The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: robot_god on March 08, 2006, 09:29:02 am
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CRAK CRAK CRAK CRAK CRAK CRAK CRAK (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=03082006)
I don't know whether to complain about the strip or use it as j/o material.
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I'm loving the cowboy hat suspended in midair in panel 3.
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the expression on the middle dude panel 3 is beautiful :)
also...cowboy sauce.
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So at this point is it just assumed that Ray can mop up the dregs or do we have a few more good fights coming up?
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anybody else get the feeling that he's just wanting to wrap this thing up?
i like today's strip, don't get me wrong. it made me laugh when the cat with sunglasses came flying in unexpectedly to kick some dude's ass
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the man with the blood on his hands
That Onstad doesn't specify which contenders remain might be an indication that Beef is hanging around somewhere, watching...but I doubt it. I'mma go dip my french fries in cowboy sauce, later y'all.
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The sensation of speed with which Ray is CRAK CRAK CRAK'n is both undeniable and moving. Kind of Fist of the North Star.
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blegh.
this leaves me cold and uninterested.
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This is not what I was expecting either, but then I was expecting a Swedish massage with "Happy Ending"; so you know, I guess it's an internal problem for me.
But yeah, I wanted the GOF to go on, and now, just maybe, I'm just wanting to see the end and where that leads mostly. Mostly.
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I like this one a lot actually. I can accept Ray's violence now thanks to the Feb 24 strip, and now I find it hilarious. I think this strip shows good comic timing. Also, I like the torso of the guy 3rd from the left in the first panel.
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Looks like Ray can take James Hetfield given the right motivation.
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Um, I am disappointed. There is no plot development, and how many pictures can you look at of talking cats beating each other up? Or is that just a girl problem?
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I like this one a lot actually. I can accept Ray's violence now thanks to the Feb 24 strip, and now I find it hilarious. I think this strip shows good comic timing. Also, I like the torso of the guy 3rd from the left in the first panel.
At least now we know that Ray can just straight up whip somebody's ass Classic Style. It's not all elbow drops and face ripping, there's pummeling too.
And what did those guys expect walking around in such comical hats? Of course people are going to go around beating you up dressed like that.
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I hate to complain, since the last two months straight have made me permamently like this comic, but todays just doesn't do it for me. If this is the start of one of those three-day Dutch fugues ("Gin: It Makes a Man Mean"), it's not particularly vivid. Nobody's mouth is foaming, you know? I was picturing the "Requiem for a Dream" pupil scene and everything. (That said, I like the expressions on Tiny, Beard, and Ribcage in panel three.)
Tomorrow! The final showdown!
Ray "Son of Rodney" Smuckles
vs.
Diabetes "The Big D" Mellitus
Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday!
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I like the fact that "cowboy sauce" is carried into the narration from Ray's dialogue -- authentic! And I also like the visual of Ray flying through the air to tackle "fine cakes and city-wine" guy (cowboy, or Conan the Barbarian? the world may never know), complete with suspended cowboy hat.
My question is: who's left? Do we have a few lone wolves and Ray's posse? If so, are we going to be greeted tomorrow by nine panels of Ray making Barry Best eat his own intestines?
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The thing people are missing here is Ray's post-fugue comedown. He's standing by the fire, body all in shock, shivering like a weiner doggie balloon-animal that's just come in contact with a cactus.
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are we going to be greeted tomorrow by nine panels of Ray making Barry Best eat his own intestines?
I hope so!
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anybody else get the feeling that he's just wanting to wrap this thing up?
Look this is about as deep as I am going to analyze a piece of art by somebody else, otherwise I will sound pretentious. (deep breath) Here goes:
In order, there are a few major themes in Achewood I've seen, in descending order of importance:
- At the core of Achewood is a lasting and abiding friendship between Ray and Beef. That's something you see in every strip. Never have they come to blows, I don't even think they've come to a shouting match (Volvo of Despair is an exception). Despite their different backgrounds and different outlooks on life, there is a fundamental friendship and charity that we all would do well to show in our lives. You wouldn't expect Fred to clothesline Barney so he can mate with Betty, would you? Try to keep that in mind.
- Major plot developments for Beef tend to happen in, or as a result of, his trips to Heaven. That's where the story for him usually starts.
- Achewood is, in most cases, a comedy. Everyone brings to mind the Ice Cream Shop and Cartilage Head as exceptions, but even those were really big buildups for cheap laughs ("Oh man if Tori Amos was here right now she would need so many hugs from me")
- We still have the Story of Molly Sanders and this is a perfect segue into it.
