Bill Ellis is a crudely-drawn example of how trivially the word “hero” gets employed these days. A hero puts their life on the line to save others or end an existential threat. That cave rescue did not measure up to either situation. If anything, Mark could be accused of reckless endangerment and child abuse for taking Sammy Spotter and Rusty into a dark, strange cave where he suspected Wesley Wingit had gotten trapped. That plotline could have been framed as a dramatic and danger-filled scene. Instead, Rivera presented it like an amusement park water ride.

If there was any situation where Mark could be called heroic, it was when he decided to enter a house known to contain freely roaming lions in search of a person possibly trapped or hiding inside. As it turned out, housecats could have posed more of a danger to Mark, but that doesn’t change Mark’s initial action. Of course, we never found out why those lions were so docile or why they ignored Mark’s wanderings. Will we learn anything more in Saturday’s closing strip?

Yesterday’s Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Laugh: The thing that caught my eye yesterday was the eagle, which looks like it is sporting a pair of spectacles. Tell me I’m wrong.