The focus of Mark Trail has traditionally been an environmentally based adventure strip, with adventure as the main draw. That has been one of the main complaints against Rivera’s stories for Mark. Are we to use the same measure for Cherry’s stories?
Certainly, Cherry’s stories have leaned towards the lighter side. That would be a fair balance to what should be more hard-hitting, dramatic stories from Mark.
In any event, this past week Cherry showed up at Violet’s with her collected food scraps to start a composting site for the Sunny Soleil Society, as Violet was literally gobbling down a bucket of chicken. Cherry tried to get Violet to remember her pledge to send Cherry to Compost Camp. After a few days of rambling, Violet agreed to fund Cherry’s trip. If Violet was hoping this would stop Cherry’s continuous lecturing, she was wrong.
Who knew!?! I always thought worms were just normal ground-dwelling creatures found just about everywhere. Good information to know. And I do like the earthworm title panel, though it’s a bit hard to read.
Okay, consider me reprimanded for my erroneous presumption: Violet was not tossing scraps into the trash, as I misunderstood. All those ginormous bins are for composting. Okay, then. They are still too large and do not appear to be properly vented. So there!
Cherry makes a very good point about why meat scraps do not normally go into a compost bin. Aside from bears, you must watch out for cats, mice, rats, racoons, foxes. However, compost piles of grass clippings, fruit, vegetables, and even grains can attract herbivores and omnivores, such as possums, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, and birds. And possibly bears, anyway.
Finally, Rivera could stop with the grade-school puns right now and see a 25% increase in the quality of Mark Trail. They are neither cute nor clever.
Well, the story is finally moving along. Very good. But Cherry’s composting plans have a few issues:
1) All of these “bins” look the same. Not a good thing when you include trash and compost. So why place the trash receptacle next to the compost bins?
2) Are these compost bins properly ventilated? They look like they are cheek-by-jowl. Granted, we cannot see their back views, but what we can see is not promising.
3) They seem a bit large for composting bins, especially non-commercial bins. That’s a lot of stuff to keep turning and a large space for compostable refuse to heat up and cook.
4) And how about removing the compost when it’s ready?
Okay, enough carping over details. This is a comic strip, not a documentary or a how-to video. So, I’ll wait to see what Rivera reveals on Saturday. She could put all my nitpicking to shame. Or maybe you could.
This is the strip that should have been posted on Wednesday. But now I want to know, as I’m sure all of you do, if Violet really wolfs down an entire bucket of fried chicken at every lunch, or even every other day.
June 11. Where to begin? From the start we have seen Violet Cheshire presented as a parody of southern society, a person whose personality and actions conflict with her attire. Vain, shallow, and mercurial she may be, image is very important to her.
So how are we to read this portrayal of Violet double-handing a bucket of fried chicken as if she is practicing for an upcoming eating contest? And are we to believe that Violet is either forgetful or the reincarnation of Mrs. Malaprop? Miss-speaking is not the same as forgetting!
June 12. Speaking of vain, that robin once again showed up to show off her feathery décolletage. Meanwhile, Cherry applies the gentle art of sarcasm in panel 2 as she goes with the idea that Violet is suddenly forgetful. Thus, Cherry repeats her original sales pitch. We may have to endure this presentation and its resolution for the remainder of the week.
Is this a good story telling technique? Rivera could have dispensed with today’s panels and simply noted that Cherry had to repeat her presentation. But repeating her composting spiel in detail is just hitting readers over the head with what’s been said, more than once. Rivera could have dispensed with this sermonizing and instead showed Cherry actually building a compost pile as Violet looks on. And still forgetting their deal!
Howdy! On Tuesday morning I have to be up before even the Sun can be bothered to turn on. Why? I’m flying down to see my old man (he’s really, really old!) and the plane leaves at 6:30 AM. Ugh! So, the Tuesday strip may wind up getting posted with Wednesday’s. After that, things should be back on a normal track, until a few weeks later, when I have to fly back. You’ve been warned.
We return to Cherry Trail, who has been collecting food waste around town to start composting at the Sunny Soleil Society. Certainly, compositing fits within her mindset and her values, but Cherry is also motivated by the offer of a free trip to a compost convention if she collects enough to get things started.
But Cherry arrived just in time at the SSS HQ to witness Violet Cheshire preparing to chow down on a bucket o’ fried chicken. What could be a more propitious time to discuss food scraps and compositing!?! But based on Violet’s idea of a lunch, I’d have thought Cherry would find enough scraps in the Society’s own garbage cans.
