I spent about five hours in my new basement studio yesterday, and it was enough time to get back in the flow and feel free within the tools. If I take too long off, I get awkward and hesitant with the paints, brushes, and attacks, and that sort of stutter-stepping is the death of a canvas. My rubric for releasing a comic, or any writing really, ...
2024-11-01 17:42:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Process panels and writing from this strip post at noon in tiers 2 & 3, as always!
When I was in sixth grade I was invited to a birthday slumber party at a friendly guttersnipe named Derek's house. His mom worked at Ed's, a low-slung building in our economically free-falling mountain town, which was equal parts crappy...
2024-11-01 17:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Good afternoon Ray, My 4-year old won't go to bed. He doesn't seem to mind the concept, but rarely lays down without trying to negotiate his way out of it, if not mild-to-medium intensity rage. What can we do to help him go to sleep peacefully? Regards, Over this Shit
Dear ROTS,
Well, you definitely asked the main ch...
2024-10-31 17:24:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Because I was unwisely given the responsibility of planning the Rome portion of our honeymoon, its end-date did not fit accurately into the overarching calendar of our travels, and we wound up with an extra day in the city — which we discovered after we had packed to leave for Naples, but, thankfully, before we had left the keys on the ta...
2024-10-29 23:01:42 +0000 UTC View Post
I was very torn by the "Bread is afraid of the gravy" vs "blotting up coffee" choice. I like them equally, for different reasons. Which one edges out the other, for you?
2024-10-25 19:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
(Complete outtakes from this strip post at noon in tiers 2 & 3!)
If you've ever received a startlingly generous portion of breakfast meat at a restaurant, you know how it can come to dominate your thoughts. For example:
Does somebody back there "like" me? Even though I'm with my partner they do this?! I ...
2024-10-25 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Ray. I have always been a "dress left" guy but since turning fifty I think that dressing right is a younger look. Do you have any exercises/regimen that will help me with my transition? Asking for a friend. JHC.
JHC—
At first I thought you meant by “dress left” that your manhood hangs to the left and...
2024-10-24 20:39:10 +0000 UTC View PostYour lowly editor here, at the behest of "comedy mogul (?) and impresario Ray Smuckles," asking you to post your advice questions for Ray here. He'll probably stop monitoring incoming messages within twenty-four hours, and may begin answering them this very afternoon, as he just had a meeting fall through. (Pro shop called to sa...
2024-10-23 19:38:44 +0000 UTC View Post
So I told you the story, in the caption to this strip's primary release, of the strange boy from the woods, who tried to pull a really b-grade Deliverance on me one day. The rest of the story of this strip is that I suddenly wrote it Saturday night at the Nation of Language show, maybe a week after remembering...
2024-10-18 19:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Now that the jet lag has concluded its solo and returned to its seat in the orchestra pit of accumulated sleep damage, I am cautiously settling back into "everyday life." For me that's a fairly routine thing of a celebratory breakfast, followed by a brief moment where I organize a few (but not all) responsibilities at the computer, and then eith...
2024-10-18 18:35:58 +0000 UTC View Post
I was recently catalyzed to remember, I know not by what, a weird boy I had met when we first moved to the woods. His family lived in a bit of a cabin — as distinguished from a home by its rustic innards and outards — and the parents didn't have the common social graces to which I was accustomed. One day when we were there alone after s...
2024-10-18 17:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
There have been a few other Prime Time Records albums unearthed here, but I don't think this one's seen the light of day since its original run date. Ray seems to have been deeply affected by the plight of someone named Terry Parker, and is also wearing what looks like a Michael Jackson-style chef's coat. No idea about the hair, but it's just li...
2024-10-15 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Lauren enjoys riding bicycles, and I am experienced in this modest elective*, so we thought it would be diverting to join a tourist’s riding group around Rome.
“They’re e-bikes,” she mentioned, looking at their page the night before.
“Isn’t the theme of this whole town that civilizations collapse?” I replied. ...
2024-10-14 18:46:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Careful readers will notice, hidden among the creative off-cuts, the colorized image of an ermine-clad Philippe holding a luminous trident. Who can tell everyone what it's from? (No, it's not the Transfer Station arc.)
2024-10-11 19:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
The process/B-roll strips which post two hours after this comic are back! They're available to the Author's Tier and In-Universe Tier — upgrade for a month and see all you've been missing!
It was discussed at the house that this was a "weird one" to run directly after our honeymoo...
