So, it isn’t that Mark Trail gets the weird jobs while Kelly gets the meat-and-potatoes assignments. We get it, Kelly. The Men’s Club still wants to enforce the old rules. Perhaps that is why Cricket Bro and Kelly Welly arranged to have Mark sit in this singular, make-a-statement chair (or throne?) stuck in the middle of the room, to give him a false sense of importance as they start cutting him down.  It’s a tag-team double whammy, as Cricket Bro dropkicks Mark on his masculinity while Kelly body slams his professional standing.

Kelly Welly has moved on from a mere journalist rival to nemesis status. I’m confused, though. Is nature journalism the ‘sad little industry’ Kelly references in panel 1 or the ‘environmental’ industry?

Panel 3 is interesting for its background, which loses most of its meaning in the black & white world of newspaper publishing. I don’t reckon it takes a lot of imagination to figure out the symbolism here, and my sense of decorum restricts me from having to state the obvious. It’s a rather bold statement , all the same.

Art Dept. This room reminds me more and more of the rooms in the German Expressionist movie, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.