As Abbey assumes a ‘duck and cover’ posture, what exactly is Mark doing?  Heaven only knows…

Ever wonder where the expression “heads up!” originated?  I have always thought that funny, especially when applied to, say, a baseball diamond.  A foul tip goes high in the sky, some unsuspecting person is about to get beaned, and someone yells, “heads up!”  The person looks up, and instead of catching the blow on the top of their head or shoulder, the ball crushes their nose or eye socket…  clearly not a better outcome.

So as Mark leads the way with his skinny jeans and flexing gluts, let’s hope Abbey can find her way, as she seems to be overwhelmed by the raining ash and cinder…

Give it a rest, Abbey.  Seriously.  And by now do you know to NOT call Mark Trail unless you want hellfire raining down on you?

Color palette continues to be very curious… lava has turned from ash gray to black now, which is a bit disorienting.  But at least in the third panel, Mark and Abbey are in synch as far as pumping their arms and moving their legs…  How surprised they will be to find that the Chopper, Cal, and Abbey’s boat are all gone!!  Ha!!  Too bad Mark had a witness at the Island Hoppers Charter service, otherwise, Cal could just forget about the whole thing… but of course he’ll need to bring the insurance company out to the atoll to make his own claim…  why do all these stories involve destruction of property and insurance claims??

The lava flow has taken out the already damaged fire ant mound…

And this is important because, well, we’d probably all be sitting up at night wondering whether the ants survived the eruption…  I can tell you I would have been.  But really?  Installments past suggested that the volcano and resulting caldera were miles away- off on the horizon.  It wasn’t like Mark and Abbey were at the foot of the mountain that just blew its top.  Well, I guess that lava flows quickly, much more quickly than any story line in the Trailverse…

…while running at full tilt is impressive.  Even to the point that he can hearken back to the past (well for us, anyway, it’s been weeks…) and recall the incident involving the Wild Boar…  and now realize that the boar meant them no harm, it was simply escaping with its life… damn the singular of boar that was left to incinerate… true- that’s what a group of wild  boar is apparently called…

So… Boar smarter than Trail.  Not surprising.  If Mark had an ounce of brains left in him, he wouldn’t constantly be placing himself in mortal danger…

…but not in the Trailverse…  it flows gray.

Not to mention the plume.  Lava Orange and not gray.  This is more than my ‘half a cup-o-coffee’ brain can handle at this point…  sort of like red is blue and blue is red these days…  Not even sure what I meant by that… maybe up is down and down is up?  Or maybe how can a tiny little atoll suddenly become Krakatoa?

And as was pointed out in earlier comments, the lava flow is the least of Mark and Abbey’s concerns as the suffocating gasses (at least in real life) would have consumed and asphyxiated them by now…

So as Mother burps, choppers are destroyed, and people run…

FWOOSH goes the “Flaming Debris”as Mark calls it…  And Mark, I think Abbey is well aware of what is going on, or should I say coming down, around her…  Yes!  back to the beach!  Capital idea!!  Where you will find that Cal has already made off with the ocean going dinghy…

Mark, that is one weird expression on your face, not to mention the running stance you are assuming…  At least Abbey appears to be pumping her arms in a way that will increase the rate at which she is moving away from the flaming hot rocks… Mark looks like he is running away from a swarm or locust or something… “Ewww! Get away from me!” he would seem to be saying with his body language…  Not to mention the Lululemon yoga pants he has slipped into just for this occasion…

…makes us stronger, and can even completely change one’s looks and physique…  Other than the blue polo shirt and hat there is nothing recognizable about the guy showing up in today’s installment.

I don’t know… you be the judge…

Anyway…  a point was made in the comments yesterday that short of Matrix-like maneuvers and special effects, Cal’s innards would surely have been liquefied by such a blast in such close proximity… but of course not.  He needs to survive in order to take Abbey’s boat!    This is actually pretty funny.  I can almost imagine Mark having a thought or two about said boat as one of the options available to get to safety… but now it would seem that Cal has his eye on it… is it to save Mark and Abbey, or to pull a George Costanza and run over kids and grandmothers on his way to the door??

And what about Cherry?  Is she even remotely wondering what Mark is going through?  Perhaps concerned and wondering about the developing new world order?  Doubtful.

