…that we all want to ask.  The steady diet of natural disasters and villain inspired dangers has proven tedious at least and incredible to boot.  No one, simply based on odds, would walk into these situations time after time after time…

So as Mark stands there mute and gob-smacked by Cherry’s intelligent question, we are all left at ask the very same thing.  On the other hand, what choice do we have?  There simply isn’t any interest in watching Mark and Cherry live their dull lives, Mark at the keyboard and Cherry doing what-all… Time for Rusty to get kidnapped again…  that hasn’t happened for a while!  There are rare times that I feel for Mr. Allen, having to keep this boat floating and heading in a direction, when it’s clear that the rudder has been disabled, the keel pulled, and the sails furled…  But as has been suggested by this forum, there are people out there who make a living writing story lines… let’s invest in one, oh mighty syndicate.

…or wanted…

As the camera does a complete 360 degree pan we go from Mark’s starboard to port side, catching his Brylcreemed coiffure, Pepsodent smile and kind, steely eyes…  Now if he could only remember his wife’s name!

So that’s it, Abbey!  Friend or not, you are on your own… never mind that you aren’t staying at the Coco Palms, or even if you aren’t staying on the same island!  Good luck getting back to your conference!  That’s OK… you’re a big girl and you’ll figure it out…

…all in a day’s work…

…as Abbey transmogrifies back into a woman- curves, eyelashes and all…

But oh no… there will be no smooching.  And that assumes that Abbey is even interested…  So as the tension dissipates, we are left to ponder the greater mysteries of the Trailverse, chief among which is… What the hell day is it, anyway?  Has the sun even set?  I don’t think it has.  At least now we know how Mark stays perpetually 32 years old.  The earth doesn’t rotate as quickly for him as it does for us- to wit- I was at the dry cleaners yesterday and received a senior discount… ugh!  Talk about your good news/bad news scenarios…

Like this can’t get any more strange…

Judging by panel two, Abby needs to go get her eyebrows done/dyed.  Never noticed this before, but her natural hair color appears to be jet-black… I guess I was never confronted with an eyes-only shot as we are today.  What other secrets does she have to reveal?  I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow…

…the two gulls arguing over whose turn it is to perch on the post or Abbey and Mark trying to wrap up their “adventure…”  Still more boring chatter about invasive species…  But come to think of it, Abbey, that’s just the point!  the threat is NEVER gone… One must never stop being vigilant… let one’s guard down!

So now that we are back at the Coco Palms, maybe what, a few hours later, Cherry will be poolside working on her 4th or 5th umbrella drink, ready to do some serious relaxing.  Let’s hope that she hasn’t been exposing her northern, alabaster skin to the tropical sun or at least has had he good sense to apply some #45 sun-block…

Will Mark soon be regaling us with tales of exploding islands, or will he just keep it all to himself?  Personally, I think it’s about time for his phone to ring again, since he an Cherry will likely have damn little to talk about…

This is, as they say, a long walk for a short drink of water… and this proves at least that Mark can be in on a joke, even when he is the joke… but it registers nary a courtesy laugh from Cal and Abbey.  I’m guessing they can’t wait to be done with Ol’ Mark.

Looks like Mark is in the middle of the boat… I was thrown yesterday by carelessly placed speech balloons.  And things appear calm… and should be unless a rogue wave takes them out.  That would be about par for the course.

Speaking of Rogue Waves, have you seen Rogue One, a Star Wars Story?  Brilliant.  This has nothing to do with our current Mark Trail Story line but just thought I’d mention that.  Happy New Year everyone!  See you in 2017!

…along with “a few days of ‘vacation’ remaining”… considering it took 5 months of strip time to play out the last 36 hours… aaaggghhh!!

Capital idea, Cal!  Why don’t you head back to Kauai?

And what the hell is floating in the water in Panel 3?  An empañada? Oh that’s right… that would have made more sense in the cave adventure… Probably what Jose and Jefe snacked on en la cantina when they were plotting their human trafficking scheme.  Which added nothing to that story line either… other that shooing Mark & Company into the Cave of wonders…

Not to mention that Abbey’s head, center of the boat in Panel 3, (assuming that’s Mark still talking, since Abbey is technically on the job…) has grown freakishly large.  Oh my goodness, can we please just be done with this?

More sympathy!  Ecchhh!  Not the Trail way!  Obtuse is what we’ve come to expect… Clumsy, incapable of feeling- at least that’s how Mark is around and with his wife… Hey, ever been paddle boarding?

