Category: Writer’s Blog

It’s been an experimental week here at the Zombie Ranch. Some of you might know that Dawn goes live on Ustream from time to time, usually when she’s coloring the next page of the comic, and she’ll chat with whoever happens to drop by to watch.

Well, this past weekend she roped me into joining her since she’s having visions of turning the sessions into a bit of a Podcast. After much technical difficulty we finally got the recording underway and jawed for about half an hour. We have some discussions on the nature of the zombie genre, and some of the inspirations and concepts involved in Zombie Ranch. Dawn has since gussied it up with some music and graphics, and it came out fairly decent if I do say so myself. Check it out here if you’re interested, and let us know if you like! (Warning: there are some mild spoilers about the setting)

Another piece I’ve put up is our very own Zombie Ranch Cast o’ Characters page. I intend to add to it as new characters are introduced. I may even be changing existing entries as new developments occur. Dawn will hopefully find the time to make it “purtier” at some point, with portraits for everyone. In the meantime, enjoy finding out things like what Frank’s last name is, as well as some more hints of the setting.

Speaking of which, I’m actually at work right now on a FAQ for the Zombie Ranch setting. I’m not even sure if FAQ is the right term in this case, since the questions haven’t been asked frequently; however, I’m sure there’s people out there who are curious about certain things, such as where and when this tale is taking place, why there are floating robot cameras, and of course, why the heck zombies are being ranched. Originally I had just intended to let the answers come gradually with each new comic, but I recognize that a weekly schedule might mean that takes forever and a day. That said, I’m not planning to reveal everything–because honestly, not everything’s set in stone yet–and I’ll be tucking it away with a spoilers warning so that those of you wanting to just figure things out along the way can do so. But others who are curious will have something to browse and know we’re not entirely just making this stuff up as we go along.

As I mention in the podcast, The Searchers was the latest in my Western line-up. John Ford was just really drinking in the landscape for this movie; seriously, the locations should have had their own cast credits. But that’s not to say there wasn’t a good story to go with it. It’s funny, I used to think Unforgiven was the first really morally ambiguous Western… but although Unforgiven remains my favorite Western (and one of my favorite movies, period), I’ve gained an appreciation for how complicated some of these “oldies” are beneath a veneer of simplicity. For instance, Ethan, John Wayne’s character in The Searchers, acts like a total psychopath at times, and I didn’t get any sense that the movie is forcing you to think that’s okay. You get to make your own decisions on if he’s a hard man for a hard time, or just an a-hole, or somewhere in-between.

Also, the Searchers features possibly the most polite fistfight you’ll ever see that also has men rolling in the dust and biting each other. If that sounds ludicrous, it is; and yet, somehow it fits. It’s like one of those stories that’s just crazy enough to have actually happened. Or maybe something that could only happen in Texas.

The artist wife has been miserably sick this past week. It’s a fate I thankfully avoided, but if I tried to draw the comic as well as write it the results would be… well, let’s just say drunken chimpanzees come to mind as an analogy. So for this here Wednesday we’ve got everything but the color, and worry not, the color should be along shortly. (EDIT: And here it is! Note you may have to refresh the page if you have the black and white version already cached.)

Dawn has, in fact, been sick enough that the lion’s share of Left 4 Dead 2 play has fallen to me, a hardship I undertook for the good of all. Actually I do have to admit that “hard” is an appropriate term. I have a group of three other fellows that I regularly played the first L4D with, and all four of us had managed to get the “What Are You Trying To Prove?” achievement, meaning we survived all four campaigns on Expert difficulty. L4D2 is humbling us on Normal and is going to require a lot of rethinking of the tried and tested strategies that made cakewalks (albeit dangerous cakewalks) of the first game’s levels.

We haven’t tried out the new Versus yet, although I’m hearing tell that Xbox 360 people are having a rough time with lag so I suppose it’s just as well. Anyhow, I have to say Valve did an excellent job in rewriting the playbook, and putting together some wonderfully atmospheric and creative new experiences. Even if I can’t figure out how we’re going to get through Expert mode on several of them. Time will tell.

On the Western front (har), we watched the original version of 3:10 to Yuma this week. Earlier this year I’d checked out the remake and was a little underwhelmed, particularly concerning the ending. Dawn had already seen the 1957 version priorly and so was even more underwhelmed, and had been bugging me to Netflix the older one.

