in particular shows up a lot but its not the only one. Casual use of gay as a prejoritive, for example, which was very much the style at the time.

Its about men. There are few female characters and onstead was going through having a baby and getting divorced during the run, so the relationships they have with women are depicted with increasing cynicism.

In fact, the comic is extremely cynical. IMO it's clear that onstead kind of hates life and himself. Teodor dreams big dreams but will never follow through on anything. Roast Beef is depressed and suicidal. There are moments of beauty, but its more often dark. The boys "look after" a five year old stuffed otter named Phillipe, something they are entirely unequipped to do, and childhood, just like adulthood, is depicted as a frightening ordeal.

That being said, it probably remains my favourite piece of fiction ever. I have never seen anything like it. The stories are absurdly creative and the writing is brilliant. In it's heyday there were regularly updated blogs for more than ten of the characters and it seemed like there was an infinite well of texture and depth even to minor characters. It's also funny as hell IMO, I've been laughing out loud looking for panels to post here.

Apparently there's new stuff coming out on patreon, but I haven't checked it out and am not planning to, onstead seems to have lost his mind a bit talking about "innovative" ways to monetize the world of achewood. That being said, his demons always featured pretty prominently in the brilliance of the strip.