I’m trying to be fair, readers. Really! But how can I resist such low-hanging fruit? While Jules Rivera won’t show us how bats were removed from Violet’s music hall, we do get to enjoy these heartwarming scenes of symbolic fishing and symbolic male bonding.

Would you say Rivera has done much fishing? In panel 1 good ol’ Cliff looks like he’s hauling in a big one, though his line is only slightly more taught than cooked pasta. But maybe they’re all just taking turns playing the boy-bonding pastime, “Mine is bigger than yours!”

I’m not exactly sure what the heck is going on in panel 2, either, as Cliff and Mark make a rookie’s mistake of holding their rods outside of the boat. What a great technique to teach the noobs!

As for panel 3, we have an impressive underwater scene. Maybe Rivera could move over to a comic strip version of the old TV show, Sea Hunt.