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[emilyk007]

Read an amusing interview with Chris Onstad, Orato:

http://www.orato.com/node/2332

Quote:
"Ominously enough I finished a page of about 10 of my first strips and put it online around 2a.m., September 11, 2001. So as you can imagine, six or seven hours later no one was going to read my comic strip because that was the day the World Trade Centers fell. It was a pretty inauspicious beginning.

About two or three weeks later, we published the site and I publicized it on The Comics Journal, went to different comics community message boards and took out an ad here and there. I didn't try very hard to publish it because I wasn’t enthused about it at the time. At that point I wasn’t trying to make a career of Achewood..."

[jaydub]

Quality first post ek.  Thanks.

[Drygioni]

"Today I was working on a screenplay. You know, where Ray and Roast Beef went down and fought in the Great Outdoor Fight. We’ve got a couple studios interested in the script, so we’re trying to finish that up and get it sold."

Just in case anyone missed that...

[jaydub]

If this was a comic, the title would be "May 8th, 2007 - In the end, every day that I’m better than Garfield is a win"

[Golfhaus]

around 2a.m., September 11, 2001. So as you can imagine, six or seven hours later no one was going to read my comic strip because that was the day the World Trade Centers fell.

Oh, so THAT'S what happened! You know, in the mix of everything, I forgot the significance.

[theinevitable]

some 14-year-old kid in Akron who’s off his medication.

he... he noticed!

[jaydub]

I don't know why, theinev, but I thought of you when I read those words as well...

I'd take this as an invitation to resume stalking if I were you.

[theauthors]

heh, some of the things he writes are complete opposites of what he said in 2002-03

Onstad: I'm not even sure if I ever read this, but I think on the sleeve of a J.R.R. Tolkein novel he says something like "the tale grew in the telling." That's my approach—I hate to plan a story, to outline it. That takes all the guts out of it, all the surprise. I like to be surprised by what happens each day when I'm toying with the thing. If it surprises me, there's a better chance it will surprise the reader. If I sit down and plot something out then more than likely I'm just going to come up with something prosaic and predictable.

and now

The fact it takes so long is basically why I’m never ahead. Newspaper cartoonists are usually about a month ahead. The curse of publishing by yourself on the Internet is that you don’t really have to do anything ahead of schedule, since there's no process involved. You just post the comic; there’s no one else you have to go through. So I’ve never really been more than a day or two ahead of the strip.

I actually sort of prefer it this way because if I have a strip done several days in advance I’ll go back and I’ll start to pick at it.

or

BT: Wow. so are you reworking these strips all the time?

CO: Once or twice a week I'll wake up, look at the strip I wrote and posted the night before and think "Oh my god that's garbage." So I'll spend an hour or so trying to catch the original thought I'd been going after, and I'll re-post the strip. This always causes a little flurry of email and message board postings from readers.

Even if the original was just lousy, there's always a legion of people who like the original better because it was first. Like guys who can't get over their first girlfriend, even if she was a mess and had like a lazy eye or something. She smelled so good! She had that smell in her hair!

and now

When I submit it to the Internet and people start talking about it and buying copies, I can’t really change it so well then. In a way, it’s a form of discipline to work on the fly as I do.

[pmcd9]

Woah, I think our first poster Emily K is the author of this piece.

[Victoria Waterfield]

"I'd like to emulate P.G. Wodehouse, who is best known for Jeeves and Wooster but who also basically invented American musical theatre and did so much in the 94 years he was alive."

I hope by this, Onstad means specifically, "I'd like to die of natural causes of at the age of 93, with that day's unfinished Achewood strip next to me." Or 103, 113, that would be all right too.

[pmcd9]

People always want to know why they can’t find pictures of me anywhere. I’m not freakish or anything; I look like a completely normal person you’d pass in the street. It's because from the beginning, I didn’t want it to be about me or about me promoting myself. It was all about the comic strip. After a year or two I noticed the chatter of people wondering what I looked like, and I began to like that because it was like J.D. Salinger. He was a recluse and didn’t want anyone to know about him. I also appreciate knowing that there’s no one out there pasting moustaches on me or Photoshopping my face on a woman’s body. I find it empowering to keep this privacy.

TOUAMB exclusive, for the next 10 minutes Chris Onstad

I think this picture is about 10 years old.  From when he was in college.

[KeithHernandez]

How did you get that?

[Beatrice]

damn i missed it!!!

[side_show]

or even better, here's a picture of his weiner dog.

[AugustWest]

Here's a picture of my weiner dog.  He's really not as unhappy as he looks.