Anyhow, yes, on viewing the original I realized just how much unnecessary padding had been piled on for the remake. Not just in set pieces, but emotionally. What at its core is a film about the interactions between two strong-willed, complex men gets all but buried under explosions, cliches, and a very bizarre ending change. And this despite having Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, two very capable actors, in the leading roles.

I won’t get into the observation that in the 21st century, America has gotten to the point we had to outsource our cowboy roles to an Australian and a Brit. Back in 2007 one of my friends already wrote a blog post about that very subject, although he further pointed out that tough guy actors in general seem to be in short supply today within U.S. borders.

Anyhow, if you’re not afraid of a little black and white film and a measured pace, check out that first run of the 3:10 to Yuma train. It’s just one man’s opinion, but I surely wasn’t disappointed.

I’ll wrap up this week’s entry with some potential bad news for the indecisive. The prediction I made on Oct. 7th regarding the San Diego Comic-Con 2010 4-day passes has come to pass, and at least a month earlier than when I figured they’d be gone. It’s pretty crazy. We found out they had moved up the deadline this year to apply for Artist’s Alley by several months as well, and we got our rejection notice for the Small Press Pavilion space we applied for.

Ah well, we did at least try. Dawn should still at least be able to host some of her work at the Art Show, which she’s been doing for several years already. But seriously, San Diego in July is becoming the new Vegas at New Year’s, or New Orleans at Mardi Gras. Here’s hoping all these advanced deadlines are a sign it will be better organized on-site.

Happy Thanksgiving/Turkey Day to everyone celebrating tomorrow! May your bellies be full and may you not be taken advantage of as you lie around torpid in the aftermath.

The little girl zombie (or LGZ as I call her for short) does seem to be a staple of the living dead genre. Heck, Night of the Living Dead started the trend, as well as the associated trend of the parents-in-denial (PID?) that get murdered and/or eaten by the adorable tyke. The latter doesn’t always happen, but the LGZ herself shows up a lot. It’s probably because she more than anything punches up that whole theme of lost humanity, of innocence and potential reduced to empty, ravening instinct. Also because people on the whole rarely consider cute little girls to be dangerous, any more than they could be convinced a dog like this could potentially rip their throats open:

So when little Karen or Katie or whoever goes feral and starts chewing on necks, it’s a bit of a shock.

Little girls gone bad aren’t restricted to zombie-dom. The Exorcist, The Ring, The Shining… the only thing creepier than a murderous little girl is a murderous little girl with a British accent, so thank you very much Resident Evil movie for deciding to do that with your killer computer personality in addition to having zombies shambling around.

Not all precocious little girls in horror movies are bad seeds, though. One particular example comes from the movie we made oblique reference to last week, the science-fiction awesomeness that is Aliens. Some out there don’t consider Aliens to actually be a horror movie, but it’s close enough for me. Someone around this wide, wild Web of ours, and sadly I can’t remember who at the moment, actually drew comparisons between Aliens and a classic “siege” zombie movie. There’s a lot of truth to that. Barricading, infighting amongst the survivors, the “horde” trying to force their way in, even a run to the helicopter (or VTOL assault craft, tomato, tomahto…) at the end. And Newt, resourceful little Newt, holding out in her cubbyhole like a pre-teen Robert Neville.

(Trivia bit: “I am Legend” inspired George Romero so much that to this day he cheerfully claims to have stolen the idea for Night of the Living Dead from Matheson’s novel. And so we come full circle.)

Anyhow, the in-joke from last week’s comic was that the last three digits on the Z Tracker readout are the same as the number of the planetoid where Aliens takes place, LV-426. We were showing something much like the motion trackers in Aliens (one of the greatest cinematic tension devices ever conceived), so it seemed appropriate. 426 was also the number of page views logged for the site on Oct. 7th, our first regular Wednesday update. Layers within enigmas.

No Western spiel this week, even though I watched enough Old West documentaries over the weekend that my wife threatened bodily harm if the marathon continued. Gotta keep the artist happy, or at least non-homicidal. Also by the time you all read this, I’ll probably be up way too late playing Left 4 Dead 2. Unless something goes horribly wrong with my pre-order, it’s time to take Ellis’ official instructions to heart and “Kill all sonsabitches”.

Hi all,

Brief interlude here. Being listed on Topwebcomics.com has been helping us out a lot in terms of getting new eyeballs to our site (and thanks for all the votes! Keep ’em coming!).

