As commenter Downpuppy pointed out, Rivera almost certainly based this adventure on the infamous Ohio train derailment and chemical spill earlier this year. That’s fine. But I’m not sure what the deal is about Rex’s oddly glib attitude. That might explain Mark’s perplexed look in panel 1, by the way: “You call discussing a train derailment and chemical spill, a bungled controlled burn that led to an explosion, and a likely environmental disaster just a chat?!”

Moving on, I suppose some people really do move in the middle of the night. But what’s the point:  Does it move the story along or initiate a related subplot? Or maybe it’s just to represent the fact that insignificant things happen in any context.

Somehow, Rivera will have to make Mark and Happy stand-ins for the investigative press as they try to get to the bottom of the environmental threat.

So this is what Rex was hinting at in yesterday’s strip:  Unnamed authorities tried to burn the spilled chemical, but it got away from them. Got it! I guess that means mystery solved! Nothing left for Mark to do but move on to the next story, right?

Trivial Observations:

Don’t Mark’s comments in Panels 1 and 2 seem out of order?

Did you know about the 1970 exploding whale of Florence, Oregon, before you googled it? I did not! Wikipedia has a good account.  Maybe Mark learned about this event from one of Happy’s stories about his grandfather, Forest Trail.

Art Notes:

Why do open mouths in Mark Trail often appear solid white? I’m guessing it is a stylistic feature, like Little Orphan Annie’s blank eyes.

So this train just happened to have derailed while at a train station, and it’s been there for days, leaking a dangerous chemical? And “the authorities” are responsible for the explosion? Well, this is quite a report from Rex!

But yesterday Rex spoke of the derailment as if it had just happened, implying it was part of the cause of the explosion. Furthermore, the explosion occurred at the same time Mark and Happy were at the station. You see where I’m going with this, right? How did Rex get all of this information from an event that just happened in the last few hours?

Are we to expect that nobody else knew about a train derailment at a popular train stop involving cars carrying dangerous chemicals? Mark seems to have swallowed this story like he was chowing down on free shrimp, since he didn’t even ask how Rex could know all of this! And just who are these unspecified authorities?

Where are all the major news sources? Where are the government inspectors? Why would people even be allowed to mill about a train station that has a derailed train carrying dangerous chemicals? For answers to these—and other—questions, check back tomorrow and hope Mark or Happy have the wits to cross-examine Rex’s information.

Okay, so Rex did bring some new information, after all: a train derailment. There must have been too much smoke for Mark and Happy to see something so obvious. Train derailments have been in the news, lately. The most common causes are student terrorist training exercises gone wild; too many cute bunnies sleeping on rails; and engineers trying to do wheelies.

Don’t buy that? Okay, faulty equipment (poor maintenance) and other human errors are, of course, the actual main reasons. But really, “it wasn’t just an explosion, it was a derailment!” That seems like misplaced drama. Wouldn’t a mysterious explosion be more unnatural, more suspicious, and a more exciting storyline than an explosion because of a train derailment? Ho hum.

If I’m right (and I sometimes am!), the plot hook here could actually be the potential danger of whatever is burning and its effects on the environment. And this would be the justification for Mark and Happy (and maybe Rex) to stick their nose in the railroad’s business.

Mark has a small circle of friends he calls on. Rex has apparently rebuilt his crushed ego from the last time we saw him at the Tess Tigress sham tiger petting zoo. Looks like his new job is boosting packages from people’s porches. He should be a real, big help.

Will we have to abandon all hope that this is going to be a more serious story than usual? It would have been a step in the right dramatic direction had Mark’s “friend” been an actual expert in a related field. Hell, even a retired train engineer would be an improvement.

So, why is Mark still carrying around that man-bag on his shoulder?

Does he think he is Felix the Cat who can create any object he needs at a moment’s notice with his magic bag?

Pre-Rivera Mark Trail adventures were known to stop abruptly and suddenly jump us back to the cabin in Lost Forest. Sometimes It felt like something got skipped over, or maybe we had suffered a case of amnesia and lost one or more days in our life. So we dug through the recycle bin to check the discarded newspapers for missed strips.

By the way, Panel 1 could have produced a nice little joke, had the motel been named “Motel 2”, based on the number of doors shown on the building. Like I said, small place and small joke.

