UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

5 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.

    1. Welcome back.
      My mom’s whole town, Monrovia, seems to have survived so far, too, but it ain’t over yet.

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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.]

Radio waiving

So, have you ever considered the phenomenon of phone usage in movies and tv shows? Notice how they rarely say “goodbye?” If not, here’s a handy video reference for you:  
  Crazy rude when you think about it, right? But it’s a form of conservation of detail, i.e. we the audience don’t need to experience every little bit of the conversation as if it were happening in reality. We tend not to even really notice, and it saves a lot of time getting rid of all those “hellos” and “how are yous” and (most importantly) “goodbyes.” Conservation of conversation, if you want to make a nice tongue twister out of it. My characters do not speak on walkie-talkies correctly. Oh, I made a stab at it way back when. Because radio communication of this kind isn’t full duplex–which is a fancy way of saying that when I’m holding down the button to talk to you, you can’t also be talking to me–the protocols are such that you want to be sure you say “over” to let the other person know you’re finished talking and ready for their response. When you’re completely done with the conversation, you’re “out.” “Over and out” is actually derided as an unnecessary redundancy. As you can see if you clicked the link to the old comic, I made an oops on that. My cover story is that Suzie was just putting on a show for the cameras, and also these folks by and large aren’t ex-military (that we know of, except, perhaps ironically, the rather undisciplined Uncle Chuck). Shortly after that, I decided I’d take a page from the phone situation above and just let the realism slacken in favor of saving space, time, and flow of conversation. They talk on their radios the way we might talk on phones, with the occasional “copy” or “out” sprinkled in for flavoring. Realistic? Heck no. But this is one of those situations in fiction where I think the trade-off between realism and efficiency is worth it. So whether you’ve noticed or not, there you have it: my radio waiver.