Cool! Kid rivalry. Gotta love it! And it’s nice to see this Rusty showing some spunk. It’s kind of like a reincarnation of the famous Markey vs. Cricket Bro’—that is, Rob Bettancourt—rivalry. Hey, that kid even has the same first name!

Gotta add that the art has been much better and consistent, if you are hoping for more representational figures, that is. Of course, the figures lack the modeling techniques (e.g. shading, contoured lines, and proportions) that were popular in past incarnations of the strip.  

But I wonder if Rivera is making an in-joke, having all the dialog today end with exclamation points, as was standard practice in the past incarnations of Mark Trail! Rivera normally avoids that trope. But if you are still suffering the change to Rivera, and you get the strip in your newspaper, you can pencil in the exclamation points for all the dialog in each day’s strip.