You remember what I wrote on Monday about the relationship of Nature to humans and vice-versa? Well, maybe we need to put that thought aside for a while. And for the record: No. I cannot explain the anatomy of that yellow tree in panel 1.
Art Dept. As we know, consistency is not part of the Mark Trail aesthetic. For example, various aspects of Mark’s head and face can change from day to day, panel to panel. Take Mark’s eyebrows. Please! I can’t figure out if Rivera is using Mark to channel Groucho Marx, Eugene Levy, or Ayushmann Khurrana. I’m leaning towards Groucho, who infamously painted on his moustache and thick eyebrows. Just check out panel 2, where Mark’s left eyebrow wraps around the head, but is completely flat. This is repeated in panel 4, where the eyebrows are also almost 50% taller.
Jules Rivera continues her campaign to move Cherry Trail away from the one-time self-reliant, “put up your dukes”, creative thinker that she once was. Instead, we see total panic take over today. Now, I admit that arachnophobia is a real condition. But, living in the forest as she has been doing for many years, Cherry should already know that the venomous brown recluse usually builds nests in darker, isolated locations, not out in exposed, open areas. She’s more likely to run across that spider in a closet of her cabin, in a work shed, or a woodpile.
There are several reasons this phobia has persisted through the centuries. One leading hypothesis is that it is based on longstanding reinforced cultural and social influences. Many people also seem to have a general dislike of spiders and get rid of them, perhaps because they think of them as insects, in spite of the fact that spiders are not insects, but help control insect populations, even in the home. But there are positives to keep in mind!
Less than 1% of the 43000 spider species around the world are venomous. Also, the spider is a popular subject in literature and storytelling. Anansi is a spider of great importance in African folklore and storytelling, often used to teach life lessons or just entertain. The spider as trickster and instructor is also found in various Native American cultures. We have the modern superhero, Spiderman, whose powers originated from the bite of a radioactive spider. Oh, I don’t want to forget to mention the 1930s pulp-era vigilante, The Spider, a more violent version of The Shadow. Certainly, his name was chosen to reinforce fear in the criminal underworld he worked against. He did not dress as a spider, however.
Wow, Cherry’s exclamation in panel 4 was really unexpected, right!? I mean, who would expect that after all of this nature talk, something ironic would occur?
One might be given to thinking that, after so many years being married and living in Lost Forest (even ignoring the pre-Rivera years), Mark and Cherry would have long run out of platitudes and affirmations about nature by now. However, one high note is that we can hope Mark admonishes Cherry for her destruction of a spider’s (temporary) domicile and meal factory. Mark can’t play favorites, can he?
Art Dept. I’m glad to see, at long last, a bit more variety in panel layouts. We get a bird’s eye view in panel 1 (complete with the required bird) and a worm’s eye view in panel 2 (minus the worm, because it must have been consumed by the cardinal).
But there is more to this than just adding different viewpoints!
The first two panels visually emphasize Mark and Cherry as figures within nature, as they rhapsodize over its many splendors. This reminds me of classic Chinese landscape painting, where nature predominates and people are just very small travelers and nature lovers.
The last two panels zoom in on Mark and Cherry to deliver the unneeded joke. The focus shifts to Cherry’s personal interaction with, and reaction to, the spider web. So, the position of Nature moves from the macro to the micro. And very importantly, it is in the service of reinforcing the dialog. Now, that is good design!
Nerdy Art History Note: Am I saying that Rivera was influenced by Chinese art or philosophy? I have no idea. It is a rather grandiose comparison, after all. It may be nothing more than the commonality of ideas that transcend time, place, and ethnicity. If you are not familiar with Chinese landscape painting, do an online search for “Travelers Among Mountains and Streams” by Fan Kuan, a painter of the Northern Song dynasty. Find some good images. You’ll likely need to view separate detailed images to find the travelers.
Nature walks are becoming the new “flapjack dinner” post-adventure Mark Trail ritual. There is some merit in that, insofar as it promotes a more healthy lifestyle than wolfing down flattened pieces of fried dough smothered in liquid sugar and butter. Not that a plate of hotcakes and bacon isn’t a wonderful breakfast from time to time. Yum Yum!
Mark and Cherry’s nature walks might even encourage readers to get off their duffs and enjoy the diversity of lifeforms, the smells of flowers and leaves, and simple pleasures of a walk in the woods or even a local park. So, do you feel adventurous yet?
I’m not going to predict the rest of the week, but … oh well, we can at least assume this week will consist of Mark and Cherry hanging out with each other until one or both of them gets called on by their bosses. Or their relatives. Or something happens. I just hope we don’t see another bear this week.
