Sometimes I just don’t get Bill Ellis. We have this totally off-the-wall assignment: Missing Director in a house full of lions. And never mind how much time has passed since animal wrangler Sammy Spotter reported the crisis. Wait, I’m not going over all of that again.

Well, wouldn’t Sammy Spotter be the exact person to take care of these lions? And once they were safely removed from the house, then there would be no danger searching the house for the missing Director. Am I right? Neither Bill Ellis nor anybody in California thought of this?

Now, if Mark is smart (just go with me on this), he’ll accept this goofy assignment, fly out to California, then use his fists o’ justice to knock some sense or courage into Sammy Spotter to get the lions out of the house. Then search the house. Fly home and wait for the direct deposit to go through. Does Bill want an article to go with that? That’s an additional payment. But we’re not finished.

Ellis finishes up today’s installment with an equally strange non sequitur (panel 4):  Sammy lives near LA and cannot afford lions or houses. Did he misunderstand Mark’s question (panel 3)? Ellis’s response makes no sense, especially since he reported (yesterday) that it was the missing movie director that set up the house with the lions and locked-in actors.