Really? THIS is the terrible truth, that Duck Duck Goose is responsible for zebra mussel infestation!? And what river pipes is Cliff referring to:  Runoff pipes from companies and large farms pumping waste into the river? Clogging them might be a good thing, I think.

This story would have more plausibility if Mark and Diana admitted up front that the zebra mussel problem was a national (or international) issue. And their focus on a single source of contamination is obviously not to solve zebra mussel infestation, but to show an example of how zebra mussels can spread through inattention or indifference.

But the plot twist here—which I think is good—is that Duck Duck Goose is actually concerned about an entirely different issue, and that is something they do not want Mark to discover. We await the Duck Duck Goose enforcers to get this story moving along.

Some nice layouts in the panels today. Panel 2 is remarkable for the amount of detail and space injected into such a small panel, without looking cramped.  But I’m a bit put off by the extreme expressions in panel 4. Compared to the prior panels, they look too exaggerated. And should Mark be surprised by the photos? He took them!

Given that those actually are zebra mussels in panel 4, what are they attached to? That odd shape on the laptop monitor sure doesn’t look like the hull of any ship. In any event, what’s the issue here? They have their photos, so why waste time “studying” them? Time to move on to the next phase of the investigation.

But, can Cliff really be trusted? It’s easy to be suspicious of characters who suddenly show up in Mark Trail strips, of course. But Cliff ticks several boxes: 1) His less-than happy exit after losing Cherry to Mark; 2) His covert shadowing of Mark and Diana in the boat; 3) His convenient “rescue” of Mark after he abandoned Diana; and 4) His silence about items 2 and 3. I could write more, but you get the drift; and I’m supposed to be writing more concisely. If only . . . .

Funny, but I didn’t get the idea that the Trails’ relationship was in any real trouble. Quite the opposite, in fact. But here we have a clear cross-over in story lines, insofar as Mark is now donating time away from his investigation to assist Cherry.

Monday is supposed to bring us back to Mark’s, uh, storyline, as Cherry’s plans now get placed in “publication suspended animation” for two weeks. So, what—or who—will we find on Monday?

 “Mutual scheming aside, Mark, where are your priorities? Are you letting Cliff and Diana take over the zebra mussel assignment while you get involved—once again—in yet another possibly illegal activity? The last time you tried to help somebody skirt the law, you barely escaped! If Cherry has any brains, she’ll tell you to go soak your head (in the river) and get back to your real assignment.”

Breaking News on Fox 9: Rusty Trail, son of famed nature writer Mark Trail, was arrested earlier today for tagging the home of the chief of police. Rusty reportedly said “I’m just looking for some attention, any attention at all! My parents are always away with their crackpot activities. Grampa just sits around drooling and talking about his years putting his hand up cows’ asses. And the writers of this comic strip never let me make time with girls. It’s all a real drag, man. I want out.”

Including today, Rivera has only two days left to push this story along, rather than spend so much time milking this faux huckleberry exterminator routine. After Saturday, we have to put Cherry back in the box for two weeks and get back to Mark’s other story. Or will he still be stuck here, moving garden supplies? I dunno, because Mark certainly doesn’t seem too worried about his zebra mussels assignment. Makes you wonder what’s going on with Diana and Cliff while Mark is away.

Now, where the heck are Cherry’s clandestine gardeners? The way Cherry talks in the last panel, one would think that the group changed its mind and went to hang out at Planet Pancake so they can enjoy pancakes when they are still warm and tasty.

We are zoomed out in panel 1, where we see a nest of bees conveniently placed to reflect the current subject. The nest and its supporting branch are arranged along an angle that acts as a means for establishing a foreground to symbolically define the location in the panel where the viewer is standing. Well, at least that was often the intention of painters from the Renaissance onward who employed this popular compositional device, often as a means to help “bring the viewer into the picture” as viewer and participant. Phew! Sorry, my former art history days are slipping out again. But seriously, didn’t the nearness of the bee nest make you involuntarily back up a bit, just for a moment?

