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.]

[1/22/2025 UPDATE: In the post-fire chaos we forgot to mention, no comic this week. Things are intact but there's still cleanup of smoke and ash to do, insurance to wrangle, etc. We had a really close call.

Since we're between issues anyhow we're going to push the start date of Episode 23 back to February 26th. Gives us some room to breathe (literally!).]

Circumstantial entertainment

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Clint
Have you ever considered how much of our reactions to entertainment are based not only on subjective experience, but pure outright chance? Think about it. A person who got little sleep, had a terrible day and then a terrible time getting to a theater is far more likely to find their moviegoing experience unpleasant than someone who is relaxed and happy and ready for a good time. That’s not just theory, I’ve heard even professional reviewers admit that on a second viewing they found a film to be better than the first time, because their first time occurred while they were already in a grumpy mood. It can happen in the other direction as well, where an amped up crowd and things like free beer may get people raving about a movie they saw at a sneak preview, and then a year later they watch it again and wonder why the hell they insisted it was fine cinema. When we approach entertainment with high expectations, we have a higher chance of disappointment if it doesn’t measure up. When we go in with low standards, a mediocre offering might end up putting a smile on our faces just for being “enjoyable” or “not as bad as they said”. And sometimes it goes beyond the emotional. Case in point: the first time I viewed Captain America: Civil War I was way up in the back row of the theater. I read reviews afterwards criticizing the overuse of “shaky cam” in the opening action scenes and occasionally unconvincing CGI and couldn’t understand what those people had been smoking. Did we watch the same movie? Well, turns out… maybe we didn’t. Not entirely. You see, my second viewing, we ended up way in the front of the theater with the screen towering at a steep angle above my head, and with that change of perspective and close-in detail, suddenly I was noticing the shaky cam and occasional computer-aided effect. I was also noticing how many face and neck blemishes Chris Evans was sporting despite portraying the pinnacle of human potential, and that’s a petty critique I doubt anyone in the back or even middle rows would have understood. So yeah, that’s like the cinematic version of my contention that reading a comic electronically panel-by-panel and reading it when you’re able to see the whole page make for two extremely different experiences, and it’s a bizarre added layer to consider as an artist, where no matter how carefully you craft your piece there will be circumstances beyond your control which may distort the experience when it reaches the consumer. Does the movie/play/comic suck? Or did you have a stomachache? Or the lighting wasn’t good? Or some kid kept kicking your chair? It’s enough to make me consider that everything deserves a second chance. But then again, I ain’t got time for that. It’s enough for me to consider that again, when someone’s going on about loving things or hating things regarding a particular piece of entertainment and you disagree so vehemently you wonder if they’re existing in some parallel dimension — maybe not. Maybe you’re both just victims of circumstance.