‘Chute ripped from his harness, Pilot McPonytail hurtles across the sky like a cruise missile, while the three amigos simply watch slack-jawed and gob-smacked.

I suppose that the last week or two worth of installments represents mere seconds in actual time, but I am still wondering why the hell Baldy isn’t in cuffs, knocked cold or subdued in some way… He’s still the bad guy and still has fight left in him.

As for today’s installment, I grow increasingly confident that Mr. Allen is drawing inspiration from your comments!  Why Just the other day Richard Bryant, Esq. predicted that Pilot McPonytail would land in a “convenient haystack…” and voilà! it is so!

And of course Mark is immediately on the scene, inquiring after his welfare… as the pilot-turned-projectile miraculously survived being tossed through a wall at terminal g-force velocity, able to raise a crooked hand as if to indicate that any spinal cord injury is in the lumbar and not the cervical region…

…

What?  Only three H’s??

And if it wasn’t for Mark, who is back to verbalizing everything, we wouldn’t even know what was happening here…  At least the ponytail has gone back to hair-color again.  That was really bugging me…  And what must still be going through this guy’s head right about now?  “Why did I ever listen to that Bald headed son-of-a-bitch?!”  “Why didn’t I listen to my mother and finish high school?”  or “Damn that United Airlines… this close to tenure and they drop me like a hot rock, forcing me to take up a life of crime…”

Or it’s the magic, ever-changing chameleon hair color that automatically blends in with whatever is the background!

But what’s a couple of broken legs?  Ouch I can  feel the bones snapping right now… But where Mark can jump off a 100 foot cliff and not sustain internal or external injuries, I suspect this bad guy won’t do as well… even with a parachute.

But back to terra firma, do we have Baldy corralled?  Subdued?  He’s been backed into a corner, has nothing to lose, which is when the basest instincts take over, right?  A broken hand isn’t going to stop him!  Book’im, Dan-o… Now!

This is funny.  It’s like no one is listening to the other…

Other than, the “Yeah, I’m OK,” it’s Baldy: “My Hand is Broken,” Sheriff: “The pilot bailed out of the plane,”  Mark: “We really need to take shelter!”

Which brings us all up to speed with the exception of Johnny Loan Elk and Blondie, who are somewhere else in the Ghost Town…

Mark is showing genuine concern for Baldy, who by now is raising his broken hand to his mouth why?  Is he going to wretch?  Ewww.  He’s still got a left hand, though… I’d secure the gun if I were you…

With finger on the trigger and one last line, Baldy prepares to dispatch Mark… Little does he know that the tomahawk, err… hatchet, is winging its way toward him, silently, with bone-crushing aim, destined to break his grip, if not his hand…

So with a CRACK and a K-THUD, Sheriff Stober gains the upper hand, so to speak,  assuming that the cracking sound is coming from Baldy’s Metacarpals and Phalanges… he won’t be punching or pointing a gun with his right hand any time soon.

And what’s with the shape-shifting gun?  Does the Tomahawk strike with such force that it’s flattening out, spreading and rearranging the molecules of the gun itself??

I still say that the “tomahawk”  looks more like a camping hatchet, but whatever…

Ahm gon trow dat ting, mon.

Let’s hope he has better aim with the ol’ tomahawk than he does have the sense to keep his gun barrel pointed up at the falling rain… (thanks, George…)

Of all the one-panel-wonders we have been subjected to, this one is actually pretty cool… I’ll give you that, James Allen.

As the tomahawk flies through the air (it’s got to have a name, right?) We are hopefully days away from witnessing frontier justice at its best.  “He shot first, Sheriff, honest!!”  I have probably shared this before, but it bears sharing again- the courtroom scene from the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit, where one Marshall Rooster Cogburn is being cross-examined and challenged for his use of deadly force…  Having a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later.  I love the language.  It’s apparently authentic to the time period.

Looks more like a hatchet to me… one you’d find at Menards or Lowes…  something a serial killer uses…

This is what I had pictured in my mind…

or this…

But Holy Mos Moses, you were right!!  You went all the way back to the FBI Regional Office to dig up that bit of foreshadowing!!  So what now?  Does he hurl it? Brandish it?  No use in bringing a tomahawk to a gunfight, you aren’t going to come out of that in one piece…  Not without maintaining some element of surprise…

History has proven that over and over again.  When in doubt get the gun and continue to monologue…

Seeing Mark laid out like that I just can’t get used to a world where Mark’s Fists-o-Fury^® don’t win the day… Where he seems to need help all the time…  Unless he’s playing opossum and is about to deliver a kick to Baldy’s nether region…  And isn’t a funnel cloud bearing down on them??

But Moss, I think you are right…  the Tomahawk!

What’s the old saying?  Keep your powder dry?  Well, that’s probably not completely apropos here, as we are no longer in the age of muzzle-loaders, but it would seem that Sheriff Stober hasn’t done a very good job of keeping his parts oiled… or something like that…

GLITCH… is that really the sound a jamming gun makes?  What causes a gun to jam, to misfire?

According to the Internets, it’s caused by any number of reasons… including Limp Wristing!  And while that applies to handguns primarily, I think that’s funny.  It’s not the gun, Pardner… it’s YOU!!

… yup… true statement, Oh Bald One.  Mark should wear a t-shirt or a placard that states, “Where Trail Goes Trouble Follows!”  This is one of those immutable Laws of Nature.  And Baldy stepped right into it!  Like a cow-pie!

So what’s your point, then?  You can’t go back in time, you can only go forward.  And by going forward, I mean delivering the punch that you are threatening in panel two…  Not continuing to monologue while you are leaving yourself open to a bullet from Sheriff Stober.  You’ve got a clear shot now, right Sheriff?  Big Bald Dome perched on broad body just three feet off the ground at twenty or fewer paces…  what are you waiting for??