Anyhow, they recently put out a call to member webcomics to help promote the works of one of their own who has recently gotten a bona fide book deal out of his hard work. This chap, J.C. Hutchins, has been publishing a series called 7th Son: Descent for free online, much of which is still free in several different formats. Richard Mathis of TWC sums it up best:

“Welcome to J.C. Hutchins’ SF thriller 7th Son: Descent, a novel set in present day featuring human cloning, dangerous technologies, and “beyond Top Secret” government conspiracies. I’m letting everyone know about an exciting publication that started as an online podcast, and now is being sold in stores everywhere. And whats more amazing than a fellow internet creator bringing his works from the free digital format to the printed page, is that he’s still publishing everything for free online. If you want to check this out, listen to the book for free, read it for free, or even buy the book, check out his site over here: JCHutchins.net You could even join the ranks of his online army by participating in Warvember just like I am.”

Science fiction thrillers? Web publications making it to the bookstores? Hey, we’ll tip our hats to that war effort. Check it out!

There’s a wee bit of an in-joke in the latest page, concerning the ‘tracking number’ of the zombie. In the interest of letting other geeks like myself feel special I won’t explain it until next time, although I confess the title of this post all but gives it away.

I was having a conversation with my dad the other day and he mentioned that he tried watching a zombie movie, but was finding it somewhat ridiculous; in particular, the notion of a creature of ostensibly human anatomy being able to bite through another human’s skull with no more trouble than we might sink our teeth into an apple.

I admit, I’ve had these thoughts myself. Even if your given zombie is super strong and feels no pain, it seems like teeth (particularly rotten zombie teeth) are far more likely to break before a skull does. But zombies these days are often associated with brain-eating, and so the skulls of their victims must conveniently have the durability of eggshells.

As zombie genre fans we often are asked to take a lot for granted along these lines. Night of the Living Dead is played straight and serious, and in my opinion works just fine, but it’s as soon as the original Dawn of the Dead that we’re asked to believe that a biker dude with a horde of undead moaning at his heels would decide that’s a fantastic time to sit down, stick his arm in a cuff and check his blood pressure.

It’s not a huge deal I suppose, especially if a movie’s obviously meant to be over-the-top. Complaining about inconsistencies and impossibilities in a film like Dead Alive is entirely missing the point (and quite possibly bordering on being a douchebag). But if you’re going to make a “serious” zombie flick, I do like to see some sort of consistency. If in one scene a zombie can’t bash through a window and can be pushed off by a 90-pound woman, please don’t follow it up with scenes where they break down solid doors with a single shove or rip arms out of sockets. Otherwise I may start laughing instead of feeling terrified.

I know, I know, ripping arms out of sockets is cool. Wookiees have known this for many years. Arguably a whole point of film, or comics, or any kind of storytelling really, is to Present Stuff That Is Cool.  Perhaps I ask too much. And no doubt I’ll be committing the same sins with my own zombies down the road and will cry myself to sleep wondering what became of that man who once had standards… standards for his zombies.

I’ll close out my weekly wall o’ text with another hearty Western recommendation: El Dorado. This is another John Wayne movie, and one where The Duke is in full effect with those trademark… pauses in the middle of his sentences if ya… know what I mean, pilgrim.

(Odd observation: Is William Shatner’s speech pattern similar to John Wayne’s, only stuck on fast forward?)

But anyhow, the movie also stars Robert Mitchum and a James Caan I’d never experienced before, which is to say a young James Caan. He looked way different.

It’s directed by the legendary Howard Hawks and quite well-written, even if sometimes the women and music seem more appropriate to a spy movie of the era.

There you have it, your weekly quota of cowboy and zombie talk. And for those of you observing it, have a good Veteran’s/Armistice/Remembrance Day!

I held off publishing any pictures of us from the Long Beach Zombie Walk, since the newest comic is really what gives the context for our appearance.

You can’t see it from the photo, but the “bolts” actually did flash. They were made from some battery-powered magnetic raver jewelry that Dawn got hold of, and we attached them to our foreheads through the power of fake skin and spirit gum.