It didn’t take long for local yokel Ernest to start dropping his “Good ol’ Boy” persona, revealing a more fundamentally chilling personality. The coldness in his expression and his statement in panel 4 should leave little doubt for Cherry and Mark.

Speaking of Cherry, I can’t say I’m impressed with her lukewarm justification for keeping the bees alive. “They help more than harm”? That’s the best you can do, Cherry? You might as well ask Ernest if you can help hold his gear while he exterminates the bees. I hope her underground Garden Club gets the job done.

The cornpone humor continues, as even the rabbit is gob smacked to see this retread from a 1960s sitcom showing up in Lost Forest. It seems that the veil of propriety has been lifted from this area and we’re discovering that it is filled with a growing variety of oddballs.
The apparent proximity of Lost Forest (near the coast of Georgia, it seems) to Florida must have something to do with the influx of creeps, kooks, and connivers. As another link to the influence of Florida weirdness, the moment I saw Ernest’s work van, a slice of tv trivia dropped into my bread pan. How about you? Think back to cop shows in Florida, around 1984. Okay, so there was only one. Miami Vice featured an undercover surveillance van disguised as a pest control truck, with a “flying ant” on top.

This is just one version of the van; there were several, including a white one. Any influence on Rivera? Other than a general “Florida Weirdness” vibe that Rivera favors, it’s hard to say. Still, you don’t usually see such things any longer, as workers tend to use their van tops for holding ladders.

Well, Honest Ernest may be a cloddish jerk and kind of simple, but I have to admit to liking the pun-name Bee-heading; the name, not the technique. Anyway, is Mark just going to keep on holding that bag of plant soil?

Well, shucks, drop my trousers and call me Cheeky. Doesn’t Honest Ernest present a nice contrast to the affected sophistication of his wife and the Sunny Soleil Society? Still, I’m surprised that Mark and Cherry are “surprised”, unless it has to do with the quantity of hokum in this yokum.  

Long-time follower of this blog, Mark, periodically expresses his ongoing frustration with the stories and the artwork. Certainly, it looks less accomplished comparing it to the former version using the same set of aesthetic values. Sometimes it just looks less accomplished, even based on Rivera’s standards. Take Ernie, here. He certainly looks like a literal blockhead, especially in panel 3. One wonders if Rivera is trying to make a visual pun based on Ernest’s personality. In support of this theory, I offer a definition by that 18^th century British man of letters, words, and odd gestures, Samuel Johnson:

“hátchet-face n.s. An ugly face; such, I suppose, as might be hewn out of a block by a hatchet“

If you wanted to visually portray somebody’s personality, how would you do it? Walt Kelly, the creator of Pogo had a knack for that. The jury is out on this one.

When we last saw Cherry (a few weeks ago), she was marching with her band of gardener commandoes to check out the bee statue at the Sunny Soleil Society gardens. And Mark was sitting at a picnic table with Cliff and Diana Daggers, hoping to work things out between themselves. Yet, here are our two lovebirds, working together, as if nothing else was going on. What’s with that? With luck, we’ll at least see what Cherry and her group will do by this coming Saturday.

But, what’s this? Some clown in a yellow jump suit has driven up, billowing snide commentary like the typical B-movie bully who thinks he is both funny and dangerous. Until he discovers he picked a fight with a woman who happens to be standing next to Jean-Claude Van Damme.

At first, I thought this might be one of the thugs sent by the Duck Duck Goose shipping company to persuade Mark to back off. But, that would be integrating the two storylines. As I wrote before, I think that would be a great idea; yet it doesn’t have that feel. My guess is that Mr. Yellow Jumpsuit is the extermination business husband of Caroline (a board member of the SSS), who has come around to “put the little woman in her place”, as it were. Clearly, his truck has that “business” look and it appears to have something on its top. Possibly a stereotypical “bug” figure. And that’s why Mr. Yellow Jumpsuit also hides the logo on the side of the work van. The Big Reveal is on Tuesday.

