Okay, I got fooled. The Saturday January 13 strip certainly looked like a typical end-of-story sequence. I bet you thought so, as well. Right? After all, the bonding rituals were made, so what was left to say?

We now see that Mark’s “fishing retreat” is back in action for a fishing cruise. What could go wrong? Observant readers that you are, you only see Mark and Cliff, so we should assume the students are fishing on the other side; or maybe they are stuck in the cabin taking a multiple-choice quiz on types of fishing bait.

The “survivalist” dialog here makes it sound as if they just lived through a significant natural disaster or military action. As we have been seeing lately, Rivera completes the daily strip (panel 4) with a non-sequitur. That is, what does the joy of fishing have to do with hospital trips? We can pass this off as a silly nonsense joke people make from time to time, something my wife will tell you I indulge in, as well. I expect cartoonists to do better than I can. But Mark doesn’t look like he’s joking.

Art Dept. Those are well-drawn fish and wisely swimming away from the boat. They form an odd comparison with the overtly cartoonish appearance of the human figures. Do you think there is some kind of philosophical or metaphysical symbolism behind this?