We finish out the week with The Seaside Specter once again mysteriously disappearing, as Rusty is located and rescued by Mom and Dad. Ho-hum. No concerns about Happy Trail’s safety, it seems. I’m truly glad that, surrounded by a raging forest fire burning everything around then and sending people running in all directions, the Trail Family can find the time to stand around for group hugs. Maybe Happy shows up to get them outta there.
Rivera informs us that Professor Bee Sharp’s warning about the Scam Brothers went unnoticed, as they somehow still raked in the cash with their Monkey NFT Event. Good does not always triumph.
So, we’re at a junction in the storyline. Do we continue with the fire story arc? Do we follow Mark Trail Tradition and jump ahead to the next day? Or go with the venerable “we temporarily interrupt this story to set up the next adventure” direction? I reckon we’ll find out Monday!
This may sound self-serving and phony, but I actually did consider mentioning the Seaside Specter yesterday as a possible candidate to rescue Rusty, but more as a throwaway joke than a serious prediction. I went with Kelly, instead. But who is playing the Seaside Specter? I’m thinking it’s The Professor. My luck, it will be Happy Trail.
The larger concern here is that Rusty’s Adventure has dribbled out here and there. You see it and you’re not sure if Rusty is just filling in a few panels for Mark, or if Rivera is turning from Mark to give Rusty his due. Allen certainly gave Rusty co-star billing in the Mexican Smuggling Caper a few years ago. I think this iteration of Rusty might be a tad younger than his predecessor, which might explain the difference. On the other hand, Rivera has plausibly linked Rusty’s cryptid hobby into the Oregon Vacation story.
You sharp-eyed readers surely noticed that Rivera spelled “Crash” with a “C” today, not a “K”, which supports my flimsy hypothesis that her exploding EUV is probably a German car. Not that it really matters, but how else to explain “Krash” and “Krack” (for the EUV’s windshield)?
Moving on, forest fires are known to sometimes move very fast, so I reckon we can’t dismiss the speed with which this event site is now aflame. I’d criticize Rusty’s choice of a safe place (the wooden halfpipe), but he is just a kid. And just maybe that sheet of wood prematurely falling on Rusty really is heavier than it looks. Just another example of the slipshod work that the Crypto Brothers demand.
But we ask, who will come to his rescue? Mark already performed one fire-based rescue. What about the three girls? It’s doubtful; they were older and probably had the good sense to run in the opposite direction of the fire. I think it comes down to Pappy Happy. He’s the only one not accounted for, unless we discover that Kelly Welly is also working this gig.
This might look like we are seeing things wrap up, but I doubt it. Now, why would Rusty be in danger, unless he is in danger of losing his innocence? And about time, too! Aside from the approaching forest fire, there are several other issues that require Mark’s attention. Oh, you can list them as well as I can, so I won’t bother. Besides, I’m on vacation, so I can be a little lazy now and then.
But at the top of my Resolution List is that all of these West Coast Crazies disappear from the strip for at least a year to make room for new faces and new personalities. I think Rivera has gotten enough satire and wackiness out of these people as she can for the near future.
Dang! Even Professor Bee Sharp can’t help pontificating in a crisis. He’s out-Trailing Mark! And an interesting choice, isn’t it, to have The Professor be the one to extricate Cricket Bro, rather than Mark. This is one of Rivera’s positive mods to the strip, where Mark is not always the singular heroic figure, doing all of the rescuing and hero-type actions on his own. However, Rivera might have done a bit more research on what front-end crashes look like.
Is this the same fire that started at the lumber mill?! If so, shouldn’t they have seen it over the past several days? The May 9 strip showed what appeared to be firemen working on the fire, so we are given to believe that fire was extinguished. Would Mark and family be so cavalier as to leisurely hang around if it was still a threat?
Speaking of cavalier, the people in panel 1 are certainly dedicated or completely jaded if they can still just stand around after Cricket Bro just raced across the lawn to try and run over two people. Even a fiery crash apparently did nothing to excite them enough to go over and take a look.
Employing one of Rivera’s standard compositions in panel 2, Trail and Sharp look upon the crashed car, but not out of veneration. Instead, it portends a bad omen that Cricket Bro is locked in an electric car. This must mean getting him out is going to be problematic. Problems on top of problems. Not a good day for anybody, except maybe Professor Sharp. Hmm….