So, as this wraps up, and yes,it will take a week or two at this rate…  We are left to wonder what else is on the Whiteboard at Allen, Inc…  We wonder whether North America Syndicate, unit of King Features Syndicate,  unit of Hearst Holdings, Inc.,  is at all invested in this strip, whether they will throw struggling writers a lifeline, perhaps play muse?  Do more than collect on the annuity that is Mark Trail and other long-running serial strips…  Given that they literally control this world, one really has to wonder whether they are paying attention at all…

I mean, look at this!  If this isn’t world domination, I don’t know what is!  Clearly they are taking their cut and one has to wonder what the “creators” are getting… It’s clearly a situation that if you want to play, you have to play by these rules!

Here are a couple more:

The Universal Press syndicate

and the Washington Post Writers Group:

The latter is interesting as it has the fewest , but features (in retried state) a favorite author of mine, one Berkeley (Berke) Breathed, creator of Bloom County, Opus, Outland and a host of other creative works.  Although it appears that Bloom County is being resurrected, after 25 years, through Opus the Penguin, to embrace the new age, internet and everything…

OK, clearly, as I take few days off around the Holidays, I have a little time on my hands…  Happy New Year a-comin’… 2016 has been a ride, hasn’t it??

And in what… like four years??  As I recall the IUCNWCC (really?) is a quad-annual event.  It just happened in September of 2016, so the next one isn’t until 2020!   First you have to get on the agenda as a speaker, and speaker calls for the next “congress” won’t happen for at least a few years… by that time it’s old and dusty news.  Plus, Abbey, what have you got? A “he-said/she-said” tale with no pictures, no evidence, just a person (you) weaving a highly improbable tale that only puts you at the scene based on another’s witness- Mark Trail, who we all know from the funny papers as being highly suspect and barely able to keep his own credibility boat floating…  I can see the PowerPoint now, full of clip art pictures of travel documents and manifests from Honey and Darling (Lord knows where they are by now…) and stock photos of the the RIFA and its ravages…

And just when I was about to rail on the presence of ORCA in the Hawaiian Island chain, I learned that while rare, these overgrown, distinctly marked, sea-faring porpoises do actually make their home there (proving that in every species a certain number come to their senses and figure out that warm is better than cold) and feast on marine mammals like baby humpback whales…

Seems a bit strange coming out of Mark’s mouth, but yesterday he expressed sympathy over Cal’s lost helicopter, and today he’s telling Abbey he’s sorry about the fact that they didn’t get a “specimen” to prove her hypothesis about invasive species on the island!  But she’s got Mark as a witness, and a more impeachable source one could not possibly ask for!!

Mhmmm, like Yoda, I speak, on the day of Princess Leia’s passing :(

Got new for you, Cal Ol’ buddy… those ants weren’t going anywhere anyway!  Not unless they hitched a ride on Abbey or Mark… which could well be the case!!  Now they will need to be quarantined for a month or so in order to ensure that they aren’t harboring any stowaways…

Cold.  Lifeless. Black.  So said Captain Quint… I’m talking about the shark, of course, and Not Mark Trail… although one could say the same thing about him…

So to heck with the helicopter and the promise of “Good Insurance…”  Is Jaws about to ram that dinghy and start the whole “OMG, Look out”thing all over again?  I’m breathless…

Ticks on the geological clock, as it were…  For one man, in a lifetime, to claim that he has seen coral atolls rise and sink suggests that he was around when Captain Cook plied the trades and even before that…

So this is our Christmas Present… knowing that Mark and Abbey are safe, and but for a (hopefully) uneventful ride back to one of the big islands, we are done with all this nonsense.  Well that only took months… to live a couple of days. Let’s all assume that Cherry has had a  life changing experience as well with the shirtless conch-blower and will regard Mark’s return with little more than a shrug, even as he recounts yet another harrowing tale of death being cheated…

…or Mark… whatever…

Stop turning Abbey into a dude!  Look at the shoulders on her in panel one!

I guess 12 or 13 MPH is all is took to outrun the devastation… You know, is this all a cheap rip-off of the movie San Andreas starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson?   The scene where they have to out-run a tsunami by running straight into it?  Of course in that movie (which, for a latter day Irwin Allen epic was pretty good,) we actually cared about the characters…  OK, at least I did.  Here, not so much.  And a once-more subtle reminder that the disaster movie genre does not translate well to the serial comics format…

Funny how none of these scrapes translates into PTSD for Mark.  He just keeps going back for more.  By now he must realize that the world is out to get him… Oh that it actually would, by some little measure, would be satisfying…

The “Oh No! Look out!” exclamation that, in theory, beckons us to tune in the next day.

As the little craft struggles to clear the fringe of the blast radius, let’s assume that Abbey is looking ahead, which means that no matter which direction our intrepid cast turns, they are facing down death and destruction.  Not Wit, not Irony, not anything that might be even remotely more interesting than trying to escape Nature’s Fury (again!)

