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The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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This week focused on the aftermath of the revelation of a free A-I App undercutting the fundraising purpose the Crypto Bro’s A-I Awards Night Dinner. Investors spent the time throwing objects, yelling, and running around in circles (or perhaps figure-8s). Why? I’m not sure, since the A-I is presented at a very abstract level, like some monolithic entity. It’s the digital boogey-man.

Mark and Kelly Welly watched the chaos unfolding from their table. Mark, inwardly smiling at the event’s collapse, suggested they quickly leave the room. But Kelly took the opportunity to stand up for her sex and trip on the floor, thus exposing her to the footfalls of the panicky investors still running mindlessly around the room. Kelly was surprised to see Mark stop and rescue her from catastrophe and was nonplussed enough to actually question Mark on this point. As he gave his usual “It’s what I do” answer, Kelly laughed at him for his naiveté and ran off, leaving Mark behind. Mark bravely waves it off. Now, why would Jules Rivera play up Kelly as a woman trying to become tough and independent, only to turn her into some kind of 1950s vulnerable and helpless movie gal who trips at the slightest sign of trouble, requiring a strong male hero to rescue her from certain doom? And after she is rescued, she becomes snippy and self-centered, then runs off. Am I misinterpreting anything here?

For today, Jules Rivera gives us a wildlife present for Father’s Day. Even more than usual, Mark needs to impart his own snarky comments, distracting as they are. Personally, I’d prefer he spent more time with his family instead of mugging in almost every panel. In fact, it would be just fine to limit Mark’s personal appearances to one panel at the start and one at the end.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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What a week this was for Lost Forest race fans! The Grungey Boys Nighttime Lawn Mower Race was once again in progress. Hidden behind some bushes, Rusty, Olive, and family muscle, Dirk, were on hand to view the action. But they did not come as fans. This was the night Rusty would put an end to the destructive actions of the Grungey Boys in Lost Forest! You might say it was a race against slime. Or you might not. Just make up your mind.

Why it’s called a race is unclear, since there was always just one riding lawn mower, always ridden by Honest Ernest. And just how fast does a riding lawn mower go, anyway:  8 mph!? Woo! Do you get the impression that artist Jules Rivera may not be taking this adventure strip—or its readers—seriously?

Still, the race had to be stopped! Being a family strip, rest assured that nobody got hurt, unlike in the old Mark Trail days before Rivera took over. Back then, people really did get hurt and some died. They had a different notion of “family viewing.”

Anyway, Rusty came with a large barrel of water. When the time was right, the three tipped the barrel, pouring the water down the slope. Even though much of the water had to have gotten soaked up by the ground on the way down, apparently enough made it onto the forest floor where Ernest was racing. At first, the water just splashed as Ernest zipped along at 8 mph. But thanks to the scientific process of combining water, silt, and clay particles, the forest floor become saturated and squishy, creating mud. And that’s all it took to stop the races. Really! Honest Ernest and his friends were stymied by the mud and couldn’t figure out what to do. Not real sharp tools, those guys. We ended the week and this “Nickelodeon“-level adventure with Rusty celebrating the scientific success of his cause-and-effect plan. Keep in mind that, in the past, most of Rusty’s plans did not work out, so it’s noteworthy that this one did. But it was a low bar.

Up here in the big city, feral hogs chase away the rabbits and raccoons that keep eating up our garden…so they can eat it up, instead. Okay. Not really. But unless that is feral hog scat spelling Mark Trail in panel 1, it is not one of Rivera’s more creative custom titles. Had to be a tough challenge, though.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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In case you missed some or most of the past week, I’m here to catch you up. Such is my mandate for Sundays.

Mark managed to get an invite from Kelly Welly to Cricket Bro’s phony AI awards event to drum up donor participation, even though we missed the details of how Mark managed the invite, given Kelly’s rival nature. It would have been fun to see, and I can only imagine what transpired. Wait: This is a family strip, right? Then I have no idea. For some reason, Jules Rivera kept those details sub rosa. That should have been worth an entire week of strips!

Throughout the week, Mark was cynical and snarky. Kelly fumed and tried to shush Mark.

As Cricket Bro gave Sid Stump his “surprise” award for Best in Show, a donor guest stood up and blurted out somebody texted that another company was giving away a free AI platform. Bro and Stump froze like proverbial deer in headlights, because this unexpected announcement undercut their scam for donor contributions. They couldn’t stop everybody from leaving with their money intact and no doubt downloading the free AI on the way home. Mark laughed and Kelly Welly—in one of her better performances—started tearing out her hair in shock and frustration. That was on Saturday, and worth your time to view.