With a SWOOSH, a BLANG, a BROMPH and a KA-BOOM we say goodbye to Cal’s Chopper and probably even Cal.  Sorry to have skipped yesterday, but clearly I did not miss anything.  Why not accomplish in three days what it would otherwise take a single strip to convey?

And thanks for the explanation in today’s installment, as I’m not sure that any of the (who the hell knows why) faithful readership couldn’t figure out what was going on…

So as we brace for the next chapter, and yes, I am referring to our own, real lives, perhaps we can draw strength from the highly predictable…  that in every story forthwith, Mark Trail will be exposed to every manner of natural peril combined with the explosive release of carbon based fuels and accelerants…  because apparently that’s what the writer assumes we want to see.  So KA-BOOM, everyone, welcome to the rest of your life…

…because the Hughes is toast.  And it’s also fortunate that Cal pulled his fishing gear out of the Hughes.  At least they can fish for food as they drift aimlessly in the south pacific.  It’s as if the gods (and writers) have something against Mark, and Helicopters, for that matter…

Certainly there is a blast radius regarding the helicopter and the large, fiery volcanic projectile that has taken out Cal’s Pride and Joy… and Cal isn’t that far away.  But as with most crashes and explosions in the Trailverse, the characters, even bit ones, will escape relatively unharmed, especially Mark and Abbey who, by all rights, should be asphyxiated by now.

As silly as this is, I have to admit that this has set us up for a tense sequence… and opened up the possibility for lots of bad dialogue… bring it on!

…because correct me if I’m wrong, but any respectable volcano eruption would have taken everything out by now… there wouldn’t be any time “to get Abbey and Mark.”  Oh, I’m sorry, that’s “Mark and Abbey…”  let’s not forget who the strip is named after…

At least Cal’s hat stayed on his head this time and didn’t get all animated and airborne…  Which is more than I can say for what’s bout to happen to the Hughes… anyone knows that volcanic ash and engines of any kind are not a great combination…  Nice to know you Cal.

Like an angry boil on Mother’s Bum, the magma has been released…  Suddenly the RIFAMOBP is of little or no concern as it will soon be covered in liquid hot magma…

But go where, Mark?  It was a perilous journey just to get where you are- ledges, ravines, Wild Boar, and that’s just what we know about… Perhaps Cal has take to the air and can hover on by and scoop them up… wouldn’t that be daring.  But nothing compared to the Nam… landing in in a rice paddy being strafed by 50mm weapons fire…

…if it’s the last thing we ever do…  I forgot what a great bass line this song has… and it’s funny to look at the gear… so simple!

Anyway, back to the Island Adventure…  As predicted, Mark is offering uber-obvious advice, but with a twist… apparently there is something more menacing that the thought of being overrun and stung to death by fire-ants…  Enraged ones, even…

What could be off-camera, stage left?  Again, the “there’s something behind the door and I need to know what it is” device…  Thank goodness tomorrow is Saturday and we will likely get an answer then.  And revel in the fact that we can all turn our clocks back an hour before we go to bed.  An extra hour to ponder the fate of Mark and Abbey and wonder what Cal and Cherry are up to, not to mention Doc, Rusty and Andy the St. Bernard back at Lost Forest…

Onomatopoeia on Parade, boys and girls…  too bad there isn’t sound associated with the comics, and we have to imagine all the other senses besides the visual… And speaking of visual, Abbey’s features continue to morph beyond the recognizable… what happened to the lithesome form that was gracing the beach, seemingly there to relax and enjoy a little “down-time?” Never mind that she was wearing the same ensemble that Honey was wearing and therefore created all sorts of confusion, later to be sorted out…

And how disappointing that Mark and Abby are not waist-deep in Fire-Ant Mound!  I was looking forward to Mark dishing useful advice like, “Abbey, get yourself away from the Ants!”or “Don’t let the ants sting you!”  such a wasted opportunity!

