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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.

August is the cruelest month…

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Clint

Don’t let T.S. Eliot fool you with his excoriation of April; in the webcomic world, indeed, the online content world as a whole, April is pretty sweet. It’s August and its partners in crime, June and July, that sneak up on you every year and sucker punch you.

The worst is probably the first time you experience it, if you’re the kind of person who monitors your traffic counts as a sign your audience is growing. Yes, various counters will tell you various things, but when you’ve been on the rise and then you suddenly see an across the board dip in people looking your way, and that dip keeps going and going from week to week, you’ll get that sinking feeling in your stomach and wonder just what it was that you did wrong.

You did nothing wrong. To paraphrase Chinatown: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Summer.” It’s the Summer Slump, and it’s a phenomenon that’s been known about by webmasters for years. The kids are out of school, people are going on vacation, and basically, a lot of folks just plain decide they have something better to do than read webcomics, no matter how gripping the cliffhangers you dangle before them are. Hell, if you look into it you’ll find out it’s not even just the web, television viewership also drops during these months to the point networks hold their new seasons of shows until Fall.

This is such a recurring thing that some wecomic creators take a page from the TV and are known to just put their comics on hiatus until Summer ends. Others use the time to experiment with layouts or otherwise do risky business with their sites before the “crowds” return, figuring anyone loyal enough to stick around during slump time is also willing to cut them some slack if there’s a temporary breakdown. As for us, we’ve mostly been holding the course, especially because this year June and July weren’t as bad as they’ve been before. But August? August looks so far to be shaping up as nasty as ever, so it’s probably time to see about some overdue updates. Of course, August in the Los Angeles area also happens to be when it gets so hot it’s really hard to motivate to do anything except lie around in the path of as much air circulation as possible.

The upside you have to keep telling yourself is that eventually it will get cooler, and school will start up again, and you’ll see a lot of familiar faces returning, eager to see how the story has gone since they last checked in. That’s also perhaps when you might find out that they really have abandoned you, but so far Dawn and I have always found September to be the time everyone comes back from “reverse hibernation”, perhaps dragging a few friends along as well.

Summer slump is just something all online creators have to deal with, unless they’re too big or too small to notice. For us here at the Ranch there’s no avoiding it, so we slog through the heat and comparative lack of feedback/commentary until we reach that cool breeze that heralds the migratory return.

That,  or maybe next time the slump rolls ’round we should look into doing an ad blitz in places like Australia.