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The plot thickens… Mark boards a Gentle Ben style airboat to ply the vast Florida Everglades… in search of his past…
…and it looks like he has found it!
Up pops Jolly Roger! (new character) Arghh! (that’s pirate talk…) Out of a what? A tiny sinkhole? (Florida is lousy with ’em) With snake in custody? (For what? Why?) Mark’s father stole his farm? (Huh?)
Clearly I am going to have to learn a few new words in this new take on the Mark Trail journey… “Ship you and the peacock?” ‘Ship’ as in short for Relationship…
“Driving into a storm,” though, should be taken both literally and figuratively, even as Mark (I am sure) breaks any number of laws Facetiming behind the wheel… Nice ride, Mark…look at that Station Wagon! No head rests! Two-tone! Analog instrument panel! Reminiscent of the Plymouth Grand Fury or Buick Estate… Now we are talking!
I am back to taking my Trail medicine in doses of three…
Mark, you are now officially an SMW (Social Media Whore,) or more accurately a wanna-be. Who talks to animals…
…who show you no respect whatsoever. Can’t really decide what happened in the last panel above, but at least Mark isn’t blind… But what is Mark in Mark’s past? What’s he running from?? I guess that’s the mystery now.
Cute Mark, keep it up. You will be the darling of the internet in no time! Ironic that Old Mark was so dismissive of the Cryptozoologist chasing Yeti… The New Mark would give his right leg for that many followers…
Sins of the father and all that… left for the children to clean up? Except Doc is still alive??
Handle business?? What? We are about to meet up with the seamy underbelly of the Davis clan? Nestled in Florida? Where Mark happens to be going to research a story that could well reveal parts of his past? This has all the makings of an Allen yarn, notably the one about smuggling artifacts, where we weren’t quite sure who the bad guys were until the end… But I hate to draw those comparisons quite this quickly. We are, after all, mere days/ weeks into this. Prelude, as it were…
I’ll say one thing… this strip hops around quite a bit. No moss growing on it, as they say…
We go from Andy eating Rusty’s flipflops to Cherry’s dad- Doc Davis. Who is much more, ummm… well-fed in this version of him… Anyway, what do they have to tell Rusty? Is Doc going to join the French Foreign Legion? Run for Governor? By the look on Cherry’s face, though, it would seem to be life threatening, which is odd since I don’t think we want to kill off characters in the first go-round, do we??
Well, Campers, we are moving right along here. Mark in Florida, Cherry and Rusty still in Georgia, getting ready to hit the road and meet up with Mark. That’s certainly different. Gone are the days when Mark goes off on his own, I guess…
What th-? What is that in panel 2? A dog? Is that Andy? I guess it is, but c’mon… need to work on that one a little…
Flip-flops in your pocket? Huh? How old are you, Rusty? Doc=Pops/Poppy? I thought maybe Rusty (Russ) was referring to his no-good birth-father…
Well, I guess I will have to take into account the Sunday offering… in that it’s now become part of the story line… This morning’s strip would have made no sense without taking in the following:
Begs the question, however, as to who is shooting the video? Some random stranger? If Mark is on camera and starring in it, then who is behind the lens?
Mark needs affirmation! And validation! Constantly! And where exactly is he? Walking out of a roadside rest stop? That sign says “feed pond” which looks like a tourist attraction… Feed the Tarpon! This was a popular stop in Florida once when my kids were that age…
You know who else is going to need to get “Insta-Friendly?” Your faithful scribe… thanks for the comments on how to find Kelly Welly’s Twitter account… She lookin’ pretty bad-ass…
OK, for those uninitiated, guessing there might be a few, Kelly was a regular character in the “old” Mark Trail. She wished for nothing else than to be Mark Trail, live his life, write stories like him and be the one on Bill Ellis’ rolodex… But all she ever accomplished was to be a foil in various plots, where Mark was already on the case and she’d end up needing to be rescued or some such thing…
Flash forward and Kelly’s the one with a bazillion followers on all social media platforms and Mark is the relic… so far, it doesn’t appear that @fishdonteven is a real handle, at least I’m not getting any hits…
Good to see that Mark is back in the saddle… I guess it only took a little consult from Ralph the Rat Snake… with a little humor on the side.
I tell ya… Mark ain’t gettin’ no respect, campers…
All about Mark? Well of course it is! His name is on the strip! Always has been! And apparently he will continue to receive the abuse he probably doesn’t really deserve, unless one is in the camp of “all that has gone before must simply be evil, for now we are woke?” In a world were the center has broken and probably will not return, are we to endure conflict at every turn in the “new” Mark Trail? Not sure I need this…
Well, well, Welly… Kelly is an Influencer, it appears.
