Either rents are cheap in Lost Forest, or it’s become a ritzy artist’s enclave where people come to spend lots of money. Who knows? But, the sisters are working it out, so that’s all that matters. Doesn’t appear that there is any specific story starting this week, just some family time and living the life in Lost Forest.
And that’s okay for a short bit, but we’re not here to simply watch people go about their humdrum lives. That’s why Mary Worth and Arlo & Janis exist. We expect to read impactful stories dealing with environmental issues, and enjoy the occasional bop on the top of some miscreant or doofus.
I’m waiting for those three months to pass by quickly, so Olive can take the gloves off and start kicking booty. But at the rate time seems to pass in Mark Trail, it will be Spring 2026 before Olive makes a move.
(Yes, I ripped off another click-bait headline because I was too tired to think of anything better.)
Today Rivera makes a timely, strategic pivot back to Cherry and her sisters who are once again setting up shop at the local farmers’ market. (The last time they did this, Peach Pitt’s psychotic boyfriend showed up and caused a scene that Cherry’s brother Dirk had to settle) I’m not sure why Cherry is exhausted with setting up jewelry, since it looks like her sister, Olive Pitt, is taking care of it. And it looks as if the t-shirts are already hung, as well. Still, I reckon it’s nice of Cherry to volunteer. No?
Side note: I bet there are some of you out there who probably think Olive’s punchline in panel 3 would have been better had it stopped at “You sell better when you’re hopped up.” But we here at ThyTrailBeDone like to maintain higher standards, so we abstain from using R-rated humor. Okay. Maybe “standards” is too strong a term. And “higher” is really relative, based on where you are standing and what you are looking at. But it is aspirational!
Getting back to the strip’s current activity, I wonder if is this going to be a continuation of an existing storyline or the start of a new one. The last storyline was about the peacock owned by Violet Cheshire’s mom, which escaped just before a big dinner event for which Cherry had been commissioned to create a cage for said bird. Mark engineered a trap to catch the peacock, which was then taken by Honest Ernest to return to Violet. And that’s pretty much where things stood. So far, no word on the fate of the cage, the dinner event, or the peacock’s impression on the friends of Violet’s mother.
All concerns about a woman’s point of view for this assignment appear to have been dropped (Wait: I think I might have said that last week. So, just move on). Mark dropped into San Antonio to meet Tess Tigress. But first, he decided to visit “The Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge,” famous for its scenic design and its wide path for humans and wildlife crossing over the highway (Monday). Or maybe it was crossing over a river (Tuesday). Or maybe it was crossing over a highway experiencing a flash flood.
Mark arrived at a large, luxurious A-frame structure on a lake—Tess’s home—aka, the hunting lodge. After driving along an elaborate driveway, Mark parked in front and knocked on the large glass doors. A man with a pompously large handlebar mustache opened the door announcing that he was Tess’s husband, Jess. This took the wind out of Mark’s sails for a moment, because not only was he surprised Tess was married, he was concerned that Jess might not have known Tess had prior marriages. Shocking, I know. Hell, even I didn’t know that! But who are we to question Mark’s scruples or his information?
Also in Saturday’s strip, Jules Rivera offered up one of her first actual cliffhangers: Tess could not remember ever meeting Mark Trail! Mark was speechless, possibly because Rivera needed the space in the last panel for her narration box, where she prematurely spilled the beans. However, this revelation opens up several possibilities regarding Tess’s memory loss, such as whether it is real or feigned. Maybe we’ll find out, but for now, it’s time for the Sunday nature chat!
Yes, a nasty plant, indeed, along with poison oak and poison sumac. But exactly what happens, Mark? Did you forget to spell it out for the unlucky ones? Poison ivy creates a really awful skin rash that gets worse when you scratch it! It can last for weeks, but is treatable. It’s still a real, real pain. And like Mark said, burning it in your backyard along with wood and yard scraps can be traumatic to your lungs and require a trip to the ER. Wash anything that comes into contact with it. Note that this stuff can grow in yards, too.
