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.

Writing is rewriting

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Clint

This week’s comic page is very important to me. It represents not only the endpoint of Episode 7, but the end of our whole first trade collection (assuming, of course, we manage to put one together). It’s the close of the overall arc we started in 2009, as well as bridging into ominous hints of where we’re headed in the future.

And it was, to put it candidly, quite the bitch to write.

It’s one thing to have an outline, or a scene envisioned in broad strokes, or even a vivid image in your head that you’re going to do your best to try to communicate to your wife and artist. I’ve had all those for quite some time. It’s an entirely different thing to actually sit yourself down and get the pacing and dialogue into a form that will hopefully (with the aid of the aforementioned artist) convey all the important things the reader needs to know, without smothering the imagery, much less any potential emotional impact, under humongous mounds of text.

“Writing is rewriting”. You may have heard this maxim, and you may wonder if it’s more of a guideline for writers just like “Show, don’t tell”. Well, I won’t claim I go over every one of these blogs with a fine-toothed editorial comb, but I do tend to read them over both in the process of writing them as well as a time or two after I’m finished, if nothing else in the hopes of catching any stupid typos.

Writing without any sort of rewriting arguably isn’t writing at all, it’s typing. Rarely if ever do we know exactly what we’re trying to say and how to say it the first time, and even prose writers are under an obligation to “trim the fat” and pare down their early drafts into something that turns more-or-less random ramblings into dramatic coherency. Then you have comics, where even my final draft may not end up being my final draft once I get the finished art and suddenly realize what I’ve written won’t fit into the panels.

This may very well happen. I write this prior to the final steps, although I’ve given Dawn a draft to work from so she can have the art ready. That particular draft already went through several rewrites, especially when the first time she read it she told me she thought the exec was getting chewed out by ClearStream (maybe because the ratings were good but could still be better) rather than this being an entirely new revelation. If even my closest partner, the one who knows about my planned plot twists gets confused, well… time for rewrites. One of the new versions was much clearer to her, and so that got the greenlight for her to start with the drawings and the colorings and such.

Meanwhile, there was still room for me to refine and economize the actual dialogue (or in this case, I suppose, monologue). The more I could whittle it down, the less chance there would be for the dread situation I mention above where even more rewrites would have to occur at the last minute due to space constraints. Sometimes in the past we got away with it here and there by changing the font size, but these days messing with the font size for any reason other than an intentional story purpose always feels like a cheat to me. I also try my darndest to fit all the panel directions and words on a single page of script, a practice only two people might ever see,  but it serves as an important gauge of how much I’m asking the story to do at once. If it’s too much that’s occasionally a sign to decompress and break the page in twain, but here, with this page, we were at the end. Nowhere to go. And I planned it all out this way, so it’s on me if I can’t deliver.

Anyhow, I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I’ve rewritten the contents of less than a dozen word bubbles. My brain feels like one great, fuzzy rewrite. And yet, I think I’m finally happy with the words and can give this arc the send-off I wanted, bringing closure to some matters just before hitting the readership with an entirely new set of speculation fodder. Not exactly a cliff hanger, but something to chew over during the intermission, or (again, if things go well) when you reach the end of a nice thick print collection.

We shall see. Writing might be rewriting, but there comes a time where you just have to post it up and hope, like my shadowy and wordy executive, that everything will work out nicely.