Achewood
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Lost Achewood: Recently discovered missing rows
🕑 Added 2023-10-31 05:47:15 +0000 UTCStrip Title: "Small Times. A Look." Run date: January 15, 2010
As with most things of thirteen years past, I can't remember why I chose to remove the completed fourth row of this comic before running it. It feels perfectly on-voice, and even gives nice closure. Strange choices like this are a decent indicator of the pathologized headspaces one gets into when working alone on the same thing for a decade. Maybe I thought it was too gentle to be Achewood — not cutting enough, no edge, just a soft nostalgic voice-over thing by an aging guy who wishes he could still dress like the kids in Stand By Me.
Below the omitted row is another row, which would have made the strip needlessly long, and needlessly libelous to Ozzy Osbourne.
Below that is just a bunch of lines that didn't end up getting used.
Comments
Nate
Honestly, Ray's feelings are both relatable and like, anti-relatable. Like I had one friend from a situation of extreme religious madness (sometimes didn't have a door, legit abuse) and it's like, there was a moment in time when he got kicked out for no reason and I couldn't get my parents to take him in. But at the same time, I was lowkey getting abused and looked at the other more functional households and wanted someone to "be my Smuckles family" so like, I think this strip would have hit me pretty hard in the feelings zone back then, and it still does now.
Stavro
What a delightful peek behind the curtain
Josh Fireland
I don't think I ever knew the word "mullion" before today and now this is the SECOND time I'm seeing it! If I see it once more I bet my pants will fall down.
Oppido
Yeah, it's very cool to get this glimpse under the hood, but I like the way the three-row version ends -- the zoom-out on two boys in a shit-cluttered yard, during what's supposed to be a fun sleepover, has a certain bleak poignancy that feels of a piece with the overall Achewood project. Plus it echoes-slash-foreshadows the hall-of-fame ending panel of Beef burying his new shirt.
Matt Mitchell
Exactly. “What’s up, new money?”
Oppido
Shades of Ray reassuring a heavily Chivas'd Beef that all he did was exist in an area.
A Cloth Map
I feel like you made the right call
Amy Lewis
Great now I want cinnamon pie
Matt Mitchell
Haa, the “in an area” phrase.
Julie (HiDeeHoGal)
I want to adopt young Beef tbh.
Jay Williams
It’s the inability to even imagine poor Beef having any kind of a happy ending…
Sean FC
I can feel the space before the exclamation point in Beef’s dialogue.
Bungus Bronbo
We all had dreams.
