Why would Happy Trail take shelter in a wooden tower when he could have just run up a hill? Even the dialog doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense; as in, what the hell is there to work out, Mark!? And the artwork looks incompetent with awkward lines, out-of-scale anatomy, and sketchy figures.

Of course, we’ve seen clumsy drawing from the prior Mark Trail artists, Allen included. Rivera is not unique in this regard. What makes these gaffs stand out is her style, which transitioned over time into something more expressionistic than merely representational. Inconsistencies, such as what we see in panel 4, hit you immediately and painfully.

But the troubling issue for me—as I have pointed out several times—is that Rivera is an accomplished artist. Why transform Mark Trail from her original, refined stylistic approach into this slapdash version?

I think the alternating viewing angles provide some interest to today’s panels. Nevertheless…

Like many readers and complainers, I also wonder where this storyline is heading. It started out as a family vacation in Portland. Vacations are the basis for impromptu Mark Trail adventures (e.g., the Mexican artifact smugglers and the outlandish island volcano incident). This vacation got sidetracked right away by Mark’s concerns over his dad’s business relationship with Cricket Bro and his brother, who also happen to be in Portland. This story arc looked to be as exciting as warm milk, but there was hope that Rusty’s adolescent fascination with locating The Seaside Specter would turn out to be the real adventure this time around (Like father like son, right?).

Not so fast! One disastrous night and Rusty was ready to pack it in. We recently got a tease that Rusty’s adventure might get reignited but hopes like that often fizzle out in The Trailverse. Speaking of igniting, we now have another subplot: A sudden fire at the brothers’ “hidden” lumber mill.

One could charitably suggest that all of this chaos may just be a satire on the messiness of real life. But who cares for that!? Mark Trail is an adventure strip, not a documentary. Adventure stories (at least in comic strips) work best when they have a strong narrative focus.

Ultimately, I hope these rambling scenarios of Mark and the Crypto Bros move to the back and allow room for a more interesting adventure:  Rusty’s Specter search. There isn’t much else to hang your hat on.

Hmmm, at last we see Mark trying to take charge of everything, just like he used to do. But take charge of what? Let’s see if we can make sense of this, shall we?

The last time we saw Happy Trail was in the back seat of Jadsen’s vehicle, on the way to that “Wings of Love” animal rescue center. It was there that everybody first heard about the fire at the mill. This all happened during Cherry and Rusty’s visit to downtown Portland. Apparently, Mark and the Bros drove to the mill fire. And they wasted time with pointless debates.

Now we have Mark dashing down into the valley, apparently to save dad. Dad!?
– Okay, how did Mark know Happy Trail would be down there?
– How did Happy even get there before Mark!?
– Why is Happy in the tower, which happens to have a loudspeaker system? What was this place, a former prison camp?
– Why would the workers still be in a burning mill, anyway? It had to have been burning for at least thirty minutes or more (in Mark Trail Time). Were they waiting for permission to leave? This is more confusing than film adaptations of Raymond Chandler stories.

For some reason, the artwork reminds me of Golden Age comic books from the 1940s and 1950s, especially panel 3. I like that. Maybe it’s the heavy-lined profile of Mark and the zoom-out circle of Happy Trail in the tower. I dunno. You tell me!

What a mess, indeed! According to Smokeybear.com, almost 9 out of 10 forest fires are started by people (idiots and arsonists). Frankly, the entire exchange today is bizarre. We have a fire that either started in the mill or started in the surrounding forest and engulfed the mill. Either way, this does not seem like the best time to talk about the building habits of beavers, much less composing press releases.

And where are all of these lumber mill employees? Clearly, they should have already vacated the premises after they called the Bonehead Bros. And Mark should have figured that out right away!

Wouldn’t the sawmill employees have also already contacted a fire department or the local forestry department to report the fire? Did Cricket Bro? Or Jadsen!? Any legitimate, professional operation would have had protocols in place to prevent or mitigate a fire.

Regarding what Rivera wrote in panel 4, the point is not whether Cricket Bro is a biologist. That’s irrelevant. The point is that he is one half of a pair of stupid “brothers” who might have conspired to have the mill burned down, perhaps for insurance purposes. They need to get money from somewhere. And it could explain their curiously casual attitude about the fire.

When I was a teenager, Ripple was a bottle of really cheap wine (or something called wine). Now, it is a very loud onomatopoeic sound from a nearby stream; a stream populated by dam-building beavers. That realization somehow caused Mark to shout as if he discovered radium. Yesterday, he was shouting to evacuate the mill (presumably), though today, nobody seems in a terrible hurry to do anything. One might get the idea that this trio is out animal spotting rather than dealing with an actual emergency, like a runaway forest fire!

