Well, this story is really moving along, ain’t it!? And sure, it is common to speak to cats and dogs as if they actually understand you. But what’s the point here?
Dogs might understand people, to a degree. However, I grew up with cats, and not only do I not think they understand people, they probably wouldn’t let on even if they did.
Unrelated historical note: August 15th is Ferragosto, a national holiday in Italy that originated in ancient Rome. It was created by the emperor Augustus to reward people with a day of rest during the harsh heat of August. The Catholic Church later moved the holiday from August 1 to August 15 for religious purposes. Today, Ferragosto is more or less a mandatory summer holiday for many people, lasting up to two weeks. Be sure to wish your friends and family “Buon Ferragosto!”
Taking three days (of strips) to get around to pulling a kitten out of the bushes seems excessive. It’s not as if Violet and Cherry had spent the time deep-thinking the value of happiness as a desired philosophical position or debating whether a restaurant that serves Fettucine Alfredo should call itself an Italian restaurant (it shouldn’t).
Golly gee-whiz! All we have here is: Cherry discovered a kitten in the bushes. But, to add some melodrama: Maybe it’s the bastard offspring of that gigolo catabout,Banjo Cat (I bet Rivera wouldn’t have come up with that obscure pun).
In her defense, I will remind readers that Cherry’s adventures are meant (I think) to reflect the Lighter Side of Mark Trail (with apologies to the late Dave Berg of the late MAD magazine for playing off the title of his strip).
Well, having done my duty, I am ready to rag on Rivera for unnecessarily dragging out the obvious point that a kitten (or maybe a catbird?) is hidden in the bushes. As usual, Rivera seems more intent on disrupting the story to get in her punch line, so she has Cherry respond to Violet’s rebuke with ambiguity (panel 3) instead of clarity. At least Cherry manages to maintain a positive disposition in spite of Violet’s usual catty behavior. (I hope you appreciate the length I went to, to set up that pun!)
And since when was Cherry down with weed killer? Hasn’t she always fought against it? Perhaps the realities of getting a regular paycheck and maybe having to pick up the slack for Mark’s lack of paying work (until now) has something to do with it.
Frankly, I don’t know. Maybe that trip will evolve into its own storyline before too long.
Anyway, if Cherry’s timeline coincides with Mark’s then it is at least the day after the movie and Bill Ellis’s phone call. Mark and Rusty could already be on their way to California. Cherry—working in her usual stretch pants-and-logo shirt uniform—hears a kitten hidden in some bushes. I don’t think a mewing kitten is an especially strange sound, though in the context presented, it would at least qualify as a surprising sound. Words matter.
Art Dept. Mark the Contrarian Commenter (as I think I must identify him here) would certainly criticize that gelatinous foliage in front of the house for having no realistic shape or identifiable trait, other than being “a bush” (or possibly a Monty Pythonesque blancmange). Its vagueness and anonymity stand in sharp contrast to the more representational grasses in the foreground. Though I do not recognize them, they appear to be identifiable. Why this visual disparity? Maybe Rivera doesn’t like to draw bushes the way artists don’t like drawing hands and feet.
By the way, are you mystified as I am by the very small two-pane window in panel 1?
Missed this week’s dailies? Boy, they were something! Why, there was fighting, shooting, car chases, abductions and rescues, and all manner of hair-raising cliffhangers! I mean, it was, uh, …uh, hold on. My mistake, I was reading Little Orphan Annie and got confused for a moment…Okay, I’m focused.
So what about the past week in Mark Trail? Well, not much happened, to be truthful. Rivera devoted the week to a “post-Bill Ellis phone call” conversation in which Cherry convinced Mark it was a good idea to take Rusty along with him as the “plus one” allowed by Ellis for Mark’s newest over-the-top adventure. You know the one I mean: The assignment is to find a movie director possibly hiding in a house that the director filled with lions and with actors for his current movie project. It’s a crazy enough concept that I think Rivera must have been rifling through Carl Hiaasen’s recycle bin. Say, do you think one of Mark’s stable of nitwit troublemakers will wind up involved in this story?
We’ll soon see, but don’t pass on today’s nature talk. It’s another story-locality subject.
