Well, bust my buttons! Is Mark still in New York?! I thought for sure that the story had come to an end. The last we saw of this debacle (May 31st), the audience was on foot and heading to the exits after learning that a competitor’s AI was being given away for free. Yet, panel 4 shows a relaxed crowd of people (we presume) sitting around the table, as if nothing was going on.
But what’s with Sid stump sneaking away in panel 1, like some kind of animated sprite? His expression—from what we can tell—does not appear at a loss or in shock. Instead, he looks as if he is enjoying the chaos of the Crypto Bros as they see their project tank. Could he be secretly behind this “Free AI” announcement as a trick to ruin the Crypto Bros?
Art Dept. What’s with that head of Mark? His sharp, rectangular face has given way to a kind of middle-aged puffiness; unless he has stuffed his mouth with dinner. But his entire profile just does not look right; it lacks the straight, linearity that has characterized his profile. But this is not unique. There are so many fluctuations in his expressions and the shape of his head that it’s almost impossible to generalize.
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.
Okay, the miracle of the mud occurred, after all. Enough to ruin the evening for the Grungey Boys.
Moving on, I am amazed to see in panel 1 what looks like another misdirected dialog balloon. It shows Honest Ernest berating his companions for doing something only he has been doing! The content of the dialog balloon suggests that one of the other two dudes should be berating Ernest. I don’t get it.
Furthermore, how does grabbing your cap or covering your mouth help extricate this lawn mower from the mud, as Rivera states? We’ve seen text boxes in the past that describe actions that do not appear to be happening. I might be overthinking this or Rivera under-thought it.
Anyway, it’s Saturday, so it looks like this story has reached its climax. The Grungey Boys are no doubt too unsettled to realize they could simply make a new path or go some other place. But it’s a major win for Rusty Trail, even if his understanding of science is wrong. This victory will certainly help improve his otherwise poor win-loss record. By the way, say good-bye to Dirk. He’ll disappear like free beer at a ballpark. Such is his mysterious way.
Art. Dept Addition: Here is today’s installment, as it appears in the newspaper. Again, much appreciated increase in the use of actual tonal contrast over Rivera’s previous habit of just raw lines.
Olive comes through with a scientific solution. Good on her! It also helps that this “lawn mower” (of course, we’ve all noticed it never seems to have a blade beneath it) runs over the track more than once to help accelerate the mud production. So sure. Somehow enough of that water made it down through the grass and into the dirt to produce enough mud to bog down the mower. Well … why not. Let’s give Rusty a break for once. Will this really work? Wouldn’t Ernest just cut a new path around it? Wait, too much logical thinking here.
Art Dept. I do think the wet tracks forming in panel 1 are quite naturalistically presented. Not so much the ambiguous and sketchy scene in panel 3. At the same time, I’m continually amazed at how objects can get bigger or smaller for no apparent reason. The mower that Honest Ernest rides today is about half the size it was from yesterday (panel 1 for June 5). Perhaps an optical illusion based on the point of view, you think?
As for that panel 1 in yesterday’s strip, the overall concept is good, but the execution doesn’t match up. Look closely at Olive. I’ll wait …………… And are those three actually above Ernest? Or are they looking up from a hole or gully? That’s one of the challenges in drawing a bird’s eye scene like this: elevations are tricky. But some more line work or hatching might have helped better suggest the elevation.
Well, a lot of artistic license (andour expected imagination) went into today’s strip. As I feared, Rivera shows the trio taking the lazy and guaranteed-to-fail approach of pouring water from the top of the rise, down the slope, and into the path of the oncoming riding lawn mower. Instant mud bath? Forget it!
What a shock it must have been for them to see this pathetic and incompetent attempt produce nonegativeeffect on Honest Ernest at all. They’d have been better off pouring the water on Honest Ernest!
