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.

The rotary club

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Clint

In popular fiction it often seems flying in a helicopter is a more dangerous prospect than off-roading in a Ford Pinto full of sweaty dynamite. There’s even a whole TV Tropes page dedicated to the phenomenon. Helicopters are the redshirts of the vehicular transportation world.

Zombie fiction is no exception, probably because the helicopter represents a free ticket to safety from the gravity-bound hordes, and we can’t have that or we have no tension for our survival scenario. Maybe the pilot becomes a zombie, or one of the passengers, or a zombie was hiding somewhere on board, or something even more contrived than that, but whatever, the important thing is that the easy salvation and hope go down in flames and our protagonists are left to cry variations on “Game over, man!”

But early on with Zombie Ranch, I knew we’d be telling a different kind of story, one where the world had been adjusting to the presence of the walking dead for several years, and more than that, still had a fair amount of resources and technology available. Roads in the Wild Zones wouldn’t be maintained and might still be choked with ruined cars; land travel wouldn’t be out of the question, but there’d definitely be dangers and delays.

The Pony Express got by in the Old West, but in this Weird New West, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just fly your delivery right over it all, roads, hills, and zeds be damned? Well, shucks, there’s something that can do that! Helicopters could fly between safe zones or even fortified Wild Zone towns, never setting gear on the ground until they needed to (and requiring a lot less real estate and development to do so than a fixed-wing plane).

I’ve been teasing hints of all this since Episode 2, so it’s fun to finally get a chance to dip into it more, this rotorhead culture of independent contractors running goods for the highest bidder. The High Road Couriers. When it absolutely, positively needs to be there on time, pay up — and up they’ll go!