Welcome to the second Friday the 13th of 2012. Once again, Winslow is having medical trouble.

This time, his affliction is a little closer to home. Around this time of year, the changing weather causes me to cough my lungs, brains, and eyeballs out. It’s irritating, because over-the-counter cough medicine does absolutely nothing. Moms know it, wives know it, doctors know it, nurses know it, everyone else who matters knows it. It’s nothing more than a syrupy placebo.

The Automated Teller Cyborg (ATC) combines the convenience of an ATM with the customer support capabilities and friendly demeanor of the average underpaid bank teller. Money is easily accessible by swiping a valid bank card and pressing a few buttons. ATCs are also completely mobile, cheap to maintain (they like hamburgers), and capable of defending themselves from would-be robbers. They are the perfect blend of man and machine.

Until, of course, something goes terribly wrong.

With all the book-related news out there–Hunger Games doing well in theaters, the second season of Game of Thrones hitting HBO on Sunday, vampire sex being more popular than ever–I felt a powerful urge to do a book-related comic strip. So here it is. A book-related comic strip. If this doesn’t make you believe in the power of reading, I don’t know what will.

Winslow has always been a science wiz, which is surprising considering all the other ways he chooses to occupy his time. But he has a knack this sort of stuff–especially genetic experimentation, which has given him many profitable successes (including the fierce apple pieger, now used by the U.S. military). While today’s comic doesn’t deal with genetics or pie, it does show Winslow knee deep in science and badger pulp.

The problem with laser beam eyes (a procedure clever readers recognized last week as literal laser eye surgery) is that they produce a great deal of heat. When combined with highly flammable inorganic facial upgrades–such as those acquired at the hands of an amateur plastic surgeon–the results can be explosive. This is actually what killed the original Scott Summers (Cyclops) of X-Men fame. (He was later replaced by his cousin, Lester Summers, who happened to have the same mutation. No one ever noticed.)