Mark’s passive-aggressive nature puts Tess on the defensive right away by leading with his “bad feelings” whine. For a reporter, that’s poor communicating. I’d probably react something like Tess, as well. Then Mark attempts to put Tess on the defensive in panel 4 by revealing that he is really talking about the weather, as if Tess should have figured that out. It’s all a lot of unnecessary melodrama. Tess could have been just as dismissive of the weather. The follow-up to panel 4 would likely be Tess exclaiming, “You doofus! You could have led with that instead of your feelings!”

As for Tess, what’s this about a photographer coming from New York? Just for the overnight hunting/camping trip? That doesn’t seem like the best time for photography. But since time is fluid (perhaps in a nod to Relativity?), we may want to assume that the recent dinner was actually held the day after the hunt.  (You won’t find this kind of intellectual analysis going on at CK!)

That would make the hunting, butchering, food prep, and dining sequence more plausible.  And as we see in this panel from November 24, Jules Rivera is being vague about the actual time interval.

Art Dept. I like to point out innovative and good drawing in the strip as I find it. Well, I don’t find much today, except I think Tess’s pose of exasperation in panel 2 very effectively highlights her mood. On the other hand, the overall blocky crudeness in drawing, anatomy, and staging is disappointing. Panels 1 and 3, especially, remind me a bit of some of the clumsier work of Jack Elrod, though clearly different styles: