
Advertisement

Chris Onstad: I am feeling better and clearer than ever. Happy to be back to writing and art after a long and fascinating hiatus, which helped me realize that I do enjoy Achewood. I love the massive swell of support I'm seeing from people who seem to have truly missed it in its absence.I'm so glad you're returning to Achewood. It's been almost a year since you left us. Can you tell me why you slowed down your production of the strip and why you've returned to it?
I burned out very badly on it, and also mixed it in with a traumatic midlife crisis and unwitting search for happiness. Have you ever repeated a word until it becomes a meaningless sound? I couldn't understand what I had created anymore—couldn't see the forest for the trees. I had lost the plot, I think, and rather than churn out work joylessly, I stopped out of respect for the legacy, the audience, and myself. I returned because I have new stories to tell, because I still love writing, because I missed making readers happy, and because I enjoy not knowing where it will go next. The muse descends inconsistently and with different wands in her handbag each time, and I enjoy wandering down her trails without a plan, trusting that the journey is its own purpose, and that finality is an incomplete concept which diminishes tomorrow's potential.
Advertisement

Always. It has made me proud, fascinated, and satisfied, but also paralyzingly anxious and morbidly depressed. For a regular person to have the speculum of public entitlement visit every word that falls from their lips is not a fate I would wish upon anyone but the most hidebound parking control officer. However, I can't do what I do without the lash as a byproduct, so I will do what I do and the many types of fingertips will have their ways, often outpacing their capacity for rational thought. Typing classes have become terrifyingly effective. Perhaps the letters on the computer keyboard should rearrange themselves while we sleep each night. This idea is mine; you cannot have it.

You'll see.I noticed you included a Scrabble game in one of the new strips. Is that you sending me secret messages through the comic because we play Words with Friends?
No, the secret messages are for someone else, someone important, someone who is the only man who can save us from ourselves. This is not you, Nicholas. [Pats Nicholas cherishingly on head, checks watch.]

Yes, always. Also, tell them how annoying the boards you set up are. It's like you think words can only be two letters long.Do you ever think of me in your day-to-day doings?
Before dinner. I wonder how you would look if you became a child again, but a child who went to the gymnasium, and read with small glasses from the store.
Advertisement

Janzen.Thanks!Everybody go see Achewood at Achewood.com. The current storyline is one of those weird ones where it's like a nightmare or a trip to hell. Ray has the DTs and is hallucinating in a hospital bed. It is BEYOND THE PALE.@NicholasGazin