Art Dept. I’m sorry, but that raised finger-pointing hand in panel 4 just does not look like it is connected to Mark’s body. The hand is rotated to his right, rather than to his left, as it should be. The placement of the hand, inside the right shoulder, also looks off. It’s as if Mark is holding a hand prop on a stick. This is not a new phenomenon.
Moving the story along, Mark and Tess have their reunion, but it’s all one-sided. Has Tess been brainwashed (e.g., hypnotic therapy)? Drugged? Enmeshed in some kind of personality-stealing cult? That Jess fellow, he certainly looks suspicious with that handlebar mustache of his. I’d claim it was fake, but Rivera seems to have a habit of drawing facial hair that always looks like it was loosely applied with an adhesive.
But, let’s take this at face value for the time being. Is Tess unaware of her own past, or just her past with Mark? Is Jess involved in her transformation or is he just an innocent dupe? I can’t wait to find out.
Art Dept. As we’ve seen, Rivera is anything but consistent. Not sure if this is a deliberate decision or just how things work out. In panel 1, Jess and Tess look like flat paper dolls for some child’s pretend 2-D playhouse. The staging of the panel is unreasonably crowded. For example, why is the car in the scene, since it adds nothing to the plot or the current interaction?
Panel 2 is an improvement. Jess and Tess take on a more substantive appearance, with actual expressions and a modicum of solidity. Mark’s depiction is also interesting, as if he has been delineated by a good sketch artist. The change of direction in the reflection of the door glass is more for reasons of visual balance than continuity with panel 1. That is, the angle from upper left to lower right leads back towards the center, where Jess and Tess are standing, where Mark is also looking. It’s basic design.
The one thing I think is wrong is Rivera’s narration box in panel 2, giving away the punch line before Tess delivers it. We’ve seen that in everyday situations, like where one person asks about a new mystery movie and some jerk reveals the surprise ending, “Is this the movie where they discover Edgar killed his wife in the park?” If Rivera felt the need to clue us in on the plot twist, she should have been more provocative: “But something is amiss!” or “Tess makes an unexpected confession…”
“Hi, I’m Mark the Journalist” Really!? What happened to “Hi, I’m Mark Trail”? Has Mark’s reputation plummeted so much that he is forced to identify himself in relation to a magazine for teenage girls? In Texas!?
Mark can sure be a real yenta. Why is he so concerned about Jess being husband number five or six? I mean, who cares!? If Mark was really concerned about Jess, wouldn’t he be more interested whether Jess knows about Tess’s corrupt past?
While I’m on this subject, would a bunch of teenage girls really be interested in women who hunt wild pigs? Just wondering how this topic got linked to Teen Girl Sparkle, rather than one of the other 16 magazines in Bill Ellis’s publishing empire. Perhaps Jules Rivera is being lazy or just can’t afford to spend more time on the strip. She came up with the concept of Mark working for different magazines when she took over the strip in 2020, but has more less abandoned that plot device, without really exploring the possibilities.
… but nothing happened on the way over, so it’s all okay. Let’s thank Jules Rivera for clarifying that Mark is driving a rental car, rather than one he owns … or stole. He also didn’t rent a horse, so that’s something! Since Mark didn’t spend the entire week at the bridge, the story moves on.
“That’s like three cabins strapped together!” Mark gulped in his Gomer Pyle response. Seem to be more like four or five cabins by area, depending on what your idea of a hunting cabin is. But it’s Texas, and as many citizens like to brag, almost everything is big in Texas. A quick scan of actual hunting lodges indicates this is not even in the top five for size. Oh, Mark. You really need to get out more often!
This is probably a commercial establishment, set up to handle several groups of hunters at a time. In my state, which features lots of lakes, some people have built summer “cabins” on rural lakes that are bigger and more modern than many houses here in town, complete with grass lawns and cement driveways. I reckon “cabin” is a flexible term.
