I’m sorry, Jules, but this is pretty rank stuff, visually and textually.I went over the implausibility of the wind blowing papers from inside the house to the outside when there is no cross-current. Rivera could have just had Mark move to the window in order to better read the paper and then have a gust of wind blow it out of his hands. That would at least be plausible.

And just how do we know that this production schedule is an important clue to the whereabouts of Wingit? In panel 3, the narration box states that Mark has caught up to the paper, yet he is still inside of the house, looking out the window. In panel 4, a recumbent lioness has somehow managed to snag the schedule. How did lions get outside of the house and why are they just hanging around the yard? The notion that police would not get involved in a situation like this is totally unrealistic.

Art Dept. There isn’t much to be said on the positive side and I do not think I need to belabor the obvious. The real question is why Rivera puts out this kind of stuff when it is clear she can do much better. Sure, her syndicate is probably not paying her much money. I get that. Mark Trail is not pulling in the kind of readership and earnings that Garfield or even Luann does, nor even the endless reprints of Peanuts. So, is the lack of quality meant to be some kind of protest by Rivera? Or maybe just her indifference? That seems self-destructive.

Perhaps there is no financial incentive for her to spend more time on the strip. That depends on her contract, of course. It might even be that the syndicate, itself, doesn’t care one way or the other, for its own reasons. I certainly don’t know. It’s a shame, because there are many good ideas and approaches that Rivera has already initiated or could implement.

I’m not sure how much bravery is required to walk through a house filled with docile lions, though the basic idea is certainly unsettling. Anyway, as the story unfolds, Mark looks for more evidence of Wingit’s location. But speaking of evidence, what was on the video camera and where is it?

Mark finds another possible piece of the puzzle: a production schedule, which just happens to suddenly fly out of a surprisingly open window! OMG!! A disaster! Go figure.

Funny though, I hadn’t noticed any strong air currents inside the house that would cause this. Was Mark holding the document outside of the window to read it? Couldn’t he just turn on the room lights or use the flashlight!?

Okay, so the schedule flew out of the window. Big deal. Mark or Sammy Spotter can just go retrieve it, right? Or does there just happen to be a swimming pool that the document just happened to fly into and then just happened to turn into a soggy pile of unreadable paper mush? What will Mark do, then?

At least the house hasn’t caught fire, yet.

Art Dept. Looks like Rivera wasn’t ready to continue employing hatching to suggest darkness, volume, or strike a mood. A lost opportunity!

Well, how interesting! The lions have not only learned how to operate a chest freezer, but they have learned to eat frozen meat. If I was Mark, I’d check if that meat looks like actors. And what happened to the video camera he was looking at yesterday?

Art Dept. The artwork for the lions seems to get more questionable. However, I’m impressed by Mark’s depiction in panel 1, which has some darn good line work and a well-defined expression. Too bad that does not carry through. If only all of the artwork looked that good. However, I am very intrigued that Rivera finally decided to try her hand at introducing shadows on Mark in panel 3. They are not very well integrated into the anatomy, and the effect is too heavy-handed. But, it’s a good start, so I hope she keeps at it and uses it more to define atmosphere, volume, and drama. But don’t ask me about that left hand.

WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON IN THIS STORY?

It is easy for me to  fantasize that this entire story is some kind of con game like Punk’d, where Trail is the designated mark. Allow me to post some observations and hypotheses:

1. Bill Ellis gave Mark a dodgy assignment to find a missing movie director last seen in a house filled with lions. Nobody else is available to do the job. Police can’t handle it. No professional lion tamer or private detective need apply. The assignment specifically requires Mark Trail’s participation, even though he has no qualifications for the assignment and admits to it
2. The location is a “mansion” on an exotic and picturesque island
3. Mark’s contact is a “professional” animal wrangler too afraid to deal with the lions, but declares the untrained Mark Trail can do it. Gullible Mark laps it up
4. There is supposed to be a group of actors sequestered inside the mansion with the lions by the movie director, for the sake of a movie in production, but they are nowhere to be found
5. Mark enters the house and discovers it is filled with inactive lions. He doesn’t seem disturbed by their presence, nor by the lack of actors. Maybe the lions are drugged or just senile.
6. Mark conveniently finds a video camera near the front door, reminiscent of finding the brass lamp in the well house of that great early text adventure game, Colossal Cave
7. Will the video camera provide a series of hints to help Mark locate the movie director? Or maybe it will provide a confession that this entire enterprise is a prank for a new Reality TV show, and Mark is its surprise first guest star!

