Okay, so “Happy-Jolly Cookout” it is! Happy and Jolly, huh? That sounds like a bad comic team. Still, the positive vibes are flowing all around. But for how long? We spent last week on the road, so will we spend all of this week at the cookout? If so, I’m expecting something to heat up besides the shrimp, or this story is going to start looking like a proposal for a Hallmark movie. Hey, at least Cherry is working the crowd. Rusty has grabbed Grampy Happy, so I wonder what Mark is doing? Chewing the fat with Jolly Roger, perhaps.

We’ve seen or expressed concerns about long storylines, not only with Rivera, but even during Allen’s tenure. Whence cometh this impatience? Methinks it is partly the influence of various events, such as the quick-cut music videos of MTV back in the early 1980s, which spawned a revolution in video and TV editing. The Internet had a bit of influence, too. We are now conditioned to expect fast storylines, quick action, heightened drama, and headaches from trying to keep up.

Stories do take time to develop. Adventures during the golden age of comic strips commonly took 4-6 months, or even longer. Then again, there was no TV or Internet back in the 1930s and 1940s.

BUT THIS AIN’T THE 1930s! I expect a lot of readers are going to start getting impatient if this story doesn’t pick up real soon! As for me, if Rivera can develop a good storyline with some depth, complexity, and adventure, I’m okay if she needs more time to tell the story. It’s okay to snark on Cricket Bro or Zebra Mussels, but let’s not overlook “the bat cave”, “the black ferret story”, “the circus comes to Lost Forest”, and “the great yeti hunt”.