Heh! Heh! I should get an award for prescience, don’t you think!? Come to think of it, if I was prescient, I’d already know, right?
Not only is Tad Crass reacting like Senator Small, he must have hired the Senator’s security force, or the railroad police, as well. And like the Senator and police, they want to shut Mark up and take his phone. But this time, Mark didn’t have time to pull out a fake. (“Something Fishy” adventure)

Yet, how do we know Crass has convinced the BLM to round up mustangs to benefit his property? I know that environmental and animal rights groups claim that the BLM sometimes works with private companies to deliberately corral mustangs into isolated areas where they are not well cared for, all to make public grazing lands more accessible to large ranchers. The BLM states otherwise. Anyway, we’re not here to take sides.

The point is that Rivera is making this the focus of Mark’s adventure, but is she attempting to explore the opposing viewpoint? So far, no. What we have here is Mark making accusations for which no corroborative evidence has yet been produced. In Ohio Mark at least noted dead fish in a river near the chemical spill from the train derailment before going to the press conference. Well, based on panel 4, I wonder if we’re we going to get a repeat of the Ohio press conference police smack-down?

Art Dept. The drawing is getting pretty sloppy, as if hastily done.

Did Mark just wake up from a nap (Panel 1)? Mark’s interview quickly descends into antagonism and insults. I think it was Senator Small in Ohio who was also pretty upset with Mark’s questions and wanted him arrested. Seems like Mark just can’t get through an interview without a fight.

Seems to be some confusion: In Thursday’s strip, we’re told that Tad’s company was located next to where the BLM rounds up mustangs. In today’s strip, Mark says it’s the BLM that decided to start rounding up horses near Tad’s property. Which is it, then? I think that matters.

Did Diana Daggers misrepresent to Crass what Mark was going to ask about? Shouldn’t Mark have interviewed the BLM first to get their take on the situation? If the BLM is, indeed, rounding up mustangs next to Crass’s property, what’s the problem? The BLM have to settle the captured horses on protected grazing property, as is their federal mandate. Therefore, there would be no problems for Tad. So what’s missing here?

<OOPS! Forgot to post this morning.>

Mark puts his “gotcha” journalistic technique into action. Tad’s talk (heh! Heh! That’s almost a pun!) is the kind of simplistic, sarcastic drivel that TV villains like to use. I’m stuck understanding why the location of Tad’s property next to a BLM holding area makes any kind of difference, since these holding areas are generally required to have perimeter fencing.

Wouldn’t a real CEO have the company’s PR Rep on hand to field most of the questions, hand out a bunch of literature, and basically try to gaslight Mark? This idiot (No, I mean Tad!) simply admits he’s going to do something unethical and very likely illegal, while being recorded. I can’t wait to see how this interview continues!

Tad may not be Rob Bettancourt, but he could be his brother. He exhibits a similar disdain for the technology that he exploited to scam gullible readers. Mark clearly decided that voicing his disgust with Tad would quickly end the interview and very likely his assignment. It’s a deflection, but not a foul.

I have yet to figure out why Rivera almost always portrays an animal looking directly at us readers. Sure, part of this was originally a parody of the Trailverse Tradition of depicting all manner of animals parading across the panels. But why continue this full-frontal meme?

Anyway, this depiction of Tad is barely more than a sketch. Is he fat, musclebound, or does he just go in for ill-fitting suits?

Of course, Rivera wants to spring this meetup with Tad Crass as a surprise for us, and that makes perfect sense. It falls in line with Rivera’s habit of character recycling. And for once, we have a character/opponent who has been a factor in two stories, but this is the first time he has had any actual presence in the strip. At least this isn’t another appearance by Rob Bettancourt (aka Cricket Bro).

However, it seems wrong from several points of view. Let me explain:

1. Diana Daggers—reprising her role as driver and frustrated guest character in the strip—sets up an interview between Mark and a big-time land developer in his office, but fails to inform Mark what his name is. Presumably, Crass could have been referenced as Theodore G. Crass, Jr.,  which might not have been so obvious to Mark or us gullible readers.
2. So Mark just sauntered into Tad’s office, without being escorted by Crass’s personal assistant/secretary, assuming he has one.  Maybe Sass isn’t so big-time, after all. He certainly doesn’t much to say, so far.
3. Is that building we see in panel 4 all Sass’s, or does he just rent space? From what Rivera has shown so far, his office could be a converted storage room, based on the double-door entry.