Did Cherry just drop a big hint about the Sunday nature feature? In any event, I believe this group is what qualifies as your typical motley crew; and they seem to have unending endurance to march from their secret headquarters in the middle of nowhere, all the way over (however far that really is) to the SSS gardens to make plans. But is it a good idea to put the gal who can’t see at night at the back of the line?

So, Cherry, you think bats and your group are misunderstood? Perhaps if your group held public meetings or advertised its existence, more people might come to appreciate you and even hire you from time to time. Hard to be loved and appreciated when you work in the dark, Cherry, unless you are in a dark room with somebody, such as Mark, where it would suddenly become a lot easier and fun to be loved and appreciated. But, I digress.

As I feared, we’ll have to wait a few weeks to see what happens next. I do believe Rivera should have moved the story along faster, given the limited space Cherry’s stories get. However, if it wasn’t for me reminding you what took place, where would you be at the end of two weeks, when we return to Cherry’s storyline? I bet you’re not even clipping the strips from the paper, are you? And if you don’t have a subscription to Comics Kingdom, you’d have to have a great memory. Just sayin’. Hey, I think the artwork is getting increasingly better. Do you agree?

(Edited) Sorry, I had to get that literary pun out of the way. Now, does Jules Rivera think Cherry and her club are in California? Helena states she has to teach a crystals class!? Maybe she’s about to present a lecture on Newton’s experiments with light. In any event, I hope all of this dithering around is just that, or it will make a travesty of my “cooperation” discussion from yesterday. And Rivera apparently uses a different clock than Cherry, though I think Cherry’s sense of time is more accurate. After all, it’s already night.

“Black Rose Garden Club” is a good name, but I think Rivera missed a golden opportunity for a better name, if I do say so, myself. This is an underground (i.e. secret” or literally, “under the ground”) garden club, right? Not to pass up a good pun, I would have modestly proposed The Sub Rosa Garden Club, if Jules had only asked me…!

Frankly, it is difficult to view today’s strip. Most of what I could write, I wrote yesterday. However, I do like the design of panel 3, with the two garden club gals symmetrically framing Cherry. It’s a neat way to show club members guessing what the serious problem might be.

However, I am surprised that Georgia seems to have so quickly forgotten that Cherry already told her about the bees on the way to the meeting! Of course, that was two weeks ago in Real Time. But I reckon it was long enough for her to forget.

Also interesting to see Cherry being efficient enough to answer the roll call for all of the members, herself. And she also has time to recite this secret society’s pledge! But moving at this rate, they’ll run out of newspaper space before they can get their act together. After all, the “Cherry” segment is normally only one week to Mark’s two weeks. As Sgt. Carter on Gomer Pyle liked to exclaim, “MOVE IT! MOVE IT! MOVE IT!“

Cartoonists often use assistants to help with inking, lettering, and even drawing. Ed Dodd did, for example. I wonder if Rivera is using one, because the drawing today looks awkward, even out of proportion in some places. Take Cherry’s “Popeye” right arm, or the gals in panel 3, who seem to be a bit out of proportion here and there. We’ve seen a lot better from Rivera. At least Cherry’s hammer makes a whacking sound, rather than something like “Hit!” or “Pound!”, as we’ve seen before.

In any event, the members of the Black Rose Garden Club (yet another group!) apparently eat their pancakes cold and rolled like burritos, given the lack of plates, cutlery, butter, and syrup. Now, I will not make the expected joke of linking this group to the bat in panel 1… Ooops! I just did, anyway. But I was just making a point that I would not, you see…uh, er…oh, never mind. But Rivera drew the bat there, not me!

In any event, there are only 6 publishing days to make their plan and put it into action. Eat up, ladies!