Nothing says “Feisty Defense Lawyer” like a dude in a cheap suit sporting a five o’clock shadow. After reading up on this interesting issue, there certainly do seem to be various factions involved in this Catalina Island predicament. Still, I wonder why Mark is smiling (panel 6) while discussing another kick-the-can-down-the-road answer from the local government. “Kill our deer!? No way!” exclaim local citizens. It’s no surprise that cute Bambi-faced invasive deer attract more sympathy than actual (but less cute) native animals and flora that are being imperiled by these deer. Cute=Protect. I don’t see anybody protesting the eradication of zebra mussels or spotted lantern flies. Sure, “Stop the slaughter!”, residents chant. Okay, they can watch Bambi stand-ins die by the hundreds from starvation and disease once they have all but exterminated local resources. Hey, at least it’s natural.
So, Jules Rivera decided to have Mark ignore the presence and utility of the on-site animal wrangler in California, as well as pass up an opportunity to involve Mark’s friend, Rex Scorpius, a professional animal tamer. And for what reason? To bring Rusty along.
What to think of Cherry pushing Rusty on Mark? And what to think of her idea to let Rusty spend the day, alone, in a hotel pool while Mark works? What could possibly go wrong with that setup!? It’s not as if there would be dangerous predators in a hotel, right? Once again, we see the dark cloud of child neglect hovering. Well, and then there is the giant Room Service bill that is likely to show up on the expense sheet.
Art. Dept. And speaking of puzzling things, what is your take on that “lion” in panel 2? Has Rivera been watching The Wizard of Oz?
Egads! The entirety of this week has been wasted on a pointless back-and-forth chatter over whether slack-jawed Mark Trail should take Rusty on an official assignment, an assignment involving close proximity to dangerous animals. Maybe Cherry has been sniffing the compost too long.
And by the way, just who is Cherry responding to and winking at in panel 4? Us poor readers? That kind of panel where the character reaches out to the reader with a wisecrack or slogan is more normally used in the concluding panel of a story. It seems artlessly and confusingly shoved into today’s strip, as if this was a punchline to a joke, like actors breaking character.
Art Dept. Occasional commenter Mark (no relation) pointed out yesterday about insufficiencies in Rivera’s artwork, such as foliage lacking shape, details, and accuracy. And looking at the background today and the past several days, it is easy to agree.
Partially in Rivera’s defense, I will point out that backgrounds in art tend to be simplified as a general rule to help focus viewers on the foreground figures. It is not a hard-and-fast rule, but merely a convention that’s been around for some 700 years.
Rivera will take this tradition to extremes. The background foliage in today’s panels are shapeless and lack definition; sometimes not even suggesting “trees” as a possibility; for example, panel 1. And check out the trees in panel 2 of yesterday’s strip, which look more like the hokey newspaper Christmas trees I was taught to make in Elementary School.
It should be obvious, however, that photographic representation is definitely not the design goal that Rivera has been pushing in the strip. And that has been a central problem for many Mark Trail readers.
Oh my. I wasn’t around in 1946, but what I saw of early Mark Trail (and summarized on Mark Trail Confidential) was that the bear in question was, in fact, Cherry’s “pet” bear that Mark mistook for an attacking bear. And they weren’t bonding too much at first, until Mark handed over a pile of cash he got from winning a nature photo contest.
Now, is Cherry seriously pushing to have Rusty tag along with Mark to search a house filled with lions!? That sounds like grounds for a child endangerment rap.
And how could Mark justify taking Rusty along as his partner/backup? Sure, he could suggest to Bill Ellis that Rusty would function as a staked goat to lure the lions out of the way, perhaps. That puts both Cherry and Mark in the pokey for child endangerment, and Rusty in the hospital. Or the ground.
I dunno. It all sounds so weird. Maybe Mark and Cherry want to break free from their restrictive lifestyle and start anew, on their own…and in another country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.
The silliness continues. I wonder why Rivera continues to highlight Rusty’s adolescent exuberance? Sure, it’s nice to see a father take the time to treat a son’s fantasy seriously, but how does that advance this story? It’s as if Rivera decided to exploit this distraction in order to pad the storyline for a second week. By the way, padding was a good excuse in the 1800s when authors were paid based on word count. That helped result in such wordy novels as “The Three Musketeers“, “The Count of Monte Cristo“, and “Oliver Twist.”