Certainly, this seems like a continuity issue. And what do beavers and beaver dams have to do with starting a fire?

Today’s panels look like the result of another rush job, which is a shame. Curiously, extra care was certainly taken with the art in panel 3.  Long-time reader Mark complained last week that his 10-year old granddaughter could draw as well. Such hyperbolic statements often come from people who just don’t like (or understand) the art they are looking at. I’m not putting Mark in that group, just using his comment to make a point. I have to admit that, if one considers panel 4, especially, Mark’s comment would be on the plus side of the ledger. The composition is crowded and clumsy; the drawing looks inept.

Okay, even I have to admit this is kind of stupid, as if these three came across a raging fire during a hike. Instead they had to presumably drive out to this location. Is the sawmill, itself, on fire? Hard to tell; there is certainly fire behind it. The mill should have burned down by now. Where are the workers? Presumably, not still inside slicing logs. Did anybody on site call the fire department? Interestingly, neither brother seems very perturbed. Could they be behind this fire? If so, why? I do like the incredulous expression on Mark’s face in panel 3, as he provides on-the-spot, timely advice. What was that movie, Dumb and Dumber? That certainly applies to those two idiots.

Moving on:  There are a few comments at CK on whether the porcupine in Sunday’s strip is one of the several New World porcupine species or an Old Word porcupine, possibly from Africa. Well, Rivera’s example does not seem to match the Common Porcupine that is native to Oregon, though she may have seen an Old World porcupine in an Oregon zoo and mistook it for a local one. I don’t know. Porcupines can get up to 3 feet long, almost 4’ with the tail. Anyway, a basket of demerits to Mark for using the wrong porcupine to make his points.

Professor Bee Sharp proves his own bona fides as a windbag. He didn’t even give Rusty much new to work with before he exited, stage left. Meanwhile, we learn there is a “Forest” emergency involving Mark. Clearly (to us) it must be the lumber mill fire.

But is this emergency really shocking? Emergencies involving nature are part of Mark’s bread and butter, right? So what is shocking?  Shocking would be something odd, such as “Mark is in the middle of a rubber band emergency!” or “Mark is in a cake baking emergency on The Great British Bakeoff!”

So, just how are Cherry and Rusty going to hurry back when they took the light rail into town? By the time Cherry and Rusty return, I think the emergency will have burned itself out, unless it spreads to the surrounding forest and starts a huge conflagration that shows up on CNN. If that turns out to be the case, it would be a good time for Mark and Family to scram back to Lost Forest.

How many “stars” can one kid, such as Opie here, meet in one lifetime, without living in Los Angeles? Anyway, it is Earth Day today. Why isn’t Sharp at his event? I reckon that it must have been earlier in the day, since Cherry and Rusty only arrived here after a day of playing tourist in town. It has to be nearing nighttime, which nicely sets up a situation for The Professor to assist Rusty in his Spector Search.

So, I wonder if things will get ugly when Sharp finds out who this woman and child are and who they are staying with.

On the drawing front, you might have complaints, but I think the artwork this week has been a big improvement compared to the slashy, crowded, and sketchy stuff from last week. But it is even starker when the color is removed, which is how newspaper readers see it. I think the artwork would look more polished if Rivera drew the strip with the b&w newspapers in mind. But that doesn’t appear to fit the aesthetic that Rivera has in mind.

For some reason, Cherry thinks that being new in town means finding a graphic novel here must be somehow different than finding one in a bookstore in another city, such as New York, Chicago, or London.

Rivera and the staff at Books With Pictures must know each other well enough, since the owner of the real bookstore is really named Katie. However, I’m pretty sure that Professor B. Sharp (seen here channeling Genie from Peewee’s Playhouse) is not part of the staff. Why he just happens to be here at this particular time is another mystery that looks like an old TV sitcom cliché.

When we last saw this joker (Is he even a real professor? I’m thinking not.), he was fleeing from Cricket Bro’s ridiculous attempt to create NFTs using him and a goat.

Alas, Rivera likes her little ensemble of weirdo-troublemakers and is content to keep recycling them, rather than creating new opponents. But really, how hard is that? There was that shipping magnate and his staff, for example. They had the potential for some really good back-and-forth, but nothing came about it, and they just steamed away.

