Perhaps Jules Rivera thinks this extended discussion will help educate readers about catfishing; but all it does is create opportunities for more unfunny gag strips (i.e. Cherry continues to play the ditz). Aside from the unnecessary redundant dialog, we slog through Cherry’s naive question in panel 2. Why naive? Because Internet scammers are anonymous, as are most users.

Now I don’t understand Mark’s choice of words (“they”) in panel 3, unless he is trying to be gender neutral, because immediately after, he switches to using the female gender. There certainly are times when using “they” makes sense, but this example just sounds forced. Anyway, three days of this conversation is more than enough time for Mark to explain why he has to go to Florida. It’s time to get on a plane or in a car and get moving!

Art Dept. Today we see another example (between panels 1 and 2) of ink lines extending beyond the panels where they clearly do not look like stylistic refinements. They look more like individual whiskers or stubble. (Say, maybe they are remnants of the face stubble Mark used to sport before Rivera cut it off and replaced it with tone fills. <LOL!>) In any event, they look sloppy. I’m surprised that King Features didn’t bother to erase them. And don’t ask me about the French-kissing raccoons, either!