Achewood

Serializer, The Model Train (2 versions), 2002

In this primordial—nay, primitive—strip, a very rough sketch of the Roast Beef prototype inadvertently communicates to Vlad that he has nearly zero exposure to women. In return, Vlad says something that has not aged well. I am vastly certain that if I were to rewrite this strip today, Vlad would reflect on how the little landscape reminds him of his childhood home, and suddenly magical realism would shrink him down to live there, only his mustache would remain life-size, and it w...

I Hate Long-Ass Recipes: The Smash Burger

Kenji López-Alt's smash burger recipe on Serious Eats is four written pages long. It is six hundred words longer than the Declaration of Independence (1,959 to 1,320), and has fourteen photographs (including a helpful one of the outside of a building where hamburgers are cooked). The entire webpage clocks in at 3.3MB, which means that transmitting it produces a larger carbon footprint than actually cooking the burger.

In addition to copious information about the science and lore o...

The Raising of the Onstad Deckola, 2024

The evening before my parents, Lauren, and I descended upon Hayden's farm to build a new pergola out of the old fort, I sensed complications arising. Everyone in the group, it seemed, had their own carpentry background — some professional, but most autodidact — and the gutters of Babel soon overran with incompatible visions for the simple structure. (Please advance to Slide No. 2, in which you will observe Hayden's phone-sketch of his desired installation.)

Regrouping in our privat...

0057 — Philippe Gets Lyle a Present

Shirt lines that didn't make the cut:

*

I AM LYLE

I SMELL LIKE

I WENT JOGGING WITH ONION SLICES IN MY ARMPITS 

and 

YARD TOOLS

*

I already have GRASS

and GAS

So gimme your (LAWNMOWER?, SORRY, NOT SURE WHAT THIS ONE MEANS)

*

I’M A PERFECT MIXTURE OF

PALE ANKLES

AND

THAT STUFFY HAT / HAIR SMELL

*

A Hot Mug of Soup (short story)

In this brand-new story, Ray takes Cornelius on a drive to the ophthalmologist, but, as these things go, that is the least of what occurs.

(As an aside to all this, I'm still looking for a way to format these such that the PDF conversion process doesn't turn them into gappy slop, so if you notice any formatting errors, or like to talk about PDF conversion, please chime in in the comments. Thank you!)

Internal E-mail Regarding Local Dance Troupe

A brief e-mail exchange between Lauren and me, as we sat in our respective offices Monday morning. 

Perhaps you would enjoy captioning it, as well? 

Notes & Outtakes from 0056 (Pentagon Disagreement)

Curious to hear from you chochachos of the Author's Tier about your specific feelings on these panels. I couldn't ask you this until now because my parents were staying with us, but tonight my parents are 300 miles away in Yreka, trying to eat food at a Black Bear Diner, and I don't have to hear about how much saturated fat is in the biscuits.  

0056 - Ray and Cornelius Disagree About The Pentagon

I have spent the past week entertaining my parents, who are visiting from out of town. We are the sort of family who hold seven concurrent conversations despite there being only three people in the room. It is a special kind of multiplexing which can drive others mad. I can handle it, because I grew up in it, but it has the unfortunate downside of making it impossible, at night, to consider anything other than falling into bed and aiming benumbed pupils at the tips of my toes. Hence, the Auth...

Fall of Fort Onstad, 2010-2024

In 2010, back when I was still married and we all lived at the old house together, my wife and kid went on a trip to see her family in California. While they were gone, I thought it would be an act of classical fatherhood to build a playhouse for my child, and surprise them when they returned. 

I wasn't in particularly good shape—along any axis you might name—at the time, and did not know much about framing (or even that it was called that), but YouTube was well enough on its w...

0055 - panel edits, original script

This strip was remarkable to me because the original script took about ten minutes to write, and changed very little through the production stage. (This happens maybe once every thousand strips.) I vacillated a bit on the seventh panel — I always find a way to waste an extra hour or two — but ended up staying with the original. Why? Because it's important for the reader to know that this character's "best case scenarios" still involve parasitic brain mortality and the unmasking ...

0055 - TV Phone Calls

I add to this list: Oncoming drivers whom you move aside to let pass on a narrow street yet fail to wave. People who bring dogs into coffee shops and don't notice your glaring. Ship captains who gaze inscrutably into the distance instead of saying, "The sea is me soul's final keep, the briney me sheet as I sleep."

What is your pet peeve you should probably get over?

Philippe's Complete Twitter Archive

Sure, you could have just gone to Twitter and read all this, but I doubt many people are going there to look for Philippe Twitter content anymore (his last post was eleven years ago), so I, in the spirit of both fun sharing and completeness, present his total output here. As you might imagine, it's fairly light reading. I'd almost just call it glancing. 

No one is really sure why he stopped tweeting, but many suspect it comes down to either (a) the general unpalatability of discour...

Monster Truck Weekend

A friend once took his young boy to witness an exposition of monster trucks — for the boy’s sake, not his own — and returned home a full-throated proselyte of the spectacle. So complete was his joy at the performance of these machines that in his breathless recap, I do not believe he mentioned the boy.

The memory of that charming little turn-of-time has always been at easy recall, so recently, when I saw an ad for Monster Jam (I am not sure if these are the only monster truck...

0054 - Lyle's New Vase

The "Truth Vase" is defined as any item in a house over which two inhabitants disagree, but whose content or form cannot be explicitly denied as actual. What's your Truth Vase? 

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

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...