Hubba! Hubba! Cherry in a bathrobe! Well, I didn’t picture that! No, not Cherry in a bathrobe, but Cherry spending time scrolling social media for disaster articles. Well, to each her own.
Here we have one of Rivera’s oft-used plot devices: Interweaving Mark and Cherry into each other’s storylines. It’s not always simultaneous: Sometimes Mark gets involved in Cherry’s work and sometimes it’s Cherry helping out Mark. This time the focus is the exploding train, not the depleted beehives.
There isn’t much Cherry can do about the train situation at this point, so she might as well keep working on how the beehives were abandoned. Until then, we may be faced with several days of Mark updating Cherry on what’s going on up there (mainly, everything we’ve already read the past few weeks).
Following the mysterious train explosion and getting chased away by transit police, Mark and Happy “took refuge”—as Rivera put it—in a local motel. With their train apparently stopped because of the other train explosion, their second and final day of fishing was also ruined. That fact, by the way, was forgotten as the two Trails focused on discovering the reason for the explosion.
Mark got in touch with one of his newest friends, Rex Scorpius, the animal trainer (an occupation Mark thinks makes him a nature expert). Rex was coincidentally nearby, visiting his mother, and knew something about the explosion. So Happy and Mark visited Rex at his mom’s place. While Rex happened to be helping his mom move to Los Angeles, he told Mark that—in spite of the fact that the explosion just occurred today—he knew why it happened: The train derailed, causing dangerous chemicals to spill out. The “authorities” tried to do a controlled burn to eliminate the spill, but it got out of hand and caused the explosion.
This was a lot of information for Rex (or anybody) to discover in a short time, all the while looking at the wreck from a distance, using binoculars. Maybe Rex has some abilities far beyond those of mortal man. He is, after all, a nature expert. Meanwhile, Mark and Happy vowed to carry on the investigation as Rex had to leave with his mother. But before you have to leave, let’s investigate today’s nature talk. You won’t need your binoculars, but you might need a respirator mask.
Based on an earlier statement this week about this exploded whale by Mark, today’s topic should not be surprising. It is rather light on science and nature, but an interesting and humorous tale of misguided optimism with tragi-comic results.
Whale + Dynamite = Moby Ick? Rivera makes another groaner PUNch line in the last panel. Of course, dynamitewas not really used to capture or carve up whales in either the book or the movie of Moby Dick. In fact, it would have been absurd, since the point of whaling is to capture a whale in order to harvest its blubber and meat. I wonder how many people today have heard of Moby Dick, much less saw the movie (I did) or even read the book (I did)? Okay, I’ll stop. It’s just a silly pun. Hah!Hah!Hah!
As commenter Downpuppy pointed out, Rivera almost certainly based this adventure on the infamous Ohio train derailment and chemical spill earlier this year. That’s fine. But I’m not sure what the deal is about Rex’s oddly glib attitude. That might explain Mark’s perplexed look in panel 1, by the way: “You call discussing a train derailment and chemical spill, a bungled controlled burn that led to an explosion, and a likely environmental disaster just a chat?!”
Moving on, I suppose some people reallydo move in the middle of the night. But what’s the point: Does it move the story along or initiate a related subplot? Or maybe it’s just to represent the fact that insignificant things happen in any context.
Somehow, Rivera will have to make Mark and Happy stand-ins for the investigative press as they try to get to the bottom of the environmental threat.
So this is what Rex was hinting at in yesterday’s strip: Unnamedauthorities tried to burn the spilled chemical, but it got away from them. Got it! I guess that means mystery solved! Nothing left for Mark to do but move on to the next story, right?
Trivial Observations:
Don’t Mark’s comments in Panels 1 and 2 seem out of order?
Did you know about the 1970exploding whale of Florence, Oregon, before you googled it? I did not! Wikipedia has a good account. Maybe Mark learned about this event from one of Happy’s stories about his grandfather, Forest Trail.
Art Notes:
Why do open mouths in Mark Trail often appear solid white? I’m guessing it is a stylistic feature, like Little Orphan Annie’s blank eyes.
So this train just happened to have derailed while at a train station, and it’s been there for days, leaking a dangerous chemical? And “the authorities” are responsible for the explosion? Well, this is quite a report from Rex!
But yesterday Rex spoke of the derailment as if it had just happened, implying it was part of the cause of the explosion. Furthermore, the explosion occurred at the same time Mark and Happy were at the station. You see where I’m going with this, right? How did Rex get all of this information from an event that just happened in the last few hours?
Are we to expect that nobody else knew about a train derailment at a popular train stop involving cars carrying dangerous chemicals? Mark seems to have swallowed this story like he was chowing down on free shrimp, since he didn’t even ask how Rex could know all of this! And just who are these unspecified authorities?
