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.

Slithy Toves

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Clint

Lewis Carroll knew one of the most fun things about being a writer. Occasionally, you get to just make up words.

Well, with Carroll it tended to be more than just occasional, he made a downright habit of it. Probably his most famous example was the Jabberwocky poem:

“‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”

On and on like that for several verses, and in Through the Looking Glass Carroll includes an entire scene where Humpty Dumpty painstakingly walks Alice through the meanings of the words she doesn’t comprehend, even though his explanations sometimes aren’t precisely helpful.

“It’s called “wabe” you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it —’.”

That clears everything up, doesn’t it? But you know, it’s still quite possible to get the gist of Jabberwocky without knowing what everything means. It was fun for me to read as a kid, and as an adult it’s still fun, not to mention a reminder to me that words can be rather arbitrary things. Carroll may have gone way out there, but language is an ever evolving project, and today’s nonsense may be tomorrow’s triple word score in Scrabble. Every year the Oxford English Dictionary inducts new words into its lexicon, such as “podcast”, “selfie”, and “frenemy”. English in particular seems to love such additions and provide room for them, making it at once perhaps the messiest language in the world and the most flexible.

Anyhow, I’m jabbering (wockily?) about all this because this week’s comic debuts a little concoction of my own. There I was, struggling to come up with something suitably bizarre to use as the title of the leader (or at least one of the leaders) of the Huachucas. “Bruja” would have worked, I suppose, but… it was missing something, especially considering some of the background elements I had in mind.

And then it hit me in a flash. Here’s a lady who is both “witch” and “boss”, right? Even though the Huachucas are not meant to be entirely Mexican in origin or current roster, if the Spanish words for witch and boss combined in unholy union, you’d get a new word that rolled right off the tongue: Brujefe. Suck it, English, you’re not the only language that can do portmanteaus!

Now Dawn expressed concern about me doing something like this outside the scope of my native tongue, but, eh, if it doesn’t actually make sense in Spanish I invoke rule of awesome, particularly since, as previously discussed, the Huachucas are not strictly Mexican. Interestingly enough I did poke at “jefe” just to see if the feminine version would be said “la jefe” or “la jefa”, and according to at least one source it can vary depending where you are and who you’re addressing, and in fact it’s suggested that nowadays you should default to masculine form with feminine prefix if you want to use the safer choice.

I probably would have gone with Brujefe rather than Brujefa anyhow since jefe is the more instantly recognized word, but it was nice to have some backup as I gyre and gimble. The best nonsense words are the ones that not only fill a necessary niche, but sound like they should’ve been there all along.