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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.

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Mark Trail, 9/9/13

Guys, it seems that those surveyors we heard about last week are looking for good spots to drill for oil in Lost Forest! They’re being backed by Senator Mason — a senator who Mark “supported,” which means that … he voted for him, or gave him money, or wrote a long puff piece about him in Woods and Wildlife Magazine, who can tell, but the point is that Mark owns this guy and how dare he sign off on fracking near Mark’s idyllic forest. I hope he doesn’t mind Mark stopping by unannounced! I’m sure he won’t. There’s literally nothing our elected officials like better than when random citizens ring their doorbell at dinner time to demand the advancement of their pet causes.

Mark has had some senatorial encounters before: he was pals with a senator who liked to pimp-slap sassy citizens, even if that meant that he got punched in return, triggering a near-fatal heart attack. Together, he and Mark exposed the sweaty corruption of his senatorial rival. But neither of those senators was named Mason, so I guess this is a third guy? Lost Forest has three senators? Sure, why not, makes as much sense as anything else in this strip.

Spider-Man, 9/9/13

Ha ha, Spider-Man is just kidding, except deep down inside where he’s totally not kidding. It’s almost as if being an unlikeable loser who literally nobody likes has hurt his self-esteem, somehow.

Apartment 3-G, 9/9/13

“Is that giggling I hear? Levity? At a time like this? Kids, the lieutenant governor just had a massive stroke, show some fucking respect.“

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Better Half, 9/8/13

One of the things I appreciate about the Better Half is that on Sunday, instead of just cramming in a bunch of unrelated panels that could have easily stood alone as dailies like the Lockhorns does, it offers a selection united by a subtle but definite theme. Today’s theme: Stanley hates himself! He doesn’t like the way he looks; he feels like his life is a malfunctioning piece of software that he wishes he could reset back to some long ago pristine state; and he’s eager to shift the blame for his many manifest failings onto a too-permissive society. Obviously all this anxiety and self-loathing leads him to panic that Harriet will leave him, but he needn’t worry: she just doesn’t have the energy to go find anyone better!

Family Circus, 9/8/13

As usual, the Keane pets are wearing little secret smiles. They quite frankly look awfully smug for a couple of dogs who are destined for damnation in eternal hellfire.