I’ve mentioned before how I feel the last truly, relentlessly scary zombie film was also the first (NotLD), and it seems like every zombie movie since has had varying degrees of camp worked in. So yeah, there’s definitely not an automatic hardcore horror expectation from the word “zombie”. I could maybe even go further and say even from the early days of Tales From The Crypt there’s been a gleeful intermingling of humor and terror… even if the story itself was dead serious, you could count on your ghoulishly grinning host to make some alliterative puns for the epilogue.

Anyhow, as far as listings on horror sites go, sometimes we’re there because the owner(s) have actually invited us, so I figure we can’t be all bad (good?)… that or they didn’t really read the comic, which is possible But I figure the worst that happens as a result is someone follows the link, spends a few minutes clicking pages, and decides it’s not for them. No fuss, no muss, no money spent, and only a bit of bother.

And hey, in your case you even found the story worth a read despite not being what you expected, so that’s best of all.

For a horror whore like myself it’s not what I was after but there are loads of people out there for whom zombie does not necessarily mean horror. They just love anything zombie related so you certainly have a huge target audience who will go wild for Zombie Ranch.

Have to agree with Mr Rubin that speculative fiction is a lame phrase. The word lacks an impact and it seems embarrassed to commit to a genre.

I think horror is difficult to get right but certainly not impossible like Joel Phillips suggests. Your correct that it’s very subjective but Joel is way off the mark that horror fails in comics.

I would also place Zombie Ranch in the sci-fi genre. I’m glad your comfortable in that category.

http://www.jamierubin.net/2011/01/25/speculative-fiction-vs-science-fiction/

I do like your point of social science versus science, though, since there’s that whole perception of “soft” and “hard” science in the real world, which corresponds to the idea of “soft” vs. “hard” SF.

At this point, we don’t need to see the apocalypse or know its nature, as much as I personally crave those details, for the story to work.

I’ll have to pass on the Lost question, as all my knowledge of the series is second hand at best.

Here’s a question for the class. How would you classify the recent TV Series “Lost”?

Supernatural is a loaded term as well, since you’re right that the definition “of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe” is about as spiritual as spiritual gets, outside the purview of science. If you can observe and quantify it, and repeat the results, then no matter how bizarre those results are, it would now qualify as part of the natural, scientific world.

However, even though zombies might be visible and observable in the Zombie Ranch world, that doesn’t mean they’re part of the natural order in ours, and that’s where we’re coming from in terms of categorizing fiction. So I’d still argue that supernatural or paranormal (or even “dark fantasy”) works, even if occult has problems.