Rivera takes the easy road to spot Mark for the ongoing bad puns. Well, why not? He’s done it before. I suppose it is logical to think this is director Wesley’s video camera that was left on the floor, as opposed to one of the likewise-missing actors in the house. But did Wingit record himself? Or was he just filming miscellaneous sequences for future use? At least Mark takes the next logical step to view the recording.

Well, I have to say that those lions certainly do look pretty relaxed; the kind of relaxation that comes after a good meal, that is!

Art Dept. One thing that has always puzzled me since Rivera took over the strip is why portions of Mark’s hair (and Cherry’s for that matter) are blue. Is blue the new gray? Does Mark color his hair? This does not resemble any kind of normal highlighting. I do recall seeing this hair convention before in some comic books here and there. Post a comment if you have some information.

I hope you discovered my belated posts for Saturday and Sunday (scroll below), as I accidentally left them in draft.

Yeah, this looks like more story padding going on; but is it? There are some really glaring issues: 1) The action in today’s episode appears to precede the events of this past Saturday, where Mark was shown already inside the house. Check it out. The question here is “WTH!?” This is not a simple “What happened last week” recap. The publish date here clearly shows 09-16 in panel 3.

2) The artwork today is once again clumsy and hurried. Note Sammy Spotter in panel 1: He looks like he was drawn by somebody who didn’t know how anatomy works. Mark’s figure on the steps is not much better, looking more like a Howdy Doody marionette. And he does not have the flashlight Sammy gave him on Friday, but had on Saturday!

3) I also missed the “variable front door” situation. On Thursday and Friday, we saw double-doors with twin side windows. They changed to a single door with full-length sidelights on Saturday. Today, they are back to double-doors but with no side windows or sidelights. This is one freaky, but ugly mansion.

Rivera could probably have used the Continuity checker from Wesley Wingit’s movie set.

This is rich. It’s hard to tell, but it has been daylight. Maybe it’s getting on to dusk, but shadows are rarely cast in the Trailverse. So why does Mark need a flashlight? Did the mansion lose electricity? Are all the shades drawn? I mean, we can still see the outside!

Anyway, what clue is Mark referring to? Does Mark think Wingit left a video of what he was doing or where he went? Why does Mark believe it could be Wingit’s camera or why anybody would have one?

Where to begin. We have a pride of lions just hanging around as if they are at a watering hole in a Kenyan savannah. They don’t seem at all bothered by Mark’s sudden entrance, and Mark doesn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that he can just walk in and kneel down alongside the lionesses. I suppose, if they have eaten all of the actors, they are not looking for snacks.

Mark holds the discovered video camera with the awe of Indiana Jones discovering a Peruvian golden idol. I don’t understand the mystery here. Are the lions tranqed? Maybe Wesley Wingit decided he had enough and took the actors out for dinner or maybe a quick weekender to San Diego.

Or, these are not real lions, but actors in costume, and Wingit is the alpha male on the sofa. That would mean they are part of an experiment to see if they can fool any would-be rescuers. Why? That would be because Wingit wanted to save money by not having to hire real lions for his movie.

I wonder if Rivera thinks this strip comes out once a week, since she uses half of today’s space repeating what was covered yesterday. Perhaps she thinks she is being helpful to elderly Trailheads who still read this strip and who might appreciate the reminder. On the other hand, this reiteration is also a method for padding a story to slow the pace down and help it fill out the week. Perhaps that slick, single-panel-Rusty-drop-off yesterday moved too quickly for an old comic strip like this and it just needs a breather.

Okay, so it looks like the guys did bring along some equipment! But maybe this is more than a simple flashlight. Perhaps it is like the cigarette lighter that Our Man Flint used to carry, the one that had about 98 different tools and functions built into it. In any event, it seems that Sammy Spotter, the intrepid animal wrangler, will not be participating in Mark’s assignment, after all. Maybe Mark will begin wishing he had brought along somebody useful, like Rex Scorpius.

