I haven’t been to a press conference in person, much less one run by a government agency. Do they really have guards (assuming it isn’t the President talking)? The speaker has certainly set a restrictive, question-killing mood, as such persons must always attempt.

Will Mark and Happy try to sneak in a question, such as “And speaking of trains, what about that chemical spill from the train car and the dead fish?” How is Mark going to show his photographic evidence on a smartphone?

The fish are not “all gone”, they are dead. There’s a difference. Dead fish aside, the guys seem to be making dramatic predictions with little hard information. Is this lake adjacent to the train station? Downwind? Panel 1 only says it is “nearby”. How can Happy make such dire predictions on such little evidence?

Mark and Happy are taking pictures of the forest damage in panel 1? Call me old-fashioned, but I was taught to aim my camera in the direction of the object or person I am photographing. Anyway, the Big Picture here is noteworthy (for a comic strip drama):  Two nature activists are angry about a train wreck that apparently resulted in a chemical spill, and they want to do something to make sure people know about it and those responsible be held to account.

Forget the real life story. Let’s stick to this fictionalized one. So far, we have an explosion and the testimony of one person, Rex Scorpius (who has exhibited questionable behavior and bad decision-making in the past), who only observed the incident after the fact, and from a distance. Then he skipped out. He did not present Mark and Happy with any physical evidence. Mark and Happy were, in fact, prevented from getting close to the accident early on. Was it for safety’s sake? Security? The fact that there were dead fish is certainly suspect, but it’s a stretch to imply more at this time. There’s not a whole lot to go on. That fish in panel 4 sure looks healthy enough!

There is going to be a press conference “this evening”, so how can Mark continue to claim that the authorities are not getting information out to the public? As far as Happy is concerned, he might be ahead of Rex with regard to his mental faculties. Happy’s outburst about seeking responsibility from City Hall makes little sense, since the local authorities are not responsible for the investigation. Not that they wouldn’t be part of the investigation, but this is a federal case. In short, it seems Rivera is moving the story along really fast, putting conclusions before all of the premises and evidence have even been discovered. We hope to learn more from the press conference and see how Mark and Happy conduct their investigation.

Didn’t Rivera cover this on Thursday? I mean, this would be acceptable as a “getting back to Mark’s story” filler if we had just spent the week on Cherry’s own adventure, but this is a Friday strip and there hasn’t been any break in continuity.

More of the same back-and-forth, but not moving the story at all. Cherry continues to be worried about train explosions when it’s chemical fumes that are the real danger. Of course, Mark has not bothered to mention that little detail.

Art Dept: The one interesting feature today is in panel 1, showing a conventional split screen of Mark and Cherry on the phone. The point of interest is Rivera having Cherry “look across” the split at Mark, as if they are in the same room. In fact, the “looking at each other” seems to have been an emerging gag during the week. The Tuesday panel has the communications split as they talk, but they are not both looking at each other. Mark appears to be “looking back” towards Cherry.

In the Wednesday strip, Mark and Cherry are in separate panels and not really looking across. When we get to Thursday, the split panel is back. Their faces are in a 3/4 pose with their eyes shifting towards each other. We can see the “progression” of visual interaction continue in these two strips; at least, for Cherry, who is practically looking agog at Mark. Okay, maybe I’m stretching the point a bit. Still, it’s a more sophisticated piece of humor than a lame pun plugged into the last panel.

That’s right, kiddos. The Wife and I are driving north Friday morning for a family get-together and general hoo-rah for the weekend. We’ll return later Monday. So, I hope to post my normal BS about Friday’s strip in the Saturday blog. Just so, it is possible that I won’t get to the Monday strip until Tuesday.

Anyway, I hope this won’t cause you too much consternation. We shall return! Some of you may recall that there used to be several blogs that focused exclusively or at least regularly on Mark Trail, but almost all folded, long before Jules Rivera came on board. Comics Curmudgeon and Joseph Nebus’s blogs still infrequently report on the current strip, so I’m afraid you are not left with a lot of options. In the meantime, you can view and/or post about Mark Trail on the Comic Kingdom website, though it obviously lacks the hard-hitting, insightful, and in-depth analysis provided by this site. Okay, I paid myself to say that.

You tell her, Mark! After all, one can’t expect federal organizations like the NTSB, the FBI, or even state transportation investigators to get to the bottom of the complex, if possibly corrupt and unsafe conditions of trains, shipping regulations, and the hazards of moving dangerous chemicals. No, no, no! Not like Mark Trail, freelance nature journalist.

