UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

5 thoughts on “Issue 22 Cover”

  1. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Ooohhh … He looks – desperate.

  2. Zombatar

    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. Scarsdale

    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. Clint

    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. Honzinator

      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
Posted on January 8, 2025 by Dawn

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.]

Instant gratifications

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Clint
I hesitate to use the word ‘miracles’, but truly we live in an age of convenience. Even people like yours truly who are old enough to remember not having a cellphone or even a television remote — or mail order being a rarely used option where you waited 6-8 weeks for delivery —  have now succumbed to the mental state where sometimes having to wait any noticeable length of time between desire and acquisition is anathema. 30 seconds for a website to load feels like an eternity, doesn’t it? And yet a scant 15 years ago I remember being overjoyed to get more than 1KB/sec with my Internet connection. I did my digital surfing with a book in my lap. Last week I mentioned I’d finally dipped my toes into digital comics services like ComiXology and Marvel Unlimited, and while 99% of the time it has worked better than I could have imagined, there is the occasional frustration of selecting to read a comic and getting stuck watching a loading screen that has no Pavlovian progress bar to stare at. 10 seconds pass… 20… maybe 30? All I know is it feels like forever and I inevitably have backed out to try another comic that’s more cooperative. Of course that pales in comparison to my occasional Netflix depressions. I get it in my head to watch a particular film, head excitedly to the Stream, and… it ain’t available. Oh sure, we pay extra a month for the DVD option and I could queue it up there, but that means at least one agonizing business day of wait. What am I going to do right now? Is there a more pathetic sight than a 40+ year old man slowly sinking into his couch, frowning as he browses title after title in an ultimately vain attempt to find something which would scratch the itch in his head that a distressing lack of instantly viewable Ant-Man has caused? And it’s not just me… Dawn recently wanted to binge on some Harry Potter movies only to find all our streaming services failing to provide. Such disappoint. Such are the crazed perspectives of our crazy heads. Movies and comics right at our fingertips, and yet the bummer sets in at just the thought that we might have to use some extra effort and/or wait a little longer before we enjoy them. 15,000 archived Marvel publications spanning half a century waiting for my eyeballs and here I am sighing in anger and stabbing at the READ NOW button because the particular Doctor Strange I wanted to check out is having technical issues. Now I’m paying for these services, true. This isn’t me haranguing a webcomic author for being a few hours behind with their latest page or giving some micro-business grief for not using ultra-fast shipping options I had no interest in actually giving them money for. But man, even if I’m not jumping on the forums to complain my brain DOES NOT LIKE IT when the free-to-play online game I set aside an evening to enjoy has a temporary server outage. And instead of going and doing something else, the brain’s first instinct is to just sit there stewing and hitting refresh over and over. Recreational targets had been planned. How dare the universe fail to cooperate. Fifteen years ago — even five years ago — a lot of these services and conveniences didn’t exist, or weren’t widespread enough to begin to take for granted. It occurs to me I should be amazed that technology has even provided me with the capability to be disappointed that, on occasion, I can’t just log in and play a game in real-time with someone on the other side of the Earth. Perspective on these things is important to maintain. In the meantime, I’ll probably be mashing that refresh button at least a few more times.