Here’s fan dedication for you: free Achewood tattoos through the end of September (which is like, 3 more days). And not just the dedication of the tattooer, but also the tattooees. Now, I have gone over 50 years (yeah, I’m an old fart) without a single intentional tattoo (marks left from falling down onto felt tip pens don’t count, although they are almost as permanent), and never seriously considered branding myself with Opus or Taz or The Tick no matter how much I loved them, but webcomics characters and tattoos seem to just go together… in spite of the fact that pictures on the skin are as long-lasting as pictures on the web are NOT. Unfortunately, nobody from Achewood is among my faves, but I’d be open to getting a little Clango or Flaco or Mr. Jinx or Agatha or Diablo or Brock or Monique or McPedro or Wally or Belkar or Sammy the Hammy or Ship the Sheep or Polly the simply-drawn emu or an anonymous chicken… but not Schlock. I love you too guy, but I already have marks from falling down onto felt tip pens that look just like you…

Okay, I have plenty of issues with the look of the new comic Ungrateful Dead (cut-n-paste figures, stiff poses, giant heads with spooky eyes), but I was pointed to it by Home On the Strange, a comic I got into much more for the writing than the artwork (but it’s gotten better), so I gave Ungrateful a chance. Started from the beginning. Liked the “all the horrors of flashbacks and none of the fun of the acid” line in the first comic. Suspended my disbelief on the ‘ghosts of dead rock legends’ premise. Forgave it when I didn’t recognize John Lennon’s ghost as quickly as Jimi Hendrix’s ghost. Then it won me over with this joke: 90% on the irreverence scale, 75% on the silly scale, and blended perfectly. And then, this one pinned both meters. A couple of the Freddie Mercury’s ghost jokes fell flat but this one saved it for me. (Although, once again, high levels of Suspension of Disbelief were required to deal with a rock star’s ghost being ‘comatose’). Now that the strip is dealing with the members of the band (not known-entity dead celebs but rock-and-roll ‘types’), here is where Wayne & Craig have their work cut out for them. Stay tuned.

I usually roll my eyes wen somebody uses the “it’s funny ’cause it’s true” line, because sometimes The Big Lie is a Big Laugh and sometimes the truth us kinda, you know, inconvenient (TM A.Gore). Anyway, if a stopped clock can be correct twice a day (and a clock running backwards twice as often!), then Achewood is capable of occasional flashes of Absolute Truth. And this is one of them.

(Someday I should tell the story of when I met the guy who Bob Woodward said supplied John Belushi most of his drugs and got nothing but a Polaroid picture…)

Congratulations to Huw “Lem” Davies on his 1000th “Bunny” webcomic. But then, when he started I knew they were gonna multiply like that. (Just be thankful he didn’t do a comic titled “Zucchini”.)