I reckon that if they didn’t talk so much, we’d have a better view of those storm clouds hiding behind the dialog balloons. At least some are peeking out in panel 4. Higher ground is usually a good strategy to follow in a situation like this, especially with a slight rise to assist in minimizing standing water. But what is this ground they are moving onto? It looks like clay or dirt, with no vegetation at all. Or is it rock? A dirt or clay ground probably would not be the best place to pitch tents in a storm.

Now, what about those kills? Are they being left where they fell? Taking any home for more pork chops? A small detail, perhaps, but leaving them on the earth will almost certainly render them useless for butchering later on. About as useless as Shania and Reba, who don’t seem to contribute very much.

Art Dept. Did you notice how Mark can quickly move from one person and space to another? He’s like The Flash! In panel 3, he’s standing beside Tess Tigress, as she once again derides his cautious attitude. In panel 4, Tess relents, but Mark is already standing beside Venus Verité in the distance. Well, perhaps it is really just Tess who moved away from Mark and Venus, before deciding to go along with the plan. Not the Flash, after all.

Did I oversleep again and miss a day? I could have sworn that yesterday we saw Tess ripping into Shania, Reba, and Mark. All of a sudden, Tess is playing nice, with no hint of animosity. Maybe it’s because her photographer has also suddenly arrived on the scene. Repeating a common visual composition, Rivera shows Tess and the photographer standing in the foreground (in front of Mark, Reba, and Shania). But they look backwards at the trio while still facing us. The trio in the background line up, side by side, as if on inspection. It’s as if they are actors whose contracts stipulate that they must always be filmed in full view, never overlapping.

Again, I’m confused on geography. Tess talks about having to “stay” in place, as if they are already at the camping grounds, rather than still at the manse. Speaking of which, where is Jess? He’s been absent all week, though he was supposed to be coming along. Perhaps he picked up and brought Venus Verité along, and now he’s somewhere else parking his car.

A point of weather depiction here: I can totally get behind the “overcast” look in panel 1, with the halftone applied across the upper sky. Very effective.

Okay, this is the second day in a row where we’ve seen a gray cloud cover overtaking the sky. If you missed the subtle, initial appearance yesterday, go back to Friday’s strip and have a look. We’ll wait for you … dah-dah bum, dah-dah-boom dah- … ah, okay. Glad some of you made it back. Let’s move on.

Supposedly, the team is packing up for the big trip, but not much is happening. Perhaps they’re waiting for the servants to show up? Nevertheless, storm clouds do seem to be coming on; even the SUV in the background shows their reflections. But metaphorical storm clouds are also forming among the hunters. With Tess currently in absentia, “All thumbs” (as in “Couldn’t get a shot off”) Reba holds down the corporate line of pooh-poohing the science. Once again, Mark’s opinion gets dissed. If these gals were newspaper readers and followed the strip, they’d know better than to buck Mark’s advice.

And Jules Rivera really should stop killing what little drama she builds up when she inserts corny remarks in a narration box. Such remarks should be left to professionals.

Art Dept. I have to love the orange background in panel 2. Its heat-like tone fully supports Reba’s agitation. And the color contrasts sharply with the green camo the hunting heroines are sporting. Good job!

Gosh, it seems like it has only been seven days since last Friday … uh, well, my wife doesn’t think much of my stupid jokes, either. But they’re probably good enough for Mark Trail.

As for this strip, it’s easy to predict a wet catastrophe is heading their way, given Shania’s comment about camping in a valley. Mark makes a move behind Tess’s back to warn Reba and Shania, but then Jules Rivera (once again) breaks the dramatic mood by criticizing Mark in panel 3. Rivera’s sarcastic notes have done this several times in the past and I find it surprising. She could (and should) be supporting the drama, not editorializing. Well, there is sure to be a reckoning about this confab when Tess finds out.

Art Dept. I see that Rivera decided to free-hand the SUV, rather than embed an existing online image. I’ve mentioned before that using “clipart” and other image sources is a standard practice with comic strip artists and has been since the beginning. At least, the drawing of this auto more closely matches the overall style of the strip.

Speaking of style, it is difficult to grasp the ongoing transformation of this strip’s drawing, because it seems like it was always like this. Not so! If you want proof, I recommend viewing several strips for each year Rivera has been drawing, starting October 13, 2020. I think you’ll be surprised at how the strip has changed in tone, detail, and visual composition from its original appearance.