Why, Mark cut his eye teeth reading Casey Jones stories. He’s watched Bullet Train, Wild Wild West, and Runaway Train several times. And he actually just rode on a train that stalled at the location where the mystery train derailed. Somebody tell those boneheaded government employees to go back to the office. They’re not needed. MARK TRAIL is on the job!

I have a feeling this sequence evolved from a TV show or movie, but I can’t place it. I could be wrong. Anyway, all of the excitement seems to be helping Happy Trail, as he is looking younger. But an adventure story can’t be a non-stop roller coaster of action, can it? I mean, there are even a few moments in Jason Bourne and Mission Impossible movies where the characters take a breath, right?

Oh no. Is Rivera once again indulging in self-parody by having Marky wear pajamas with the same pattern (and possibly material) as his wear-forever work shirt?

The pre-Rivera Cherry never bothered Mark in the middle of his adventures, mostly because that version of Mark Trail remained rooted in the 1950s, before cell phones. Why would Cherry think the explosion had anything to do with Mark, anyway? For all she knew, he was on some lake fishing with Happy. I reckon if Mark had been checking in with Cherry all along, Rivera forgot to tell us.

Art Dept: I notice that Rivera likes to use heavy outlining on animals she draws. Why is that? Is it so kids can easily cut their tiny figures out of the newspaper and paste them on the refrigerator? Is it because it is the best method Rivera knows for making the animals stand out for easier viewing? Is it because she is illustrating various species of animals who happen to naturally have heavy outlines for their bodies? Or is it to smooth over the rough edges of a figure that has been digitally copied from another source, then manually cropped to fit the strip?

By the way, there is nothing necessarily wrong with using “clip art” in comics, unless it becomes too intrusive or repetitive. Long-time readers may remember this clip-art habit in earlier Mark Trail artists, where it was images of Mark that were often copied! As I’ve mentioned before, cartoonists have been using clip-art and tracing objects for many decades. Such images are usually fairly easy to distinguish, as they exhibit an unusual level of detail, precision, or style that does not always match the rest of the strip.

As commenter Downpuppy pointed out, Rivera almost certainly based this adventure on the infamous Ohio train derailment and chemical spill earlier this year. That’s fine. But I’m not sure what the deal is about Rex’s oddly glib attitude. That might explain Mark’s perplexed look in panel 1, by the way: “You call discussing a train derailment and chemical spill, a bungled controlled burn that led to an explosion, and a likely environmental disaster just a chat?!”

Moving on, I suppose some people really do move in the middle of the night. But what’s the point:  Does it move the story along or initiate a related subplot? Or maybe it’s just to represent the fact that insignificant things happen in any context.

Somehow, Rivera will have to make Mark and Happy stand-ins for the investigative press as they try to get to the bottom of the environmental threat.

So this is what Rex was hinting at in yesterday’s strip:  Unnamed authorities tried to burn the spilled chemical, but it got away from them. Got it! I guess that means mystery solved! Nothing left for Mark to do but move on to the next story, right?

Trivial Observations:

Don’t Mark’s comments in Panels 1 and 2 seem out of order?

Did you know about the 1970 exploding whale of Florence, Oregon, before you googled it? I did not! Wikipedia has a good account.  Maybe Mark learned about this event from one of Happy’s stories about his grandfather, Forest Trail.

Art Notes:

Why do open mouths in Mark Trail often appear solid white? I’m guessing it is a stylistic feature, like Little Orphan Annie’s blank eyes.

So this train just happened to have derailed while at a train station, and it’s been there for days, leaking a dangerous chemical? And “the authorities” are responsible for the explosion? Well, this is quite a report from Rex!

But yesterday Rex spoke of the derailment as if it had just happened, implying it was part of the cause of the explosion. Furthermore, the explosion occurred at the same time Mark and Happy were at the station. You see where I’m going with this, right? How did Rex get all of this information from an event that just happened in the last few hours?

Are we to expect that nobody else knew about a train derailment at a popular train stop involving cars carrying dangerous chemicals? Mark seems to have swallowed this story like he was chowing down on free shrimp, since he didn’t even ask how Rex could know all of this! And just who are these unspecified authorities?

Where are all the major news sources? Where are the government inspectors? Why would people even be allowed to mill about a train station that has a derailed train carrying dangerous chemicals? For answers to these—and other—questions, check back tomorrow and hope Mark or Happy have the wits to cross-examine Rex’s information.

Okay, so Rex did bring some new information, after all: a train derailment. There must have been too much smoke for Mark and Happy to see something so obvious. Train derailments have been in the news, lately. The most common causes are student terrorist training exercises gone wild; too many cute bunnies sleeping on rails; and engineers trying to do wheelies.