Dawn also gets full credit for molding more fake skin into Z Ranch brands for both of us. We had a great time down there, with a nice big undead turnout that shambled down 4th street at the appointed time and groaned hungrily at passing motorists. Then we went into the Art Theater for a midnight showing of the original Night of the Living Dead. Those of you used to the fast, aggressive specimens of modern zombie movies like 28 Days Later, Zombieland, and the Dawn of the Dead remake might find it easy to discount the threat of Night of the Living Dead’s unfocused shamblers… but here’s the thing a lot of people don’t remember until they watch it again.

Night of the Living Dead’s zombies are tool users.

In one of the very first attacks, a potential victim locks herself in a car, and in between pounding on the windows the zombie is trying the door handles. He even goes around to check the other side of the car. Then he goes and picks up a rock and uses that to smash the windows in.

Think about that versus the Dawn of the Dead remake where the zombies are stopped cold by a thick glass door. Night of the Living Dead’s zombies are almost frighteningly intelligent by comparison.

Anyhow, I could tell that a good chunk of the audience were actually seeing the movie for the very first time. Why? The ending. I won’t spoil it for anyone else who’s never seen it, but here we are over 40 years later and it retains its power to shock.

Speaking of good endings, I’ll switch from pure zombie to pure Western and recommend The Ox-Bow Incident to anyone who likes classic Westerns or just flat out well-written drama. I’d heard a lot of hype about it over the years, but despite that the final few minutes just punched me right in the heart. Great stuff.

See you next week!

And so here’s Halloween and our first “holiday” sketch for Zombie Ranch, a break both from our normal update schedule and our normal continuity.

Solomon Kane is a character that might not be too well known out there right now, although that may change once the movie debuts. As my wife indicates, Kane was created back in the late 1920s by the same pulp writer who originally created Conan the Barbarian. He doesn’t have the same name recognition, but his iconic image should be quite familiar to anyone who’s familiar with Warhammer Fantasy, Vampire Hunter D, or any number of other works of fiction and art since then. Yes, even including the recent movie Van Helsing, which was a pretty obvious… well, let’s call it an homage. When you think “badass witch hunter”, think Solomon Kane.

For those of you celebrating Halloween the “American” way, here’s wishing you lots of candy and booze! Unless of course you’re under the drinking age, in which case I can only publically endorse candy.

Something wonderful happened just after our previous update on Wednesday. I mean that somewhat literally, in that Project Wonderful approved us as a publisher. We’ve been using them to advertise through some other sites, but now others can use us to advertise as well! We currently have no minimum bids on our adspace, so if you’re interested just check out the areas on our site with the telltale ‘Your Ad Here’ notice. We may not be a terribly popular site as yet, but hey, we’re cheap. Real cheap. As in, possibly even free of charge for now so long as nobody else is bidding. You’ll have to join up with Project Wonderful if you haven’t already, but if you’re trying to promote your website it is totally worth it, whether you go with us or any number of other member sites.

Speaking of other sites, check out Daisy is Dead. My timing sucks in terms of finding it because the artist/writer just stated she’s going on hiatus, but there’s a sizeable archive to chew through. As far as comedy zombie strips, hers is one of the best I’ve seen. I love the almost Looney Tunes level cartoony art style and it’s consistently funny. Well, it’s funny to me, and that’s what matters. So there.

One last Halloween special, courtesy of a random Google search I did last week on “Zombie Cowboys”. It’s an animated music video by that same name, set to a song in the vein of old Country-Western horror classics like “Ghost Riders in the Sky“.

Got five minutes to kill? Give it a look. Zombie Cowboys! Yee-ha!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Well, we got mentioned favorably in another blog, this time at A World on Fire. A common mistake was made where he put down our URL as zombieranch.com, rather than zombieranchcomic.com, but I can’t fault him for that. Embarrassingly enough, there’s still times I make that mistake myself, and I’m writing the dang thing!

Zombieranch.com, as far as I can tell, has been reserved since the year 2000 by Flying ~M~ Design, and since there are other completely different domain names that lead to that same (mostly) blank page, I suppose they’re just hanging onto the domains for whatever reason. I’m not even sure how we would have gone about contacting them since even flyingm.org just gives that same page. Maybe one day we’ll figure that out. Meantime, zombieranchcomic it is. Tell your friends. Tell people who aren’t your friends. Then flee while they’re still confused.