Mark gave out with one of his glib snarks, which should mark the end of this adventure. One thing is for sure: We learned next to nothing about AI and the environment.

First of all, the “Crickets are land shrimp” statement is an in-joke. This phrase originated in Jules Rivera’s lead-up to her second Mark Trail adventure (“LA Confidential”), when Mark told Rusty that Crickets were Land Shrimp (March 2021). In the story, Mark’s comment was put in a “BikBok” post by Rusty, which gave Mark 15 minutes of notoriety and an assignment in Palm Springs. Since then, “crickets are land shrimp” has become something of an in-strip meme.

Second point: I’m not a biologist. I did not do well in my college bio class, either, especially when I had to dissect a frog and discovered it was the brother of my pet frog, Oscar. Taxonomy is more complex than before, and still debated. The old Linnaean taxonomy tree has been recut and remade so many times, it makes Japanese bonsai trees look drab. Don’t take my word for this. Look it up!

Shrimp and crickets are certainly both crustaceans, and from what I’ve read, are considered more related to each other than earlier thought, but not siblings. That is, they have common ancestry, but exist in different taxonomic groups. Still, for poetic license, why not?

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Have we learned anything substantive about AI and the environment in this story? Not much, but like many of Mark’s adventures, environmental education takes second place to the story.

After Mark’s participation in a stacked panel discussion on the merits of AI and the environment, Mark placed a short catchup call with Cherry. Outside of a local Manhattan coffee shop, Mark introduced himself to a woman named Vera, who offered him her unwanted Cricket Protein bar (Don’t get ahead of me!). In any other story, this could have been the opening shot of a seduction attempt. But not in this strip! Turns out Vera is the “handler” for Simon Stump, as in keeping him in line.

It didn’t take much to get Vera to start dissing the “tech gurus” for their shallowness and greed. She didn’t mind dishing the dirt on Simon. Vera might be clearheaded and organized, but probably not the person to hire for a position dealing with confidential information.

As Mark and Vera sat around chatting, she told Mark about an upcoming awards ceremony, which was really a vanity showcase and fundraising event. Thinking that there might be a story to be found there, Mark asked how to get in. Vera suggested hitting up Kelly Welly. This left Mark conflicted, given their rivalry and her position on Cricket Bro’s staff. Of course, this will not likely stop Mark from asking. And that’s the week!

An interesting topic, with a not-so-interesting finale. Is Mark is hinting at some kind of shark pup song in the last panel? In fact, there is a well-known (to parents and toddlers), if repetitive ditty unsurprisingly called “Baby Shark”. I’ll leave it to you to look up.

Oh, here are some other interesting facts about mommy sharks and baby sharks: Some mommy sharks have gestation periods over a year, such as Dogfish sharks (2 yrs) and Frilled sharks (3 yrs). Blue sharks and Whale sharks can give birth to more than 100 live pups at a time. Many sharks only birth a few at a time.  Sand Tiger sharks hatch the eggs of their pups while still inside their uterus. For nourishment, the hatchling pups feast on any unfertilized eggs as well as not-yet-hatched fertilized eggs! So, sleeping in late can have fatal consequences!

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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You say you didn’t get to the strips this past week but want to catch up by spending your Sunday reading about them? Well, sit back, because I’m your huckleberry!

In the fast-paced world of Mark Trail, we have occasion to find solace in the bucolic, casual pace of life in Lost Forest. As has been the habit in Mark Trail stories for decades, as Mark’s adventure (in New York City, the own that never sleeps) came to an end, we immediately jumped back to Lost Forest (the town that never wakes up). The loose storyline of Rusty and Cherry’s sister, Olive Pitt, getting involved in stopping the hijinks of the Grungey Boys latest outrage continued. They have been holding riding lawnmower races in the woods. Rusty is upset at the possible damage to the forest and wildlife.

Because Cherry was heavily involved in overseeing the installation of a new water heater (as if this should take days!), she had no time to fix a proper dinner. So she whipped up some “pizza bites.” At the dinner table, Rusty was preoccupied with how to stop the Grungey Boys, but Mother Cherry tried to redirect his attention to “kids activities.” Typical mom.

Later that night a rainfall turned the ground muddy and gave Rusty an idea. Rusty brought up the idea of mud with Aunt Olive the following morning. So, what is this muddy plan to stop the Grungey Boys’ races? Alas, we may have to wait a fortnight to find out, in case we jump right back to Mark for a few weeks. Well, don’t look at me: This is Mark’s strip!

