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Wait. Vera said that AI doesn’t make money by itself. But then continued on about raising “investor cash”, which we all know means R&D. But that is different from AI generating income. Which is it, then? That could help explain why she isn’t one of the tech moguls.
So why would Mark (channeling a character in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickelby by exclaiming “Gadzooks!”) want to stick around for an AI award show? He doesn’t even like AI! Furthermore, his assignment is over.
Well, Darth Welly finally steps in to provide some direction for this discussion. Of course, Cricket Bro has to promote an over-engineered, irrelevant app which Mark easily dispatches. If that is Cricket Bro’s best, he should quit while he is behind. Maybe let those younger entrepreneurs take the stage with their better thought-out projects. Will Rivera even take this step?
The term “dad energy” is roughly defined (online) as a man strongly exhibiting “fatherly” traits normally related to home and family, while gladly letting other people know about it. A bit of bragging, in short. That might fit the bill here, as Cricket Bro is clearly not happy to be showed up by Mark’s response.
In at least one source I read, wearing plaid shirts was listed as a stereotypical meme of Dad Energy. There’s more to this concept, but feel free to do your own research. I don’t have time as I’ve got to do some car work that only a manly father can do.
Alas, Rivera downplayed a reasonable discussion and replaced it with a kind of low-rent, “reality show” battle between speakers and a reactive audience like that seen on TV shows such as Jerry Springer or Maury.
Sure, this is a comic strip, albeit a nature-based adventure strip. Still, is there no room for nuance? Where is the adventure? And I wonder: is Rivera doing this deliberately as a metaphor for our perceived lack of political and social engagement by the general public? Or possibly a critique of the hardline positions of the Left and Right? Or maybe Rivera just likes Jerry Springer and thinks it makes a good format for this panel discussion.
Still, within the confines of the story, itself, do you think that Cricket Bro would go to all this trouble just to try and humiliate Mark in public? Is his ego that fragile that he feels the need to flex his fake muscles and try to make Mark look like a weak technophobe, a neo-luddite?
Sure, it looks like Mark is setting himself up for failure. Or, perhaps not. Mark is likely to try and turn the tables on that assumption by suggesting how AI tech can actually be good for birds—as well as the environment—if carried out wisely. In that way, Mark cuts the rhetorical legs out from under the Tech Bros.
Will Kelly Welly step in at this point and attempt to shut down Mark in favor of Cricket and Crypto?
Mark can’t catch a break, no matter how sincerely his comments are delivered. This is less like a panel discussion and more like an ambush attack you can see on social media platforms, such as X. Still, Mark has plenty to dislike or hate regarding these two troublemakers. They went so far as to try and topple a boulder on top of Mark while he was fighting Sid Stump (May 16, 2023, “Bear Necessity”).
Regular readers know those guys cause nothing but trouble for Mark. In real life, Mark would have had them arrested or just stayed away. But comic adventure heroes (e.g. Batman, Dudley Do-Right, Popeye) often keep a stable of familiar villains around because the artist doesn’t have to spend extra time defining the amorality of new bad guys. And it’s like sports rivalries, where the fans of each team want to see the other team repeatedly humiliated.
Art Dept. Drawing a “bird’s eye” panoramic view can make good sense in a situation like this, to capture the ambiance of the event. However, it seems overblown when the scene only highlights one of Rivera’s sarcastic comments and the exclamation of one audience member or squirrel. Perhaps this is another example of Rivera riffing on the once-common habit of prior artists—such as Jack Elrod—to draw dialog balloons that pointed ambiguously to one or more people, animals, or objects.
This panel talk is more like a professional wrestling match: It’s all about the theater. And Mark is the one getting tag-teamed by the Bro’ Boys. Clearly, we are not going to see much in the way of actual—or serious—discussion. Absurdity works best when it appears within an environment of normalcy and convention. But is this a normal or conventional environment?
Will Mark accept Cricket Bro’s challenge and take off his shirt? Or will we learn that Cricket Bro’s muscled physique is not real, after all? And who cares, anyway?
