…and to Pythons, apparently.

What I don’t understand is that Mark drives to some dark swamp, gets a ride on an airboat, hooks up with this “Jolly Roger” dude, whose first name is apparently “Jolly,” who dons a poncho despite just having been in the water, who just made some off-handed remark about having his land stolen from him (by Mark’s father) and now Mark is wading, chest-deep, with poncho on, into a constrictor- laced pond? All this makes total sense… right? Whispers of the Allen yarn featuring under-cover CIA operatives posing as Sleepy Joe and either Cheech or Chong … delivery truck driver and biker in Central America chasing Rusty and his would-be girlfriend Mara around…

Oh, that’s right… we know! Back in 1946, Mark thought Cherry was being chased by a bear, only to find out that Cherry and the Bear were just frolicking…

Of course Cherry was modeled after an Ava Gardner or some other Matinee idol of the day…

But back to the latest re-boot… Looks like Cherry has some truth-telling of her own to do!

What?! Well, this is going to be interesting! An entire Family Tree put on its ear!

Based on today’s installment, Rusty appears to be fully aware of his adopted status, it would seem, so what’s the crisis brewing with Doc, aka Poppy? But I would imagine that this is a challenge for many adopted children- knowing from whence they come… beyond the emotional, there is the practical. What am I prone to medically? What do I need to be aware of?

So, Cherry snaps at Rusty as he dismisses the idea that he has a family… complete with eye-roll in the middle panel… maybe now is the time to have that “Discussion?”

Knowing one’s roots is basic, at least in my opinion… It boils down to single lines of cause and effect: but for the lives of two people who sprung from separate and random origins, but for the alignment of fate, I would not be here. Maybe that’s a bit overblown, but as I have studied, with the help of my elders, the lines of cause and effect that resulted in my life, I have discovered interesting things. For one, the luck of an intrepid man-servant plying the Atlantic ocean along with 101 other souls, roughly 400 years ago, swept overboard but lucky enough to have grabbed hold of a halyard and pulled back aboard-ship: that man was John Howland. He was mighty prolific in his day along with his wife Elizabeth Tilley, and through their first born daughter Desire, I am certainly grateful and certainly not the most famous of their many ultimate descendants.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. Be safe and be grateful.

I love how the Trail vehicles show age and wear, not like the $80,000 Escalade variety that Allen’s Cherry Davis Trail somehow found herself driving… Although this truck is ‘new’ enough to have head restraints, which first started showing up in 1969 when they were mandated by the NHTSA.

Question: Can Rusty keep up this rapid-fire, staccato interrogation all the way to Florida?

I guess we’ll learn more about the “Waterslide Summer Project Deal” in future strips…

That’s right, Campers, keep your head on straight and watch those impulses! Although this did give rise to an entire industry- snake removal services!

Back to the back story…

Appears that Doc Davis has secrets as well… but is the big “lie” the fact that Cherry is adopted too?

Awwww… cute. Cherry as a little girl. We also note that Doc was losing his battle with Male Pattern Baldness even, what, 30 or 40 years ago? And that his taste in clothing, jeans with a yoke style shirt, hasn’t changed. Looks like he sported the ol’ “bolo” tie when he was younger.

…and it looks like he has found it!

Up pops Jolly Roger! (new character) Arghh! (that’s pirate talk…) Out of a what? A tiny sinkhole? (Florida is lousy with ’em) With snake in custody? (For what? Why?) Mark’s father stole his farm? (Huh?)

“Driving into a storm,” though, should be taken both literally and figuratively, even as Mark (I am sure) breaks any number of laws Facetiming behind the wheel… Nice ride, Mark…look at that Station Wagon! No head rests! Two-tone! Analog instrument panel! Reminiscent of the Plymouth Grand Fury or Buick Estate… Now we are talking!

Mark, you are now officially an SMW (Social Media Whore,) or more accurately a wanna-be. Who talks to animals…

…who show you no respect whatsoever. Can’t really decide what happened in the last panel above, but at least Mark isn’t blind… But what is Mark in Mark’s past? What’s he running from?? I guess that’s the mystery now.

