Were you by chance too busy this week to keep up with Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail? Fear not, dear heart, for having taken on the mantle of daily observer, analyst, and reactor, I can—nay, I must—catch you up. Such is my obligation and pleasure.

This past week the strip turned its focus from Mark to Cherry. Working one day (as is all too common) in the garden of the Sunny Soleil Society, Violet Cheshire interrupted Cherry with a handful of kudzu vine and a written note of scorn. Apparently, somebody left that fragment of invasive weed on her home porch with the note blaming Violet for apparently sponsoring its growth in her home garden. It was signed with a comic book nickname: “The Kudzu Crusader.” Of course, Violet assumed Cherry fashioned this presentation as some kind of childish prank. But Cherry denied being either being the author or perpetrator of this action.

I would have thought that this story would move on from the initial interrogation and response. In fact, most of the week’s strips were wasted on repeating this question-and-denial routine, in slightly different revisions. It wasn’t as if the issue was difficult to understand.

Other than my observation that Violet—surprisingly—expressed no knowledge of kudzu, this story started to languish. By Friday, Violet was finally ready to believe Cherry might be innocent, and now came to think that Cherry was being framed. If somebody wanted to frame Cherry, wouldn’t they have signed her name to the note?  But even Cherry began to accept Violet’s illogical “frame Cherry” theory. In Saturday’s strip, Violet was overtaken with Sherlockian zeal, ready to go on the hunt with Cherry as her Watson and find the real Kudzu Crusader.

At last, the story’s excitement level rises to a measurable level! It would be a shame to interrupt the plot at this point and chuck its momentum in the freezer, just to get back to Mark’s ambiguous storyline.

Now it’s good to use more plastic!? As happened last week, Rivera is once again linking the Sunday topic to the current storyline(s), which is a good idea. And as usual, her customized title panel is spot on. Rivera ingeniously takes advantage of the lanternfly’s wing markings to pick out the strip’s name. I would only add that the spotted lanternfly was first observed on the eastern seaboard but seems to be moving westward.