Oh, I do like the way Rivera has Tess’s narration of her “hog hunting origin” implanted on her past self in panel 3. An improvement over the ubiquitous narration box. Rivera has used different visual schema in the past to illustrate character recollections, but this is a new one. I’ve seen this device used elsewhere, but memory fails me. Anybody have an idea?

So it seems all three of the hunters “did what they had to do” to earn their stripes. And overcoming adversity has brought them together. Well, is this it, then? Mark has learned who they are, how they formed, and what they do. Is there anything else or is it time to head back to Lost Forest?

There is the actual hunt, of course. And something has to happen soon, or the story will end just after it gets going. I’m thinking (not guessing, mind you) that during the hunt something dangerous will happen, requiring a concerted effort to save or salvage the situation. Here, things can get a bit dicey, owing to the social complications implicit in this story: Man Saves Women? Women Save Man? All get saved by somebody else? Any choice you select will be rife with social expectations, stereotypes, and integrity issues. Perhaps there will be a situation in which all four characters have to work together as a team to save the day. Sounds dull. But first, we’ll first have to see how this week winds up.

Hoo-boy. And I thought Reba’s story was goofy. A wild pig just happened to run through a plate glass window (presumably) into her house, huh? Well, it obviously could not have smashed through a brick wall, much less the wall of a standard timber-framed house with modern siding. Maybe it came in through an opened attached garage and smashed through one of those cheap hollow-core doors you can buy at the Big Box stores.

So, Princess Shania grabbed a rifle off the gun wall (which must have already been loaded) and the result was smoked ribs for the rest of the month and paying for a professional cleaning job. After that, Shania must have filled out a club application, included the requisite photos and yearly dues, and the rest is herstory.

For the record, I’m not anti-feminist. Nor anti-female. I’m no incel. Far from it! This is all Rivera’s story; and I’m just a reactor. I think anybody can be a hunter if they want. No machismo or beards required.

And for the record, feral hogs are a real problem across the southern United States, and heavily populated throughout Texas. So I’m hoping Rivera will spend some of this story to point out the real problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PfBiLzP0V4

Art Dept. The more I look at Shania’s face in panel 1, the more I get creeped out. It just looks like somebody pressed it flat with a large, hot iron. Even the jaw line doesn’t make sense. Just creepy! On the other hand, the rifles on the wall certainly look more like actual rifles than what Reba was holding yesterday. And so does the one Shania is holding.

Mark jumps right in with his next interview. I’m not sure what difference it would have made if Reba couldn’t “shoot right”, by which I wonder if she meant “shoot straight”?  Apparently, Reba has trouble with chronology and transitions, since panel 3 looks like there should be one or more panels between it and panel 2. So, fine. Reba was motivated by feral hogs beating up her fields. And I see the pseudo-patriotic parody going on here: “I’m gonna blast those commie hogs to kingdom come!”

What I don’t get is the rifle she is holding. What the heck is that thing!?

I’m not conversant on the many styles of firearms available, but I’m fairly certain none of them look like what Reba is holding in panel 4. That looks like something somebody might draw without having an actual rifle or photos of an actual rifle on hand. But tell me if I’m wrong, people. Please correct my ignorance. Is Rivera just being lazy or am I more ignorant that I think?

Well, aren’t they just the cutest hunting trio!? Today’s strip looks like it was expressly made for snarking. In spite of that, the story is moving along a bit. It seems that Tess’s two hunting partners are named after famous country singers. Might that mean something? I don’t know. Both actual country stars have had controversial, successful careers. Both are very popular and involved in philanthropic activities. Like their real-life namesakes, these two hunters also share similar hair colors. Fine. So what? Maybe Rivera just likes their names. But all of this shlock Rivera has put in in seems like an echo of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Maybe she watched that TV show back in the 1980s. Mine did!

The quip, “The higher the hair the closer to heaven” is a paraphrase of “The higher the hair the closer to God”, popular back in the 1960s when stacked hairstyles were popular. Dolly Parton apparently used the quote when questioned about her stacked hair styles. The phrase seems to have made a comeback in various social circles these days, though sometimes in a humorous manner. What really lies behind the quips of these two women (panel 2), if anything, remains to be seen. So, we’ll wait and see.

Props. Glad to see that Rivera has equipped Mark with a camera, since he is supposed to be a photo-journalist.  He has carried a camera before, but it is curiously uncommon. Maybe it was a long-running joke in the pre-Rivera days, as well. On the other hand, I see no rifle or shotgun with him.