Cute Mark, keep it up. You will be the darling of the internet in no time! Ironic that Old Mark was so dismissive of the Cryptozoologist chasing Yeti… The New Mark would give his right leg for that many followers…

Handle business?? What? We are about to meet up with the seamy underbelly of the Davis clan? Nestled in Florida? Where Mark happens to be going to research a story that could well reveal parts of his past? This has all the makings of an Allen yarn, notably the one about smuggling artifacts, where we weren’t quite sure who the bad guys were until the end… But I hate to draw those comparisons quite this quickly. We are, after all, mere days/ weeks into this. Prelude, as it were…

We go from Andy eating Rusty’s flipflops to Cherry’s dad- Doc Davis. Who is much more, ummm… well-fed in this version of him… Anyway, what do they have to tell Rusty? Is Doc going to join the French Foreign Legion? Run for Governor? By the look on Cherry’s face, though, it would seem to be life threatening, which is odd since I don’t think we want to kill off characters in the first go-round, do we??

What th-? What is that in panel 2? A dog? Is that Andy? I guess it is, but c’mon… need to work on that one a little…

Flip-flops in your pocket? Huh? How old are you, Rusty? Doc=Pops/Poppy? I thought maybe Rusty (Russ) was referring to his no-good birth-father…

Begs the question, however, as to who is shooting the video? Some random stranger? If Mark is on camera and starring in it, then who is behind the lens?

Mark needs affirmation! And validation! Constantly! And where exactly is he? Walking out of a roadside rest stop? That sign says “feed pond” which looks like a tourist attraction… Feed the Tarpon! This was a popular stop in Florida once when my kids were that age…

You know who else is going to need to get “Insta-Friendly?” Your faithful scribe… thanks for the comments on how to find Kelly Welly’s Twitter account… She lookin’ pretty bad-ass…

Flash forward and Kelly’s the one with a bazillion followers on all social media platforms and Mark is the relic… so far, it doesn’t appear that @fishdonteven is a real handle, at least I’m not getting any hits…

Good to see that Mark is back in the saddle… I guess it only took a little consult from Ralph the Rat Snake… with a little humor on the side.

All about Mark? Well of course it is! His name is on the strip! Always has been! And apparently he will continue to receive the abuse he probably doesn’t really deserve, unless one is in the camp of “all that has gone before must simply be evil, for now we are woke?” In a world were the center has broken and probably will not return, are we to endure conflict at every turn in the “new” Mark Trail? Not sure I need this…

No doubting now what era we are in… no confusing signs of yesteryear to conflict with modern accoutrements… Here we see a screen on a smartphone and a reference to “followers…” Internet famous. Anxiety over not having enough “likes.” As Mark continues to pay for past indiscretions and un-woke moments, this is looking more like Dickens’ Christmas Carol- Mark being visited by Ghosts to remind him of the life he has led and is likely to lead if he doesn’t change his ways. Boy, this is going to go over like a lead balloon!

Kelly Welly, for the uninitiated or forgetful, is always “competing with Mark, trying to “scoop” him on stories that he has been assigned. She is a perpetual thorn in Mark’s side, placing him in compromising situations, always suggesting that there might be a “thing” going on between them…

What always occurred to me (in the old Mark Trail) is that poor Kelly was just a lady trying to break into what was traditionally a man’s place- the overly male-dominated and testosterone-infused world of journalism… That Mark always “got the assignment” even though she was eager, available and for all we know, qualified to do the work…

What deep secrets lie hidden in the Trail-brain? Again, in the past, the Trail Brain could be better described as “reptilian,” not as fully formed and conflicted as we are witnessing here. Now we have a Namesake Character lousy with doubt, and it would seem, remorse…

Scruples, ethics, standards, character… these were never issues back in the day. Remember WWMD? Well, what is Mark doing now?