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Gosh, it must have been about six or seven hours since they last saw each other at breakfast this morning. I reckon stressful situations can make even unexpected meetups more dramatic, so we can give the goo-goo eyed pair a pass. Still, I’m not sure it’s nice to be in a hospital under almost any situation.
I’m still expecting to hear ranting and lawsuit threats by Saturday.
Continuing with yesterday’s surprise of Cherry and Mark running into each other at the hospital, today’s strip moves from Rom-Com dialog to Support Group blather. I swear, the expressions of Cherry and Mark in panel 1 look like Cherry caught Mark fooling around with somebody else. Her face does not say “glad to see you!” And Mark just looks kind of guilty.
Their jarring images are somewhat mollified in panel 2. Cherry still looks odd, perhaps from the difficulty Rivera had attempting to portray Cherry’s face seen from slightly behind her right shoulder. Tough to draw! Mark shouldn’t look too worried, though. Connor just has a finger fishhook injury, so we shouldn’t have to worry about a doctor coming out to report that the finger had to be amputated.
I’m curious how Mark’s storyline continues after the hospital. The class is in shambles. For some reason, Cliff decided to come along and hold Mark’s hand rather than take over the class so that the other two “campers” won’t have their entire day is ruined.
Monday: Is Rivera hoping to be ironic or satirical? My local medical clinic is larger than this “hospital.” Connor must have taken up 50% of the beds when he was a patient. I reckon those other two cars mashed into the parking lot belong to the doctor (or P.A.) and receptionist/nurse.
But also interesting is pondering why, at this point, Connor is identified by Rivera as a camper—which is not the case—rather than by his name. If anything, Connor is a student. Mark should be miffed that Cliff wasn’t around when all of those bad things happened.
Tuesday: This hospital must be based on Dr. Who’s Tardis, because it sure looks bigger inside than out. Putting my blog off for a day ruined what would have been an otherwise obvious prediction of what appears in today’s strip: The nexus of Cherry’s and Mark’s storylines as they converge in the hospital, both incidents based on self-induced accidents by two self-centered boneheads.
How Cherry, Violet, and Ernest managed to walk through the waiting room without seeing Mark is not only implausible, but poorly thought-out, as it gives away Cherry’s surprise in panel 3. It dilutes the suspense for us readers, too. We want to enjoy being surprised, even when we expect it. This is like wrapping a Christmas present, but leaving one side unwrapped so you can see what it is.
Art Dept. What’s all this, then? Looks like some preliminary rough drawing (e.g. Ernest in panel 1) made it through to the final strip. And poor Mark must really be suffering from the stress of his class, since he looks like an old man in panel 3. Perhaps it was a good day in California for surfing? However, the other figures in panel 1 look just fine. In fact, I very much like the contrast Rivera made between the stiffness of Mark and Cliff and the more casual postures of Violet and Cherry. There’s symbolism in that.
Thank you for spending some of your time reading these blogs about Mark Trail, the legacy “adventure” strip where the adventure is sometimes either pondering “What would Mark do?” or just bringing yourself to read the daily panels. Clearly, I enjoy writing these blogs, though I’m not always sure why. My predecessor, Dennis, once claimed (I think) that he posted blogs for his first three years without knowing whether he had any readers. Now that is dedication, or extreme Trailheadedness. I’ll likely continue—as I can—until I’m turned out, my brain turns to mush, or the strip takes that final turn towards retirement. To be clear, I’d prefer to see most legacy strips retired to make room for new ones; some, more than others. Many legacy strips have been republished in book form, so that should be good enough. Interestingly, that is not the case for Mark Trail.
Anyway, The Daily Trail will catch up with Mark on Boxing Day with a double-feature. Until then, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Zartosht No-Diso, Mongolian Independence Day, or just want to sleep in, make it a great day. We all should have at least one a year.
This was the week where a solution for removing bats from the Great Hall was thrust upon Cherry when Honest Ernest suddenly showed up in his trademark yellow jumpsuit. Violet confirmed hiring him to remove the bats. Cherry was less than impressed.
Cherry questioned his knowledge and preparedness, even offering him her gloves for protection, since Ernest had no protective clothing on. Naturally, he had the situation under control and declined Cherry’s offer. Ernest retrieved a pest-control sprayer from his work van and entered the Great Hall. Not surprisingly, the bats once again fled, one of them nicking Ernest in the face as it flew out. In spite of his attempts to play it down, the gals insisted on taking Honest Ernest to the hospital for rabies shots.
