Rivera wastes half of the space today (panel 1) by having the docent repeat what she said yesterday. Not that explaining NOAA’s goals is a waste of time, itself, especially given the pernicious scapegoating that some politicians and groups are touting about NOAA. They link it to the “climate change alarm industry” and think it needs to be downsized, broken up, and brought to heel. Will Rivera take us down that path? 

Art Dept. Panel 3 shows us another case of Rivera’s reliance on (and appreciation for) the symmetrical composition of a figure with upraised arms flanked by two other figures. We can see this organization at least as far back in Rivera’s work as the scene of Tess Tigress welcoming Mark, Diana Daggers, and Rex Scorpius to her compound in the “Puff Piece Zoo” story (9/6/2022). 

The composition of Tess Tigress and her companions at least has a functional story purpose for the arrangement, being that of a formal greeting. In today’s episode, the composition in panel 3 is largely meaningless, insofar as the information in that panel could have been presented with almost any arrangement of the figures. The best that I come up with is that Rivera is giving the reader a compositional illusion of standing in between Mavis and Mark, looking on, while the docent and the students pointlessly stand in a line, facing Mark and Mavis.