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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.

The safety margin

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Clint

On the poll before the current one I asked y’all what your preference would be in the world of Zombie Ranch: the order and security of a Safe Zone, or the freedom and risk of the Wild Zones?

With 61 votes tallied at the time I closed voting, the Wild Zoners had edged out the Safers, but only barely, by a margin of 32 to 29. It might be surprising in the sense that a lot of zombie fans are also what I suppose we could call “survival enthusiasts”, but then again we’re talking zombie fans who are reading comics on the World Wide Web, a medium which likely wouldn’t exist anymore if the apocalyptic hammer ever drops.

I honestly don’t know how long the Web would survive without regular maintenance. On the one hand, it’s extremely decentralized in its structure, so that failure of parts won’t affect the whole. On the other, some parts are more important than others, such as the telecommunications “backbones”… or the satellites, for that matter, without which things we’re already starting to take for granted such as GPS couldn’t exist. Even rugged mountain men and explorers have a GPS handy these days, keeping them constantly in touch with those invisible eyes in the sky.

And how long would those satellites last? Well, in Zombie Ranch we know there’s at least one still active, but jealously controlled by its masters. Even with the limitations involved in what’s likely much more limited satellite coverage, it’s a pretty big advantage. Getting signals to your drone cameras would require a lot of repeaters to compensate for the curvature of the Earth, and if those towers are mostly out in hostile wilderness, that gets tricky mighty quick. You might have already inferred from the ranch crew’s struggles with their old-school UHF walkie-talkies that cell phones don’t seem to be a consideration any more, at least not for the common man. There’s a lot of infrastructure required and a lot of men and women who are working on a daily basis to keep those cellular “footprints” in working order. For that matter, it can be positively terrifying to contemplate just how much our modern civilization has become dependent on the ready flow of electricity.

But hey, I’ll admit it: I’m a fan. I love my refrigeration, and my air conditioning, and my 40 watt bulbs and my Internet. I probably wouldn’t last long out in the wilds, and more than that, I might not want to, so despite my value of personal freedom I’m a Safer at heart. I run straight onto the rocks of Ben Franklin’s scorn and his famous quote, oft-repeated in the post-9/11 days of the Patriot Act: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Then again, that scorn could all depend on what he meant by essential Liberty, and given Mr. Franklin’s propensities that might just have been the Liberty to pursue French demimondes.

It’s interesting to go back to the original quote (the source of which is detailed here) and note the qualifiers of “essential” and “temporary”, words often left out when the phrase is regurgitated, as if there is no way Liberty and Safety could possibly co-exist. And maybe they can’t, at least not as absolutes, but human society does seem to balance best on a sliding scale between the two. The worst breakdowns occur when Liberty is curtailed but people still live in fear (the “Police State”), or when Liberty runs entirely free from law, at which point it’s oft been shown certain people will use their own freedom to oppress the freedom of others.

There’s a give and take we’ve been dancing with since our first tribal groupings, as we groped for some form of effective cooperation which would allow us to do more than we could do on our own, and that usually meant designating one person who seemed to know what they were doing as the person who told the rest what to do. That was the death of Freedom as an absolute. There was always the choice to leave, but even the most badass hunter would have a lot more trouble taking down prey on their own.

And then, of course, beer happened. I’m pretty convinced (and there’s early historical evidence to back it up) that beer really greased the wheels of the decision to stop roving around and establish cities. Sure, there was other agriculture, but I don’t think “You’ll have a lot more bread to eat if you settle down here and pay taxes” had nearly the same immediate impact as “Here, try this. We call it ‘Liquid Party'”.

From bread and beer to sewer systems and Xbox Live, we’ve always been ready to give up a little freedom for our luxuries. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with that, any more than I see anything wrong with the people who still do emulate the lone hunters of the past, taking themselves “off the grid” and working for self-sufficiency. It’s all about determining those freedoms we deem essential, the safety level we want, and how far we’re willing to go.