Art Dept. It’s already well into Fall down in Lost Forest, though I think Jules Rivera is a bit premature. Easy mistake to make, living in southern California. That landscape sure looks to be one of the scruffiest areas in Lost Forest! I can’t say I appreciate the 2D interpretation of vegetation we see here in panel 1, as if the trees were cut out of construction paper and pasted onto the panel. The landscape in panel 3 is almost surreal, or rather, a heavy-handed attempt to create a George Herriman-style landscape, as if Krazy Kat lived in the American southeast, rather than the southwest. I might be looking at this with a too historical eye.
Really, not enough cold water? Does the Trail family maintain refrigerated cisterns!? Oy vey, if this week isn’t going to progress beyond tiresome punchlines, all I can do is hope that Bill Ellis calls tomorrow so Mark can get back on the job as quickly as possible. Even then, this home interlude could stretch to two weeks, since Jules Rivera likes to start stories on Mondays.
Art Dept. Yesterday’s first panel was a well-planed composition. Today’s panel 1 is a compositional mess. The hummingbird should have been placed more to the right, with the cabin below and to the left, so they don’t overlap. In fact, Rivera should have made this a 3-panel format,like yesterday. She could still have easily consolidated panels 2 and 3 into one and killed two birds with one panel.
Alas, what’s with the drawing of that Ruby-throated hummingbird? Is it actually gliding!? Hummingbird wings are a blur, unless captured by high-speed photography, which makes for fake-looking drawing. Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this bird will be the next Sunday topic. Mark last talked about hummingbirds on April 21, 2024.
Here we begin a week of post-assignment family time. The family time segment has always been part of the strip (as far as I can determine), but Jules Rivera likes to expand on this period, injecting more than her predecessors did. In the old days after Mark came home from an assignment, the family would eat, then Mark and Cherry would sit in the living room or on the front porch and chat about how dangerous Mark’s assignments were. Then Mark would get a phone call and he’d be off on another trip. That process hasn’t changed all that much, except Rivera likes to flesh out this time with “everyday problems” and activities to add more dimensionality..
Anyway, there’s a nice duck landing by the Trail cabin. Not sure when this lake (or river?) showed up again. And is that a side door? We know that the front door is centered, with a porch. And we recently discovered that the back door has a stairway leading down an incline, suggesting the cabin is on some kind of promontory. Maybe this is a separate, adjunct building housing their shower and bathroom facilities. Rivera has a transactional approach to the strip, such that if the Trail cabin or its property needs to look a certain way, it will. I don’t know if it’s because Rivera doesn’t care or if she just needs the changes to fit the current storyline.
I leave Mark’s dialog in panel 2 (“I feel at ease after a good shower.”) for you to comment on, if you feel inspired or coerced by your own sense of values.
Art Dept. Panel 1 is a nicely designed and illustrated composition. However, I’m puzzled by the design of panel 2. Rivera employs her standard panel arc compositional device. However, we can see that both sides of the arc are not drawn along the same curve and will not connect. This is unusual for Rivera, who has drawn this device hundreds of times. I don’t recall another case with this kind of looseness. Then consider the figure of Mark. At first, I thought the head was too big. But I covered up the arms, so the body and head don’t look too out of proportion. I think it must be the arms are too small for the torso. Rivera can usually handle foreshortening much better than this, even though she can be inconsistent. We know that Rivera deliberately distorts figures, though her motivation is not always obvious. However, these two quirks do not line up with her eclectic (or crude, if you wish) style. Was she in a hurry? Had a bad day? Did she let one of her fellow artist friends ghost-draw the panel? I dunno, but it is visually jarring.
Well! Well! Well. We didn’t get introduced to the local postmaster, after all. So much for meeting more characters in Lost Forest. Harumph!
So far, we don’t really have anykind of story going on. Sure, there was the incident with the Grungy Boys and the riding lawnmower in the woods several weeks ago, but nothing has come of that so far. Instead, we see the kind of desultory activity and dialog that can be found in Mary Worth, Judge Parker, Sally Forth, or even Hi and Lois. So why do we need any more of that!? This is supposed to be a nature-based adventure strip, right? This doesn’t even look like Rivera’s normal version of Mark Trail. Maybe Rivera could look at spinning these sisters out into their own strip where she can indulge these whimsies in greater detail and length.
I’m disappointed. It’s not that I expect to see gunfights and fisticuffs at every turn, but where is any sense of adventure? I certainly hope something appears before the week is over that provides even a touch of excitement. I know I’ve talked in the past about how the Lost Forest stories tend to be more light-hearted and comedic, but a week of this is going to really test my resolve.
Four panels it takes for Mark to just say “Ok. You two handle it. I’m outta here!” And that is because Rivera again sacrifices plot for her distracting humor. At least Duke had the decency to actually inspect the water heater up close to confirm his initial long-range analysis!
