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.

Excuses, excuses…

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Clint

Any time I don’t quite meet a commitment I feel I’ve made, I do feel bad. Right now, though, I feel bad mostly because I’ve been sick, and Dawn’s even worse… I try not to get overly informative about our personal lives, but fact is she got back from the doctor recently with a diagnosis of acute bronchitis and a 100 degree fever.

Untold story: she first started feeling awful early last week, and still forged through to get the previous comic done in between bouts of coughing and sneezing. We did not mention this, because, well, eh, what do we want, medals? There are people out there who put out a comic 5 or even 7 days a week, sometimes under even worse circumstances. Cry you a river, right?

Some readers are perfectly understanding that, especially with a comic being done for free, the creators might have an occasional life-related lapse. Some others are on the other extreme, unwilling to take any excuse for lateness or missed updates… sometimes so much so I fantasize even a post of “The author died yesterday” would be met with “Well they should have had a buffer. WHERE’S MY COMIC?!”

I can’t control those reactions. I also try to rarely resort to making excuses, but you know, this has just been one of those weeks. The script was done, but to get the artwork done on time would have required me pushing a very sick wife who really ought to be doing nothing more than lying down. Even so she’s voluntarily getting a sketch together for you all as I type this, but one that doesn’t rely so much on brainpower and getting certain specifics right. One that’s not going into the posterity of the storyline.

There’s the rub, right? If I’d insisted she would have done her best, because she really is a trooper like that… but it’s hard to give 100% if your body feels like it’s running at around 25%. Not too long ago, Mark Waid authored “An Open Letter to Young Freelancers“, and though it was mostly geared towards warning new aspiring comics professionals not to be taken advantage of, there was this one quote from it that really stuck with me:

“The quality of your work is all that matters.”

And so that I’m not accused of taking that out of context, this is the explanation he gives in that same paragraph.

“You’re being given an absurd deadline and you think you’re better off turning in crap than being late? We used to literally stand over the fax machine at the DC offices while Neil Gaiman sent in his Sandman scripts in batches of exactly one page. Not admirable, but twenty years on, no one remembers how slow Neil could be, just how phenomenal the stories were.”

Now I still believe that schedules have their place, and that if you ever end up in a situation where you seem to be making more excuses than comics, there might be a problem. But I had a choice this week. I could choose to insist on work out of a sick wife to meet our self-imposed deadline, work which almost certainly would have been compromised and lacking in much of anything resembling joy in its composition… or yield, make my apologies to our fans, and angle for something produced in a healthier state. Excuses, excuses. But after all, as the pages come out the time between them disappears. All that’s left in the end will be how well they tell the story.