And the next day, Georgia gets a bill from the Sunny Soleil Society to pay for the hibiscus. So, is Rivera wrapping up this story, as well?

BTW: Commenter Daniel P made an interesting observation yesterday about the lack of any “evil doer” in Cherry’s story. That is so. Mostly, it’s been about recovering the bee population in Georgia’s bee hives that were lost to “colony collapse disorder.” It’s a pertinent observation.

Daniel’s comment made me think (and that hurts!). There is almost always an antagonist that the protagonist (Mark or Cherry) has to defeat. Cherry’s current adventure might be a departure from this standard hero-villain format and more of a story about everyday problem-solving and relationships. Instead of a human villain, the antagonist here is natural processes that have to be overcome or worked around.

Still, there may yet be a human villain on the other side of the bush!

It’s nice to see that Cherry’s mind can keep up with us astute readers! Okay, so it was not a terribly complicated idea. But that means, if I also thought of it, then there must be something about to go wrong. Maybe Cherry gets billed by Violet for the flowers.

Scroll down and you will soon see the post for Monday, being the conclusion of Mark’s train adventure.

(Tue) Solve what problem? It seems to me talking with Mark creates problems. Anyway, standing beside a nice carving of a male cardinal (it is a carving, right?), Cherry gets interrupted by Violet Cheshire, possibly signaling the start a new story. Like Mark, Cherry’s stable of opponents seems to be limited. This does not bode well, but we can hope for a new nemesis.

 Ignorance and Arrogance: Always a bad combination!

(Wed) One might have thought that Violet would already know whether the SSS president likes hibiscus flowers, as well as whether she is allergic to them, especially given Violet’s prominent position (whatever that is). Apparently, Violet purchased and installed these new flowers without conferring with Cherry or having her do the installation. Does Cherry even still work for the Sunny Soleil Society? Violet seems unfazed and unconcerned. Rivera has made Violet’s pettiness, insecurity, and shallowness transparent from the start. So why would Cherry be surprised?

Cherry ponders the fate of the hibiscus.

(Thur) Let’s just ask the obvious question: Why can’t whoever put them in take them out? Seems pretty logical, right? In any event, out they go! But where, Cherry wonders? I have an idea:  Plant them over at Georgia’s place to attract new bees. In fact, there is a special hibiscus bee, but it tends to be solitary, and it nests underground in hard soil by salt marshes. Fortunately, the hibiscus can attract other bees, too.

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Georgia does all of the work and Cherry, enthralled by the information Georgia has spoon-fed her, is already starting to act as if she is actively involved, herself. That is, until she got notified on her phone about the newest episode of “America’s Wildest Police Chases.”  Okay, this is not the cliffhanger I was hoping for, but it gets us out of this rambling interlude.

Yeah, you tell her, Cherry! Be the master organic gardener. What’s wrong with a few weevils, aphids, and Japanese beetles, anyway? Is that why you seem to have so much free time and so few customers for your lawn and landscaping business? But I wonder where Georgia is getting her “Dyno-Mite” chemical application from? Could it come from one of Cherry’s main nemeses? Maybe we’ll find out on Saturday. That will make for a dramatic cliffhanger.

Anyway, my wife and I were talking today (we actually do that once in a while) and she asked me “What kind of music would Mark Trail listen to?” I was stumped. Just what kind of music would Mark listen to? Would Cherry like the same or different music? I think the pre-Rivera Mark and Cherry, being the old-school rural citizens they were, would like bluegrass. Maybe even some “Great American Songbook” music or “classic country.” You know, nostalgic comfort songs. But for our newer, millennial Mark and Cherry, I don’t think Bill Monroe or Vic Damone would cut it. Perhaps musicians such as Hootie & the Blowfish, Foo Fighters, Tupac, Metallica, Prince, or Beyoncé? I dunno. What do you think? think? (I think I forgot to do a second proofread!)

