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.

Stumbling over the milestone…

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Clint

Folks, I tell you: 13 years and 500 story pages of comics and sometimes you still feel like a complete newbie.

Though now that I think on it, newbie might be the wrong term. Oldbie might be more accurate. We are weary veterans who have been through many scenarios at this point, and watched peers ebb and flow and even burn out completely. This comic has never been something sustaining us financially and probably never will be — but that’s okay. We just acknowledge that we still have a story to tell and people who want to listen, even if that storytelling has become intermittent.

If you’ve happened across us at a recent convention you’ll know that a lot of gray has crept into my hair since 2009. I’m approaching nearly half a century on this planet and there’s no question that I don’t have the sort of energy reserves I had back when we started. Dawn is younger but as she likes to point out, she’s burdened with enough pre-existing conditions to feel a similar state of low-key chronic malfunction. It’s not great, and it’s not always easy to react to crises and changes, the latest of which was the website’s comic theme framework finally going haywire beyond fixing. We had been throwing around ideas for Comic 500 like doing a (non-realtime) AMA session where we’d take your posted or emailed questions and respond, and then all of a sudden our framework we’d been using more or less since we started went kaput and we had to seek out a new one. Fortunately Dawn found Toocheke, which was good to its word of enabling a simple migration from ComicPress/ComicEasel with data intact. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite that simple (is it ever?), and since the changeover we’ve been having to figure out how to mimic some features and layouts we had with the old that don’t seem to exist in the new.

Toocheke’s support people have been helpful but the process is ongoing and some of it is just going to be plain busywork, like just today I noticed all our character and location tags are missing. That means at some point I have to go through 500 comics and add them all back in, which leaves me wishing I had a personal assistant (don’t we all?).

But hey, the comic is readable as intended again and we got that new page up for y’all, and Dawn and I are headed up to San Luis Obispo to see The Warning live in concert, even though there’s no way in hell I’m going to bounce around like I would have in my 20s. But I’ll be there and listening to a great band perform some great music.

tl;dr: getting older sucks, but do your best with the energy you have, and even if all seems downhill, remember there are good things still to experience and do your best to enjoy the ride.