One of the longstanding sources of artistic humor in Mark Trail is the dialog balloon that seems to point to the wrong speaker. Often, this turned out to be an animal or tree. In this case, we have an extreme example in panel 3. It’s difficult to call it” ambiguous”, because the tail of the top dialog balloon deliberately points to Honest Ernest, instead of Violet. It would be interesting to know if this was truly deliberate or if there was some editing going on at the syndicate. Or, it could have been the case that the top balloon had different dialog that Ernest actually said, but it was later changed without redirecting the balloon tail to Violet. 

Otherwise, Rivera finally moves the story along by throwing in a plot twist of a sort with Honest Ernest’s dramatically clumsy entrance, most likely in an attempt to get back into Violet’s good graces and welcoming arms. 

Art Dept. The composition of the group in the background in panel 1 provides a good symbolic purpose, as it supports the narrative by focusing on the group as a whole, rather than the individual participants. However, the squirrel is too big and obscures the effect. Ernest’s clumsy dramatic entrance in panel 2 is also a good effort, though his anatomy is just not right. And once again, the included squirrel is spurious and detracts from the mood.  Rivera cannot seem to stop herself from continuing to parody the pre-Rivera Mark Trail tradition of including animals irrelevant to the storyline. 

Quiz: How close are you observing details? Check out Wednesday’s strip (“In case you missed yesterday, let’s review.”), then compare it to panel 2 and panel 4 today.