Art Dept. Very disappointed to see Rivera once again revert to her technique of drawing completely flat flora like that of a high-school play. I can hear you say: “At night, forms lose volume and definition!” To which I respond: “So what!?” Those sketchy lines barely resemble bushes and trees! Rivera could use a bit more of her artistic expression and add more definition so it at least looks like she cared.
And what do you think of the improbable sequencing of time and events going on here among the panels? Does it bother you?
The riding lawnmower is decently illustrated, even if it looks more like a riding lawn tractor to me. As if I’m an expert on lawn care.
Rusty’s devilish plan is revealed … to nobody’s surprise. I hope they brought along a lot of water barrels, because they’ll need a lot if they want to muddy enough ground to discourage the Grungey Boys’ hijinks. Maybe that’s why they got Dirk to come along, to carry those heavy barrels. Being the Family Muscle seems to be Dirk’s major role in the strip.
How long do they think this mud will last? I mean, it just rained a day or two ago, right? But the ground is just fine, now. So this doesn’t seem like the killer plan Rusty imagines. I’d have expected one of the adults in the room to pull Rusty aside and say something like “Rusty, you know all that mud you saw the other night? That was from a big rain storm. You think we can do the same thing with just a few barrels of water? Nah! We’d probably get better results by stretching a muddy clothesline across the path, about chest-high. Better yet, we come back during the day, dig a big hole, fill it with mud, then cover it with sticks, leaves, and dirt. At night, they might not notice it until they are falling in.”
A tip of the grungy cap to regular reader Be Ware of Eve Hill for her rapid, multiple-post catchup. Unlike other blog lords, I do not demand constant and unconditional obeisance. I recognize that—for some reason or another—there are occasionally more important priorities than your daily dose of The Daily Trail. “As long as you return.” (Read that statement in the low, dramatic voice of James Earl Jones.)
I’m still confused how this is a “race”, unless they are doing individual time trials. On the other hand, it sure doesn’t take much to entertain these dudes, does it!? Their motivation still eludes me.
It would be easy to nitpick various contradictions in today’s strip. The Bigger Picture, however is that Dirkis here! He’s becoming increasingly pulled out of his self-imposed isolationist/survivalist compound to get involved in family affairs. He’s getting more face time than Doc Davis!
If you manage to remember when Rivera last focused on this adventure, Rusty had come up with an idea to discourage the Grungey Boy’s races and save the forest. I’m not exactly sure how it will be done, and I don’t want to muddy the waters with a lot of tomfool guesses, so tune in tomorrow.
Art Dept. Although I often find heavy outlining of characters distracting, I admit that Rivera’s use of outlining in panel 3 greatly reinforces the naturalism and enjoyment of the foreground figures. In some ways, the trio has the look of a woodcut, through their bold lines, straight-line hatching, and solid forms. Compare them to the images in panel 4 or even panel 1.
Panel 4, with its raised point of view, has a totally different feel to it. Perhaps the raised position of the three not only projects a commanding overview, but also implies their assurance of success. Then again, maybe I’m getting flashbacks to the Wizard of Oz film scene where Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion are spying on the guards at the Wicked Witch’s castle.
For those coming in late, the “Grungy Boys” are middle-age delinquents with a fascination for causing destruction in Lost Forest. Head Grungey Boy in yellow, Honest Ernest, has fallen in stature over the years, from an optimistic ne’er-do-well with a business and a wife, to a divorced loser with a revenge chip on his shoulder against the entire Trail family. The guy with the Richard Simmons haircut is Connor, a whiny incompetent who got into trouble after following a fake survival book by fraudster Tad Sass. Connor was rescued by Mark and Rusty, but became a major headache in Mark’s doomed fishing survival class. The third member (panel 1) is an anonymous goof with a funny mouth and cap.
For some reason, Jules Rivera calls this action a demolition derby. It was originally explained as a race. Yet in neither case is there ever more than one riding lawn mower present. Yeah, don’t look for the logic.
We can expect some action coming up from Rusty and his aunt, Olive Pitt, who have been trying to find a way to stop the Grungey Boys from damaging Lost Forest.
