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Mark is invited by Cricket Bro to speak against AI at his AI Conference in New Your City. Mark has to deal with an empowered Kelly Welley, a pumped up Cricket Bro, and the discovery that everything “AI” is not necessarily bad.

Mark demonstrates how to be a bore!

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It would have been fun to see Mark grovel before Kelly Welly. I wonder what he had to do or give in order for her to agree? From the looks of things, she still doesn’t look terribly happy. It’s understandable.

Well, few people can send others running for the exits like Mark can. It’s a good thing Mark was not trying to make time with Vera or Kelly Welly. Who could resist a man in a sports coat, lumberjack shirt, and bow tie, talking about shark eggs, and holding onto his lapels as if he thinks it makes him look sophisticated? No ego, there, I’m sure (panel 2).

I wonder if he’s wearing hiking boots.  Mark certainly looks like the country cousin in the big city in panel 1. Was this a deliberate action by Jules Rivera to poke fun at Trail? She does like to make him look out of place or silly. Rivera has employed this trick more than once (e.g. 4/20/21-4/21/21, 8/8/22).

I might be stretching a bit (and it hurts), but it looks like Cricket Bro brought along as his “plus-one” Holly Folly, the “lifestyle influencer” and Professor Bee Sharp’s companion at the faux STEM Retreat of Simon Stump (“Bear Necessity”, 2023).

Art Dept. The decorative images of people painted on the rear wall (panel 1) build an illusion of more attendees. Nice! … Wait. Are they actually supposed to be real people at the event?

Note: I forgot to publish the May 13, 2025 blog, so you can all scroll back there and fill in the missing space of your Mark Trail Awareness!

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Have we learned anything substantive about AI and the environment in this story? Not much, but like many of Mark’s adventures, environmental education takes second place to the story.

After Mark’s participation in a stacked panel discussion on the merits of AI and the environment, Mark placed a short catchup call with Cherry. Outside of a local Manhattan coffee shop, Mark introduced himself to a woman named Vera, who offered him her unwanted Cricket Protein bar (Don’t get ahead of me!). In any other story, this could have been the opening shot of a seduction attempt. But not in this strip! Turns out Vera is the “handler” for Simon Stump, as in keeping him in line.

It didn’t take much to get Vera to start dissing the “tech gurus” for their shallowness and greed. She didn’t mind dishing the dirt on Simon. Vera might be clearheaded and organized, but probably not the person to hire for a position dealing with confidential information.

As Mark and Vera sat around chatting, she told Mark about an upcoming awards ceremony, which was really a vanity showcase and fundraising event. Thinking that there might be a story to be found there, Mark asked how to get in. Vera suggested hitting up Kelly Welly. This left Mark conflicted, given their rivalry and her position on Cricket Bro’s staff. Of course, this will not likely stop Mark from asking. And that’s the week!

An interesting topic, with a not-so-interesting finale. Is Mark is hinting at some kind of shark pup song in the last panel? In fact, there is a well-known (to parents and toddlers), if repetitive ditty unsurprisingly called “Baby Shark”. I’ll leave it to you to look up.

Oh, here are some other interesting facts about mommy sharks and baby sharks: Some mommy sharks have gestation periods over a year, such as Dogfish sharks (2 yrs) and Frilled sharks (3 yrs). Blue sharks and Whale sharks can give birth to more than 100 live pups at a time. Many sharks only birth a few at a time.  Sand Tiger sharks hatch the eggs of their pups while still inside their uterus. For nourishment, the hatchling pups feast on any unfertilized eggs as well as not-yet-hatched fertilized eggs! So, sleeping in late can have fatal consequences!

Mark won’t admit that he likes staying in Manhattan.

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Vera sounds like she has a good head on her shoulders. And if she had an invitation that allows a guest, she’s clearly wise enough to not let Mark know about it. Mark, on the other hand…. As for this awards show being an opportunity for another article, perhaps what Mark just smells is his Cricket Protein Bar.

Like the other female bit players that show up in this rebooted series from time to time, Very does not try to seduce Mark the way women did in the pre-Rivera days. The “pre-Rivera Mark Trail” was not only immune to these advances, but openly hostile to them. The current Mark Trail shares the same disinterest, and it seems the feeling is mutual.

I don’t wish to get political here, but I wonder what Mark meant when he said to himself “…I have to ask Kelly Welly to be their plus-one?” Was this a slip of the pen or an indication that Kelly has adopted third person personal pronouns? If so, they hasn’t said anything about it.

