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[Death Ray]

I first heard of Achewood through James Lileks, a columnist/blogger, a couple years ago. I am curious how others came to discover this strip.

I would also like to know what is everyone's favorite podcast about comics?  I listen to a few through the Comics Podcast Network, but I'd like to know which ones are the most popular (especially podcasts about webstrips).

Feed my head!

[littlefallsmets]

A good friend of mine from college at Syracuse... who is also out in LA but is somewhat more successful than me as he works in the salt-mines as a story editor on reality television... was a huge fan of the Ache and told me to just give it a chance as it is great.

That the first few would be weird and not particularly funny but stay with it and it'll be great.

Dude was right, of course.

[theinevitable]

It was linked to from one of the dozen other webcomics I read at the time. Achewood is the only one I still read.

a story editor on reality television

This job sounds like something LFM would make up, but I believe that it is real.

[oball]

A guy on a forum I post on kept using panels from Achewood as his signature.  I remember he had "Like I give a shit, snot-cock! Put a sock in it and pass me another eight hundo!" and "Here comes a huge fag", among others.  I was wondering what they were from, and later he posted a link to Achewood and said "This is the webcomic where I get my sig images from and everyone should read it because it's the best webcomic there is."

So I read it.

[jaydub]

Matt Boyd (now at at TPS) linked to Achewood in the Rant section of MacHall a couple years ago.  The GOF was in its final stages - I read back to get the whole story, then hit the archives hard as the awesomeness soaked in.

[littlefallsmets]

No no, it is a real job.

It is basically the dude who looks at all the raw footage from that week or day or whatever of tape and sketches out for the video editors how it should come together into an episode of television that (kind of) tells a story.

What needs to be tweaked in editing, what needs voice-overs to pull it together, what needs additional stuff shot to have it make sense like... "confessional" interviews with the cast or whatever... graphics, flashbacks, etc.

Whatever needs to be done to make a bunch of fame-grabbing dullards overacting so that they can have their fifteen minutes of fame look like they're actually going through a sequence of events that tells a story... he comes up with that.

Basically, y'know, the producers write the little scenarios that they're gonna put the contestants through... roughly knowing how the people are going to react but not quite having a "script" persay... and then the story editors take the output and figure out how to squeeze it into a narrative.

It is a lot like making a documentary that is shameless in its bias... you don't really "write" anything persay but by carefully choosing what you shoot to begin with and then massaging the hell out of it in post-production, it might as well be written.

Story editor is in charge of the second half of that process.

[CortJstr]

Lileks for me too. The first time he mentioned it, I think. There was a re-run of the French Fry saga running at the time. Right after he talked about the Lung Buddies story I stopped reading the Bleat.

[wombat]

Lileks.

We've done this before, of course.

[CortJstr]

Yup, we even had a brief Lileks forum because so many of us found Achewood from the Bleat.

[side_show]

I was working at a call centre for a dial-up ISP that no longer exists back in late 2001.  It was a boring place to work, but we were allowed to surf the net as much as we liked.  I got into reading The Parking Lot is Full* because it was regularly posted on another site I read.  I was laughing pretty hard about one, so the guy across the isle from me and a few people from neighbouring cubicles came over to see.  I think I was reading either this one or this one at the time.  The guy across the isle liked my twisted sense of humour and we went out on a date.  On this date, he was telling me about this other web comic he liked that had just posted a strip about knives.**  I had no idea what he was talking about, so shortly after the date I checked it out - probably reading this one, and thought "well this sort of sucks" and dismissed it.  A few dates later, the guy was over at my place and we were both bemoaning the fact that the artist and writer of The Parking Lot is Full had announced that they were ending the strip.  The guy asked if I had checked out Achewood, I said I had, but that I didn't really like it, but he insisted I give it another try, went to my computer and brought up the first strip ever and got me to read a few from there.  I said it was okay, but I wasn't really into it.  I continued to date the guy, and he still really liked Achewood.  Later I returned to the archive and started reading, and shortly after I found the dumbrella messageboard.  There wasn't a particular strip that hooked me, but I think maybe because I got into Achewood only a couple months after Onstad started it up, and also because he ran a messageboard where I could talk with him directly (which seemed so cool at the time!) that it seemed like a fairly accessable strip to read.  The guy across the isle became the boyfriend, became the SO - he still reads Achewood, but his interest has wained I think.

If you're looking to develop a stronger fan base, I'd say what lured me (one of the few early Achewood fans with a lady hole) to regular readership was the messageboard and an opportunity to explore the inner workings of the strips.  But then the original messageboard made Onstad go sort of crazy, so... uh, I don't know.

I don't listen to Podcasts I'm afraid, so no input there.

*The Parking Lot is Full is so similar to The Perry Bible Fellowship, with the lack (for the most part) of ongoing characters, the absurdity and the regular parodying of products and culture, etc, that I finally feel like I've found the thing to fill my PLF hole with: PBF.

** Holy hell, I just realized the SO and I have been celebrating our anniversary each year on the wrong date!  Our first date would have to have been on or after Dec 7th, since that's when the "These Knives" strip was posted, but we've been celebrating on the 5th!  Oops!

[jay-ell]

Lileks.

We've done this before, of course.

From my brain to Womb@'s keyboard.  As usual. 

[oball]

Heh, The Parking Lot is Full was the first webcomic I read.  I was round at a friend's house, probably in grade 12 or first year uni (so 2001 or 2002), stoned out of my mind, and he told me I should check it out.  So I looked it up, and spent the next couple of hours sitting at his computer laughing my arse off at it while my friends watched some shitty movie.  Good times.

I think my favourite strip is this one.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I'm pretty sure I was led to Achewood from Ted Barlow's blog.  Which no longer exists, but I think he writes for Crooked Timber now.

[CortJstr]

How did I first find Achewood? Quirky and amusing.

</required lame joke>

[V-Adore]

I moved the potato, and there it was!