There goes Rivera once again, wringing out yet another sappy 3-panel gag strip, featuring the “mom packs for a six week vacation” trope. Real comedy gold. If the hokey poses of Mark and Rusty in panel 2 aren’t contrived enough, in panel 3 Rivera has them standing in the doorway, looking gobsmacked (“Uh-oh, there goes Mom again!”). Yet more sitcom tropes worthy of Nickelodeon. But this just does not fit Cherry’s personality. I’m wondering if Rivera is making these choices on her own or if she’s getting advised from people at King Features on ways to make a strip about nature and the environment appear cute and appeal to more readers (maybe like the kind of people who enjoy Hi and Lois and Garfield).

Art Dept. One day Rivera will figure out bears. As we’ve seen in the past, she’s used different approaches, or perhaps, different online sources. Now, using reference images is not a negative in comic strips. In fact, cartoonists have been using visual references for over 100 years. It’s a lot easier now since cartoonists don’t have to maintain filing cabinets full of photos and drawings.

I’m pretty sure that Rivera used this online image as her source. Note that she even used several of the same river rocks in her own representation.

Perhaps she manually traced it (as artists would have done in the past) and then improvised the texture and lighting. Or, she ran the image through several transformations with her software. Whatever, I think she went too far, creating a bear with a strange surface texture. Sometimes you just shouldn’t fool with Mother Nature.