When does a hobby become an obsession, an obsession become an addiction?   When you know that what you are doing is harming yourself and those around you and still you can’t stop…  Be careful, Lori.  Just like that lout that Meryl Streep was “with” in Out of Africa, Chris What’s-his-Name is probably harboring syphilis.   Then she met her “Mark Trail” (played by Robert Redford) and things got really complicated…

But what, if anything DO you feel, Lori?  It’s very strange that you are on Safari with a guy when the two of you are obviously NOT and the same page… about ANYTHING…

Nice to see the return of the random wildlife shot.  It cannot be easy to draw all those stripes on that zebra…

OK, let’s not get too excited about the fact that I might have guessed how this story was going to unfold…  but in the past there has been Catfish aiding and abetting Rod Bassy by strapping on the SCUBA tanks, the bear finding the maple-syrup-infused Indian artifacts, and now we have Chris (I have a gambling problem) Dyer going double-or-nothing by getting involved with a few locals in their poaching scheme to pay off the shylocks with whom he is in deep…  Oh, money, thou art a wicked temptress…

But Lori Tompkins, you brought Chris Dyer all the way to Africa to tell him that the two of you couldn’t be together?  Seems a bit, well, involved…  And you are one to talk, considering you are on the lam after embezzling school funds!  A dentist!  Ha!  My hind foot!

Yes, Chris, your scheme may work out, but what about your impulsive nature?  What about your addictive personality?  Success here will only cause you to go after the next score, since the thrill of winning fades and you will need another fix!!

OK, unless of course you count the far left narrative panel, which will continue to move the story along MUCH FASTER than any stories of Mark Trail past…  I don’t know, I feel like I am sort of being jerked around… It was just morning for crying out loud, and the last image I have burned in my psyche is a flaming spear thrust into a gaping hippo’s mouth…  now I have to shift quickly to the comely Lori Tompkins leaning up against a tree in the Sub-Saharan Moonlight with the feckless and out of work Chris Dyer confessing his undying love for her…  I am getting a whiplash here!!

And Chris, I hope you are a good judge of human emotion, better than you are at keeping a job, because Lori, despite the fact that the two of you are traveling together on this exotic junket, presumably on her dime, wants nothing to do with you.  But can you blame her?  I mean, she’s met THE TRAIL… and there can be no going back now…  You know what they say… three’s a crowd…

As Mark Stand there, like a member of the Justice League (Superman?) or one of the “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,”  it’s already quit clear why providence has brought all these people together… To save a Porter named Taurus from an untimely death at the mouth of a Hippo…

Yes Chris, I imagine you WOULD bet money, if’n you only had some…  Remember?  You are UNEMPLOYED??  Such is the lot of the down on their luck, always looking to make a score to bring themselves back even!!  And Chris, that burning stick isn’t the only thing that Mark hasn’t “thrust” before in the presence of an angry beast, or even in the face of advances at home…

Well it’s a damn good thing that Mark Trail and his party don’t follow the OUTDOOR CODE!  Otherwise there would not be the always available flaming stick to ward off marauding Hippopotami…  But Really?  “Hey! Over Here!”??  This is an African Hippo, how would it understand English??

My hopes that somehow the red whistle would come into play are dashed!  The mystery of the red whistle remains intact.  Poor Mr. Hippo.  He’s going to have a nasty burn- worse than Pizza stuck to the roof of your mouth…  Oh well, soaking it in the river will take care of that.  I want to say that I am reminded of a Rudyard Kipling “Just So Story” about the Elephant’s Child by the “Great Gray Green Greasy Limpopo River all set about with Fever Trees…” Wait- that was an elephant story…  or the one about how the Rhinoceros got his skin- where the Farsi baked a cake and got the crumbs under the Rhino’s skin and caused him to roll around and scratch himself… But that’s a Rhino Story…  alas, no Hippo stories to recall…

Oh Dear…  That Bull (not Taurus) must have felt to need to protect his mate/ territory.  And I see now that Taurus has the same type of whistle around his neck that Kah-deen was wearing when we met him briefly at the airport baggage claim.  Interesting.  Is this to alert others of danger?  Well, get blowin’ Mate.  Oops wait we aren’t in Australia we are in Africa.

And who does Lori’s Hair in the bush?  She strikes a typical pose with her hands on her head and her eyes bugged out.  Nice flip-do… And what’s Mark doing in the background?  That has to be him cutting such a striking profile…

Are we talking fluff and fold here?  Is “Taurus” (Really?!?) offering to rinse out Mark’s “Unmentionables??”  And why is “Taurus” (Don’t worry I will stop putting quotes around his name in a minute…)  shouting at Mark?  Is that why his left hand is raised in a cupped fashion around the side of his mouth as he talks??

