UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

9 thoughts on “558 – Cotton Clad Calamity”

  1. Raznaak

    Yup, he’s a bastard XD

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Are those pajamas available in XXXL in the gift shop?

  3. Otaku

    It’s been a while, so let me ask: Did we get a reason for him to WANT Susie dead? Not to backseat, but if we didn’t, I’m worried were about to move into “Stupid Evil” territory. Now, stupid happens, don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad storytelling for that to be the case here.

    You’ve just done a good job NOT having that be a driving factor, so the “Kill off the stars of my successful reality TV show.” seems shortsighted, otherwise. Oh, I guess I could be mistaken about the in-story reality TV show’s success. Like, if the company behind them is losing money, or they think a change in management at the ranch would make the whole thing more popular/profitable, then I can see the above scenario happening as well.

    I REALLY think I’m just forgetting something important, but that I don’t have time to deep dive to remind me of, hence the comment. >_<

    1. Deoxy

      It certainly has been stretched out over quite a while, but there have definitely been hints from quite near the beginning that whoever is running the reality TV show definitely wants her dead.

      But I certainly don’t recall any reason why.

      1. Clint

        Yeah it’s fair to not remember since it’s been a hot minute (many, many minutes) but if you feel like a refresher the most relevant bits would be the beginning of Episode 8 and the end of Episode 15. We haven’t explicitly spelled out exactly what The Exec means by his “side hustle” or who was on the other end of that phone call, though.

        I’m hoping that when the whole thing is eventually available it will make sense, or at least enough sense to have hung this narrative on.

        1. Otaku

          Thanks for the replies, Deoxy and Clint. Yeah, I’d totally forgotten about those things. Good to know!

  4. Evervigilant

    Seems about time for the two people who aren’t there to make a surprise entrance as the ace Susie didn’t even know she had.

  5. Scarsdale

    There’s still 3-5 people on her side that might be planning something. This guy is a megalomaniac with a god complex, so letting him think he’s the sharpest tool in the shed sets him up for a fall. Everything depends on those cameras, and I suspect their little stop over by the charging coffins had something to do with her actual plan, not the one the a-hole thinks it is.

  6. lyra

    Really enjoyed the opening of Zombie Ranch. I like the combination of the western setting with the zombie concept, it gives the story a really distinctive atmosphere. I’m a freelance illustrator and animator, and I’d be interested in seeing how some of these scenes could translate into motion, especially as a short animated teaser or character scene.

    If you’re ever interested in something like that, you can reach me here:

    IG: eve_verse_
    Email: [contact.lilaclines@gmail.com](mailto:contact.lilaclines@gmail.com)
    Discord: Lyralilac_

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558 – Cotton Clad Calamity
Posted on August 26, 2026 by Dawn

What would you call this? Armchair assassination? Merk-from-home?

Well, Suzie ain't dead (or undead) quite yet, so we'll just have to see if his gloating is justifiable.

Keeping things straight (when it’s all crooked)

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Clint

I remember when we first started Zombie Ranch, my ambitious intent was to use camera footage and “media interludes” for any and all instances of storytelling that were outside of the present timeline (as far as the comic’s world goes). We would freely roam through locations but any flashbacks, etc. would be through the gimmick of something filmed.

This proved to be more boring and limiting than actually clever, and so I abandoned it in favor of more flexible methods, particularly after discussions with some friends and fans indicated that no one much cared about the method of delivery so long as they weren’t confused. And let’s face it, the weekly format leaves plenty of time for the average reader to forget things that in “comic time” would have happened five minutes ago, because in our time it’s been two months. Heck, many’s the time I’ve seen someone in the comments refer to a character by the wrong name.

Don’t get me wrong, that last bit’s not a complaint, or at least not a complaint I wouldn’t be entirely hypocritical in making considering my own track record of forgetting names. But in any case, the past few comic pages have been an example of me really pushing things in a time-and-space sense. I’ve jumped us around from place to place before, probably most notably in Episode Six and Seven as the McCarty intrusion was going down and people were in all sorts of different spots doing different things. Those shenanigans I’m pretty sure I got away with. Now, though, I’m not only jumping around from place to place but jumping in time, and gambling that there’s just enough in the way of visual cues and captions for the reader not to become completely lost. Or at least not lost once all this is properly put together in a contiguous, “page-turnin'” fashion. For example, getting back to the camera gimmick, I wrote page 356 to be presented entirely through the lens view of Camera 7, as a recording of the past. But page 357 abandons this and introduces narrative voice-over captions even though the location is still the same. Partly because I felt the constant “CAMERA 7” labeling and TV Lines were growing a little bit much (my exact note to Dawn was “we know where we are now”), partly because panel 3 goes back to a reaction shot of present-time Suzie, and mostly because panel 4 would make absolutely no sense unless a parallel universe Camera 7 had intruded to take the story of Zombie Ranch interdimensional.

And now this week is another time-space jump sans camera gimmicks, hurtling back to where we left off with Rosa and Chuck in the last episode. Out of control, man.

Or is it?

I guess if people can wrap their brains around Doctor Who–a show I like to describe to people as “perfectly enjoyable once you accept the idea that a master of time and space has to rush to get somewhere”–they can wrap their brains around this. Or perhaps I’m just getting away with it for the moment because I keep you all in such perpetual confusion about what’s going on that additional layers of such are functionally imperceptible.

I don’t intend the latter and I think for the most part people have been following along just fine so far, but I admit I’m getting pretty crooked with the narrative right now and not necessarily always using the helpers I perhaps should be.

Maybe I need to start thinking about sepia tones again.

Time will tell.