Mark and Tess have a classic argument based on a deliberate or mistaken misunderstanding. Weather is a relatively short-term (hours, days, weeks, etc.) state of the atmosphere in a given region. On the other hand, climate is described as a long-term (years, decades, centuries, etc.) statistical description of weather patterns in a given region, or even globally, through averaging all weather regions on the earth. It’s micro v. macro. So Tess pushed Mark’s environmental buttons and he gets defensive.

Mark should try to explain the difference to Tess, who appears to present herself as a climate change skeptic. Will he do so (or save it to Sunday)? Probably not. As in virtually all Mark Trail stories since it began, nature and environmental issues are usually discussed in a broad sort of way (emphasizing exposure and public interest), and serving as a motivation for the story, itself.

To me, an important question is this: Is Jules Rivera making Tess taunt Mark by misdirecting him with a deliberate misuse of the term “Climate stuff” that is almost guaranteed to unhinge Mark? Is Rivera just making Tess out to be a typical climate change skeptic or denier, to get Mark to defend climate change while she pulls out the weather card to show the immediate weather report isn’t all that bad, thereby undermining Mark’s “climate change” forecast?

Flash floods? Of course, even Tess should realize this, given the recent flash flood disaster in Texas. Not sure that the small opossum in panel 4 would understand. And why it’s out in the daytime is anybody’s guess.

Some of you may recall that Mark has a bit of experience with flash floods. He experienced one back in Doc’s Adventure. Start with the June 6, 2019 strip and scroll forward (up). This is the adventure where Mark and Doc, along with some others, go searching for a supposed cache of gold in a lost cave.

Anyway, Mark is still on his high horse, isn’t he?! Melodrama is his middle name. He could suggest another location for the camping site; they can’t all be in a flood zone, can they? I’m guessing the hunt does not get called off, they all go, it floods, and once again Mark has to save everybody.

Mark’s passive-aggressive nature puts Tess on the defensive right away by leading with his “bad feelings” whine. For a reporter, that’s poor communicating. I’d probably react something like Tess, as well. Then Mark attempts to put Tess on the defensive in panel 4 by revealing that he is really talking about the weather, as if Tess should have figured that out. It’s all a lot of unnecessary melodrama. Tess could have been just as dismissive of the weather. The follow-up to panel 4 would likely be Tess exclaiming, “You doofus! You could have led with that instead of your feelings!”

As for Tess, what’s this about a photographer coming from New York? Just for the overnight hunting/camping trip? That doesn’t seem like the best time for photography. But since time is fluid (perhaps in a nod to Relativity?), we may want to assume that the recent dinner was actually held the day after the hunt.  (You won’t find this kind of intellectual analysis going on at CK!)

That would make the hunting, butchering, food prep, and dining sequence more plausible.  And as we see in this panel from November 24, Jules Rivera is being vague about the actual time interval.

Art Dept. I like to point out innovative and good drawing in the strip as I find it. Well, I don’t find much today, except I think Tess’s pose of exasperation in panel 2 very effectively highlights her mood. On the other hand, the overall blocky crudeness in drawing, anatomy, and staging is disappointing. Panels 1 and 3, especially, remind me a bit of some of the clumsier work of Jack Elrod, though clearly different styles:

Being a millionaire means you can paint your house whenever you want to. And maybe change its size. I’m looking back at the strips from October 15 and 16. This place just can’t be the main house, so it must be a guest house. If you are too relaxed to look, the original home is so much bigger, painted red, and sits alongside a large lake.

Here is Mark, first overwrought with the idea that the hunting trip will give Tess another opportunity to take a pot shot at him; then he goes into a grand funk over an oncoming storm. And he’s worried about it!

Quick-thinking Mark doesn’t get it. He doesn’t realize the storm is the perfect excuse for not going hunting, thus avoiding the possibility of friendly fire. So why is Mark keeping the weather report a secret!? Is he afraid that they will call off the hunt and he’ll have to fly home and not get to eat any more tasty pork chops? Okay, you are caught up on the plot, so let’s get this story moving once again!

Art Dept. For once, the animal of the day isn’t looking at us. Maybe the squirrel is looking for an exit.

