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.

Happiness in hyperbole

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Clint

I originally titled this post “Happiness in Slavery” before deciding that was just slightly overblown as a headline, even if it makes for a snappy Nine Inch Nails reference. Last week I spent some bandwidth discussing the whole idea of the boundaries of “professionalism” insofar as making an independent comic goes, and in a sense you could contend that some creators become slaves to their creation, in some extreme cases even sacrificing personal health and welfare for the sake of getting those pages out to an ever-hungry public.

But slavery? Not really, even if much of the time the lack of monetary compensation seems to fit the bill. Any floggings tend to be self-inflicted (and hopefully figurative). If you run off on a hiatus, no one’s going to hunt you through the woods with hounds and return you to your computer and/or drawing table in chains. There may be some choice flames flung your way, but even if you somehow stir the Internet hornet’s nest enough that someone goes to the trouble of an entire site dedicated to how much you suck, it’s still insane to compare that to even the most enlightened models of indentured servitude.

Perspective, you see. I brought up the idea of perspective last week, and I’ll bring it up again because it’s important. Perspective is, for example, what prevents you from declaring your life is over because you woke up with a zit on your nose before the big dance. Teenagers can be notoriously lacking in perspective, but it’s still an issue going into adulthood.

For example, in recent months Dawn had been having such stability troubles with her computer that we never knew if it was going to function correctly when she turned it on. I tried and tried to fix it, stressing myself to the point I eventually twitched into an instinctual fight-or-flight response every time she pushed the power button. That computer was MISSION CRITICAL to getting the comic produced, and she never seemed to properly understand what a disaster we were constantly teetering on the brink of.

Actually, her plan was to hook up the drawing tablet to our laptop if worse came to worst and get things done that way, even if it meant having to start over. Maybe we wouldn’t make our weekly deadline, but she was okay with that in a way I couldn’t fathom. There would be a ZIT. RIGHT ON OUR NOSE.

Aieeeee!!!

I mean, this all came from a good place, the idea that we made a commitment to the readers that if they swung by on a Wednesday, there’d be some new content for them. Even though no one’s paying us for it, even though there’s no editor looming over our shoulders, that was something I felt should be striven for. But as I mentioned last week, once I realized I’d gotten to the point where a single minute past midnight felt like a crushing failure, it was time for perspective. To ease off the throttle some and let happiness creep back into the process. I mean, the fact is that the one time we’ve been significantly late (by more than an hour) in the past year or so was due to an unavoidable server issue. True, we also take the occasional filler break, such as the traditional chapter break we’re doing now, but even then it’s still new content even if it doesn’t happen to be specific story progession.

But it was vitally important for me to find the happiness in what I was doing again, which not incidentally lets Dawn be happy as well… because a twitchy, worried Clint tends to cramp her style. I think the last couple months of the comic have actually been the better for it. The quality has remained the same (or better), but the creative team is a more cheerful bunch. This is also important when you happen to be living together as husband and wife.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I finally seem to have gotten her computer working stably again. Really, perspective also dictates that these are amongst the firstiest of first-world problems (though not quite up there with deciding whether to drive the Porsche or the Jag to your Summer home), but occasionally we all dip into that well of my-life-is-over hyperbole. The important thing is to recognize when it stares you in your zit-schnozzled face, and agree to disagree.