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.

Who’s that guy?

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Clint

A few weeks ago I was reminded once again that my perspective on this series is not that of the average reader. Now when I’m saying “average” I don’t mean that in a disparaging sense, because otherwise I’d be putting myself in that same boat with my readings of other peoples’ work. Sometimes I don’t even catch up on a comic until a few weeks or months have passed, and if there’s a big cast or a complex plot it can be tough to keep track… I’ve had a lot of other things on my mind in-between, as opposed to the creator(s) who are living and breathing their story on a near constant basis.

In the case of Zombie Ranch, it’s not uncommon in the comments for people to get characters’ names wrong or forget the names entirely. This would cause me fits, if I didn’t have the sense to take a breath and put myself in their shoes. For one thing, they (and let’s not forget many of “they” happen to be you reading this) have cared enough to comment, period. No one forced them to do that, and comments on webcomics tend to be spur-of-the-moment affairs where someone was inspired by a particular aspect of the current page. While they’re writing that comment, do they really want to open up a new tab and go searching around the archives to try to find the exact name of the person they’re talking about? Most probably not.

Repetition helps. It might even be the case (though I don’t know how much) that an entry on the cast page helps, and I keep meaning to get that expanded just in case it assists readers. I think, for instance, that most people by now have Suzie, Frank, Chuck, and Rosa as characters they recognize on sight. But Oscar has been nothing but a voice on a walkie-talkie for quite awhile, and when I reintroduced him it wasn’t just a matter of people not remembering his name, but remembering he existed at all. There’s a black guy on the ranch? When did that happen?!

Well, whaddaya mean? Geez, I introduced Brett, Lacey, and Oscar all the way back as far as Episode 3! Okay, so we didn’t actually find out their names or hear them talk until the middle of Episode 4, but how do you completely forget them?

Breathe, Clint. Breathe. Remember the date on the last post (before the recent ones) where we actually saw what Oscar looked like? August 17th, 2011. More than a year and a half ago. I’ve read a lot of webcomics that for one reason or another, either author choice or format, don’t have posting dates on their pages. I like having it right there, easy to find, both so a reader can see the progression and so I myself can go back and look and remind myself of the amount of real-world time that has passed.

In a sense, the most loyal, longest-running fans, the weekly readers of Zombie Ranch might ironically be the ones who are going to have the most trouble keeping track of the details. As noted above, they would have last seen Oscar in Summer of 2011… whereas someone just joining us and doing a fresh “archive dive” could have last seen him as recently as this morning.

So under those circumstances, if you’re going to run people down for not remembering details, it’s entirely possible that the people you’re running down are the ones who love your work the most. That’s not a good thing. And that’s why I usually try to be helpful and understanding if someone has those kinds of questions.

Ideally of course, you create characters memorable enough that no one has a problem remembering them, which I’m happy to have succeeded with in terms of several of the cast. On that score, if people refer to Muriel as “Honeysuckle” or even one of the less flattering nicknames she’s been called over the course of the comic, so be it. If people have entirely forgotten Oscar, that means maybe he just needs a few more moments to stick in the memory properly. Like maybe a quirky moment of faith and firepower.

We’ll see how that works out.