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.

Grading on a curve…

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Clint

So… I watched X-Men: Apocalypse this past weekend and was underwhelmed.

A lot of critics and fans are not disagreeing with me, but I’m not going to just begin and end with some ultimately subjective and unhelpful statement like “it sucks”. In analyzing my feelings and reasonings as to why I emerged from the theater with an ambivalent reaction, one thing kept coming up in my mind, which is that if this film had come out in 2007 I would probably have found it awesome.

Okay, awesome may be an overstatement, but since the movie itself can’t help but take a swipe at 2006’s X-Men: Last Stand, let’s go there. Man did I hate (and still hate) Last Stand. Some critics have gone so far as to declare Apocalypse worse than Last Stand. They are wrong. Again, had Apocalypse released just one year later, I probably would have hailed it as the savior of the franchise. A fresh start ready to right all the wrongs, and damn the continuity. As a longtime comics fan, I am quite inured to the idea of retcons and reboots if it promises that mistakes will be addressed.

No, the main issue with X-Men: Apocalypse is that it did not release in 2007, one year after Last Stand — but more importantly one year before The Dark Knight and Iron Man. It has released now in 2016, in a much altered landscape where it seems as lost as its titular antagonist, and just like him ultimately fails to be relevant despite the power at its disposal. Just a scant few weeks after Captain America: Civil War where the presence of twelve different superheroes was successfully juggled, with each given character arcs and memorable moments, along comes a movie with the same unresolved problems X-Men films have had in the past, where a good number of the onscreen mutants end up little more than snazzy window dressing. Are you one of the people who complained Ant-Man or Spider-Man seemed shoved into Civil War for no reason and to no good purpose? Oh boy, they seem downright mission critical compared to Jubilee, Angel or even Storm.

And hey, you know, before I saw Civil War… or hell, Avengers, that would have been fine. I would have been content in the idea that you can’t feature a team of superheroes and have them all feel important. Of course you’d have to structure it as Xavier and Magneto (and some other guys), or Wolverine (and some other guys), or Mystique (and some other guys). Of course I’d have to wait sixteen years for a barely related movie that didn’t even have the X-prefix to give me an actually memorable Colossus. Let’s not get crazy here, right?

Welp, there’s the big problem. Now I’ve seen it done. Now I’ve seen just about everything Apocalypse had to offer, already done, and arguably done in superior fashion. Hell, sometimes in a previous X-movie. Sometimes just in movies, period. I suppose I won’t get into spoilery specifics, but man, there are some hoary old tropes resurrected for Apocalypse, and — okay, spoiler — the X-mansion blows up, which just a few months ago was a Deadpool punchline.

My parents who paid for our tickets enjoyed Apocalypse, and some friends enjoyed it, and if you enjoyed it, too? No worries. But from my standpoint, I can’t help grading it on the curve and feeling like Bryan Singer is still stuck in the ghost of comic book movies past no matter how much his characters mess around with the timeline, still recycling the same old character relationships and conflicts when there is so much more of a vast universe of X-Material out there that Fox has the catalog rights to. It was excusable back in the day when the superhero genre was still figuring out how to best present itself, but now? That’s probably why something I might generously rate a solid B minus is coming off to a lot of folks like an outright failure.