Mark gets sidetracked once again

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Wait. Vera said that AI doesn’t make money by itself. But then continued on about raising “investor cash”, which we all know means R&D.  But that is different from AI generating income. Which is it, then? That could help explain why she isn’t one of the tech moguls.

So why would Mark (channeling a character in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickelby by exclaiming “Gadzooks!”) want to stick around for an AI award show? He doesn’t even like AI! Furthermore, his assignment is over.

“Don’t move, Rocky! Just keep those paws where I can see them!”

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Okay, we have more clarification. This Vera character is some kind of go-between or minder for Simon Stump to keep him out of trouble, one assumes. Or does she mean “handler” as in Fixer? So who would Vera report to?  It would have to be Cricket Bro. If Stump is also part of Cricket Bro’s company, what is his role? Perhaps this current assignment is not over at all, but has entered a second phase. Then well done, Rivera, for the misdirection!

Exactly where is this coffee shop in New York? With all of the flora in the area, it doesn’t seem to match the real location of the shop in lower Manhattan.

Art Dept. That bear in Mark’s mental flashback (panel 3) looks a lot more menacing and naturalistic than the cartoony bear that actually appeared two years ago in the story that introduced Sid Stump (“Bear Necessities”). Evidently, Rivera has access to better reference images these days.

Breaking news:  Cricket Bro uses steroids. Mark Trail is gobsmacked!

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I’m not sure what is more cringeworthy: Mark with his nose bent out of shape as he stands on his moral high ground sputtering on about steroids, or Rivera with her attempt to reach Millennials and Gen Z’ers by involving this hipster who apparently works for Cricket Bro’s organization and talks the talk.

Anyway, I’m surprised Mark accepted her gift. I’d have thought Mark would eat crickets in their normal state, not pulverized into an energy bar.

The storyline still isn’t going anywhere. Is Mark going to get dragged back into Cricket Bro’s business? Or will Kelly Welly show up in the next few minutes to commit Mark to some other foolish action?

The post-assignment consolation

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Clearly, it seems more and more that Rivera is drawing the wrong strip. She is so fascinated with the “comic” element of comic strips that she can hardly resist the daily gag format, which would be fine in a comic strip that is supposed to be comical; not when it is unintentionally comical, like when Mark’s smartphone changes size from panel 2 to panel 4. Or with Cherry apparently talking to the squirrel. Or when the cabin keeps changing dimensions and adding new features never before seen, like the balcony in panel 1. Where did that come from? Is there a new second floor? And finally, we get the common Rivera pun in panel 4. If Rivera is going to keep doing this Pearls Before Swine pun gimmick, there needs to be somebody in panel 4 waving a club in Mark’s direction.

In any event, we seem to be in the usual week-long, post-story autopsy that follows on the end of an adventure (and I use that term loosely). Since Mark was on an official assignment, we should expect Mark to check in with Bill Ellis before this week ends.

Perish forbid that you would think like I do, but I hope we’d agree that Rivera has dropped the ball on one of her more interesting contributions to the Mark Trail reboot:  The magazine empire that Bill Ellis now works for, with a variety of different magazines having different editors. They provided the assignments for Mark, rather than just Bill. The diversity of magazines with different reader interests should have made for some interesting assignments. Rivera tried this for a few years, but seems to have dropped it. Now we’re back to Bill Ellis handing out assignments <yawn!>. I’d like to be wrong on that.

Mark is feeling down and out in NYC.

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There is—or was—actually a place called the Green Room Café in Midtown East, Manhattan, but data says it is permanently closed. There are several other places in the City that have “Green Room” as part of their name, but I’m not sure if they are connected with each other. If anybody can clear this up, feel free to share that information in a comment.

Wait! The caption in panel 1 says that Mark is inside the Green Room Café. If that is the case, then is all of that greenery just a wall mural?

Yet, Mark is desperate for the outdoors. He finished his roundtable talk and should be free to fly home. Why isn’t he?

We get to watch Mark manually dislocate his head in panel 1. And I’m struck by the irony of his plea in panel 2. Mark moans over concrete, but the building behind him is brick. And there seems to be a good bit of greenery right beside where he is standing, with a big (gray?) squirrel checking him out. Unless that is just a mural, as I noted above.

As for asking Cherry to turn her phone camera around? Is Mark really interested in trees now or whether any water heater dudes are just hanging around? I suspect that this phone call is just an excuse to check up on Cherry to see if she is still deeply involved with the water heater project.