So CHUSH, DUSHH and BDUSSHH you, keeper of the Trail flame… it’s been reduced to a feeble ember…

…or not…  the three are now heading away from the blast zone as fast as mechanically possible…  which appears to be 13.4 MPH…

For the benefit of anyone (like me) who initially missed the silhouette of three people in an undersized, underpowered boat escaping the rain of meteor-sized fiery rocks, I have circled it in yellow…

It also appears that “hit it, Cal…” was not sufficient guidance from a few days ago, so let’s try, “Get us out of here, Cal <exclamation point>”and see if that works…

Seriously.  You mean you haven’t put any distance between yourselves and the Molten Mess?  Well, you deserve to die.

And to the question “What has Rusty been up to all this time?” Realize that the elapsed time has been (including travel time from Lost Forest) about 3 days.  Or less.  We haven’t lost daylight during this race against flowing lava and exploding island, and the only implied overnight was between the time Mark and Cherry were greeted by the shirtless conch-blower and then seeing them pool-side when Mark’s phone rang with Abbey on the other end…

Oh how I pine,
For a decent story line.

I know we have all been going back and forth about whether ‘Volcano’ and ‘Atoll’ deserve to be in the same sentence… and here’s what I found:

The coral of the atoll often sits atop the rim of an extinct seamount or volcano which has eroded or subsided partially beneath the water. The lagoon forms over the volcanic crater or caldera while the higher rim remains above water or at shallow depths that permit the coral to grow and form the reefs. For the atoll to persist, continued erosion or subsidence must be at a rate slow enough to permit reef growth upwards and outwards to replace the lost height.

But is this entirely inconsistent with an island that has 100 foot sheer rock faces jutting up from the sea, lost civilizations expert in the art of stone cutting down to the nearest millimeter, and other things that we have witnessed over the ensuing months?  Seems a bit far fetched, but here’s a short video discussing how reefs and atolls (a specific kind of reef) are formed with the help of a volcano… So who knows, could be that the volcano had been dormant for centuries or longer, only to awaken for the benefit Mark and Abbey and what constitutes our current storyline.

And here’s what an underwater volcano looks like from above, the Seamount forming…  a reminder that despite what Man does or doesn’t do, Mother Earth has her own agenda…

As Mark gets a leg-up and into the boat by… I don’t know who or what… He encourages Cal to gun that 9.9hp Johnson outboard and get them the H-E-double toothpicks out of there…

So now we take odds as to whether they will be able to return to civilization unscathed…  and given our experience with these protracted story lines, I’d say the odds are 70-30 in favor of further calamity.  Or 90-10 in favor of the Feds showing up…

Come to think of it though, a helicopter rescue would have been much more satisfying.  To see Cal hovering over Mark and Abbey, inches off the water, bathed in Prop-wash, and hauling them to safety… watching them talk to each other in normal voices, oblivious to the roar of the engine 6 feet above them, and figuring then that Abbey would have to explain why she had to expense a boat and motor on the government dime… be subject to congressional scrutiny by the new administration… Oh I guess these things can go any which-a-way, and for that matter still could.

At least we aren’t dragging this out…  weeks of Mark and Abbey bobbing around, seemingly on their last legs, wondering if they will be found… Rather we have Cal right on the Mark… Hah!  See what I did there??

But what must be racing through Mark’s mind right now…

But… Cal=Helicopter, Cal≠Boat, Abbey=Boat, Abbey floating with me…

Just imagine the cognitive disarray!

So climb aboard me mateys…  let’s get back to the Resort and end this silly story!!

…in the words of one Henry David Thoreau, Early American Blogger, protege of Ralph Waldo Emerson, identified as part of the Transcendental Movement, who apparently was never taught to NOT end sentences with prepositions…  But in the spirit of time being fluid and eternal, and certainly not linear, we are taken back in time to the point right before Mark and Abbey tested the effects of gravity and sudden deceleration…

Vonnegut also had fun with time in Slaughterhouse-Five, with Billy Pilgrim tripping through time (and space) after being alien abducted and spending time on the planet Tralfamadore where all the inhabitants live in a four-dimensional reality… After being removed from the Trailverse for a couple of days and spending time in Iowa, I can relate…

But back to the story…  As Mark’s hair snaps back into place by panel three, Abbey is doing her water-works-fountain act for good measure…  Talented lass… she can cough, hack, spit gracefully and talk at the same time.

Swim Fast?  You think?  Oh Mark, you are nothing if not obvious… So, as Mark and Abbey swim as fast as they can away from the soon to be boiling ocean, it’s a darn good thing that Cal will be making his way to them in Abbey’s ill-fitted craft.  We shall  soon test the weight bearing capacity and lack of any safety equipment (or fuel) aboard and we’ll see whether they can all make it back to the King-Kaluha Resort to sit poolside and recount lusty tales of flowing lava and death defying leaps…