Why can’t these clowns just have a nice, contentious debate based on the actual focus of the conference? There are certainly plenty of videos on YouTube that Rivera could have cribbed from. Hopefully, she did exactly that, and we’ll see some of it in the coming days.
Oops! This is May 1st, not April 1st. Forget what I wrote in the previous paragraph… !
Hmm, I thought the topic is “Going Green with AI”, but Cricket Bro seems to be arguing against that. Cricket Bro’s opening remark in panel 1 lays the foundation for his thesis in panel 2. Seems like a strawman argument to me, as it does to Mark. But, it’s early, so let’s see how the panel discussion develops. At least Mark is stepping in to counter Cricket Bro’s distortion, even if his statement is self-evidently obvious (“This is our planet…the one where people live.”). I don’t know why Mark didn’t dress up in a smart sports jacket, tie, and slacks in order to throw off Cricket Bro and the audience. Instead, his clothes have a big target on him that says “I live in the woods.”
Art Dept. Too bad Rivera didn’t consult the work of comic book artist extraordinaire, Jack Kirby. She could have improved on Cricket Bro’s “pumped-up” body, unless Rivera is deliberately making him look baggy because his pumped torso looks like it is leaking. Boy, I’m persnickety today!
Well, introductions must be made. The four-panel format just happens to fit. Otherwise, not much to say here in terms of storyline or plot development. Why is Mark emoting out loud, rather than through a customary thought balloon? Is Mark breaking the conventional “fourth wall” to speak directly to us?
Art Dept. I know that Rivera has commented before about going old school and using non-digital drawing tools (i.e. pen and ink). That kind of looks like what we see in panels 2 and 3, unless somebody else drew them. The style resembles a slightly more finished version of her storyboarding technique, though I hesitate to show them here without permission. Just look her up on BlueSky where she posts. As pen drawing goes, more practice should help. As I’ve mentioned more than once previously, that her Mark Trail style appears to be an outgrowth of her storyboarding approach.
But the other question you are likely asking is “Why was panel 1 and panel 4 drawn in Rivera’s usual, digital style? Why weren’t all four panels drawn using the same style? Got me!
This is a panel of AI experts? Clearly, Rob Bettancourt (Cricket Bro) conned both Bill Ellis and Mark Trail, as the only other apparent member of this AI “expert panel” is Rob’s brother, Jadsen Sterling. Both were involved in trying to swindle Mark’s dad, Happy Trail, out of his money to support their fraudulent NFT venture (“Oregon Trails”, 2022).
Well, AI experts or not, the brothers are expert grifters in the AI/NFT field. And from way things are shaping up, I’m not holding my breath that the audience is really composed of tech pros, either.
Critical thinking—as thinking is called these days—is a skill that requires ongoing practice. Mark must have skipped his homework as he makes the fundamental mistake of assuming one speaks for all. There is little purpose at the present in trying to figure out the reason for Sid Stump’s panicy outburst. Maybe he had just demonstrated his software in the exhibition hall and all he got in return was a bunch of smirks, rolling eyes, and suspicion. Is Mark really going to dismiss the sincerity of the vendors he talked with because of Sid Stump’s actions?
Art Dept. Not much stands out except maybe panel 3, with a strongly-defined closeup of Mark, posed like the standard Mark Trail “corner lean-in “ image used by her predecessors. This time around, in addition to the radiant energy lines that perhaps symbolize Mark’s illogical revelation, we see the usual unshaven Mark, looking more like a scheming bad guy in a crime movie. In fact, in the pre-Rivera days, Mark’s gruff appearance would almost certainly indicate a person with criminal intent. But as we know, Rivera turned that notion upside down when she took over the strip back in October of 2020.
Once again, Rivera parodies her own strip by presenting a pigeon and foliage in panel 1 as if they have been pasted from another source. Maybe, maybe not. But reality is not the point, I think. It’s just to make sport of Trail fans. I think the expression would be “Own the Tailheads.” Sounds a bit clumsy, doesn’t it? Perhaps we should shorten “Trailhead” to a simpler contraction, “Tread”, as in “Own the Treads.” Nice!
