The Virgin Read: So Long As Men Can Breathe Or Eyes Can See

Each week, the non-comics reading Nina Stone picks out one random comic book based off her own made up criteria, reads it, and then writes about that experience. While she's been doing these columns for awhile, she's only successfully managed to remember and keep up with one series. This week, she picked Achewood Volume 2.

Achewood Volume 2: Worst Song, Played On Ugliest Guitar
By Chris Onstad
Published by Dark Horse & Achewood

God Bless Achewood and Chris Onstad.

Why did I wait? After reading The Great Outdoor fight and loving it, you’d think I’d keep up, right? Well, that’ll all change now. Now that I’ve read Achewood in its daily format of Achewood-by-injection, I am so totally hooked. 

By the way, The Prologue and History of Achewood, which I would have probably skipped if it had been any other book, are works of genius all their own, totally worth the purchase price. The history is told by Onstad as if he was renting rooms in his house to the the various characters. They arrive in their various ways to rent space in his head. They end up renting it in ours too. (Man, I want to rent space in Chris Onstad’s head. What a cool, wet place to be.)

After these little vignettes, we get even more of Chris. First it's in the “Alt Text” that appears under every comic. And then, below that, is the commentary from now, reflecting back on the work. It’s a commentary on the commentary and is often as hilarious as the strip itself. Now, aside from Chris Onstad’s brain, what else makes Achewood so funny, so enjoyable, you ask?

I have a long and circuitous way of telling you.

Something about this book reminded me of another reading experience of mine way back in the early 80s. Okay, 1981 to be exact. No, I wasn’t reading comics. So what could it be? Oddly it was Delia Ephron’s “How to Eat Like a Child", which has since become a TV show, a musical, a recording, etc.  But way back then, it was a simple book, a book of instructions on, well, How To Eat Like a Child and How To Laugh Hysterically and How to Tease your Sister, those sorts of things. I remember the pure enjoyment I got out of reading that book. More so than any other up to that point. I wanted to share it  (much like my Achewood experience, where I made my husband sit down and listen while I read parts of Achewood’s History to him. With expressio.) and so I got up in front of my Sixth Grade class and read it to them. Let me explain to you the significance of this. That was an awful year for me. I entered it as an innocent little one into a class with four other girls who had failed the year before, and were thus thirteen-year-old-black-eyeliner-wearing-Van-Halen-listening-pot-smoking-breast-developping teenagers. They were also dumber than bags of hair, but I didn’t know that then. I was so intimidated by them, and when they called me a “goody-goody”, that moment served as the signpost to the end of my life. Getting up in from of them, with confidence, and acting out stories for them (maybe it wasn't goody-goody, but it was certainly drama-geek sort of way) stands, to me, as a testament to how much pleasure can outweigh fear. 

What was it about that book? Well here’s two lines from it’s description on Amazon: “Universal and timeless, Delia Ephron's How to Eat Like a Child is a delightful revisiting of the joys -- and tricky ploys -- of childhood” and “After the giggles of recognition have subsided, one thing will be very clear: all adults are kids in grown-ups' clothing.”

And that’s really the thing with that book and with Achewood, for me. It's the giggles of recognition, made better in Achewood because it’s so absurd! I’m not just identifying with behavior, I’m identifying with the behavior of a bear or a squirrel or a robot! I’m identifying with knowing people just like these characters and with Onstad's idea of "tweeking squirrels".

"One thing will be very clear: all adults are kids in grown-ups' clothing.” Or, in this case, after the recognition we realize that all adults are kids in grown-ups clothing who are even funnier when they are illustrated by the personification of animals. Am I right, or am i right?

And just as I’m buying into these characters, I'll read a series of frames that reminds me that they are, actually, animals. They're pets, taking over while the people are away. It might be an attempt to drive a car or the sight of Ray sitting on a motorcycle. (That was the best. Suddenly, Ray is drawn to scale. He's the size of an actual cat…on a motorcycle. And if that’s not cute enough, Ray in his thonged glory sits side-saddle. Onstad comments, and my laughs get doubled.)

Don’t you just laugh out loud reading this? I was on the subway and read Silk Robe. I hadn’t even read the title. What was hilarious was that although the comic was about Tedor being bummed about Penny, the whole comic lies in the two end frames where the robe is first stuck in between Cornelius' butt cheeks as he walks away. And in the final panel he reaches back and pulls it out with the sound effect “umph” in the left of the panel. Hysterical! I laughed out loud! For the 643^rd time!!

I could just go on and on. I have so many favorite moments in this book that I'll just go ahead and tell you that I LOVE it. I love this book, I love this comic, I love these characters. Man, I wish you were here right now because I’d just sit you down and read to you from this book, just like I did in the sixth grade. This thing is pure joy. Everyone needs Achewood in their life.

-Nina Stone, 2009

Comments

[Kenny Cather]

No one has commented on this yet? Oh my! I *love* Achewood and didn't realize this was already out! I heard he was putting all the Alt-text comments in this book, too, which is awesome because those frequently make me laugh as hard, if not harder, than his punchlines!

[Kumar]

I'd like to read Achewood, but I don't know where to begin. Is it better to start reading with this volume or the other one or online?

KS

[Cole Moore Odell]

I finally decided to read Achwood last month--I just went to the online archive and started from the beginning. Within 10 minutes I was laughing so hard I had trouble breathing. It only got funnier from there. I'm up to 2007 now, and I can say without reservation that it's one of the funniest things I've ever read in my life.

[Chris Jones]

I discovered Achewood a few days ago and it is my new favorite thing, ever. I'm driving my brother and mom absolutely bonkers right now with how much and how hard I'm laughing at it.

BTW, my brother doesn't think Achewood is funny at all. He also didn't like the Kamandi strip where the ape on horseback shoots down a blimp being driven by a dog with a rocket launcher. Are these valid complaints, or is he dead on the inside?

[Roast Beef]

This is such an excellent review. Can't wait to buy it now. Achewood is such an amazing comic-- it's art. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry (usually from laughing). All my friends are obsessed. God bless Chris Onstad.