Thanks again to the powerful Trystan Falcone for handling the art duties on the last strip; the writing process was not without anguish for my friend Michael, whose neck had tired of providing neck duties day in and day out and had instead become a kind of high efficiency pain cylinder with unparalleled uptime and responsiveness.

When we got back together to write on Friday, he was NOT scourged as thoroughly as he had been previously. I asked what the regimen had been, and he gave me the list in the strip. So, everything. All the things. He sounded like someone who had seen a documentary about pain and fallen asleep halfway through. He might tell you that he'd gotten most of the main points, sorta the Cliff's Notes of pain - "It's bad," authoritative nod - but enhancing any quadrant of that understanding would just be a screenful of sawtoothed artifacts and stained-glass apparitions of real data. And I was glad. Pain is in ready supply. Nobody needs more.

Clearly, more horrors are soon to be revealed in the direct to video sequel of our last Black Friday, but steel yourself against this terrible onslaught of savings.

(CW)TB out.