Home » 2025 » August

Monthly Archives: August 2025

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Rivera side-slipped us back into Cherry’s Runaway Peacock story, while still on the golf course. As you may recall, she popped up the Saturday before, in the middle of the Trail-Chedderson Slapfest, along with the errant peacock. The fight immediately stopped and the peacock disappeared. Mark volunteered to help Cherry chase it down, the pollution fight, seemingly forgotten.

Then we cut to a scene of Honest Ernest with a butterfly net trying to catch the peacock and failing. Comparisons to “Coyote and Roadrunner” were obvious. At least Rivera showed good taste in what she borrowed from.

When Ernest complained about Mark and Cherry trying to hog credit for catching the bird, they assured him they didn’t care. It didn’t take Mark long to come up with a way to trap the peafowl using sticks, Happy’s golf club, and a granola bar that Cherry happened to have. Exactly how the trap worked is not really explained, but the bird was considerate enough to wander into it. Honest Ernest grabbed the trapped bird and ran off to impress Violet with his capture. Exciting stuff.

The only thing I’ll add is that Rivera may be throwing us a curveball.  The peacock shown and trapped this week did not exhibit the long tail that the (male) peacock originally displayed. Either Rivera forgot that “subtle” distinction when she drew the bird or she is playing off the fact that there are “feral” peacocks loose in this country. So it is possible that they trapped the wrong bird (a female in this case) which will backfire when Honest Ernest returns it and claims credit. This could be the best ending yet for one of Cherry’s stories.

For sure, I thought that Rivera would create her custom title panel using mouse droppings to spell out the title. Seemed obvious to me! Well, I read up on hantavirus and, frankly, I’m pretty bothered, especially as there is no specific treatment (cure) or vaccine against it; and fatality rates go as high as 50%! Uffa! Sure, it may be rare and mostly in western states, but that’s not the same as “non-existent.” We get an occasional mouse, especially in the Winter. I’m doubling the mouse traps this year. Maybe get a cat or two.

I see it now: Mighty Mouse was really a foreign agent, sent here to spread hantavirus under the ruse of “coming to save the day.”

Honest Ernest shocks Cherry by claiming the bird and the credit!

Posted on by | 1 Comment

Well, I don’t know why Mark and Cherry are surprised by Honest Ernest’s actions. After all, they told him that they were not interested in the credit, just capturing the peacock. Yet here they are, dismayed at Ernest taking their word on it.

I was hopeful that Mark would at least explain how his trap worked; you know, just in case a peacock shows up in my backyard one day.

What happened to the tail feathers?

Posted on by

Okay. This is, uh … well, uh … naïve? Is some kind of time-lapse sequence happening here, where the peafowl eventually (and quite fortuitously, I might add) found its way to the correct spot and discovered the granola bar? It’s possible, though that’s a stretch because these birds don’t have an outstanding sense of smell.

But I’m dying to know how this trap actually worked. I’m thinking there is supposed to be some kind of motion-sensitive mechanism linked to the snack bar or its leafy support that springs the trap. That could explain why the trap is shown off to one side. I’m no hunter or trapper, so I’m hoping that the Saturday strip will get me up to speed. But based on panel 4, I just don’t see how this works.

I’m also hoping this is just a case of my own ignorance of such things and not that Rivera is just making up a bunch of crap.

Art Dept. Okay, Even Rivera refers to this bird as a male, so where the heck are the long tail feathers? They don’t retract into the body. Now, the female is noted for her lack of long tail features. They are a characteristic of the male peafowl, used both for attracting females and as a kind of self-defense. If you go back to July 12 and August 7, the bird clearly shows the full tail plumage.

Is it possible that Mark, Cherry, and Honest Ernest are chasing the wrong peafowl and wound up catching a female by mistake? After all, there are peafowl in the wild, having escaped from, or been set free by, private owners.

Now, that would really be a really interesting thing to see:  Returning with the wrong bird, only to have Violet’s mother realize their mistake at the big Summer Banquet!

Mark outlines his cunning plan to catch the peacock

Posted on by

Hoo-boy, here we are again, as Mark “McGyver’s” a trap for the runaway peacock, who is obviously going to hang around the golf course long enough to be enticed. Seems like Honest Ernest isn’t the only one playing Coyote to the peacock’s Roadrunner. I suppose it is supercilious of me to ask questions, such as where you get tree branches on a golf course. But of course, they are on the edge of Lost Forest.

