2:30am: You aren’t asleep because jet lag or midnight gelato or both roused you from a dream about not being able to find your car at your own wedding. The hillsides are alive with howling, yowling, baying hounds in tempo prestissimo. They freak each other out in simultaneous call and response, and this continues unbroken until dawn, ...
2024-09-24 09:17:23 +0000 UTC View Post
In 2007 an Australian journalist named Tim Blair commissioned me, writing as Ray Smuckles, to compose 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 these pieces over the course of the next several weeks. Remarkably, they ...
2024-09-23 19:00:03 +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...
2024-09-23 17:00:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Sunday, leaving Ercolano
Last night we were the only tourists at a bright and lively locals restaurant filled mainly with older couples. The food was fine but the people-watching was Michelin-grade; tables full of bangled wrists, sheer tops, stuffed trouser-fronts, hairpieces, discreet vaping, and towering bowls of mussel...
2024-09-23 04:41:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Perhaps the most noteworthy event of our flight from Portland to London was discovering that our Premium Economy seats, which actually reclined to within one degree of where the body understands that sleep may commence, were not so thoughtfully engineered that popping back wouldn’t topple the stubby wineglass of the lady behind you, causing a ...
2024-09-21 08:12:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Lyle's song at the end...I know it's 2024 and the rap songs playing over the loudspeakers at Starbucks are bullish on coprophagia, but it felt a bit extreme for this gentle universe. If there ever is an Achewood musical, though, (which is unlikely, because I despise musicals) it will be given the badass title PRISON AT THE DIVE BAR RIOT. It's an...
2024-09-20 19:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
As is custom, the bloopers, outtakes, & unused lines from this strip will post at noon in the In-Universe and Author's Tiers. Upgrade for a month and get access to over 100 other pieces!
For the next two weeks, while we're away on our honeymoon, I'm running three strips a week, M-W-F! These will...
2024-09-20 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Chos of Woes! As promised, here is the second installment of our honeymoon diaries. We are at the gate at PDX, next to one of those people who listens to videos out loud on their phone in a crowded place. Can you imagine life as such a creature?
This is a rather thin update, except for the news about how our cat Zigzag would not stop blep...
2024-09-20 01:55:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Ray, I'm making more money than I ever have before in my life--but I'm still always broke! Can you offer some advice for a man who is working his tail off and still cannot maintain his greenbacks? Many thanks, Frothy
Frothy,
Yeah, I seen it. Got the stack comin’ in every month, but you’re ...
2024-09-19 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Tomorrow, at a reasonable hour befitting two people who are trying to treat themselves nicely during a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, we will board a plane for Heathrow, then bella Napoli. There will be no one-two punch of awful sleep and terrible airport pastry that makes everyone constipated. There will be no seeing of one's breath whil...
2024-09-19 05:40:27 +0000 UTC View Post
The livestream archive will be open and free to the public, so please share! THE WORLD NEEDS MORE PODCASTS
One hour and forty-two minutes of me answering questions submitted by Chochachos in an AMA-style Achewood Community chat. Topics include: webcomics, my recent wedding, the two categories of cheese, and what I'd be doi...
2024-09-19 02:33:59 +0000 UTC View Post
It is a quiet, chilly, early fall morning as I post this. Looking out from my second-floor office window, across the yellow and purple Giverny of treetops soon to be bare twigs, and having just been through the camera roll of my time working at the grocery store, the moment feels draped in a forlorn gauze. Five years have passed since I learned ...
2024-09-17 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostAll paid tiers (Weekly Comic, In-Universe, and Author's Tier) will be able to join me for a livestream event tomorrow, Tuesday evening, 6PM Pacific time. From my home high above Portland, Oregon I will be happily fielding your questions, complimenting your achievements, and commiserating in your miseries (limited to 3).
You will get an em...
2024-09-17 04:29:14 +0000 UTC View Post
(Post now edited to include the attached column)
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...
2024-09-16 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
I still struggle with the feeling that these "cutting room floor" pieces should go in the Author's Tier, since they're clearly past the fourth wall, but a precedent is a precedent. Polling has shown that you fine people enjoy them here, and that's what this is all about anyway, so here they shall stay.
In other In-Universe news, you may h...
2024-09-13 19:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
The outtakes and unused scripts for this strip, as always, post at noon today in the In-Universe and Author's Tiers.
