Chris Onstad

"Achewood" has gained a reputation as one of the best web comics currently being run. This has less to do with creator Chris Onstad's artwork (which is minimal and serviceable to his purposes) and everything to do with his talents as a writer. He brings a depth and inventiveness to his characters that is rarely found in comic strips from any medium, creating rambling story archs that exist not to advance any grand plot, but to give his characters new ways to interact. This book collects one show more of his more popular story archs, "The Great Outdoor Fight." The tale begins with Ray, an uber-wealthy anthropomorphic cat, learning that his mysterious father won the title competition in the early-1970s. Ray bribes his way into the event, bringing along his clinically depressed best friend, Roast Beef (a long-time fan of the fight who hacked his way into the competition), as a strategist. Onstad explores the many comic possibilities inherent in the fight, a three-day event in which 3,000 men compete in a last-man-standing brawl on three fenced-in acres of land. Other fighters include a country star who fights for the publicity, a squat Englishman who blogs about the fight from his Blackberry and a man who goes by the name "the Latino Health Crisis." Onstad's humor is character-based and dialog-driven, with many of his best jokes coming from his oddball turns of phrase (personal favorite is Roast Beef describing Ray's dad, a legendary brawler, as "the Thomas Edison of handing a dude his ass.") The comic's subtler elements reward rereading, and it eventually becomes clear that the story is as much about Ray's attempts to overcome his deeply hidden insecurities as it is about the fight itself. The book is a nice piece of work. Though it loses the alt-text comments that Onstad adds to every strip online, this lack of meta-commentary gives the story a more serious edge. He also makes up for the lack with a collection of material only found in the published book, including a history of the fight and its fighters, as well as other historical paraphernalia that Onstad seems to have a real knack for imitating. "The Great Outdoor Fight" is a great piece of comic work, and one that stands up to just about any graphic novel of its type.

(This review originally appeared on zombieunderground.net) show less

Catching up on reviews!

I haven't exactly made any secret of my love for Chris Onstad and Achewood (people who are actually Facebook friends with me, which is everyone on here, I guess, will note he's my only "inspirational person"), so giving this five stars shouldn't come as any surprise. You can make all of the accusations about Achewood dropping off quality-wise and I won't make a peep (I think it's peaked, too), but this is a shining example of the strip (is it a strip?) at its best. show more Onstad has his character voices down so tight, the art is spare but somehow perfect, and the jokes are magnificently executed. There's some fun back-matter type stuff to be had in the added bios of GOF champions of yesteryear, but the recipes section falls surprisingly flat for an Onstad production. My biggest quibble is that Dark Horse put a big 1 on the spine, which I think is bound to throw people as time goes on. show less

Onstad takes another trip down memory lane with another collection of early Achewood. The comics content is five stars because, well, it's Achewood. Onstad's side commentary in this one is weirdly self-deprecatory for a set of strips that while it's definitely early stuff, isn't THAT bad. The best part of these collections, though, is still Onstad's long-form text pieces that accompany the comics, which are just crammed with great lines themselves. (I can't remember the exact line now, but show more at one point Beef describes Ray's high school career as "Ray was so bad in school that when he was all done they retired the F." Ray's response? "Just like Jordan.")

It's a little sad to be writing this now, with Achewood not having updated since April, possibly never to return again, but it's nice to know that we'll always have these books to try and encapsulate Achewood. show less

Once again, it's Onstad, so I'm throwing all my stars at it. Yeah, this collection incorporates some rough material, and the added origin stories for the original characters (Teodor, Lyle, Cornelius, Philippe) are based in the "all the animals except the cats lives at Onstad's house" backstory that the strip rightfully discarded, but once again, Onstad is a goddamn master at what he does.