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?
Following long-standing tradition, we get to enjoy the site of Kelly Welly (panel 4) pulling her hair out in frustration at the realization that she once again backed the wrong horse. Jules Rivera actually did quite a good job drawing her! And we can enjoy seeing the schemes of Cricket Bro and Sid Stump come crashing down around their feet.
Rivera has resorted to one of her trademark story-ending memes, having Mark break the fourth wall to offer us readers a TV sitcom style retort. I think Rivera oversold the scene by putting Mark in the foreground. A funnier version would have been to show Mark still sitting at the table behind him and turning to talk to us, as Kelly simultaneously goes crazy. It would be like how Mel Brooks created an in-context fourth wall ending for Blazing Saddles, when Sheriff Bart and the Waco Kid got on their horses and rode out of town, dismounted, then got into a waiting limo to drive off into the sunset. Great scene and great movie!
Well, for those who came in late, this entire story is one of Rivera’s favorite tropes to satirize: The foibles, corruption, and jerks in the high tech industry. Investigating tech industry fraud or corruption (especially where it might have an impact on the environment), has been one of Mark’s most common plot devices since Rivera took over.
Ah, the perils of comic strip continuity, where deadlines can be tight, especially when the surf’s up. So, maybe Jules Rivera was in a rush and forgot that Cricket Bro wasn’t the one getting the award (panel 1): In fact, he just presented it to Simon Stump two days ago! Was I the only one to catch this!?
But hold on, maybe Mark had a point, after all: This could make a great story about the exposure and downfall of Cricket Bro’s AI scam at the hands of a mysterious “Free AI” vendor. And wouldn’t it be great to have some real drama here, after all?
Now, who could be behind this unexpected crisis? Perhaps the enigmatic, faux professor, Bee Sharp. He and Cricket Bro are hardly pals at this point. Or maybe those two Florida manatee rescuers who discovered that Cricket Bro was behind the attempt to kidnap Max the Manatee as they were trying to save it (you recall the “Manatee Calamity” adventure, yes?).
Cricket Bro’s “AI” project is still nebulous and vague, like an Oort Cloud. In the real world, AI is hardly the one-size-fits-all tool it’s made out to be. People create AI applications for all kinds of fields and industries. Yeah, some of it is “free”, but much of it is not. The free stuff could just be some generic app people use to create cheap composite photos of themselves making out with their favorite movie star (Not that I would know anything about that). But that’s not where big money goes.
No surprise that comic strips usually don’t have the time or the bandwidth to get into the nitty-gritty of real-world tech. Rivera could’ve linked Cricket Bro’s AI product to something more specific, such as sustainability or healthcare, things relevant to this strip’s reason for existing. Yet, all we have at this point is some vague “AI” product.
Mr. Moneybags stands up all angry in panel 3 and demands answers, to which Rivera responded “Good Question” (in case we didn’t get it. I got it.). I can’t wait to see how Cricket Bro and Sid Stump handle this crisis. Maybe they can ask their AI app to produce an answer that will save their bacon and their scheme!
Well, maybe I was wrong. Mark’s position yesterday was not simply a matter of artistic expression; Mark and Kelly Welly actually did change seats. Maybe Kelly wanted to have a better view of Cricket Bro, her boss. Perhaps she has some kind of idol worship, or she’s playing “His Gal, Friday” to the hilt.
Peevish Kelly Welly is justified for getting angry with Mark about his smartphone etiquette. Why does Rivera continue to make Mark act like a rube? Can the Mark Trail strip influence people to be more concerned about our world, its wildlife, and the environment if Mark can’t demonstrate enough respect for the people around him to mute or turn off his phone during an event?
Maybe that ship has sailed. I was in a public library today when I heard a phone ring across the way, breaking the silence. A woman carried on a conversation for several minutes, not bothering to talk softly, walk outside, or tell the caller to call back in an hour. And I wonder what fascinated Mark about a free AI engine, given his disdain for AI, block chains, crypto, etc. Perhaps his amazement is a realization that even more people will now play with AI, using ever more energy and creating ever more pollution. What Mark may not realize is that there are already several free AI programs available, even if they are limited versions of the full, paid products.
