Having previously making a laughing stalk out of Mark with his ridiculous fake cowboy routine, Rivera now portrayed Mark as a ham-fisted impression of Mary Worth on steroids haranguing Rex Scorpius over his infatuation with Tess Tigress while ignoring “real dangers” around them (including a preposterous elephant assault). Rex was already onto Mark’s intrusive questioning and let him know he didn’t like it. When Mark let slip that Diana was directing his actions, Rex blew his top and stormed off to find Tess. Playing therapist is not Mark’s specialty and I’m not sure why Rivera put Mark into this no-win plot instead of focusing on the zoo animals. It’s like she is insulting Mark Trail, her bread and butter.

Well, Mark’s mission scorecard is looking mighty bad right now:

Diana Daggers – kicked out of the zoo by Tess and now likely on Rex’s blacklist for her betrayal.
Mark, himself – Tess seems to have figured out Mark’s real mission. And now, Mark is on Rex’s blacklist. Maybe he’s on Diana’s blacklist, too, or soon will be.
Zoo Investigation– It hardly got off the ground and it’s not likely going to happen at this point.
Rex’s Internet show –Nobody left to film it! Maybe Rex will just walk away from it, arm in arm with Tess.
His ride back to the airport – fat chance of that. Is he too far out of town for Uber or Lyft? Sheesh! Can a situation be any more screwed up than this? Sure, there’s this coming week! But before that, let’s try to find some order and education in the Sunday nature talk.

In spite of several questionable issues concerning the daily strips, Rivera’s Sunday strips are generally well done and informative. In addition, there are two innovations worth mentioning: 1) The custom title panels. Coming up with a creative, thematic, image-based title panel every week is hard work.  Most of the time, Rivera creates inventive solutions. Today’s is no exception. You might even overlook it, at first. 2) The second innovation is Rivera’s focus on animals or issues found in or near the proximity of the current Mark Trail storyline.