- Onstad likes to shake things up a little. But just a little. No one is fundamentally and drastically altered. Even Lyle's genteel nature upon scotch deprivation has been a) hinted at in some of his extracurricular activities, and b) humorously and quickly reversed.
So let the fight wrap up quickly and let's see where the real humor is.
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So at this point is it just assumed that Ray can mop up the dregs or do we have a few more good fights coming up?
He might have to face Nice Pete and his Death Valley Holiday crew.
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and ye verily, on that day did the cowboy sauce run like the rivers
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On one hand, I would have liked to have seen a strip or two of Ray making cowboy sauce all House of Blue Leaves style. On the other hand, we don't need the fight to overstay its welcome. I have a feeling he wants this bitch wrapped up by friday.
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how many pictures can you look at of talking cats beating each other up? Or is that just a girl problem?
It's possible this is just a wombat problem.
Although I can see your point, this strip is relatively weak compared to our current run (though be honest how much love would we be giving to 'cowboy sauce' if it had come during the Chatsack part where we thought this was all going to hell).
Props to trouserbot for his car ralley anouncers voice.
Are we seriously expecting the Molly Sanders story? I figured that was just a once off gag to compliment the daaaaaaang naachooooos.
The withdrawl/shock in the last panel is a good contrast, I'm thinking at that point the rest of his army has been taken out (by others) and he's on his own, note no one sharing the fire.
My only real complaint is that we never found out which one had the limp.
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It does feel a bit like this one was mailed in, but I think of it as a reversion to the mean (they can't all be gems), and, as Cort says, proves that the fight so far hasn't been a fluke: Ray is a genuine badass. Also, that it isn't Mr. Hyde-Ray doing the fighting, but R. Quentin Smuckles. We're not going to be wondering, come the finale, which Ray will show up.
Also, I love the first cowboy. With that underbite, I can actually *see* his accent.
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Are we seriously expecting the Molly Sanders story? I figured that was just a once off gag to compliment the daaaaaaang naachooooos.
Entirely possible; would you hand-draw and sketch that much for a one-off joke, though?
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would you hand-draw and sketch that much for a one-off joke, though?
Can we believe that Onstad wouldn't? After all you just pointed out how he will construct an entire storyline for the purpose of cheap one off gags.
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Can we believe that Onstad wouldn't? After all you just pointed out how he will construct an entire storyline for the purpose of cheap one off gags.
Yeah, but it's easier to do that with Adobe Illustrator, where you get to drag and drop; and you can save and reuse a lot of your primitives and basic character poses. Drawing, including that level of hatching and shading, requires actual physical effort.
It's possible, but remember there's a difference between lazy and crazy.
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"decimated" means reduced by 10%.
So it is a very bad thing if the field has only been decimated. It means 90% are still standing.
I am a pedant, yes.
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He might have to face Nice Pete and his Death Valley Holiday crew.
I have been wondering where NicePete is too (surely he has at least a passing interest in the GOF), but more than that I just can't stop hoping for a Where's Waldo with Beef hiding away amongst the bodies.
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I can't believe y'all ain't lovin' this strip. Cowboy Sauce alone makes it hillarious. Those clowns Ray is straight up pounding on look fuck*ng ridiculous. Besides I'm getting a vicarious thrill out of watching Ray pound on those assholes because they have it coming (http://www.paulmcrae.com/images/Miscellany/Misc/MOUSTACHE/DSCN0542-E2-400.jpg). Also, Bobby, you are a smart guy, but you have it all wrong. If I were in Vegas I would lay money that we are about to see a showdown between Ray and Beef. There might be Heaven (or Hell) to follow, but not before these best friends face off. Here's something to consider, we don't know the rules of GOF, but this has been running around my head for days. What happens if there is more than one cat standing after the end of three days?
No one said it could be done.
~Paul
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blah blah blah
i'm totally with you. i love cowboy sauce, and i love this strip.
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Chris Onstad is getting really good at drawing facial hair on cats. Like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two are alike.
I hope he finished this cartoon, leaned back in his custom-painted Aeron chair, and, with a smug sense of accomplishment, chuckled softly to himself. Then he'd glance at the dog and say "Your master is very good at drawing facial hair on cats. Let's see what I can do with a dog." At that, he'd spring from his seat and playfully chase the dog from his studio, ultra-fine Sharpie in hand.
Because that is how I would behave if I drew such good mustaches and beards on cartoon cowboy cats.
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"Mommy, what's a tickpimp?"
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What happens if there is more than one cat standing after the end of three days?
This Kid is up to some good hypothesizin'
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yessss
paul is right
paul is right
they will lay it all on the line, and win
they will win on some technicality that only Beef knows.