Can Mark can build a big enough trap out of just branches? How will he lash them? Will he build a trap door, as well? These questions, and more, are apt to be ignored in favor of just showing the finished trap, as this is not an episode of Wild Kingdom. A blanket could also be used, so wouldn’t a mother also carry a blanket for ad-hoc picnics and resting?

But why specifically nuts, when peacocks will also eat grains, seeds, fruit, berries, and even leaves? Mark could probably find most of that stuff more easily than having to rely on motherhood to save the day.  Quibble, quibble, quibble. I know. You’re saying “Enough with the obvious questions, George! We get it, already! ” Sure, a trap is likely better than trying to run down a peacock or catch it with a small net. But the peacock has to be near enough to the trap in the first place to be suckered. Well, today is Thursday, so a lot has to happen for that peacock to be caught by Saturday. And thank goodness for that!

Art Dept. I was going to say something about the characters in the middle ground in panel 1, but you probably know what I would be saying. Consider it said. Otherwise, I’ll conclude with criticism for the longer-than-necessary run of boring panel layouts. An inventive, interesting layout can make even a dull or dumb story more interesting.

Mark finds an easier problem to solve

Posted on by

Frankly, I don’t know why they would want to help Honest Ernest, unless it was to help him sink into a deep hole. But, Cherry still has her job with the Sunny Soleil Society to keep. Maybe she could look for other clients, but I don’t imagine there are too many paying customers in that sleepy little village.

Are you confused by the storyline? Of course! Mark and Cherry have magically transferred into the Cherry and the Runaway Peacock story, leaving the lake pollution story, as well as the probably perplexed golfing party, on the other side of the comics page. I reckon Mark got his “you’re killing my environment” anger out of his system for the time being, as he seems happy to devote some time to this trivial event. But credit to Rivera for continuity: Mark’s facial scrapes from his fight with Brett remain in place.

Art Dept. Sometimes I wonder if Rivera uses marionettes as models for the characters. I mean, check out Mark in panel 3. And there are more of those “lines beyond the borders” today, too. One might think that Syndicate editors would catch that stuff and fix it before publishing. But that might be optimistic. It could be they just slap the strips online and send them out to the newspapers, as is.

Catch the latest news on The Great Peacock Hunt!

Posted on by

All regular readers of Mark Trail are long familiar with Honest Ernest, who probably started life as the school bully; only now, he is depicted more like an older version of the Class Clown. So it makes sense that Rivera would depict him here in a role reminiscent of the Warner Brothers Coyote with his ACME butterfly net trying to catch the Roadrunner, played by local favorite, the take-no-prisoners wandering Peacock.

Art Dept. I noticed the same kind of pinched-in, distorted face in panels 3 and 4 today that I talked about yesterday. This kind of distortion of facial images in background figures has often plagued the strip, and I believe it might be due to size restrictions on Rivera’s digital (or manual) pen. It’s as if she is trying to cram too much detail where it becomes more noise than information.

PS: I sometimes look at the Comics Kingdom comments, but only after I post. So, I want to let you know that I did not pinch my Roadrunner analogy from Bill F‘s comment. Frankly, I figured most Mark Trail readers would have picked it up, anyway, especially with the pose of the peacock in panel 3.

How about a zesty bowl of potpourri commentary?

Posted on by

Welcome back to the Third Annual National High School “Draw Mark Trail” exhibition, where the excitement level is hovering around the “Our son drew that one!” level.

We were all impressed with an entry from yesterday (Sunday), drawn by 10th grader Zigmodo R. Pettyfogger of Zuni, Ohio with a “Walking Dead” interpretation of our favorite wildlife journalist. Gotta say, Zigmo, you nailed that one!  Okay, we hope to return to this exhibition, but for now, let’s get back to the current story…

“Segues!? We don’t need no stinkin’ segues!” The Mark-Brett confrontation has been pushed aside for the moment as Rivera makes a giant pivot at a moment’s notice, continuity be damned. At least her appearance on the greenway did stop the playground altercation going on, so there is that. But how is it that Cherry can’t seem to see the peacock she is looking for, as it continues to fly all around her? Or is that a depiction of her mental state?

And what will Mark do from here on, now that he’s blown his cover and killed whatever cooperation he might have been able to inveigle out of the Cheddersons?