Seriously.  Check it out.  If this was you first encounter with Mark Trail, you’d have to say that Mark was tackling a guy in blue shorts and a yellow T-shirt…  But for those of us following this, (and heaven knows why we do…) we know that we are being treated to another example, a tired example, of Hero Mark saving the damsel…

And if I am not mistaken, they both have gone head-long into the FAMOBP!  (Fire Ant Mound of Biblical Proportion)  Oh bring on the stinging!  This ought to be good…

Abbey doesn’t realize how close she is to sweet release…  Her ticket out of this awful parallel existence… But it should be noted that Palm Trees are notorious killers…  they are top heavy and it’s not uncommon for the crown to come off and take out the unaware…

And Oh boy!  Mark has never looked so stern!  Like he’s actually mad or something… Heck, I’d be mad too if everywhere I went I had to battle for my life.  I’d start to wonder whether there was some force in the universe that had it out for me, whether my life was really just a big sketch being played out for the amusement of others…  but wait, Mark, that’s exactly what’s going on here.  And now you are being guided by a new-ish hand, one that is still doing his best to keep your life from going off the rails…

Oh, we’ve seen the RRRRRUUUUUMMMMMBBBBLLLLLEE before, may times, but apparently Mark knows his Rumbles, and this is not an earthquake variety Rumble… and either Mark is choosing to not look at Abbey which he is admonishing her, or she has moved, in mid-sentence, from Mark’s port to Mark’s starboard side…

Dollars to donuts, Cal is in the air by now… he has his investment to protect, and since he has every passenger execute a lengthy waiver of liability, he is certainly held harmless against any stupid acts that a client might engage in…

But really, folks, here we go again… Man (and woman) against Nature.  We know that she can be a cruel mistress, a bitch even, but this got old two stories ago.

In the old days (and yes I am old enough to know about them…) Mark never went on assignment without a camera- I mean, how are you going to entice readers with mere words?  No matter how eloquently you might describe a world-record-breaking ant hill, a picture is going to bring it all home…  It suddenly occurred to to me that Mark has been (I think) camera-less in all the Allen inspired stories…

But sure as shootin’, this is the mother of all ant hills…  compared to what one typically sees in Nature…

So Maybe these aren’t your garden-variety Red Imported Fire Ants…  Maybe they are a new strain, one that will threaten the world if they ever got off the island…  OK, I know… I’m just trying to manufacture a little tension here.

Just like the most interesting thing to a dog is what’s on the other side of a closed door, we are constantly told to wait and wonder what’s in the next panel, the one that will appear the following day.  It’s a device, not an an especially clever one, that will keep a story moving, and readers coming back, I suppose…  But what is it that Abbey is seeing?  Did Cal set himself on fire along with his chopper?  Is there a tribe of native islanders looking for their next meal? (OK, I have no knowledge that the Hawaiian people, of any sort, were cannibals…)

But if it’s as big and obvious as Abbey is making out (again, without the aid of her necessary, pre-scription eye-glasses) then why does she even need to point out the “menace?”

Thanks for the comment that what we have experienced since Cherry had the good sense to not get in the Helicopter with Mark and Cal has taken maybe a couple of hours in real time, but has stretched out 40 days.  So, no, boys and girls, you aren’t just imagining the “James Allen Effect,” you are, in fact, living it.

And for what it’s worth, screw the ants…  I mean, really?

Once again we are led into a situation on a wild hare (or is it hair??)  Bats?  Let’s witness some human trafficking, get shot at and go get lost in a cave system… RIFA’s?  Let’s leave poolside and the resort with the 600 thread-count sheets, charter a Helicopter, climb to the top of something, get charged by a Wild Boar, climb up a dead tree and then fall 100 feet into 12 inches of water, head first, appear unscathed and move on…  to what end? I ask… To what end?  <<COUGH>> indeed…

Mark, in panel two, is going for humor again, an indefatigable mixture of the dry and ironic… 2 out of 5 Elrods for that…… mostly for effort.

Than you Reader Richard…  you noticed that I did not post on 10/25…

But I digress . . . So either our intrepid blogger missed reviewing a day’s installment – a rip in the Trail universe’s space-time continuum, as it were – or I have become entirely too obsessed with the twists and turns of this nightmare/fantasy such that my subconscious has started making up more bizarro-world stuff in order to see if it just might come true, just as I have done with the presidential election.

Funny how this happens, I guess… I read the Trail, I start the post, and if nothing comes, I move onto the day’s news, bleary and depressing as it is these days.  Then I look at the time, realize that I need to go take my turn at the wheel, and off I go.  Normally I remember this and make up for it the next day with a two-fer, but not this time.

So yes, my comments this morning must have seemed a bit off, since I had not yet posted the installment featuring the death (or at least a C-5 fracture of the spinal column) of our in-over-her-head USDA agent…