Although there are various types of animal wranglers, I wonder if those people really do use the word “wrangle” like Mark does (panel 3): “Honey, I’d love to go to Dollar Tree with you, but Brenda has some new goats and I need to wrangle them.”
It’s soooo damned hard to resist filling this page with the snarkiest comments known to humanity. At the same time, I keep trying to come up with reasonable arguments for why the comic syndicate allowed such a ridiculous story to make it to print. And I keep thinking that Rivera is having a good laugh while spending her time surfing (the waves, not the ‘Net).
Poor Rusty is thinking he’s gonna get more face time. By now, he should be used to the standard routine: 1) Get trotted out to kick start a story; 2) Mark gets involved, because he’s a “concerned” father; 3) Mark assumes control of the story and Rusty gets demoted to making cameos; 4) The adventure ends and Rusty disappears for the time being. At least Rusty gets more strip time than grandpa Davis!
At this point, it is futile to speculate much, though the sudden inclusion of a “partner” should indicate the logical person would be Rex Scorpius. Wait, I think I previously mentioned that, but let’s just say I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. Well, the surf must be up because the drawing is getting really sketchy again.
Really!? After more than a week, Rivera is still milking this phone call. Okay, this is a Monday strip, and it would traditionally summarize prior days. Perhaps this excuse might make sense these days for readers returning from places where the strip was not carried in the paper or where the Internet was not available.
Seems remote to me. In any event, the review time is over. Time to move on!
Former Daily Trail blogger and founder, Dennis Williams, sent me a link to an Australian artist (Adam Murphy) who creates mashups of different comics characters and styles, such as Charlie Brown and Calvin & Hobbes; The Phantom and Indiana Jones; and Tin Tin and Indiana Jones. Check out his impressive work on Instagram: @adammurphyart. Mark Trail does not seem to have been one of the inspirations.
The Tin Tin reference is especially significant, as the original Belgium strip proves that adventure comics with good suspense, drama, and even humor do not have to be depicted in what many consider a proper “realistic” style (e.g. Judge Parker, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and vintage Mark Trail). Having noted this, I do not propose that Rivera’s current interpretation reaches the level of Tin Tin in either style or plotting. Well, I think it did in the beginning (as I have said before); and it could, again, if she wanted.
As for this past week, we have endured days of Bill Ellis on the phone with Mark, convincing him to take on an assignment to help locate a film director who disappeared inside a house, where the house apparently is locked down and filled with lions and actors involved in the director’s current film. Does this sound absurd? Of course it does, in pretty much every which way you can imagine! If you want more details, you’ll have to scan the previous posts; I won’t repeat them here. What I will say is that, unless this house is on scale with the Biltmore mansion in North Carolina, I don’t see how this works. But, we can meditate for now on today’s topic.
Once again, Rivera chooses a topic geographically related to Mark’s current story: California. And once again, Rivera ends the discussion with a non sequitur (“social climber”).
Art Dept. In the “penultimate” panel (that might sound snooty, but I like the word), Mark is posed in front of an orange oval. This juxtaposition has been a compositional device in Rivera’s work for over a year. In most cases, it works (see panel 1 in Saturday’s strip), because the oval carries across the entire panel, creating a proportionally divided background using a slowly curving line.
But today, we see an oval isolated within a larger panel, unable to reach its sides. Rather than dividing the background, today’s example serves to frame Mark’s figure, like the concentric circles in the opening credits of Warner Brothers cartoons; just not as developed. Was Rivera going after the same aesthetic concept or adapting the device to a different idea? Okay, only art/art history geeks would care one way or another, I suppose. At least I’m not using footnotes.
Long-time readers of this blog know that I try hard to give Rivera an even break, even promoting this strip whenever possible. I’ve invested a lot of time and thought into analyzing, describing, and commenting on various aspects of this strip; from writing, to visual composition, to drawing, to characterizations, and more.
So, when I tell you that this story makes less and less sense by the day, I’m not just trying out snarky comments for Comics Kingdom (in fact, I don’t post on the Mark Trail page. I leave that to Bill F. and his compatriots). For one thing, I’ve noticed a change in tempo and temperature coming from Bill Ellis through today. Starting with his initial near-hyperbolic presentation at the start of this phone call (last Saturday), it has softened to a casual, bantering phone play during this week, as if this was all just sending Mark out on a normal assignment reporting on Japanese Knotweed. No hurry, no big deal.