Well, the crisis thermostat is really boiling over now! Or maybe it’s freezing over? Heck, I’m just not sure what Rivera is driving at. Is this a real crisis or not?

Instead of hurrying on to solve this really big deal problem (at least for the movie studio), our intrepid group takes the time to drive out of their way to view some old houses. And now they dawdle by the shore, coddling Rusty.

Perhaps after they spend a few hours hiking around the mountains to find a Catalina fox or shrew, they might find the time to take a detour to the “lion house,” only to learn that the missing movie director snuck away to the Bahamas with one of his “production” assistants.

I’m still trying to come to grips with the justification for this entire storyline. One would think that a house filled with free-roaming lions and human actors would constitute an imminent threat requiring quick and decisive action. Nothing could be further from the truth. Then there is the fact that the entire enterprise is not about rescuing the actors (who cares about them!?!), but on finding the missing director who set up this ridiculous scenario, in order to protect the reputation of the movie studio.

I cannot stop thinking that there might be something entirely different going on here than we are led to believe. Is Sammy Spotter being honest? Are the lions actually in a cage inside the house? Or are they old, toothless beasts ready for their last roar? Is Mark being conned into participating in some kind of secret Reality TV show? Is he being set up to be a fall guy? Or maybe it’s something even worse, planned by one of the clown criminals from his earlier adventures? Perhaps I’m just hoping for something spicy. Don’t let me down, Jules!

Why is Sammy still in his “I’m looking for Mr. Trail” pose (panel 1)?

Call me a skeptic, but I don’t see how they will get to Catalina soon, seeing as how they’ve already spent so much time hanging around the airport. And now it’s a detour to the “meme houses.” Well, why not? It’s only a short distance in the opposite direction of Catalina Island, so time is clearly not the issue it first appeared to be.

But why are Rusty and Mark breaking The Fourth Wall by talking to us? And talking nonsense, no less. Do they think we should care!?

“Wingit”, wing it. Got it. Not sure I want it. The mystery of why the lions are in a house with actors becomes clear. What next, snakes on a plane?

Art Dept. The overall drawing is a bit sketchy and blocky. Another thing I’ve noticed over time has to do with how Rivera chooses to show Mark when “looking back” in what would normally be a three-quarter rear view (panel 2). Normally, Mark’s face should show a rear side-looking profile, where facial features are mostly unseen. This photo gives you an idea of what I mean.

Instead, Rivera shows a side profile as we see him reacting to Sammy Spotter. It isn’t that she doesn’t know how to draw that, as Rivera has drawn people from multiple viewpoints. Rather, she wants to emphasize Mark’s angular profile as much as she needs to show Mark’s expression. In short, artistic license overrides the naturalism we expect to see.

I forgot to mention how nice an image Rivera drew of Rusty yesterday. Check out yesterday’s panel 2, showing a relaxed pose and an optimistic, inquisitive expression. No cynicism, no distorted features, no empty-headed stare; just a nice looking kid.

And today continues the weirdness, as we learn that wrangler Sammy Spotter will, indeed, take part in the search and rescue of movie director Wesley Wingit. And only Spotter and Mark can do the job! In what way, we don’t yet know, bringing into question the role of an additional person. No matter, we’ll soon find out.

For the sake of my good feelings about yesterday’s drawing of Rusty and my growing impatience with Rivera’s irrelevant narratives, I’m ignoring panel 3 in today’s strip. You should, too.

Well … except for the suitcase. What’s in there? Mark wears the same clothes every day. Maybe he just buys multiples of the same shirt and jeans. Maybe he brought along large white gloves, a whip, and colorful costume so he can take on the persona of a circus tiger tamer. Mark obviously likes cosplay, as we’ve seen him decked out in his “Western Dude” attire.

Animal wrangler Sammy Spotter certainly seems the excitable type.

But I think it is time for a recap:  Animal wrangler Spotter called editor Bill Ellis to help find movie director, Wesley Wingit, who has gone missing inside a house he filled with lions and actors. The police are not up to the task and we assume, neither is Spotter. Instead, they get nature photographer and journalist Mark Trail to handle it. Perfect! What could go wrong?

Okay, it doesn’t make much sense. Anyway, how come nobody seems concerned about the actors in the house? Those lions must be pretty tired and old. Or well fed.

