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“Here’s mud in your eye! And your shoes! And your fuel line!

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Okay, the miracle of the mud occurred, after all. Enough to ruin the evening for the Grungey Boys.

Moving on, I am amazed to see in panel 1 what looks like another misdirected dialog balloon. It shows Honest Ernest berating his companions for doing something only he has been doing! The content of the dialog balloon suggests that one of the other two dudes should be berating Ernest. I don’t get it.

Furthermore, how does grabbing your cap or covering your mouth help extricate this lawn mower from the mud, as Rivera states? We’ve seen text boxes in the past that describe actions that do not appear to be happening. I might be overthinking this or Rivera under-thought it.

Anyway, it’s Saturday, so it looks like this story has reached its climax. The Grungey Boys are no doubt too unsettled to realize they could simply make a new path or go some other place. But it’s a major win for Rusty Trail, even if his understanding of science is wrong. This victory will certainly help improve his otherwise poor win-loss record. By the way, say good-bye to Dirk. He’ll disappear like free beer at a ballpark. Such is his mysterious way.

Art. Dept Addition: Here is today’s installment, as it appears in the newspaper. Again, much appreciated increase in the use of actual tonal contrast over Rivera’s previous habit of just raw lines.

This mud’s for you!

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Olive comes through with a scientific solution. Good on her! It also helps that this “lawn mower” (of course, we’ve all noticed it never seems to have a blade beneath it) runs over the track more than once to help accelerate the mud production. So sure. Somehow enough of that water made it down through the grass and into the dirt to produce enough mud to bog down the mower. Well … why not. Let’s give Rusty a break for once. Will this really work? Wouldn’t Ernest just cut a new path around it? Wait, too much logical thinking here.

Art Dept. I do think the wet tracks forming in panel 1 are quite naturalistically presented. Not so much the ambiguous and sketchy scene in panel 3. At the same time, I’m continually amazed at how objects can get bigger or smaller for no apparent reason. The mower that Honest Ernest rides today is about half the size it was from yesterday (panel 1 for June 5). Perhaps an optical illusion based on the point of view, you think?

As for that panel 1 in yesterday’s strip, the overall concept is good, but the execution doesn’t match up. Look closely at Olive. I’ll wait …………… And are those three actually above Ernest? Or are they looking up from a hole or gully? That’s one of the challenges in drawing a bird’s eye scene like this:  elevations are tricky. But some more line work or hatching might have helped better suggest the elevation.