What are we to make of this odd intrusion? In the past, Rivera has, on occasion, put Mark or Cherry into each other’s storyline, usually for a short time to help the other out. But this time around, it isn’t just Mark and Cherry doing cameos; we have a convergence of their two separate stories, to the point where it becomes a question as to whose plot we are currently following. Is this a bit of cinéma vérité, perhaps? Or am I just making stuff up because I wanted to use the term cinéma vérité ?

In other news: I just paid my yearly dues to renew the domain name (thytrailbedone.com) and storage space on WordPress for my daily scribbling. So I’m committed to another 365.25 days of following the misadventures of the Trail Family. Also, I was just daydreaming about what might happen if Jules Rivera turned the entire Trail family into a team of environmental journalists/advocates, going on assignments and saving the planet. You know, like in The Incredibles movies. Well, the Trails would probably lose the cabin for lack of a second income; and they could get arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for keeping Rusty out of school and putting him into harm’s way.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

Posted on by

This was the week that wasn’t. Was it? It was make or break week for the polluted lake story. Mark and Happy continued with the golfing expedition, along with Chet Chedderson and his son, Brett. Rather than continue with his ruse of just being a guest of his dad so he could covertly investigate the resort, Mark jumped right up to accuse them of deliberate environmental damage, bringing about a heated exchange. This resulted in a fit of desultory face-punching between Bret and Mark, until Cherry suddenly popped onto the scene, more or less accompanied by that errant peacock nobody seems to be able to corral. It wasn’t clear if the peafowl showed up on its own by happenstance, though why a peacock would even want to invade a crowd of humans is unclear. There must be a reason for all this tomfoolery. But it sure looks as if this storyline has crashed and is in serious threat of burning. Why so?

It’s too early for this story to arrive at a conclusion. Plot-wise, it is still in the midway point; or at least, should be. At this point, Mark should be investigating the resort grounds more thoroughly, possibly even at night, as he did with Diana Daggers while investigating a secret data center site in Utah.

Instead, Mark couldn’t keep his mouth shut (as his dad recommended) and let the cat out of the story bag too early before gathering actual evidence. Did Mark find evidence for the assumed runoff? Did he compare onsite fertilizers with the sample that Ranger Shaw had taken from the lake? Did he interview the groundskeeper? No. No. And NO! It would have been simple enough to dramatize all of this over another week or two, building to a dramatic climax.

Ok, which is it, Mark?  “Super typhoon” or “Super Cyclone” (panel 4)? It’s all Potatoes and Potahtoes. Typhoons (Pacific Northwest), cyclones (South Pacific and Indian oceans), and hurricanes (mid-Atlantic and Eastern/Central Pacific oceans) are geographic synonyms. The term “cyclone” was coined in the 19th century by an English sea captain studying tropical storms in India. The term “typhoon” has a confusing origin, with the Chinese using a similar word for such storms as far back as 1124 CE, though “typhon” was used in France at least as early as 1504. And “hurricane” was derived from a Spanish term, which was taken from the name of a Caribbean god of evil, which evolved from the ancient Mayan god of winds and storms (“Hurricán”). Etymology is very cool.

Figured out the flags, didn’t you?

Is this a subtle tip o’ the Mark Trail Hat to its own past?

Posted on by | 5 Comments

Taken at face value (pun intended), Mark appears to be getting the worst of this “tussle.” Either Mark is holding back or his vaunted Two Fists O’ Jello … I mean, Justice, are not doing the job they were anointed to do.

Now, as for panel 2, I’m gobsmacked, as the Brits sometimes exclaim. We can see that Brett is shocked, as well. But I like his expression! Cherry showed up as if she is arriving at a neighbor’s backyard BBQ party … accompanied by her pet peacock!? I don’t see a string or leash, so how is it the peacock also showed up?  They don’t even like people. Did Cherry win it over with her winsome ways? Did she bring along rare peacock food to entice it?

Or is the peacock on its way to actually attack the Cheddersons, just on principle?

At this point, I thinking that a once-plausible storyline has rolled into a hazard, and there will be penalties to pay.

Tip of the hat: Okay, what’s with today’s podcast title? If you observe all of the dialog today, notice that every statement ends with an exclamation point! This was pro-forma for dialog in the Mark Trail strips before Rivera took over. One of her improvements was to stop that and only use them when they were called for. And she has been fairly consistent with that. Until today. So, are all of those !s in every speech balloon appropriate for today?

Mark demonstrates how to break your hand

Posted on by | 5 Comments

Well, I guess if Mark wanted a fistfight, then using the word “Bully” was the right word, after all. But why would he want to fight?