<AAGH! I must resist having these disreputable thoughts. That’s what comes from staying up too late.> In any event, we are glad to see that Cherry knows how to get her snark on, as she gently needles Mark. That’s a pun, folks. Get it? Pine Tree, pine needles, needle. HAH! Rivera missed that one!

Saved by what belt?

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Let’s recall the point of this story: Mark was assigned to attend an AI conference at the request of Cricket Bro, so he could present a counterargument to AI being compatible with the environment. Fine. However, the actual panel discussion was held only within the last two weeks of the story, where there were few, if any, actual points of discussion. So if readers were looking for good information or arguments on AI and the environment, then as the Dread Pirate Roberts once said, “get used to disappointment.”

Still, there were a few things missing: Where were the usual questions from the audience? And whatever happened to Sid Stump? Was he just making a cameo appearance? And what does Rivera’s dreadful pun even mean?

Art Dept. Presenting anonymous figures in a crowd can be done in several ways. Rivera normally creates background figures even more sketchy that the main characters often appear (e.g. panel 4), usually in a purple tint (see the May 8th strip). In panel 1, the anonymous crowd is in the foreground, presenting a new challenge. Their flat, outlined shapes are over-accentuated by their black outlines, making them look like cardboard cutouts. I think a better effect would have been to omit the outlining completely, so they would draw less attention to themselves by blending together in more of an amorphous mass.

But you might ask, “What about the crowd shot in panel 4 of the May 3rd strip? It shows actual human figures from the rear, still in purple.” Well, you might not have asked, so I took the trouble of asking for you. Thank you. I think it might be an issue of scale and view. That May 3rd panel is fairly tight and close, so we only see one row of viewers.

And just when it looks like this panel talk is going nowhere, it succeeds in going nowhere!

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So, Rivera crams a bunch of viewpoints into one day for a panel discussion that was spread over two weeks. Did we learn much of anything about Going Green with AI? Did we learn much of anything about AI? Or Green? Granted, this is a comic strip, a nature adventure strip, even. Still, part of this strip’s calling card has been its self-imposed mandate to promote environmental education, respect for wildlife, and appreciation of nature . . . within the limits of its storylines.

I didn’t see much of any of that here. We didn’t even see an actual example of AI Going Green! Now, I don’t think this was all that different in pre-Rivera days, though the strip then did focus more on local stories about nature and animals, so the connections were more obvious. Not so much here, which is why a bit of “show-and-tell”, with some numbers and data, would have helped. By all means, keep the goofiness, but don’t ignore the serious stuff.

But that wasn’t really the point, was it? Most of the panel discussion was mere snark, and another opportunity for Rivera to parody technology. Finally, poor Mark looks like a hapless dude hoping the audience doesn’t start throwing things at him.

… But Mark fumbles an easy infield popup!

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Well, that’s a non-answer, Mark (panel 2). And the wrong approach. It makes you look insincere and smug. Crypto Bro’s rhetorical trap allowed him to play up his brotherly love act at Mark’s expense. The panel discussion again veered off-topic, although moderator Kelly Welly kept silent.

But should we? Jules Rivera has so far turned this panel discussion into a “Gotcha!” circus, which is disappointing. But Mark Trail is a nature/environmental strip and it would be great to see some serious issues and questions out of this meeting. Otherwise, what difference does the format of the strip make if the content continues to focus on irrelevant carping, jokes, and petty actions? Mark has two days left this week to do something valuable. Will Rivera gives him the chance?

Kelly Welly serves up a softball as Cricket Bro misses the pitch

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Well, Darth Welly finally steps in to provide some direction for this discussion. Of course, Cricket Bro has to promote an over-engineered, irrelevant app which Mark easily dispatches. If that is Cricket Bro’s best, he should quit while he is behind. Maybe let those younger entrepreneurs take the stage with their better thought-out projects. Will Rivera even take this step?

The term “dad energy” is roughly defined (online) as a man strongly exhibiting “fatherly” traits normally related to home and family, while gladly letting other people know about it. A bit of bragging, in short. That might fit the bill here, as Cricket Bro is clearly not happy to be showed up by Mark’s response.

In at least one source I read, wearing plaid shirts was listed as a stereotypical meme of Dad Energy. There’s more to this concept, but feel free to do your own research. I don’t have time as I’ve got to do some car work that only a manly father can do.

