Again, tortured logic in play!  Why in the world does the execution of Rod and Catfish’s evil plan hinge on their maintaining custody of Rusty, tied up, in the “Rod Bassy Stealth Van?”  Wouldn’t it be easier to just (perish the thought) snuff the life out of the little hell-boy and dump his body in a culvert?  And for use later if questioned, manufacture a plausible alibi (“I was with him- and oh yea, I was with him… we were polishing lures and sharpening hooks”)

The look on Trail’s face in the second panel is priceless.  Mark is so sure of himself, even though, again, his reasoning is without foundation.  Committing the classic “post-hoc, ergo propter hoc,” fallacy, mark is trying his best to put his powers of prefrontal cortex reasoning into play, only to embarrass himself…  The woodland creatures, in quiet rumination, mock his supposed mental acuity…

“…tough to find a van with “Rod Bassy” emblazoned on the side?  Really?  Well, Mark agrees, so it must be so!  With all the fishermen in town? What, no women?  And the van was so difficult to find all the other days- “Oh, look, there’s Rod Bassy’s van…”  

But let us take stock of the situation…  a suspected kidnapping and never a mention of getting the local constable involved.  It’s like the only law enforcement that exists in the Trailian Universe are Park Rangers and Game Wardens, both of which care little about the welfare of humans or enforcing the laws designed to protect them…  “…fewer people the better,” they’d say…

See Mark gritting his teeth?  If the camera were allowed to pan down, we would see his fists-o-justice clenched for sure!  I trust that I am not just getting my hopes up only to have them dashed…

Too bad they aren’t fly fishing- looks like the hatch is on!

I bet by now he really has to go to the bathroom!!

“Act like I don’t know anything” will be an act all right… “Rusty? Rusty who? Don’t know who you are talking about Trail…  If it doesn’t have gills and I can’t put it in my gunny sack, I don’t much know or care about it.  I am all about the BASS, you know?  That’s why they call me ‘Bassy.’  If I cared about kids they’d call me ‘Kiddy’ and I’d paint THAT on the side of my van.”

That has to be the saddest Rusty face I have ever seen!  Do you think he has now seen the error of his ways, how his intrepid, get the shot at any cost style, might finally be his undoing??  And the bullfrogs are weighing in on Rod’s plan…  can you hear them?  “Bullshit…. Bullshit…”

…NO REASON anyone will SUSPECT US!  I guess you’d be wrong. Mr. Bassy… Not long from now you will be getting your come-uppance…

Poor Rusty!  He can hear everything that these evil men are saying…

I love the manufactured urgency from Mark… “We’ve got to find that van SOON…”  And the dramatic use of light and shadow in frame one… they must have learned that from the “Draw Tippy the Turtle, and you could qualify for a scholarship” School of Art found on old matchbook covers…

Lying in the murky depths, looking for the light-up lure…  I am really having trouble buying this whole thing though, I mean it’s just not plausible…  lots of trouble to go to in order to make sure that you are bringing in the biggest catch of the day.  And where do they get their fish? Keep them alive.  I am growing bored with this.  Mark better be sharpening his fists and wrap this up in the coming week, or…

But note Mark’s priorities- (1) Catch them cheating and (2) recover Rusty.  These are two mutually exclusive objectives…  hmmm.  Very telling.

OK, I am sorry, but what about all those bubbles rising to the surface?  What do you suppose those are?  Fish Farts??

Again with Rod’s EQUIPMENT… And worrying about EXPOSURE…  I would be worrying about too many double entendres…

I suppose this is what happens when the audience gets so far ahead of the storyteller…  that when the plot turns or truths become known, it’s kind of ho-hum… But let’s think for a moment about the creative process that brought us to this point.  I mean, at some point, Elrod and Co. had to conceive of a plot line that would get us to this juncture- where a cocky bass fisherman has built an entire empire upon a lie.  It’s not the Lures, people, it’s the fact that he has a bald accomplice with gills that plants large fish onto his “light-up” lure… Do you suppose that there is drinking involved?  or is this a process where they pull slips of paper of of different hats, one labeled “characters'” another labeled “plot dirvers” (like ‘rusty being kidnapped…’) and away they go?