Art Dept. I wonder if Rivera uses a “model sheet” for reference? That’s a page of images, poses, and expressions for each main character, referenced to ensure consistency. Panel 3, for example, gives the impression that Mark must be almost 7 feet tall, based on his arm. Or Cherry must have shrunk to 5 feet. Either way, it’s a bit disturbing. Even the figures seem awkward, as if standing around and posing.
Feel free to comment on my analysis or on the strip, itself.
Let me see if I understand this scenario: Duke the plumber (with his now-trimmed beard) arrives from the now-named De-Bait Team Fishing Club (formerly the De-Bait Team Fishing Lodge) and announces he brought along his plumbing supplies, as requested by Mark.
Why would Mark have to specifically request plumbing supplies? Did Duke bring his fishing equipment on a prior plumbing job?
But isn’t Duke just one of the in-house fishermen over at the Lodge, er, Club? Sure, but he’s not just a weekend plumber. He has his own business truck, as seen in the background, with the leaky shock absorber. Perhaps that is why Mark and Cherry are going to get stuck with a big bill.
Once again, I’m breaking tradition and will combine today’s strip with tomorrow’s into a single, hopefully more cohesive, post. Enjoy your day (or night) and see you tomorrow!
A recent display of Mark’s much vaunted Fists O’ Justice!
Notification Repeat: I’m on the road now and will be for the next 3 days, heading for a family visit. See details on Friday’s blog. There may be delays in posting, but I’ll eventually catch up. So if you don’t see the current strip you expect, check back later or the next day. Once I’m in Virginia, things should normalize.
The non-tech nature walk is finally over. But it’s disingenuous for Mark to suddenly get apoplectic over his missed technology, don’t you think? Rivera might be saying something along the same line in panel 4, but she gets no laugh from me, since she’s the one that made it all happen.
So, Trailheads and Neo-Trailheads, what shall we find on Monday: A new assignment for Mark or another misadventure with Cherry and Violet (as seems to be the running trend)? I think it would be nice for Cherry to have a new client once in a while, with new issues to resolve. As for Mark, would attaching him to a new magazine editor really make a difference? I was hoping that this multiple-magazine hook Rivera set up for Mark way-back-when would introduce different types of stories and goals. But I haven’t noticed much difference. And we haven’t seen much of these different magazines lately, either.
Notice: We’re leaving on a road trip this Saturday to visit my Dad and my siblings down in Virginia. There may be a bit of delay or stacking of strips for a bit, though I think I’ll be able to sneak in the Saturday strip on time. Maybe Sunday. Why the trip now, you wonder? My Dad turns 99 in March, so I figure I better get back down there real soon!
It’s not as if Rivera was caught up short in her storylines and had to plug a plot hole. Like most comic strip artists, Rivera has to work up her stories and art weeks in advance. Theoretically, anyway.
Rivera had long ago met her goal of illuminating more aspects of “At Home with the Trails” beyond the traditional, limited sessions of porch chats and pancake dinners we used to see. And that’s just fine. But this week sure takes the pancake … uh, cake. Most of the nature walks Rivera has portrayed last just one or two strips. But this time, Rivera apparently showed us an entire walk!
That long of a focus might make sense if Rivera was the type of artist who spent a lot of time creating and showing really impressive, detailed drawings of flora and fauna. But that is not her style. Furthermore, nothing particularly exciting or dramatic has happened on this walk.
This cloying “nature appreciation” week is starting to get really annoying. And there are two more days of the week to go! Yesterday would have made a proper ending for this woodland ramble, with that “walking into the distance” closing panel. Bill Ellis just cannot call soon enough.
Anyway, I don’t know what Mark is posturing about in panel 3, since we rarely see him doing anything even remotely resembling nature journalism.
The Trail’s bucolic stroll through Lost Forest continues, as they enjoy a cooling off week after the action and suspense of their recent adventures. But don’t despair, readers, as real excitement and danger can suddenly appear at any time! That Pileated Woodpecker in panel 4 might mistake Mark’s head for a tree stump and start pecking on it for grubs. Woo! Maybe some wood ticks will latch onto Cherry and start crawling down her sweater.
Art Dept. Again, consistency seems to be an issue. The image of Mark in panel 1, for example, looks top-heavy, and he is not moving. Perhaps that is why Cherry seems to be kicking him in the shin to get him moving. The wavering thickness of limbs and lines that define Mark’s jeans seems to have no rational explanation. And yes, it would be nice to see Rivera spend a bit more time depicting the flora and fauna, since they provide the thematic focus of this strip.
Finally, do you agree that omitting the text box in panel 4 to focus only on the silhouetted figures of Cherry and Mark walking off into the distance provides a much more effective follow-up to Mark’s comment in panel 3? In so doing, it would emphasize the silence that Cherry and Mark are appreciating. What do you think?