The discussion is going around in circles

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Alas, Rivera downplayed a reasonable discussion and replaced it with a kind of low-rent, “reality show” battle between speakers and a reactive audience like that seen on TV shows such as Jerry Springer or Maury.

Sure, this is a comic strip, albeit a nature-based adventure strip. Still, is there no room for nuance? Where is the adventure? And I wonder: is Rivera doing this deliberately as a metaphor for our perceived lack of political and social engagement by the general public? Or possibly a critique of the hardline positions of the Left and Right? Or maybe Rivera just likes Jerry Springer and thinks it makes a good format for this panel discussion.

Still, within the confines of the story, itself, do you think that Cricket Bro would go to all this trouble just to try and humiliate Mark in public? Is his ego that fragile that he feels the need to flex his fake muscles and try to make Mark look like a weak technophobe, a neo-luddite?

The “discussion” continues!

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Are we glad to see that Rivera took the trouble to make sure we all grasped Mark’s rhetorical “Gotcha!” question in panel 4?

Or is she hinting that this is just the first volley of a week-long battle of the trolls? If Rivera lets Mark remain true to his nature, he will attempt to make his argument, instead of trading snarky comments with everybody all week long.

Of course, the audience could get involved and try to hound him off the stage, as it would be naïve to think that Rivera would not be making comparisons with our own contemporary politically-biased social and culture wars. I think it would be interesting to see how Rivera would handle Mark actually coming out on the wrong end of this panel discussion and getting humiliated, however unjustified. It would be a good opportunity to explore the depth of Mark’s character and his integrity.

Art Dept. As is all too common, with few exceptions, Rivera plays fast and loose with drawing, especially human anatomy. But contemporary standards in comics suggest that Rivera is not alone, that traditional views on space, proportion, and forms are not always necessary. This dismissal of conventional representation is nothing new, in fact, but has shown up in the arts several times.

There are several examples in Western art that immediately come to mind: The so-called “Mannerist” period (1500s) that developed during the time of the High Renaissance in Italy is one of the first. The painting on the right is popularly called “Madonna with the long neck”, to emphasize how the painter has deliberately distorted the normal classical proportions of the figures and the space for artistic, not religious, reasons. To modern eyes not used to the conventions of the time, this may not appear very revolutionary today. Even Impressionism, once scorned as profane and ugly, look fairly tame these days. Non-Western arts also went through revolutionary periods, but I don’t have the time or space to get into them here.

Madonna and Child by Parmigianino, 1535-40.

Now, there are those who make distinctions between “real” Art with a capital A and comic art. While there are differences, they are still similar in many ways. They are both mostly based on having a patron buy the work. Both are meant to communicate something to the viewer. Both can have embedded symbolism or meaning. Both can also be made and enjoyed for their own visual appeal.

Nevertheless, that is one ugly-looking body on Crypto Bro in panel 2!

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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The Main Event began this week, with Kelly Welly “moderating” the panel consisting of just three people: Cricket Bro, his brother Jadsen (aka Crypto Bro), and Mark. Kelly announced that the topic of discussion is “Going Green With AI”, which is about all of the moderating Kelly did for the week, other than to slam Mark a bit in her introduction. I suppose she’s entitled.

Cricket Bro spoke first, denying any value to going green and thus, undercutting the “green” vendors that Mark interviewed , as well as the point of the convention. Naturally, Mark jumped in for the defense, and the rest of the week was just a back-and-forth contest between two hard positions.

While Cricket Bro and Crypto Bro kept dumping on Mark, Mark kept trying to calm the situation and talk rationally. A few catcalls from the audience suggested that they might be a bit biased against Mark. Mark kept his composure and decided to try a gambit and take one of the insults and affirm it. This silenced the audience, which is where we ended the week. How will Mark turn this attack on its head? Post your suggestions, if you’re brave enough to withstand ridicule if you’re wrong. Otherwise, cower in silence until we return to this chat.

Alert! In case you have not been on the Comics Kingdom site for a while, they have begun restoring the Vintage Mark Trail strips. This should especially please Mark the Contrarian Commenter. I haven’t had time to see how far back they go, but they are currently running strips from 1974. If you do a regular “Mark Trail” search, you will find links to both strips. Have fun!

I reckon I’ve fallen behind in my Star Wars Universe viewing, but I don’t recall a Hellbender in it. Do you? I did find references to salamanders, in general. Perhaps that explains the faux “Star Wars” style Mark Trail title panel and Mark’s Jedi clothing. I happily await further edification from any of you! Well, May the 4th be with you!