Not to mention they probably have a library of clip art including ‘Mark looks concerned’ as in panel 3…  What do you suppose he uses on his hair? the way the light dances off’n it…

Ha! Told you!! I am so smug and proud, my head isn’t going to fit through the doorway now!!  Again, though, the thought balloon is absent and Mark must verbalize his every thought…  How funny… “Just. Have. To. Zoom. In. A. Little. Bit… There! SCUBA GEAR!!”

Catfish was right though, the van is a total MESS.  Water dripping everywhere!   But clearly Rusty has cracked the case and now he is in mortal danger…  How will they ever find him now that he is being transported in that cleverly camouflaged van??? Where’s Andy??  Why did he get the “story off?” We could sure use his nose right now…

Out of nowhere comes a device that would suggest that we are actually operating in the current year, or at least the recent past!  A laptop!!  A memory card from a Camera!  I guess the camera doesn’t have one of those fancy “view-screens…”  But no matter.

I think that’s hilarious… the ennui exhibited-** ho-hum** “Bass Boats, fisherman, the usual stuff”  **yawn**  But Wait!  There’s more!  Oh the heart races.  Do you suppose we will get to the punch line by Saturday?

Elrod HAS to be writing this with people like me in mind… “Let’s see, how moronic can I make Trail look?”  “Camera… Camera… CAMERA! WAIT! It holds PICTURES, maybe even CLUES!”  And to suggest that “Rusty being taken by force” is some new, novel plot twist is quite a stretch even in itself.  As previously discussed, Rusty is a consummate kidnapping victim.  Almost like he enjoys being bound, gagged and taken away “by force.”

But is there now a chance that Mark might be able to unleash his Fists of Justice?  His Roundhouse of Rightousness? His Right-hook of Retribution?  We can only wait and see!

Sadly, Rod is probably spot-on… The specific gravity and density of Mark’s Pre-frontal cortex* suggests that it will be at least a week’s worth of strips before he might link Rusty’s disappearance to Messrs. Bassy and Catfish…  But with the spotted salamanders on high alert, someone (maybe even Trail) will link the restlessness of this bellwether species to a great unhinging of the natural order of things… and suggest to him that his young charge is being taken against his will…

* This brain region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision making and moderating social behavior. The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex

Here it is in color!!  “That’s PINK Spotted Salamander to you, Fella!”

The kid saw everything…  but does he have the mental acuity to connect all the dots?  That’s the question… but oh, what to do?  I don’t think there’s felony charge for “cheating at a bass fishing tournament,” but I am pretty sure that Bassy and Catfish just punched their ticket to the land of big time hood-dom, adding kidnapping to their repertoire… Nice going, Catfish… we could have headed south and lived out our days in mexico, in shame, but now we are wanted felons…

But come to think of it, I don’t think I have ever recalled any baddie getting the kidnapping rap…

What will possibly next?  And you only THINK Rusty would never “go running off without telling me…” I mean really, Mark?  he does it all the time!  And where are you and are you paying attention to his needs?  I think not…

It’s a damn good thing that Mr Catfish, along with doing a piss-poor job of securing the details of his illegal fish tournament caper, seems to have been to too great a hurry to notice that A CAMERA went THUD! on the ground… Now all mark has to do is go through the pictures on the memory card…  Mark, you DO know how to do that, don’t you?

Hmmm… where’s Rusty? Not in the car?  What’s the rule again? 15 minutes and I get to leave without a shred of guilt?  But what will Cherry say? Oh, that’s right, he’s not really hers anyway… Damn, she might demand that we engage in baby-making activities… Shit I better go find him.

I was really looking forward to meeting some of the other fisher-people…  but I guess that was not to be.  That would have required Elrod and Co. to come up with a slew of other implausible names like “Musky McPike” and “Sally Sturgeon…” I mean, c’mon it’s not THAT hard, right?