Quiz Results. I was flooded with responses…at least from Be Ware of Eve Hill. And she had some good responses. Yes, the dialog of family members, such as Rusty, is often more engaged, sometimes witty, and sarcastic than before Rivera.  He certainly comes across as a more normal, authentic version of a kid. Be Ware talks about examples of “breaking the wall”; that is, facing the readers. Well, if the Trails are not always aware, animals are. Many times we find them in the strip, staring us down.

Another important dialog innovation is the emphasis on every-day, plain-spoken English. Prior to Rivera, the Mark Trail Grammar Style Sheet listed only two methods for ending a sentence: a question mark and an exclamation point! Don’t take my word for it! Sample the strips on this site between 2013 and 2020! You’ll be hard pressed to find exceptions! Under Rivera, this exclamation point is demoted to occasional dramatic appearances. As it should be!

I think we should expect a certain amount of consistency and coherency, especially within a sequence of four panels. But that seems missing today. First, Mark is concerned about his safety going out on another hunt with Tess. Good thinking! Next, he acts like a kid who is brushing off that concern and looking forward to eating even more pork following the hunt (in which he might get killed or at least, shot). Finally, Mark’s now visibly upset that a severe storm is coming through that might ruin the hunt where he might “accidentally” get shot or killed by Tess (or even Jess). Meanwhile Jules Rivera keeps dropping big-time hints about Tess’s intentions with her every appearance, hints that Mark is too self-absorbed to see. But maybe I’m reading too much into it.

You know, the way Mark wolfs down those chops makes me think he must live in a cabin full of vegetarians. Or maybe he just hasn’t eaten since leaving Lost Forest. It all just looks so wrong.

Art Dept. Didja notice that Rivera has changed up how she visualizes thought balloons? The last time we saw them (Monday), they appeared like normal dialog balloons. Today, they show up in an unusual but distinctive way, with the tail formed by overlapping circles of decreasing size. It’s different and serves to distinguish itself from the image thought balloons she also uses (see Thursday’s strip).

Well, I’m excited to see how this night hunting turns out; that is, whether Rivera knows much about it. I don’t. In general, most states restrict night hunting to going after predators, but not game. So, if they are hog hunting, there shouldn’t be an issue. OTOH, if Tess is actually hunting Mark Trail, that could be a problem! King Features Syndicate owns the strip, so I don’t think they are going to let Mark suffer a “Dick Cheney” incident. On the other hand, such an “accident” could provide a convenient, if fortuitous, reason for killing off the strip, as well.

Today’s script sounds like a setup plot of a B-Movie, where the intended guest (victim) has an inkling of impending disaster, but feels unable to do anything about it; like leaving the table, packing up, and getting away. And like those movies, Tess and Jess are extravagantly generous and open with their intended victim. And that’s like those old James Bond movies, where the villains are all very (if disingenuously) polite, well-dressed, and focused.

Still, Mark has his interviews and has sketched out his story. Job done! Nothing is keeping him there, except for the opportunity to exclaim “GOLLLLLY!” and chow down on a tableful of pork dishes. Okay, I can’t blame him for that part.

But we should at least expect some consistency with Mark’s dining habits. In panel 1, he eats with his left hand, with a drinking glass to his left. In panel 4, he eats with his right hand and has a different drinking glass on his right. Maybe this inconsistency is due to Mark’s nervousness?  Could also be why he forgot to first cut up that big chunk of meat he’s preparing to shove down his throat. Ah-ha! Maybe that’s the trick: Make Mark feel so nervous he tries to eat too much at once and chokes to death while Tess and Jess pretend to call the paramedics. Or not. But doesn’t everybody like a conspiracy!?

Art Dept. Yes, I know that the dinner table contents look like cartoon clipart pasted into the panel. Maybe it’s only inspired by clipart, or an adaptation of clipart. But let’s be fair here. Allen and his predecessors certainly took advantage of repeating/copying poses and faces, even using clipart for animals, cars, etc. Cartoonists have done this since comic strips began. It’s an accepted practice.

So what is going on here? Is this an attempt to influence Mark’s writing for some unknown reason? And is Mark maintaining his journalistic independence by having dinner with his subject, a person he also has history with? I certainly don’t understand Mark’s comments here; as if a country goober has been buffaloed by his big city betters. But it’s more like small town goober meets big town goober. What’s the point?

