I’m sorry, Jules, but this is pretty rank stuff, visually and textually.I went over the implausibility of the wind blowing papers from inside the house to the outside when there is no cross-current. Rivera could have just had Mark move to the window in order to better read the paper and then have a gust of wind blow it out of his hands. That would at least be plausible.

And just how do we know that this production schedule is an important clue to the whereabouts of Wingit? In panel 3, the narration box states that Mark has caught up to the paper, yet he is still inside of the house, looking out the window. In panel 4, a recumbent lioness has somehow managed to snag the schedule. How did lions get outside of the house and why are they just hanging around the yard? The notion that police would not get involved in a situation like this is totally unrealistic.

Art Dept. There isn’t much to be said on the positive side and I do not think I need to belabor the obvious. The real question is why Rivera puts out this kind of stuff when it is clear she can do much better. Sure, her syndicate is probably not paying her much money. I get that. Mark Trail is not pulling in the kind of readership and earnings that Garfield or even Luann does, nor even the endless reprints of Peanuts. So, is the lack of quality meant to be some kind of protest by Rivera? Or maybe just her indifference? That seems self-destructive.

Perhaps there is no financial incentive for her to spend more time on the strip. That depends on her contract, of course. It might even be that the syndicate, itself, doesn’t care one way or the other, for its own reasons. I certainly don’t know. It’s a shame, because there are many good ideas and approaches that Rivera has already initiated or could implement.

I’m not sure how much bravery is required to walk through a house filled with docile lions, though the basic idea is certainly unsettling. Anyway, as the story unfolds, Mark looks for more evidence of Wingit’s location. But speaking of evidence, what was on the video camera and where is it?

Mark finds another possible piece of the puzzle: a production schedule, which just happens to suddenly fly out of a surprisingly open window! OMG!! A disaster! Go figure.

Funny though, I hadn’t noticed any strong air currents inside the house that would cause this. Was Mark holding the document outside of the window to read it? Couldn’t he just turn on the room lights or use the flashlight!?

Okay, so the schedule flew out of the window. Big deal. Mark or Sammy Spotter can just go retrieve it, right? Or does there just happen to be a swimming pool that the document just happened to fly into and then just happened to turn into a soggy pile of unreadable paper mush? What will Mark do, then?

At least the house hasn’t caught fire, yet.

Art Dept. Looks like Rivera wasn’t ready to continue employing hatching to suggest darkness, volume, or strike a mood. A lost opportunity!