Clearly, it seems more and more that Rivera is drawing the wrong strip. She is so fascinated with the “comic” element of comic strips that she can hardly resist the daily gag format, which would be fine in a comic strip that is supposed to be comical; not when it is unintentionally comical, like when Mark’s smartphone changes size from panel 2 to panel 4. Or with Cherry apparently talking to the squirrel. Or when the cabin keeps changing dimensions and adding new features never before seen, like the balcony in panel 1. Where did that come from? Is there a new second floor? And finally, we get the common Rivera pun in panel 4. If Rivera is going to keep doing this Pearls Before Swine pun gimmick, there needs to be somebody in panel 4 waving a club in Mark’s direction.

In any event, we seem to be in the usual week-long, post-story autopsy that follows on the end of an adventure (and I use that term loosely). Since Mark was on an official assignment, we should expect Mark to check in with Bill Ellis before this week ends.

Perish forbid that you would think like I do, but I hope we’d agree that Rivera has dropped the ball on one of her more interesting contributions to the Mark Trail reboot:  The magazine empire that Bill Ellis now works for, with a variety of different magazines having different editors. They provided the assignments for Mark, rather than just Bill. The diversity of magazines with different reader interests should have made for some interesting assignments. Rivera tried this for a few years, but seems to have dropped it. Now we’re back to Bill Ellis handing out assignments <yawn!>. I’d like to be wrong on that.