Letters to the Editor
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Hearty recommendation
I'm not sure what weight this will carry, but I heartily recommend this book. As Wolk says, it gets funnier every time I read it.
I am currently reading the entire catalog of cartoons for the sixth or seventh time. Since there are currently 1485 strips, it takes most of a week to complete. But I have read the Great Outdoor Fight story arc at least a dozen times.
Having the book is wonderful, because it allows me to show it to my friends without needing a computer and an internet connection.
I don't know how many people I have been able to hook into Acheworld, but I won't stop trying.
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Awesomewood
It's hard to tell people that my favorite book is actually a comic. A comic on the internet. It's hard to explain to people how amazing Achewood is, when instinctive reactions to comics run from disgust at the poor quality of the popular, readily-available-in-the-papers comics to ingrained beliefs that comics are for the immature.
Achewood is for the mature. And the immature. And everyone else.
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The hell?!
I love Arrested Development. I have never once laughed at Achewood. People keep going on and on about it and I keep trying it again, every few months, and it keeps being mindlessly random and stupid.
I seriously think that it's some kind of conspiracy, like the Royal Nonesuch, where the perpetrators pretend to love it in order to fool others into reading it.
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I'm with ya'
I don't get it either. This is the 5th or 6th article I've seen talking about it (something previously on salon about bacon), and everytime I go check it out hoping to love it, and I don't.
Is this the long tail? Is there some niche audience somewhere that this is angled towards? I feel like I should be right in this comics sweetspot... 'Cuz I just don't find it funny at all, and I want to, I really do. And I like offbeat, dry, comedy. Do I need to read like hundreds before it starts making sense? I've read dozens, and it's not clicking.
Hey, whatever, comedy is subjective, I say good on the author and the people that love it so much, no hate here, really.
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@Ringomon
You might be onto something with the "need to read hundreds" bit. While I think most individual strips are very good, my personal love for it comes after having consumed it en masse.
Then again, I have a rabbit ambulance tattooed on my leg, so my tastes are pretty clear.
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@Smileyy
Is that an ambulance shaped like a rabbit (like the cat-bus form Totoro) or a regular ambulance specifically for saving ailing rabbits (failed bunny suicides?)?
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What's with the mypoic foucus on PvP and Achewood
Whenever I read articles on webcomics, I wonder why the article myopically focuses on PvP and Achewood (I never heard of achewood until today) - Penny Arcade, Something Positive, Questionable Content, and XKCD have all managed to produce high quality content and to become some of the most popular webcomics around.
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You can't explain it
If you do not find "There are some things a man doesn't talk about, particularly when a lady wisdom-rocks his bonch so hard he forgets who's on the penny." funny as hell when uttered by a bespectacled cat named Ray Smuckles, then there's little I could do to explain the humor. It's preposterous, insightful, and almost poetic in construction and it made me laugh so hard it's lucky I didn't have a mouthful of coffee going on when I read it or my laptop would be trashed. Onstad's a genius.
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re: Ringomon
I made several false starts before I fell under the spell. Give it another couple of tries. Don't start at the beginning; in fact if your mind can stand it, I recommend going backwards, strip by strip, until you feel on fire with questions like, "Beef's girlfriend is from WHERE now? How did that happen?" Then jump backwards. Then go read the blogs.
Great Outdoor Fight is the best of the best. It's online content worthy of being honored with a hardcover collection. My husband and I read it together, cheering, like watching a movie, bouncing up and down with excitement every time a strip loaded. It's good stuff. And it's not just for guys - ladies love it too!
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really
I checked out Achewood several times and never cared for it. Now I love it. This comment finally broke it for me. (Google for source.)
"I always find myself hesitating to recommend Achewood because it’s so freaking hard to get into; no one episode is that funny on its own. You’ll click and wind up looking at a strip with a guy screaming about moussaka while another guys lays on the floor getting stabbed in the ass by a little machine. You have to read about 20 episodes to get any kind of context for that ... It’s not exactly forgiving. But man, it’s a nut well worth cracking."
Yes it is. Realize that if you read any one comic it's like starting a Russian novel on a random page.
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Some times you just cant...
explain why something is great. Ive attempted to explain Achewood to many but cant succinctly wrap it up. I had the same problem explaining Mr. Show. I was introduced to Achewood by my boyfriend and I will admit that at first I didn't get it and thought 'whatever, nerd'. Then I read the archives, kept at it and now I am an addict. My homepage is set to Achewood. It is twisted for sure but smart, wry and at times sheer brilliant insanity. Not for everyone at all and indeed that makes it all the better for me. Chris Onstad is a genius and Achewood rules.