I knew a guy in college named “Curt” and we called him “Dirt” because it rhymes and because he was such an asshole… especially with women.  He thought it was great and never figured that the joke was on him…

Yes, and we all know from experience that marriage solves all financial problems…  makes perfect sense.  Again, with the “I Bet” language…  Dirty, it’s a freakin’ wonder the two of you ever got together in the first place…  I mean really, what could she possibly see in you??

But wait!! Is that Mr. Lion in the very foreground of the panel?  Looks like it!  Where on earth is the animal life so thick that it won’t fit all into the same frame?

“Dirty Dyer?”  You have to be kidding.  Your Friends call you “Dirty?”  But only your “Good Friends?”  Really??

Well, I for one applaud the return of absolutely inane dialogue and plot lines…  it’s almost as if Jack Elrod coaching James Allen through this story- Stage whispers, if you will…

Well, “Dirty,” you are going to have to lure Mark further away from camp if you are going to do him any harm and make it look like an animal attack…

I have a new take on what’s happening with that Lion…  He’s not hunting, he’s homeless!  He challenged the “Lion King” and is now cast out from the Pride…  and everywhere he goes he is unwelcome…  and referring back to Kipling’s “The Elephant’s Child,” I recall his Aunt the Giraffe gave him a good kick in the pants…  so maybe a Giraffe kick is nothing to mess with after all…

Ominous thought balloons coming from the cab of the truck…  Chris “Makin’ it up as I go along/ Livin’ by my wits” Dyer’s plan is forming up nicely.  He will make Mark’s demise look like an accident!  Yea! That’s it… How he plans to pull that off should be entertaining…  doesn’t he realize that it’s Mark that holds dominion over the Animal Kingdom, how Mark was able to summon a bigger bear to attack the bear that was after him???

And speaking of dominion, what happening around Mark in Panel two?  Is he literally sitting on a cloud, hovering as if god-like in the presence of mere mortals??  Well, Mark, it’s nice of you to come down off your lofty perch and walk with the common folk, even those who mean to do you harm!

Gee, I wonder what it could be?  Counterfeit Beanie Beanie Babies??  Pirated DVD’s?  Chinese Computer Operating Systems?  Blood Diamonds?  Oh, that’s right- it’s bound to be Rhino Horn destined for the Asian market where it’s used as an aphrodisiac… I guess Western Medicine in the form of Cialis and Viagra has yet to translate to Eastern markets… the whole sitting in separate tubs thing probably doesn’t work, not in a culture known for communal bathing…

Your plan is perfect, Chris, with the exception of two things- Mark will not be easily taken “out of the way” and Lori can’t stand you.  Other than that, have fun!

The two beings in this single panel strip that have the most in common are the Lion and Chris.  Neither are getting what they want.  And are probably going to act out as a result.  Got news for you, James Allen, the lionesses of the Pride do the hunting…  While the males fight amongst themselves to protect their position and their harem.  This lion was probably awoken from a nap, which is why he is cranky… and has absolutely no interest in bagging a baby pachyderm…

Oh, Mark.  You can say whatever you want and Lori will buy it, won’t she… and what are you doing continuing to stand next to her?  While Chris rides in the forward cab?  Chris was supposed to be doing that, but then you came along.  Did you “tell Chris you are happily married,” or did you forget to do that??  And Lori- What a Trollop…  “Oh Mark, the Animal Kingdom…” blah blah, eyelashes batting, grabbing him and holding him close… really??

For whatever reason, all access to the full color strip on all the usual sites was unavailable this morning…  but no matter… the story has turned decidedly dark anyway…  with Mark mooning and pining for Cherry and Chris Dyer plotting to take Mark out “in the tall grass…”  Is this the African equivalent of “the woodshed??”

But this is camping at its finest- recall the linen on the table, the Pinot Noir served with dinner, now look at the loft on the not one, but TWO pillows on Chris Dyer’s cot!  Holy Goose-feathers!!  This is more than most people have in their homes…

But certainly the plot thickens as Chris “I need to get out of debt” Dyer plans his next move, which involves disposing of Mark Trail…  and since Mark has not been in contact with anyone else, who’s to know where he is or who he is with…  it’s almost the perfect crime…

Might want to put a ring on your finger Mark, it would only be fair to the people you encounter, especially lovelorn folk that either want you or are made jealous and uncomfortable by you…  what a quaint notion, though, that simply telling Chris you are a “Happily Married Man” and that “You love your wife very much” will “ease his mind…”  And Mark, Chris will not understand, since he simply can’t have what it is he wants.  Lori has herself to blame here… you don’t go on Safari with a potential love interest without making your intentions and feelings well known and understood…

And Mark, what has given you the impression that Chris is at all reasonable?  He seems as volatile and desperate a man as has ever graced the panels of the Mark Trail comic strip.  In fact, I would lay odds (using Chris’ terms…) that he will meet up with a Mark Trail Haymaker before this is all done…

So with Lori completely UN-reassured, and deeply disappointed that Mark is not in play, Mark toddles off to bed…

Oh, careful there, Mark.  That touch to your unshaven (but who would know since you don’t grow whiskers) chin spells trouble.  If Chris Dyer sees that gesture, without the words, he could easily misconstrue and have his fears confirmed… That Lori has fallen for you!!

