Category: Writer’s Blog

I hesitate to use the word ‘miracles’, but truly we live in an age of convenience. Even people like yours truly who are old enough to remember not having a cellphone or even a television remote — or mail order being a […]
Read More

Ironic title is ironic. Long time readers of this blog will be aware of this great irony: that one Clint Wolf, writer of the Zombie Ranch webcomic, actually prefers reading his comics in print — at least where traditional comics are […]
Read More

Visual Evil 101 is to never show the faces of your badguys. That’s why Stormtroopers had those helmets — it’s a dehumanizing effect. Not only is it more intimidating, you feel less of a twinge when the hero starts killing […]
Read More

I still don’t know whether or not the Western might see another period of resurgence anywhere near the scale of its cinematic dominance from the 1930s through the 1960s — although the sheer length and scope of that dominance is […]
Read More

Have you ever considered how much of our reactions to entertainment are based not only on subjective experience, but pure outright chance? Think about it. A person who got little sleep, had a terrible day and then a terrible time […]
Read More

So… I watched X-Men: Apocalypse this past weekend and was underwhelmed. A lot of critics and fans are not disagreeing with me, but I’m not going to just begin and end with some ultimately subjective and unhelpful statement like “it […]
Read More

I linked to my previous “symbols and characters” article just a couple weeks ago when talking about The Falcon, but I want to reference it again because it’s where I brought up the idea of plurality as an effective way […]
Read More

So in the first seven episodes of Zombie Ranch I mostly stuck to a system of 24 pages per chapter. Mostly. Episode 1 had 23 pages, and Episode 3 and 7 had 28 pages. In practice I’m guessing no one […]
Read More

I have to admit, I’m a little bit in awe. Full disclosure — Captain America: Civil War did not end up supplanting Captain America: The Winter Soldier as my favorite Marvel Studios movie, just because I still feel the cinematography […]
Read More

I was (and still am) a great aficionado of tabletop role-playing games. What are those? Well, the most well-known example is still Dungeons & Dragons, although that example still occasionally suffers from someone who thinks of teenagers in black cloaks […]
Read More

One of the most famous sketches ever presented by Monty Python’s Flying Circus is the “Argument Clinic”, which at least for the time being you can watch in its entirety right here via the magic of YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y The hapless […]
Read More

Your Mileage May Vary. A useful bit of idiom born originally out of the American automotive industry where that disclaimer was added to any estimate of a given vehicle’s gas efficiency. It has since become shorthand for “this was the […]
Read More

My name is Clint Wolf, and as I writer I have sinned. Maybe. It’s about this and last week’s comics, where Suzie is going over all the little bits and pieces of information that got lost in the shuffle, in […]
Read More

So before we get started, let’s get a couple of disclaimers out of the way. One, if you’re not caught up on AMC’s The Walking Dead through its current season finale, I suppose I’ll be spoiling something. Or… not spoiling something? That uncertainty […]
Read More

Usually the above phrase is used in strictly karmic terms, such as a politician passing harsh anti-drug laws getting arrested for possession. I am here to report a much happier and more literal interpretation. This last weekend was, of course, […]
Read More

If you’ve been keeping up with my last couple of blogs you know I’ve been blah-de-blahing a lot on the subject of tolerance. I ended my soapbox stint of last week with a bit of an “I’m not perfect” disclaimer, […]
Read More

Still haven’t quite got Zootopia out of my thoughts. I think Dawn is considering me obsessed at this point with how I keep bringing it up in our conversations, but so what? It was a good flick with a surprisingly […]
Read More

So I caught a showing of Disney’s Zootopia this past weekend, and really, really liked it. I wanted to see it based on the world-building alone, but then it blew away my expectations. I’ll be unpacking everything this movie made me think […]
Read More

Excitingly, this past Saturday I figuratively chained myself to my computer and did my best to put together our tax information for 2015, in preparation for our upcoming meeting with Our Guy. I may have mentioned in a previous blog […]
Read More

I still wonder sometimes whether Zombie Ranch has “succeeded”. That’s weird, isn’t it? Especially for a story that by its very nature isn’t complete. I start wondering then how I’m even trying to define success. Notability? Critical reaction? Monetization? Some […]
Read More