Okay, I’m going to have to go along with the crowd (as I suspect) on this one. This is just stupid. Infantile. Embarrassing. Insulting to the readers. Not serious. Not even convincingly drawn!

Maybe referencing some actual boxing images could have at least helped Rivera draw the choreography.

But it just doesn’t fit. And speaking of not fitting, check out panel 3 and tell me when Brett acquired a sixth finger? I only ask because the top digit of his hand cannot be a thumb.

Mark has them where he wants them!

Posted on by
Click on image to see enlargement. Click browser’s back button to return to this page. Do not pass Go.

Well! Since the verbal gloves came off yesterday, words continue to fly. By the way, I like how Rivera poses the two Cheddersons, like some kind of Doublemint Twins gag from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Well, “like” may be too strong of a word, but they do look like some kind of 2D prop held up by a board in the back.

Wouldn’t it be just a hoot if, after Trail gets through his entire spiel about evil golf course pollution, the Cheddersons reveal that they use only organic and environmentally-approved procedures for maintaining the course and handling potential runoff; and that they have a seal of approval from every environmental agency in the region. Then they reveal that they saw Ranger Shaw dumping something into the pond several evenings, so they reported it to the EPA for investigation. And that makes sense, given Shaw’s dodgy past with illegal dumping. Fully chastised and realizing how wrong he has been, Mark apologizes, quits his journalism job, and goes to work as a troubleshooter for Chet’s company. At least, no more worries about busted water heaters or Doc Davis’s rent and care at the nursing home.

Okay, that won’t happen.

But, a “Bully”!? C’mon, Rivera! How does that fit into this scenario? I don’t think being a bully is required to operate a golf course or to pollute the environment. Does it? Is that supposed to humiliate Brett? Is it Rivera’s intention to make Mark look like a hypocrite?

As you can see, I’m treading lightly here, keeping my eye and words strictly on the strip. I seriously don’t want this to go the social media route. So, please keep any comments focused on the strip. You can draw your own conclusions about external relationships, but keep them to yourself. I don’t want to see them. And I’ll likely remove or edit out any such comments.

We’ll return to the story in just a minute, but first …

Posted on by | 3 Comments

Hippies!? I wonder if Rivera got this cornball dialog from an editorial written during the Nixon era?

If Rivera is looking for inspiration, I recommend The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. Rivera can then turn Mark into a wildlife journalist with a secret nighttime identity as an environmental commando. After all, Mark has a family to support, so he can’t quit his day job. Even Superman has to pay his bills!

This land ain’t your land, this land is my land!

Posted on by

Fighting words, Jules? Maybe they are for drunken frat boys, basement-dwelling Internet trolls, and spoiled progeny with identity issues. So I wonder how this part of the story will play out over the next several days. It doesn’t seem like Mark would take such easy bait as this, but …

I recently stated that I thought this story had legs. As a story, itself, I still believe it. Whether Rivera can follow through and keep it intact is another matter, altogether.  And from a practical point of view, the premise of the story (Nobody knew about this resort) is weak. But there’s a reason for it, I think:

Nobody just suddenly builds a golf course/water park resort. It requires lots of planning, surveys, permits, public and private meetings by a zoning commission, following regulations about placement, easements, sanitation, etc., and more. That can easily eat up a few years (paying off various officials, notwithstanding). That means the notion that nobody in Lost Forest knew what was going on is difficult to accept. In reality.

And that’s the catch:  If comic strip stories actually tried to be comprehensive, nobody would have the patience to read them, would they!? And the real point of the story is not “How to design and build a golf resort in the country”, but “How will Mark uncover the source of the recently-discovered environmental damage and resolve it?”

They don’t want you to see this!

Posted on by

What about today’s blog title? Alas, I’m completely without honor or shame. I’m certain this kind of headline flim-flammery will bring in readers by the boatload. I mean, it works on other sites…!

What do you think?  For all the time Cherry and Rusty spent at the water park—which had to be at least an hour—this foursome didn’t get very far, as the main building is still right behind them. I doubt the gator kept them occupied that long.

Also, I would be peeved like Mark to discover that his own dad won’t back his play, especially knowing that Happy supposedly had the same “job” in his younger days. At the least, it suggests Happy Trail is somehow more mixed up in this business that he is letting on.

At least we can hope for some actual fisticuffs and wrestling on the fairway! Maybe it will even inspire our friendly gator to crawl back out to make a quick snack of the loser.