As I look at today’s strip, I believe that Rivera’s wretched depiction of Caroline and Violet today (compared with yesterday’s more flattering view) is meant to reinforce the inner ugliness and selfish ignorance of the women and the Association they represent. Rude caricatures have a long well-known history though we don’t need to go a-wandering down that path to find justification. It is common practice, especially in comics, to exaggerate for emotional or physical purpose. This is in contrast to the former version of Mark Trail, where the most extreme distortions were usually just images of Mark showing surprise or were incidents when the art was just badly drawn (as back in the Elrod days of 2006).

At the same time, Violet’s face in panel 3 looks bigger than the head it inhabits, which makes me think Rivera may have liked an earlier version of the face she drew and pasted that version over this figure. This is not an unheard of practice, even in comics. Maybe Rivera did this deliberately, for its jarring effect.

Yet, I cannot account for the weird position of Cherry’s head in panel 4 with regard to her neck. It looks really off-kilter. I cannot account for it in any kind of metaphorical way. That is, if it is symbolic of something, I am lost. It’s as if the back of her head is missing.
It’s a weird head-neck arrangement that I recall seeing in some of James Allen’s work, such as the head of Rusty’s futile feminine interest and crime-solving partner, Mara, during their Yucatan adventure. “Creepy” is right, Mara! Cherry’s head reminds me of a marionette for some reason, the one with the separated head so it can be independently moved.

But back to the story, we finish the week with a major setback for Cherry, as Violet stands by her Association’s nepotistic corruption and disregard for nature. Thus, we’ll likely have to wait two weeks to discover the outcome: Will Cherry go on to convince the Association of its erroneous position or will Violet (one letter short of “violent”) once again physically throw Cherry off the property and fire her?

Final note: Anybody who has scanned today’s post more than once might notice some changes over time, as I made some revisions to grammar and content during the day. Sometimes it is hard to resist, especially as I have a big Italian quiz coming up on Tuesday. Not sure why I should be concerned, as I’m just auditing the class; however, I am taking the class to learn Italian, so I take all of the quizzes and tests to see if I’m making progress.

The story moves on. Cherry abandons her original suggestion to move the bees and finally starts making the proper case for their continued existence here. But the two Association honeys have made the a priori decision for extermination. Can Cherry overcome their wall of social privilege? Caroline attempts to put Cherry in an ethical dilemma by comparing Cherry’s struggling landscape business with her husband’s alleged new business struggles. Of course, Caroline sidesteps the corrupt transaction, itself. For all we know, Caroline and her husband are already part of the economic upper crust, and this business is just a side concern. But we don’t know that, so judgment reserved. Still, as a pest controller, he should know that honey bees are not proper subjects for extermination. So, we might assume that Violet reported these are destructive killer bees, instead. We’ll have to wait to learn more, but it doesn’t put Caroline’s husband in a good light. The more we learn about Caroline, the more it is clear she is cut from the same cloth as Violet. With one day to go (I presume), will Cherry be able to make her case?

Visually, today’s strip is well-designed and nicely illustrated, showing little of the “I-have-a-deadline!” sketchiness we have seen other times. By well-designed, I mean that the composition in each panel nicely highlights and supports each panel’s dialog: Panel 1 focuses on Cherry as she states her position, with nothing extraneous to distract us. Panel 2 brings in the statue and bees, along with the three women, as Cherry’s argument moves from a global view of bees to their importance to their local garden. And panel 3 provides a dramatic “oh, by the way” objection by the Sunny Soleil Society to Cherry’s argument. Thus, the two Association women take prominence, as Cherry (and her position) is “pushed” towards the background. I like panel 3, as Rivera’s drawing of the Sunny So-Ladies, as they give us a visual window into their souls (or attitudes). 

“…until she heard of the bee statue.” I thought Cherry was the co-discoverer of the bee statue! Well, it’s clear my powers of prediction leave much to be desired, because the story has a new wrinkle. And sure looks like Caroline is not going to be Cherry’s BFF. She also turns out to be married to an exterminator, which explains her appearance in the strip. We see more reinforcement that it helps to be connected when trying to land jobs. I’m sure that the SSS did not bother to follow standard practices by putting out the job for bids, and doing a blind analysis of the bids before they just happened to pick the firm that was run by the husband of a board member. “Nothing dramatic to see here, folks. Just normal, everyday corruption. Move along, move along.” And close your mouth before flies (or bees) get in your mouth, Cherry!

