Returning to their “luxury hotel”, Mark cogitated on why Tad Crass put on the Woodsman Olympics. Clearly, there must be a nefarious purpose! It’s a fundamental rule of bad guys. While Mark randomly searched online, Cliff pointed to a page citing a real estate dispute Tad is involved in with a solar power company for a parcel of land near the site of the “Olympic” contest. Disputes over land use are common and there is nothing illegal about such actions. But Mark was still sure something was rotten, waiting for him to discover. That’s a fundamental rule of Mark Trail!

Mark thought a midnight drive out to the contested site might help him figure out an angle to use against Crass. But access to the land was locked. Once again, Cliff came through with an idea: Property taxes! If nothing is being done to the land, paying property taxes for it is just throwing away good money. Sure. So what? Crass does not own the property! In fact, Tad’s dispute is who gets to purchase the land! Unfortunately, Jules Rivera seems to have gotten lost over the details of land purchase, land use, and property taxes. This is throwing the plot into fantasy land. Anyway, the issue is not in Mark’s wheelhouse, so his involvement is dubious, at best.

Mark finally hypothesized that the Woodman Olympics was some kind of hustle by Tad Crass to sway the Las Vegas city government to allow him to purchase the land, instead of the solar energy company. Again, this is extremely weak. It suggests that the City Council of Las Vegas is filled with people even dimmer than Cliff and Mark. But to give Rivera the benefit of a doubt, we can also see this as an unrealistic expectation of a corrupt and dim Tad Crass. We’ll see.

We have another Sunday Quickie: An average topic with mediocre visuals, two completely wasted panels (the second and last panels), and an over-reliance on a throwaway joke. Interestingly, Rivera covered the bighorn rams before, from a different angle. And more interestingly, it appeared during Mark’s investigation of Tad Crass’s activities in Utah involving wild horses and a secret data center (3/24/24, “Horsin’ Around”). Could this really be just a coincidence?