Yes, Cherry! Hurry up and take Master Rusty into a comic book store so he can buy a few items and maybe feel like this trip isn’t a complete waste. And maybe he’ll stop whining. Cherry once again chimes in with her homespun, tried-and-true wisdom. Ah, and there’s also a plug for comics, as well. I certainly can’t begrudge that sentiment! Viva comics!

With such a carefully drawn building, you know this has to be authentic. And it is:  It is the Books with Pictures comic book store in Portland. And Rivera does a pretty good job of capturing the store and its setting.  We’ll have to see if Rivera also attempts to capture some of the actual staff who work there. I hope so. From what I saw on the store’s website, they could fit right into the cast of supporting characters of this comic strip.

Special note to Rusty:  Kid, from what I can see, you won’t need to worry about getting humiliated over your superhero nerd quotient in this particular comic book store! They cast a much wider net than just dudes in spandex.

Yeah, you figured it. My title was just clickbait. Anyway, continuing to whine and complain might be cathartic, but it doesn’t go very far. So, I have to, uh, play the cards I’ve been dealt. Not that I won’t play them as I see them (gawd, how many clichés can I drag out!?), but I can’t continue to let complaints dominate the blogosphere.

Okay. Cherry demonstrates what happens when a parent tries too hard to engage with a pre-teen child. What 12-year old boy could fail to appreciate a city tour of “must-see” locations? How about all of them!? Having helped raise four boys, I can attest to the folly we are seeing play out before our eyes.

Otherwise, Rusty’s nice little suspenseful mystery apparently wimped out in one night, and we are left with this vacuous rambling hokum. It is quite possible that this vacuous hokum is also meant to divert our attention, where we’ll be surprised by a sudden turn of events surrounding Rusty’s Specter Search. I hope!

Hayseed Cherry (remember the stereotypical trailer home?) must not get out of Lost Forest very often. She might even be surprised to learn that people use dinner knives for cutting their food, not for eating it. Okay, maybe she’s just trying to get Rusty excited for the excursion, because he sure looks like he’d rather be somewhere else.

We might be destined for a week of strips showing Cherry and Russ—er, Rusty—visiting Portland. Like the class of delinquents Sidney Poitier hustled into the Victoria & Albert Museum in To Sir With Love, will we get a montage of Cherry and Rusty eyeballing old statues, scratching their heads at public art, and searching for the “Women and Women First” bookstore from the Portlandia TV show? Or will Rusty discover the Seaside Spector selling coffee in a Starbuck’s (“Heck, kid. Even cryptids have to earn a living, you know.”)? Buckle your lazy-boy seatbelts, people. The train is ready to pull out!

More cutsey-cutsey nonsense. And what kind of recovery center is this, anyway? Floor-to-ceiling bird cages line each wall of an otherwise empty room. Is that even good for the birds? Is there even any ventilation in there? PHEW!

As for the story, another PHEW! Plus some very questionable artwork, too. I could swear this was getting drawn by two different people. Panel 3 barely qualifies as a sketch. I just don’t get it.

And what kind of stupid question is that in panel 4, anyway: What do you do when a lumber mill catches fire?  Gee, I dunno, dudes. Maybe you tell your employees to get the hell out of the mill! Didn’t you implement any safety procedures? Don’t you get inspected by the State, or is this some kind of illegal mill? And what about safety features, such as fire hoses, water sprinklers, or an automatic fire alarm to the fire department? Do you let your employees grill their lunch in the mill?

Gawd, can we please get back to the Specter hunt?

“Four tablets and computers”? Last I looked, tablets are computers. In any event, a handful of computers is small beer; hardly what I would call a “generous gift”, unless Mabel has a yearly budget of about $10K. One would think that the boys would provide seed money for supplies, facilities, and staff. Now, all that would be generous!

Also, what is this “department” Mabel refers to in panel 2? I was under the impression this was an autonomous NPO of some sort. In any event, what’s Mark’s beef, anyway? Aside from the NFT scam—which does not appear to be illegal—what have the Brothers done? And isn’t Cricket Bro already a millionaire in his own right? Mind your own bees-wax, Mister!

Mark, just go back, pick up your family, and take your damned vacation! Quit looking for imaginary monsters; that’s Rusty’s job.

Who knew that Mark Trail was a literature junky? Maybe Jules Rivera reads Pearls Before Swine? But Mark, get it together! Quit acting like a…a… stereotypical schoolgirl!?