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yessss
paul is right
paul is right
they will lay it all on the line, and win
they will win on some technicality that only Beef knows.
I'm suddenly reminded of the Tick Annual where Chainsaw Vigilante is fighting Barry Hubris (aka the other Tick). Just as the fight is starting wrap up the superhero police burst in and stop them because there can never be a clear winner in any hero vs. hero or villain vs. villain fight. I can only imagine that Ray vs. Beef would need some similar deux ex machina but I kind of hope not.
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My only real complaint is that we never found out which one had the limp.
Unless Onstad is going to pull a new character out of his hat (Oh noes! It's Rico "No Knees" Sinpatella!), I think it refers to the guy Beef ran over with the motorcycle before the GOF started.
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The Man With the Blood on His Hands, indeed.
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The Man With the Blood on His Hands, indeed.
Of course, that's his dad's nickname. "The Man With Cowboy Sauce On His Hands" isn't quite as appropriate, taken out of context.
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I can't believe y'all ain't lovin' this strip.
I'm with you, my doggie. I can't believe all these fuckin' naysayers-- always naysaying! This strip is a goddamn classic of the genre and an explosive climax. It is delightful. It is a "FUCK YEAH!" moment in the making. It makes me happy, and it makes me look forward to more.
GODDAMN GENIUS. Where is this Christ Onster, so that I may blow him?
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"decimated" means reduced by 10%.
So it is a very bad thing if the field has only been decimated. It means 90% are still standing.
I am a pedant, yes.
Could be serial decimations. That would reduce the field to an infinitely fine few by seqeuntial tenths.
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Could be serial decimations. That would reduce the field to an infinitely fine few by seqeuntial tenths.
I broke down and registered just so I could increment you for that remark.
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I wish the belt buckles had been bigger.
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Requiem for a Dream pupil scene
I feel like this strip was Onstad's salute to looney toons. This puts him in an elite class of culture innovators who reference pop culture (Twain, Led Zepp, Tarantino).
But I can't express how happy I would have been had he pulled a Requiemesque fugue. All pointilist shading, all muscles bulging, bones breaking gracefully through skin as the demon in Ray's genes becomes the demon in his jeans (or thong or whatever). I know he fugues...
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I broke down and registered just so I could increment you for that remark.
Whoa! What's with the bradypus tridactylus there? What happened to that rule where I get to approve all the n00b's avatars!
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I might have to take back everything I said about Requiem.
Achewood is good because everything in it is stylized. Onstad brings Strunk's concise English sensibilities to humor and art. Aronofsky, on the other hand, couldn't portray an equilateral triangle without a tactile subtext.
I think that this strip shirked on detail a bit, but would it be appropriate for Achewood to be as rich as a scene from Requiem? Or would it even be logistically plausible?
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Rico Sinpatella? My hat is off to you, sir.
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Alas, n00bs cannot increment anyone's Dr Pepper until they have posted 25 messages that convey meaning and insight.
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Whoa! What's with the bradypus tridactylus there? What happened to that rule where I get to approve all the n00b's avatars!
Is that fancy bighead talk for Three Toed Sloth?
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Her sloth avatar wants maximum cuddles with the new sloth avatar.
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I liked how the cat in the thong beat up the cat dressed up like a cowboy.
It was like when Flash beat up Luthor/Braniac in that one cartoon, all VROOOOOOOOM BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA like that. That was SO COOL.
Careful observers of the fight movie genre might notice that nothing propels a man to victory better than the death/maiming of his best friend since young times. Even when that man is Jean-Paul Van Damme, he will win. Ray might be having doubts standing alone by the requisite no-man's-land fire barrel, but in the end the memory of his buddy will spur him to victory.
Ray might get shot in the shoulder or have dust/drugs thrown in his eyes. Do not worry if this happens, because he will still win. In slow motion. WATCH FOR THIS
Also: the cat wearing the full beard appears to have had either his appendix or his kidney removed.
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Alas, n00bs cannot increment anyone's Dr Pepper until they have posted 25 messages that convey meaning and insight.
I don't want to increment AlohaDawg's Dr. Pepper, I want to increment AlohaDawg himself. As it is written, so it shall be.
As for insight, the deep truth of Achewood is essentially wordless. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen.
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It means both (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=decimated).
It takes a 3/4 majority of "usage experts" to convince me I'm wrong in a matter of pedantry. You have less than a 2/3 majority, according to the site. :)
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It takes a 3/4 majority of "usage experts" to convince me I'm wrong in a matter of pedantry. You have less than a 2/3 majority, according to the site. :)
Do you trust the OED? Because my 10th Edition Pocket OED defines it thusly: "1 kill or destroy a large proportion of a group. 2 severely reduce the strength of something."
