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.

A low-heat situation

Posted on May 10, 2017 by Clint

One of my recurring topics over the years has been observations of creators burning out on their stories, an all-too-common occurrence especially in the field of webcomics. There have been more than a few abrupt endings that I personally witnessed, and many more noted in passing, to the point where Zombie Ranch seems to be something of a rarity as we find ourselves in the midst of its seventh straight year in production. Now of course that’s not as impressive as it might sound given that we’re a once-a-week gig that even then has taken its share of pauses for life instances or holidays, but never without some sort of notice, and I believe our longest hiatus was the month we took off after we finished Chapter 7 (at least part of which was spent in early planning and production for the trade paperback and its Kickstarter).

We’re still chugging along, and that counts for something, but I’ll admit that it’s tempting at times to want to just take one of those indefinite hiatuses that many of our peers have ended up doing. What stops me is that an indefinite hiatus more often than not just ends up a way that a comic dies without the creator officially pronouncing it dead. Because who wants to do that? But if it’s gotten bad enough that you want to just walk away and aren’t sure when you’ll look back, would it be better to make that final pronouncement rather than leaving everyone hanging?

Thankfully this is not a stage we’re at, which I credit to our slow pace and the accompanying patience of our readers. Nothing accelerates burnout like fans posting semi- or outright abusive demands to a creator if they feel unsatisfied with the pacing/quality/whatever of their free entertainment, ironically making sure to kill the thing they loved as something that doesn’t generally pay well (or really at all) turns from a joy into a nightmare for the artist(s) involved. That’s usually when the ultimate version of burnout occurs — the unannounced hiatus where without warning the comic just stops updating, because even the effort of communicating something to their fans has become too much and they’d rather figuratively slip out the back than face what seems to be already a largely hostile crowd. It’s an understandable behavior, but a result the Internet is full of once vibrant comics whose last update page is dated from a few years ago, with the occasional commenter asking, “Is this ever coming back?”

This, more than anything, is the outcome I seek to avoid. But what would happen if, say, Dawn were offered a full-time job doing storyboard work for an animation studio? Could we keep the comic going? If not, would we be willing to pronounce it dead? Should we? After all, not every comic that has gone on an extended hiatus has died. It would give an (unsatisfying) closure to shutter the doors early, but should we truly extinguish all hope?

In any case this all remains hypothetical and I suppose the best answer is to just deal with it if and when it comes to that, but I do like to take into account that our readers are a patient bunch and many of them are already used to just doing the occasional binge catch-up rather than reading week-to-week. That says to me that even should the worst(best?) circumstances happen and we felt like we couldn’t continue Zombie Ranch for the foreseeable future because of them, it wouldn’t rule out a possible resurrection (heh) down the road.

After talking about dire circumstances I should hesitate to compare the current comics situation to our marriage, but there’s a certain parallel in that Dawn and I have been together for over a decade now. The whirlwind zest of our early years has long since settled down into a more routine, low-heat situation, but it’s a comfortable kind of heat. The kind of heat that should hopefully never burn out.