With the introduction of Frank and Zeke we’ve got some new faces on the Zombie Ranch. Within the next few weeks we’ll probably get a cast page up so people can keep track, but right now your dynamic duo are busy getting stickers and gummi candy brains together for this Friday’s Zombie Walk. Not to mention my wondrously whimsical wife has a special full-color sketch planned for posting on Halloween. If you feel like a sneak preview we decided to try out the whole ‘incentives’ feature on TopWebComics, but no worries, either way everyone stopping by on October 31st gets a treat in the form of Susannah Zane in Halloween garb.

After that we’ll be back on Wednesday Nov. 4th, but I’m particularly fond of our latest comic since we’re finally getting to some zombie handling, in the form of a bipedally modified, high-tech version of the cattle crushes they’ve used to immobilize livestock for many years. Those of you who have been wondering why zombies are ranched also get your first reason. By no means the only reason, but if you have any thoughts to share on what events a zombie rodeo might have, feel free.

I leave you with another picture that really inspired me in writing Zombie Ranch, probably in part because the cow looks almost zombified. Though of course if this rancher was touching a real zombie’s teeth, he’d best have his gloves on!

Now you might be wondering why I didn’t title our latest comic “Dawn of the Dead”, what with the obvious sleazy pun on the artist’s name. Well, that’s just it: too easy. I like to think I have my boundaries. Occasionally.

Here we are just ten days from Hallowe’en, and in between writing and my Real Job(tm), I’ve been busy trying to get the word out about Zombie Ranch. You might have noticed a few more ranking buttons popped up linking to places like webcomicplanet.com and webcomicz.com – I also added us to the Zombie Webcomics section of the Zombie Survival & Defense Wiki, did a shameless plug (no, really, that’s what the subforum is called) on the forums of All Things Zombie, and another shameless plug on the Zombies Bite blog.

Much better than self-promotion, though, is when others independently consider you worthy of promotion. So far only a couple instances of that, but what can you expect when you’re just starting, right? We were very happy to have our sneak peek publication reviewed at ComicBookCollectorsBlog.Com, and just today I discovered that someone maintaining a list of horror-themed webcomics on the forums of Comic Monsters found us.

I’m putting a lot of links in this post. Why? Because I think the best kind of promotion is still good ol’ fashioned word of mouth, or its Internet equivalent. With that in mind, I’m sure a good number of you coming here already know about The Zombie Hunters and Everyday Decay, but if you don’t, go check them out. Another long-running zombie webcomic is Dead Winter. Finally, there’s this one I just found today, and it’s rocking my socks: Raising Hell.

I stole the title of this post from my wife, who in turn got the idea from a Toby Keith song she downloaded for Rock Band: “Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses.” I’m not a big TK fan, but I must admit I love that title.

Oh, I almost forgot! Back in 2004 I used to waste a lot of time playing a free browser-based MMO zombie game called Urban Dead. Well, lo and behold, that sucker is still going! Give it a whirl if you feel the notion.

Horses are terrifying. My artist has convinced me of this.

Oh sure, I knew they could be dangerous. They’re big suckers. People can get crushed to death by a horse falling on them. There’s a good reason that for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, heavy cavalry charges could make or break an entire battle when they thundered into enemy lines.

So when my wife accuses me of having thought of horses as nothing more than My Little Pony, that’s not entirely accurate. What I actually meant to say was that I figured she’d have to “zombie it up” in order for it to be truly creepy and scary.

That’s when she started showing me pictures of horses rolling their eyes and baring their teeth, sticking their heads in car windows to frighten small children, and all manner of roguery.  Frankly, the rotting zombie horse she came up with seems well-behaved by comparison (at least for now).

Anyhow, welcome to everyone who’s been reaching us by way of our cunningly placed ad links. Hopefully you’re liking what you see so far, or at least intrigued enough to come on back by for a few more Wednesdays. If you really feel inspired, you can always give us a click for a TopWebComics vote, or leave a comment on this site or our forum. We already had a couple fans drop us a line informing us of a cool sounding zombie flick we hadn’t seen yet (Dead Snow), for which we are greatly thankful.

Speaking of movies, Dawn and I have been in further touch with Mondo Celluloid, the organizers of the 2nd Annual Long Beach Zombie Walk. They have been gracious enough to make us a sponsor for the month, and we’re going to be there on Friday, Oct. 30th to be part of the shamble and hand out some Zombie Ranch swag. There’s an entire evening of zombie fun planned on 4th street. The details are here. So if you’re near the L.A. area, come on by! Participating in the walk is absolutely free, though tickets for the Night of the Living Dead midnight screening are $10 each (you can pre-order with the link above).