No doubting now what era we are in… no confusing signs of yesteryear to conflict with modern accoutrements… Here we see a screen on a smartphone and a reference to “followers…” Internet famous. Anxiety over not having enough “likes.” As Mark continues to pay for past indiscretions and un-woke moments, this is looking more like Dickens’ Christmas Carol- Mark being visited by Ghosts to remind him of the life he has led and is likely to lead if he doesn’t change his ways. Boy, this is going to go over like a lead balloon!
To start with, don’t motorcycles, especially crotch-rockets, go “Beeeep!” as opposed to Honk!?”
Kelly Welly, for the uninitiated or forgetful, is always “competing with Mark, trying to “scoop” him on stories that he has been assigned. She is a perpetual thorn in Mark’s side, placing him in compromising situations, always suggesting that there might be a “thing” going on between them…
What always occurred to me (in the old Mark Trail) is that poor Kelly was just a lady trying to break into what was traditionally a man’s place- the overly male-dominated and testosterone-infused world of journalism… That Mark always “got the assignment” even though she was eager, available and for all we know, qualified to do the work…
Boy, when I said brooding introspection, I wasn’t kidding…
What deep secrets lie hidden in the Trail-brain? Again, in the past, the Trail Brain could be better described as “reptilian,” not as fully formed and conflicted as we are witnessing here. Now we have a Namesake Character lousy with doubt, and it would seem, remorse…
Scruples, ethics, standards, character… these were never issues back in the day. Remember WWMD? Well, what is Mark doing now?
Mark Trail, 2020 version… a man deeply aware of his own feelings, prone to brooding and introspection… and a wife who calls him Sugar, no less!
Cherry must really have the green thumb! Looks like she is able to grow plants in Portland cement!
Mark… C’mon now Mark… What aren’t you telling us?
Sparkle Lip Gloss Girls? (Or whatever the magazine is called…)
or
Mark Trail, now a gigging eco-journalist?
As Amy Lee nearly pees herself with excitement, we learn something very important today… that this Mark Trail talks to animals!! Dr. Doolittle I presume!! This was promised earlier in the description of the Trail makeover, and well, here it is! Does Cherry know this? Or is this a deep secret? He certainly came clean with Amy and Bill, and they didn’t seem the slightest bit put off by it.
Today’s Nature lesson:
Rat Snakes, are members – along with kingsnakes, milk snakes, vine snakes and indigo snakes – of the subfamily Colubrinae of the family Colubridae. They are medium to large constrictors and are found throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere. They feed primarily on rodents. Many species make attractive and docile pets and one, the corn snake, is one of the most popular reptile pets in the world. As with all snakes, they can be defensive when approached too closely, handled, or restrained, but bites are not serious. Like nearly all colubrids, rat snakes pose no threat to humans. Rat snakes were long believed to be completely nonvenomous, but recent studies have shown that some Old World species do possess small amounts of venom, though the amount is negligible relative to humans.
This is really brain bending… when Mark meets the founder of “Happy Trails” he’s going to wonder what episode of the Twilight Zone he has stumbled into… OK, going to break that rule… ending the sentence with a preposition. “wonder into which episode he stumbled” just seems to be a bit much…
But here we are. A new day has dawned. Trust in our elders is at an all time low… and certainly anyone “making bank” has to have done something wrong or screwed someone else over… And what could be more fascinating than a boundary dispute?? Questioning Title to land has always been a great trigger for conflict and controversy! So Mark will play abstractor and hit the county land records? Have a survey done? Hire an attorney? Hmmm… Maybe he’ll just punch this guy and be done with it!
Marks reaction is telling!
Whoa! But wait! A strangely meta-experience is about to unfold!
Is Mark looking in a mirror? Does he feel strangely connected to this story already? I can tell all of you now, I am just touch confused by it all. But then again, Mark can’t see what Amy “Foxy” Lee is imagining. It’s all being described and shown for the viewer’s benefit, but Mark is being left in the, how you say, dark… and goes back to a dark place.
…no, not that kind… not literally. Just look how tall he is next to Mark!
As Geoff falls out of focus and Mark returns to (more) familiar form, I am reminded of the very beginning of the cave adventure when Mark was free-climbing, all to set up the final scenes in the cave, in order that we couldn’t say, “Hey, where did Mark suddenly get those mad climbing skills?!” It wasn’t clear, to me at least, that it was Mark doing the climbing. In fact it might have been the first time Mark was ever presented without a shirt on, unless you count the time that we was treed by a bear after separating his shoulder…
And In case you all are wondering when the switch-over occurred, from Elrod to Allen, here is the last daily signed by Elrod and the first daily signed by Allen. Notice how in the latter the style seems to change panel to panel… a reminder that Allen has been at this (along with you scribe) for over 6 years… he’s probably looking for an out…
The Daily Trail 