We have today’s strip closing out the week and filling the space on your screen or your newspaper page without furthering the story. Presumably, Jules Rivera is writing her own stories, so she can pace them as she pleases. But can she develop a plot that does not require wasting days with empty blather? We’ve seen this happen over and over. To be fair, Rivera is not unique. Prior artist James Allen did this, as well.
A traditional approach in adventure strips was to use Monday’s strip (if Sunday was not part of the continuity) to summarize the prior week’s progress. This helps relieve the cartoonist from having to keep inserting time-wasting strips into the storyline. But Rivera likes to do both.
Since Rivera claims to be science– and nature-oriented, she has ample room to make those concerns more integral to this strip. It would be much more appreciated by the readers (I’m sure) than wasting dailies with endless bad jokes, bad puns, and an apparent low regard for the readers.
Sometimes I just don’t get Bill Ellis. We have this totally off-the-wall assignment: Missing Director in a house full of lions. And never mind how much time has passed since animal wrangler Sammy Spotter reported the crisis. Wait, I’m not going over all of that again.
Well, wouldn’t Sammy Spotter be the exact person to take care of these lions? And once they were safely removed from the house, then there would be no danger searching the house for the missing Director. Am I right? Neither Bill Ellis nor anybody in California thought of this?
Now, if Mark is smart (just go with me on this), he’ll accept this goofy assignment, fly out to California, then use his fists o’ justice to knock some sense or courage into Sammy Spotter to get the lions out of the house. Then search the house. Fly home and wait for the direct deposit to go through. Does Bill want an article to go with that? That’s an additional payment. But we’re not finished.
Ellis finishes up today’s installment with an equally strange non sequitur (panel 4): Sammy lives near LA and cannot afford lions or houses. Did he misunderstand Mark’s question (panel 3)? Ellis’s response makes no sense, especially since he reported (yesterday) that it was the missing movie director that set up the house with the lions and locked-in actors.
Oh boy! Maybe we will see Mark team up with his good buddy, former animal wrangler/trainer, Rex Scorpius. Otherwise, I think we can all admit that the foundation and justification for this story is one of the most absurd story setups we’ve seen.
Personally, I don’t know what the problem here is. Nobody in their right mind would stay in a house filled with, presumably, free-roaming lions. I’d get the hell out of there, immediately. I’d also be questioning the sanity of any actors who remained. Get those scared cops to check nearby motels and brothels.
There is a plethora of flaws in this entire setup, and I’ve mentioned a few; but since that is the basis of this adventure, let’s just take it on its own terms: 1) How does Ellis know the director is still in the house? 2) Did the actors check for hidden doors and passages? The attic? The basement? Kitchen cabinets? Maybe Rivera, by chance, recently read Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story, The Norwood Builder. 3) Did anybody check to see if the director is hiding in plain sight, say in a lion costume, to see how the actors react to the situation? He could be resting with the felines, just lion on the floor. 4) Finally, how long has Bill Ellis been on Crack?
Rivera once again pads this fledgling story by devoting today’s panels to repeating the punchline from yesterday’s panels. Rivera has Mark (panel 1) employing a sitcom meme that was old back in the 1960s: “Did you just say that <blah, blah, blah>?” Cue the laugh track. It’s a shame Mark was not at Planet Pancake, where he could do a spit-take with his coffee.
OVERVIEW: Uh, if they know he’s in a house of lions, how come they don’t know where it is?
DISCUSSION: That still needs explaining. But hold on. Let’s accept the premise that there is a house full of lions. This director is in the house. So how come they don’t know where the hosue is? Well, a kidnapper could have informed “them” that they were holding the director in a house of lions until a ransom was paid. It fits the weirdness of this story’s premise.
Now, why would there be a house of lions in the first place? That’s not a practical way to hold a kidnap victim. And where would a person get lions? Perhaps the kidnapping was done so the ransom would be used to pay for the lion purchase! It could be the work of a less-than-scrupulous zoo-keeper, such as Tess Tigress.