Last night Dawn and I finally managed to get out and see Zombieland. If you loved Shaun of the Dead, you’ll love Zombieland.  Okay, maybe some of you out there won’t. Maybe some of you didn’t even like Shaun of the Dead. In that case, I ain’t talkin’ to you… but we can agree to disagree so long as you keep reading Zombie Ranch.

For the rest of you, go see it. You won’t be sorry. In the first five minutes I already felt my $11 ticket price was well spent, and it just kept getting better. I can’t say too much without spoilers; in fact I don’t want to, because they kept a lid on some moments in this movie that were really fun and surprising. See it while there’s still an audience around to cheer and holler along with you. If you must wait for rentals, then plan to invite a bunch of friends over.

It’s one of the most purely entertaining movies I’ve seen all year, zombie-related or otherwise. These writers, this director: they are our peoples.

Anyhow, on the subject of “Nut up or shut up”  (as Woody Harrelson’s character often states throughout Zombieland)… today’s the day we mailed off our application for a table at the Small Press Pavilion at the big one: The San Diego Comic Con. SDCC is the 800 pound gorilla of the popular arts world; no other comic convention, at least in the United States, even comes close.

To qualify for a small press booth we not only have to shell out $350, but we had to submit a publication for judgement and approval by a review jury.  I picture our Zombie Ranch preview sitting in the middle of a sacrificial table, surrounded by sinister robed figures deciding our fate. Which is no doubt ludicrously off the mark and it’ll be more likely be a few qualified lads and lasses in t-shirts and jeans passing it around.

SDCC has gotten so huge that we’re not too optimistic of our chances, but at least we’ll be in by the October 23rd deadline, and you never know unless you try.

Oh, even if you’re just planning on attending SDCC and you haven’t ordered your passes yet, you’d better get cracking. They’ve already sold out of their four-day+preview night badges, and who knows how long the four-day badges without preview night will last at this rate? Stop by http://www.comic-con.org/cci/ sooner rather than later and lock it in. And while you’re at it start looking into hotel reservations as well.

Dawn and I bought our passes already so will at least be there as fans even if we don’t get the table. But I’m definitely predicting right now that the remaining 4-day passes will be gone by New Year’s.  So if you’re going, get a move on!

The 1st Annual Long Beach Comic Con is over at last, and some of you reading this already have had a sneak peek of our first six Zombie Ranch pages! Or you just got the URL from a strip of paper, a sticker, or just plain’ ol word of mouth. However you got here, welcome! In the weeks to come we’ll be publishing the rest of the sneak peek and then continuing our story.

It was a great experience. We got to meet the organizers of the 2nd Annual Long Beach Zombie Walk, which just started last year and features an Oct. 30th mass shambling to the Art Theatre for the viewing of a piece of zombie related cinema. Last year it was Shaun of the Dead. This year it’s the big granddaddy of the genre: George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead itself!

Needless to say they were very excited about Zombie Ranch, as were several others who stopped by our table. Our best customer experience by far, however, was an adorable little girl, couldn’t have been more than six or so, who had come to the Con with her dad. She was so enthralled by Zombie Ranch that she gently pushed aside her dad’s inquiry of if she wanted one of Dawn’s Bits of Nothing sketchbooks instead. Nossiree, she wanted cowgirls & zombies.

Ahh, the next generation. Take that, McDonald’s, assuming every little girl wants Barbie. Unless of course you come out with Zombie Barbie.

Aside from that the Con was great in other ways, such as getting to hobnob with some of the comics professionals we’ve admired for years and feel welcomed by them. Amanda Conner actually traded us one of her sketchbooks, signed, for free because we gave her a Zombie Ranch and Bits of Nothing. If you don’t know who Amanda Conner is, well, all I can say is you’ve been missing out. Also shouts out to Marc and Jennifer Dos Santos, Gus Vasquez, and Topher Davila, all of whom helped make the experience educational, fun, and (perhaps most importantly) well-fed.

See you on the Ranch!

So the great John Wayne instructs his son in the movie “Red River“. Of course his son ends up taking the cattle to Kansas; similarly, we must defy The Duke’s command and drive our zombies down to Long Beach, instead.

