UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

6 thoughts on “541 – Graverobbers

  1. “Oh, *that* kind of grave robbing? Lead on, Chuck!” 😈

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    What? I say “What”?

  3. Heh, this is going to be fun. Tradition says you need to drink at least one bottle of MD 20/20 before going to the graveyard.

  4. At first I was thinking of something like a potato battery … nope!

  5. If you take a dead “D” cell battery, take out the carbon rod from the center, cut a strip of galvanized sheet metal about an inch (2.7 centimeters), take a small jar for canning, suspend the rod in the center and the strip on the side, pour in drain cleaner, you’ll get 1.2 to 1.4 volts DC. 10 of those connected to an inverter will give you 120 VAC at 0.5 amps. Do NOT keep them in the same area you live in however, the fumes will burn your lungs. Just something I learned in chem class in high school. You’d have to top-up the jars every few days, however. Any type of acid will work, even salt water. I think the teacher was a survivalist…

  6. Scheffler, Hovland and Conners Share the Lead at P.G.A. Championship
    Jordan Spieth, who needs a victory at Oak Hill to complete the career Grand Slam, and Justin Thomas, who won last year’s tournament, just made the cut at five over.

    Give this article

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541 – Graverobbers

WonderCon 2025 is coming soon, so the next comic is planned for April 9th.

In the meantime, relevant previousness for this week's page:

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/223-surrounded-by-film-end-of-episode-9/

 

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/483-solar-systems/

A burden of presentation…

As a sequential writer I’ve found that I have to be prepared at some point to forge ahead with your instincts and present ongoing development of your characters and events, with no further luxury of leaving things in what physics might call a “potential” state. It’s still scary, even after all this time. Once you’ve got those words coming out of their mouths or those deeds coming out of their actions in front of an audience, that’s a commitment, and you hope that whatever you just portrayed jibes with what you’ve presented previously. It’s scarier of course the more what you’re presenting might be considered unexpected — on the one hand, the predictable becomes boring; on the other, a plot twist that’s too unfounded might also mess up your story, right? Now it’s probably a given that nothing will make 100% sense to 100% of your audience 100% of the time, but I think it’s also safe to say that it’s more likely more people will accept one of your characters being shot in the heart and dying than will accept a character being shot in the heart and living. The latter outcome is one that benefits far more from you having laid the groundwork for such a situation, even if it’s something as unlikely (in a real world sense) as the classic “good thing I kept this cigarette case in my vest pocket” save. Mind you it also is a benefit if the character with the cigarette case is one that (again, most of) the audience would rather not see dead. We accept that flimsy rationale wholeheartedly. Superhero comics in particular are known for tying themselves in utter logical knots in order to bring characters, both villains and heroes, back from the veil, and oddly enough this again seems to be tied into how much wailing and gnashing of teeth (and closing of wallets) results from the idea of that character no longer being part of the tale. But if you’re aiming for something of a more realistic tone, then there is a sense of finality that can weigh heavily. “Wild” Will can complain all he wants that the victims are of no consequence, but as the author I’m still conscious of snuffing out lives whose only shortcoming is arguably that the narrative did not center around them. William Munny’s words from Unforgiven can come to mind:

“It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”

That’s the most extreme case, but if you think about it every published image, every canonical word that makes its way from author to audience, closes off pathways and possibilities. And yet that’s exactly what has to happen for a narrative to be anything more than just random ideas haphazardly slapped together. It’s a hell of a thing. But then again, when an author closes those doors I guess that’s why fan fiction sometimes opens the windows.