Art Dept. I can’t think of a more “cartoony” face in Mark Trail than Brett’s (panel 2). He looks like he was pulled out of a classic Archie comic book.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

Posted on by

We first met Chet Chedderson as an unscrupulous shipping magnate in the Zeeba Mussels story ( 8/12/21-2/4/22), as he tried to prevent Mark from investigating and reporting on the occurrence of invasive zebra mussels arriving in American waters on the hulls of his tankers. Chedderson even went as far as hiring thugs to beat up Mark. Mark doesn’t seem to hold much of a grudge. So Chet became this strip’s symbol of corporate greed and environmental indifference. After a brief, unmemorable cameo in another adventure, he is here again, taking on the role of a rich dude building a golf resort without regard for the local environment. His son is merely a projection of his father. But this is all quite in keeping with traditional Mark Trail bad guys, insofar as their personalities are superficial and stereotypical. Golfing aside, it’s the kind of story that might have come from Allen, Elrod, or even Dodd.

A common complaint about Rivera’s stories is their weak plotting and absurdities. That can hardly be denied when seen in toto. I mean, lions in a house (e.g. snakes on a plane)!? It might be less so, here. For the most part, the story has followed a logical and coherent path: Mark discovers pollution from an unknown source in a favorite lake; a follow-up interview with the local forestry ranger proves uninformative; Mark learns about a new golf course and begins to think of runoff pollution; he “coincidentally” gets invited to spend time at the golf course; and discovers that Chet Chedderson is the developer. Of course, there are silly bits meant to keep the flow going and expand the storyline, such as the resort’s water park that Rusty explores, and Happy Trail being the person who invited Mark (and family) to the golf resort because he just happens to be a member of the new club. Overall, it’s a better than average storyline for Markey. But will it hold up?

We spent this week watching Mark and Happy deal with an alligator crossing the fairway while Chet and Brett whined and complained. Mark berated them about interfering with local nature habitats by building the golf course too close to the gator’s home. Then Mark helped the reptile get to its watery destination. This gator scenario will surely further convince Mark of the Cheddersons’ complicity in the lake pollution and embolden him to take more dramatic action. Or so I hope.

Alligators. Hardly a surprising subject, but as often as Rivera can, she relates the current subject to the current story or story location. The alligator literature says that gators do not normally attack humans unless provoked or reacting from a defensive posture. I’d still keep my distance. They are quite different from crocodiles, which will actively attack humans without provocation, often killing and consuming them. The Nile Crocodile (even feared in ancient Egypt) and the Freshwater Crocodile (S.E. Asia and Australia) have the highest annual body counts (in the hundreds). I never much thought about crocodiles when I was a young lad visiting Egypt and happily relaxed in low-hulled boat ferries crossing the Nile. But now? They scare the bejeebers out of me just thinking about them. You can look up “Crocodile Attack” in Wikipedia for more unsavory details.

It has to be revealed!

Posted on by | 4 Comments

Okay, so I used a popular click-bait title. It only works if people first see it, so I think I’m safe.

Today we get some good old-fashioned Grill-Master Mark work, as he roasts these two self-important boobies over some environmental ignorance. Nothing new, since a while ago Mark faced off against Papa Chedderson over zebra mussel infestation with his cargo ships, forcing court-ordered changes to his shipping business. So now, it’s his son taking up the reigns.

Art Dept. Sometimes I wonder if Rivera has somebody working with her, or if there is staff at the Syndicate doing post-production work. Maybe there was a printing or layout error. Who knows? But drawn lines extending from the artwork into the panel gutters is not a good look. Now, sometimes cartoonists will deliberately draw figures that overlap panel borders, but those instances are obvious and not accidental. The right side of Panel 1 shows the most obvious examples of this issue.

But runaway lines are in the other two panels, also (p2 shows Mark’s elbow extending beyond, and p3 shows the background curve running into the copyright notice). They are almost certainly not for visual appeal or invention. Cartoonists draw their own panels, so it’s difficult to account for these flubs.

If you have the urge, feel free to comment on these lines, or maybe the ever-changing faces of Mark. I count three variations today, one for each panel. Pretty sure Rivera is not doing a parody of the Tony Randall movie “The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao.” Be Ware of Eve Hill might tackle the emenata.

Anyway, the gator is gone just in time for the end of the week. Is that a coincidence or what?! Maybe we’ll get back to Cherry’s story on Monday to see if it takes six days of strips to capture the peacock.

Sometimes gators need to be told twice?