I can’t be too tough on those two purile paragons of privilege (Hey! How is that for a Spiro Agnew-style insult?!). For one thing, it is clear that Rivera means to mock their status. Furthermore, they may want to destroy the bees, but Cherry’s first reaction was to move them some place else, rather than integrate them into the garden. I mean, I can’t believe that was really a hive of so-called killer bees. Not even Cherry confirmed Violet’s rush to judgment. Now, is Cherry going to hurry up and make the pollinator case for the bees? She has two days left to do it before Sunday and then the return of two weeks of Mark and Diana.

Well, I appreciate the fact that Jules is juggling two concurrent story lines in the strip, something we did not see in the former Mark Trail (as I recall).  We might quibble with specifics (as we like to do), but Rivera is still in her first year of the strip. Unlike when Allen took over, Rivera’s job is not to simply keep driving the same car down the same country road, stopping at the same diners for the same meals. There’s a lot of things to work out in any reboot. I think (or hope) several of the clichés Rivera relies upon, such as the ongoing jabs at the former version of the strip (especially to Mark’s earlier role as the Idealized Man of Action and Nobility) will eventually disappear.

I was just having a chat with my wife about my bad habit of second-guessing myself. Never mind what the specific incident was; but this is another example. I took yesterday’s drawings too literally and discounted the idea that Caroline was another SSS member. She seemed from her pose and expression that she was much younger. Well, with the closer images today, that would have been more obvious. She’s just childlike, I reckon. Boy, that Sunny Soleil Society must be one big collection of self-indulgent pretenders.

Anyway, Violet’s no-nonsense pose in panel 1 suggests to me that she knows how Cherry’s conversation with Caroline is already going to go, and that Cherry will not find an ally. Perhaps Cherry, in her desire to be open and friendly towards Caroline, missed Violet’s body language. Cherry is an optimist, however; maybe she read the signals fine, but still thinks she can bring Caroline over to her side. Based on Caroline’s reaction and expression, Cherry may have do an end-run around Violet’s influence and appeal to Caroline’s better instincts. If they exist.

Of course, Cherry is just the hired help; she can suggest, but she cannot insist, unless she wants to return to unemployed status and lose out on the business. But Cherry has principles, too. If she walks away, the bees still get terminated. Is feeling righteous about your high moral standards an acceptable substitute for saving the bees? Okay, Cherry. The pressure is on you to convince these precious debutantes that bees actually help gardens thrive and should not be killed. Cherry could suggest the SSS hire a beekeeper to maintain the bees and help the garden thrive. The beehives could even become an educational attraction for the garden and the Sunny Soleil Society. A good PR Coup for the SSS and Cherry becomes a hero and respected hired hand.

But let’s see how things really pan out this week.

Okay, this story sure took a hard turn to the Land of Weird. Motivations here? Is Cherry really that concerned for her business that she has to act servile? Sure, Cherry is the hired help; it’s her business. The social separation of these people is also inescapable, as seen both by the clothing and the artwork, where we see Tara—er, Caroline—and Violet from a groveling servant’s viewpoint in panel 2.

But, is Cherry patronizing Caroline and Violet by apologizing about the little toads, or is she just genuinely embarrassed by them scampering about and making her look careless? It’s not as if you never see creatures crawling, hopping, and flitting about in gardens, even for two rarified ladies such as these.  Yes, we know that Violet is really a poseur, while Caroline comes across as…charmingly passive-aggressive. She hides her put-down (“wild streak”) within an oh-so-charming sense of familiarity and manners. She also looks and dresses younger than Violet, so maybe she is Violet’s niece. Or maybe she is just naïve.