And in not “paying attention to his surroundings” (What- is this your first Safari, Taurus??)  He’s about to get attacked by a rogue Hippopotamus… I learned on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom that The Hippo is one of nature’s most fearsome creatures, whose tusks are razor sharp and can disembowel a man as quickly as it might look at him… despite not having very good vision, the “sight” of a man doing laundry has been known to enrage a territorial Hippo… OK, I just made that one up…

You know, it’s hard enough being a white guy these days, but an UNEMPLOYED white guy, traveling with your gainfully employed <girl>friend, presumably on HER dime… well, that makes it all the more difficult.  Of course Lori could have chosen her words a little more carefully…  She could have simply said that Chris does “import/export” or “in commodities” (like rhino horn??)

And it appears that this “conversation” between Mark and Lori has persisted well into the night.  Once camp is set up Mark goes back into interrogation mode, wondering whether Chris “helps” with Lori’s Dental Practice… “No, Mark, he wouldn’t be very good at that, what with his tendency to scowl and frown all the time… he would scare my patients away…”  So we will call him “unemployed.”  Like this is terribly different from Mark’s status?  Mark maintains the illusion of being “employed” but it’s really all a ruse…  I think Editor Bill Ellis is really a figment of Mark’s imagination and that his “trips” and his “adventures” are merely flights of fantasy…

And Mark, when are you going to divulge the fact that you are married and living rent-free in your father in law’s house?

The only thing missing from Mark’s exclamation is “OH BOY!” Settle down, big guy.  Stay cool.  Take your pictures, listen and learn.

Look at the SIZE of the Cargo Truck in the caravan.  Looks like the NAZI truck from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” that Indiana Jones hijacked…

I trust that it is Lori who is “Glad…” and not Chris.  He is probably still sullen and sulking about this recent turn of events…

And Where have we seen this before?  Oh I don’t know… maybe everywhere Mark goes…  Women want him, Men are threatened by him.    Mark Loosens his collar and it’s all over…

And what do you know?!?  Chris speaks!!   Mark, have you ever heard of the phrase, “Oh, no thank you?”  It comes in handy every now and then, but of course we need to move this story along. Watching Mark mope over a book he is only pretending to read is not very exciting, now is it??

Spoiler alert- “Chris” is the leader of a Poaching Ring…  I will bet hard currency on that one.

Again, his name is music to his ears…  “Why, Yes, I am!”

And a quick search of the Google reveals that Lori Tompkins is in Africa to start a new life, after embezzling over $100K from the Salisbury, (CT) Central School… She’s just been released, and is no doubt violating the terms of her Parole/ Probation by leaving the country…

It would seem, though, that Chris is a mute.  Hasn’t said a word yet.  But he sure looks snappy in his Safari Jacket complete with waist band and epaulets…

But Mark, you give up so quickly.  You came to Africa to hang with Jacob Hickman and you are simply taking a porter’s word that he is missing?  No inkling or desire to follow up on that?  Where is your natural curiosity, your obtuse nature that allows you to walk onto private property to snoop around??

And Mark where exactly are you going with that “It seems I’m stuck here for a while!” line?  It smacks of desperation, or at least a come-hither line that might get you invited somewhere other than this hotel with fine dining…

Of all the <hotels with fine dining> in all the world, you had to walk into this one, Mark Trail… With a book, no less.  Have we ever seen Mark crack the binding on a book before??  We have to assume that he reads, given that he writes for a living, but still…

And never mind that fact that Mark’s notoriety knows (literally) no bounds.  Here he is in Africa and he can’t seem to go unnoticed/ unrecognized.  The fact that it’s a loverly lass is something we have all come to expect over the years, right?

But what does this mean?  Mark has had showings?  Does that suggest that there is a coffee table book with his name on it??  “The World You Would not Know…” by Mark Trail… Maybe tomorrow Chris gets to speak!

Never mind that Jacob Hickman has been killed by poachers, now Mark is STUCK in Africa.  On expense account, no less…  Mark looks so SAD…  the game is over before it started… but worry not, friends, no injustice can go un-righted…  not in the Trailverse!  Not when Mark has traveled across space and time to get a story!

Funny how Kah-deen knew that Mark was coming in… even what flight!  Jacob must have run a very transparent operation- probably had a Google Calendar with open access…

How’s the coffee, Mark?  I bet it’s a little stronger than that dishwater you get at Lost Forest… Might put a little hair on your chest, of which we learned last month you have none!

Music to his ears, his own name is…  And thank goodness Mark is back to speaking out loud and not THINKING all those THOUGHTS to himself.  I feel better already.

