UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

4 thoughts on “Issue 22 Cover

  1. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Ooohhh … He looks – desperate.

  2. No hat. He lost his hat. Which had a lot of his personality. Alert! Alert! We have a Lost Hat emergency! This is Not a Drill! Alert! Alert!

  3. Hang in there, I’m a retired fireman, and those pictures/videos have me sweating… The closest thing to a forest fire I ever fought was when a stupid tried to burn raked leaves on a windy day. 4 houses! Mostly grass and bush fires but, yeah.

  4. Good news, we are back at home and there was a home to return to. It’s been a crazy week and a serious near miss seeing as several other homes on our block burned. Terrible stuff but the Ranch persists.

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Issue 22 Cover

Traditional post-issue comic cover! Episode 23 is currently TBA but we're hoping to have the first page out on January 22nd so as to not leave y'all hanging from the proverbial cliff for too long.

[1/9/2025 NOTICE: Some of you may know we live in the Greater L.A. Area and if you've heard about the wildfires here: yep, we're currently evacuated from our home and still unsure as to its fate. We grabbed our computers and backup drives so whatever happens we still have our files, but definitely expect some delays and cross your fingers that the worst we're going to end up having to do is throw food out of the fridge due to power loss.]

[1/11/2025 UPDATE: Good news, we are back at home and there was a home to return to. It's been a crazy week and a serious near miss seeing as several other homes on our block burned. Terrible stuff but the Ranch persists.]

Musical masochism

I don’t think of myself as a composer by any stretch, and yet here I am fumbling my way through another song. I did some musical theater and glee club (yes, glee club) in my academic years, but that was so long ago I’ve likely lost any pitch and breath control that I might have once enjoyed. Vocal chords are like any other muscle you don’t keep exercising, and my exercise for the past several years has mostly been singing in the shower and/or car where I pray no one is overhearing my gasps and squeaky graspings at octaves I can no longer easily reach, if indeed I ever did. It’s probably for the best my musical soundtrack CDs were stolen so long ago CDs were still a relevant form of media. Belting out songs from Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables was always something of an exercise in hubris, I’m sure, and infinitely moreso now. So why, oh why, did I bother recording and uploading this? A capella, on a cheap headset mic in my living room, scratchy-throated during a 2am bout of insomnia? I can’t ascribe that to hubris, so it must be sheer masochism. Well, that, and this: whenever I would read the lyrics of a song presented in a silent medium, it would be somewhat frustrating. I would try to imagine the tune Tolkien or Alan Moore had in mind and, on those occasions where a tune actually did exist, would find out I was waaaay, waaaay off. So I sang out the tune in my head, crappy as the effort is, and linked it in the comic blog. So now if there’s anyone out there like me, they at least have something to work with.