Art Dept. While Rivera can usually handle unusual foreshortenings, such as Mark’s uplifted face in panel 3, she seems to have trouble with three-quarter rear-facing heads. So Mark’s head in panel 2 is really in strong profile, even though his body is turned toward Sass. Speaking of Tad Crass, Rivera’s depiction of him is stiff, flat, and unconvincing. If Crass is into A.I., perhaps Mark is looking at an A.I. depiction of Crass, rather than an actual person. After all, this “Crass” neither spoke nor stood up, as business etiquette demands.

We’re back to Mark’s World and some less-than convincing artwork in panel 1. Okay then. In the March 1 strip, Diana mentioned an unnamed land developer anxious to “clear this land of all wildlife.” Is that just horses, or does the threat includes newts, jackrabbits, snakes, birds, scorpions, turtles, and a myriad other animals? Maybe the horses are really a scapegoat for getting rid of prairie dogs.

While we ponder Mark’s thoughts, we observe that he is decked out in his interview clothes, ready to investigate. Wait! Those are his normal clothes! Mark should really impress that land developer, wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday (and the day before, and the day before that, and the…).

Mark’s speculations do seem precipitate, but at least he is thinking beyond the obvious. How about “Where are the horses going to be cleared to?” I mean, there’s a heck of a lot of land out there. One would think that if you have property you want to develop and protect, you hire some professional wranglers to move the horses to some other location, then fence off your property. Unless your property is the size of Ben Cartwright’s Ponderosa Ranch on Bonanza, a property larger than any city in the lower 48 states.

Recent reader comments (you can go back and actually read them, folks!) question the alternative spelling (and even the pronunciation) of the horse rescue organization’s name (“Happy Hoovez”). Is Rivera attempting to be too cute? Is she attempting to suggest that the rescue staff is illiterate? Or does she want to suggest that maybe the owner(s) are foreigners and not sure of the spelling? I’ll make an executive decision and claim that that last idea is just bupkis. Still, I left it in so I could use the word bupkis.

I’m not a conspiracy nut, but maybe Rivera has embedded a tell-tale in the spelling, itself: That is, the misspelling (“Hoovez”) warns that something about the organization—like the spelling—is not quite right. That would be a clever plot device, as you might find in a murder mystery.

But I wrote the paragraphs above on Friday. Today’s strip is leading me to think differently.

BLECH! Maybe Rivera really dislikes Mark Trail. Or its readers. I can’t recall a more disparaging, demeaning sequence.

Clayton, Caretaker and apparent head wrangler of Happy Hoovez, defines his NPO’s mission, which coincides with BLM’s (no, not that BLM!). I hesitate to suggest at this point that Rivera implies that the Bureau of Land Management is not about protecting mustangs as well as the land. But is Clayton all talk and no hat (like Tess Tigress and her faux tiger petting zoo)? Is he fronting a fraudulent organization secretly selling horses for slaughter, in violation of BLM regulations? It’s too early in the story to start making these presumptions, but innuendo sells, right?

And while the artwork is not terrible at this point, it is rather bland. We could discuss the depiction of Mark’s overly-starched kerchief or the ever-changing size of Artemis. But again, innuendo is so much easier and saves me from having to actually think.

Mark has been strategically placed in panel 1 to keep this strip family-friendly. It is just an oversight, I’m sure, that led Rivera to focus more on Artemis, herself, and less on the proportional relationship of the horse to Clayton in panel 1. No matter, as Rivera straightened out the visual ambiguities in panel 3.

[Edit] Mark expresses his ignorance of horses in general or maybe just the mustangs. I suppose that with Rivera’s reboot, Mark’s pre-Rivera past experience with horses (as noted by a comment from Downpuppy a few days ago) has been wiped clean for the sake of this story. Otherwise, Rivera seems to be maintaining a more serious approach than has been usual in past adventures. That’s good, but how long will this last?

Nice to get those comments! I’m back home, so my posts should appear more regularly. In a touch of irony, regular reader Downpuppy made a pithy comment regarding Mark’s missing cowboy hat that I poked fun of. Apparently not wearing a hat in Utah can lead to a bad end. Consider me educated on that topic!

Clayton the Wild Horse Caretaker (who wisely wears a hat!) lays out his case for Mark. For possibly the first time, we have evidence of Mark Trail actually working as a journalist, recording Clayton’s testimony! I’m willing to give Mark a pass today regarding his response in panel 4. It’s not necessarily a pun, nor an obvious joke. It could be a sincere reaction.

It seems that Jake is less concerned about the issue of the wild horses’ geographic ancestry or the BLM’s periodic roundup of the horses than he is about the horses’ ultimate care.

Art Dept. After five days, the black bar between the panels has disappeared. A shame; its appearance held promise and the hope of millions that Mark would finally get to wallop the living #(@! out of some malefactor.