Rusty’s been “kidnapped?”  Amazing, really.  Most sentient beings can learn from their past mistakes, but apparently this one can’t…  “Oh, I will just go nosing about in someone else’s stuff/ business, then act terribly surprised when I get grabbed, tied up and driven off…”

What choice do they have but to kill him?  I mean, Rusty KNOWS now what the “secret is…” as if this plot inflection wasn’t telegraphed a few weeks ago.  One should wonder, though, why Rod Bassy, Inc. didn’t invest in a cargo van with NO windows and spend a little money on the interior to hide the “tools of their trade…” so as to not signal defensiveness when people come around wanting to “see what’s inside…”

Imagine the shock and horror of being found out!  Well, that didn’t take very long!!  Such a sad face on poor Rusty!  It’s the fish-bait knife for you, Nosey Parker! A lesson well worth learning, since Rusty’s notion of private and personal boundaries has always been a bit retarded… Oops, can I use that word?  OK, “Challenged…”

At the risk of feeling way too proud of myself, I believe I may have “called” this plot out a few weeks back… and I am generally one that doesn’t need to do so… happy to let things unfold before me…

…but upon closer inspection, it appears that there may be water spilling out from under the bench seat- could they be growing and stocking trophy size bass in his  van?  That seems a little far-fetched given the elaborate set-up that would require.  Oh Silly Mr Catfish…  so careless.  Maybe he wants to get caught so that he can give up this awful life that he has become wedded to…

But what danger has Rusty walked into?  Quick, Lad, get your pictures and be gone!!!

Why is it that karmic forces always bestow upon this lad the unlocked door that really should be locked???  Usually it’s a cabin in the woods being used as a bad-guy hide-out, but in this case it’s a gaudy conversion van owned by none other than our primary suspect, which will no doubt now reveal its deep, dark secrets of “success.”  But, really, who taught this boy any manners? A notion of boundaries?  Of private property rights?  Where is that small, still voice that should be saying, “Gosh, Rusty, you really haven’t any business nosing around in other people’s stuff…”  But no, the passion he exhibits and where he allows his natural curiosity to take him is, at last, what will drive this tedious plot line forward… Thank you, Rusty.

And we get a double dose of wildlife as a bonus- one avian and one mammal.  But what do you suppose is going on in the van?  How could Mr. Catfish have been so careless?  Oh the mind races with possibilities, some of them downright icky…  let’s hope for something that’s not cringe-worthy…

Really?  Stretch it out, stretch it out.  How many weeks have we been waiting to pull the mask off of Rod Bassy?  This is getting tedious… and it would seem that the first string illustrators are getting tired of all this, too, as evidenced by the bad close-ups of our intrepid, erstwhile “Father-son” duo…

I remain terribly confused by the setting as well…  the re-introduction of an urban skyline just serves to disorient this reader.  I mean really.  And do we really need more pictures of boats, motors and “equipment?”  I am speechless.  C’mon, Elrod, let’s get the tension pot simmering at least…

Something to hide!  What a breakthrough! The case-cracker! I am surprised that Rusty gets to ride in the front seat with Mark… one would think that he would be relegated to permanent back seat status…

Do people really use words like “however” in normal speech patterns?

Let’s see if we get to meet other contestants with equally improbable fish-related names!

Can’t wait to see the inside of the “Lakeside Hotel.”  I think it more likely that it’s a “MOTEL” without hallways, and room entry from the parking lot…

Finally, however, Mark needs to lend Rusty some of his hair stick-um to tame that cowlick!

Tinted Windows?  Really! What if what he’s hiding has NOTHING to do with fishing?  What if he really is a better fisherman that everyone else, but there is something else horrible and nefarious going on?  Oh, the mind races…

And look at the concerned look on Mark’s face.  It appears that he is starting to realize that something strange is afoot!  But then again, fisher-people are known for their secrecy… and the BS that issues forth from their being.  Anything to hide their secrets and what it takes to catch the most and the biggest fish.  But still it would appear that Mark is now sufficiently aroused to go into action!