What’s the expression: “There’s a lot to unpack here.” Hoo-boy. Well, Panel 1 shows and tells us that the best part of the nature walk is yet to come. Jules Rivea continues to screw around with time, like Kurt Vonnegut’s Chrono-Synclastic-Infundibulum, where past-present-future all comingle into one amorphous reality. Well, perhaps it isn’t quite that radical. Nevertheless, the seemingly recursive nature of this storyline continues to dig deeper and deeper with each retelling.

And in what more appropriate place would you expect a Woodsman Olympics to be held than Las Vegas, with its luxurious, deep forests and lush green meadows. Okay, sure:  Nearby mountains contain some healthy forests.

And can we ignore panel 4? I say “No. Hell, No!” There is that anonymous floating dialog balloon, with the vague text, not specifically connected to either Cherry or Mark. It should be Cherry, of course. Is this just a production mistake or an editorial oversight? But consider the message box:  “Cherry can’t resist the lure of a casino!” That might be one reason she always stays home. But it also implies she is inviting herself to go along, even though the dialog balloon says “Go on…”, as in “So, go on that trip, Mark!” Because, shouldn’t the dialog balloon say “Let’s go!” or “Can I come along?”

Art Dept. Panel 1 is unusual today, as it has a different look and feel to it. For example, the background looks like some strange other-word landscape, though it is probably Rivera just drawing kudzu, which does make sense. And there are those weird lines under Mark’s eyes. I’ve seen them lots of time over the past five years. I’m not sure what Rivera means by them, unless they are some kind of applied emoticon I’m not familiar with.

Finally, the depictions of Mark and Cherry look similar in that panel to how Rivera used to draw them. I’m thinking back to 2022, as in the Oregon Trails story. What do you think?