To be a very young boy decades before the Internet was to live in an information desert of speculation, misunderstanding, and ill-intentioned lies. What precious little could be deduced about the female bod...
2024-09-13 17:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Tell me by 1pm PST today which of these designs you'd like to see on apparel in the 2024 Achewood holiday shop! Please leave your thoughts in the comments.
The first three will be tees, and I want to re-release the Dude and Catastrophe on a thick forest green hoody, As Is Classic. Thank you!
2024-09-13 16:39:30 +0000 UTC View Post
As mentioned elsewhere, I got married a few days ago, which signals a return to my full-time writing and cartooning in the Achewood Patreon! Here are the updates currently in the hopper for your enjoyment during the next several weeks:
All Tiers (including Free)
Free Membership Trivia Contests — T...
2024-09-13 16:01:32 +0000 UTC View Post
On Saturday afternoon at 4:30pm Lauren and I were married before a small gathering of friends and family on the property we had prepared for the last year. It went off with a hitch.
We were seen unto the pouring-forth of our conjoined life by children, sisters, friends from small times, patient parents, and a man who is quietly dying. (He...
2024-09-12 04:56:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Ray — I am engaged to the most wonderful woman. She comes from a smaller family than I do; I am very fond of her parents, and her sister is a charming character (this is fundamentally a compliment, but complicated). Thing is, her sister's wife? She sucks. She is ungenerous of spirit, incurious by disposition, and aside from some u...
2024-09-11 18:17:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Huzzah! Fresh-brewed, let’s see if I still got it. Wish me luck!
2024-09-07 21:37:56 +0000 UTC View Post
(This strip is not the beginning of a storyline.) (Also, I apologize but the noontime bloopers version of the weekly strip will return next week, please read below.)
Dear Reader,
It is exactly one day until our wedding. I currently have one shoe on, and am about to rush out to clip table and altar flowers from a loc...
2024-09-06 17:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Ray,
I feel distant from some of my family (cousins, uncles, aunts). I’m almost 30 and I’m wondering if its worth putting in the effort to get closer to them or if its better to just accept that none of us are close and that’s just the way it is. How do you deal with distant family?
Today I felt the inevitability of the wedding tractor beam for the first time. It was signaled by the surprise pop-by arrival of an excited friend, the first indicator that things outside of my control were going to start happening with greater regularity.
I installed the risers on the new front stairs this afternoon. Don’t my sassafras...
2024-09-03 03:22:43 +0000 UTC View Post
I was wondering if I ever used that "you don't look good at karate" scenario anywhere. Did I? If I didn't, I could still use it in a strip, even though it's just been "spoilered" a bit. I think I could still make it work, though. Please let me know! At this point it's impossible for me to keep nearly twenty-three years of this tumbling blabberba...
2024-08-30 19:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Outtakes and production notes for this strip post at noon in the In-Universe and Author's Tiers! It's like a whole other strip every week.
During the autumn running season, when it's easier to put on miles, the rogues' gallery of my toenails grows to strongly resemble that multi-color corn moms used to deco...
2024-08-30 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
It's a news roundup kind of morning!
On Saturday, September 7, Lauren and I will be married at a small ceremony here on our property. This event is the culmination of, among other things, one year and one week of constant renovation, repair, financial hemorrhage, landscaping, and the desire to s...
2024-08-28 17:41:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi Ray. How are you so calm and chill? I am anxious about everything. —Jonathan
Jonathan,
No way to sugar coat this: chill is a born thing. I’m sorry about how life seems to you, but there is no solution except either (a) finally finding whatever chemical God didn’t give you, or...
2024-08-27 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm not going to lie, but I am typing this sentence at a pretty good clip because I want to go play my electric guitar. Evening is wrapping up fast, not much light left, and there are moody clouds due for rain. I am upstairs and I can sit in the wide window that faces the street and Mt. Hood and plug in the amp and twiddle the dial to a syntheti...
2024-08-23 19:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
(A full page of outtakes, along with a very different version of this flowchart, post at noon in the In-Universe and Author's tiers!)
Ray was recently challenged to help a sad, homely man become handsome. This led him to a "lotta' thinkin'," and he came to the realization that self-confidence and charisma are th...
2024-08-23 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post