I’m not seeing anything specifically bad here, aside from theft and illegal dumping. Not that they are minor issues; but the destructive actions of these three dudes is nothing to be alarmed over. Better the smashing of a fax machine than a person or animal.
Why they are doing this at all is not clear. They don’t seem to be angry about being displaced in their jobs, so we can’t call them modern-day luddites.
Now, why they want to destroy equipment in the woods is a psychological issue for trained medical personnel to deal with. They could as easily destroy equipment in their own back yards. So maybe this sidebar story ends with Ranger Shaw citing them for illegal dumping and the police arresting them for petty theft.
Then maybe we can get back to Rusty’s school fair project, unless this is just another ploy by Rivera to present Rusty as worthy of his own adventure, only to have it taken away by his father.
Rivera certainly did throw us an interesting curve this time. I recognize Honest Ernest. Is that Afro-haired dude in the middle the annoying kvetch, Connor? He does look familiar, but I forget where. I can’t place the man with the yellow hat, but I’ll wager he doesn’t have a pet monkey named Curious George.
The idea of smashing objects is a well-known technique for temporary relief of anxiety. It’s certainly possible that these dudes are doing this out of some mutually acknowledged need to displace their anger. Or it could be they just enjoy taking (or stealing) things and destroying them. Then leaving them behind as litter in the forest. Based on the existing litter, these boys have some long-standing anger issues to resolve.
But “Grungey Boys”!?! They don’t seem to fit what is called “grunge boy aesthetic” based on their attire. I’m willing to admit to being wrong on that assessment, but I don’t think so.
Andy certainly has that “fashion runway walk” mastered in panel 3, though it’s unusual for a Saint Bernard to have such long, slim limbs. Perhaps the Trails had Andy’s legs shaved for the summer. Or maybe Rivera was looking at Marmaduke’s character reference sheet by mistake.
You know, my mindful readers, I have a notion that Rivera’s stories could be better if she didn’t go out of her way to telegraph upcoming events in such obvious ways, as in panel 3. Now, Rivera could be throwing us a curve, where Robbie does not suddenly pop into the picture, but Mark and Ranger Shaw do.
But what would be the outcome if Robbie does show up? I mean, Rusty does have a shovel. And Andy.
“Don’t worry, I have plenty of time to get it done!” is the surest sign of impending failure every time it is spoken in a book, movie, or comic strip.
It probably won’t come as a surprise to most of you if I admit that I am a tad confused. Based on Mark’s discussion with Ranger Shaw the week before, Rusty had already been digging, though until that moment, we hadn’t seen Rusty doing any digging. So today he is going back to dig up game controllers. Perhaps the mental image of Rusty at work that Mark portrayed to Ranger Shaw was only a bit of hyperbole. Or maybe Rusty is going back for even more busted controllers.
But will Rusty run into Mark and Ranger Shaw on their way back from visiting the site?
Art Dept. I’d like to give Rivera credit for that gray squirrel, but really, that heavy outline just kills any impression of lightness and quickness.
An empty house, eh? That must mean ol’ Doc Davis is either working at his clinic or he picked the lock on his door and escaped. We can certainly ascribe the latter aspiration to a cheerful Rusty, as he walks down a path brandishing a shovel, while Andy follows behind. Wait a minute: brandshing a shovel?!? Are there more game controllers buried in Lost Forest? Does he and Andy play some kind of radical version of Hide and Seek?
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.
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.
An old-timer once told me “Beware of Evil”, or perhaps it was “be ware of eve hill”. My recollection is hazy, so I’m uncertain. He might have said “Be warm on Eve Hill!”, which is a standard greeting between skiers at a remote mountain lodge in Zuni, Virginia.
Well, dang! Now I forgot my point. No matter, on to today’s exciting installment of Mark Trail.
Hoo-boy! This story is just moving right along … like a car without fuel. So what is the point of all this? Sure, it’s always a good idea to flesh out characters, even the supporting cast. But is Rivera going to take all week to do this?
As for Mark’s fellow woodsman, Ranger Shaw, what’s with his “fill the void” confession? Is he a newlywed? He may not make it to long-term spouse status if he thinks there is an equivalence between his wife and a fish.
Art Dept. The fish drawing looks pretty good. I like this convention of showing the fish “in the water”, which is about the only way you can show a live fish without depicting it leaping out of the water.