More significantly, I don’t get this sharing photos thing. Presumably, Mark is sharing photos of the train explosion with a “nature expert” who “happens to live nearby.” While it stretches credulity that a friend of Mark just happens to be living near the scene of the train explosion, the real questions to me are:  What possible connection can there be between an exploding train and a nature expert? And what notes are getting compared? Mark was there, but his friend was not. What does that guy have to bring to the table? Yet, always-gullible Happy Trail (panel 4), seems to think this is a good idea.

Well, commenter Downpuppy’s prediction of a burner phone was not too far off the mark!  Good try! But sly Mark really threw his battery charger phone case (Apple seems to charge around $99 for theirs).  Not necessarily a cheap throwaway, its weight might fool the cop for a second or two, until he sees it’s just a shell with a battery pack. So Mark probably shouldn’t be brandishing his real phone (panel 3), as if he is doing a TV commercial for Apple. And yeah, Happy, the transit cop probably will like that “fancy” case, either for his own phone or to resell on eBay or Etsy.

I need your help figuring this out:  1) Mark has a smartphone ($$$) on which he is taking pictures of the train explosion. 2) He doesn’t want the cops to take it from him, even though I’m pretty sure they cannot.  3) The cop claims Mark and Happy cannot be “back here”, which seems to be the same place where everybody else was standing just before the train exploded. 4)Mark decides to distract the transit cop by tossing his phone towards him, anyway, so that he and Happy can make their getaway (or at least run somewhere else), rather than staying to offer an explanation or at least apologize and return to their own train.

So, HUH?! What’s Mark’s game plan? They clearly lost their chance to snoop around the burning train, which was none of their business, anyway. And now Mark is out a phone with all of his contacts and photos on it (which are hopefully automatically backed up) and is running from the police. Again. “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Dad!” If he keeps this up, Mark won’t have a state left on the East Coast where he can travel without a disguise.

So, this cop (or security guard?) wants to confiscate Mark’s camera because he was taking pictures of a train on fire at a train station. Maybe the train is carrying boxes of secret NSA recordings of phone calls by citizens ordering pizza and planning to take over the world.

Or it could be one of those situations where Mark’s video gets declared “evidence” of a possible crime, so the phone would be confiscated to obtain the imagery. Yet, the cop doesn’t sound like gathering evidence is high on his priorities list, given that any number of people at the station could also be taking pictures.

“But officer, I’m MARK TRAIL, nationally known nature journalist! I get paid to butt into other people’s business and take pictures. Surely, you’ve seen my adventure strip in the newspaper!? Maybe you read Teen Girl Sparkle? By the way, I’m not that guy wanted down in Florida for destroying private property, assault and battery, fleeing police, and polluting the river with diesel fuel. And you can even see I was—I mean—that other guy is drawn really differently! Uh, we’re not the droids you are looking for …?”

Rivera ruins the engineered suspense with her snarky textbox in panel 4. I’m feeling generous today, so you can discuss the police officer, if you wish.

Yeah, I’m with Mark on this one. We can stop (at least for a year) with “Mark blows up boats” jokes. How about replacing them with “Mark never takes photos on assignments, even though he’s a photo-journalist” jokes?

So, the dialog moves from being somewhat serious to being something of a parody. And shouldn’t one of the guys be at least a little concerned about the fate of, well, any humans that might have gotten hurt or blown up? I realize that people are a bit out of the Trail wheelhouse, but still.

I also wonder if Happy Trail is going to start beating on firefighters and railroad inspectors who might try to block his access.  Happy Trail should be careful these days, as law enforcement takes a dim view of agitated individuals with backpacks wearing masks and hanging around disasters.

That is certainly one, very long train platform!  And if you look closely, there seems to be a train, or trains, wrapping around the far end of the platform. How odd!

It’s unclear exactly what is going on, unless the railroad brought in a 19^th century wood-burning steam engine and its boiler exploded.  Diesel engines can catch fire and may explode in certain conditions (aside from a crash). Since this is an adventure strip, I’m guessing this was either sabotage or an explosion of chemicals illegally being transported on the train.

Anyway, Mark and Happy are not train inspectors, nor do they presumably have any experience in crash investigations or forensic analysis. But who is going to tell that to Happy Trail, one really pissed off dude missing his father-son fishing trip!?

The caption in panel 1 suggests that the train got fixed, because it says the train paused at a train stop. That’s not what one says about a train that broke down at some arbitrary location along the tracks. Rivera (or syndicate editors) must have decided to move the story (and the train) along by cutting out the panels dealing with the train’s repairs and travel resumption.

