Downpuppy’s caustic assessment yesterday of Mark Trail (d)evolving into a child’s comic strip, might be based on more than just the current story. After all, we’ve already had several plots with Rusty over the past three+ years. There seems to be some kind of thinking to filter real drama and danger through the lens of nonsense and goofy characters. Now, as “theater of the absurd” or “social satire” goes, this manner of writing has a long and respected tradition over the past several centuries.

However, one thing missing here is the target of the alleged satire. Is it the legacy Mark Trail strip, itself? In part, I think so. Since she started in 2020, Rivera has been rocking the boat of Mark’s 1950s morale certainty and immunity. But that can only go so far and for so long. Continued, ad infinitum, this trick becomes a parody of itself, as the original strip and its original readers fade into the past. So the satirical references get lost. Then the strip continues as a trivial pastiche looking for an audience. And I think that is where we are. What to do? There is virtually no sense of actual drama or danger to be found. Everything is a put-up joke. Real conservation and ecological issues are resolved by actions too dumbed down or unbelievable to be meaningful.

I think if Rivera and the comics syndicate want to attract more youth, then maybe start molding the strip along the lines of computer adventure/action games, rather than Pokémon or Dora the Explorer.