Joseph Nebus wrote a recent “What’s Going On In Mark Trail” blog which succinctly expresses many things I’ve been wading through the past year about Rivera’s take on the strip. And more. It is worth reading.
I still appreciate Rivera’s desire to add more complexity and storylines to the strip, but it can be hard to keep track of things in the constrained format of a comic strip. It’s calls for longer storylines, though readers (in general) seem to prefer quicker, shorter stories. I don’t mind length, as long as it is done to fill in and move the story. This past week saw Professor Sharp’s exposé of the Crypto/NFT scam broadcast during the outdoor celebration as well as Cricket Bro’s violent reaction, resulting in his attempt to literally run over Trail and Sharp. Instead, he crashed his car into a tree, resulting in a fiery explosion. Though Mark’s first thought is rescuing Cricket Bro, what will Sharp do?
Part of the complexity, as we have seen, is former opponents now acting more or less in concert with Trail, though with different motives and objectives. I think the currently popular portmanteau is “frenemy”. Cricket Bro, Diana Daggers, and Professor Bee Sharp have all opposed Mark, but recently played up to him, though Sharp’s relationship is more ambiguous and conflicted. In short, these are all shades of gray, not simply old-school black and white. Like the difference between “Dragnet” and “NYPD Blue.” Mark’s Dad may be the most complex and mysterious character in the strip, if you think about it. I’m hoping we see new opponents, so this doesn’t turn into a version of Batman fighting a circle of the same six villains.
A good Sunday topic, though it should have come out in April, when lawn-seeding time begins. I got over the “perfect lawn” syndrome years ago, just because it is a lot of work. Anyway, I agree with the content today, both philosophically and practically. We live in town, but our back yard is a combination pasture-and-garden. It draws in bees, lots of birds, butterflies, etc. The front yard is more clover than grass and looks just as nice.
The crowd of hopeful investors stands in front of the “setting sun” band shell as they watch the more interesting action going on in the foreground. It’s one thing to be involved in various scams; but another to actually move on to attempted murder. Or so it seems. This must be a German EUV because it crashed with a K instead of a C.
This dramatic overreaction almost certainly will lead to an equally animated reaction on the part of the crowd, but not before Trail (and maybe Sharp) rescues Cricket Bro, as needs must. All in all, this is not your father’s (or your own former) Mark Trail, with its simpler, black & white (predominantly white) opponents. This is more like global realpolitik, where your former enemy becomes an ally, or vice-versa.
So, what will the situation be when they pull Cricket Bro out of the wreck? Do Mark and Sharp decide to save him from an angry crowd?
Rights make strange bedfellows. Sharp and Trail were dangerous rivals early on, and still have a strong distrust for each other. They both want to stop the cricket brothers, but from different motives and with different means. So, Mark finds himself trying to stop Sharp from exposing the two brothers out of concern for his dad’s safety. And here he is, trying to save Sharp from getting run over by Cricket Bro. If the Brothers had any doubts about Mark, they have been resolved.
For some reason, Trail and Sharp decided to exit the DJ platform, rather than stand their ground. And that must be why Cricket Bro chose to pursue the two in his car, his so-called Cricketmobile. It is completely colored from roof to hubcap in a single color, as if it was the Batmobile. Mark’s response lends support to the allusion. Based on the way Rivera normally writes sound effects, I would not be surprised to see “Accelerate!”, rather than the traditional “Vroom!”
I’ll save my horrendous day of getting on and off planes all day for another time. But there is a specific national airline this person is not going to use in the future.
So, this is all Sharp has? Mere accusations? I assumed he was going to follow up with actual evidence. Sounds familiar. Mark’s position here is ambiguous, as if he is fine letting the dupes get duped, just as long as Daddy is okay. That’s responsibility with a capital, er, lowercase “r”.
As anybody who has ever gone to a hall featuring electronic dance music or been passed by a car with seriously large speakers and high wattage can attest, the sound is really, really loud. And the bass track is almost always oppressively punishing. How is it, then, that Trail and Sharp can hear what Cricket Bro is saying? As in virtually all fiction and tell-alls, the story sometimes takes precedence over reality.
A bit of a recap today from last week, because we all know people have short attention spans. Actually, this is nothing new in comics. They’ve been doing recaps for a hundred years. For continuity strips, Sunday strips were themselves sometimes recaps of the previous week’s dailies for families who only subscribed to Sunday delivery. Anyway, if you missed my post yesterday, consider yourself caught up.