As usual, Rivera created a customized title panel that works pretty well this week. On the other hand, the content is nice, but simple. I don’t know why the duck in panel 4 has a heavy outline. Is it to reinforce the spatial separation from the mother duck and chicks in the background? Well, it makes the male duck look flat.

I’m not sure if it is worth noting, but the colorful plumage of wood ducks is limited to the males, as it is for many other bird species. That’s for mating purposes, of course. It’s curious that we humans turned that around and made women the traditional “attracting” gender. Although the wood duck population has increased over recent years, it is the second most hunted duck species, after mallards.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Fingers are crossed that yesterday was the performative end of the Mark Trail and the AI conference story. I named it “AI, AI, Oh!” (a terrible pun, itself!), which you can see at the bottom of each post. Heck, maybe I should start naming these stories using the format “Mark Trail and the ###” the way old adventure stories were often titled. That would give it a bit of the old tradition, which Trailheads like, right? Yeah, it won’t change the strip, itself. But have you seen the Vintage Mark Trail strips on Comics Kingdom, featuring Ed Dodd’s work in the 1970s? Hoo-boy.  At least we can all agree that the characters look like normal people and the scenery doesn’t look like it came from a high school play.

This past week saw the highlight (such as it was) and conclusion of this “Going Green with AI” panel talk, where very little substance was actually imparted to a pro-AI audience. As with the prior week, the content focused primarily on Cricket Bro and Crypto Bro throwing out snarky comments at Mark. To his credit, Mark did try to counter with a few focused comments on AI and the environment, but artist Jules Rivera seemed more interested in a Jerry Springer-style show.

In the end, there just wasn’t much substance, which was a lost opportunity for education. I guess Mark’s nature teaching is still relegated to Sundays. Like right now.

Okay. Bobcats are all over the Lower 48. They eat small animals. Everybody should build a barn for their pets, along with a fence. Got it. Another good thing to know: They don’t normally attack humans, unless they feel threatened (which seems to be the standard criterion of most wild animals).

Nevertheless, trying to pick up a cute, young bobcat (and they are cute) is liable to result in serious harm to the human foolish enough to try it. One reason is that a mother bobcat can cause serious damage. And they can carry rabies. We’ve already seen enough examples of reckless human behavior occurring in national parks with tourists who think Yogi Bear is real or that the bison are just big, laid back fur coats with legs. They are called wild animals for a reason, as all Trailhead readers know.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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The Main Event began this week, with Kelly Welly “moderating” the panel consisting of just three people: Cricket Bro, his brother Jadsen (aka Crypto Bro), and Mark. Kelly announced that the topic of discussion is “Going Green With AI”, which is about all of the moderating Kelly did for the week, other than to slam Mark a bit in her introduction. I suppose she’s entitled.

Cricket Bro spoke first, denying any value to going green and thus, undercutting the “green” vendors that Mark interviewed , as well as the point of the convention. Naturally, Mark jumped in for the defense, and the rest of the week was just a back-and-forth contest between two hard positions.

While Cricket Bro and Crypto Bro kept dumping on Mark, Mark kept trying to calm the situation and talk rationally. A few catcalls from the audience suggested that they might be a bit biased against Mark. Mark kept his composure and decided to try a gambit and take one of the insults and affirm it. This silenced the audience, which is where we ended the week. How will Mark turn this attack on its head? Post your suggestions, if you’re brave enough to withstand ridicule if you’re wrong. Otherwise, cower in silence until we return to this chat.

Alert! In case you have not been on the Comics Kingdom site for a while, they have begun restoring the Vintage Mark Trail strips. This should especially please Mark the Contrarian Commenter. I haven’t had time to see how far back they go, but they are currently running strips from 1974. If you do a regular “Mark Trail” search, you will find links to both strips. Have fun!

I reckon I’ve fallen behind in my Star Wars Universe viewing, but I don’t recall a Hellbender in it. Do you? I did find references to salamanders, in general. Perhaps that explains the faux “Star Wars” style Mark Trail title panel and Mark’s Jedi clothing. I happily await further edification from any of you! Well, May the 4th be with you!

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Scenes shifted quickly this past week. It started out as an unimportant, but standard mid-story phone conversation between Mark and Cherry; then jumped to Mark attending Vendor’s Day at the AI Conference center; and finally shifted to an open door where Mark spied one of his former nemeses on an angry, panicked phone call.

Mark’s preconceptions about the harmfulness of AI were challenged at the Vendor’s Day exhibit by several young vendors talking up their pro-environmental projects, all supported by AI technology. Their testimonials got Mark to start having second thoughts that AI may not be all bad if it can support good ideas. Is it right for something considered harmful to be used for something not harmful? And is the tradeoff worth the price?

