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/

Booking revelations

Where “booking” in this context would be in the sense you might use it in, say, professional wrestling, i.e. “laying out in advance the general storyline…to include what the eventual outcome will be.” Trundling further along that comparison, there is the mystery component present in all manner of fiction. Whodunnit? How’dithappen? Etc. A writer tends to have these answers “booked” even though the particular event might have occurred far in the past of the story’s timeline, although just like in wrestling there might be wriggle room for happenstance and improvisation depending on the circumstances. Like the concept of Schrödinger’s cat, even the most defined backstory remains in a state of flux until observed by the audience. If the truth is the answers have been left more nebulous (like say, in the TV Show Lost) then things might morph. But at some point the reveal has to occur, the box has to be opened… …and that’s the scariest part, I think. When the writer or writers open up the proverbial box and say, “Ta-da! The butler did it!” or “He was dead the whole time!” or “The girl was actually a guy!” — that’s nerve-wracking, especially if your fiction has been leaning heavily on the answer. For several seasons Twin Peaks asked us “who killed Laura Palmer?” and the honest truth was even they didn’t know until a botched camera job captured a random production staffer in a shot and birthed the idea of Bob. I like to think I have a more solid grasp on my boxed-up cats than that, but even if you have it all rigidly plotted from the start, what’s to stop your “Ta-da!” reveal from being met by your audience with disappointment? What if they had it all figured out before even you did? Does their satisfaction with being proven right outweigh their lack of surprise? On the other hand, changing things up for the sole purpose of surprising people can just lead to disastrous inconsistencies, which are their own kind of let-down. I personally come down on the side of staying the course in that situation, where even if the reveal is met with disgruntlement (or worse, yawns) at least I can console myself that I’ve had months (or even years) to think it all through. If you have a suddenly deceased or departed actor you have to scramble to write around, that’s one thing, but a webcomic doesn’t worry about such matters. So anyhow, here I am this week, opening the Zeke box and showing at last the precise circumstances that led to his fatal accident. It doesn’t seem like it’s been weighing that much on people’s minds, though, so I’m not feeling a huge bite of nerves. But it’s always been an important piece of the puzzle to me so it’ll be interesting to see the reaction, if any, as it takes a final form.