Wait, those animals were not hurt at the clinic, Cherry. I’m sure you meant to say, “I found a clue to what hurt the animals that were brought to your clinic last week.” You see the difference, Cherry? I don’t think you want to paint your dad as an animal abuser, right? What’s that? The text won’t fit the space?! Get rid of the unnecessary text box!

Still, there must be something to that potion, as Cherry’s body in panel 3 seems to be getting more ripped than she looks in panel 2.  Of course, it just might be the light. Even though Doc doesn’t seem to know the safer method for detecting odors, let’s hope he still has the ability to analyze the chemicals.

I have what some people might call an unnatural love for milk. Maybe it’s dairy in general, because I also love cheese, ice cream, and chocolate malts; the latter being a combination of milk, ice cream, and heaps of malt powder well-blended into a concoction so enticingly satisfying that I believe it should be classified as a new food group. If you are going to get all huffy about that idea, we can always pump in a few nutrients, as long as they don’t affect the taste. And it’s not as if I’m downing malts and cones every week, either. But what does any of this have to do with Mark Trail, you ask? Not much, but it keeps me from asking impertinent questions about it, such as:

• Does Doc eat lunch if Cherry does not show up?
• Why does Cherry have such poor posture, as in panel 1?
• Why is Cherry wearing a “Crazy Cherry” mask in panel 4? I mean, that can’t be her actual face, of course.  See how that jaw line runs up the whole side of the face and past the ear, rather than stopping just under the ear? And the expression frankly looks homicidal. Not a cheery Cherry face!

At least, Cherry seems to be getting to Honest Ernest’s home brewed poison! Let’s hope Doc has the wherewithal and lab equipment to test this stuff. Perhaps Cherry laced Doc’s lunch with that stuff to see if he breaks out.

Will Cherry get just one week this time, or two? It would be nice to see some progress here. At least, Rivera’s pacing is a bit faster than Allen’s. On the other hand, nice to see some of the standard “Mark Trail” wildlife dropping by, this time without staring stupidly at us for a change.

But now that the pleasantries are over with, it’s time for some drama and action. As I recall, Cherry (or Doc) was going to analyze Honest Ernest’s “Lawn Libation” lawn treatment to see if it might be contributing to the animal rash going around.

As far back as the ancient Egyptians, libations have been part of religious and funeral rituals as well as celebrations. Libations composed of oils, water, milk, or even alcoholic liquids were poured onto objects or on to the ground. In spite of Ernest’s “aw shucks” redneck pose, he apparently had enough of an education to create this clever brand name for his otherwise odious concoction.

Thank goodness Cherry has enough common sense to see a possible link with the pet rash problem. Maybe we’ll learn something next week, if Rivera doesn’t drag us to Mark’s tiger spa assignment.

Honest Ernest is nothing if not motivated and self-confident, whereas Cherry misreads the room, until Violet throws her a lifeline to put her in her place. Cherry ignores the put-down and goes on the attack.

But Ernest— “The man in the yellow suit” —is clearly a better salesman…er… salesperson.

So why would the SSS hire Cherry as well as Honest Ernest for the presumably same job? Or did Cherry mix up her own assignment? Is there a reason for these continued conflicts? Well, a pointless question, perhaps, since this situation is used to move the story along.

Ernest is an interesting character. His very pose in yesterday’s strip is an archetype of his comical arrogance and almost affable, positive attitude.  Until pushed, that is. I hope we’ll learn more about his personality and motives. For one thing, Ernest was at least smart enough to diversity his business with another revenue source.  We’ll just have to see how the story develops.

Honestly! Ernest and his chemicals to the rescue. Or fescue? Whatever.

Oh well, back to Cherry’s small world of Big Problems. I’m glad to see that Cherry has a business and something to do other than wait for Mark to come home from his latest adventure. And there’s checking in on Rusty (if he hasn’t run off with the Seaside Specter) and ol’ Doc and his rash crisis. But doesn’t Cherry’s business have any other customers around which an adventure can be built?  What about her secret garden commandos? Surely, there is a story to be found there. Instead, we have the Big Hat and the Big Mouth once again.

Oh dear, another crisis has bloomed. Well, as long as Cherry gets paid, so what? Rip up the damned plants, then.

The “new” Mark Trail is definitely more family-oriented, compared to his predecessor. Ironically, this might not sit that well with long-term Trailheads who used to scoff at Mark for never spending more than a few days at home before running off to a new assignment. I plead guilty to serving up some of those rude comments, but I’m not against this new wrinkle in Mark’s psyche. It isn’t just the usual “I had a great 48 hours at home, Cherry, but now I’m off to another adventure!” I even like how Rivera represented the well-drawn panel 3 as a gray, monochromatic symbol of Mark’s unenthusiastic acceptance, only to quickly bring up a polychromatic façade of enthusiasm in panel 4 as he talks with Bill. After all, you gotta keep those assignments coming in to pay the vet bills!