Well. This could have been more interesting if Rivera used this week to have Cherry moving about town, still collecting food scraps. This would provide a simple way to introduce us to a few more citizens of the Lost Forest community, without having to develop complicated plots. I’m thinking slightly off-beat people, such as Squirrely Sally.
Excitement in Lost Forest continued this past week as Mark and Ranger Shaw surveyed the abandoned e-waste in a clearing of Lost Forest. You could hear the teeth gnashing. Mark was in his element, taking charge of a case of illegal dumping in Lost Forest, even though legal authority likely rested with the all-too-compliant ranger.
Jules Rivera filled in a few plot holes for us as Mark revealed that Rusty had, indeed, been digging! Apparently, this spade work must have happened “after hours”, when cartoonist Rivera had quit work for the day to visit the beach and didn’t get around to drawing Rusty’s digging until later in the week.
Talking to Ranger Shaw, Mark relayed that Rusty claimed Robbie (who is the ranger’s son!) had buried his broken game controllers in the area. After enjoying the burn on Ranger Shaw’s face, Mark admitted that Rusty had also been involved. Just two dads, commiserating over their juvenile delinquent kids.
But Mark must have sniffed something wrong, as he began to interrogate Ranger Shaw on whether he had seen anybody in the area. Rivera made a point of showing Ranger Shaw looking guilty as he forced out an odd denial. Yet, nothing was made of it. The week ended as the two walked into the debris area to look for clues. No doubt, at least one piece of abandoned equipment will have a label that reads “If lost or illegally dumped in a forest, call 999-555-1234. Ask for Elmo.”
Let’s see … last Sunday Mark got in his talk on e-waste, stealing Rusty’s thunder. This week, it’s beavers.
Rivera devoted a Sunday to the beaver’s rodent cousin, the muskrat back in December 2022, where Mark compared the two animals and tried to make the case that they are both “engineers”, but in different ways. But she also did a Sunday on beavers back in May 2022, which has a little bit of overlap with this one. Some of you might recall that beavers became an involuntary aid to Mark in the “Oregon Trails” story at the time.
Why is Mark yelling at Ranger Shaw? It’s not as if Ranger Shaw wouldn’t be knowledgeable on this topic (much less guilty). But for some reason, Rivera chooses to depict our finger-pointing Mark as some kind of Sunday Service “Elmer Gantry”, laying into the laity for their sins, while simultaneously stroking their guilty consciences for larger tithes. In any event, Mark not only speaks melodramatically, but he looks a bit overly dramatic, as well.
Art Dept. And speaking of dramatic, it’s nice to see that Rivera still remembers how to move beyond the all-to-common “tv screen” viewpoint in her panels to give us a bird’s eye look from above (panel 3). At least from that angle, the objects Rivera scatters across the grass look more “normal” than their appearances in the other panels. But, maybe that’s not the point at all.
Some primitive graphics today, though that is nothing new. It is difficult to not agree with others that Rivera is just dashing this stuff off in between surfing outings. Wait, I have done that! One exception is Mark’s depiction in panel 3. That is actually well drawn and defined, though it makes Ranger Shaw’s image look even more unfinished. Rivera has a background in storyboarding—that is, a sequential graphic layout for a story in its design stage. So it strikes me as odd that we have seen several dialog and event revisions in this adventure.
Today, we have Mark in panel 3 harshly questioning Ranger Shaw about his awareness of activity in this part of Lost Forest. Yet, Mark has been acting this week as if Ranger Shaw was not aware of this junk. Why isn’t Ranger Shaw taking control here? He is the one with authority to investigate, not Mark.
To emphasize Mark’s environmental psychic ability to ferret out wrongdoing, Rivera has put Ranger Shaw into the harsh lights (notice the bright background in panel 4) with his self-incriminating response and clammy face. Rivera’s overtly finger-pointing comment does nothing to expand on what has already been shown. And anyway, shouldn’t that have been Mark’s response?
Hold the phone! You can’t change the story mid-stream, Rivera. This flashback does not resemble anything published to date. So fine, Mister Smug casually admits to Rusty’s active involvement with Robbie, as a fake news flashback shows Mark lording it over his kid, actually shoveling. What’s the point of this apparent revisionism?
Finally, what else should Rusty have learned? Keep your dad out of your business.
Ranger Shaw responds to Mark’s statement in panel 3: “Really, Mark? Well, where are these controllers? What’s that you say, you were too stupefied by finding these other electronics lying on the ground to remember to dig them up? In short, Mark, you have no real evidence, other than Rusty’s testimony, which was clearly motivated by his need to seek revenge against Robbie for his classroom prank. Golly, Mark, is this how you conduct research for your articles!?!”