It originally meant to reduce (a population of something) by 10%, but, as I'm sure you will agree, many bastardizations have been adopted into the lexicon (among them the use of "quote" as a noun). So even though such changes may make some of us cringe, they're still technically correct. Plus, I think Onstad probably knows what he's doing.
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If it's desperately clawing against the evolution of language you want then you need yourself an AP style guide. Last I checked they don't accept the word "townhouse"
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delapidated: a building which has had stones removed.
a building cannot be delapidated if it isn't made out of stone people
and don't get me started on turning nouns into verbs.
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Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen.
Is that fancy bighead talk for FURIOUS DING-DONG, Mr. inferior type of sloth with three toes?
Also note: di·lap·i·dat·ed Having fallen into a state of disrepair or deterioration, as through neglect; broken-down and shabby.
Nice smackdown with the OED there by the lovely Miss Hobot, though. Why is it so hard to get more such high quality n00bs around here?
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Quote from: Xngurevar on Today at 17:04:06
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen."
Is that fancy bighead talk for FURIOUS DING-DONG, Mr. inferior type of sloth with three toes?
I left my German/English dictionary in my other gorilla suit, but I think it's something like "In things about which one cannot speak, one must be silent." I'm trying to find a better way to phrase it, but instead I'm just getting all Tao te Ching. Sorry.
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Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen.
It means "Shut the fuck up, Donny, you're out of your element".
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Even when that man is Jean-Paul Van Damme, he will win.
Who, Jean-Claude's lesser-known, morbidly obese stepbrother?
I know I'm late to the party and I know we're well beyond talking about what's cool in the strip and on to speculating about how this ties into everything and everything, but that 3rd guy over has a whacked physique. He looks like he got breast implants under his ribcage.
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I left my German/English dictionary in my other gorilla suit, but I think it's something like "In things about which one cannot speak, one must be silent." I'm trying to find a better way to phrase it, but instead I'm just getting all Tao te Ching. Sorry.
Yeah, it's from Wittgenstein.
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Yeah, it's from Wittgenstein.
Don't worry about it too much though, Wittgenstein himself decided later in life that the entire book that quote came from was total BS.
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delapidated: a building which has had stones removed.
a building cannot be delapidated if it isn't made out of stone people
and don't get me started on turning nouns into verbs.
What about "jilapidated (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=09072004)?"
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Triple-length strip coming Friday.
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Triple-length strip coming Friday.
Didn't Onstad say something like "Two sunday-length strips coming Tuesday" on Monday, as well?
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Daily strip: 1 row of panels.
Sunday strip: 2 rows
Double sunday: 4 rows.
Sunday strips haven't been longer than 2 or 3 rows of panels since before World War II. At least not in America.
In the 1910s, a Sunday comic strip was the size a full broadsheet (that is, New York Times sized page, not a smaller "tabloid" page, the size of most comic supplements these days) As one crtitic pointed out this means that each individual comic strip was actually larger than a 6 or 7 year old reading the strip.
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I think Onstad is getting himself into comic debt.
Di-lapid-ated. Coming from the latin noun lapis, lapidis, meaning a stone.
but, damn. we're both right. The verb, dilapidare, means either: to fall into disrepair, or to be ruined by being pelted with stones.
I asked a latin teacher, and we both learned!
docta
(I couldn't find a latin word for Education, so it says "things having been taught")
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Triple-length strip coming Friday.
Well thank god you didn't start a thread to point that out, because that would be the end of the fuck*ng world.
>:( ;D
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(I couldn't find a latin word for Education, so it says "things having been taught")
I think Education is from Latin origin, so it would be just something like educatio.
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but that's so boring!
also, people would have thought I had just left off the n.
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You know, that Cowboy Sauce movie was unjustly snubbed at the Oscars, I thought.
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but that's so boring!
also, people would have thought I had just left off the n.
Not if you wrote EDVCATIO.
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The cat in the thong is shivering in the cold. Perhaps the cat should wear more than a thong?
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The cat in the thong is shivering in the cold. Perhaps the cat should wear more than a thong?
The cat in the thong does that when he's coming down from a dutch fugue.
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The cat in the thong is shivering in the cold. Perhaps the cat should wear more than a thong?
Well, it's a little different when you have all the stars and the cell phone and the moustache, isn't it?
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but, as I'm sure you will agree, many bastardizations have been adopted into the lexicon (among them the use of "quote" as a noun).
(I hate it when people use "quote" as a noun, instead of "quotation." I even hate it when I myself do it. Please help me.)
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Is Cowboy Sauce different than Magic Gravy (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=02182005)?