Looking like a 1980’s toy superhero doll (panel 3), Cricket Bro hands out his phony AI awards at his fundraising event. Why Mark thought this was worth a story is unclear. Looks like Mark is thinking the same thing.
I noticed that neither Mark nor Kelly bothered to eat their pork chop and mashed potatoes. In fact, neither did Sid Stump! (panel 2) That food must be really bad, which is a crime. Anybody that ruins a good pork chop should be made to eat a bag of raw chia seeds.
To be transparent: I put that stuff about pork chops and chia in for my wife, who likes to use chia seeds but has little use for pork chops. Yet, I married her.
Art Dept. You’re probably looking at panel 4 and thinking “Did Mark and Kelly change seats?” It’s possible, but I think this is just another example of artistic license. It had to be difficult to pass up a strong composition like this, with Mark leaning on the dinner table, cynically bored. Mark’s pose is well designed to emphasize his mood.
Since Rivera likes to try putting jokes into these dailies and making Mark look like a goof, I’m surprised she passed up the obvious slapstick of having Mark accidentally lean his elbow in the mashed potatoes.
I posted this discussion separately, in order to focus on one visual aspect of Mark Trail: Jules Rivera’s increasing use of grays.
My regular post for 5/27/25 follows below. I’ve been noticing more and more the use of grays in the black & white newspaper version of Mark Trail. From a visual standpoint, this is a worthwhile improvement, as these mid-tones can help define volume, lighting, and even mood. Here is today’s strip as published in the usual “black & white” format of the newspaper. Compare it to the colorized version:
Do take into account that I’m photographing the strip with my phone, so there may be a certain loss of fidelity. Nevertheless, there shoujld be enough to clearly notice that Rivera is using grays to indicate basic contrasts between objects. In panel 1 a graduated gray pattern in the background helps establish the table lighting from the overall, darkened room. It is a mundane technique, of course, but given the stylized imagery that Rivera uses, adding mid-tones provides an improvement in the strip’s presentation.
Many strips today avoid shading, altogether, especially the majority of joke strips, where features such as tonality, volume, and mood may not be important.
However, even some continuity (dramatic) strips, where mood and lighting would seem more important, avoid tonality: Judge Parker is one example (click the images to see expanded versions):
On the other hand, For Better or For Worse will use overlapping blacks, whites, hatching and grayscale patterns to evoke a more sophisticated setting of light and mood:
The avoidance of “shading” is often justified because of the reduced size of the strips when published in newspapers and the fear that scenes and figures will blur together, giving a less inviting appearance to the readers. There is some merit to that position. Like grays, I think there is a middle ground that can be staked out, and we should be glad to see Mark Trail making inroads in this direction.
Is all this just BS? Pretentious academic-speak wasted on mere comic strips? Let me know.
Mark discovers that inventors, innovators, and charlatans do, indeed, hold fundraising events under different guises.
We humans are often easily fooled by tricks, trinkets, and glitz, meant to define greatness: a piece of parchment on the wall, a hulk throwing a designated bad guy out of the wrestling rink, or somebody waving a hat and declaring themselves to be great. Or maybe it’s the concept and promise of greatness, itself, a vague aspirational statement that could be taken in different ways, but never clearly explained.
The cartoonish notion of self-aggrandizement is on full display here, not that it is anything new. Kelly Welly, Cricket Bro’s designated sycophant, provides the usual cover for his phony status the same way we’ve seen in other places, both real or fictional. It is odd, given that Kelly is supposed to be a professional reporter. I suppose money talks big when it has to.
It’s one thing for Jules Rivera to let Kelly lord it over Mark once in a while, especially as she almost always came up short in the pre-Rivera incarnation of the strip. Yet it’s another thing to portray Kelly as some kind true believer, stifling any opposition to Cricket Bro with empty accolades.
