Home » Posts tagged 'New York City'

Tag Archives: New York City

Mark is feeling down and out in NYC.

Posted on by

There is—or was—actually a place called the Green Room Café in Midtown East, Manhattan, but data says it is permanently closed. There are several other places in the City that have “Green Room” as part of their name, but I’m not sure if they are connected with each other. If anybody can clear this up, feel free to share that information in a comment.

Wait! The caption in panel 1 says that Mark is inside the Green Room Café. If that is the case, then is all of that greenery just a wall mural?

Yet, Mark is desperate for the outdoors. He finished his roundtable talk and should be free to fly home. Why isn’t he?

We get to watch Mark manually dislocate his head in panel 1. And I’m struck by the irony of his plea in panel 2. Mark moans over concrete, but the building behind him is brick. And there seems to be a good bit of greenery right beside where he is standing, with a big (gray?) squirrel checking him out. Unless that is just a mural, as I noted above.

As for asking Cherry to turn her phone camera around? Is Mark really interested in trees now or whether any water heater dudes are just hanging around? I suspect that this phone call is just an excuse to check up on Cherry to see if she is still deeply involved with the water heater project.

<AAGH! I must resist having these disreputable thoughts. That’s what comes from staying up too late.> In any event, we are glad to see that Cherry knows how to get her snark on, as she gently needles Mark. That’s a pun, folks. Get it? Pine Tree, pine needles, needle. HAH! Rivera missed that one!

We return to Mark’s action-filled adventure in New York City … (Yawn!)

Posted on by

One of the things I had early on complimented Rivera for is expanding the home life of Mark and Cherry, giving us more than just pancake dinners, front porch discussions, and tearful goodbyes. However, it can swing too far the other way, as exhibited here. And this is not a singular occurrence. But I don’t think breaking a storyline to indulge in insignificant small talk is a good idea. Coming back to Mark’s adventure after a week with Olive and Rusty, we should expect to see something going on with Mark and the AI Conference. Tempo! Tempo! Tempo!

Today offers us nothing of value. It’s mediocre filler, at best. I am bothered by the notion that the entire week might be like this, since Rivera likes to spend an entire week working with one idea or scenario. You might recall the week-long nature walk these two love birds took back in late February, following their vocal beat-down of the incarcerated Rick the Poacher.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

Posted on by

If you missed last week, your faithful MT blogger suffered in your place, but he’s happy to catch you up. Are you ready?

Our dogged duo (Olive and Rusty) wanted to gather more evidence against the Grungey Boys for their alleged damage to Lost Forest land by their covert lawnmower races. You might recall that our two good deed doers ran across the “Boys” while on a nature walk. The two were discovered by Honest Ernest (the ringleader), who tried to snatch a phone Olive was using to capture their surreptitious activity. Ernest tried to get rough with Olive and demanded the camera, only to wind up on the ground after a sharp right to the face. Zoom to this week.

Operating under a warning from Mark to not escalate the situation (that is, to not act like him), Olive and Rusty came up with another plan to get more evidence. They purchased a “trail cam” and installed it where the Grungey Boys play. When Olive and Rusty showed the video evidence they captured to Ranger Shaw, he responded that (for some reason) he had no enforcement powers in the unincorporated portions of Lost Forest. Personally, I found this surprising, as unincorporated land is usually protected by the county sheriff. Ranger Shaw could have brought him in, but did not. But why didn’t Shaw have jurisdiction if Lost Forest is some kind of preserve? Oh, the complexities of government jurisdictions!

Custom title panels are a hallmark of Rivera’s Sunday Mark Trail strips. The conception of today’s title is very good, though the execution is a bit slack. Anyway, it’s nice to see that Rivera can draw or copy realistic trees when called upon (panel 4). Would be nice if she could draw them in the regular panels, too.

Planting trees in downtowns is a good idea, if thoughtfully done. My city tried it a few time and failed. At one time they even created portable “parks” complete with shrubbery and seating that could be moved around downtown to give workers and customers a respite from the concrete.