It’s interesting to see Mark stress over writing HTML, when in his early stories, he seemed to be somewhat ignorant of the Internet. Even Mark can learn, I reckon. So is Mark coding his own web pages for his blogs, rather than taking advantage of the many platforms and blog sites already available? That might help explain his low number of followers. Certainly, he must have enough wits about him to cross-post his articles and blogs across multiple sites, right?
I wonder if, in his talk, he’ll bring up that Salt Lake City adventure (“Horsin’ Around”, 2024) involving a secretive data center run by grifter Tad Crass and a bunch of mustangs that may or may not have gotten disturbed by Crass’s desert complex. Maybe he’ll bring up the NFT grift of Cricket Bro and his brother out in Oregon.
Who knows!? Maybe Kelly is a better nature journalist, which is why Mark gets the weird and silly assignments. Of course, this sets up a real conundrum for Rivera. Can Kelly Welly be as good—or better—than Mark, in his own comic strip? Or is Bill Ellis a secretive, conniving SOB for sending both Mark and Kelly on the same assignment to see who submits the better story?
But maybe Kelly will once again be doomed by her delusions and lack of a brand name, bound for another humiliating return to the Mark Trail Phantom Zone. Of course, given the stakes here and the serious nature of the subject, we should not expect Rivera to turn this story into a farrago of nonsense and superficialities. Right?
Wait, sorry. I already predicted that that is going to be the case, though that is hardly a revelation.
A peaceful, bucolic day in Lost Forest revealed Rusty Trail and Olive (of the Florida Pitts) taking a peaceful, bucolic walk. But are they bird watching? Looking for Spring flowers? Taking soil samples to test for changes in soil nutrients? Uh, no. They are on another cryptid hunt.
Olive, an aunt who genuinely likes Rusty, played along until they heard a buzzing sound. When they went to investigate, they spied The Grungy Boys fooling around with a riding lawnmower in a clearing. Olive began recording their antics on her phone.
Honest Ernest, the chief Grungy, saw Olive and Rusty and became irritated. He approached the interlopers, demanding Olive’s phone so he could presumably erase the video. Honest Ernest claimed their activity was in protest of being arrested for breaking up office equipment in Lost Forest and leaving the debris behind.
Unfortunately, as Ernest tried to grab the phone, Olive, who has a long history of scrapping, planted a solid right cross that knocked Ernest off his feet. The hapless Stooges looked on in disbelief as she read to them from the Book of Olive.
I’m guessing this is a draft of Mark’s AI talk for the upcoming Cricket Bro Tech Convention in NYC. It’s a good start, at least. It has the added virtue of avoiding bad puns and jokes, and I think we can all appreciate that!
Last week (or so) I proposed a thought experiment about what Bill Ellis did in his spare time. I found a possibility: Moonlighting as a meteorologist for ABC under the assumed name of Lee Goldberg.
Bill Ellis⏤when not forecasting the weather⏤doesn’t seem to treat Mark seriously. He is happy setting up Mark as a punching bag for Cricket Bro (aka Rob Bettancourt), as Mark rightly assumes. But to what end? What does Ellis get out of this besides a cut of Mark’s fee?
Nothing mentioned (so far) about how this assignment has anything to do with journalism, much less which magazine this assignment is destined for. Is Mark supposed to write up the conference for publication? It’s a puzzle. Maybe Jules Rivera is finally transitioning Mark into more of an outright, independent troubleshooter, troublemaker, “Edward Abbey” type of activist, with Ellis more as his handler or manager than an editor. So “journalist” then becomes Mark’s cover job, rather than his actual job. If so, let’s get Diana Daggers in on this as his partner. She could definitely stand some hardening up in this strip. I don’t want to see her go the way of Kelly Welly or Dirty Dyer.
The Daily Trail 