Mark seems somewhat over-reactive, like some holier-than-thou parent finding a book by Christopher Hitchens in their child’s bookcase. Perhaps that accounts for the “testifying preacher” pose in panel 4, because Mark does get preachy now and then. I noticed that most of Mark’s dialog has exclamation points (as in the strip’s good ol’ days). This is not something we normally see in Rivera’s interpretation.

If a person is lost in the woods after following Tad Crass’s bad advice, where does the horse head come into the picture? Was it part of the book’s advice to wear a horse head mask in the wilderness to save yourself from animal attacks?

Mark makes flexible use of the word “lost”. In panel 3, it is ambiguous whether Mark refers to getting lost in your mind from reading the bad advice or whether a person got physically lost in the real world after reading the book. In panel 4, a person may have metaphorically “lost their head” as a result of reading the book. That accounts for the contrived pose of holding up the horse head mask. Rivera almost got away with that visual pun. But not quite.

It is even more problematic, since “losing your head” refers to a person acting without reasoning or caution. Perhaps this lost camper is going to turn out to actually be Tad Crass, still living as if it was 20 years ago, yet trying to test out his AI-generated survivalist book.