But now we learn that a train exploded, not the train exploded. Is Rivera getting careless with grammar or is that really a different train in the distance? This innocuous story just woke up and took a sharp turn into the Suspense Zone. Reckon we should learn more come Monday.

Mark and Dad are waiting for the train to get fixed, which is probably reason enough for them to take a walk outside, carrying their bags. Meanwhile, Mark seems fixated on the idea that he would not have learned more about his granddad from Dad while the train was actually moving. Perhaps Happy gets motion sickness or movement makes him forgetful.

Speaking of “trading stories”, would somebody remind me what story Mark traded with Happy about Granddad Forrest Trail? Was it the “Wow” remark or the “Sweet 70’s sideburns” comment?

Perhaps Mark might have learned more about his granddad if he had seen him once in a while as he grew up or had asked about him during the 18+ years he presumably lived at home with Dad (and Mom?). I suppose one thing I (as Mark) I would ask Happy is “How come Granddad looks more like a normal person than I do? Why do I look like a character on The Cartoon Network? And just who was my mother, anyway, Dad?”

Note: The regular daily commentary follows below this **** Special Feature! ****
Frequent commenter Daniel P made what seems a kind of back-handed compliment on Rivera’s drawing of a traditional Mark Trail image in yesterday’s strip as a “boomer” era version. But it reminded me that in a strip lasting over 70 years, images of characters can modify over time. Here are a few examples:

Making assessments from single images may not be fair, but they are still representative. Tom Hill was Dodd’s uncredited assistant who did lots of dailies from the 1950s on, so I’m giving him recognition. Elrod’s less animated and somewhat wooden model (c 1978-2013) was typical for him, while Allen (who seemed to favor a corner angle pose that made readers think he merely photo-shopped the image) returned to a more Dodd-like model, but gave Mark hair that was glued in place, as well as an expression that also seemed glued in place. Rivera’s original take on Mark Trail had a certain rough naturalism that she ultimately transformed into what we see today. Speaking of which, on to today’s strip!

We interrupt this adventure to bring you virtually the same information you saw in yesterday’s strip!

Every now and then Rivera feels the need to repeat content from the prior day, as we see today. About the only thing new is Forrest Trail’s “Elvis” sideburns. Yep, pretty wild, man.

Now, could Ed Dodd, Jack Elrod, or somebody actually named “Forrest Trail” have been involved in research that led to the EPA? I was not able to locate any citations.

Jules Rivera reprises the unusual ancestry of Mark Trail’s family originally presented in her first Mark Trail adventure, wherein several ancestors were shown to all share the same name and general look. I wonder if this also means they all married women named Cherry and adopted a kid they (re)named Rusty? Old “Forrest Trail” has Mark’s traditional double breast-pocket work shirt, and the Ur-Mark look. Good job, Jules.

I’m sorry, but is this the first time Mark has heard about his granddad’s work? How is it he has been following in the family business all this time, yet remained ignorant of grandpa’s achievements? Ain’t like he was some soldier from WWII unwilling to hash over old war stories. Wait! The first Mark Trail was a WWII veteran!

Art Department: How do you like the visual composition in panel 4 where Happy and Mark mentally “look back” at (or look forward at) Grampa Forrest at work?

Oh, the uncertainties of life, love, and transportation. Sure, the train broke down. A plane could have crashed or been waylaid because some stupid person decided to urinate on an attendant or demand her own recliner. Stuff happens. I reckon ol’ Pappy Happy just didn’t plan for uncertainties and thought getting there the night before the event was …uh …what!?

Wait. Stop the presses! In Panel 3, Mark says that the second day of the fishing trip is tomorrow. DOH! That makes no sense. They apparently boarded the train earlier in the day, some five hours or so ago (published date June 10). Is Mark delusional or did they think they could take a train all the way up to Ohio and start fishing on the same day? Is Lost Forest in Kentucky!? If so, how do Mark, Cherry, and Happy manage to drive to each other’s homes so quickly? Yeah, I know: It’s China Town, Jake. No, I mean, this is the comics, not a documentary; the natural laws of physics may not apply.

Anyway, WHAT will we learn about that surprise? What could it have been, unless it was a special, one-time event, like viewing the Night-Blooming Cereus (Epiphyllum Oxypetalum), which blooms its flower for a few hours only one night a year. But I digress. And I’m being a smart-aleck.

I just hope Happy Trail at least remembered to book sleeping berths.