Mark plays 4-dimensional chess with the audience

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Sure, it looks like Mark is setting himself up for failure. Or, perhaps not. Mark is likely to try and turn the tables on that assumption by suggesting how AI tech can actually be good for birds—as well as the environment—if carried out wisely. In that way, Mark cuts the rhetorical legs out from under the Tech Bros.

Will Kelly Welly step in at this point and attempt to shut down Mark in favor of Cricket and Crypto?

The “Gotcha!” discussion continues

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Mark can’t catch a break, no matter how sincerely his comments are delivered. This is less like a panel discussion and more like an ambush attack you can see on social media platforms, such as X. Still, Mark has plenty to dislike or hate regarding these two troublemakers. They went so far as to try and topple a boulder on top of Mark while he was fighting Sid Stump (May 16, 2023, “Bear Necessity”).

Regular readers know those guys cause nothing but trouble for Mark. In real life, Mark would have had them arrested or just stayed away. But comic adventure heroes (e.g. Batman, Dudley Do-Right, Popeye) often keep a stable of familiar villains around because the artist doesn’t have to spend extra time defining the amorality of new bad guys. And it’s like sports rivalries, where the fans of each team want to see the other team repeatedly humiliated.

Art Dept. Drawing a “bird’s eye” panoramic view can make good sense in a situation like this, to capture the ambiance of the event. However, it seems overblown when the scene only highlights one of Rivera’s sarcastic comments and the exclamation of one audience member or squirrel. Perhaps this is another example of Rivera riffing on the once-common habit of prior artists—such as Jack Elrod—to draw dialog balloons that pointed ambiguously to one or more people, animals, or objects.

Wah! Wah! Wah!

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This panel talk is more like a professional wrestling match:  It’s all about the theater. And Mark is the one getting tag-teamed by the Bro’ Boys. Clearly, we are not going to see much in the way of actual—or serious—discussion. Absurdity works best when it appears within an environment of normalcy and convention. But is this a normal or conventional environment?

Will Mark accept Cricket Bro’s challenge and take off his shirt? Or will we learn that Cricket Bro’s muscled physique is not real, after all? And who cares, anyway?

Why can’t these clowns just have a nice, contentious debate based on the actual focus of the conference? There are certainly plenty of videos on YouTube that Rivera could have cribbed from. Hopefully, she did exactly that, and we’ll see some of it in the coming days.

Oops! This is May 1st, not April 1st. Forget what I wrote in the previous paragraph… !

Cricket Bro lays out his AI Vision

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Hmm, I thought the topic is “Going Green with AI”, but Cricket Bro seems to be arguing against that. Cricket Bro’s opening remark in panel 1 lays the foundation for his thesis in panel 2. Seems like a strawman argument to me, as it does to Mark. But, it’s early, so let’s see how the panel discussion develops. At least Mark is stepping in to counter Cricket Bro’s distortion, even if his statement is self-evidently obvious (“This is our planet…the one where people live.”). I don’t know why Mark didn’t dress up in a smart sports jacket, tie, and slacks in order to throw off Cricket Bro and the audience. Instead, his clothes have a big target on him that says “I live in the woods.”

Art Dept. Too bad Rivera didn’t consult the work of comic book artist extraordinaire, Jack Kirby. She could have improved on Cricket Bro’s “pumped-up” body, unless Rivera is deliberately making him look baggy because his pumped torso looks like it is leaking. Boy, I’m persnickety today!

Kelly Welly poisons the well

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Well, introductions must be made. The four-panel format just happens to fit. Otherwise, not much to say here in terms of storyline or plot development. Why is Mark emoting out loud, rather than through a customary thought balloon? Is Mark breaking the conventional “fourth wall” to speak directly to us?

Art Dept. I know that Rivera has commented before about going old school and using non-digital drawing tools (i.e. pen and ink). That kind of looks like what we see in panels 2 and 3, unless somebody else drew them. The style resembles a slightly more finished version of her storyboarding technique, though I hesitate to show them here without permission. Just look her up on BlueSky where she posts. As pen drawing goes, more practice should help. As I’ve mentioned more than once previously, that her Mark Trail style appears to be an outgrowth of her storyboarding approach.

But the other question you are likely asking is “Why was panel 1 and panel 4 drawn in Rivera’s usual, digital style? Why weren’t all four panels drawn using the same style? Got me!