UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

9 thoughts on “558 – Cotton Clad Calamity”

  1. Yup, he’s a bastard XD

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Are those pajamas available in XXXL in the gift shop?

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

  4. 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. 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. 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

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.

Salute of the Living Dead…

Death comes for us all. Even guys who pioneered an entire genre about people not staying dead.

And while it’s impossible to analyze the “butterfly effect” of what our world would be like without George Romero having existed and having co-created Night of the Living Dead all those years ago, I think it’s safe to say this comic wouldn’t exist. Not in its present form, anyhow. H.P. Lovecraft may have arguably been the first guy to write about people returning from death hungry for human flesh in his story of Herbert West, Re-Animator, but it was NotLD and later Dawn of the Dead that cemented our modern culture’s ideal of the zombie as an infectious, cannibal ghoul, and the resulting zombie subgenre of horror being a place where thought-invoking social commentary could lie in the wake of the shambling hordes.

Mr. Romero passed away July 16th, at the age of 77, after what was reportedly a relatively brief but intense struggle with lung cancer. His family was with him and his favorite song was playing as he died in his bed, so as these things go I suppose it was as good as it gets. He had a long life and a beloved cult following, and speaking as someone who has experienced two close relatives dying from it, cancer is definitely something that is better to be briefly experienced. I’m sure it doesn’t make it any less devastating for the loved ones, of course. My own aunt passed from lung cancer just a few years ago under what I imagine were similar circumstances.

I’ve had my criticisms for Romero’s most recent zombie efforts, but one thing that’s clear is he always had ideas, whether or not he was fully cognizant of how to realize them. A lot of NotLD could be said to arguably be a happy accident, including the Civil Rights era parables, but Romero rolled with the social commentary aspect and the rest is history. Now to say he single-handedly gave us this subgenre is false, but his partner John Russo meanwhile went more down the path of blood and boobs and camp with the Return of the Living Dead series. Russo also gave us the whole “zombies eat brains” schtick that was never baked in from the beginning but is now an instantly recognizable trope.

But this isn’t the Russo reminiscence hour, this is the time to reflect on the legacy George leaves us, and it’s a legacy that shambles on to this day, reinventing itself again and again to stay relevant. George has plenty of other films in his works besides those “…of the Dead,” but certainly zombies are going to be what he’s most remembered for. As I’ve discussed in a previous blog, that legacy may not have even happened had he and Russo not screwed up their copyright and rendered NotLD into public domain, but then again maybe it would still have occurred and he’d have been a multi-millionaire. Regardless, Romero always seemed famously good-humored about it. In fact I don’t think you could have asked for a kindlier patriarch of the zombie realm, always encouraging to up and coming talents who wanted to make their own (tooth)marks. Fellow travelers as diverse as Zack Snyder, Stephen King and Guillermo Del Toro all acknowledge their debt to his vision and have made their statements of remembrance. And for what it’s worth, here I add mine.

As an ending note, Romero supposedly has elected for cremation of his remains. One last wink from the master? In any case, godspeed, George. And thank you.