Note: I saw that a reader over on Comics Kingdom commented on the apparent “smiley face” seen in the thought bubble in panel 2 of yesterday’s strip. In fact, it looks like a ghost or cloud face, which is either winking or has a black eye. Anyway, go ahead and look if you don’t recall. I’ll wait. I saw that face yesterday, as well, but didn’t think it worth saying anything about it at the time. But today, there is another possible smiley face in panel 2, kind of a clown face with a short screw-lid hat. Or so it seems. We humans are pattern finders by nature, so it is possible these “faces” are coincidental arrangements by Rivera. What do you think?

Anyway, getting back to the story:  Is this even a story? Is it going anywhere? “For my next demonstration, Cherry, pull my finger!” This is looking more like a female version of “Mr. Wizard.” I mean, just where can you go with this plot? There’s no villain to foil, except nature.

I suggested some time ago that Rivera should have Cherry host the Sunday nature chat one in a while, maybe even with guests such as Georgia. I think she could have given a much more informative presentation on Varroa Mites than Mark.  Better that than trying to add some meat to this very lean bone of a story.

Wow, completely new information?! Who knew Varroa mites hit these beehives? Who knows anything about these creatures?  Well, just about anybody who has been reading the strip since at least June would. Cherry Trail must be having a memory loss, since Georgia informed her about the mites in mid-June. And Mark gave us an exposition on Varroa mites last Sunday. I reckon Cherry does not read the Sunday comics pages, either.

So, is Rivera just padding out the story with rehashed information and sketchy art in order to meet her deadlines? Is she still trying to figure out where to take this story? It is a shame to reduce Cherry’s involvement here to that of some clueless child.

If Cherry takes the trouble to write Georgia’s explanation down, she can go home and tell Rusty and Dad all about the mites, which I am sure would make interesting reading in a comic strip.

Well, I guess today’s panels function as a “For those of you who came in late…” recap, as this information was originally shared between Georgia and Cherry over breakfast in Planet Pancake back in June. Of course, that story seemed to have arbitrarily stopped, once the cause of the bee failure was diagnosed. Now, it resumes.

At least nobody here is being chased by law enforcement after punching out some cops.

Oh, Cherry. The very last thing you need to worry about is Mark in a chemical spill zone. Even while you are talking like a young gal answering a question in a beauty pageant (panel 4), Mark is even now evading the law with his father in a car driven by his friend, Rex Scorpius. They could be in Kentucky by now. In any event, I don’t think you’ll be eating any freshly caught steelhead trout or walleye for a while.

Hubba! Hubba! Cherry in a bathrobe! Well, I didn’t picture that! No, not Cherry in a bathrobe, but Cherry spending time scrolling social media for disaster articles. Well, to each her own.

Here we have one of Rivera’s oft-used plot devices: Interweaving Mark and Cherry into each other’s storylines. It’s not always simultaneous:  Sometimes Mark gets involved in Cherry’s work and sometimes it’s Cherry helping out Mark. This time the focus is the exploding train, not the depleted beehives.  

There isn’t much Cherry can do about the train situation at this point, so she might as well keep working on how the beehives were abandoned. Until then, we may be faced with several days of Mark updating Cherry on what’s going on up there (mainly, everything we’ve already read the past few weeks).

Say, is this place a diner or a coffee shop? Georgia and Cherry are just hanging around doing a lot of talking, but not ordering anything.

In any event, it looks like this story line maintains its more serious, sober approach (compared with Mark’s more outrageous adventures). Cherry certainly takes the bees’ bad news badly, but not finally.

Georgia’s fatalistic frustration sets up Cherry’s sudden, energized decision in panel 4 to flex her mental and physical muscles and start doing … what? Clearly, Cherry has more “get-up-and-go” than “I-know-where-to-go”, since she is not a bee expert. Perhaps she has another family member who is. Still, we cannot deny her commitment. And let’s hope that commitment is resilient, because Rivera will likely resume Mark’s fishing trip adventure on Monday and not return to Cherry’s story for another two or three weeks.

Other than an unusual perspective in panel 4 that makes a table for four look like it might fit the Partridge Family, Rivera has decided to play it straight this week and avoid outlandish dialog and actions.

