Even if you grow up in a forest where you will likely see lots of deer, you can still appreciate an interesting photograph.

Anyway, it is problematic that Rivera just cannot decide whether Mark Trail should be a continuity strip or a joke-a-day strip, so she tries to merge both concepts. And usually fails. I’m sure there are ways to put humor into an otherwise “serious” adventure strip without resorting to a standard 3-panel joke format as Rivera often does. This isn’t Pearls Before Swine and Rivera doesn’t have Stephen Pastis’s chops for puns (good or bad).

I’m not sure this event qualifies as an actual story yet, though the general “plot” seems to be “The Grungey Boys are discovered messing around in Lost Forest on a riding lawnmower. Rusty and Olive take steps to report them to the forest rangers for further investigation and law enforcement.” If so, the story is almost already over.

Art Dept. It seems as if Rivera wants to at least give the impression that her animals are cut-and-pasted, as I’ve even stated, yesterday. But is it really just part of a possible “stick it to the Trailheads” agenda? If we examine that deer in panel 3, the uneven black border lines suggest a rather awkward cut-and-paste job. But check out the line under the belly of the deer and you’ll see it continues over top of the hind leg. So what’s the real purpose of these oddly shaped, heavy contours, if not part of a gag? Also, just whose cabin is that behind the deer? Is there a guest house that’s been hiding out of view at the Trail cabin all these years?

In other news: There was a lively discussion in the comments section yesterday about a possible future for Mark Trail; not that we have any control over that, of course. It was more a matter of what might be possible or desirable.