I think Cherry is also putting on an act, as we can see by the contrast with her “inner self” emoting in panel 3. What is Cherry’s aim here, then? If Jules Rivera is not pulling our leg, I’m intrigued by what’s going to happen next.  At worst, we should hope that Cherry gets all of Caroline’s home landscape business for this performance.

I was off on my tracking, as the two week segment with Mark included the prior week when Mark picked up Diana and spent the rest of the week getting consoled by Cherry.

So, catching up, Cherry and Violet Cheshire have an uneasy alliance to restore and upgrade the Sunny Soleil Society’s gardens. That alliance was sorely tested when they were surprised by a swarm of bees hidden under a tarp covering a memorial statue in the garden area. Violet lost her cool. So we’ve caught up.

Yesterday, Jules was nice enough to go over the frog-toad issue, at least enough to ensure that we’ll never be 100% positive one way or the other; so whatever Cherry wants to call these amphibians, is okay by me.  Anyway, I’ll be the first to admit that I was flummoxed by the ceramic pots that seemed to be floating on top of the pond beside Cherry. My gardening wife said that this was just a fashion in upscale gardens:  bricks or stones are placed underneath to give the illusion that the pots are floating. Flummox solved.

Moving on to the plot, Cherry seems unduly sensitive about her reaction to, or the appearance of, these toads/frogs in the presence of the two Sunny Soleil ladies. Well, I suppose the “EEK!” exclamation accounts for some of it? Perhaps Cherry’s anxiety is driven by trying to stay on their good side for business reasons. And once again, Rivera continues to do a good job of linking the Sunday animals to the daily strips in a more active way then used to be the case.

Well, if one pretentious person wasn’t enough, Violet shows up with a companion who is equally decked out in Kentucky Derby finery. Okay, that’s possibly a non-sequitur, as conventional wisdom says they are in Georgia. These ladies must live in some time-warped gated community where people dress like that; or it’s Easter. Or maybe the other woman is also an SSS employee and these are just their uniforms.

As for the dialog, I don’t fully understand Cherry’s concerns over the amphibians (aside from the “Eek”) running around (over what I wrote earlier); they are normally found around ponds and lakes, including garden ponds. Also, this is the humid, semi-tropical South. So, why is Cherry upset over what must be a common sight? Hmmm, I’d be more upset over Violet Cheshire’s lame pun in panel 3.

The art is fine, today, and the varying points of view add interest to an otherwise unremarkable sequence. And I can’t help but think of Gulliver when I see panel 2. Then there are the runway model poses of the two fashionistas in panel 3. I think Jules Rivera gets her stereotype ridiculing in again with these ladies’ poses. Miss Blue’s is portrayed in a “precious-refined lady-overreacts-to-actual-wildlife-outside-of-a-zoo” pose, while Violet’s pose has “I-anchor-my–self-importance-with-sarcasm” written all over it.

Based on what I’ve seen and read elsewhere, I believe some people missed the actually clever pun Rivera slipped into panel 2. Cherry says “Not in front of the Sunny So-Ladies!!” The pun is the phrase Sunny So-Ladies, which is an elision of the words Sunny Soleil and Ladies. The So-Ladies phrase sounds similar to the French Soleil.

What’s that you say? You already figured it out earlier, and I’m just trying to show off!? Well, it’s easy for you to say that now, since this is already written and you didn’t tell me ahead of time! :)

Well, well, well:  Bees, bees, bees! Is that the same house in panel 1 they were walking away from yesterday? Reckon so, no matter. Clearly, the Sunny Soleil Society had already been around these parts for some time before Cherry got into trouble with them over one of her landscaping projects. Wait… how long ago was that? I reckon in comic strip time, it had to have been about 2 or 3 weeks ago, right?

And here they are, the two former combatants, ready to uncover what appears to be some kind of statue of some “forest pioneer”. But what garden is she talking about? The surrounding grounds are not well seen, but what we do see appears to be pavement.