Commenter “Be ware of eve hill” picked up on Georgia’s apparent lackadaisical care & treatment for the bees. Another reason they should have called on the services of a professional beekeeper.

But it looks like we might not get The Adventures of Cherry Brockovich (as commenter Daniel dubbed Cherry) after all, unless something unusual turns up in the Saturday strip. As we keep seeing images of Honest Ernest’s rash-provoking lawn-treatment bottle, I’ve a feeling we’ll be seeing him again.

Actually, I think Ernest is a pretty good character. He has a kind of goofy malevolence layered over a simple-minded self-assurance. His braggadocio also helps make him a classic old-school villain. It fits into the way this strip is slanted along a lighter, outrageous “alternate  universe” version of Mark Trail. For example, Honest Ernest is like the whacky version of The Joker (Cesare Romero) on the 1960s Batman TV show, as opposed to the more serious and sadistic versions of The Joker seen in more recent movies (e.g. Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix). Honest Ernest doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong and continues to get frustrated by Cherry’s actions, while he’s simply trying to make a living.

A mystery, then?  How and/or why did the bees disappear? Several known reasons exist for colony collapses, but I’m wondering, if not hoping, that Georgia’s response will provide something new. After all, there is not much of a mystery if Georgia simply pulls out a list of the usual causes and points to “Reason 3”. But I sure hope that Honest Ernest is not connected with this mystery.

Cherry has another mystery to solve. Her last one involved the case of neighborhood pets getting an unknown rash, eventually shown to be caused by Honest Ernest’s new grass growth fertilizer (see “Rash Decisions”). This new mystery suggests a possible career reboot for Cherry:  Cherry Trail: Private Nature Detective & Landscaper.  It pays to diversify!

It seems that TV-style humor has become the coin of the realm in Mark Trail.  Over time, Rivera has taken what was once an occasional opportunity for a chuckle or smile and moved the strip further into this turgid low-end. Rivera’s reboot of MT started as a semi-dramatic strip with strong satirical overtones and interesting embellishments (e.g. Mark’s communicating with animals). The strip quickly shed most of its seriousness and focused on satire with outlandish plots and characters (starting with “LA Confidential”).

The satirical element (which requires more thought and ingenuity) has been all but surpassed by Rivera’s fascination for simplistic gags. They don’t help. If writing satire takes too much effort, I’d love to see Rivera come back to more serious drama and let the occasional bit of satire or humor bubble up where it makes sense. What do you think?

By the way, I discovered that “Colony Collapse Disorder” is a real thing.  The EPA has an interesting information page dedicated to it: (https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder#:~:text=Colony%20Collapse%20Disorder%20is%20the,immature%20bees%20and%20the%20queen.)

The Planet Pancake diner reminds me a bit of Dr. Who’s Tardis:  Small on the outside and larger-than-expected on the inside. Well, today may not be the best proof, and maybe it’s no big deal. It seems clear to me that this diner must have its own laws of physics. You can check out the “Can’t Spell WHOA without HOA” story for more interesting interior views. Anyway…

For those coming in late, the reference to bees goes back to Cherry’s “Sunny and the Bees” story, when a “forest pioneer” statue in the garden of the Sunny Soleil Society wound up with a beehive around its head, leading to a big fight over the bees’ future. A nighttime commando raid was led by Cherry and the Underground Black Rose Garden Club to liberate the beehive and its bees for safekeeping before Honest Ernest could gas them with his customized bee insecticide.

I just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page going forward.

If old readers are dying off, try to attract younger readers, such as primary school-age kids, with puns.

Meeting up with friends at Planet Pancake—where everybody knows your order—is the kind of repetitious activity that seems reasonable, unlike Mark going on different assignments to different places in the country, but still dealing with the same oddballs.

We haven’t seen Georgia and her “Underground Black Rose Garden Club” members for about a year and a half, so it will be interesting to see what comes out of this reunion. I just hope it does not involve anybody connected with the Sunny Soleil Society, or Honest Ernest. They are Cherry’s version of Mark’s constant nemeses, the Crypto Bros and “Professor” Bee Sharp.