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.

Home is where the art is…

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Clint

This week’s comic was hopefully worth the wait for you faithful readers. No dialog from me, but my oh my was there a lot of work regardless.

That probably doesn’t make much sense, since you’d think all the burden of work in a wordless page would be on the artist. And truth to tell, I’ve seen some comic scripts where what’s given to the artist is something along the lines of “Captain Cosmos and Lieutenant Walrus approach a spaceship”, but if I gave something like that to Dawn she’d probably want to murder me in my sleep… no, no that’s not right… she’d probably want to murder me while I was wide awake and could fully experience her ire. Not right away, perhaps, but certainly if she made her best guess at what ‘a spaceship’ represents, spending hours on drawing it, only to have me tell her she’d gotten my vision ALL WRONG.

So as a comics writer, I think you have two options when dealing with your artist on details: Get specific, or be ready to accept that what they come up with may be wildly different than what was in your head. How specific? Well hell, folks, Dawn and I once discovered that we had an entirely different idea of what a “tank top” was. For her, a tank top was a spaghetti-strapped little number only women wear. For me, a tank top and an A-shirt (or in common American slang parlance, a “wifebeater”) were interchangeable terms. As you can imagine, my discussion with her on what Uncle Chuck should be wearing became much more complicated than I’d imagined.

Therefore, despite having written up several paragraphs on how the Zane’s Ranch House should appear, I spent several more days finding reference images, and trying to piece them together with my meager Photoshop skills into something approaching that whole “writer’s vision” thing that she could then work from. These are probably the times where the people who both draw and write their comics as a solo act have it the easiest. Then again, they still have to try to live up to their own imaginations, so maybe they also have it the hardest.

I still do remember talking to an artist of Fables at Comic-Con and asking them how Bill Willingham communicated what he wanted. Well, apparently Willingham is quite the artist in his own right and just draws it all for the artists to… re-draw? I don’t quite know how that works, but that was the process. I do know that when I asked what the options were for someone without drawing skills he told me “Learn to draw”.

I was annoyed by the answer then, but looking back on it now… hmm, no, still annoyed. Can’t even truthfully say the guy meant well, with how it was said. Not one of my more positive convention experiences, and also such a disingenuous answer given how many comics out there are produced with only the barest hints given of what should be drawn. Again, though, I figure the flip side of that is the writer looks at the end result, finds it different than what he imagined, and just shrugs and cashes his paycheck. On the other end of the scale, Alan Moore is no visual arts virtuoso, but is (in)famous for his scripts spelling out minute details of character, setting, and how things should be meaningfully arranged from panel to panel.

I’m somewhere in between, I suppose, gravitating towards one end of the scale or the other as the visual importance of a given comic strikes me. And then every so often, even though I still haven’t learned to draw, I’ll break out the Photoshop and do my best to pretend like I can. I wanted this one to be something special, especially after we made you all wait a week to find out why Rosa was saying “Wow”. I hope at least some of you agree with her.