Is this just an interlude, another side trip in an otherwise undramatic, mediocre story? At the very least, can we get an attempt to poison Mark!? I mean, Rivera has already made her PSA on eradicating wild hogs about as far as she can go. All for the good, of course. But where does the story go from here? Another hunt with another accidental shooting? More staring at the trophy wall? The only reasonable continuation here is going to turn on whether Tess is faking her amnesia; whether Mark’s appearance breaks her amnesia if it’s real; and how she reacts to it all. It’s the last chance for something dramatic and interesting to take place. Other than to wonder where Tess put the pulled pork, slaw, hot sauce, and buns.

Yes, indeed, readers! Just what would Olive Pitt do in Mark’s place? I think if the hunting situation was the same, but with Olive in the tree, she would clean Tess’s clock after her cheap stunt. The razorback would have company in the back of the truck on the way back.

All that is to say, What’s going on here today? Jess just contradicted what Tess told Mark about the shooting. Is Jess saying that Tess potted that shot near Mark just for fun, so he should just man-up and move on? Or does Jess suggest that Tess’s priorities were perfectly in order when she chose to take a shot at Mark before shooting the hog bearing down on her friend?

I suppose we could interpret this dialog exchange as Rivera promoting Jess as an empty-headed good ol’ boy parody of Texans and hunters. Well, maybe, until we read Rivera’s closing text box: “Don’t mess with Texas!” Now, I’m a tad confused: Is Rivera taking Jess’s side and putting Mark in his place? Is she continuing the parody of Jess by damning him with faint praise? Or is Rivera just trying to be cute with her rhyming, but remaining oblivious to the subtext?

I hope we find out before the Giant Armadillo from Space in panel 4 decides to crush the house and eat Tess, Jess, and Mark for dinner.

Answer to the nerdy grammar quiz: I’m not a professional grammarian, writer, editor, or poet. You probably figured that out some time ago. But something struck me about Rivera’s little rhyme in yesterday’s strip, beyond its simplicity. It was those word endings! So I poked around to look up different types of rhymes. There are several. This particular type is where the word endings are the same for each word, like: bass, lass, morass. This type of rhyme consists of “parallel or adjacent words with the same endings”, or homoioteleuton (ὁμοιοτέλευτον), to use the official (academic) name. This type of rhyme was first codified by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. Hence, the use of the Greek term. Now, did Rivera know this? I see no reason she would, any more than I did. Two-thirds of Rivera’s work was already accomplished with Tess’s name, anyway. Rivera was just lucky enough to hit on a word that rhymed with Tess’s name and still accurately express Mark’s thinking. “Thus endeth the lesson,” as Sean Connery said to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables. I bet you can’t wait to share this really useful information with your family and friends! But for now, on with the show…!

That’s some pretty quick butchering, I think, but needs must. I wonder if Mark is going to quiz Jess on investment options, where he gets his trophies mounted, or if he insists on standing behind Tess when they go hunting together.

All snark aside, it looks like Mark is preparing to take Tess’s husband into his confidence and ask something potentially negative about her: Is she homicidal? Does she really not remember Mark? Did she talk about her Tiger Petting Zoo? It’s quite possible that Tess has kept Jess ignorant about her past by faking her amnesia.

Okay, let’s appreciate the fact that Jules Rivera spends time showing Mark actually working on his journalism now and then, something prior Mark Trail cartoonists tended to leave to our imagination.  And it isn’t just for show, but it works as a technique to advance the story.

Call me a traditionalist, a purist, old-fashioned, or just a frustrated wannabe cartoonist, but I get put off some when Rivera uses a normal dialog balloon to display what would otherwise be thoughts, not spoken words. Thought balloons usually have a series of ellipses or bubbles instead of the usual dialog “tail” pointing to the speaker. But as we can see in panel 2, Rivera likes to use the thought balloon as a memory or imaging reference. Maybe Rivera can come up with a new design or just combine them into one!

Mark is trying to come to terms with the shooting incident. He is conflicted by his impression that Tess is a good shot, but now wonders how she should have almost hit him or Shania. Mark has little real world experience for that belief in Tess’s accuracy, but he’s probably on the right track. His conflicted feelings in panel 3 seem to be leading him to question Tess’s objectives and might lead him to realize Tess is conning him. Or so my theory goes.

Pretentious Nerdy Grammar Quiz: Okay, students. What is notable about Mark’s closing words in panel 3? Your immediate thought is likely correct, but dig a little more. If you figure it out, leave a comment!