I’m not sure what is more perplexing: Jules Rivera believing it is possible that a raccoon can somehow track down or follow somebody driving away in a truck and locate their home; or making Rusty, growing up in a forest filled with raccoons and other wild animals, believe in this tomfoolery. This is not “Lassie Come Home” or “Homeward Bound.”
Well, perhaps I have it all wrong. Maybe Rivera knows this is not realistic, but is deliberately making Rusty seem like some “naïve city kid in the country” in order to make a certain point. But then, why does Rivera state in panel 1 that this is, in fact, “Rocky”? If Rivera was in on the gag, she would have written something like “Rusty reunites with what he believes to be Rocky the Raccoon.”
The Daily Trail 
If Rivera was in on the gag…
If Rivera were not wedded to those narration boxes, she could have had Rusty say something like “Here, Rocky, have a dinner roll” (she even left room for the additional word in the dialog balloon). She seems to be moving Mark Trail toward the Prince Valiant style, where the art illustrates the text and there is no dialog.
Which might be the only time Jules Rivera is compared to Hal Foster.
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I agree, quite the artistic stretch! And I think she left too much horizontal space in Rusty’s dialog balloon.
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Racoons don’t stab each other in the back like the people in YOUR world, Rusty.
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