… 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!?

Using one of her standard bilateral layouts, Rivera starts off today’s strip by continuing yesterday’s hand wringing. I find it odd that Mark keeps repeating already-discussed points (“Texan women with guns”), to which Cherry keeps acting as if this is the first time she’s heard it. Mark’s comment in panel 3 doesn’t make sense. The women are out to kill wild pigs (hogs, or whatever). Sure. That Tess killed another animal, even an elephant, is supposed to make her a pariah? I think Cherry’s remark in panel 4 is correct. The other women—based on their avocation, not their location—would not see this as a detriment. In any event, there is no evidence that Tess killed Gemma, so why should Mark say that?

As for hitting on Texas—which happens to be the location of this trio of hog hunters—we could easily interpret today’s statements as Rivera injecting politically-charged comments, but we could just as easily see it as playing on common stereotypes about Texas. Both interpretations could be correct, but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether one takes precedence or if my interpretation is just wrong.

Then again, Mark and Cherry live in a small community in a forest, presumably somewhere in northern Georgia, based on the Old Trailverse Standard. In such a community, neither guns nor hunting would be strange. This would make Cherry’s comment disingenuous.