I think that once you have gotten your characters to form a common bond in your storyline, spending extra days reiterating that accomplishment starts diluting its value. That is the case here, where the characters fall to pointless chatter as the storyline bobs and goes nowhere, like their fishing boat. That is why I thought this story concluded a few weeks ago, in the hospital. Mission accomplished…Not!

So the nicely illustrated underwater scenes begin to look merely repetitive. I agree with commenter Mark that the panels dealing specifically with the boat and the river are artistically of better quality than the flat, simplistic panels of “the men.” Are they drawn by a different artist? It might seem so, but I disagree. Compare these current panels to some of Rivera’s earlier work, such as this panel from January 2021:

Rivera uses the same compositional devise of combining the top and underwater views, along with a close attention to detail. They are not exact matches, of course; but after three years, there will naturally be differences. Of course, I could be totally wrong and it could be that a ghost artist today has simply updated Rivera’s original take on water scenes. A few non-related observations here:

In her inaugural Mark Trail adventure (“Happy Trails“), Rivera already had Mark arguably breaking the law and fleeing from the cops, as was recently repeated (“Something Fishy“). Also, these days Rivera has all but abandoned her original and innovative “Doctor Doolittle” relationship between Mark and various animals (think also of Ralph the rat snake). I rather enjoyed that feature, and I’m sorry she moved away from it.