Art Dept. A defender might point out that the extreme miniaturization of this strip in newspapers is a big reason for Rivera’s very simplistic drawing style, which often borders on the being sketchy. To a certain extent, I agree. But the style of other strips belies that size justification as a primary reason. As I’ve noted in the past, Rivera doessometimes use more dynamic layouts in her panels, as we see in panel 1 and even more in panel 3, with its bird’s eye angle and axonometric view of the cabin. Yet much of the detail in panel 3 is sketchy, except for the cabin, which was drawn with more care. And that static-looking car in panel 1 would look more like it is moving had Rivera added a few “speed lines” behind it.
(This is really for Wednesday, the 15th. I just accidentally posted before the clock turned!)
Photographing the land bridge!? Looks like Mark is shooting pics of wildlife, or what resembles wildlife.
So, is that an actual jackrabbit or just a prop, set beside some fake, two-dimensional bushes? Is that really a cooper’s hawk or just a kite some kid is flying? Well, what do I know? I reckon I’m just being a jackrabbit, er, jackass.
Mark is feeling sorry for himself once again. So sad. We’ll see how long this Pity Parade lasts, before he finally gets on the job. As if we had a choice in the matter.
Rivera is having a little joke today. Unique Texas critter? No, she doesn’t mean Mark’s rental car parked on the grass (looks like a late-model Prius, sure to impress Texans) . She doesn’t mean the armadillo, though that is what we are supposed to assume. It’s not unique to Texas, either. HahHahHah! The correct answer is the land bridge, though I’ve never heard of a bridge referred to as a critter. And again, the only thing unique is that it is named “The Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge.” I’m sure we’ll learn more about it.
Looks like Rivera is, indeed, letting Mark have his tourist side trip before reporting for work later this week.
Art Dept. The juxtaposition of armadillo, Mark, and his car appear out of whack, due to the vague perspective that makes the armadillo look like it’s just five feet away from Mark. And it certainly is not the South American giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus), which averages around 3 feet, excluding a 20 inch tail.
The other artistic nit I’m picking is that the land bridge is not over a body of water, as Panel 1 suggests, but over the popular Wurzbach Parkway, which is why it’s a land bridge, of course! Now, even if we omit the blue coloring, we are left with an open area that looks nothing like a highway and more like a body of water.
With that Big Gulp of a mouth in panel 3, I was expecting to hear a “YEE-HAWWWW!” It’s good that Mark can compartmentalize and simply enjoy the sights without having to be preoccupied with how things are going to develop on the ground. Plenty of time to think about that, especially if he has to sit on the tarmac for an hour waiting for an open gate.
Rivera does a decent job of replicating the airport entrance and sculpture (based on photos I referenced), including one of the sculpture’s nighttime spotlights on the ground. Maybe that armadillo is rising up to search for the other spots.
I wonder if Rivera will have Mark visit tourist spots like he did in New York, before contacting the hunting heroines? Will Mark embarrass himself inside the Alamo doing Davy Crockett impressions?
Mark’s salon of villains and troublemakers is relatively limited; less than a dozen over the past 5 years. Several have made multiple appearances: Professor Bee Sharpe, Cricket Bro (and his brother, Jadsen), Senator Smalls, and Chet Chedderson come to mind. Now we can add Tess Tigress to that list with her second appearance.
With the power of a comic strip named after himself, Mark Trail ensured Bill Ellis would give him the assignment that Ellis originally wanted to assign to a female reporter. No complaint was provided from Bill Ellis, suggesting that Mark may have censored that part of the phone conversation. Or Ellis knew what was better for him and remained mum.
Mark began researching his subject: A trio of women on the lookout to kill wild pigs (or boars) destroying private property in Texas. When Mark discovered that the leader of the so-called Texas Hog Hunting Heroines was Tess Tigress—former owner of a fraudulent and abusive tiger petting zoo (also in Texas) and target of an earlier assignment of his—he was taken aback (as we used to say, before gobsmacked became fashionable).
