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.

A city for the “century”

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Clint

Well, here we are. Comic #100 in the zombie ranch storyline, and the start of Episode 5. I wanted to do something special, both for us and for you. Up until now we’ve kept our locations purposely vague. We’re somewhere in Texas. Now we’re on the borders of Oklahoma, or looking in on a shadowy corporate office. It was time, at least in this case, to take a risk and finally get specific. Though the Z Ranch itself remains “somewhere out there”, we’ve cast our cowboy hat in the ring and declared that there’s no need to Remember The Alamo in the world of Zombie Ranch; this time around The Alamo, and the city surrounding it, never fell.

I’ve had that skyline vista of the last panel, with its contradictory pattern of welcome and isolationism, optimism and invasive authority, in my head for a long time now. Since before the start of Episode 2 I had the thought that San Antonio represented that big Safe Zone people were strutting around in, but we left it generic at that time while I fretted the details to figure out how feasible that might be. Isn’t it one of the sacred tenets of the zombie apocalypse that all major cities must be abandoned and/or wiped away? Certainly one recent book (which we’ve given a nod to in the form of graffiti) was very specific about San Antonio not surviving. How would that possibly work, especially for a bustling metropolis that in modern times is a big tourist destination?

Eventually I got over myself, considering I already have a world here where the dead walk (and are harvested for pharmaceuticals!), and there’s camera drones floating around with no more suspension provided than that of disbelief. Zombie Ranch is already not your usual zombie story, so why couldn’t there be the idea of a city that closed its borders early enough and policed itself effectively enough to get by?

Plus, the details of this particular city just kept drawing me back. The enclosing loops of highways that from overhead reminded me of ancient castles or fortified cities, with their interior palace or keep surrounded by an inner and outer bailey. An image of the Pam Am Expressway where I could envision steel or concrete barriers integrated with the underside to form not only an impenetrable wall, but one that was very easily moved around upon by its wardens.  Finding out the San Antonio River doesn’t just flow through the city, it actually bubbles up from deep underground only a few miles from downtown like a sort of gigantic natural well. The city runs its own power company, and is home to major military bases, medical complexes, biotech industries, and a certain broadcasting entity that inspires our own ClearStream Corporation.

Military and biotech? Hospitals? Wouldn’t those be ground zero? Well, think about that. Most of the apocalype scenarios involving these institutions hinge upon them not knowing what they’re dealing with until it’s too late. Not that I’m implying anything sinister here, but the Safe Zone of Santone responded in a lot of correct ways to the Great Plague, in very quick order.

Finally, I suppose I’ll just take cover behind those same rules of cool that allow me to have floating cameras. San Antonio is an iconic city of the Old West, a place many a hero of cowboy fiction passed through, and I want it. More than that, it’s a modern metropolis overlaid on those wild and dusty roots, where the Alamo is laid seige to these days not by Santa Anna, but by tall buildings and 21st century commercialism. All I have to do is tweak that to a starker contrast. So given the choice between Generic Safe Zone A and a place far more intriguing in past, present, and future, I go with Santone. If we’ve gotten some details wrong, I beg your indulgence for fiction’s sake. Trust me, I have to deal with the same thing every time I play a sandbox video game of Los Angeles, and those aren’t even set decades into a post-apocalyptic future.

What can I say? The last time a vision nagged at me like this, it was the start of this whole comic. And that was just a few months, compared to this concept kicking around in my skull for almost two years. I’m thrilled to finally be able to share it, and hope it was a fitting treat for those of you that have joined Dawn and myself on this continuing journey into a Weird New West.