Art Dept. If you have been looking closely, have you noticed strange distortions of scale between figures in the panels? Or even next to each other? For example, Kelly’s figure in panel 1 looks positively childlike in size compared to Mark. The mannequins in panel 3, between Mark and Cricket Bro, also seem out of proportion to the rest of the people in the scene.
Anybody want to hazard a guess who the old gent in panel 1 resembles? May not be the same person, but a brother or close cousin. The first fifty correct responders will be accorded the status of “Great in your own mind!”
It would have been fun to see Mark grovel before Kelly Welly. I wonder what he had to do or give in order for her to agree? From the looks of things, she still doesn’t look terribly happy. It’s understandable.
Well, few people can send others running for the exits like Mark can. It’s a good thing Mark was not trying to make time with Vera or Kelly Welly. Who could resist a man in a sports coat, lumberjack shirt, and bow tie, talking about shark eggs, and holding onto his lapels as if he thinks it makes him look sophisticated? No ego, there, I’m sure (panel 2).
I wonder if he’s wearing hiking boots. Mark certainly looks like the country cousin in the big city in panel 1. Was this a deliberate action by Jules Rivera to poke fun at Trail? She does like to make him look out of place or silly. Rivera has employed this trick more than once (e.g. 4/20/21-4/21/21, 8/8/22).
I might be stretching a bit (and it hurts), but it looks like Cricket Bro brought along as his “plus-one” Holly Folly, the “lifestyle influencer” and Professor Bee Sharp’s companion at the faux STEM Retreat of Simon Stump (“Bear Necessity”, 2023).
Art Dept. The decorative images of people painted on the rear wall (panel 1) build an illusion of more attendees. Nice! … Wait. Are they actually supposed to be real people at the event?
Note: I forgot to publish the May 13, 2025 blog, so you can all scroll back there and fill in the missing space of your Mark Trail Awareness!
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!
Vera sounds like she has a good head on her shoulders. And if she had an invitation that allows a guest, she’s clearly wise enough to not let Mark know about it. Mark, on the other hand…. As for this awards show being an opportunity for another article, perhaps what Mark just smells is his Cricket Protein Bar.
Like the other female bit players that show up in this rebooted series from time to time, Very does not try to seduce Mark the way women did in the pre-Rivera days. The “pre-Rivera Mark Trail” was not only immune to these advances, but openly hostile to them. The current Mark Trail shares the same disinterest, and it seems the feeling is mutual.
I don’t wish to get political here, but I wonder what Mark meant when he said to himself “…I have to ask Kelly Welly to be their plus-one?” Was this a slip of the pen or an indication that Kelly has adopted third person personal pronouns? If so, they hasn’t said anything about it.
Wait. Vera said that AI doesn’t make money by itself. But then continued on about raising “investor cash”, which we all know means R&D. But that is different from AI generating income. Which is it, then? That could help explain why she isn’t one of the tech moguls.
So why would Mark (channeling a character in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickelby by exclaiming “Gadzooks!”) want to stick around for an AI award show? He doesn’t even like AI! Furthermore, his assignment is over.
Okay, we have more clarification. This Vera character is some kind of go-between or minder for Simon Stump to keep him out of trouble, one assumes. Or does she mean “handler” as in Fixer? So who would Vera report to? It would have to be Cricket Bro. If Stump is also part of Cricket Bro’s company, what is his role? Perhaps this current assignment is not over at all, but has entered a second phase. Then well done, Rivera, for the misdirection!
Exactly where is this coffee shop in New York? With all of the flora in the area, it doesn’t seem to match the real location of the shop in lower Manhattan.
Art Dept. That bear in Mark’s mental flashback (panel 3) looks a lot more menacing and naturalistic than the cartoony bear that actually appeared two years ago in the story that introduced Sid Stump (“Bear Necessities”). Evidently, Rivera has access to better reference images these days.
The Daily Trail 