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.

Dialogue as navigation

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Clint

Last week I talked about the idea that the placement of word balloons and captions in comics can actually be a very important storytelling element. Let’s take that even further. Have you ever noticed how they have the potential to guide the reader’s eye?

Most of us are familiar with the basics of how we tend to read in the so-called Western World, a habit that’s been ingrained into us since childhood: left-to-right, top-to-bottom. That’s our default, and it’s not even something you have to think about when you write in prose.

Comics can be another matter entirely. Art and paneling layouts are suddenly part of the composition, and you may have to engage in some fancy gymnastics to get all those words and sound effects you wanted to fit comfortably. Now of course, the first pass is to make sure you absolutely need all those words and sound effects, but if you honestly believe they’re needed, you want to try to make the progression of the reader through the story is as natural as possible. I’ve had several times as a reader over the years where I had to stop and get back on track after reading the wrong dialogue balloon first or even the wrong panel out of intended sequence, neither of which is a good thing.

The most primitive and direct solution for this is the ol’ arrow method where you’ll see a creator literally place a graphical arrow in the gutters between panels to show which ones you should be reading next. You’ll rarely see this in works from experienced pros, and I shy away from calling out any direct examples because of that, but you probably know what I mean. It’s a last resort, in my opinion, something to be avoided at all costs. And there are definitely creative ways to avoid it, one of which happens to be your lettering.

I think I’m going to just dive right in the deep end here with an extreme example from the pages of Superior Spider-Man. The script calls for the Green Goblin to taunt his foe by naming off several locations, and then one after another he detonates bombs planted in all of them, laughing maniacally all the while. The paneling layout, however, is very non-standard. (click the image to enlarge)

 

ssmballoonsample3

Now admittedly this has the dimensions of a splash page, so we’re actually looking at two separate pages of the comic, but as a single design I think it still works swimmingly at guiding you down the left side first and then the right, with the Goblin and the visual representation of his laughter serving as the border. I even like the happy accident (or maybe design?) of the word balloon stem in the lower left panel. It points to the Goblin’s mouth as it should, but if you look past him it also points to the the upper right panel where the quite literal cascade of “boom” begins. The laughter serving as a background to the right side panels also serves to divide the two spaces.

You could technically still read this left to right and have it work, but I don’t believe that’s the intent, and that’s why those thin little stems are there crossing the gutters to provide the vertical (but not horizontal) connection. They could have all had individual stems pointing to the Goblin or no stems at all and still serve their minimal purpose, but it would have been a less clear choice.

Now that we’ve seen a cool bigtime pro page, I’d like to provide these three pages from our own past work that also hopefully illustrate what I’m getting at, and hear your thoughts on how well they might (or might not) have worked for you.

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/episode/a-la-cart/

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/episode/99-event-horizon/

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/episode/118-brewing-and-stewing/

If you’ve got no opinions to give, I’ll just do my retrospective on them next week to say what we were going for and how well I think we achieved what we intended in terms of guiding the reader. But since you folks are the actual readers, it could make an interesting addition to the discussion.