The sneak preview print run is done and came out quite nicely, as did our swag stickers. Nothing left to do now but take ’em to market and see how it goes. The exhibit floor opens at 3pm Friday, which if we’ve set things right should also be the moment our first page for the comic goes live on this very site. We may not know about that until tomorrow evening since our Internet access will be limited at best out there, so bear with us.

One thing we’re very jealous of is that, due to us being busy all this weekend, a great many of you will be getting out to see “Zombieland” before we do. But don’t spare our feelings, it looks like a heckuva lot of fun. In fact, if you feel like telling us about it, sign up for our forum and make a post under the “Brain Food” section. I suppose a spoiler tag would be in order, although I myself am more of a journey person regardless of if I know the destination.

It’s ticked over past midnight as I’ve been writing this. Today is now the day. Time to get some shut-eye so we can get those zombies wrangled and moving along in the morning. Long Beach ain’t as far as Missouri but L.A. freeways have their own perils to contend with.

Now that the sneak preview is off to the presses, Dawn and I had a short chance to breathe and catch up on some sleep. We still have a ton of work to do before getting to our Artist’s Alley table (70A!) at the Long Beach Comic Con this weekend. I mean, people always need their free sticker swag, right?

I did want to take a moment to give a special shout out to the software engineers at http://www.quetek.com/. You see, Saturday morning we woke up to find out that the external hard drive where Dawn was keeping most of her artwork had become corrupted and was no longer readable. Switching it to other computers didn’t help, and when I checked the support site I saw a solution that was not very comforting; basically, that we’d have to reformat to use it again, and oh, if you had any data on there you needed, here’s a list of our Data Recovery partners to contact.

Now this wasn’t like a failed system drive I could just hook up in a still bootable computer and then grab the files off of it, this was a full on case of trashed allocation table (at least). And from my tech support days I knew that sending a drive off for data recovery would be both time consuming and hideously expensive. And naturally, we hadn’t made any backups lately.

As a sidenote, I will never let anyone question Dawn again for doing her penciling and inking on physical mediums rather than in Photoshop. Because of that we might still have gotten our sneak preview done in time… but without color. Maybe not even a cover. And there was the issue of all Dawn’s other artwork as well.

In the midst of that despair, I ran across a random forum answer regarding failed external drives that mentioned trying Quetek. I go to their site and find their File Scavenger program claiming to be able to recover data from corrupted and even reformatted drives for the cost of a $49 download and license. This was the very definition of “too good to be true”, right? But then they say, wait! Don’t believe us? Download a demo free so you can scan your drive with it and see what’s recoverable.

Malicious adware vehicle? Maybe. But considering the alternatives, I took the risk, and I’m glad I did. I plugged in the external drive, scanned it, and all the data was there. The demo even allowed you to preview certain things like JPGs and recover tiny files just to confirm that it wasn’t bullshitting.

I paid for the $49 license and started a recovery. Three hours later, every important piece of data on that drive was safely returned. The day was saved.

So yeah, I suppose this blog is one big shill when you get down to it. But before I found Quetek I had emailed one of the big Data Recovery outfits for a quote, and they just got back to me today: $65 diagnostic fee, then a minimum $695 charge for recovery, possibly all the way up to $1995.

Compared to $49 for a near 100% data recovery with no need for shipping and processing time? Yeah, I’ll shill that.

Happy trails!

A good idea is much like a hungry zombie. It grabs hold of you and won’t stop until it has consumed your brain.

My wife tends to have a lot of ideas, especially when she’s drawing in the middle of the night. Some are ingenious, some are just plain odd. But when I awoke one morning to find an illustration of a young, shotgun-totin’ cowgirl facing down a horde of zombies, I was intrigued.

When Dawn stumbled forth from bed a few hours later, I asked her about the picture.

Later still, after she had a shower, some breakfast and some caffeine, I asked her again. This time I actually got an answer: the young lady is a zombie rancher. She’s wrangling zombies on her zombie ranch.

Like I said, some of Dawn’s ideas are ingenious, and some are odd. But every so often, there’s one that’s both. I wanted to know this woman’s story, and how she’d gotten herself into such a strange occupation. Since Dawn had no real answers for those details, I was left to my own daydreams on the subject. Daydreams that eventually evolved into a script on my part, and a lot more pictures on hers.

We hope you find the idea as infectious as we did. Saddle up and shamble along for the ride.