Four!

Am I allowed to shout that without being on a golf course? Do they still shout that on golf courses? Doesn’t matter I suppose, it’s not even spelled the same in print (the golf shout is “fore!”, if you must know).

Here, we’re moving on to Episode Four in the comic, and it will be our first addition to the storyline structure since I installed it a few months ago. I hope everything goes smoothly. If not, well, I comfort myself that even folks like Kris Straub seem to still have website/update SNAFUs. Sometimes I regret the whole decision to update just after midnight, since I ain’t as young as I used to be and tend to start nodding off prior to that these days unless I force myself awake. On the other hand, it does make for some convenient “settling in at the office” viewing for our fans around the GMT zone.

The Rapture got postponed until October 21st. I never know how to feel about the throng of disappointed believers whenever these end of the world jobbies occur. On the one hand, it must be depressing for them to still be here after zero hour (particularly since the whole crux of the Rapture is if you’re still here afterwards, you weren’t worthy of being saved); on the other hand, they’re praying and hoping for the world to end — a world that I by and large happen to like, even if I do have student loans I’m still paying off.

One of these days I’ll probably be getting deeper into the aspect of religion as it relates in the Zombie Ranch world, where an apocalypse well and truly occurred. If you were reading between the lines at the beginning of Episode 2, you’d notice that Suzie is quoting words from the traditional Christian burial rites, an indication that a belief in the Big G has not entirely collapsed even though some parts of Revelation may have arguably come to pass. Religious themes are something I think every zombie story has to deal with sooner or later, because of how intrinsically most major religions are tied in with a particular concept of life beyond death and the dispositions of souls (or their equivalents). “When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth”, etc.

But Zombie Ranch is a story from the perspective of practical folks. Uncle Chuck might be the closest thing they’ve got to a philosopher, and he seems to be a living example that the line between insight and bullcrap can be a mighty thin one (even if the bulls aren’t around to crap any longer). In any case, pondering the fine points of spirituality isn’t high on the list of priorities at the Z Ranch, but you can bet if you told them the end of the world was coming, they’d thank you graciously for the warning, but still be up as usual for work the next day. After all, some of them have already seen an apocalypse, and although some things changed forever, many more stayed exactly the same.