Oh dear. Where to start? We get confirmation that Max the Manatee is just an excuse for the story and not the focus of the story. The idea that people would start a fist fight while dressed in clumsy bear costumes could only happen if they were:  a) drunk; b) stoned, or c) stupid. If Rivera’s intentions are to treat this sequence as a cheap parody of Vintage Mark Trail, then she succeeded.

This “rescue from ambush” (by a falling iguana, of course) is an old movie and TV trope. Rivera used a similar setup before (“Thanks-alotl for the E-Waste “,7/2/24 & 7/3/24), when Mark was fighting the E-waste dumpers in Lost Forest and was about to get brained by Honest Ernest after Connor snuck up from behind to trap him. But Andy was the surprise “frozen iguana” who bit Connor, breaking his hold and allowing Mark to continue fighting.

Tip for Rivera: Narration boxes look less clunky when they are stretched to fill the width of each panel, especially where there is no dialog.