While this story may not exactly be a barnburner of drama and action, it has the advantage (like other adventures of Cherry’s) of being more or less a slice of daily life, however nutty the people are. Her stories are grounded in the local landscape of her community. I wish Rivera would open up the community even more and expand the cast of characters and storylines. She has made a start with Jeanine, Georgia, her mysterious brother, and Squirrely Sandy. C’mon, Rivera! Don’t sell Cherry or your readers short. Cherry does not need to face off against the same cast every time. New characters simply have to inspire new ideas and storylines.
Anyway, while we wait two weeks to find out what happens, Mark has another Sunday topic to present. Take it away, Mark!
So, Mark focuses on reindeer over Christmas holiday. Seems like an appropriate subject! I listened to an NPR interview the other day that discussed reindeer and covered most of these points with regard to their surviving the cold. Another point the interviewer went into was the sophisticated “heat exchange” setup within their thin legs to them from freezing and breaking off.
Normally, Rivera’s punchlines are like bad “Dad jokes.” But I think this one hit the Funny Bone. Well done.
Rivera continues her portrayal of Honest Ernest as the archetypal primitive male, brash and always ready to rush into any situation based on sheer bravado. When faced with a setback, he attempts to brush it off as a minor annoyance. Well, that has been a male stereotype since, uh, forever. The ancient Greek warrior Achilles tried to brush off a Trojan arrow shot into his heel as just another workplace injury (“Just don’t call OSHA!”). That didn’t work out too well in the end for “swift-footed” Achilles. But in our current setting, Ernest got snicked by a bat and doesn’t get to brush it off. Instead, he is put his place (or into his van, if you will) by the women and rushed to treatment.
As longtime readers (Trailheads) know, it was standard practice in the pre-Rivera era to populate panels, whenever possible, with wildlife scampering around the scenery. Rivera continues that tradition, but almost always has the animal facing the reader, oftentimes with what appears to be some kind of human-like expression or emotion. I’m not sure what the motivation is, nor if I’m interpreting it correctly.
The CDC confirms that a scratch from a bat can spread rabies, if the bat is rabid. Since identifying and catching the specific bat that scratched Ernest is impossible, it can’t be tested, so unlucky Ernest is in line for a series of shots and additional treatment. Will Ernest take it seriously enough to get to the hospital? At least doctors don’t inject the vaccine in your stomach muscles anymore.
Props to Rivera for showing us a bat’s-eye view of Honest Ernest’s failed attempt to dislodge the bats! In fact, for a second, I thought Ernest had decided to hang upside-down from the top of the building to get at them! Nice to see that Rivera can still design an interesting, original composition when she wants.
Exactly what went wrong is not revealed and probably doesn’t matter. What matters is what occurred in panel 2, where it seems Ernest got scratched by at least one of the winged nocturnal mammals.
As noted yesterday, gloves would not have helped so much, though Cherry’s offer should have prompted Ernest to rethink his strategy. Perhaps better gear, such as a full-head mask, might have saved Ernest from the uncomfortable fate that likely awaits him at the hospital.
I get Rivera liking the dramatic effect of strong light pouring into a dark room from the efforts of somebody throwing open a door (as she drew in Mark’s prior adventure introducing us to Connor the cranky loser). However, that is not enough to give weight to this light story.
Are gardening gloves going to prevent anybody from getting bit by a bat!? No! I do wish Rivera would take her stories just a bit more seriously and not have everybody running around like ten-year-olds in adult bodies. Does even a swaggering buffoon like Honest Ernest think he can show up at a location to permanently remove bats from a building using no equipment, whatsoever? He’s got to have something in his van for this, and that might account for his boorish response in panel 3.
Anyway, I just don’t see the connection between Cherry’s icy retort in panel 4 and Rivera’s comment box. To me, at least, Cherry is just pissed off at being patronized by Ernest.
Wait a minute! Mark is supposed to be the expert on nature, the environment, and wildlife. It’s Mark we see each Sunday, right? So why is Cherry spouting animal-related statistics that only 57 people in the entire country probably know? Is she in secret talks with King Features Syndicate for her own spinoff comic strip? Well, Opus got his shot after Bloom County.
Anyway, what’s with this patronizing, know-it-all attitude of Cherry? It’s not any of her business to begin with. I tell ya, some people are just natural PITAs. I can see why Ernest is a touch peeved, though I fail to understand the forced pun in panel 4.
Oh, joy! Back to Cherry’s World. But wait: Is this “old friends week” or just “thinking up new characters and plots take too much time”? We’ve had stories involving bees, spadefoot tadpoles, rash-infected pets, kudzu, and now bats. I’m thinking that Rivera maybe should have given Doc Davis second billing instead of Cherry.