Weighty issues for this strip, given that most of the stories Mark handles are wrapped in layers of parody, absurdity, and cheap puns. The point here is that whenever something serious comes up, instead of exploring it in a serious manner, Jules Rivera shifts the focus and heads back into comic land. And so it is that Mark eventually spied one of his former nemeses, Sid Stump, on the phone trying very hard to dump some AI technology as quickly as possible. Perhaps it was seeing Stump, but Mark’s position on AI returned to his negative position very fast. He seemed to conclude that AI developers were in it only for the money, not for any long-term benefit to humanity. Will Rivera take the story back to crazy land? Let’s see how things continue this coming week as the conference begins and Mark presents his own take on AI. But first …

Oh, wow. New York has wild animals, excluding the human kind. So, sure. New York City used to look like a lot of the rest of the East Coast before it got developed. Got it! And New York State still has lots of rural areas left. And there are still all kinds of unusual animals in New York City these days. Okay, so maybe readers (if there are any) will get educated on the fact that New York is not just skyscrapers and street gangs, but has woods, forests, rivers, streams, and animals like other states.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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If you missed last week, your faithful MT blogger suffered in your place, but he’s happy to catch you up. Are you ready?

Our dogged duo (Olive and Rusty) wanted to gather more evidence against the Grungey Boys for their alleged damage to Lost Forest land by their covert lawnmower races. You might recall that our two good deed doers ran across the “Boys” while on a nature walk. The two were discovered by Honest Ernest (the ringleader), who tried to snatch a phone Olive was using to capture their surreptitious activity. Ernest tried to get rough with Olive and demanded the camera, only to wind up on the ground after a sharp right to the face. Zoom to this week.

Operating under a warning from Mark to not escalate the situation (that is, to not act like him), Olive and Rusty came up with another plan to get more evidence. They purchased a “trail cam” and installed it where the Grungey Boys play. When Olive and Rusty showed the video evidence they captured to Ranger Shaw, he responded that (for some reason) he had no enforcement powers in the unincorporated portions of Lost Forest. Personally, I found this surprising, as unincorporated land is usually protected by the county sheriff. Ranger Shaw could have brought him in, but did not. But why didn’t Shaw have jurisdiction if Lost Forest is some kind of preserve? Oh, the complexities of government jurisdictions!

Custom title panels are a hallmark of Rivera’s Sunday Mark Trail strips. The conception of today’s title is very good, though the execution is a bit slack. Anyway, it’s nice to see that Rivera can draw or copy realistic trees when called upon (panel 4). Would be nice if she could draw them in the regular panels, too.

Planting trees in downtowns is a good idea, if thoughtfully done. My city tried it a few time and failed. At one time they even created portable “parks” complete with shrubbery and seating that could be moved around downtown to give workers and customers a respite from the concrete.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Hall shall I refer to this past week: The attempted humiliation of Mark Trail? Kelly gets her oats? Message a trois? As we discovered the week before, long-time rival Kelly Welly got herself hired as Cricket Bro’s environmental advisor and Mark’s presentation preparer. Mark was led into a large, scarcely-furnished room, a bit reminiscent of the office of “Number Two” in the English TV series, The Prisoner. Only Mark was the one sitting in the imposing single chair, while Kelly and Cricket Bro hovered above him, on foot.

Kelly enjoyed putting Mark under her thumb as she defiantly touted her new-found independence and position of authority. She was no longer the second banana to Mark. Nothing wrong with that, of course, though throwing in with Cricket Bro may more likely tarnish than burnish her reputation.

Kelly’s position mutated from long-time journalistic rival to new vengeful nemesis. For his part, Cricket Bro had a good time this week showing off his new weight-lifter’s physique that he used to primp, preen, and otherwise disparage Mark’s alleged physical inferiority. Yet, Mark was not impressed.

Finally, Kelly enjoyed informing Mark that the conference was filled with pro-AI people who would not care what Mark had to say, that he would be humiliated. To his credit, Mark sluffed it all off.

A concrete-molded title panel graces this weighty discussion. Okay, enough with the puns. The topic has serious points to make. As panel 2 suggests, concrete explains a lot of why urban centers are almost always hot spots. While cities demand that science develops less harmful concrete, they could look more closely at the Romans. The ancient Romans developed a recipe for their building material that is often more durable, self-healing, and less harmful to the environment (not something they would have been aware of or cared much about).