2024-10-11 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Welcome back, me! There's still the usual Friday strip coming tomorrow; today's doodle was simply inspired by the schools of leaves which shimmer down from the trees as they enter their well-deserved season of tranquility. Growing efficiencies in the overseas manufacture of plastic skeletons has the whole town participating in a surfacey flirtat...
2024-10-10 20:15:41 +0000 UTC View Post
A glimpse into the mind of R. Beef Kazenzakis. Co-starring: a leaf blower, a free day, and a chest cold.
2024-10-08 23:45:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Note: We have returned home, and I am now catching up with the last five days of the trip, which got so busy I couldn't adequately document it in real-time. Several more installments will follow.
As I sit and weep back at the room, forcing concrete grapes out of my ass, I visualize the fruit cup vendor we saw by the Circus Maximus...
2024-10-04 19:55:53 +0000 UTC View Post
This comic is from an actual double-take I did recently. In reality, I had misread the shirt. I don't know what it actually said, but the idea of drinking so much coffee each day that the belly distends in the manner of a pregnancy captivated me.
For the next two weeks, while we're away on our honeymoon, I'm running ...
2024-10-04 17:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
For the next two weeks, while we're away on our honeymoon, I'm running three new strips a week, M-W-F. These are ultra-classic, single-row Achewood strips like you saw in 2001.
I'm posting three a week instead of the usual one-on-Friday because, frankly, posting short strips makes me feel insecure about providin...
2024-10-02 17:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Some many years ago, an Australian journalist named Tim Blair commissioned Ray Smuckles to write a series of columns for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. Ray, true to form, didn’t really ask what Mr. Blair wanted from the partnership, and randomly submitted several pieces over the course of the next few months. Remarkably, they actual...
2024-09-30 19:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
This one gets my vote for the Most OG Style Achewood of this entire 6-strip mini-run. Do you think it compares to the year one mentality?
For the next two weeks, while we're away on our honeymoon, I'm running three new strips a week, M-W-F. These are ultra-classic, single-row Achewood strips like you saw in ...
2024-09-30 17:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
So much happens in Rome, even when just slipping around the corner to buy the morning bus ticket, that documenting every remarkable little moment would somehow begin to take more time than the trip itself. It is a phenomenon, but in a city where the tourists outnumber the cobblestones and the cats want no pats, you salve the confusion with anoth...
2024-09-29 16:28:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Rome.
Arisen, eyes ringed red
Displeased but not abusive WhatsApp
Sent to rental manager
Massimo will check the A/C
While you are out
Maybe make a video
Of the controls
No video was made
Owing i...
2024-09-28 18:10:40 +0000 UTC View Post
For the next two weeks, while we're away on our honeymoon, I'm running three new strips a week, M-W-F. These are ultra-classic, single-row Achewood strips like you saw in 2001.
I'm posting three a week instead of the usual one-on-Friday because, frankly, posting short strips makes me feel insecure about providin...
2024-09-27 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
I would complain about every meal for the last seven days being just cheese and bread, but all my hair is growing back! This makes me very happy.
LEAVING THE COAST
Our last day on the coast consisted of a walk along the clifftop highway between Minori and Maiori, and two hours chatting in a beachfront cafe ...
2024-09-27 06:49:21 +0000 UTC View Post
dear ray what are the best ingredients to keep on hand for when the party goes late and people might not be able to handle proper cooking but you as the host dont want guests to have to resort to ordering delivery — Zen Window
Dear e e cummings,
I’m going to be charitable and decide that your lack ...
2024-09-26 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Pizzeria San Francisco Tramonti, Costa D'Amalfi
IG: @pizzeria_san_francisco_tra
Alfonso’s electric golf cart whirred us down the winding mountain road from Zagara, the cool night air off the vines and stones nostalgic of those first early teenage years giddily spent out late in undefined freedom. We rolled...
2024-09-26 06:39:28 +0000 UTC View Post
For the next two weeks, while we're away on our honeymoon, I'm running three new strips a week, M-W-F. These are ultra-classic, single-row Achewood strips like you saw in 2001.
I'm posting three a week instead of the usual one-on-Friday because, frankly, posting short strips makes me feel insecure about providin...
2024-09-25 17:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Alfonso Golf Cart, who hustles tourists around the cliffside town in a spanky open-air four-seater, quoted us 50€ each way to a secluded four-table pizzeria up in Tramonti, run by a former English student of Nilde named Francesco. Alfonso looks like if a young Le Corbusier had given himself to racquetball instead of concrete.
There are ...
2024-09-25 04:21:37 +0000 UTC View Post