Fine. So, Violet calls in her non-secret lover, Honest Ernest, to once again bring some half-baked and harmful scheme that will set him and Cherry against each other. Maybe that’s to be expected in a small town. Should Cherry seek out more clients and possibly more story ideas? Perhaps the Sunny Soleil Society offers great medical insurance to its independent contractors. Yet good ol’ Honest Ernest is always good for a laugh, a clueless foil for Cherry’s justice.
I don’t expect to see Mark portrayed as the moral, all-knowing, macho hero of old, especially after Rivera’s debut Mark Trail adventure (“Happy Trails”). However, I do expect him to be presented as fully capable when it comes to activities he’s supposed to know something about. But we can exclude the teaching part, for which Mark seems to have little aptitude.
This week, Mark’s Fishing/Survival Camp imploded, in large part through allowing Connor’s ranting and self-inflicted accidents to distract Mark and throw the class into chaos. One should wonder why this unstable person was even allowed to take this class, except that Connor admitted his friends on the De-Bait Team talked him into it! Doesn’t say much for them, does it? Then there is the fact that Cliff happened to be absent for most of the class, leaving Mark to handle everything. Since Cliff was aware that Connor had issues, one would think that he would be on hand to watch over Connor and help out.
But the story is not over, as the week ended with Mark and Cliff bundling Connor into a car to rush him to the ER to remove a fishhook from (I think) his thumb. Don’t you think Cliff’s fishing lodge should have had a first aid kit on hand and the expertise to deal with injuries such as this? Could this be something that Rivera did not think of, or does she just want to make Mark and Cliff look like bumbling fools?
Evolution is an interesting—if difficult—topic to try and encapsulate into a Sunday strip. I don’t even play an evolutionary biologist on TV, so not a lot I can say about the topic. But I did find a lot of Mark’s information in a PBS NewsHour release (Search for “PBS naked lizard”).
Art Dept. In Rivera’s customized title panel, I’m surprised she didn’t design the “Mark Trail” name using reptile scat, since it fits the lizard theme.
So, this is survival training!? Rivera portrays this scene as Amateur Hour with a hint of panic. Is she deliberately trying to make Mark look incompetent and unprepared? Mark and Cliff better lawyer-up and prepare for a civil lawsuit. Connor doesn’t seem like the forgive-and-forget type.
In reality, people who go fishing sooner or later experience this painful accident and learn how to deal with it. Getting impaled by a fishing hook is painful, but not usually fatal. You’d think even Ranger Shaw would know that.
There is naturally a possibility of infection or even tetanus. But if you were in the wilderness, you’d have to make do until you got to a doctor or hospital. Sorry Mark, you and Cliff blew an important teaching opportunity and forgot the underlying reason for your retreat.
I think I’m repeating myself here: Do you think Rivera has become preoccupied with gags?
Early on in Rivera’s tenure, gag panels were an occasional diversion from the straight continuity of the stories. However, rather than emphasizing a point of interest in the last panel to encourage following the story, Rivera seems to be stuck on pushing punchlines over plots. But why?
From day to day, the panels lead inexorably to the closing gag panel, without fostering compelling content or reader motivation, unless you like the gags. I think it is wasted opportunity. Mark’s Big Idea for a survival camp was reduced to a fishing seminar. Why? It wasn’t explained.
A survival training camp story has many opportunities for adventure and even danger. Instead, we get a watered-down fishing class held indoors.
Even this sorry storyline has been sidetracked by the ongoing Mark v. Connor grudge match, pushing aside the other characters and any hope of an adventure. But one thing is clear: Mark is a lousy instructor.
While Rivera continues to draw American (not European) robins, we rejoin Mark as he begins another lesson doomed to failure: Baiting a hook. And once again, Cliff has apparently abandoned Mark to his fate. That’s not surprising, given how Mark callously dissed him yesterday.
I hope that Rivera is giving Eli and Ranger Shaw some meaningful participation at some point in this story. As it now stands, all we have is a repetition of remark-and-insult vignettes. At some point (soon, I hope), something has to go “BOOM!” If the red coloring behind Connor in panel 4 is any indication, Mark better not turn his back on him. Mark may even come to realize that perhaps it wasn’t just the crazy survival book that caused Connor to have a breakdown in the woods.
If I was Mark, I’d toss Connor out and focus on Eli; he’s the only one who genuinely wants to be there and learn how to fish.
This so-called survival school story has devolved into a weird morality play, where Mark plays a macho-man who eats raw meat and talks with his hands, only to eventually fail through his own arrogance. This is the kind of character that the prior Mark Trail would normally enjoy taking down. But I’m not sure what Rivera’s motivation is. Frankly, this does not seem in character, even for the Rivera-era Mark Trail.
