Mark is finally on the “Save Max the Manatee” job at Storm Brain, the non-profit run by Rita and Skeeter. After some desultory rehashing of conspiracy threats by “The Whether Men”, it was time to hit the road in their specialized transport truck. Was Max the Manatee already in the truck or did he have to be picked up? That was left unsaid and we never saw Max. In fact, most of the dialog was about the kidnapping threat. They finally left, only to make a surprisingly unnecessary snack stop at a gas station along the way. While there was no practical reason to stop for such a short drive, it’s the kind of staged moment we see in countless shows where the protagonists do something pointless so they can be caught off guard by the bad guys.

As Mark, Skeeter, and Rita got out of the truck, a hilariously “fake bear” jumped out of the bushes (How did he know where to be?), knocking down Rita and Skeeter. Mark was not deterred, but rushed the phony bear and removed its headpiece, exposing the person inside. Unless “The Whether Men” group is actually just one lone whacko, such an obviously inept attack has to be a diversion for a secondary raid on the truck. We’ll have to wait and see where Rivera takes the story.

Art Dept. Maybe some feedback got to Rivera or she acted on her own initiative, but I noticed that Rivera has been experimenting more frequently with using tones and shading in her panels, as seen in this newspaper version of Saturday’s strip. Whether these tones are applied primarily to give more texture to the colors, they certainly provide a welcome enhancement to the usual stark newspaper versions.

And now, on to the Sunday nature exposé!

Rivera produces another interesting topic, as well as a creative title panel. I found some supporting information on this topic on the Smithsonian and National Forest Foundation’s web sites. Of course, trees do not have brains or central nervous systems, so this interaction may be a function of their DNA. However, an article in Scientific American states that all of this is still very hypothetical and relies on limited studies. In fact, competition between trees for limited forest resources seems to be more common (as with humans and animals), and the sharing of “danger or stress signals” was based on a single study in a greenhouse, not in the wild. Tolkien may still be a bit too fanciful with his Ents, but the idea of some kind of communication network among trees is slowly taking root (sorry about that!).