At this point, the remainder of the week was spent with Mark moaning and explaining his reactions to Cherry. Now, she would have already known about Tess Tigress, because of Mark’s earlier assignment. But let’s give Jules Riverasome credit for using this week to review the background on Tess for the benefit of new readers (if any) and old people like me, with failing memories. Or you can call it story padding, as I earlier noted. This background could have been delivered in just a few days, rather than using the entire week. So, maybe it’s a little of both.
As is common for Sunday, Rivera picks a topic that is somehow related to the current storyline. In this case, the Chihuahuan Raven, which can be found in western Texas (as well as New Mexico and Mexico). Rivera provides the usual customized title panel, with the title nicely integrated into the tree. And, unfortunately, we have Rivera’s usual practice of dedicating the concluding panel to a weak joke, rather than giving more information on the raven. For example, the American Birding Association reports that misidentification is common between this bird and the common raven, even by birders. Go figure.
What else? It is found in western Kansas. The Kansas Dept. of Wildlife and Parks reports that they are sometimes killed by humans mistaking them for common crows. Another understandable mistake, I think.
I’m surprised that Cherry did not bring up brother Dirk and his sounder of feral hogs, earlier. I’d have thought they would be one of her main reasons for turning down Bill Ellis’ job offer.
Maybe Jules Rivera doesn’t see all of this time spent on Mark’s complaining as story padding, but that’s how it comes off. I mean, two days should be enough, right? Perhaps the explanation for all of this lies in one way I think Rivera handles story development:
Each week is a “chapter”, with one main point that gets promoted, explained, and hashed out by Saturday. Then on to the next chapter the following week. Sure, there is a simplicity and clarity in that approach. And it supports the scant time people spend on reading comic strips, so it pays to simplify. If a reader misses a day or two, nothing much lost.
Nevertheless, there are parts of any story that do not deserve equal treatment. This is one of them. By Monday we should see Mark flying into a Texas airport, hopefully without the hokey western attire he wore the last time. I wonder if Diana Daggers will pick him up again!?
Using one of her standard bilateral layouts, Rivera starts off today’s strip by continuing yesterday’s hand wringing. I find it odd that Mark keeps repeating already-discussed points (“Texan women with guns”), to which Cherry keeps acting as if this is the first time she’s heard it. Mark’s comment in panel 3 doesn’t make sense. The women are out to kill wild pigs (hogs, or whatever). Sure. That Tess killed another animal, even an elephant, is supposed to make her a pariah? I think Cherry’s remark in panel 4 is correct. The other women—based on their avocation, not their location—would not see this as a detriment. In any event, there is no evidence that Tess killed Gemma, so why should Mark say that?
As for hitting on Texas—which happens to be the location of this trio of hog hunters—we could easily interpret today’s statements as Rivera injecting politically-charged comments, but we could just as easily see it as playing on common stereotypes about Texas. Both interpretations could be correct, but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether one takes precedence or if my interpretation is just wrong.
Then again, Mark and Cherry live in a small community in a forest, presumably somewhere in northern Georgia, based on the Old Trailverse Standard. In such a community, neither guns nor hunting would be strange. This would make Cherry’s comment disingenuous.
I wish Rivera would quit doing that! Yesterday, I made a perfectly fine observation about Tess being shown online in her former Tigress outfit, instead of her current hunting attire. And today, Tess is shown in both costumes. I just can’t win!
Well, are we going to suffer Mark’s whining about Tess Tigress the rest of the week, too? Sure, some of you are likely going to counter with “Well, we already have to suffer Rivera’s relentless regurgitation of pointless boat explosion jokes!” And I will have to re-respond with “… uh … well, yeah.” And back-and-forth this will go. Okay, I’m calling it all off, as of now. Thank you.
