So much for the boat, and so much, presumably, for the men chasing Mark and Ken…  Although I really doubt that a small fuel leak combined with a signal flare would create such a conflagration…

So again, as Mark Trail channels the A-Team, I guess we’ll have to get used to a lot of pyrotechnics…

Perspective and a closed aperture creates a deeper depth of field and makes mark look really burly in panel two, as he points the flare gun at the boat with the fuel leak…  stand by for another BOOOM, ladies and gentlemen… This is starting to remind me of “The A-Team” from the 80’s…  Stuff was always getting blowed-up in that show…

As Mark is about to go all-in on destroying yet another rental boat, we are now left to wonder what the next move will be… which of course will keep us tuning in.  See you tomorrow everyone!

With the Yacht off in the distance, the Sea-ATV’s take over!  Oh, things don’t look good for Mark now!!  With a resounding CLICK the wheels come down… Onomatopoeia is a useful device in comics… given that the reader has to imagine the sounds and the voices, it’s helpful to be guided…

But BLDDDK? What on earth is that?

An observation:  the dialogue in the Trail-past was awful, often times stilted and cringe-worthy… but now the lack of it takes all the air of the room…  perhaps Mr. Allen should enlist the help of a writer to go along with his (in)estimable artistic talent…

Wasn’t that the infraction that landed Anthony Michael Hall’s character in all-day detention?  He brought a flare gun to school to shoot himself (or the teacher?) because he was getting something less than an ‘A’ in Shop Class?  You mess with the bull, son, you get the horns…

As Ken checks on Mark’s welfare, (and why not a simple, “What in God’s name are you thinking?!?”) Mark returns it with a mere “I’m good – You?” As if they were meeting on a street corner some random Saturday afternoon…  So off they go, away from the boat that is quickly becoming an eco-hazard, hoping to not get caught by the bad guys…

Well, no WAY Mark is getting his damage deposit back now, and no way Editor Bill Ellis is going to let him rent another boat!!  Do boats have airbags?  Probably not, which means that Mark and Ken will be properly concussed, if in fact they can walk away from this.  What exactly is the strategy here??  We prefer to be marooned and surrounded by bad guys?  As compared to high-tailing it out of there??  Oh well, we shall see where the story goes now.

Chin up, boys and girls.  Mark has crashed before.  I am suddenly reminded that a plane making a hard landing on Slumber Mountain makes roughly the same sound… or at least calls for the same large font…

…that’s because it is… We were introduced to Ken and Kelly In June.  It’s nearly the end of October without an end in sight…

So as Mark rams the hull of the rental boat up on the (hopefully sandy) beach, it’s clear that he won’t be getting his damage deposit back…

How do you figure, Mark?  You stand a better chance trapped on a small island surrounded by gun wielding bad guys than you do in a boat that offers you at least a little cover?  What exactly do you expect to find there?

Leaking fuel into the ocean?  That’s criminal!  Very un-Trail!  Of course it’s NOT his fault… remember??

“Looks like the boat’s been hit?”  You think??  It’s a miracle YOU haven’t been hit, Ken…

Well, this is a fine kettle of fish, isn’t it?  Mark, for all your hot-dogging around, you have now put yourself in a real bind… but that’s OK, we need to move this along and find out who the real baddies are…  Considering Mark is used to dealing with occasional poachers, turtle egg stealers, two bit larcenists, and capitalists ready to repent, this is going to be a brand new challenge- pure, megalomaniacal, out-for-world-domination evil!   Takes on a whole new dimension- James Bond, where are you?  I can see it now- “The name is Trail… MARK Trail…”

Seriously, Mark, use your head!!  What have you learned from all your days in the woods? That Nature has endowed its creatures with their own special strengths and gifts- right now yours is SPEED!  Does the box turtle try to out run the fox?  no!  A turtle will pull itself into its shell and wait out the attack.  Does the Hare stand still when being attacked? No! it RUNS!!

And what do you have to show for all your guile (or lack of)?  Bullet holes in your back-end and probably in your engine, which will now allow yourself to be captured and well, who knows what-all… Well, it’s probably for the best as this story line needs to include the real villain, monologuing about world domination… and a hefty bill going back to Woods and Wildlife Magazine Editor Bill Ellis for yet another destroyed boat!!