For one thing, Roman concrete does not require the high temperatures needed to produce modern Portland cement, which helps create environmental problems. Roman concrete structures (e.g. the Pantheon, the Colosseum, various bridges, etc.), have lasted millennia, whereas modern concrete can start deteriorating within 50 years! Can this Roman construction material be used in large-scale projects? Sure! The famous Colosseum (half of which was lost from earthquakes and later plundering of its materials) held up to 50,000 people. The Imperial public baths of Rome were huge expanses of concrete, marble, and sculptures. The largest bath enclosed a space of over 10 acres.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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After blithely and indifferently assisting with the capture of a raccoon in LaGuardia Airport, Mark took the air and toured parts of Manhattan before going on to his pre-convention meeting. Mark has a penchant for verbal self-reflection and saw fit to voice his impressions along the way, apparently talking to himself. And for some unknown reason, Rivera decided to alter Mark’s personality and portray him as a clichéd Gomer Pyle visits the big city. “Shazam!” Not sure what the purpose of that change was. Mark may be a lot of things, but he was never a country bumpkin. Snuffy Smith has that role locked up.

When Mark arrived at the location for his meeting, he ran into long-time (but rarely seen during Rivera’s tenure) rival, Kelly Welly. The last time they had any significant dialog was in Rivera’s first Mark Trail adventure. Welly’s resentment for Mark has grown over time, and she somehow found out about Cricket Bro and his convention, so she attached herself to his company. She is now Mark’s official contact for the AI convention. He’s just thrilled.

If you are thinking this whole affair is some kind of elaborate “James Bond” setup for Mark, I agree. Revenge is the most likely cause because of Mark’s interference in the manatee abduction attempt. But we’ll have to wait another week to learn more, as Rivera has signaled she is turning the space over to Cherry (or maybe, Doc Davis). Well, perhaps Cherry is getting tired of her never-ending problems with Violet and will strike out in a different direction this time.

Mark wants to honor rats!? Egad, has Mark been eating the cheese again? Well, Rivera already covered pigeons, so I suppose these rats (known by various nicknames) are the next popular animal life form people think about when it comes to New York City.

Talk about wanting to get rid of illegal immigrants, this would be a better place for all of us to focus. The idea of rats running around cities, homes, and apartments does not make for fond memories. They are crawling laboratories of pathogens. They have also long been thought to be the spreaders of bubonic plague during the Black Death in the Middle Ages. But more recent research says no, it is rat fleas. Those are parasites hitching rides on the rats.

So, do these city rats have a positive purpose? Not as far as humanity is concerned. There is a lot of truce to the old insult, “You dirty rat!” I’ll laugh at lions, alligators, and black mambas (from a distance). As for flies, tics, and rats, send them all to the Antarctic.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Action a-plenty this past week! Mark flew into the Big Apple, impressed and overwhelmed by the city’s size and activity. Mark took on a kind of “country cousin goes to the Big City” persona. Strange.

In the airport, Mark continued to be amazed and dismayed by the crowds and the noise. His anxiety cleared up upon hearing a callout: “Someone help! Is there a nature expert in the house?” The words were music to Mark’s strained ears. He navigated around the milling crowd of passengers to make his way to the caller. There he saw a raccoon hanging on a cord from the airport’s ceiling! 

It’s a bit confusing at this point regarding the number of people involved. Hair colors kept changing, as did clothing. It’s possible these were airport skycaps, as regular reader Daniel P. suggested; or maybe animal control staff; or maybe a mix of “security” people and others. Take your pick. Also, one person was holding a cage!

As Mark approached, the raccoon fell to the floor and started running towards the cage. Along the way, the raccoon jumped up and snatched some airline peanuts that Mark apparently was holding. Then he ran into the cage. Mark was no actual help, but he also spent no time finding out what actually was going on. He just walked on! Seems odd behavior to me. Regular reader, Mark “the Contrarian Commenter”, testified that “…it appears the past 3 days the dialog and artwork is more legible,” and thought maybe a ghost artist was filling in for Rivera. That’s quite a positive comment from Mark! So, what do you think? There is certainly a brighter tone and mood, perhaps contrasting with Mark’s earlier dark mood and the darker hues seen in the first several strips this past week.

Rivera sneaks in a subtle comment on immigration into today’s nature strip dealing with pigeons. I’m afraid I’m too dense to figure out the point or significance of the special typography of the title in panel 1. Any ideas? But as she often does, Rivera links the nature subject to the locality of Mark’s current story. From what I’ve read, pigeons use a variety of navigation techniques, in addition to sensing magnetic fields. But I have no idea what “Bungle the air” means (panel 5). Do you?