Panel 2 suggests Mark has a short memory about Tess. I recalled the story about Tess and her Tiger Touch Center from three years ago, as I’m sure most of you do. Here is a snippet from November 29, 2022. Apparently, Mark forgot this after-action phone call with Bill Ellis, who caught him up on Tess’s whereabouts.
I think three years in Real Life is probably only a year to a year and a half, tops, in the Trailverse. Still, there is always the hope that this might at least be a fun story.
I’m shocked, shocked to see Tess Tigress back in the country, apparently unburdened by legal technicalities. But as we’ve seen in this rebooted strip, nobody gets killed, hurt badly, or truly punished. Poor Mark! No matter what he chooses to do, he keeps running into the same gasbags, cons, double-dealers, crooks, and troublemakers. Maybe he just needs to get out more and meet a better class of criminals.
Okay, we knew where this was going. It is interesting to see that Tess’s former identity and costume was used in her online photo, rather than the recent group photo with hunting garb. Perhaps Rivera wants to ensure that her readers make the right connection. But what other connection could there be?
In other news, is Cherry turning into a real Suzie Homemaker? I wonder how long it will be before she starts sporting a pearl necklace.
Art Dept. Rivera does some decent staging today. The overriding principle here is the alternation between Mark and Cherry, as they take turns being the visual focus in each panel (cM-Cm-M-C). What also makes a bit interesting is the variety of layouts Rivera uses in the panels.
It is a happy day, indeed, to see Jules Rivera revisit the old Mark Trail trope of the ambiguously misplaced dialog balloon. Hah-Hah. Look at that bird (is it a European Robin!?) shouting “ARGH!” So funny. Okay, it might be a little cute. But fortunately, Rivera doesn’t do this very often. Moving on…
Today’s strip is a filler, certainly not moving the story along, even though we’re only in the prologue stage. But let’s give Cherry (or Rivera) her due for keeping a popular southernoath (panel 1) in the public domain, where some readers might assume Cherry’s statement is the result of having spent the prior evening binge-watching The Beverly Hillbillies.
But I’m still a bit disappointed that Rivera chose to not have Cherry participate in this assignment. It would have been a nice change from her usual Sunny Soleil Society stories. That is, Bill Ellis could have given both Mark and Cherry their own, separate assignments. Instead, Rivera kept it conventional. Looks like we’ll have Cherry once again cleaning Violet Cheshire’s boots and putting up with Honest Ernest.
I reckon Bill Ellis will never know how lucky he was that Cherry did not recommend her brother, Dirk, as a better replacement than Mark! He would certainly provide a special touch to that group.
We also see a more sinister-looking, less personable Ralph the Rat Snake (maybe?), who has nothing to say to Mark. And I’m not surprised, given how little time Mark has spent with him. Hissssss!
Okay, gang! After reading today’s strip, is there anybody here who has figured out the group’s leader? It sure isn’t Diana Daggers. The one illustration we saw of the group certainly does not lend itself to close identification of anybody in particular. As the group is based in Texas from a preexisting book club, we can safely rule out Kelly Welly, who doesn’t fit the look, anyway.
So who does that leave? Clearly, this isn’t anybody new.
Unless Rivera is looking back down the Trail Timeline to one of those earlier female opponents, I’m guessing this will turn out to be Tess Tigress. After all, her phony “Tiger Touch Center” was located in Texas. She also has a background in using rifles (or shotguns). And even though she had reportedly fled the country to avoid prosecution, there’s no reason she wouldn’t come back, even under a different name.
But, that’s just a guess. And my track record has been pretty poor, lately.
A “Woman’s Touch” was the theme of the week when Bill Ellis made his usual phone call during Mark and Cherry’s nature walk and love affirmation session. But it turned out that he wanted Cherry’s participation instead of Mark’s. This was a highly unusual idea, using Cherry as the lead in a Bill Ellis assignment. Ellis specifically wanted a female reporter to accompany a trio of female book club members in their mission to eliminate feral hogs from people’s yards.
