Okay, this is more like the old Mark Trail, I believe: Lame TV-style dialog and outlandish events. First of all, it makes no sense for Rept Man to ask Mark about local car drivers; Mark should be asking Rept Man! Second, a high-speed car chase in what appears to be a Prius, really!? (Well, it seems similar to my Prius C) What kind of sound effect is that “VRRRR”? Shouldn’t it be “VRRRM” or “VRRROOOM”? Perhaps it is meant to replicate the sound of the car accelerating into high RPMs.

Well, real action going on! Will we get a real car chase, like “Bullit” or “America’s Greatest Car Chases”? Of course, we’re talking about what might be a Mustang or Trans Am pursuing what appears to be a Toyota Prius. Hardly fair, or exciting!

This brings up other questions, such as: Who are the chasers? We may assume the chasers work for Cricket Bro or may even be Cricket Bro. How did they know about the plan? Perhaps the chasers were watching the property and simply decided to follow when they saw the car leave. Or, Herp Hacienda was already bugged by Cricket Bro in order to keep tabs on these people. He could already have full awareness of the plans.

So, why bother with an obvious and noisy car chase when the chasers could simply hang back and follow them? Cricket Bro could string Mark along at the office, while his security team monitors the other two as they attempt to secure the laptop and/or air quality app. Then they close the trap, as police are called in to arrest Mark and his co-conspirators before they can escape.

I suppose the Prius does not have an oil slick release lever. This “chase” will end as quickly as it began, unless a comic strip dux ex machina drops in, or on.

There is another alternative:  The chase car is not really a chase car, but simply a muscle car aggressively driven by a typical fat-head who likes to tailgate and hoorah other drivers before zipping past the rubes and disappearing around a curve. In other words, this could be a false alarm. What do you think, oh honored readers?

Finally, in the art news:  I like the artwork, both in the individual panel compositions and in the inventiveness of the imagery, especially in panel 3. For example, the car lights make an interestingly different visual effect than what I would have expected. My art history geekiness is showing here, but I see the rear car headlights tilted to the right, which in our linear time-oriented thinking suggests moving forward. On the other hand, the headlight of Rept Man’s Prius tilts left, suggesting moving slower. However, I would have preferred to see that headlight to be shown in a typical conical shape reaching to the street, as was done in panel 1.