UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

6 thoughts on “542 – Catching Up”

  1. Keith

    Some friction, but yeah. IRL, I’d like these two…they should have kids. 😉

    1. Dawn

      I might have to draw out what their kid would look like. First thought is that their kid would look like Ongo Gablogian from “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”

    2. Scarsdale

      He’s pushing 60, she’s maybe 30, more likely less. Chuck is most likely shooting blanks, and besides, he’s talking to her like a baby sister than a love interest.

  2. ConcordBob

    It is really hard to have a favorite character, as there are so many good ones. But I think Rosa is my favorite. Chuck is a good accomplice in sneaking work, but not much for romance. Uugh.

  3. Otaku

    I mean, if they don’t have at least an inkling of what’s going down, I’m actually disappointed in Clearstream. If anything, I’m starting to wonder if they caught on and realized “Wait, we can use this.”

    Because of course they can. 😉

  4. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    I’m way ahead of you – I’ve been waiting for you to catch up. From November 2020:
    I would hope for nothing less – her and Chuck have the potential for a great deal of positive mischief.
    Speaking of which, I received the email notifying me that my order for the NSFW “Chuck and Rosa Finally Do It” (age verification required) limited edition hardcover is going to be delayed due to the pandemic. I think it’s really cool that you’ll be adding some additional stretch goal goodies when it ships – thanks for all your story and art.
    As for the inscription, ” We owe it all to you ” will be sufficient.

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542 – Catching Up
Posted on April 9, 2025 by Dawn

Keeping things straight (when it’s all crooked)

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Clint
I remember when we first started Zombie Ranch, my ambitious intent was to use camera footage and “media interludes” for any and all instances of storytelling that were outside of the present timeline (as far as the comic’s world goes). We would freely roam through locations but any flashbacks, etc. would be through the gimmick of something filmed. This proved to be more boring and limiting than actually clever, and so I abandoned it in favor of more flexible methods, particularly after discussions with some friends and fans indicated that no one much cared about the method of delivery so long as they weren’t confused. And let’s face it, the weekly format leaves plenty of time for the average reader to forget things that in “comic time” would have happened five minutes ago, because in our time it’s been two months. Heck, many’s the time I’ve seen someone in the comments refer to a character by the wrong name. Don’t get me wrong, that last bit’s not a complaint, or at least not a complaint I wouldn’t be entirely hypocritical in making considering my own track record of forgetting names. But in any case, the past few comic pages have been an example of me really pushing things in a time-and-space sense. I’ve jumped us around from place to place before, probably most notably in Episode Six and Seven as the McCarty intrusion was going down and people were in all sorts of different spots doing different things. Those shenanigans I’m pretty sure I got away with. Now, though, I’m not only jumping around from place to place but jumping in time, and gambling that there’s just enough in the way of visual cues and captions for the reader not to become completely lost. Or at least not lost once all this is properly put together in a contiguous, “page-turnin'” fashion. For example, getting back to the camera gimmick, I wrote page 356 to be presented entirely through the lens view of Camera 7, as a recording of the past. But page 357 abandons this and introduces narrative voice-over captions even though the location is still the same. Partly because I felt the constant “CAMERA 7” labeling and TV Lines were growing a little bit much (my exact note to Dawn was “we know where we are now”), partly because panel 3 goes back to a reaction shot of present-time Suzie, and mostly because panel 4 would make absolutely no sense unless a parallel universe Camera 7 had intruded to take the story of Zombie Ranch interdimensional. And now this week is another time-space jump sans camera gimmicks, hurtling back to where we left off with Rosa and Chuck in the last episode. Out of control, man. Or is it? I guess if people can wrap their brains around Doctor Who–a show I like to describe to people as “perfectly enjoyable once you accept the idea that a master of time and space has to rush to get somewhere”–they can wrap their brains around this. Or perhaps I’m just getting away with it for the moment because I keep you all in such perpetual confusion about what’s going on that additional layers of such are functionally imperceptible. I don’t intend the latter and I think for the most part people have been following along just fine so far, but I admit I’m getting pretty crooked with the narrative right now and not necessarily always using the helpers I perhaps should be. Maybe I need to start thinking about sepia tones again. Time will tell.