Mark and Rusty arrive on the 600-passenger Catalina Flyer, or a similar catamaran ferry, with the famous Catalina Casino in the background. It’s a good enough composition, though the scene suffers from an uninteresting sky. Sure, everybody is glad that Mark did not pilot the boat. But they haven’t disembarked yet!

Art dept. Rivera referenced pictures of the images she combined in panel 1. This is a long-standing and common practice in comics, especially in adventure strips that rely on recognizable locations and objects. In the days before the Internet, cartoonists kept physical files of photos and drawings of useful objects, locations, animals, people, etc. This was standard practice in the earlier Mark Trail strip.

For example, the Catalina Island Fox (and cacti) in the foreground appears to be a reversal of this photograph I found in an online search. The challenge for the artist is ensuring that the drawing matches the overall style of the strip as close as possible in order to lessen the accusation of mere cut-and-paste laziness. I believe I mentioned that the depiction of the famous “Meme” houses of San Francisco is another example.