December 13: Achewood Week Finale

And thus concludes Chris Onstad’s journey through the holidays, December 24th 2008.

It would stand to reason that this year’s Christmas strip is right around the corner, so make sure to start following the strip at http://achewood.com.

As for why I’ve chosen this rollercoaster of emotions, good-to-bad-to-confusing, to showcase on my blog? Well, honestly, I have a complex relationship with Christmas myself. I don’t want to go into the details, but the music, the bright lights and decorations, the joy of the season is something I embrace because the darker parts of the holiday are always creeping around the edges. I know a lot of people who can’t stand Christmas, because for them it represents bad times. I empathize. It’s a bit like the song Fairytale of New York I think? People with problems singing them away in the hopes of something better… Achewood is a pretty marvelously complicated piece of work, that touches on all of those sorts of feelings and many more besides. Hopefully you get it. Hopefully at no point during this week does my family call to worry about me (this is being written a week prior). Hopefully you all have a good holiday.

And I promise, for the rest of the month it’s nothing but brightly coloured cartoon and comic fun. 🙂

– Christopher

December 11: Achewood Week Pt. 6

Christmas 2007 (actually January 2nd 2008), and it seems Ray has made an annual occurance out of writing people a book. And having it professionally printed. ISBN and everything. Teodor’s face in Panel 5 is actually perfect.

I laughed about this one for hours.

Get ready, tomorrow’s strip is intense.

– Chris

December 9: Achewood Week Pt. 4

For Christmas 2004, Chris Onstad was in the middle of  a storyline and did not acknowledge Christmas directly. He did provide a gift to readers on Christmas Eve, in the form of a page of guitar tabliture for a song from the Achewood world. Written by a man who has gone insane on moonshine, about a boy who wastes his life looking through a shop window until he too goes insane. The song is called “Sullivan’s Bear and Dried Bird.” He follows it up with a strip where Ray needs to tell Charlie Brown that he is in fact, dead, and died when Charles Schultz did years prior.

For Christmas 2005, Achewood went on hiatus and Onstad posted a bunch of photos from around the house, and some from his sketchbook. It’s good stuff. But he did do a Christmasy strip the week before, and that’s what you see above. Click on it to keep reading btw, the punchline is great.

– Christopher

The 5 Things Wrong With DC’s War Of The Supermen #0 Cover

fcbd10_wotsm-cv0-fpoI hesitated posting about today’s big DC “news”. I did it yesterday and I kind of don’t want to make a habit of giving them a lot of attention—negative or otherwise—because they’re a multinational corporation who doesn’t need it when I could be focusing on excellent books from smaller publishers. It’ll do wonders for my hits though. And seriously, as much as I love posting about something just to rag on it, I’m a genuine fan of the artist of this cover, JG Jones. I own lots of his comics and think he’s a really talented artist.

But.

But this cover is already out to a wide lead for “ugliest comic book cover of 2010,” and… and I gotta say something. Maybe there’s still time.

The 5 Things Wrong With DC’s War Of The Superman #0 Cover:

wotsm-1

“FUCK YOU, DAD!”

1. Superman should not look like a petulant teenager. He also might be cross-eyed here.

wotsm-2

2. Supergirl is making a kissy-face on the cover. Seriously. All the dudes on the cover are angry or serious, the girl on the cover is giving her best come-hither. The teenage girl.

wotsm-3

3. Are those seriously hairs on the art? Like the art that DC released today was scanned with hairs on the scanning bed?

wotsm-4

4. Not Jones’ fault (I hope), but that logo is terrible. There are 3 different fonts in that logo. WAR has 5 different text effects on it, including a bevel. Bevel. Bonus problem not related to the design: I seriously cannot believe this is DC’s entry into Free Comic Book Day.

fcbd10_wotsm-cv0-fpo

5. It’s just not a good cover. Washed out, oddly static, the figures aren’t moving in the same direction and don’t come from even roughly the same point, the expressions don’t match up, it’s poorly ‘blocked’ meaning it looks like the woman in the upper-right corner looks like she’s standing on Superman’s shoulder… The whole thing feels like it’s been art-directed to death, or not at all. I can’t tell which.

I have solicited comics before, for free comic book day. You gotta get the art in early to make a very early deadline for a May book. Maybe it’s just rushed, or otherwise not the final. Or maybe this really will be the ugliest book DC releases in the new year.

– Christopher

December 8: Achewood Week Pt. 3

It is one year later, Christmas Eve 2003 and not much has changed for Ray. He is still a poor friend, as he has killed himself and caused Roast Beef to do the same, chasing after him to hell. They are at a Friendly’s Family Diner In Hell, in this storyline. It’s a pretty good storyline, actually, which starts on December 1st. It has famous bluesman Robert Johnson in it too.

Bonus: On Christmas Day 2003, Chris Onstad started a week of guest-comics. The first one is a Christmas comic by ScaryGoRound and Bad Machinery creator John Allison, featuring Phillipe. Enjoy!

– Chris