When it comes to drawing beards, Rivera may not be your go-to artist. Her attempts at men’s facial fashion usually look like pasted-on comedy beards, and I don’t mean just Duke’s own fuzzy-wuzzy. Lost-camper-finally-with-a-name Connor (in panel 2) has a beard that looks more like a sloppy Covid mask.

I’ve commented in the past on Mark’s disaster of a five o’clock shadow. His original stubble beard was good, but possibly got too boring for Rivera. Maybe Rivera is trying to give Mark the kind of beard we see on the sweaty face of Humphrey Bogart (as Fred C. Dobbs) in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Mark doesn’t have that kind of personality, which is to the good; but I think it takes that kind of person to wear that kind of beard with any authenticity.

As for how this story is shaping up, I can’t tell. It seems like a diversion. More to the point, it feels like a sly criticism of Mark’s male-centered universe. In panel 3, Duke holds his hand beside his face in a kind of “gossip sharing” gesture with which women are often stereotypically portrayed in mass media. This is reinforced by Rivera’s comment in panel 4.