Dang! Another swing and a miss for me. So what was Mark looking at on that wall that we could not see? That seemed to be the point of the last panel in yesterday’s strip: That is, setting us up for the big reveal today. I reckon I was wrong about Gemma’s head having pride of place on the hidden wall. Otherwise, I think it would have been more effective for Rivera to show Mark turned around, starting at the walls we could see.  Am I wrong?

Anyway, I can’t believe Mark would have been so gobsmacked yesterday by what appears to be a typical (if bountiful) hunter’s trophy room. After all, Mark has his own past history of hunting. I think it is safe to say that Rivera is not a hunter, so a trophy room is sure to shock.

Anyway, Rivera jumped us back outside, where Mark grabbed his camo jacket—presumably from his car—and then walked some 10 yards away to show to Tess and Jess, standing back by the car! Sometimes I don’t get Rivera’s reasoning for her layouts. 

Art Dept. I’m trying my best to mentally square Mark’s forearm with his torso. But I can’t.  At the angle shown, his total arm length would likely extend down at least to his kneecaps. Talk about knuckle-dragging. I’m not sure if Rivera bothered to draw the complete arm when roughing in the panel, or whether she just draws each body part separately, which could lead to this distorted look.

Speaking of yesterday, I reckon my subtle, if possibly lame, pun shot right over your heads, as Rivera’s did mine. There don’t appear to be any puns today, thank goodness. Paronomasia aside, we are witnessing Mark getting the treatment again, being steered away from his interview in order to admire a room of mounted animal heads. Looks like we also missed details of the wedding, so it’s not all bad.

I’m guessing that Mark is taken aback in panel 3 by a wall containing something more unusual. It probably isn’t mounted boar heads, as there are one or two on the wall behind Mark. Hmmm … Ah-ha! I think I’ve got it! I bet you do, as well. If I’m right, I also won’t be able to forget this (that’s a hint). After all, I meant what I said and I said what I meant….

“Why the long face, Mark!?” Looks like his jaw got pulled away from his head. I suppose if there was an award for “Bad Acting in a Comic Strip”, today’s entry would be one of the finalists. And maybe also a runner-up for “Most Egregious Padding in a Story.” It’s like one of those terrible infomercials that never seems to quit. And today’s strip lends more support to the theory that Tess is the one running this game.

Nevertheless, we learned one or two things today, namely that Jess is a lonely millionaire, which also explains the outrageous “hunting cabin.” I’m just a slow kid from Virginia, so I’m also glad Rivera put that explanatory text in panel 4, because Tess’s pun shot right over my head.

Will Mark ever get to the real point of the interview, the wild pig hunting group, or will this entire week be devoted to Jess & Tess’s lovey-dovey matrimony? I wonder whether we will have to endure two more days describing their wedding. I can see a celebration as they exit the church to the accompaniment of a 21-shotgun salute by Jess’s fellow hunters, all dressed in formal duck hunter livery. Well, I have to admit that it would certainly be an interesting panel to see!

Jess’s conversation gambit apparently worked. Instead of interviewing Tess about her hog-hunting group, as Mark was assigned to do, he is being led down an irrelevant side road of matrimonial kismet. I suppose there is some justifiable curiosity in knowing about their first meeting. In another context, we might suspect Mark is deliberately playing the role of a gullible and inexperienced reporter in order to disarm Jess and Tess to reveal more than they intended. But so far, we’ve seen no support for that idea. Yeah, I must be projecting, once again.

Okay, I hear what (some of) you are thinking: “Hey, George, you big dummy! Maybe it is Jess that was conned by Tess; not the other way around. Her amnesia is just part of her con so he wouldn’t ask too many questions about her background. She needed a place to hide out and a meal ticket.”

Moving the story along, Mark and Tess have their reunion, but it’s all one-sided. Has Tess been brainwashed (e.g., hypnotic therapy)? Drugged? Enmeshed in some kind of personality-stealing cult? That Jess fellow, he certainly looks suspicious with that handlebar mustache of his. I’d claim it was fake, but Rivera seems to have a habit of drawing facial hair that always looks like it was loosely applied with an adhesive.

But, let’s take this at face value for the time being. Is Tess unaware of her own past, or just her past with Mark? Is Jess involved in her transformation or is he just an innocent dupe? I can’t wait to find out.