Announcement: Starting tomorrow, I will be on vacation for four weeks. Chances are I will have to post Tuesday with Wednesday. No big deal. This doubling or even tripling up may be more frequent, owing to my circumstances. Comics Kingdom’s latest marketing ploy makes this more difficult for me, but I’ll do my best to not miss any days.
It’s SUNDAY! In this action-packed week, the Big NFT Show finally began. We haven’t yet seen the main event in progress; rather, we sat through various interactions of Family Trail members. I reckon all of the action this week probably took place within a 30-minute time frame:
Mark and Pappy Happy discussed the impending doom when the crowd discovers the scam
Mark and Cherry traded quips as Rusty was amazed at the large halfpipe in action
Rusty then got gob-smacked by a trio of cute teens hanging out by the halfpipe until he found the courage to start a conversation with them
Mark ran into Professor Sharp, who was on his way to reveal the scam-in-progress to the crowd. Mark tried to stop him. Sharp pushed his way into the event DJ’s booth and means to upload his thumb drive for all to hear and see. Can Mark stop him? Should he?
While we all wait for Monday to see what The Professor has to show, let’s look at today’s nature show.
Figured it would be spiders, today. And a web-based title panel is made to order. I used to informally study spiders. Trail is right; they are very helpful to humans, insofar as their pest-eating ability is concerned. In fact, if you find spiders in your house, it usually means there are even less desirable bugs around and the spider(s) is cleaning up for you. So don’t squash them, even if they look scary. Seems our fear of spiders (and snakes) may be an evolutionary holdover, though that is small comfort to people with strong phobias.
Just try to ignore them, unless they are dangling from a thread over your head where you sleep. In that case, you should run like hell, because you are probably a character in a murder mystery novel about to be murdered by a clever fiend who is most likely your uncle, in order to beat you out of your inheritance! Either that or quit wearing mosquito-themed pajamas.
Action builds as Trail decides his unconfirmed fears are more important than exposing the Crypto Bros. Rivera continues to indulge in Batman TV Sound Effects (Grip! Snatch!). Everybody in the strip seems fixated on full names. What a day. Hey, watch out for that wolf spider (I think)!
Now, why would The Professor expose himself to Trail (as he did yesterday), if he didn’t want to be interrupted? I suppose predetermination wins out once again. And we have another cliffhanger that will only unfold next week. This reminds me of the Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes that always ended with cliff-hanging reminders:
“Tune in again next time for ‘Play NiFTy for me’ or ‘Say it Loud! It’s fake and I’m proud!’”
What’s with this habit of Mark Trail always using Sharp’s full name? Can’t Mark Trail just call him “Professor Sharp” or even “Sharp”? Does Jules Rivera think we would forget a character that makes an appearance in the strip at least once every two or three months? It’s not as it is what’s-her-face, that uh, reporter, you know, who is Mark Trail’s rival or something, right? How many times has she been in this strip since Jules Rivera took over? Yes, who could forget . . . her?
Anyway, pretty nice panel 4. Very manga-ish.
So, another dramatic moment arrives. Which way will it go? I hardly think Sharp is going to suddenly agree with Mark and just do a fade. So, he’ll attempt (at least) to expose the Bunco Brothers. Will Mark intervene or be smart and rush his family to safety? Will we see Sharp storm the stage in this Saturday’s strip to call a stop and announce he has a revelation?
He shoots, he scores! These gals look a few years older than Rusty, so it’s major cool for Rusty that they would even talk to him. That blonde girl’s face and mannerism reminds me of another, somewhat older, woman that appeared this strip. You might have figured that out, as well.
Anyway, aren’t we all glad that Rusty learned an important lesson about relationships and self-worth today? I hope it pays off for him in the very near future. Maybe the girls will stick around to help Rusty hunt the Specter. The sooner the better! I’m starting to worry that Mary Worth might show up, thinking this is a soap opera, not an adventure strip.
Are we going to have another week of mattress stuffing? I think that will be my new go-to word for padding a story. This stuff doesn’t move the story along. However, I give it a pass, because it focuses on Rusty and it shows that, not only is he not too young to notice girls after all, but he found enough grit to approach them.