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Olive and Rusty returned from their successful altercation with the Grungy Boys, only to get a tongue-lashing from Mark and Cherry, who don’t like other people infringing on their right to give beat-downs to local bums and bastards. After that, Duke the Plumber arrived and told them to prepare to sign over their retirement accounts to pay for a new water heater. While all of this was taking place, Mark was preparing to head out to New York for that AI conference he reluctantly agreed to speak at. 

It took eight panels for Mark and Cherry to get their Goodbyes done so he could fly out. Regular reader Daniel Pellissier noticed a squirrel in the last panel, apparently holding a stick or club. Daniel’s comment was that the squirrel would use it on Mark and Cherry if they didn’t finally break it up so the story could take off, so to speak. That’s how I took his comment, anyway. And that was the week.

Raccoons certainly are a bloody nuisance. Even some of my family members seem to think it is okay to leave food for them. I finally got my dad, at least, to quit leaving food scraps for them down by the ditch. It was starting to look like a raccoon convention!

The last panel is, alas, another attempt at humor, wasting a panel for what could have been additional helpful information. Besides, it’s a non-sequitur. Any visit by a raccoon is unwelcome, regardless of the length of stay.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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A peaceful, bucolic day in Lost Forest revealed Rusty Trail and Olive (of the Florida Pitts) taking a peaceful, bucolic walk. But are they bird watching? Looking for Spring flowers? Taking soil samples to test for changes in soil nutrients? Uh, no. They are on another cryptid hunt.

Olive, an aunt who genuinely likes Rusty, played along until they heard a buzzing sound. When they went to investigate, they spied The Grungy Boys fooling around with a riding lawnmower in a clearing. Olive began recording their antics on her phone. 

Honest Ernest, the chief Grungy, saw Olive and Rusty and became irritated. He approached the interlopers, demanding Olive’s phone so he could presumably erase the video. Honest Ernest claimed their activity was in protest of being arrested for breaking up office equipment in Lost Forest and leaving the debris behind.

Unfortunately, as Ernest tried to grab the phone, Olive, who has a long history of scrapping, planted a solid right cross that knocked Ernest off his feet. The hapless Stooges looked on in disbelief as she read to them from the Book of Olive.

I’m guessing this is a draft of Mark’s AI talk for the upcoming Cricket Bro Tech Convention in NYC. It’s a good start, at least. It has the added virtue of avoiding bad puns and jokes, and I think we can all appreciate that!

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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This week was the prologue for a new Mark Trail adventure. I’d like to think that it has the makings for real suspense and action, but I can only beat up on myself so much. Bill Ellis called Mark and spent most of the time this week stroking Mark’s somewhat cautious nature to get him to accept a speaking engagement at a technology conference in New York City. The topic is about artificial intelligence and the environment (so I am calling this adventure “A-I A-I Oh!” Catchy, huh?)  Mark was properly skeptical, as he could only speak on the negative effects of AI on the environment. Ellis told Mark he will get a big payday for the talk. Mark was even more skeptical and dismayed to learn that the conference is hosted by long-time serial nemesis, Cricket Bro. Bill Ellis must get his kicks making Mark squirm.

In spite of mounting pressure all week, Mark found a clumsy, if effective way to back out of the engagement (“let me think about it“), only to be undone when Cherry suddenly popped up to announce they had an emergency water heater leak that required a lot of money to fix. The last image we saw was an unhappy Mark giving in to Bill Ellis. NYC, here we come!

Was anybody looking for river giants, as Mark concludes? I wasn’t and I don’t recall Mark being curious any time recently. Until now, of course. Anyway, we get a topic that is unrelated to the current or most recent adventures. Unrelated nature topics were common in pre-Rivera times, whereas Rivera often focuses on creatures and environs related to Mark’s or Cherry’s current adventure and location.

And that is a good thing, I believe. Why? Well, it provides continuity throughout the entire week, and it serves as a way to highlight aspects of the location where the current story takes place. Still, it has never been required and takes nothing away from the Sunday topic, itself. But it does make me very curious to see what Rivera comes up with for topics related to New York City.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Well, if you’ve followed any of my posts this week, you may as well just skip to the Sunday strip, below. Otherwise, here goes:

Mark and Cherry, after driving to the Lost Forest Jailhouse and haranguing Rick the Bipolar Poacher and ex-beau of Cherry’s sister, Peach, decided to go on another one of their cherished nature walks. 

This one lasted most of the week (in our time, not theirs). Each day favored a different animal vignette for them to gush over, and I suppose we were invited to gush, as well.  The problem was that none of the depictions seemed especially gushable to me. Your mileage may vary, as they say. As Mark relished the idea of getting away from technology for a while, he faced the predictable consequences of a charging phone flush with left calls to answer on their return to the cabin. And wasn’t Mark surprised! Were you?