Well, much has been made here and elsewhere about the ongoing insults to Mark in the strip, backed up by reader indignation and frustration. This ongoing insult and parody shtick reminds me, superficially, of Charlie Brown. But that’s a different mindset, altogether. There was no prior idealized heroic image to break down and rebuild in Peanuts. Charlie Brown always got the football pulled away at the last moment. People found his pathos and futility endearing, the perennial underdog.

Almost every new character who gets introduced to Mark insults him in some way. And it’s overdone. Well, in the right kind of situation, such things could be amusing. For example, if this was the Old Mark (i.e. the big, strong, arrogantly confident, stoic hero), sarcastic jabs at his fame or ability could provide funny counterpoints to prick Mark’s ego.

But the persona of New Mark Trail is already a strong counterpoint to Old Mark Trail. While New Mark retains some of the former looks, he is rarely heroic, not that strong, not so confident, and often too emotional (as today demonstrates). That’s fine. He is a walking rebuke to the dull, former defender of the environment. So, New Mark does not need to be metaphorically kicked in the gonads every other day. Kicking somebody when they’re down just makes you (Rivera) look like a bully.

All we are saying, is give Mark a chance!

The boys have arrived at the Love Wildlife Center, a theme that reminds me of the earlier story where Reptilionnaire drove Mark to the Herp Hacienda. Borrowing the sentiment, above, from Pete Seeger, I wonder how much longer Rivera will revel in denigrating Mark.

With today’s strip, I have to agree with critics regarding the quality of the drawing, especially in panel 1. Not only are the figures stick-like and awkward looking, but the house looks out of scale. The whole panel just looks too crowded.

On the other hand, panel 3 offers a nice worm’s-eye view of Cricket Bro and Mark. The view allows us to see just these two framed against an empty sky. No crowded panel here! The foreshortened head of Cricket Bro is also very well drawn.  I have to believe that the arrangement of Mark’s fingers reflecting the design on Cricket Bro’s sweatshirt is deliberate. All in all, a really good job, Rivera.

With their two heads looking into the center of panel 4, we have a symmetrical compositional device that Rivera has used several times in the past. It’s a tad busy, but still an effective design. In summary, comparing panel 1 to panels 3 and 4, I can almost believe I’m looking at a strip drawn by two different people.

Even if this operation and their support are legit, so what? It’s a deflection, having nothing to do with their business. Look: Autocrats, warlords, and criminals used to purchase papal indulgences during the Renaissance in order to pave the way for the salvation of their souls. But indulgences didn’t justify or stop their earthly activities.

Looks like the squirrel is inspecting nuts; nuts in the SUV, that is. Mark feigns indifference in panel 4, while not bothering to “ask the hard questions” aloud for some reason. Instead, he dribbles lame sarcasm. Is that all you have, Mark? You can do better than that. So how come Cherry and Rusty weren’t invited? You want to win over Mark? The Bros should have invited Rusty along to get excited about animals!

Okay, a few interesting visual takes:

1. As was the case even with Allen, cars often look like they are standing still. Yet, Rivera makes the case for movement in panel 3 with speed lines emanating from the trees. It’s an interesting solution, but goes against logic. Normally these lines appear on the back of the moving object (the SUV) indicating motion. But it isn’t the trees that are moving. Instead, we should normally see something suggesting blurred tree images as the SUV speeds by. Nevertheless, because we read these speed lines as “movement”, they still kind of work, which is all that is necessary.
2. The “exposed interior” view in panel 2 is not original, but unusual. It is certainly more interesting than the usual car-with-dialog balloon we see in panel 1. So points for once again (finally) inserting an unusual and interesting angle into the strip. It is unfortunate that the figures in the car (save for Cricket Bro) look flat and uninvolved. A realistic representation of people in a car, no doubt, but why waste an opportunity to show something interesting?
3. I’m guessing that the purple color in panels 2-4 is meant to suggest tinted windows, something that the B&W newspaper readers will miss.

While we watch the beaver destroy a tree, we still have to wonder:  Doesn’t anybody ever change their clothes!? Brand Identity has always been a lazy crutch in the comics.

As for today’s strip, all I can say is I’ve about given up trying to figure out the point of the Jerk Brothers’ immature attitude or Rivera’s point. We already know they are losers, but why does Rivera feel the need to constantly play up their pathetic behavior? And why does she feel the need to expose us to this nonsense? What’s the end game, Jules?

Maybe Happy Trail’s comment in panel 2 (“You’re going to love this, Marky!”) is a subtle hint to Mark that they might stop somewhere along the way and arrange for the two morons to have a fatal accident.