Yikes! Indeed. Rivera must have a low opinion of her readers’ capacity to remember simple plots if she has to rehash yesterday’s installment in the first two panels of today’s strip. Talk about unnecessary story padding. See anything else kind of odd?
Rivera also continues to indulge her fascination for alliteration with that “trash trove” label Mark bellows out to Ranger Shaw in panel 3. So Shaw now thinks somebody is stealing and storing “trash” in the Lost Forest, albeit in a very haphazard manner. I think he’s way off base.
Art Dept. The mouths keep getting weirder. What can you say about Mark’s yapper in panel 3? Is he, perhaps, now singing his dialog? And is Ranger Shaw so shocked in panel 4 that he has to yell? I don’t know what to tell you. The very close staging of the two dudes in panel 2 suggests to me Shaw delivers his clunky dialog in some kind of flat, monotone voice, as if there was a period between words.
What can we say about the layout of the scene in panel 1?
Ranger Shaw on the scene. Is he surprised by the junk on the ground or the site of a raccoon milling about in the daytime? After all, there is no food here to attract its attention. Still, it isn’t unheard of. But I wonder if Mark considers Ranger Shaw a little slow on the uptake. In panel 2, Mark points out the obvious: “Rusty and I came uponthis dumping ground in the woods.” Well, of course it’s in the woods! That’s where they are! Maybe the problem is with Mark, and that would explain the dubious look on Ranger Shaw’s face. At least the story is progressing.
Art Dept. Yes, it must be Flat Day in Lost Forest. But it’s not quite as severe as Edwin Abbott’s book, Flatland, where everybody and thing is a 2D geometric shape. Here, everything and everyone is depicted as if they are either paper cutouts or were pressed with a hot clothes iron. Even the raccoon suffers: Its very heavy outline suggests a “cutout” that belies any volume in its body. In fact, there is virtually no attempt at giving volume to anything else. Why? The only obvious answer is not incompetence so much as stylistic choice. It’s not a unique approach, but it can be jarring. And it conflicts with Rivera’s drawings of the same location in last week’s strips. This visual discomfort is compounded by other oddities, such as Mark’s sideways mouth in panel 3.
I’ve mentioned this “feature” before, and it just looks wrong: In addition to the facing of the mouth, which almost looks like it is in profile (compare with panel 2), its vertical alignment is also off-centered. You could propose that Mark is expressing a different emotion that requires the new mouth shape, but the rest of the head doesn’t seem to conform. As for Mark’s beard, don’t get me started.
This was mostly a week of exclamations, excuses, and e-waste. We returned to Rusty’s e-waste revenge adventure where he led Mark to the not-so-secret location in Lost Forest where he and Robbie buried the broken controllers. That Rusty, himself, was also a participant in burying the game controllers that he wanted to use as a way of getting back at Robbie was certainly a surprise! The irony escaped Mark and Rusty, but not this Trailblazer.
Upon arriving at the location, Rusty and Mark discovered the area was full of discarded monitors, controllers, chairs, and other knickknacks that Jules Rivera casually pasted on top of the grass. I reckon this secret location became well known to people who like to dump electronics in the woods. That’s really not so unusual: As a kid, I came across stoves, refrigerators, and mattresses dumped in the woods where I lived.
Although many references were made to things “buried,” everything was lying on the surface and no digging seems to have taken place. Maybe Rusty and Mark were too distracted by the debris. A pissed-off Mark figured it was time to have a talk with Robbie’s father. In another surprise (Gosh, two surprises in one week is a record!), Robbie’s dad turns out to be Ranger Shaw, one of the three hapless participants in Mark’s fishing survival camp episode. Small world, huh?
Art Dept. Nobody commented on the giant spider in Wednesday’s strip. I thought one of you might notice its unrealistic size. Well, considering the tree its web is attached to, it sure looked big to me! Also, Rivera drew a chipmunk on Saturday that didn’t look like a statue or cardboard cutout. Well done, in fact. Will we say the same thing for today’s nature talk?
What a coincidence! Rusty tells Mark about his e-waste project for the school science fair, and all of a sudden, Mark has his own show-and-tell about e-waste. I like today’s title panel, though I’d have wanted to see the “Mark Trail” logo appear like actual text on circuit boards. Perhaps, Rivera thought it would be too small? Well, everybody knows the name of this strip, right?
I’m puzzled why Rivera cites statistics from 2019. Perhaps she could have compared that number to a more recent statistic: The UN reported some 68 million tons of global e-waste for 2022, alone. Another issue is that electronic waste contains billions of dollars’ worth of rare earth resources, such as gold, silver, copper, and iron. Yet our country has no national standards, policies, or programs for safe reclamation and disposal. Seems that “recycle” and “reclaim” never made it into the manufacturers’ thinking.