Unless Mark, not knowing how to teach, is channeling a TV persona of what he thinks guys want to see in a fishing instructor.
Mark immediately contradicts himself by talking things out. How planned with this class? Perhaps Mark should have shared his fishing philosophy with the students at the start of the class to avoid misunderstandings.
Art Dept. Cliff’s fishing lodge must be doing gangbuster business, as it has dramatically expanded in size, compared to its original depiction. But that might be an invalid comparison, just as were my futile attempts earlier to reconcile the various depictions of Mark and Cherry’s cabin. Perhaps we have to grant artistic expression, where props are used and modified—as needed—to fit the scene. The modest structure we see in the panel from 2021 would be swallowed up in the view portrayed above, where “fishing lodge on the river” is the obvious intention. Or, it could just be that these distinctions are not so important to Rivera.
I’ve noticed that Viewership and Visitor stats are down for the site. While there are no reasons provided for the reductions, it could be any of several things: a) the posts are too boring; b) they are too long; c) people gave up on the comic strip; or d) all of the above. In addition, I’ve been told that I write too much. I reckon yesterday was one of those days. But I don’t want this to simply be another Mark Trail “snark site” posting one or two biting remarks a day. So, I’ll start by trying to tighten up the prose. I can see that I’m already headed for trouble.
Rivera thankfully spared us from viewing the graphic depiction of tangled fishing line being removed from Connor’s hands. Cliff showed up in time with coffee so Mark can ponder why things are going wrong. He apparently doesn’t understand grammar very well, as he uses “they” and “these guys” when it was only Connor giving him grief. I think Cliff sees through Mark’s lament and suggests the hike to give Mark time to get himself sorted out. Panel 4 suggests he hasn’t figure that out yet. Thoughts?
As another week concludes, some of you look forward (I hope) to this modest (okay, verbose) weekly digest as a way to keep abreast of Lost Forest Follies without having to wander through the briars and brambles of its daily treks. But be of good cheer, for I will fear no lanternfly. My baggie and spray protect me. Mark’s grandiose plan for hosting a men’s survival retreat to protect inexperienced dudes from getting victimized by phony survival books (such as the one used by Connor) finally began its inaugural class this week. Huzzah!
Well, almost. Mark’s survival retreat for men got watered down to an Introduction to Fishing seminar, inside the De-Bait Team’s fishing lodge. Rivera skipped us past the plan’s revision and organizing phases, including how it was that the initial class wound up with only three students: A game warden, lonely because his wife was on vacation; a nattily dressed fellow named Eli who just likes fishing; and Connor, who immediately began a week-long tirade of insulting Mark.
While inside the lodge, Mark figured it was a good place to teach the class how to cast a fishing line (rather than doing this outside). Can we blame Rivera for a lack of fishing experience or is she simply indulging in more Mark Trail Mockery? She focused most of the week on Connor, who managed to entangle his hands in fishing line, while blaming Mark. It was a missed opportunity. Had this happened outside, Connor might have suffered another accident, such as falling into the river and drowning. The week ended with Mark berating himself for thinking up this whole stupid idea. But the drama continues on Monday. Until then . . .
Now this is very interesting. It led me to discover that the European Robin and its American Cousin are not really related, as the American Robin is part of a different genus: Their similarity is cosmetic. The topic was interesting enough for me to do a bit of research. Biology shows that the European Robin (and some other birds) do utilize electromagnetic fields of the earth to help navigate during migration. This process is not fully understood, as far as I can tell, but does not appear to be in doubt. But I saw no mention of animals exhibiting their own electromagnetic fields, or robins using each other’s magnetic field for navigating. Rivera clearly has sources I do not and I’m not a biologist. The literature is complex, so I may just be misreading things. Anybody out there experienced enough to shed any light?
Okay, where the heck is Cliff? He should be here helping out, especially when his good buddy, Connor, is having a meltdown. So why would Rivera drop Cliff from this story just after introducing him? Perhaps he is outside, prepping bait and boats.
I suppose there are people who somehow are able to get their hands completely wrapped up in fishing line, even when the line is clearly still looped through the pole. That takes a special skill! But I think the court is still out on whether Connor has PTSD or is just a PITA. Or both. It’s not surprising he has relationship problems. I can’t sympathize too much with Mark’s frustration: He brought this largely on himself. He also agreed to provide relationship advice to the guys, even though he has no professional experience. And—I presume—he approved of Connor’s participation.
Art Dept. Did you all notice that sometimes Rivera recognizes that light and dark exist, and that objects and figures have volume? Check out panel 3, where Mark and his shirt are cast in shadow. But this isolated, cool bit of three-dimensional illusion only makes the rest of the figures look flatter and starker.
The Daily Trail 