Okay, so it’s not as if Mark is getting sent to the Middle East for an eighteen-month deployment. But it’s something most of us can identify with:  The requirement of having to go back to work after taking time off.  The fantasy of happy independence gets kicked back in line.

The Trails are not the only people just back from a vacation! I fear Thursday’s strip will go down as either another Ghost-Artist Fiasco or a Deadline Disaster. Either way, the art looks slapdash. On the positive side, Rivera has decided (wisely, I think) to put Mark back into one of his own adventures and—hopefully—let Cherry and Doc Davis take command of their own mystery. But as we’ve seen before, the walls separating one story from another don’t always hold. Instead, Mark and Cherry have routinely interacted in each other’s business.

Does Rivera think our memories are so bad that we need a summary of the prior day’s strip? As for expensive medicine, sez who?!? Has Doc already determined the proper treatment?

What is more interesting is that Mark is willing to walk away from a paying assignment. However, realist Cherry will have none of it!

Okay, if Honest Ernest is not behind this, it has to be “some ugly, impersonal chemical factory”, unless the Lost Forest community has reinstated using “the mosquito man” to drive his truck around town, pumping out clouds of DDT to kill mosquitos and bugs. Being the stupid, ignorant clods that we were as kids, we used to run behind that truck, trying to run catch up to the lethal haze, as if it was just some kind of cool, gray cloud.

So, what is that logo on the book?

Is this taking place in the 1960s? So the Trails are only now discovering that lawn chemicals can hurt animals?! Yet, Mark apparently has a fully-stocked library of scientific research materials in the cabin that prove lawn chemicals are the culprit. Without testing? Why doesn’t Doc Davis have access to this material? He could have just looked it up, rather than waste time with bothersome tests and microscopic analyses.

Where do we go from here? Will Mark and/or Doc call in the proper authorities to take over the investigation? Not yet of course. The Trails will investigate on their own, I think, to get more evidence. At that point, they would call in the authorities. Somehow, I don’t think it will play out that way.

Even if we ignore the coloring, it’s hard to see how that pile of stuff Mark was holding in Saturday’s strip turned into this white puppy today. Well, Rivera is consistent in her changeups. That is, she doesn’t mind altering things to suit the occasion or whim. The very style of the strip has changed since Rivera began back in October 2020. Even the Trail House has varied over time.

On the left is the cabin from October 2020.

On the right is the cabin from August 2021.

Then we have the cabin, today.

Also, notice how the “dramatic” cliffhanger at Doc’s office on Saturday has suddenly shifted back to the Trail cabin, where it is obviously later, since Cherry sits with Rusty and Sassy. Cherry is wearing the same clothes, so it’s possible this is later in the day. What happened in between Saturday’s strip and today? Rivera is pushing the story along. Is that a good thing? Perhaps Rivera is playing with varying the story pacing and we’ll get a shorter, faster-paced adventure this time. Sometimes you like a two-plus hour blockbuster movie and sometimes you are fine with a one-hour TV episode.

As usual, Mr. Important must claim center stage and insist upon jumping to the front of the line, to say nothing of jumping again into a storyline that is none of his business. Such is Mark’s insecurity.

Doc is still suck on paperwork. Cherry should be interviewing the pet owners, but I’ve already covered that. Apparently, that might result in a conclusion found too soon and ruin the drama. So, we continue with the mystery. Will Mark also get involved? I hope he beats a retreat and finds his own adventure.  

Maybe Rivera is not sure that Doc (and Cherry) can carry the story alone. The same thing happened with Rusty. His Big Cryptid Adventure went nowhere, except for some comic (strip) relief. I wish that Rivera had more faith in the characters. After all, she is modeling their personalities as she sees fit.

Speaking of modeling, I notice some shading on the back of Doc and the lower areas in panel 1. Rivera rarely employs shading (or modeling). Seeing her employ a shading technique reminiscent of old-school Ben-Day dots is noteworthy. Is she experimenting? Could be a positive enhancement.

Well, Doc Davis might get an idea if he talked with all of the pet owners to find a common thread. Hmmm, I wonder if this is leading us back to that “kill-’em-all” pest remover, “Honest Ernest”, and his truck of lethal poisons? Recall that he is the husband of Caroline, a board member on the Sunny Soleil Society. Those two were stopped from poisoning a statue-based beehive in the SSS garden. But that doesn’t mean Ernest is out of work. Maybe he expanded his business to lawn care. If Mark keeps running into his former antagonists, why can’t Cherry?

What kind of office, vet or physician, doesn’t have a secretary of some sort? If Doc’s practice is so small, why is the office so large?

Sometimes it seems as if there is a ghost artist filling in for Rivera. I’d compare Monday’s strip to these, for example. I could every well be wrong. It’s hard to believe that the image of the man in the lab coat in the 4^th panel of the July 6 strip is really Doc Davis. Sorry, just thinking out loud.

Okay, we seem to be off and running with Doc and Cherry’s adventure:  It would be great to see Cherry and Doc handle this on their own, while Mark gets sucked into another assignment, somewhere else. Like South America.