Art Dept. As we’ve seen, Rivera is anything but consistent. Not sure if this is a deliberate decision or just how things work out. In panel 1, Jess and Tess look like flat paper dolls for some child’s pretend 2-D playhouse. The staging of the panel is unreasonably crowded. For example, why is the car in the scene, since it adds nothing to the plot or the current interaction?

Panel 2 is an improvement. Jess and Tess take on a more substantive appearance, with actual expressions and a modicum of solidity. Mark’s depiction is also interesting, as if he has been delineated by a good sketch artist. The change of direction in the reflection of the door glass is more for reasons of visual balance than continuity with panel 1. That is, the angle from upper left to lower right leads back towards the center, where Jess and Tess are standing, where Mark is also looking. It’s basic design.

The one thing I think is wrong is Rivera’s narration box in panel 2, giving away the punch line before Tess delivers it. We’ve seen that in everyday situations, like where one person asks about a new mystery movie and some jerk reveals the surprise ending, “Is this the movie where they discover Edgar killed his wife in the park?” If Rivera felt the need to clue us in on the plot twist, she should have been more provocative: “But something is amiss!” or “Tess makes an unexpected confession…”

“Hi, I’m Mark the Journalist” Really!? What happened to “Hi, I’m Mark Trail”? Has Mark’s reputation plummeted so much that he is forced to identify himself in relation to a magazine for teenage girls? In Texas!?

Mark can sure be a real yenta. Why is he so concerned about Jess being husband number five or six? I mean, who cares!? If Mark was really concerned about Jess, wouldn’t he be more interested whether Jess knows about Tess’s corrupt past?

While I’m on this subject, would a bunch of teenage girls really be interested in women who hunt wild pigs? Just wondering how this topic got linked to Teen Girl Sparkle, rather than one of the other 16 magazines in Bill Ellis’s publishing empire. Perhaps Jules Rivera is being lazy or just can’t afford to spend more time on the strip. She came up with the concept of Mark working for different magazines when she took over the strip in 2020, but has more less abandoned that plot device, without really exploring the possibilities.

… but nothing happened on the way over, so it’s all okay. Let’s thank Jules Rivera for clarifying that Mark is driving a rental car, rather than one he owns … or stole. He also didn’t rent a horse, so that’s something! Since Mark didn’t spend the entire week at the bridge, the story moves on.

“That’s like three cabins strapped together!” Mark gulped in his Gomer Pyle response. Seem to be more like four or five cabins by area, depending on what your idea of a hunting cabin is. But it’s Texas, and as many citizens like to brag, almost everything is big in Texas.  A quick scan of actual hunting lodges indicates this is not even in the top five for size. Oh, Mark. You really need to get out more often!

This is probably a commercial establishment, set up to handle several groups of hunters at a time.  In my state, which features lots of lakes, some people have built summer “cabins” on rural lakes that are bigger and more modern than many houses here in town, complete with grass lawns and cement driveways. I reckon “cabin” is a flexible term.

Art Dept. A defender might point out that the extreme miniaturization of this strip in newspapers is a big reason for Rivera’s very simplistic drawing style, which often borders on the being sketchy. To a certain extent, I agree. But the style of other strips belies that size justification as a primary reason. As I’ve noted in the past, Rivera does sometimes use more dynamic layouts in her panels, as we see in panel 1 and even more in panel 3, with its bird’s eye angle and axonometric view of the cabin. Yet much of the detail in panel 3 is sketchy, except for the cabin, which was drawn with more care. And that static-looking car in panel 1 would look more like it is moving had Rivera added a few “speed lines” behind it.

I’m surprised that Cherry did not bring up brother Dirk and his sounder of feral hogs, earlier. I’d have thought they would be one of her main reasons for turning down Bill Ellis’ job offer.

Maybe Jules Rivera doesn’t see all of this time spent on Mark’s complaining as story padding, but that’s how it comes off. I mean, two days should be enough, right? Perhaps the explanation for all of this lies in one way I think Rivera handles story development:

Each week is a “chapter”, with one main point that gets promoted, explained, and hashed out by Saturday. Then on to the next chapter the following week. Sure, there is a simplicity and clarity in that approach. And it supports the scant time people spend on reading comic strips, so it pays to simplify. If  a reader misses a day or two, nothing much lost.

Nevertheless, there are parts of any story that do not deserve equal treatment. This is one of them. By Monday we should see Mark flying into a Texas airport, hopefully without the hokey western attire he wore the last time. I wonder if Diana Daggers will pick him up again!?