Apparently while we have been slaving away etching dogs in business suits into massive granite columns, people started putting cartoons on the Internet—with the intention of making my livelihood completely obsolete. Thanks. However, one of the best outcomes of this Internet blitz is the hilarious Web comic Achewood, by Chris Onstad. I suggest you start at the beginning, read all the way to the present, then read each characters’ blog, then read the advice column, and then repeat. I sat down with Onstad and asked him the following questions, to which he gave the following responses:

CARTOON LOUNGE: You were Time magazine’s graphic novel of the year in 2007. How does it feel to be on top of the world?

Chris Onstad: When you are on top of the world, at first you wake up not knowing that. Then you go to your computer, and there is an e-mail from someone with a time.com e-mail suffix, and the e-mail wants to become a phone call. It is uncommon for an e-mail to ask to become a phone call, so you agree, and then the call happens pretty quickly after that. It’s a girl named Julie from Thanking & Congratulations, and she does what you might expect. She makes you feel as though you are sitting Indian-style on top of the world, much like the Little Prince, and in my case I had the distinct feeling that I could have taken her to a trendy vodka bar in Alphabet City and talked playfully and open-endedly about bras for a while. Maybe that’s what they wanted me to feel. Maybe I was played to a T.

But, are you happy?

Onstad: No. That is not a thing I reserve for books or communications or interior progress or myself. Happy is, as defined by my men’s therapist, a mountain bike ride to a place near Mount Santa Cruz, and it takes place around 4:15 in the morning, and when we get to the top he has this ultra-light tripod and he takes a picture of our group. It’s scheduled for next weekend.

What are some of your favorite funny things to watch or read?

Onstad: On YouTube, there are videos of Gordon Ramsay bugging people and criticizing them and their restaurants. I like the way he yells at people; he seems like he’d be a lot of fun to yell at people with. You’d really just be a third wheel, but here and there I bet he’d take a breather and you could kick them while they were down. I also like those old Steamboat Willie-type animations they show at the Main Street USA cinema at Disneyland. So, so scary. Awful, in a way, if you can get yourself there mentally, and imagine all the tragedies that have befallen literally everyone involved in their production all those years ago.

When you are talking to strangers, do you refer to cartooning as your “craft”?

Onstad: It is a permanent problem, describing what you do when you do an obscure comic. I tell people I’m a cartoonist, and if they press me to say a cartoon out loud, I know I am wasting my time. It’s like suggesting that a young fireman dance around with his wonderful butt showing—it’s his job to offer, not yours to ask.

There are so many great characters in “Achewood.” Which is your favorite to write for? Which is your favorite to draw?

Onstad: I like the main two guys, Ray and Roast Beef. In my mind, they are shlemiel and shlemazel. I am sorry if I spelled that wrong. I was not brought up in the Jewish culture and I can only appreciate it from a distance, much like a flower on a rock that is far out to sea, watching a boat full of Jews sail past. Do they wave? (Yes.)

Chris, I get invited to a lot of parties where I’m not necessarily the guest of honor, but I’m a guest that everyone feels honored to have there, and whom everyone would like to honor in some way. Is this a shared experience?

Onstad: I know what you mean. A lot of times, like when I’m just in line to pay a cashier for something, I’ll swell out my chest, because I am more than likely the most important person in that line. I have a good chest—although it has some fat on it, no joke—and I often wear a fairly tight t-shirt over a snug thermal long-sleeve, so I know that people notice.

I have to pay a lot of taxes living in New York City. What about you, are you a taxes guy?

Onstad: I pay almost all the major taxes, and I’m also part of a local program in my town where we pay experimental taxes to see if we get mad. There’s a tax on those who throw away too much homemade food (they’re like, “Just cook better, and then you’ll eat more of it”), and there is also a tax on guys who smoke regular tobacco from a bong in public solely to be provocative.

Comic-con. Did you go to that? What’s it like? I’m thinking of doing some interviews there.

Onstad: No, and yes. Stormtroopers? I think that’s how it plays out. You know what I’d like to see at Comic-con? Howard Stern shaking hands with Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca. Peter Mayhew is 7’1” and Howard Stern is kind of his Mini-Me, even though Stern is 6’5”. Maybe up on a modest stage, for half-hour periods, with five minutes off for autographs.

Would you ever do an Achewood book on tape? If so, who would do the voices? Your answer can be a lie.

Onstad: I think the main thing is that Ray would be voiced by over 700 members of The Arcade Fire speaking in unison, and Roast Beef would be voiced by the door latch being locked for the night at a McDonald’s restaurant. The latch closure can be mixed together at different pitches to create a complex tonality not unlike utterances.

What is your ideal day?

Onstad: Wake up, hot merguez sausages on a plate, Madeleine Peyroux posters on sale, turn off the radio, it was all a dream. Wake up.

Ideal night?

Onstad: Chris Isaak driving a fairly heavy American car on a large beach, and carving it artfully around in large swoops. Not trying to get anything done, just enjoying the physics of the event. I’m watching from a nearby home.

Chris, I am swamped. I have nearly two posts to write a week, on top of a sandwich shop I’m trying to start out of my apartment. (Readers, call me if you are interested in any sandwiches.) Can you write some more stuff for us that I would post as if I had done any work?

Onstad: This would be a burden, and an imposition, although I like what you are saying about sandwiches and new companies. I often think that all it takes to start a good sandwich company is a place that is convenient to people, and not to use Scotch tape to close the paper around the sandwiches, because that seems out of place, though I have seen it done.

Wow. thinking about good sandwiches is making me want to write posts. What kind of posts do you need? How about I chronicle the growth of your apartment sandwich company? We could start there, but move to a Quizno’s if a particular week was kind of uneventful. Or, I could do a thing where I ate at Quizno’s, three meals a day, for a day. Kind of like a “Super Size Me” social commentary thing. I could go out with friends afterwards and we could get some pitchers. We could call it The UC Santa Barbara Project.

We’re sort of new to the Internet around here. What can we learn from you? How many pixels do you usually use?

Onstad: I use pixels the way doctors used John Wayne’s stomach: they cut it out because of smoking cancer and he had to drink whiskey through a tube in his head (in other words, pretty intensely). Did you know that John Wayne’s childhood home became an out-of-business museum?

Are you working on anything besides the “Achewood” comic strip, books, merchandise, and blogs?

Onstad: I re-seeded my back lawn, and I watch it vigilantly. Little eucalyptus seeds are falling all over it. They’re shaped like that space capsule Gus Grissom messed up in “The Right Stuff.” The one he sank to the bottom of the ocean with his stupid tchotchkes. Kind of conical.

Do you need any money?

Onstad: No, keep it where you are. Money is like freedom in a leotard—it’s the leotard that makes it matter, and without, it’s anarchy. People selling rap CDs in a doorway, next to people selling rap cassettes in a doorway. Dogs barking at rich dogs, who try to do the right thing and look away. You can call it a free-market economy, but I call it the shame of a nation. Fill up a leotard with money—Moira Kelly comes to mind—and we’re back on track, and that’s something I’d be interested in.

Share any thoughts you have about anything in The New Yorker. Not necessarily cartoon-related.

Onstad: I haven’t seen much Malcolm Gladwell lately, and I wonder if that’s because he’s busy running more social experiments centered around his haircut. Also, I thought it was lame that Anthony Lane acted like he didn’t care about the Rolling Stones. That is ridiculous, not to care about that band in a really heavy way. Is he (originally) from space?

Chris, I’m bushed. Can you just finish this interview yourself?