Don’t buy that? Okay, faulty equipment (poor maintenance) and other human errors are, of course, the actual main reasons. But really, “it wasn’t just an explosion, it was a derailment!” That seems like misplaced drama. Wouldn’t a mysterious explosion be more unnatural, more suspicious, and a more exciting storyline than an explosion because of a train derailment? Ho hum.

If I’m right (and I sometimes am!), the plot hook here could actually be the potential danger of whatever is burning and its effects on the environment. And this would be the justification for Mark and Happy (and maybe Rex) to stick their nose in the railroad’s business.

Mark has a small circle of friends he calls on. Rex has apparently rebuilt his crushed ego from the last time we saw him at the Tess Tigress sham tiger petting zoo. Looks like his new job is boosting packages from people’s porches. He should be a real, big help.

Will we have to abandon all hope that this is going to be a more serious story than usual? It would have been a step in the right dramatic direction had Mark’s “friend” been an actual expert in a related field. Hell, even a retired train engineer would be an improvement.

So, why is Mark still carrying around that man-bag on his shoulder?

Does he think he is Felix the Cat who can create any object he needs at a moment’s notice with his magic bag?

Pre-Rivera Mark Trail adventures were known to stop abruptly and suddenly jump us back to the cabin in Lost Forest. Sometimes It felt like something got skipped over, or maybe we had suffered a case of amnesia and lost one or more days in our life. So we dug through the recycle bin to check the discarded newspapers for missed strips.

By the way, Panel 1 could have produced a nice little joke, had the motel been named “Motel 2”, based on the number of doors shown on the building. Like I said, small place and small joke.

More significantly, I don’t get this sharing photos thing. Presumably, Mark is sharing photos of the train explosion with a “nature expert” who “happens to live nearby.” While it stretches credulity that a friend of Mark just happens to be living near the scene of the train explosion, the real questions to me are:  What possible connection can there be between an exploding train and a nature expert? And what notes are getting compared? Mark was there, but his friend was not. What does that guy have to bring to the table? Yet, always-gullible Happy Trail (panel 4), seems to think this is a good idea.

Well, commenter Downpuppy’s prediction of a burner phone was not too far off the mark!  Good try! But sly Mark really threw his battery charger phone case (Apple seems to charge around $99 for theirs).  Not necessarily a cheap throwaway, its weight might fool the cop for a second or two, until he sees it’s just a shell with a battery pack. So Mark probably shouldn’t be brandishing his real phone (panel 3), as if he is doing a TV commercial for Apple. And yeah, Happy, the transit cop probably will like that “fancy” case, either for his own phone or to resell on eBay or Etsy.

I need your help figuring this out:  1) Mark has a smartphone ($$$) on which he is taking pictures of the train explosion. 2) He doesn’t want the cops to take it from him, even though I’m pretty sure they cannot.  3) The cop claims Mark and Happy cannot be “back here”, which seems to be the same place where everybody else was standing just before the train exploded. 4)Mark decides to distract the transit cop by tossing his phone towards him, anyway, so that he and Happy can make their getaway (or at least run somewhere else), rather than staying to offer an explanation or at least apologize and return to their own train.

So, HUH?! What’s Mark’s game plan? They clearly lost their chance to snoop around the burning train, which was none of their business, anyway. And now Mark is out a phone with all of his contacts and photos on it (which are hopefully automatically backed up) and is running from the police. Again. “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Dad!” If he keeps this up, Mark won’t have a state left on the East Coast where he can travel without a disguise.

So, this cop (or security guard?) wants to confiscate Mark’s camera because he was taking pictures of a train on fire at a train station. Maybe the train is carrying boxes of secret NSA recordings of phone calls by citizens ordering pizza and planning to take over the world.

Or it could be one of those situations where Mark’s video gets declared “evidence” of a possible crime, so the phone would be confiscated to obtain the imagery. Yet, the cop doesn’t sound like gathering evidence is high on his priorities list, given that any number of people at the station could also be taking pictures.

“But officer, I’m MARK TRAIL, nationally known nature journalist! I get paid to butt into other people’s business and take pictures. Surely, you’ve seen my adventure strip in the newspaper!? Maybe you read Teen Girl Sparkle? By the way, I’m not that guy wanted down in Florida for destroying private property, assault and battery, fleeing police, and polluting the river with diesel fuel. And you can even see I was—I mean—that other guy is drawn really differently! Uh, we’re not the droids you are looking for …?”

Rivera ruins the engineered suspense with her snarky textbox in panel 4. I’m feeling generous today, so you can discuss the police officer, if you wish.