One of the featured nature walk creatures was this stag beetle. So we get some of the beetle’s lifestyle and personal likes. On the other hand … 

I thought that Rivera had realized the importance of really focusing on the creature-of-the-week by minimizing the appearance of Mark and his pointless puns, as she did last week. Well, call me Mr. Naive. Go ahead; I deserve it! Once again, it’s hard to distinguish what is important here, as the first thing I see is Mark commenting in almost every panel. I mean, honestly, Jules! Aren’t the narration boxes enough!?

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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If this was truly the ending, or aftermath, of the adventure of Peach and Rick, it was an unusual ending. For starters, most of the main characters were no longer around: Peach, Olive, and Dirk simply faded from the story, like drops of water on the sidewalk during a sunny day. While Rick, the story’s villain, sat in the local jail awaiting extradition back to Florida, the only people who visited him were the two people who had the least to do with the prior events:  Cherry and Mark. Well, Cherry did house her sisters, of course, and that is where Rick ultimately met his defeat and arrest. Mark was not even around. Still, it is unsatisfying that Peach was not given the opportunity to have her final say.

Most of the week was a flood of tongue-wagging and finger-pointing as Mark got to exercise his morality and show off his presumed influence, all to humiliate Rick. It looked pointless and petty to me. Cherry, for the most part, had nothing to say. Now, was this week meant to give the appearance of family support, but subtly show Mark and Cherry as holier-than-thou buttinskies? Was it to show Mark getting his pound of flesh to fulfill his need for not being around during the episode? Did Rivera deliberately put Mark and Cherry in an unflattering situation? Decide on your own, dear readers and let me know.

Why is the American Crocodile a threatened species? It isn’t because of attacks from other animals, for the American Crocodile is an apex predator. Most of these crocs are killed accidentally (cars) or deliberately by humans (Yes, I know we are part of the Animal Kingdom, but you know what I mean).

A good component of today’s strip is that Mark has not injected his face into every panel, restricting himself to just the opening and closing panels. I applaud that decision and I hope Rivera keeps it up, because it means more space gets dedicated to what Mark is talking about.

Finally, Mark did not end on one of his bad jokes. Another success! However, I have no idea what Mark means by “Special on a grand scale.” Sure, the male American Crocodile can grow up to 20 feet, which is about 19 foot more than I’d prefer to see. But is that what Mark means by grand? What do you think?

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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In case you missed the past six days, I’m here to fill you in on the <yawn!> action. (I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to go back and read all of my snappy daily comments, but I’m biased.) Since Mark’s manatee adventure came to an end, Mark checked in with Bill Ellis and caught him up on events. Rivera devoted four days to the phone call, just to ensure we all got a proper debriefing. That was nice of her! Also, I proposed a small thought experiment about what Bill Ellis does on his time off. Apparently, just about everybody assumed he did nothing, as I only received one comment on Friday, suggesting Bill pretty much did nothing. Next time, I may ask about Doc Davis.

For the last two strips of the week, Mark was back at his cabin in Lost Forest, where he met Cherry standing in front of her truck. There, I noticed some peculiar marks drawn under Mark’s eyes (2/14/25), features I’ve seen on faces in the past. So I asked readers what they thought those marks could be. Regular reader Be Ware of Eve Hill suggested they might be blushes, though blushes normally show up on cheeks. “Perhaps Pink Eye”, she went on to joke. Well, not tears of joy, either. So the matter remains unresolved.

Getting back to the story, Mark suggested he and Cherry check out some nature trails for in-depth investigation, but Cherry put him off stating they needed to get to the Lost Forest Hoosegow because ex-boyfriend, Psycho Rick, showed up at the cabin and again tried to kidnap Peach Pitt. Seems that kidnapping is becoming all the rage in this strip.

Well, that’s it for another week! So now, on to the nature presentation.

Another timely and theme-relevant nature subject, as the title panel relates to the white buck that Psycho Rick shot and bragged about. In fact, the title panel reminds me of a drawing on an early hunting computer game I once saw in a computer store. A fair topic, for sure, though I don’t know how Rivera expects readers to take a stand against poaching, other than donating money to organizations that fight poaching, becoming a game warden, or maybe going out and hunting the poachers.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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Hoo-boy, you almost missed real drama! It seemed for a moment that Rivera had taken a turn for the serious. But no worries, she quickly spun back to her tried-and-true habit of absurdity and jokes.