Mark wasn’t difficult to spot.  Ivy league all the way… dresses and carries himself like an off-duty pilot I once knew.

Mark, I had not noticed before, but is that a gun?  A Rifle?  What exactly do you think you’ll be doing on this trip?  Snapping pictures and writing words, to be be sure… but hunting?  Is that for personal protection?  Poor Man. I believe these are the first people of color he has ever encountered… no wonder he is confused.

Is that Kaden as in Ka’-Den or Kah-Deen’?  I chooses the latter…  more exotic.  More in keeping with the mystery of the Dark Continent…  Kaden looks like he grew up wrestling Rhino.  Or judging by the whistle around his neck, refereeing matches…

And of course there’s “a problem.”  Where Trail goes trouble follows!

I have to hand it to James Allen.  We are boldly going where Dodd and Elrod were loath to travel…

He will arrive on a noisy silver bird.  He will stand out from the crowd.  He will emanate his own light while carrying his own luggage…  His name is Mark Trail.

But seriously…  How are we to regard the people in the first panel?  The Gentleman in the foreground, judging by his style of turban, has also come from a great distance- Like Northern India or Pakistan…  and what is the lady balancing on her head? A giant platter of hay?  For whom or what??  And center stage rear is a person astride a donkey, with another in tow…  Then there’s the guy in the airport… Hmmm… today I shall wear my best vest and fez… no shirt, just vest…  to meet my party at the airport… Is there a Shriner’s convention in town?

Not like he hasn’t gone off before… although this time he needs a PASSPORT, which could be a first, since up until the 80’s and 90’s, a person could cross over to Canada and back with little more than a driver’s license…   And we know that Mark has been to Canada before to meet up with that rascal Johnny what’s-his-name (and his monstrous brood)…  the French Canadian owner of a fishing lodge…  But back to our story of the oh-so-sad Cherry Davis Trail.  Maybe she has cried before, but has suffered in silence and off camera.  In the Allen-age of Mark Trail, we get to see it all!!  Thought bubbles all around, everyone!!

So while Cherry cries her little eyes out, Mark is probably chatting up a stewardess and flashing that big toothy grin of his.  He is relieved to be back in the zone- one where he can do what he does best.  Mark, we are with you, buddy!

Nice, conservative suits with white shirts and rep ties?  Mark appears to have a closet full of them for just such occasions as would arise when needing to board an airplane…  We don’t see that much anymore.  Not even in elite class.  Comfort is everything for today’s traveler.  Thank you Mark for showing proper respect for what used to be a novel and  elite form of travel.  And it’s great that Andy and Doc came out to show Cherry support!  No Rusty though…  he was locked in his cage before they left for the airport, punishment for the “Oh boy, Mark, Can I go?!?” outburst yesterday.

And is the plane in panel two really necessary? It’s way too close the terminal building, is pitched and yawed all wrong, and I can’t tell whether it’s coming or going…  I would say that the riskiest part of Mark’s trip lies not on the Dark Continent, but rather in the air… and riskier still would it be for him to spend one more night in his marriage bed!  Go Mark! Reclaim your soul!  Into the Heart of Darkness!!

Yesterday Cherry only knew that a call from Editor Bill Ellis would take Mark away from Lost Forest… Today she learns that “away” means “Africa…”  Poor Little Lamb…

Oh Rusty…  Please.  But in this new world of James Allen’s Mark Trail (Not your Father’s or Mother’s Mark Trail, that’s for damn sure) one never knows what can happen next.  Established roles and mores have been tossed to the wind.  And besides, if Rusty doesn’t go, then he won’t have a chance to get kidnapped.  That’s his ultimate skill, by the way… I can see him now, all tied up and being held against his will by evil White Rhino poachers!!  And they are going to have black skin. The poachers that is, not the Rhinos…  thus introducing people of color into the strip for the first time… of course we had to go to freakin’ Africa to accomplish that…  because certainly there aren’t any people of color in the United States…

Rare has been the time that Mark actually checked in with the home front while out on assignment…  so wrapped up he gets in his work… that it probably doesn’t occur to him.  That, and every now and then Mark finds himself locked in a cooler or some such thing that would prevent him from making the call anyway…

And Cherry, Really.  Can you be that sad?  That surprised?  Remember, this is what your man does, despite the weeks of (ahem…) action at Lost forest.  Consider this:  If Mark doesn’t get going on a bona fide adventure soon the future of the strip is in peril…  and your life as you know it will crumble to the stone foundation upon which your log house rests.  Sort of like the Truman Show, you probably don’t realize that you are all under constant surveillance, that your life only exists because people are watching you, can’t keep their eyes off of you, despite that they know that watching you all is slightly perverse and a colossal waste of time…