Where are all the major news sources? Where are the government inspectors? Why would people even be allowed to mill about a train station that has a derailed train carrying dangerous chemicals? For answers to these—and other—questions, check back tomorrow and hope Mark or Happy have the wits to cross-examine Rex’s information.
Okay, so Rexdid bring some new information, after all: a train derailment. There must have been too much smoke for Mark and Happy to see something so obvious. Train derailments have been in the news, lately. The most common causes are student terrorist training exercises gone wild; too many cute bunnies sleeping on rails; and engineers trying to do wheelies.
Don’t buy that? Okay, faulty equipment (poor maintenance) and other human errors are, of course, the actual main reasons. But really, “it wasn’t just an explosion, it was a derailment!” That seems like misplaced drama. Wouldn’t a mysterious explosion be more unnatural, more suspicious, and a more exciting storyline than an explosion because of a train derailment? Ho hum.
If I’m right (and I sometimes am!), the plot hook here could actually be the potential danger of whatever is burning and its effects on the environment. And this would be the justification for Mark and Happy (and maybe Rex) to stick their nose in the railroad’s business.
Mark has a small circle of friends he calls on. Rex has apparently rebuilt his crushed ego from the last time we saw him at the Tess Tigress sham tiger petting zoo. Looks like his new job is boosting packages from people’s porches. He should be a real, big help.
Will we have to abandon all hope that this is going to be a more serious story than usual? It would have been a step in the right dramatic direction had Mark’s “friend” been an actual expert in a related field. Hell, even a retired train engineer would be an improvement.
So, why is Mark still carrying around that man-bag on his shoulder?
Does he think he is Felix the Cat who can create any object he needs at a moment’s notice with his magic bag?
Pre-Rivera Mark Trail adventures were known to stop abruptly and suddenly jump us back to the cabin in Lost Forest. Sometimes It felt like something got skipped over, or maybe we had suffered a case of amnesia and lost one or more days in our life. So we dug through the recycle bin to check the discarded newspapers for missed strips.
By the way, Panel 1 could have produced a nice little joke, had the motel been named “Motel 2”, based on the number of doors shown on the building. Like I said, small place and small joke.
More significantly, I don’t get this sharing photos thing. Presumably, Mark is sharing photos of the train explosion with a “nature expert” who “happens to live nearby.” While it stretches credulity that a friend of Mark just happens to be living near the scene of the train explosion, the real questions to me are: What possible connection can there be between an exploding train and a nature expert? And what notes are getting compared? Mark was there, but his friend was not. What does that guy have to bring to the table? Yet, always-gullible Happy Trail (panel 4), seems to think this is a good idea.
Wrapping up this past week, the mysterious train explosion continued to be a mystery. Happy Trail, possibly spurred on by some past failure or personal incident, goaded Mark into running across the platform with him, towards the exploding train to investigate it. Why? Perhaps a father-son fishing event seemed less exciting, especially as they had already missed half of it.
Anyway, as Mark and Happy trotted across the platform and Mark started taking photos of the wreck with his phone, a transit cop ran up behind them shouting that they did not have permission to take photographs and had to turn over the phone. Never mind that the cop’s demand is probably not even legal. In any event, quick-thinking (for a change) Mark tossed his phone-like charging case towards the transit cop to make him think Mark was obeying. Then Mark and Happy continued on their way, though it wasn’t clear where they were going at that point. Doesn’t seem likely they are going to get to “investigate” the exploding train. Still not sure why Happy thinks they could do this. Heck, the way this story is exploding in all directions, I would not be surprised if it turns out that Happy spent a few years in his early life as a railroad inspector and still has his badge and union card!
I’m not sure what the timetable is for this adventure, but while we wait for a connection, let’s train our attention on today’s nature seminar!
Okay, this looks like good advice for the family pooch. Of course, instead of buying booties (which I wonder whether dogs really like), why not just take Muffles down to the park or to a field to run around on some grass? As for soundproofing a room, I wonder if Mark bothered to price soundproofing tiles and similar add-ons? Whoof! Perhaps Mark only means to minimize outside noise. Certainly playing music or a movie could help. Put the music or movie on “Repeat”, since there are always fools who will shoot off their fireworks all night long.
Well, commenter Downpuppy’s prediction of a burner phone was not too far off the mark! Good try! But sly Mark really threw his battery charger phone case (Apple seems to charge around $99 for theirs). Not necessarily a cheap throwaway, its weight might fool the cop for a second or two, until he sees it’s just a shell with a battery pack. So Mark probably shouldn’t be brandishing his real phone (panel 3), as if he is doing a TV commercial for Apple. And yeah, Happy, the transit cop probably will like that “fancy” case, either for his own phone or to resell on eBay or Etsy.
The Daily Trail 