Is that Ken squealing like the pig in the GEICO commercials?  or is is the final hench-man about to go under??  OK that’s a stretch… the pig goes “WEE, WEE, WEEEEE all the way <home,> and someone here said, “AAAHHH…” but it’s the best I can come up with before the coffee kicks in…

But really?  that boat is heeled over so far I doubt the prop is even making contact with the water…  but no matter, the laws of physics and naval architecture mean nothing in this world…

Oh, Mark, never content (anymore at least) to run away from danger, you are now facing it head on and won’t be happy until you have knocked all the bad guys off their “vehicles…”  I get your challenge with finding the rights words, Mark, I don’t know what to call them either…

With all the red-necks on sea-ATV’s dispatched, will Mark turn toward the mother ship?  Is he that crazy??  Can Ken talk some sense into him?  Ken has a lot to be worried about- he only has a river in his name, not like Mark who has a comic strip named for him… One of you is disposable, the other not… besides it would seem that Mark has no compunction about leaving angry women in his wake…  and would not find it difficult to break the news to Kelly that her man is down!

Such action has never been witnessed in the annals of Mark Trail!  Never has Mark been allowed to utter an unbridled “WOO HOO!” twice in one story arc…

I am waiting now for the helicopter(s) to take off from the yacht and engage… Given James Allen’s love of drawing modern, carbon-based conveyances, they can’t be far off…

Good thing Mark popped for the model with the bullet-proof hull!!  Sort of like opting for the “never-lost” unit in the Hertz rental prior to smartphones and Siri helping us all get around…  All this excitement might have left a scratch or two on the clear-coat, but heck, it’s all for a good cause!  As Mark rams into ATV-2, we see the driver losing saliva in copious amounts as his automatic weapon goes flying and his craft is reduced to scrap…

Sorry for the delay, kids… out of town for the weekend…  Back to work tomorrow and more bone-crushing action in the Trail-verse!!

Strafing fire with a fully automatic Israeli submachine gun/pistol (Uzi 9mm, I am thinking…) and they are not even stopping the Trail!!  What the…?

But OK, we’ll go with it…  Mark needs to run Mr. Aqua-ATV over and get the heck outa there!  For the record, yes, Mark IS getting attacked this time, unlike the encounters he had down inthe deep, where he was the aggressor.

On a watery note, I watched a movie the other night, Pressure, on NetFlix.  It was actually really good.  Starred Danny Houston, recognizable as the saxophone playing, jazz and catfish loving Ax-Man in American Horror Story- Coven.  Called upon my two greatest phobias- enclosed spaces and getting trapped underwater with seemingly no way to escape…  introduced the topic of Full Saturation Diving… really interesting.

Stop pussy-footing around, Mark! Drop the hammer on those twin screws and get out of there!  Unless the rental agency gave you a boat that is all show and no go… No way you shouldn’t be able to out-run a fleet of all-terrain/water vehicles…

Ever wonder why the steering wheel of a powerboat tends to be on the starboard side?  Well, here are a bunch of ideas, the most compelling of which dates back to the Vikings…  That the tiller was on the “steerboard” (right) side of the boat and they would dock on the “port” (left) side so as not to mess up the steering mechanism…

Well isn’t that fancy!  These bad-guy-mobiles can go from sea to land and back again!  And Mark, what are you going to tell the rental agency when you return the boat? “How was everything, sir?”  Oh, just fine…  “I see you ran into some stray gunfire… we see that a lot in these waters- were you drug running or smuggling radioactive material??”

These guys don’t mess around!  Clearly they want the cache of Cobalt-60 to remain a secret… their secret…  World domination can come at a terrible price…

Poor Ken.  He doesn’t realize that this is all in a day’s work for Trail…  Getting, kicked, punched and shot at…

So nice that the bad guys are wearing the blaze orange personal flotation devices…  this will aid in recovering their bodies when things don’t go their way…

So fire up that ride, Trail, your life is depending on it!  Mark, you have the pumped-up kicks, but can you out-run their guns??

What’s with the blue highlights?  And the fact that your helmet would have supposedly kept your head dry and every hair in place…  are you perspiring??

So what are you waiting for?  Fire up that cigarette boat!  Let’s see what she can do!  Certainly these hovering/ jet powered personal water craft are no match for 8 cylinders worth of displacement and propeller power!

These are not your mother’s and father’s bad guys!  There has been an upgrade to the evil that stalks the Trail-verse…  The kind that has a payroll, offers benefits and a retirement plan!  The kind that invents its own technology… like the over-the-water conveyances seen below… what the hell are they?  No doubt the bad guys are aware that they are down three in the first inning of play and are plenty mad about it!!

Like angry hornets that have had their nest tampered with, out they come… How prophetic is it that Bill Ellis suggested that Mark “get a fast boat…”

Probably a good thing that the divers couldn’t talk anyway since they probably only spoke Español… and among all of Mark’s considerable talents, pretty sure speaking Spanish isn’t one of them…  and where is the big boat that made Ken all wide-eyed??

But let’s be really clear, here… no one attacked you, Mark.  They might have been lurking menacingly, but I believe that you are the aggressor here…  but no one will ever know anything but your version of the truth…  What is it we say?  History is written by the victors?