But seriously, Mr. James Allen, do we really want our hero dishing out relationship advice?  What Mark knows about love one could fit into an eye-dropper…  Where are the baddies?  Where are those evil poachers?  C’mon let’s dispense with the “As the Trail turns” and get on with something that will require Mark to Punch a Poacher and save a White Rhino!

And thank you, Lori Tompkins, for using the objective form of the first person pronoun, “me,” instead of “I.”

Is it because you maintain the veneer of caring?  When in fact people confuse and bore you?  Especially when they are want to share with you all their tawdry history?  So you raise your glass at the prospect of having Lori tell you something in private, only to respond with a confused and shocked look in panel two… are you reacting to the fact that Lori has “known Chris for several years,” or that she feels like she has “made a mistake?” that is the greatest “oh crap” look I have ever seen…

But Lori, let’s get real here…  Are you and Chris “Friends with Benefits” or are you merely “Safari Buddies?”  We need to define terms here…  And how could he not fall in love with you?  You of the raven hair and impossibly small waist…

This has GOT to be a first!  I don’t think I have ever seen Mark with an adult beverage…  And I will give Chris credit, if it’s due him, he really knows how to entertain!  What a spread- fine dining al fresco with the Springbok noshing on the foliage in the foreground…

Given Chris’ 180-degree turn of attitude, he seems to almost be setting Mark up… Leaving him alone with Lori!  Has Mark even bothered to tell Lori that he is married?  Well, that would just spoil the fun, I suppose…  I do like this, though, much better than Mark getting into trouble in his own back yard (albeit a BIG  back yard) and having Cherry come to the rescue…

OK, a couple of thoughts:  first, this installment almost seems out of sequence…  The conversation would have been had right after the “Mark saves Taurus from the marauding Hippo” scene… but apparently they are want to re-live Mark’s heroics and cleverness long after they happened…  and second, who is “leading” this safari?  Apparently it is Chris Dyer… my assumption that Lori Tompkins was behind this- sort of a bucket list thing- was wrong…  So in addition to having a chronic gambling problem and being in hawk up to his eyeballs, Chris Dyer is also experienced in the ways of the Savanna?  I am starting to hear his voice- Afrikaans…  Deep South African roots.  White supremacist.  Oh, this is getting interesting…  He isn’t in love with Lori, he sees her as a “Mark,”  ha!  Get it??

Nice Aryan buzz-cut, Chris…  sort of a Dolph Lundren special… And again with the gambling references- “I would’ve laid odds…”  Do chronic gamblers really think like that and speak these tired, hackneyed phrases?  I think they do…

Our party does not waste any time…  last we knew it was night-time, a full moon and Chris Dyer was professing his longings for Lori Tompkins.  But now the truck is packed and Mark and Lori are once again commanding the best views while Chris simpers and molders riding shotgun with Taurus, or one of the other (at least) 3 porters, since these vehicles don’t drive themselves!!  I wonder if one of them is named George?

And, true to form, Mark remains oblivious to the “drama” that unfolds and involves him…  Good to know that Mark’s obtuse nature and relative position on the autism spectrum remains unchallenged…

And how it sucks to be one of the cloven hooved denizens of the African savanna…  You are born to run, to become some apex predator’s meal, only to be converted to carrion and picked over by hyena and vulture…  not very dignified, now is it?  I am guessing wildebeest… aka the Gnu…

James Allen has them.  Elrod did not.  Still adjusting to this new world where people have hearts and such… And also where people, even the men are not afraid to show them, or a world where men bleach their hair and leave their big, thick, dense black eyebrows untouched…  or is it the other way around?  Does Chris Dyer color his brows and leave his blonde mane au naturale?

Again, I say, it’s just plain weird, if not cruel, to lead a man on…  to bring him on safari only to break his heart…  I mean, how long have these two known each other?  Do they have history?  Did they at one time play on a level field??  Are they sharing a tent but that’s all?  Lori Tompkins, you are an evil and wicked temptress!  But then the look on your face in panel two, out of view of your frustrated former lover, says it all…

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…