The week began with Cherry, her two sisters, brother Dirk, and Rusty sitting at dinner. Afterwards, Peach took out the garbage. Here we learned for the first time that the Trail cabin sits on a plot of land with a small descent behind it, resulting in the cabin having a raised stone foundation with a rear deck and steps! Just think of all those Trail cookouts we missed seeing.

So this is the point where things got serious:  As Peach walked down the steps, she saw Rick, standing at the bottom, his car parked beside him, in the backyard. Yet, nobody heard it drive up. When Peach told Rick once again to leave, he displayed his gun and shoulder holster and threatened everybody inside. As a terrified Peach was being forced into the car, Cherry came out to see what was keeping Peach.

The hoped-for serious drama gave way at this point: While Cherry faced Rick and urged Peach to move back, Dirk suddenly appeared. Quickly scoping the situation, Dirk whistled and his “feral hog friends” suddenly  appeared and started ramming Rick’s car before he could drive away. Of course, Rick’s escape attempt failed as his car was heavily battered and he was knocked senseless. The gang pondered calling the police, as Dirk offered some of his homespun hillbilly wisdom.

Are we at the end of Cherry’s story? Once again, it has that feel. I bet that next week we’ll see Cherry drop Olive and Peach off at the airport as Mark arrives to get picked up, symmetrical bookends to the start and end of both stories. As for Brother Dirk, he will likely just disappear on his own and maybe change his phone number.

Okay, I usually appreciate Rivera’s customized Sunday title panels, and today’s contribution is almost there. At the very least, it is creative. As is common, Rivera’s Sunday topic links, geographically, to Mark’s current storyline. That makes the Sunday strips more interesting than just reading about random animals or locations.

I have no major issues with this content, though panel 3 is redundant. Rivera could have used that panel to show us another mating example. And then there is the weak, forced humor in Mark’s asides. <Sigh!> He’ll never have a future hosting late night TV shows, so Mark should leave the jokes to the professionals.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

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I’ve been challenged to produce a vigorous analysis of this past week. I must be slipping, as I thought all of my weekending summaries are vigorous in one form or another. Well, let’s see how things go…

First, a brief recap the week, day by day (I’m ignoring the omnipresent bear puns):

Mon – Mark reacts to learning Cricket Bro is behind the kidnapping attempt. He is put off to learn that the kidnappers do not know who he is. This could have been important, as it suggests Mark’s participation was not anticipated by Cricket Bro.
Tue – The kidnappers reveal they are here to grab Rita because of criticism against a post of Cricket Bro.
Wed – The kidnappers support the manatee-weather conspiracy and spout nonsense about Max.
Thur – Rita pounds the kidnappers on climate change. The kidnappers thought wearing bear costumes would protect them from arrest.
Fri – The police are called and Max is finally released into the “freshwaters” of Florida.
Sat – The police arrive to take the kidnappers. Our gang commiserates over the slow acceptance of climate change in the general public. Max is shown listlessly floating and shrunken.

This week’s strips suggest we have reached the end of the story, though it left the door open for dealing with Cricket Bro. Will this take place in one of Mark’s subsequent, off-the-books revenge stories? Wait a minute. Has Mark ever had one of those stories? Frank Miller could whip one up, I’m sure.

Now, what was this adventure really about? Was it really about protecting Max the Manatee? We can all agree that it definitely was not about protecting manatees, in general. As previously noted, there was virtually no face time with Max until the last two weeks. Even then, it was brief and desultory. None of the usual safeguards, procedures, or professional assistance for manatees was depicted or mentioned. Then there were the late revelations by the kidnappers about Cricket Bro’s involvement and his objective to stifle scientific/political views contrary to his own.

We were misled—well, I was misled—by the initial emphasis on protecting Max the Manatee. This was really a kind of bait-and-switch story. Mark was hired as a bodyguard, not a reporter. His job was to bring his Two Fists O’ Justice to any conspiracy nut who interfered with Rita and Skeeter getting Max back into his natural waters. I wonder if Bill Ellis knew this? And this conspiracy was either initiated or supported by Mark’s earliest “nemesis”, Rob Bettencourt, aka Cricket Bro.

When seen in this light, I believe the story makes more sense, though it is still superficial and lacks any suspense. Then again, we can claim that Rivera’s stories have never been about actual suspense and drama, excluding Mark’s first adventure. Thus, criticism about any lack of suspense and drama is redundant and unwarranted. What do you think?

It’s kind of depressing that Mark would spend so much space and effort discussing the groundhog’s weather prediction nonsense. But then again, I’d probably be more depressed if I thought there were people who still do believe this. What’s that, you said..? There are such people!? Oh, right: “Manatees can control hurricanes.” <Gag!> Where is my bucket?