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Monthly Archives: September 2024

An island with mountains you say? How unusual, Rusty!

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I’m still trying to come to grips with the justification for this entire storyline. One would think that a house filled with free-roaming lions and human actors would constitute an imminent threat requiring quick and decisive action. Nothing could be further from the truth. Then there is the fact that the entire enterprise is not about rescuing the actors (who cares about them!?!), but on finding the missing director who set up this ridiculous scenario, in order to protect the reputation of the movie studio.

I cannot stop thinking that there might be something entirely different going on here than we are led to believe. Is Sammy Spotter being honest? Are the lions actually in a cage inside the house? Or are they old, toothless beasts ready for their last roar? Is Mark being conned into participating in some kind of secret Reality TV show? Is he being set up to be a fall guy? Or maybe it’s something even worse, planned by one of the clown criminals from his earlier adventures? Perhaps I’m just hoping for something spicy. Don’t let me down, Jules!

Now we’re getting somewhere…!

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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.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Cherry called in her dad, Doc Davis the Lost Forest Veterinarian, to consult on dealing with her box o’ kittens found in the bushes of the Sunny Soleil Society. Doc warned against pet shelters, having too few funds or adoptees available. He suggested getting someone to foster the kittens until they get old enough to offer up for adoption. Just who would adopt any of them is another thing. About that time, Violet Cheshire showed up and started gushing over the cute kittens, until she developed a sudden allergic reaction. It should be noted that she did not sneeze around Banjo Cat. So, is that an inconsistency in the story?

Not necessarily, but we’ll have to wait to see if Rivera picks up on this point. Not all cats produce enough allergens to affect people and not all cats affect people the same way. That’s just to say “it depends on the cat (or kitten).” And that’s a common problem with most allergies. I know that, as I went through 20 years suffering indoor/outdoor allergies, including getting weekly shots and inhalants. Not a lot of fun. But most of them disappeared about as suddenly as they came on. We’ll likely be waiting a few weeks before we learn more about Violet’s reaction, as we should now get two weeks of Mark’s current assignment. But first …

Rivera continues to force puns on us, shooting twice for a basket. On the plus side, this another topic germane to Mark’s current assignment on Catalina Island. On the negative side, the artwork looks pretty spartan. Even the title panel is hardly more than an idea.

You know, if Rivera did not put Mark in virtually every panel (and there’s really no need for that), there would be much more room for the subject(s) to shine!

I’ll let you grammarians have fun with the actual text; I don’t wish to hog all of the fun!

Violet experiences a CATastrophe!

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So, Banjo Cat didn’t give Violet the sneezies like these kittens appear to do? That’s a tough break for Violet and for Cherry, if the diagnosis is accurate. Where will the plot go, then? Too bad that we’ll have to wait for another two weeks to find out, unless Rivera has revised her usual schedule of Cherry=1 week and Mark =>2 weeks.

Art Dept. It may just be another case of artistic license, but that animal looks pretty large to be a kitten.

Wait until Violet learns about litter boxes.

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This story is moving along at the pace of a garden snail, or so it seems. And the Big Plan is:  Cherry and Doc con Violet Cheshire into fostering the kittens. Okay, then what? Do they hold an “Adopt a Kitten” event to unload these little fur balls? They should do it in a hurry, while the kittens are still in their cute phase.

The doc delivers.

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I presume that Doc Davis is going to be as good as his word and take his own advice? He can foster those kittens in his private bedroom hidden somewhere in a corner of the Trail cabin that we never see. That’s after he spays and neuters the kittens, of course!

Art Dept. Things improved today. Even the squirrel.

Oh. I almost forgot Rivera’s punchline of the day (panel 4). But I’m going to try harder.

Does Rivera now have an assistant!?

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Do you think Cherry’s stories have become more simplistic and vacuous? If so, why?

The current plot involves Cherry finding a pack of possibly abandoned kittens. What to do?!? That Cherry has no idea about animal shelters around Lost Forest is a bit surprising. Of course, what to do with stray cats and kittens (to say nothing of dogs) is certainly a real world problem with no easy solution. Spaying and neutering kittens is one step, even if it means returning them to the wild. Finding families to adopt the kittens is not easy. We’ll have to wait and see what happens and whether Cherry’s over-the-top reaction (panel 3) has any justification.

Art Dept. Who drew this stuff? Is Rivera just knocking these panels out while waiting for the surf to come in? I’m sure that the door in panel 1 must have been traced from my grandson’s 5th grade drawings. As far as panel 2 is concerned, I wonder if Rivera let somebody else use her drawing tablet. Did you notice Cherry’s amazing kitten box whose size varies panel to panel?

Then there is the very different depiction of Doc Davis in panel 2, as if drawn by my grandkids. Is there a genuine reason for this sort of inconsistency? Most of Rivera’s critics seem to think she can’t draw or doesn’t care (for examples, search for comments on this site by Mark, “the contrarian commenter”). I’m more inclined to the latter reason, which is worse.

Still don’t know why Cherry called on Doc Davis.

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First off, the contrivance and pacing of the dialog into three panels is not warranted, just for the sake of a forced joke. I’d have rather seen panel 3 become panel 1 and move on with two more panels to push the story some more. I don’t think we’d lose any context for the remark.

Art Dept. I don’t wish to be merely critical. Even if I am. So, why are everybody’s slacks tight fitting? This is a standard design choice in Mark Trail. But isn’t it about time that Doc Davis, at least, started wearing “comfortable fit” slacks that don’t look like leggings?

Why does Rivera show Doc and Cherry standing so closely, side by side in panel 1, with their bodies facing us, while their heads are turned toward each other? And that proximity looks like some geezer hitting on a younger gal.

I think panel 2 is well done, though drawing Cherry’s mental image balloon crowds Doc Davis out of the frame. Panel 3 is quite another story. It’s a room of shifting perspectives!

Doc looks like a slightly smaller version of Andre the Giant, fully covering the door behind him. When we see that Cherry is virtually the same height as Doc, one has to wonder. Let’s suppose it must be artistic license or the “needs of the story”, but the kitty box is drawn with a perspective that matches nothing else in the room. But we need to see the kittens, right? Drawing the scene from a higher viewpoint could have resolved that issue much better, but would also present more challenges in foreshortening the figures.

And now we return to Lost Forest, deer decoys, and Cherry’s kittens!

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While Mark, Rusty, and Sammy Spotter presumably make their way to Catalina Island, Rivera returns us to Cherry’s drama of the six kittens. Based on Doc Davis’s reaction, finding kittens is either a rarity in Lost Forest or maybe he’s never seen that many kittens at one time.

So what is Rivera driving at? Is she setting up a scenario where the kittens need to get vaccinated and then taken to the pet shelter? The kittens don’t look like they are running away, so shouldn’t a search for a possible mother cat be undertaken? But then again, if a mother cat is found, then what? Regardless, they have to be removed from the premises to protect them from the dangerous lawn spray. Clearly, this is a tricky situation for Cherry.

Based on the content so far, I predict this will be yet another short story for Cherry. Shorter stories seem to have become the norm, in contrast to her earlier, longer episodes, such as the incident of the statue and the bees (“Sunny and the Bees“).