I imagine that the shocked expression on Cherry’s face in the first panel is because she thought she was being cordial and polite. There wasn’t even an apostrophe at the end of her complaint! I’m sure that Cherry’s idea of an aggressive tone would be more like the Trailer Court How-Dee-Do with her sisters. Then again, in Monday’s strip, Cherry’s background in panel 4 was a slightly more intense violet, while the color in today’s fourth panel has changed to some kind of pale orange. Is this merely a color design choice, or does it suggest a mood swing? Of course, this will not be seen in the black & white printing, so my theory may not be valid.
The authoritative Wikipedia tells us that the Sabal Palmetto tree (aka Cabbage Tree) is native to the Southern United States: South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, etc., all the way to southern California. I don’t believe we have seen these trees in Lost Forest. So it might bring up the question of where this neighborhood is located, if anybody cares? Florida would be a guess, but probably not accurate, since Florida has twelve varieties of palm trees, which would undermine Violet’s ruling.
While Florida also has its own share of kooks, I don’t think we need to leave Georgia (the presumed location of Lost Forest) to find Stuffy Southern Snobs. And do we really think Cherry’s small landscaping service is big enough to do business in multiple states? Consider the licensing costs, taxes, logistics, and staffing required.
As for our story, the last panel today makes clear that Cherry is not going to take this autocratic behavior lying—or sitting—down, though she has more or less agreed on the exotic palm tree. Will that be concession enough for Sunny Soleil, or will Andy make a mess of Violet’s flower beds outside and ruin the negotiations?
Hi, my name is George Atkins. Because of his time commitments, Dennis asked if I would pinch hit for him now and then and provide commentaries. So you might notice a slightly different style. But first, an apology: I should have published these initial commentaries earlier, but I misunderstood some instructions, much to my dismay. Second, please feel free to continue or start offering your own comments about the strip or even my contributions. So, moving on…
The Sunday nature panels continue to align most closely with the traditional Mark Trail canon, a welcome continuity for long-time followers. The topic du jour is the beaver. According to its Wikipedia entry, the ultimate origin of the name “beaver” derives from an Indo-European word root meaning “brown.” So, aptly named! Beavers were almost hunted to extinction, mostly for their fur. Obviously, Rivera can only hit the high points in a comic strip. We must skip over a few details, such as the beaver’s capacity to take down a lot of trees when building habitats. However, forestry experts say the beaver’s positives outweigh the negatives. Good news! I think Rivera plays things pretty straight on Sunday and injects some pleasing, casual humor. I suggest the comic syndicate (North America Syndicate) start pushing the Sunday panels in the newspapers that dropped them because they were often boring. Not any longer!
As is typical in the Trailverse, when Mark has to travel, we immediately move from Lost Forest to a scene of a plane landing at some airport. Curiously, it looks like the plane is actually taking off. I think we must also forgive Rivera for concatenating the time element by having the pilot alert the passengers they are making their final descent when they are already just a few hundred feet above the airport! There is only so much space to get the story moving. Note also the totemic owl in the first panel. Here is our first candidate for next Sunday. I’m no ornithologist, but it looks like a Burrowing Owl. More educated readers may wish to correct me here.
Is Mark actually taken with those exotic scents for sale? Is he just being sarcastic? For old Mark Trail: No way. For new Mark Trail: Very likely. Maybe that’s why he apparently walked right by Reptiliannaire, who we see in the background holding a “Mark Trail” attention sign. Maybe Lizard-man was late getting there. Still, he had no trouble recognizing the large, flannel-shirted dude from the back!
Is this really “star treatment” as Rivera keeps bringing up? Where are the reporters and photographers? TMZ? Mark’s fans? Sure, the star rapper himself came to pick up Mark. And that is certainly some kind of recognition. But shouldn’t Reptiliannaire be accompanied by a coterie of vloggers and other media hacks? Perhaps Rivera is making a critique on the hollowness of “the star life.” Okay, I’m no deconstructionist.
Perhaps the last panel holds a clue: The eco-rapper asks Mark to provide comfort and aid to his pet iguana. Now Mark! Why are you perturbed by lizard-sitting duty? Or is it having to sit in the back? The back is where the star sits, Mark! Being chauffeured is part of the star treatment, so get with the program and put on your shades! Maybe you and Sherman will have a nice chat about the LA Scene.
