Well, okay! Mark gets another paying gig. He can pay off the plane tickets to D.C. and once again escape the confines of Lost Forest for a while, where he can rely on his usual seat-of-the-pants decision-making.  

Frankly, I don’t know why Mark keeps up the pretense of being a wildlife journalist when he is actually more of a fixer. That is, he’s a problem solver who gets dumped into a situation and told to fix it. This could be a great secondary covert role for Mark and expand the potential of the strip: Mark gets called in by the Dept of the Interior from time to time to resolve issues they cannot officially touch. Mark would not be allowed to even tell Cherry. 

Art Dept. It’s quite clear that Rivera does her best figurative work in closeups. We can quibble about the exaggerated expressions of Mark in panels 2 and 3, but ignoring the lack of shading or volume, they are well executed, especially panel 3.

Drawing a foreshortened head from below is tricky to do, especially if you want to keep the proportions intact.  On the right is a comparable drawing by James Allen from his infamous bat cave chase (April 2016).  Allen is a competent artist more in line with Dodd than Elrod. Mark’s upturned face is good, but its proportions do not track that close with the rectangular Mark Trail Head.

At the same time, Rivera’s drawing is simpler and the lines less expressive. This is most likely because Allen probably used a conventional ink pen and/or brush, whereas Rivera tends to use a graphic drawing tablet.