Well, just how bad was the site, Rusty? We’ve seen six days of strips so far, and you haven’t dug a lick of dirt. For all we know, Robbie’s broken controllers are still underground.
But a bombshell drops as Mark clues us to the fact that mild-mannered Ranger Shaw is Robbie’s father! We met him last November in the deBait fishing lodge where Mark tried to run a survival program for clueless husbands (cf “For Men Only”). At that time, mild-mannered and largely insignificant Ranger Shaw seemed distraught at how to fill his days while his wife was on vacation. And no, I’m not going there, except to say that I found her to be a nicely mannered, largely insignificant person.
Thus, Rusty’s “e-waste reclamation visit” scene comes to an end. Whether Rusty actually accumulated any e-waste, much less Robbie’s, may take a backseat to Mark’s overriding concern with the fact of toxic solid waste abandoned in Lost Forest. Is Mark once again taking over Rusty’s story? Buckle your seatbelts, people; it might get rough.
Yeah, robot cloning technology! Now that is a cool plot device. Too bad it won’t be used; but heck, this is a comic strip. If Rivera allows Mark to avoid responsibility for breaking the law time and time again, I think we can get behind some robot cloning technology once in a while.
Art Dept. I think we have seen that image of Mark in panel 2 before. Does anybody recall when?
Addendum: I found this example from April 12, 2023. It’s close, but not exact. Don’t these people ever change their clothes!?!
Yes, Rusty apparently didn’t have to actually dig anything up. Did Mark’s heavy-handed “lecturing” cause everything that was ever buried in the immediate vicinity to automatically ooze to the surface? I dunno. Anyway, Rusty already knows something about e-waste, or should. After all, it’s his topic which he picked out. Some glaring inconsistencies! BTW, I noticed they didn’t bring any trash bags to carry stuff back.
Art Dept. If you look closely at those unburied items, you’ll see numerous things lying around in all sorts of weird angles, as well as items clearly out of proportion with neighboring items. Perhaps Rusty and Robbie also buried some furniture from their Barbie Playhouse. It looks like Rivera simply took a bunch of clip-art images and pasted them onto the panel, rotating them every which way. Hardly convincing, Rivera. Maybe the surf was up and she couldn’t wait.
Well now, why would Rusty and Robbie want to mark where they illicitly buried broken game controllers? Why would Rusty want Mark to tag along while he went to retrieve them? Rusty doesn’t strike me as a scaredy-cat or somebody incapable of digging holes.
Rivera has Rusty actually admit his complicity in burying the very items he wants to use in a science project to humiliate Robbie. Again, why? Rusty is showing himself to not be a very clearheaded thinker, even for a 12-year-old kid.
Thus, we see Rusty hoisted with his own petard (to paraphrase Shakespeare) as Mark prepares the dreaded “Dad Lecture.” I’m not looking forward to it, myself.
So, Rusty helped Robbie bury the broken game controllers in the woods!?! Now I’m confused. If Rusty fulfills his plan to get revenge against Robbie in the science fair, he also exposes his own complicity in the deed, right? I reckon he hasn’t thought this through. Let’s see if Mark figures it out. You remember Mark; he’s the guy with the big head (or the petite torso) in panel 1.
Well, of course a bear is going to make a random appearance in Lost Forest, unaware of Mark and Rusty walking along a trail. And of course, Mark and Rusty are going to saunter by, unaware of the bear. Another case of Rivera poking the bear or poking fun at the Mark Trail bear trope?
Wait, you mean to say that Robbie actually buried his broken game components in the woods!?! That seems like a lot of trouble. Why wouldn’t he just dump them in the garbage, like most people? I don’t know if Lost Forest supports hazardous waste management, but if they are not big on composting, then hazardous waste may not even be on their radar.
Art Dept. Close examination of Mark in panel 2 might help explain how those ubiquitous raised arms with pointing fingers often look disconnected. Also, I’ve been getting distracted by these strange sideways mouths (panel 3) I’m seeing. I’m not sure what this oddly drawn depiction means, but it’s been showing up a lot, lately (e.g. Jeanette on 5/21 and 5/22; Violet on 5/24). I also spotted this sideways mouth as far back as January 30, 2023 on Mark, while he experienced a moment of frustration. It could go back further, but I was too lazy to look. Feel free to do it, yourself. All I know is that it isn’t the usual way Rivera draws mouths. Maybe Rivera is experimenting with her drawing style.
The Daily Trail 