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.

Stoicism and absurdity

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Clint

Ben Edlund may not be a name you’re familiar with, but you may know of his most famous creation: The Tick. From humble comic shop beginnings in 1986, the satirical superhero franchise grew to a national and then international following, then an animated series and two live-action small screen adaptations, the most recent of which has debuted on Amazon recently to what seem to be good reviews so far.

We might be fans. SPOON!

I haven’t seen the new series yet but it’s good to hear that Edlund has apparently lost none of his edge, as detailed in this interview. An excerpt of which I found very interesting, since in his discussions of what makes the superhero genre, well… tick… Edlund brings up Westerns:

“What explains the Westerns? World War II, I think,” Edlund says by way of comparison. “Where does the wounded fucking guy who can’t tell his pain to anybody — where does that come from? Where does emptiness, peace, and quiet as a fantasy come from? What is the story of all that shit?” 

This put me in mind of a documentary called Five Came Back that Dawn and I watched not too long ago, which spent some time on famous Western filmmaker John Ford and how his military service in WWII informed his postwar work. You need only watch Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956) back-to-back to see a fairly gaping tonal difference even though the superficial elements are the same (including John Wayne being the star). Westerns of course predate the start of World War II, but it’s only after the war that you really start getting that genre feel of the lone man or small band of men on their own, often struggling to deal with a world that no longer seems to understand them or have a place for them. I’ve talked up George Stevens’ Shane (1953) before as the arguable ur-example of this, and wouldn’t you know it, Stevens was on the frontlines of WWII as well.

What also struck me about Edlund’s quote was thinking back to how The Searchers unabashedly interrupts its dark existentialism towards the end for an absurdly staged, lengthy fistfight at a wedding party, complete with one of the guys involved all but calling a time out while he gets someone’s abandoned fiddle out of the way before the next punch. It goes on for so long and is so comically bizarre that the only comparison I have is the similar scene in They Live where two grown, burly men are fighting over one of them putting on a pair of sunglasses.

And yet that’s the thing, isn’t it? Catch-22 and other works like it certainly prove that darkness and absurdity can walk hand in hand. Stoicism and absurdity are also aspects that can go together… The Tick isn’t really a stoic sort but if you’ve never seen the movie Airplane!, the performances of Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves and Robert Stack in that movie are perfect specimens of how being oh-so-serious can be oh-so-funny. The idea of “deadpan humor” is entirely built around this phenomenon, and in the world of Zombie Ranch Frank is probably my best example.

The Tick has similarly flirted with a dark side to its humor that doesn’t undercut it so much as throwing it into greater relief. It can be a fine line to walk to avoid figuratively breaking your audience’s neck with the mood whiplash, but if you can get it right a bit of contrast can really add up to more than the sum of its parts and (bizarre as it is to say this) actually give a sense of verisimilitude over a piece that is relentlessly on one side or another.