I sort of kept up with the goings-on while enjoying the Thanksgiving weekend… lots of travel and not a lot of time or computers available… anyway, in reading the Thanksgiving installment, I recall being particularly thankful in the fact that Mark did not commit the classic blunder of using the wrong form of the personal pronoun when inviting Mr. Holland onto the boat… “Spend a few days with my wife and me…” rather than “with my wife and I…”
But Mark, it’s really not your boat now is it… but that’s OK, we will let you live in your own fantasy world for now… And that’s right, Mark, Mr. Holland is simply too busy raping the natural world to afford any time away from the office…
But with Great Flourish and Dramatic Purpose, Mark moves from the cockpit to the bow of the great vessel, imploring Mr. Holland to come see the “photos” he has taken…
And like a Striped Bass (Which Holland recalls not photographing as a child but hooking, landing and gutting…) he takes the bait that Mark has laid out for him…
Mark, now so pleased with himself, his face so aglow with pure rapture that it’s drawing Cherry into the caper, we now get to see Justin Holland in his thoughtful and pensive state… And we soon get to be introduced to the real villain- Mitchum- who “single-handedly arranged the purchase of the property near the GREAT swamp…”
But Justin, you really are unaware of the vitriol you are about to face, aren’t you?? The lit torches and pitchforks that await you upon meeting “some of the local people…” they aren’t in the mood to talk or shake hands, they want a pound of eco-flesh- yours…
So now we know that Holland is simply a pawn in his own company, probably came into his wealth the old fashioned way- through a blood line, a member of the “lucky sperm club,” and now we get to see just how ill-suited he is at running a conglomerate…
But again I say, Cherry, Get your gun! At the rate the mother Grizzly is closing in, and given her abilty to reach up 10-12 feet, not to mention her ability to climb or even to knock down the snag of a tree seen as sanctuary, all I can say is that Mark better be a damn good shot!
But oh, the selfless Cherry, content to shove Shelley’s white ass up the tree while she looks over her shoulder at the bear… funny, but I recall Mark mentioning a special place to go camping, not far from a Ranger Station… not this hell hole full of danger around every corner… OK, so most of what we are seeing here has been self-inflicted… but still.
OK, so a while back I was suggesting that what was needed here was a little “Disney Magic…”
What I had in mind were flying cars, maybe a pumpkin that turns into a coach, anything to help out our intrepid campers… But instead we get a scene right out of the Disney Classic, “Bambi,” where ‘evil man’ has set the forest aflame and the animals, large and small, of all possible genus, are sent running for their lives… Or did the artist simply go to the “Mark Trail animal clip art collection” and start to cut and paste? I mean, really? What do we see? Grouse cavorting with Raccoon shacking up with White Tail? Not likely…
And as Cherry and Shelley head toward the lake, possibly to choose a fate of drowning and hypothermia over being fried to death, we see that Cherry had the foresight to put a jacket on and grab the ol’ Peacemaker. Apparently Shelley only brought one outfit- the obnoxious green slacks paired with purple shirt… I wonder if she had time to throw on all the layers, including that itchy turtleneck sweater?
Apparently Wes crashed the sea plane in the land of the midnight sun… given the immediacy of his “did you hear that?” comment, and the fact that the ladies were still snug in their beds at night when the 20-pounder went off, and the fact that it looks like they are paddling in full daylight, once again is making me question the whole space/time continuum in the Trail-verse… And where there’s smoke there’s what, gentlemen? FIRE! And again, what’s with the stubble on Wes’s face and the not-a-whisker on Mark’s? Must be that Mark took a pledge to A) always have razor and B) use razor even in the direst of circumstances…
And rather than being on a lake (or up a creek) without a paddle, looks like the abandoned cabin came complete with a sound canoe and TWO paddles! Oh what good fortune! I see that Mark has taken the forward position in the canoe- the POWER STROKE. Let’s hope the Wes earned his canoeing merit badge at some point in his outdoor training or else the canoe might not be making the most direct line toward the smoke and fire and their ladies in distress!
I will say that this story line is moving right along… no drama at the “abandoned cabin…” only a mere way-station to carry the men back to where the real story is. But did they leave a note for the cabin owner? Any journalist worth his press card should have his pencil and notepad handy… let’s hope Mark had the decency to leave his calling card to inform the owner of who filched his property, and under what circumstance…
The Daily Trail 