Mark’s power of suggestion is getting to at least one of them…

Almost like Jedi Mind Tricks…  He lures people in with the power of suggestion… suggesting that he knows more than they do…  Again, this is a ‘new’ Mark… I prefer the old one that led with his fists.

Goodness, Mark, you are such a bore…  an absolute Buzz Killington…

So where’s your NOAA Weather Radio?  Pretty sure you don’t leave home without it… or at least the App…  Why don’t you help Baldie download it onto his phone, that way he’d have up-to-the-minute information about weather conditions in the local area!  And his safety would be assured!  Because if there’s one thing we have to do, it’s make sure that no one gets hurt!!  Poor Baldie… he never figured on what would happen once he stepped into the Trailverse… Once you check in, it’s awfully difficult to check out…  I know from personal experience.

I wonder if North American/King Features Syndicate knows that Mark is still shilling for NOAA??

Be right all the time?  Know more than everyone else? Care about bank robbers and kidnappers? OK, that last one is new.  In the olden days Mark would have punched his way out of there, leaving a Trail (ha!) of teeth and spittle…

But what is he talking about?  The mere arrival of clear skies does not mean the coast is clear?  That there is smooth sailing? That the small craft warning has been lifted?  OK, too many nautical references in the middle of the prairie…  but I guess that’s what he’s getting at…

… yup, time to WRAP THIS UP…

By now I am sure that Johnny is sick and tired of being nothing but a setup man for Sheriff Strober’s (Stober’s?) one-liners…  “I’m a bit slow and can’t see things the way you do, Sheriff…”  “That’s OK, Johnny, that’s why you are here… to make me look good.”

Who else would it be, Johnny?  Hmmm?

So the sun does shine in South Dakota.  Well, you’d never know it by the last few months, which felt more like a monsoon season…

But… uh… yea.  Sure.  I bet your cell/data plan is all that… able raise a signal in the middle of the Black Hills…  But then maybe he has Verizon… They always claim to cover the boondocks…  It’s that 1 or 2 percent better than the other plans…  Looks like Baldy is snapping a selfie in panel three…

Not sure what we are looking at or listening to this morning, but it appears that Johnny had to burst through a secure hatch…

…only to emerge in a crouch reminiscent of Brandon Lee in The Crow.

Good think Mark and Company are in the Saloon, otherwise the story might have moved along a little too quickly…

Here we go, kids, hopefully to something more moderately interesting…

Needing a Tetanus Shot?  C’mon Johnny… you should have one every ten years…  Just like Mark was admonished by Doc before we ever got going on this “adventure…”  Yea… that was 7 months ago…  good lord…

Oh the ink and time that is wasted on idle and meaningless prattle…

…but when the medium is largely digital, there is no cost, other than time… which as I pointed out yesterday is exceedingly precious, especially in light of recent events…  We never know when our number is up, when fate or evil will strike…

I went to a Celebration Mass last week for a co-worker’s father…  65 years old.  Heart attack while hiking, for god’s sake… While it was largely a traditional Mass, the service closed with a quote from Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5, wherein Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time” and travels to the planet Tralfamadore and learns that time is meaningless.  He learns that everything that has happened , is happening or will happen is actually all there in real time…  that “death” as we know it, doesn’t carry the weight we think it does.  Tell that to the people who were just mowed down…  and those left behind to deal with it.

As Johnny and Sheriff Stober make their way through the cave system…

…and we are forced to learn more about it than really matters…  We find the Sheriff dropping weight faster that Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club…

…whereupon, they weren’t charged with anything, not seen to have violated the robbers’ rights to a speedy trial and  due process… Justice back in the day was swift… upon inspecting the bodies, it was easy to see that they were bad guys.  I am sure they all wore black hats…

In other , very sad news, Tom Petty passed away…  age 66.  I am sure when he was 10 years younger, he figured he had more time…  I certainly do…

Finally, a reference to the ONE, the ONLY…  the MARK

And why are you so sure, Johnny?  Why would Mark go the CHURCH?  Because he is a particularly religious man?  Never mind that you are correct (despite the fact that he got waylaid into the SALOON…) it’s nice to see that we might even be closing the circle here?  Oh, such a tease you are James Allen…

Completely off topic (other than it involves Mark…) below is an animated piece done by a true fan…  and if I’m not mistaken, it uses a storyline from a pre-Allen period.  No sound, and wait for it to load…

… Cuz that’s the category you’d be in, Sheriff… you did afterall plan ahead with the candy bars…

Bad puns aside, Johnny, I don’t think you have to worry too much about hurting Ol’ Sheriff Stober’s feelings…  and by the way, leave the punning to the master, Stephan Pastis of Pearls Before Swine…

While the twister twists its way through the Ghost Town, sending debris flying every which-a-way, Johnny and the Sheriff are oblivious to its wrath…

…while once again we are reminded of our author’s deft use of clip art…

look familiar??

…to resolve the question of “What will we do when we encounter Samson, the Grizzly, who is completely out of range and never leaves the cave?” mystery.  Wheeewee!  Still my beating heart!!

