UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

4 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.

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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.]

Keeping a lid on your “voice”…

Posted on April 14, 2021 by Clint
It feels like that to be an artist (which includes writers, yes) is to be constantly second-guessing yourself. To be an artist producing something for others is to be constantly second-guessing yourself but also forging ahead with it anyhow because otherwise you’re not going to get anywhere. To be producing art long-term is to eventually be wondering about that saying of either dying a hero or living long enough to see yourself become the villain. All those sins and pet peeves that drive you crazy when you’re a consumer… can you truly say you’ve avoided them now that you’re on the production side? Would you even be aware if you had slipped? If you do notice, are you guilty about it or (perhaps worst of all) do you now just shrug your shoulders and embrace the dark side? These are the kinds of thoughts that… well, they don’t keep me up at night, and perhaps that’s it’s own sign of degeneration. But I still get them while writing. For instance, one thing that can annoy me is if the author’s voice starts coming through the mouths of every one of their characters in a “samey” manner. Don’t get me wrong, an author’s work should have some mark of style to it, but omnipresent quippiness in dialogue can get old fast. And yet here I am recently wondering if the words coming out of Whitecloud are true to her or is she no different than Rosa’s teasing of Frank way back when? Is Frank himself having the occasional wordy (or at least semi-wordy) retort a betrayal of his character? Basically, am I shoving my own words into their mouths, chortling at my cleverness at the expense of consistency and verisimilitude? But the story mustn’t grind to a halt from artistic paralysis, so eventually the words have to get published. A lot of times it helps to set them down in a draft, walk away and come back later and see how it reads, and if it doesn’t make me cringe I feel better about it. And then there are times I still fret right up to the moment I have the comic locked and loaded. Sometimes beyond that. But hey, Sturgeon’s Law says 90 percent of it is crap anyhow. I’ll content myself with feeling skilled at least 10 percent of the time.