Ever wonder why Cherry and Mark always wear backpacks on their nature walks? I do! It’s not as if they are going on a 3-day mountain hike! Maybe they are just prudent? I suppose they might carry snacks, water, raincoat, compass, extra socks, perhaps a blanket, and some lotion … uh, suntan lotion, of course.
Anyway, it’s only Tuesday, people. This could be a lonnng walk!
Nature Dept. I’m curious about panel 3. Not the beetle, but the rock with a tree growing atop. I’ve seen this before on some hikes I’ve taken with my wife. Here is a photo of one such occurrence. The tree is a member of what are known as Lithophytes, flora that grow on and/or in the rock. They subsist on sunlight, rain, and minerals extracted from the rock. I don’t really know the botany, so maybe Mark will tell us about it this coming Sunday.
And here we have famed nature advocate and journalist, Mark Trail, demonstrating the proper procedure to follow when coming across a bear in the wild: Continue to walk towards it!
Moving on, I think Mark is trying to score points with Cherry (or maybe just score) with his empty pro-Bear boast (panel 2). In fact, when Mark ran across bears in the past, he ran the other way! On the other hand, when Cherry made her first appearance in the strip back in 1946, she had a pet bear to play with!
Moving on, it’s too bad Rivera has this chronic disposition to inflict bad, school-age puns on her readership, but perhaps she is focused on capturing middle school readers to make up for the senior citizen Trailheads who have moved on. Or worse, she thinks we really like them.
Artwork. It’s nice to see Rivera put more variety in the flora once again, even if they look like flat, painted cardboard props from public school plays (ah-ha! I see a connection with the puns!). This is a nature-oriented strip, after all, so the more nature, the merrier. Now, if the flora actually looked recognizable …!
Meanwhile, back home in the Davis/Trail cabin, Andy (panel 1) must either be standing on the dinner table or possess the ability to levitate. Well, who cares about reality or even the laws of physics, anyway? All we have today is Mark talking nonsense: • No, Mark. You did not chase wild horses. You illegally trespassed, helped instigate a prairie fire that destroyed private property, and escaped responsibility. • Disbelieve slides and slide projectors? Again, Mark boasts of his disdain for technology and history. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get to see his after-dinner slide show with the family: “Check this out, family! This picture shows the helicopter that was chasing us as it hit a transformer and set everything on fire! And this next picture shows the smoldering ruins of the company the next day. How neat is that!?!”
Having some down time, Mark wanted to experience some warm, fuzzy family time, but Cherry had a gardening job and Rusty was setting off with his friends to investigate something mysterious in the forest. Mark really wanted more time with Rusty, so he chased him down, getting him to reveal that he and friends are going to inspect a possible “E.T.” sighting. Mark bribed Rusty with the use of his digital camera and a pizza lunch so that he could tag along.
The last time Mark tried to bond with Rusty was when he took him and his friends out on a borrowed boat at night to hunt for the “Bassigator” cryptid but grounded the boat on an island of unusually docile alligators. While Mark fretted, the kids loved it.
For those not in the know, kudzu really is a big problem. There are places, mostly in the south, where it looks like the land is just one big growth of kudzu, shaped like whatever it is growing over. You’re gonna need a hell of a lot of goats to control this stuff.
I thought it was interesting to see that Rivera, who usually likes to have a pun in the final panel, blew this one: “Goats are really the greatest of all time!” Of course Rivera was spelling out the acronym, but that’s like explaining a joke. If you have to spell it out, it isn’t a joke. She should have written “Goats are really the GOAT!” Just my opinion.
Rusty might get into trouble!? Gosh, Mark! Did you forget to set up a chaperoned play date? What a Millennial you are! Just let the little bastards play. It’s not as if Rusty is still six. Frankly, after that Bassigator Boat disaster, I’m surprised any parents will let their kids come anywhere near your place.
Maybe you can be Cherry’s gardening assistant today, Mark! Then you and Cherry can both get that call from the hospital telling you Rusty broke his arm falling out of a tree in a climbing contest with those other hooligans. Or they might go off on one of those “Stand By Me” adventures. Come to think of it, maybe you should spend the day shadowing Rusty, Mark.
Well, since Mark just got back from his trip, I reckon this would be his first family breakfast since returning. But would it have made any difference if this was the second breakfast? Just wondering.
Anyway, it sounds like Cherry has another job, possibly with a client that is not the Sunny Soleil Society. That’s cool. Poor Mark has to finish his breakfast without the family. But fair’s fair! Mark hasn’t been around for their breakfasts, either. Still, there might be options for Mark.
Such as Doc Davis. He’s part of the family; so where is he? Those pancakes won’t stay warm very long.
The Daily Trail 