Meanwhile, back somewhere else…  Why don’t we cut to Mexico, or the Caribbean, or the desert southwest, or Kuala Lumpur?  It would make as much sense as anything…

Sorry Campers.  Saturday came and went and the muse didn’t strike…  it was a loverly, mid-summer-like day in the 90’s with humidity to match, and we had nothing going on so we took full advantage of it!  I’ve been pondering the “NUTZ” candy bar punchline for a couple of days now and it’s not entirely out of line…

…having done some camping and hiking in bear country, we never took any food into our tents, but rather aways suspended our victuals, especially sweets, high above the ground, ideally between two trees, in a “Bear Bag.”  If we were in a fixed campsite, there was invariably a “Bear Box” made of heavy duty metal to stow items that might arouse interest, even toothpaste.  The consequence of breaking those rules would be dire- having a bear come visit you in your tent!  Haul you out by your head!  No thank you!!

… said the graduate of film school…  And how nice of Sheriff to unwrap the candy bars…  no sense in having Samson’s tummy ache over trying to pass foil or whatever the candy is wrapped in…

Speaking of movies (OK, serial dramas on Netflix) we just finished watching the first season of OZARK.  Four Stars.  Highly recommend it.  But it got me thinking about one of the common memes surrounding drug trafficking and that lifestyle- what to do with all the neatly stacked Bundles of Benjamins…  In OZARK, we are presented with an anti-hero, one Marty Byrde, who is laundering money for a large Mexican Cartel.  Unlike Breaking Bad where we get to see Walter White go from mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher to drug kingpin Heisenberg, we find Marty already into this life, and the effect it is having on him and his family.  ‘Nuff said, no spoilers… But back to the Benjamins.  Ever wonder how the cash turns into 100-dollar-bills, neatly stacked with a wrapper around them in $10,000 units?  I did the other day and found nothing satisfactory in the way of answer.  Supposing you are in the trade, and your customers all pay with greasy, grimy 5’s and 10’s and maybe 20’s.  You are a long way from 100’s.  And it’s not like you can walk into your neighborhood credit union with you sacks full of cash and request that it be turned into crisp, bound 100-dollar-bills…  at least not without arousing suspicion.  The best answer I found is taking all the small bills to a Casino, buying chips, playing a few hands, and then cashing the chips in…  but that is certainly limited when we consider the sums that are supposedly being laundered… Suffice it to say that with the amount of googling done on this topic, I am probably on someone’s list by now…

…mostly because, hey, who likes to get startled from a sound sleep?  That, and it looks like Sheriff Stober has a bear claw festooned band on his hat… although you’d never know it by the coloring job… they are see-through in the second panel.  And why do they call it a Bear Claw Pastry when clearly it looks more like a Bear Paw??

Johnny!  Listen, boy!  Do what the Sheriff says!!  Now is not the time to be putting Ol’ Sampson (Cousin of Rex over by Cutter’s Bluff?) down!  Reach into the bag!!

That’s all we are to a predator… a walking meat sack.  and given the size of this guy, he needs a good sized meat sack every now and then…

So as Johnny goes from looking like Gene Simmons (without makeup of course) to someone completely different in the next panels,

Sheriff Stober (who has to stand for election every so many years) continues to act all mysterious-like, not really letting Johnny in on the broader plan… Just “reach in my pocket (saddlebag, whatever) and hand me the contents!”  whatever…

Snoring, growling, what’s the difference?  All we know is that today’s installment does little to move this “story” along…

But one thing we do know is that the ‘low rumbling sound’ is not the sound of a lion pride… recall the little head fake we were subjected to back in February when we thought Mark might be traveling back to the Heart of Darkness?  What are we doing here, people?  Seriously.  What are we doing here?

Sheriff Stober!  I know… All I would have had to do is go back through the dailies, but they are painful the first time around, so I was content to not multiply the discomfort!

So with Mark and Crew safe inside the saloon, we cut back to the cave where we are hoping for an encounter with the Shut-in, Cave-bound Grizzly.  Seriously, is he like Bat Boy of Weekly World News Fame?

Speaking of shut-ins, or not, check out the Believe It or Not entry from yesterday:

I am choosing to NOT believe this… not that Ray and Wilma probably haven’t been to 99.85% of the World’s Cracker Barrel locations, and why not the last one we wonder… but  really??  5 million miles?  The earth’s circumference is roughly 25,000 miles, meaning they could have circled the earth 200 times…  or gone to the Moon and back 10 times!!  C’mon, let’s do a little fact checking here!

That’s right,Mark, get inside, and when there isn’t a basement (which I think there is…  tunnels, anyway…) take shelter inside an interior doorway!  Mark probably even remembers climbing under his school desk to protect himself from an atomic bomb!

So with Baldy reunited with his money, stowed, apparently, in a bed-roll, he wears a smile that we haven’t seen, probably, well, ever…

Yea, see, I’m just gonna sashay on up to the bar, order myself a couple of shots of rot-gut, and get the next stage outa here… see??

The look on Mark’s face in panel one is priceless.  Slack-jawed disbelief in the fact that a person could value money over another person!

But what the hell is he doing in the third panel?  Getting ready to fly??  Doing his Clark Kent turns into Superman routine?  Or channeling Fezzik from the Princess Bride?

This is just getting weird.

The Horses are all freaking out due to the wind?  The wind has them?  What about the humans?  Are they impervious to the effects of the Tornadic Gusts?  Two references (thank you Google…) Windhorse and Horse Latitudes, is the best I can come up with…  I will let you read up on those… interesting.

And why, for the love of Mike, are you directing your captors to safety, Mark?  It’s your General Good Nature I guess…  Ahem… is there a writer in the house?  This “story” is in need of direction…