Somehow, Cherry got the impression that she was expected to also take part in the actual hunting instead of simply reporting on the group’s activities, and Bill Ellis did nothing to dissuade her. Maybehe did infer that. I dunno. But Cherry is no hunter and even got a bit panicky at the thought of hunting feral hogs. So she turned him down. Instead, she suggested Mark would be the person to take on the job. Seeing as how Bill was interested in a woman’s point of view, I’m not sure what Cherry was thinking at that point, but Mark was on board. However, we have yet to hear what Bill Ellis has to say on this last-minute substitution.
Thus, within one week, Jules Rivera tempted us with the novelty of Cherry going on an official assignment instead of Mark, only to pull it away by having Cherry refuse the job. It could have been nice to see Cherry operate in a situation that did not include the Sunny Soleil Society. Still, as I noted, we have not heard the last from Bill Ellis, who may reshape the job to get Cherry on board. We’ll see. But until then, let’s see what aspect of Nature Mark is expounding on today:
Well, yippee yi yo ki yay! We’re back in Texas once again and once again talking about bats. You would not be chastised for thinking that Mark might even own some property out there. Or maybe a bat sanctuary.
Too bad that Rivera didn’t have to mention a particularly popular event down in Austin: “Texas is home to the largest urban bat colony in the world, consisting of [up to] 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats under the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas.”
Apparently, these bats collectively leave the dark underside of the bridge every evening from around mid-March to early November and create a spectacular cloud of flying mammals looking for their evening meal. It’s quite the attraction, online sources say.
Well, is this turning out to be a joke, after all (as I feared)? What could have been an interesting plot has turned on itself and appears to be going back to the Same Ol’ Same Ol’. But in spite of Cherry’s handoff and Mark’s self-assurance, Bill Ellis is running the show and wants a female’s point of view. I’m pretty certain that ability is not in Mark’s backpack. And this leads us back to Kelly Welly, unless Ellis comes up with a different solution.
Something is tragically—or stupidly—mixed up. As I stated yesterday, reporters are observers and recorders, as we all know. So why is Jules Rivera putting out this obviously preposterous proposition of Cherry having to hunt feral hogs as part of the assignment? Is Rivera setting us up for some kind of a joke at the end of the week? Is Bill going to clarify: “I was just kidding, Cherry! Of course you don’t have to hunt feral hogs. You just have to tag along with three women who do!”
I know some of you are going to think about that final narration box. No, not the fact that it is again present, but its contents: “Yep. That’s canon.” It seems to be a loose application of the term “canon”, which normally refers to an accepted, recognized body of work in literature or music. There are also different applications of the term that refer to laws and rules that do not apply here.
This different, personal use of the term seems to be popular on social media, where a speaker feels something is a “significant event”, “official”, or just true. As cultural outsiders, the rest of us would have probably just written, “Yep. That’sa fact.”
Art Dept. Try to ignore (or block out) Cherry and Mark in panel 1. Those are some wickedly stylized trees and landscape in panel 1. They could belong to a completely different comic strip. In fact, I think they are better than the flora Rivera has been drawing recently. Now, I’m not saying they are more realistic or representational, not in the least. Rather, their surreal appearance suggest a wholly different vision. If Rivera were to apply that aesthetic consistently to the strip, we could see a remarkably different version of Mark Trail.
To ask the question she did, Cherry must have strange ideas about what Mark does on assignments. And I don’t know why Ellis fumbled his response by implying she actually might have to shoot hogs. Heck, if Cherry was like that, we probably wouldn’t be seeing Honest Ernest around anymore.
Taking both statements together, I don’t get the point Rivera is trying to push here, other than Cherry doesn’t like hunting animals. And we already learned that. Maybe two more days for Q&A before Bill throws in the towel and moves on to Kelly Welly.
The Daily Trail 