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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.

Well that’s X-citing…

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Clint

Growing up in the 1980s, I was a huge Uncanny X-Men fan. I had next to no idea about who was writing and drawing it (although for the record it was the Chris Claremont/John Byrne dream team), all I knew was my big sister just happened to have a few issues lying around in her room that also happened to be the issues introducing Kitty Pryde, the Hellfire Club (including one Emma Frost), and culminating in the Dark Phoenix saga. To say they blew my fragile little mind is probably understatement, and for the next decade or so I devoured various X-stories even as the spin-offs began. It took the advent of the “Dark Age” of the 1990s before I gave up on the ever proliferating crop, no longer really recognizing the characters I had grown so attached to.

That’s a whole other story, but I want to get back to the fact that I first ran across those X-men comics in my big sister’s room. I don’t know if she was still interested much in them at that point, but they represented prima facie evidence that in some earlier time they had held her interest enough for her to brave our dusty, dark local comic book store and buy several issues over a course of several months.

But you know, why not? The X-books, by and large, still have a reputation for being “female friendly”, and what Claremont was doing around the late 70s/early 80s is probably largely responsible for establishing that. That age of comics was where heroes were getting more complicated than just punching the bad guys, and Storm and Jean Grey/Phoenix benefited from that just as much as their male counterparts. Sure it might have just been the two of them on the team as regulars, but as soon as you have even two ladies present, you stop being able to just define them as “the girl”.  I guess there still could have been “the white girl” and “the black girl”, but Claremont was pretty good about giving them a lot more distinctions to chew over.

A little over a year ago I made an entire post on the subject of superficiality in characters, of the danger of those that deviate from the “norm” being seen as symbols rather than people, becoming defined by their deviance rather than any other facet of their being. Unless you as a writer can overcome this human tendency to compartmentalize based on surface impressions, you risk your heroes ending up feeling somehow more shallow, like the way a happy face might represent a person smiling, but an actual photorealistic portrait of a person smiling has so much more for a viewer to contemplate. Without any perceivable depth to the presentation, the spectre of tokenism raises its stereotypical head.

In the course of that argument with myself, I came up with the idea that the easiest way to solve the problem was plurality. Like in the example above, if there’s two women on the X-team, the viewer’s mind will start to search for other differences besides just boobs/no boobs. Would they stop at the skin color? Maybe, but at least you’re already getting some analytical momentum going, right? The brain has now engaged in the same mode as it would when looking between the male characters and being curious about what makes this one different than that one. The next step as an author is the same as you would do with those men… give them distinct dialogue, give them things to react to in different ways, show the things that make them interesting so that the reader, in turn, gets interested. This gal’s tough, but her hot temper can get her in trouble. This gal’s honorable to a fault. Et cetera, et cetera.

Mind you, all this further development can only happen if the ladies in question get some time in the spotlight. That’s true of any characters, truthfully, but in mainstream comics it can still be rare to see the women on a team get some quality time. That’s why this month, I’m looking with piqued interest at the X-Men again for the first time in a long time. Why? Because X-Men may actually be a misnomer in this case. Call it an experiment in plurality:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/01/x-men-relaunches-as-all-female-superhero-team/

I’ll be interested to see how this turns out. A lot of the women on the roster have already benefited in the past from the X-books not being shy about focusing on them from time to time, but now we’re also looking at an entire team dynamic filled out without any of the usual (male) suspects involved. It leaves Rogue unquestionably in the “big muscle” role, Psylocke (with pants!) probably acting as the hard edged loner… and any Marvel brat of the 80s knows that “Storm With Mohawk = Leader”. But no matter which character of this team the spotlight focuses on from issue to issue, it’ll be a woman.

X-Men #1 should supposedly be out by the end of May. The plurality is there. It just remains to be seen what writer Brian Wood can do with it.