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Mark Trail, 9/11/13

MYSTERY SOLVED, everyone! “Senator Mason” is just the evil senator from the last senator storyline wearing an extremely clever disguise (i.e., a fake mustache). He clearly worries that Mark will eventually see through it, though, which is why in panel two he keeps a tight grip on his daughter to keep her between him and Mark’s fists at all times, while she further distracts him with rambling nonsense. How old in Anne Marie supposed to be, exactly? 40? 14? Whatever, she remembers good ol’ Andy. Why didn’t Mark bring Andy to meet with the senator? I genuinely want to know the answer to this question. There isn’t a rapacious politician in the pocket of the oil industry alive who can’t be charmed into environmentalism by a lovable big dog!

Crankshaft, 9/11/13

Last week’s Crankshaft, which featured a pleasant person discomfiting the unpleasant main characters in the strip, was downright cheery, and we can’t let that stand in the Funkyverse. This week: innocent children ask an old lady a series of increasingly rude and awkward questions! By Friday, we’ll get to “So nobody’s ever loved you? What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you sad that you’re going to die alone?”

Heathcliff, 9/11/13

Sure, it’s pretty disturbing that Heathcliff is putting up giant portraits of himself everywhere in order to inculcate a Mao-style cult of personality, but it’s a step up from forcing his minions to carve idols of him out of food and worship him as an actual god.

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Open talks: on the one hand, they’re an invaluable therapeutic tool (NOTE: Open talks have not been certified by the American Psychological Association as a therapeutic tool and are not intended to diagnose or treat any mental illness), but on the other hand they can sometimes lead to feedback — unwelcome feedback. People need to be cautioned about the potential for such feedback! And what better way to caution everyone in advance than to wear a t-shirt with this logo on it?

This logo was designed by faithful reader and logo-design hero A-wel Cruiz and you can now buy it on just about any CafePress product you can imagine, including thongs, but if you want it on some product you don’t see there just email me and I’ll add it. Feedback! Sharing! Open feedback sharing fever! Catch it, by buying products from my CafePress store. And then send me pictures of you wearing them, so I can showcase them on the site!

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Gasoline Alley, 9/10/13

As usual, I haven’t been keeping you up-to-date on the extremely low-stakes antics in progress over at Gasoline Alley, and as usual I don’t feel a bit sorry about it, because as usual you’re not missing much. The short version is that Slim’s daughter Gretchen has an Italian boyfriend named Guido who’s supposed to be flying in to meet up with her and her dad today, only it turns out … he hasn’t! And in response to Slim’s fairly straightforward and perhaps largely rhetorical question, Gretchen gives an extremely horrifying answer. “Where’s Guido? I’m not sure, but it’s a good bet that he’s still safely contained by a layer of healthy skin! Yep, we can be reasonably certain that Guido’s empty skin-sack isn’t hanging in a display case in some monster’s nightmarish trophy room, while Guido himself is somewhere else entirely! The chances that his entire body has been flensed by some madman, leaving him a shambling, screaming open wound, wandering around oozing blood everywhere, are probably no greater than one in four!”

Funky Winkerbean, 9/10/13

Speaking of everyone’s worst nightmares of horror and madness, I’m sure the real reason Bull goes through the lost and found box every morning is as some sort of coping strategy to avoid thinking about how depressing life in Westview is for him and everyone he knows, but I do want to point out that he appears to be a holding aloft a severed human hand in the second panel.

Hi and Lois, 9/10/13

You hear that, world? Hi and Lois may be a bland legacy strip that nobody has any sort of strong feelings about one way or another, but at least it’s not going to lower itself to Marvin’s level and do an endless series of poop jokes.