Mark Returns a right!  And has Baldy by the T-shirt ready to deliver another!

YOU’VE “had it” with HIM?  Really?  Said the kidnapper to the detainee, never mind that said detainee had MULTIPLE opportunities to turn the tables on his captor…  Or at least get clear of him…  but what’s the story in that??

Meanwhile, sheriff Stober and his peacemaker are off stage right trying to get a “clear shot” off while Mark and Baldy are a-punchin’ and a-rasslin’…  Really?  That’s the best you got?  Just shoot him in the ankle… that would put a crimp in his day…  at least the sound of a bullet winging by would probably get his attention…  All this as the funnel cloud bears down on the proceeding!  Ya’ll better fand yerselves a ditch to git into!!  Why I am suddenly typing in a hickish drawl?  Hellifiknow…

…in Allen’s Trailverse… in the first panel we see the front of Mark’s face aglow from the burning aviation fuel (or at least what’s left of it) after the explosion… but the back half of Mark’s head is in the darkness of the wall / funnel cloud.  In the Second Panel we see more a study in perspective as Mark seems to be rising from the fires in an attempt to wrest control of “the gun…”  Makes me think that Allen wishes he could render in 3-D!  Makes me also wonder what’s going on with Mark’s “Trailing” hand… (boy this never gets old, does it??) …looks to be wracked in a palsy…

Finally, the Baldy right hook finds its Mark (ha!) on the Northern Trailian Mandible, which will lead to, hopefully, full-on fisticufs in the Trail Tradition.

One thing we know by know is that James Allen loves big, block letters describing big, loud sounds.  Especially explosions.  Where Mark goes, concussions follow.  It would seem that Mark would have to enter a concussion protocol in every story line we have been subjected to since Allen took the reins, but then this is nothing new- Mark has been taking blows to his head for decades now, previously through the inevitable fist-fight…

So with pieces and parts flying everywhere, including a handgun and a bedroll full of bills, Mark and Baldy go into Justice League mode attempting to avoid the fray…  Good that the pilot bailed even if his chances were slim… they would have been none if he had stayed aboard.

But really? Do planes explode on contact?  I guess they can, and do!  Imagine those poor motorists thinking that their biggest challenge was getting around the slow-poke in the left lane!!

Of course he’s going down… in flames.

And apparently he’s really quick about getting it on and getting clear of the plane…  But what are the chances of Pony-Tail guy actually deploying his ‘chute and landing safely??

Slim to none… <click to go to source>

“All I see are props spinning.”  Indeed.

And as if on cue, as if Mark controls the heavens, a funnel cloud is dropping out of the sky!  Now this is exciting!  The plane will no doubt get caught up in the vortex and find itself and its pilot where it didn’t expect to be.  Baldy will be standing slack-jawed, wondering how his foolproof get-away has been once again made impossible.  Remember, he was the “best getaway driver in the business,” right?  Well, methinks he might have overthought this one…

And what about those landing gear?  Hmmmm…..

So leave, already, you big galut!  You have no responsibility for Baldy’s safety, do you?

And what the hell is Sheriff Stober doing off camera?  Guiding the plane in?  He probably has those magic flashlights that guide the plane into the gate, and waving them around!  A two-fer, he must be thinking- I will get the pilot and the robber too… not to mention the girl… who recently melted under the pressure and listened to reason…

Sorry Campers… Needed a few days away from the woods to sharpen my axe a little…

With a thud, the revolver falls to the ground.. and doesn’t go off!  I’m pretty sure that Mythbusters covered this topic years ago… dropped guns do NOT fire on their own…

Meanwhile Meteorologist Mark (he so bad!) is giving the local forecast…  with “Backup” from Sheriff Stober… Man, this is really inane…

..with Mr. Bad-guy-pony-tail-dyed-to-match-upholstery asking the question we have all been positing for months now…  there had to be an easier way to do this… like how about we all get on the plane at the airport and take off together, rather than adding kidnapping and false imprisonment to the rap sheet…

She is a chameleon… and has shown her many sides throughout this story line…

Right now she is playing the sympathy card and you are falling for it!  Keep those guns out and hammers cocked…  OK, that last sentence could be misconstrued, but whatever…

The Wildcard in all of this (for now at least) is Johnny “with the six-shooters” Lone Elk…  he’s been off camera for a while now, ever since going after Blondie…

Yea, shut up Trail, you are an annoyance, at best.  Learn some moves, man.  You’ve been a puppet for most of this engagement, with the exception of one spark of the Ol’ Mark… As the rain begins to fall again, we are left not with dialogue, but competing monologues- no one is interested in hearing what the other has to say.  Hmmm…  wait a minute, did I just land on something?  Did I not just sum up the state of the political world, with everyone talking past each other, trying to be heard above everyone and everything else that makes up the din?

Seems a bit improbable unless of course he had another life before “breaking bad” and hooking up with Baldy…  “Seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess…” he thought.

I read somewhere that the coloring in of the dailies is done by off-shore artists…  which might explain why Bad-Guy-Flying-Plane’s pony tail matches the upholstery of the cockpit…

The more I look at panel one, the more it reminds me of a scene from Johnny Quest.  Remember how Race Bannon, Dr. Quest, Johnny and Haji (not to forget about Bandit…) would jet around, seemingly able to land where no plane had gone before?

Not being an airplane aficionado, I attempted to determine the make and model of what is being piloted… and discovered that there are literally hundreds of manufacturers…  Wiki of course lists them all, and here is part of the listing, alphabetically of just B-Be…  If anyone can ID the plane, more power to you…