Back to the unveiling, it seems that this statue must have also been restored or replaced, if this is a proper unveiling. And where is the rest of the staff for such an important moment? The only other person belonging to this association that I recall is a middle-aged man in a kitchen that we saw in one daily strip back just after Violet tossed Cherry out on her ear. But that was about it. Who he was or what his job was is a mystery, except maybe as a springboard to help move the plot along.

Say! This must be one of those old Mark Trail traditions that Rivera snuck in on us—the temporary character, who is there to fulfill a short-term role and then disappear, kind of like the red-shirted security dudes on those “Away Teams” in the original Star Trek episodes, whose role was to die early on in the episode.

Anyway, looks like the unveiling revealed a large swarm of bees. Could they be those “killer bees” that Mark told us about a few days ago? Exactly how or why they wound up under this tarp, much less how they survived, is likely going to be a major part of this ongoing Sunny Soleil Society story, I’m afraid.

From a drawing point of view, I think the perspective view in panel 2 is dramatic and very well executed. The third panel’s “statue view” is a popular framing technique seen in movies and TV, where the drama is not so much the view but what is viewed.

It looks like Rivera has decided to continue Cherry’s adventure with Miss Cheshire, er Miss Violet, rather than ending it along with Mark’s adventure. This could be an interesting approach to have continuity on one hand, balanced against Mark starting another adventure on the other hand. But even there, Rivera has maintained continuity through the appearance of Diana Daggers. I know that Professor Bee Sharp has been brought up elsewhere as a possible additional element in Mark’s new assignment; and the appearance of killer bees (i.e. Killer Bee Sharp) here is hard to overlook. Still, Cherry had nothing to do with that particular adventure; and how or why the Professor would get involved in the Sunny Soleil Society’s work is a big stretch.

So, who is this honored forest pioneer? And what does the Society have to do with forest pioneers, anyway?

Okay, fellow Trailheads. I reckon Cherry got Rusty off to his scout meeting without problems or worthwhile conversation. We are back to the Rarified World of Violet Cheshire, whom Cherry deigns to call “Miss Violet”, as if they are on some ante-bellum plantation with magnolia trees and happy slaves singing in the fields. And I’m thinking that Cherry’s response in panel 1 is a not too subtle reference that the self-absorbed, upper class Violet, with her southern belle image, misses. Or not. Perhaps she did get it, as Violet puts out her own burn against Cherry in panel 4.

I’m especially taken with how well Violet “cleans up.” Not only does she look younger than when she was originally portrayed, but her features are softened. For a gross comparison, here is how she looked at Planet Pancake, after Dirk’s hogs feasted on her butterfly plants. That could have been Violet’s mother.

The first panel could have been a source of scenic enjoyment, but that enjoyment is marred by an almost medieval lack of proper depth and proportion. For example, the dark green trees are least as tall as the house, but they look pretty close to the women and one could imagine the trees are only about 7 feet tall. Both can’t be true.

Artists traditionally divide space into background; middle ground; and foreground. Clearly the forested moutains are in the background, leaving the field and trees to mark the middle ground. That leaves us wondering if the house, road, and women are in the foreground, or if the house is part of the middle ground. But if you look at the road and track the spaces of the women and the house, it would seem either the house is too small or the women too large. In short, more ambiguity.

I think a lot of this spatial ambiguity could probably have been fixed by moving the two women to the right foreground and showing only their shoulders and heads.  They would constitute the new foreground. I hope you can visualize that. Of course, I’m getting into the weeds and making this more academic that it deserves. This is just a comic strip, something that will be published in newspapers with a general height of less than two inches. Such subtle refinements that I’m referring to probably will not even be noticed.

Otherwise, I’m hoping today’s strip closes out Cherry’s involvement with the Sunny Soleil Society, as I don’t see where there is anything more to develop in the story, unless Rivera just wants to explore two people getting on each other’s nerves. Your thoughts on this?