I suppose I should have thought more about this “week-long” plane ride (including today’s strip) that I criticized the other day. I might have recognized that Rivera extended the flight for the entire week to suggest the lengthy flight, itself. However, there was nothing in the dialog or body language of Mark and Rusty to reinforce this interpretation. Now, there were several ways to portray a flight. Rivera chose an approach that focused less on the plane and more on conversation, ignoring flight attendants, drink service, and looking out of the window.

The blowout of Mark in panel 1 is a nice way to focus on a person talking inside something (like the plane), while looking at the thing’s exterior. The panoramic view of a plane landing at LAX is also a good compositional idea, though it suffers from crowding too much text along with an extraneous owl in the panel. The chosen view also seems too close to suggest the expanse of the airport. Emphasizing the airport by showing it from a greater distance would reinforce the idea of airport. I think the Theme Building would still be recognizable from a greater distance.

I find it interesting from the point of view of tempo, that the landing scene in panel 1 suggests a somewhat fast-moving tempo. But that tempo disappears when we return to the inside for more Trail Talk.

Rivera is still playing softball, and I don’t mean women’s softball where the pitchers hurl big yellow balls across the plate as if they were shot from cannon. I mean that Jules just spent the entire week devoted to Mark’s largely one-sided promotional pitch, resulting in a long, loping arc that does not appear to translate into a story arc. And like that softball, Mark and Rusty are still in the air! But you have to hand it to Rivera, this is sure some Class A story padding.

No cabin attendants passed out drinks and cookies. No jerk stood up and started attacking the staff for not serving steak and onions in Economy. I count this as a missed opportunity for Rivera, where Mark could have intervened in the assault and had just cause to use his vaunted Fists o’ Justice. That would have been a lot more satisfying than this Boorish Dad routine.

So why didn’t Mark tell Rusty about Catalina before they left? Rusty would have changes his mind. Then, Mark could have brought along somebody actually useful. There must be a reason why Rivera has Mark preferring Rusty over a skilled assistant.

Throughout Jules Rivera’s tenure, Rusty has been portrayed as something of an antithesis in several ways to his traditional, prior existence. While not quite a complete break, “Traditional” Rusty seemed to be stuck in a time-warped Beaver Cleaver sensibility.

We saw in James Allen’s Mexican Vacation, aka Dirty’s Revenge (2018-2019) adventure, that Traditional Rusty was still capable of making independent decisions and actions, even in the face of danger. His courage may have been inspired a bit by his partner-in-adventure, Mara, a slightly older adolescent girl. Otherwise, Rusty was a simple youth who played a limited role as a recurring guest star. He loved nature and wanted little more than to spend time with Mark, especially fishing! Of course, the running joke was that Mark was almost always too busy.

Current Rusty holds nature in a less revered position. He dislikes fishing, is more cynical, and is much more a child of the time. Both versions of Rusty are clumsy around girls. Traditional Rusty was not a completely clueless youth when it came to current trends. Mark and Cherry were both bemused and concerned with Traditional Rusty’s attention to the Internet and social media. Current Rusty, like many kids today, live by social media and smart phones. Of course, Current Rusty is not clueless about the environment, climate change, and other ecological issues. We could see Traditional Rusty growing up to be like Mark. Current Rusty’s future is not so clear.

Traditional Rusty was marginalized (like Cherry) because the strip was about Mark and his adventures. Rivera’s aim is to flesh out Mark’s family and add more depth and variety to the strip. We get a larger picture of Rusty. In the end,  while Conventional Rusty could have been drawn wearing a Davy Crockett coonskin cap without raising anybody’s eyebrow, Current Rusty plays the role of a stereotypical modern kid more at home in the virtual reality of gaming and the Internet.

What do you think? Are these accurate assessments?

Getting back to today’s strip, spotting a Catalina Island Shrew would be a very major deal. In addition to being extremely rare (and rarely observed), they are very small and mostly nocturnal. This mammal is destined to be a Sunday nature topic!

Yes, there are several animals that have developed more or less isolated from their mainland brethren. Perhaps we’ll learn more in an upcoming Sunday chat. I’m going to go out on the proverbial limb and guess that Rusty has not grown up with the same love of nature as good ol’ Dad. It’s like that other “wise maxim”: Like father, unlike son. Or something like that.