Posted on by

Now, I did some checking, but I can’t confirm that gators get stymied much by bushes. In some cases, they will hide in the bushes to ambush prey. Keep that in mind if you plan to stroll close to bush-lined ponds in South Carolina or Florida.

I imagine the thickness of the shrubs might be an important factor in slowing down gator movement. But didn’t Mark already move the bushes out of the way for that gator in yesterday’s strip? Why is he doing it again, unless Rivera is replaying the tape to run out the week. And panel 4 seems to imply there is a missing panel preceding that one, else what or who is Mark reacting to?

Helpful Hint: I read that the alligator can run short distances up to about 9 ½ mph!  That’s when chasing prey or tourists who want to feed the gators and take selfies beside them. So, use the zoom feature of your camera for those close-up photos. And work on your sprints.

As usual, Mark shows us the way!

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Are the Cheddersons from out of town or maybe have never played on golf courses in the southeast?  Well, who can tell. And frankly, who cares, since the whole point here is to get in another scenario of humanity’s interactions with wildlife. And that awareness is part of the foundation of Mark Trail. Mark has been fighting an uphill battle for over 70 years, and it doesn’t look like he’s winning.

Art Dept. The wavy lines that we’ve been observing on Rusty, then Brett, and now both of the Cheddersons (panel 3) have lately been discussed in the Comments section. And here they are again, but only on the Cheddersons. Perhaps they represent the heat of the moment, i.e. some anxiety and anger.

I consulted the Lexicon of Comicana, by Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, Boner’s Ark, et al.). He has a short bit on wavy lines: Wavy “heat” lines from hot drinks are called Indotherms. Wavy “hot” lines from the sun are called Solrads. Nothing about stink lines, though! I totally overlooked the Indotherm definition yesterday, by the way. Just a small note to Self to take more time.

Soon to be on sale at Chedderland Resort: Gator Merch!

Posted on by | 6 Comments

Gee, I didn’t know that Happy actually works for Chet Chedderson, the obnoxious shipping magnate, and his man-child, Brett. Or maybe Chet just assumes Happy knows what to do. But Mark and Happy should know that the gator is not likely going to chase anybody and that the best thing to do is just play around him. A better outcome would be that Chet creates a tourist attraction out of the gator, similar to his “dangerous” water slide park. He can call the course “Gator Golf.”

Okay, this ho-hum story has to have some drama and there isn’t much of it in golf, unless you are a golfer. Hence, the alligator. Maybe things will get more exciting if Mother Cheshire’s prized peacock wanders onto the scene and becomes the gator’s afternoon snack! I’d love to see how Cherry and  Honest Ernest react to that situation!

Say, did you notice that  Cheshire and Chedderson (a cheese name pun) are both names for cheeses? A coincidence? Or the newest global conspiracy!?

Art Dept. Not sure what those squiggly lines symbolize in panel 1. Is Brett having a heat stroke? Is he burning up? Is his head shivering or trembling? We can rightfully claim some confusion, because Rivera used similar lines around Rusty last Friday, to show he was shivering after sliding into very cold water.

Given how this strip has lately been drawn, I have to admit that Mark’s head in panel 3 is a well-designed rugged and expressive head. A lot is due to a good application of thick and thin lines by Rivera, supported by Mark’s expression. And it’s an order of magnitude beyond the cartoony images in the other panels.

Have a near miss, Mississippiensis!

Posted on by | 5 Comments

Reader Observantdonutad (the short form of his name) made the clever observation that neither Rivera nor anybody here managed to invoke the “See you later, ‘gator!” catchphrase into the script. Of course, I let him know that it was probably due to the fact that I and my other readers expect a higher level of humor (please don’t let the cat out of the bag!).  Hence, my “higher level of humor” title for today’s blog. It’s sure to catch the amused eye of discriminating and highfalutin folks. It might even catch on!

Well, all of the evidence (i.e. videos) I’ve seen indicates that alligators eventually head towards and into the nearest source of water on their own, so there’s really little need for any “gator wrangling.” I couldn’t find any indication that Happy Trail (that is, “Mark Trail” before Jules Rivera) had done any gator wrangling in the past, even with electrical tape and smoothies. Comedy gold. HahHahHah…

Art Dept. Rivera continues her climb (or descent) into totally cartooning the strip. Yeah, I know there are lots of people who think she walked over that finish line a long time ago. But she’s not finished. I’m looking at Cherry in panel 1 and wondering how long much longer until she looks more like Little Lulu?