Anyway, I think Mark’s original response still holds: Why him? He’s a nature author and photographer, not a lion wrangler, for which several experts already exist throughout this country. Maybe Ellis thinks that Mark’s time on that Tiger Touch Petting Zoo assignment gave him enough hands-on experience to tackle this assignment. (yeah, I know. I’m taking this much too seriously!)
As we await Bill Ellis’s justification, I’m sticking with Mark’s position. And clearly, that position is about to be undone. Otherwise, there may be no story. So, moving on: Will Ellis assign another sidekick to Mark? If so, who?
Okay, I had to get that pun in before I forget. Anyway, I’m glad to see that Mark shows some common sense and honesty (panel 3)! As for Bill Ellis (see panel 2), who else did he expect to take the call on Mark’s phone? Okay, I know that Ellis’s statement is just a commonplace expression and not meant to be taken literally. Maybe Ellis really meant “If anyone could take this call seriously, it would be you.”
Well, I’m intrigued by this story’s opening. Coincidence aside, Ellis leads with a tabloid-style declaration (“click bait” to use modern jargon) sure to grab Mark’s attention. Eventually (we hope), Ellis will explain the more mundane details that will justify Mark’s involvement. For example, the director could have gotten lost while out hiking the Blue Ridge Mountain parkway. Now Mark just confessed he isn’t a modern-day Daniel Boone, but at least the plot is relatable. We’ll see.
Well, this week saw the culmination of both Cherry’s and Mark’s (or Rusty’s) adventures, merged into a week-long epilog. For Cherry, she and Violet were able to launch their “Movies in the Park” night at the same time as Mark met up with Honest Ernest and his “brothers”, who also decided to attend. They immediately formed ranks and started the usual ritualistic chest thumping and evil-eye throwing, until Violet, in an unusual intervention, stopped the impending fight by coming up with a plan to hold a public electronics demolition event on her parking lot, what she referred to as a “Rage Lot” event. Mark seemed puzzled by the reference, but the fight was avoided. The movie played. Later that night on the way home, Bill Ellis called Mark about a crisis: A movie director has gone missing, and he happens to be the director of the movie the citizens of Lost Forest just watched! Coincidence? And why should Mark be called about a “missing person”? We’ll have to await further events.
Interesting topic. Now the size of prehistoric lions (or any animals) cannot be established by cave wall paintings, which were not drawn “to scale” (panel 4). Perhaps Rivera only refers to the color of the prehistoric lion’s coat. Those cave paintings/drawings that Mark mentions exist only in Europe (not in North America), mostly in Spain and Southern France. The most famous “lion cave” is the Chauvet Cave in Southern France, discovered in 1994.
I was puzzled by the image of the zebra in panel 5, where Mark discusses the extinction of the “American” lion. It turns out that many fossils of prehistoric horses have been found in Idaho, and are commonly known as the Hagerman Horse, or the American Zebra. (FYI: I’m simply summarizing equus information from several scientific/nature websites.) This animal is known as Equus simplicidens, in the taxonomic genus Equus, which is the ancestor of modern horses, donkeys, and zebras. Several sources claim it is more closely related to modern zebras, though there is no evidence of what their coats looked like. That is, there is no evidence for stripes. In any event, academic/scientific study and debate continues.
Okay, the humor in panel 1 is actually normal for once. Very good. Otherwise, it looks as if Mark is finally back on the meter, which Cherry should be happy about. Mark cites the old phrase “Things that go bump in the night”, though it’s not the apt comparison to the movie he thinks, nor was anybody speaking of such things in panel 1.
It is phrase that, for once, does not go back to Shakespearian England. It refers to things like ghosts and spirits or unexplained noises that bungle around for a bit and disappear. This is not a habit usually assigned to vampires, as they seem to be more graceful, being able to morph into a bat to enter or leave a bedroom. Vampires are not stumblers.
Otherwise, we are left with the odd notion that Bill Ellis thinks Mark is now The Finder, a sleuth of missing people. I wonder what happened to “Mark Trail, Defender of Nature and our natural resources”? I mean, geeze, Bill! Hire a private detective, why don’t you!?
Art Dept. One good thing that leaps out to me is a generally improved level of art, especially in the faces, showing more individual expressions. Rivera is clearly taking more time. But I have to admit, I’ve always been puzzled by the blue bands behind Mark’s head. I’m thinking they represent graying hair, perhaps? Or maybe some kind of unusual haircut style.
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