I am pretty sure that Bill and Mark are in the same time zone…  and I always picture Bill Ellis’ office to be somewhere on Madison Avenue in NYC… not on tony Park Avenue, but a block over.  Not low rent but not high either.  This is after all a PRINT Magazine we are talking about here…  and unless it’s part of some conglomerate like Condé Nast, it’s probably limping along financially…  But here’s my point:  either Bill Ellis is putting in ridiculous hours at the office, or he is at home, spoiling the dinner hour taking Mark’s call on his -what- Walkie Talkie??  He still doesn’t seem to know how to hold or use a smart phone- and is still all suited up like he is at work- c’mon Bill, throw on a smoking jacket or something.  Relax, dude…

Such a look from our hero…  Bill has hit the trip-wire in the Trail-brain, that’s for sure…  first West African Black Rhino, now the White!!  This injustice has to stop!  And who is better equipped to undo generational poverty and black marketeering in sub-Saharan Africa than our own MARK TRAIL?!?  Pack your bags, Mark, you are going on safari!

Are you trying to say something here, Bill Ellis??  Like that’s ALL he writes about, and MAYBE he could try another angle this time??  Is James Allen taking a shot at his own strip?  Funny.

But it’s like they don’t know each other- Not “Hey Bill, Mark here…” but rather “Bill Ellis, This is Mark Trail!”  Mark seems disappointed in panel three that Bill only considers his seminal piece on the West Africa Black Rhino as “good…”  “C’mon Bill, I was on fire!  That was my best work!” Mark’s face seems to say…

Well, it looks like Mark might be off somewhere…  Thank goodness.

We never get to see Mark hunched over his typewriter, bullet sweat flying off his brow, pencil clenched in his teeth, trying to make a deadline to get his story into the next issue of Woods and Wildlife magazine…  Or is it hunched over his laptop, connected to the magazine through a high-speed satellite internet connection…  we HAVE seen laptops and flat screen TV’s in the Trailverse…

But oh thank goodness! A trip!!  A chance to renew himself and his fists with the outside world…  Our strange Odyssey into the world of “Mark Loves Cherry” can soon become a distant (and fleeting?) memory…

But can you blame him?  I mean for how many decades has he been drawn, suffocating and not allowed to be a man…

And there HE is… RUSTY.  He looks like he has grown up a bit, not the scary, shape-shifting little sprite out of our worst dreams… He almost looks human…

One thing sure hasn’t changed, though.  Bad, random, non-sequitur dialogue.  Mark offers up “I left my cell phone in the house!” Cherry responds that she “didn’t hear is ringing!”  What?  Like your phone rings off the hook, at night?  Whatever…  Careful there Mark, you know that this is how babies are made, don’t you??