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An online webcomic about a group of cowboys/cowgirls and their Zombie herd.
An online webcomic about a group of cowboys/cowgirls and their Zombie herd.
3 thoughts on “534 – Compliments To The Cook”
Anonymous
Of course, the sleezer gave them expired food XD
Anonymous
Chuck acknowledged that the bucket “survival food” was old, with the potential of being bad, but admitting it still had the potential for being good! 🤣
Con in Pasadena? I had to check, Cali, not TX, tho they have smaller shows at the college, I figured not likely, as Pasadena/Deer Park is in the news again, for all the wrong reasons (again), after an SUV crashed into a LNG pipeline, turning it into a blowtorch.
Anonymous
Dangit! I *know* I put in my name and info!
Latest Comics
#395. 379 – Zulu India
26 Jun 06, 2018
#394. 378 – Me Myself And Eyeball
24 May 30, 2018
#393. 377 – Temperature Rising
24 May 23, 2018
#392. 376 – Hot Stuff
22 May 09, 2018
#391. 375 – [Title Drop]
20 May 02, 2018
#390. 374 – [Credits Intensify]
23 Apr 25, 2018
#389. 373 – [Zombie Ranch Theme Plays]
41 Apr 18, 2018
#388. 372 – Fire And Ice
40 Apr 11, 2018
#387. EPISODE SIXTEEN
47 Apr 09, 2018
#386. 371 – The Small Picture (END OF EPISODE 15)
45 Mar 14, 2018
#385. 370 – She Do Declare
43 Mar 07, 2018
#384. 369 – The Say Of The Gun
21 Feb 28, 2018
#383. 368 – Weird Is As Weird Does
18 Feb 14, 2018
#382. 367 – Honor Bound
16 Feb 07, 2018
#381. 366 – Practical Tragic
15 Jan 31, 2018
#380. 365 – The Philosopher’s Tone
16 Jan 24, 2018
#379. 364 – In Memoriam
15 Jan 17, 2018
#378. 363 – Broken Records
16 Jan 10, 2018
#377. 362 – Civilian Investigation
15 Dec 13, 2017
#376. 361 – Zeke, Interrupted
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Latest Chapters
Episode 22
Episode 21
Episode 20
Episode 19
Episode 18
Episode 17
534 – Compliments To The Cook
[EDIT: Dawn is nursing a sprained wrist so we'll be pushing back a week. Hopefully join us for a new page on Oct. 9th]
Hearkening back to the events of page 269!
Meanwhile, this weekend we're bringing Zombie Ranch to the wide-open spaces. Comparatively. The trade volumes will be among our offerings at the annual Pasadena ARTWalk at Booth #32 in the shady lanes of Green Street.
Horror: a matter of intent
“Think of it this way: “occult” is a genre, “horror” is an intent. The former goes to subject matter, characters and settings. The latter goes to what the writer wants to happen to his or her audience. If they want them to be scared, that’s horror.”
Drawing that parallel back to humor again, this is a very, very succinct way to look at things. A gag strip could be set on a starship in the far future, or a fantasy landscape in the past, or just be focused on a group of Anytown, U.S.A. (or other applicable country) kids, but it all comes down to one thing: is the creator’s primary intent to make you laugh? Whether or not you actually find the jokes funny is irrelevant, the intent is what matters. Similarly, a work of horror’s primary intent should be to scare. Zombie Ranch, by Joel’s definitions, would be what he calls an “occult” comic, dealing in the trappings of the supernatural, but focusing on subject matter, character, and setting without necessarily wanting the audience to react in a fearful manner. In the comments on Joel’s piece (also worth reading), there’s some discussion on whether “occult” would be the proper term, but no matter what you choose to call it, the distinction has a lot of merit, especially because I agree with his premise that real horror is one of the more difficult things to pull off in a comics medium, and certainly rough to do in an ongoing serial with recurring characters. Comics, for example, make the “spring-loaded cat” moments so prevalent in horror movies largely useless gestures… the still page doesn’t provoke that visceral, instinctual recoil of shock that sudden sound and motion produce in us. It’s cheap, sure, but it’s effective. Joel names this, appropriately enough, “shock horror”. He then moves on to “disgust horror”, and argues that gore is also not quite as effective on the comics page as it is in film, or even books where the power of our own imaginations can be turned against us. But it’s the third type of horror that Joel does believe comics can do, and do very, very well. This is what he terms “creep horror”, and what I term “the horror of ideas”. This is the kind of horror that makes some of those old Twilight Zones so memorable, the kind that stays with you, keeping your brain churning with disturbing thoughts long after you turn off the TV or put the book or comic away. The kind that shines darkly in the best examples of comics like Hellblazer or Swamp Thing, such as when a character finds out she’s been having sex not only with the walking corpse of her husband, but with the walking corpse of her husband as possessed by the spirit of her twisted uncle. That’s stuff that still makes me want to take a bath to this day when I reflect on it. But it can be less graphic than that… it could be as simple as being the last man on Earth, finally having the time to read all those books you wanted to… but then you break your only pair of prescription glasses. I think it’s also entirely possible to delve into horror without it being your primary purpose, in fact it may arguably be the only way you can sustain a decent level of scare in an ongoing series of any kind… audiences need downtime or everything starts blending together and desensitizing, and desensitization is the worst enemy of scare. Would I consider the old Tales From The Crypt offerings to be horror comics? Absolutely! But they were collections of one-shots rather than a continuous narrative, constantly interchanging characters and stories. Maybe in that sense Joel’s definition is too strict, since not even a comic like The Walking Dead is trying to scare you all the time, nor should it. With Zombie Ranch, I’ve purposefully injected elements that I find horrific to contemplate, but after twenty years of it as their daily existence, the characters themselves have largely accepted it as normal. I’ve talked before about how resilient human nature can be even in the most horrible circumstances… somewhere along the line as the bombs drop and the bodies pile up, people decide it’s not really going to get better anytime soon and so just work it into their daily routines. The outsider asks, “How can you possibly live like this?!”, and the native responds, “Well, the war isn’t stopping. What else should I do?” On a smaller scale, you might think about how uncomfortable the idea of killing, gutting and skinning an animal is to a lot of modern day city dwellers. It might even be considered horrific. But if you live out on a farm, it’s just something you do. Is it sane? Is it right? Who sits in judgment of that? Horror, I still believe, is a very subjective matter. That’s why the intent of the creator is so important, and in my case, although there are times I’m writing Zombie Ranch with the intent to scare or disturb, I’m just as often looking to evoke other reactions out of you readers as I let the story ply its course. So is it a horror comic? Sometimes. Which, again, means it’s probably not really a horror comic at all, at least by my self-inflicted definition. But I can live with that. And hey, since you’re not expecting it, maybe you actually will jump when I throw the cat at you.Calendar
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