The big question many boys and men face is “Why the hell am I afraid of approaching a member of the opposite sex?” Sure as hell I am not the guru holding that wisdom. Still, big points for Rusty’s new-found courage in the face of disaster. Next time, Rusty, talk about what the girls like to do!
On second thought, perhaps this is not mattress stuffing, after all. It is a focus on Rusty’s life, which is kind of a secondary storyline in this adventure, right? So, yeah. We’d all like to see this story (whatever the actual point here is) move along to a hoped-for successful and even action-packed conclusion. At the same time, we have to allow for some “real life” to play out a bit, here and there. Flesh on the bones, and all that.
Wow, at first, I thought “Cathy” the comic strip character, was making a cameo appearance as a skateboarder in panel 4. Having a guest cartoon character would be a first for Mark Trail, though it is often done in other strips. And say, do you see how the stage decoration behind Happy Trail in panel 1 kind of makes him look like a turkey? I wonder if Rivera is making some kind of subliminal statement here.
I reckon that Worrywart Mark has to stick around for the surprising revelations from Professor Bee Sharp that will predictably set off the fireworks. Then Mark can go into his Hero Act again to save the family from the soon-to-be-rioters. But let’s face it: Happy Trail has lost his antennae for detecting danger.
I’m not even going to pretend to understand the disconnected aphorism in panel 3.
However, I admit that I like the way Rivera connected the ground line in panel 2 with the halfpipe curve in panel 3 to create some visual continuity. The continuous line is not a revolutionary device, itself, but a subtle way to reinforce Rusty’s viewing in panel 2 to what he sees in panel 3: So, we see the skateboarder through Rusty’s eyes. Except that, Rusty is in the background of panel 3. Rats! That theory is DOA.
And that’s why I wound up doing this blog instead of teaching art history classes.
In case you missed this last week, you’re not too far behind. Think of it like missing a week of a soap opera. Yeah, that’s about it. So, Happy Trail and son Mark stressed and opined over the ethics of worthless NFTs, crypto-whatever, and the Douche Brothers’ upcoming Crypto Conference. What would the crowd do if and when they discover the NFTs are worthless? Would they get mad? Golly gee-whiz! I also penned a few thoughts on the possible aesthetic aims of the strip, itself. But you’re going to have to scroll down to find it. In any event, this week of padded plotting ended with a transition to Cherry taking Daddy Doc Davis to task for stupidly misusing a pressure cooker to make chili. Fascinating. There, that’s the whole nut. While you’re chewing on it, check out today’s nature exposé.
Overall, this is a nicely-drawn and interesting Sunday strip. And we know that Rivera really likes doing the Sunday strips. So, today’s strip tells us that no matter what we do, we @#($! the planet. Or ourselves. Aside from a wide-brimmed hat, is there any kind of sunscreen that is acceptable, since so-called organics are also suspect? But Rivera wants us do to the research!? Hang on there, Jules! Isn’t that what these Sunday strips are for? Why don’t you just tell us what lotion is safe and save us (and the planet) the trouble of making a wrong choice?! I suppose if the long-term solution is that we just wear hats and still get skin cancer, at least, the Earth will be around for the rest of the animal kingdom.
As for today’s custom title panel, it’s a nice idea, but not a winning solution. I mean, just what is that ectoplasmic title supposed to represent: A giant fart? A jellyfish cape? Better would be a series of bubbles spelling out the title. Ah, but that would also represent CO2, which is bad. Hey! How about spelling out the strip’s name with an arrangement of melanoma spots on Mark’s arm?
Okay, why have we spent all week on this pointless back-and-forth questioning between Mark and Dad? Did Rivera recently re-watch the Da Vinci Code? Is it simply to make a transition into next week’s focus on Cherry and/or Rusty? Seems a bit much for that to me. As I’ve pointed out before, none of this is news and it all goes back to their conversation in Florida. I think we have to chalk this up to padding the ol’ storyline, something that we’ve seen in Vintage Mark Trail stories, as well. Like the flapjacks Dad brought up this past Tuesday, we can give Rivera points for keeping another old tradition going!
Also, we haven’t heard much from ol’ Doc Davis for some time. In fact, we’ve hardly heard from him at all since Rivera took over. >DING! DING! DING!< Rivera tops off flapjacks and story padding with yet anotherVintage Mark Trailtradition for the Hat Trick. Rivera is hot this week!
But no points for Doc. Nobody in their right mind makes chili in a pressure cooker.
The Daily Trail 