The Week in Review and the Sunday Nature Chat

Posted on by | 2 Comments

After blithely and indifferently assisting with the capture of a raccoon in LaGuardia Airport, Mark took the air and toured parts of Manhattan before going on to his pre-convention meeting. Mark has a penchant for verbal self-reflection and saw fit to voice his impressions along the way, apparently talking to himself. And for some unknown reason, Rivera decided to alter Mark’s personality and portray him as a clichéd Gomer Pyle visits the big city. “Shazam!” Not sure what the purpose of that change was. Mark may be a lot of things, but he was never a country bumpkin. Snuffy Smith has that role locked up.

When Mark arrived at the location for his meeting, he ran into long-time (but rarely seen during Rivera’s tenure) rival, Kelly Welly. The last time they had any significant dialog was in Rivera’s first Mark Trail adventure. Welly’s resentment for Mark has grown over time, and she somehow found out about Cricket Bro and his convention, so she attached herself to his company. She is now Mark’s official contact for the AI convention. He’s just thrilled.

If you are thinking this whole affair is some kind of elaborate “James Bond” setup for Mark, I agree. Revenge is the most likely cause because of Mark’s interference in the manatee abduction attempt. But we’ll have to wait another week to learn more, as Rivera has signaled she is turning the space over to Cherry (or maybe, Doc Davis). Well, perhaps Cherry is getting tired of her never-ending problems with Violet and will strike out in a different direction this time.

Mark wants to honor rats!? Egad, has Mark been eating the cheese again? Well, Rivera already covered pigeons, so I suppose these rats (known by various nicknames) are the next popular animal life form people think about when it comes to New York City.

Talk about wanting to get rid of illegal immigrants, this would be a better place for all of us to focus. The idea of rats running around cities, homes, and apartments does not make for fond memories. They are crawling laboratories of pathogens. They have also long been thought to be the spreaders of bubonic plague during the Black Death in the Middle Ages. But more recent research says no, it is rat fleas. Those are parasites hitching rides on the rats.

So, do these city rats have a positive purpose? Not as far as humanity is concerned. There is a lot of truce to the old insult, “You dirty rat!” I’ll laugh at lions, alligators, and black mambas (from a distance). As for flies, tics, and rats, send them all to the Antarctic.

Mark the Woodsman gets worn out walking in New York

Posted on by

It’s not completely accurate to refer to Kelly Welly as Mark’s nemesis, at least in her original pre-Rivera incarnation. On the other hand, Cricket Bro is an actual nemesis.  Kelly Welly, as long-time readers know, was Mark’s journalistic rival in the pre-Rivera (or Classic) days, always trying to beat him out of an assignment or even mess up one of his assignments; but things usually didn’t work out for her. I suppose it is a matter of degree and motivation.

The last time Rivera featured Kelly—as far as I can recall—was in the first story she penned, where Mark had to investigate his Dad’s questionable business dealings (started October 13, 2020 “Woke Mark”). In that story, Mark felt the heat and wanted to give the assignment to Welly. Instead, she laid out her feelings about him and she did not hold back (this happens over several strips in late January 2021). In the end, she refused to take the story and told him to suck it up and do it himself. Kelly wasn’t about to be used as Mark’s “Get out of jail, free” card. The pre-Rivera Kelly would likely have taken the assignment. However, the current Kelly Welly Reboot is a cut from new cloth.

For a good summary of Kelly Welly’s background, check out Mark Carlson-Ghost’s index of classic Mark Trail stories and characters (https://www.markcarlson-ghost.com/index.php/2020/11/21/mark-trail-history/).

The Yokel Express keeps running

Posted on by

Yes, the New York subways certainly are famous, though not exactly in the manner Mark Trail is suggesting.

I’m not sure why Rivera started making Mark act like a country rube visiting the Big City. I think Rivera could have done the “personal tour” with a standard-issue Mark Trail broadcasting his commentary to whomever passed him by. 

But this is not really a story at this point. It is more like a long TV commercial selling you on why you should visit New York City. Heck, maybe Rivera has a more personal motive in mind.

Art Dept. I don’t know how to explain this. In looking at the street dancers, they seem to have a real sense of mass and volume in their bodies, unlike the more cartoony, flat figures Rivera usually uses for Mark and the other regulars.