''Mark Trail'' is a
newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...
comic strip
A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
created by the American cartoonist
Ed Dodd. Introduced April 15, 1946, the strip centers on
environmental and
ecological
Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely re ...
themes. As of 2020,
King Features syndicated the strip to "nearly 150 newspapers and digital outlets worldwide."
When ''Mark Trail'' began, it was syndicated through the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative
daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates three online sites: NYPost. ...
'' in 1946 to 45 newspapers. Dodd, working as a
national parks
A national park is a nature park designated for conservation (ethic), conservation purposes because of unparalleled national natural, historic, or cultural significance. It is an area of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that is protecte ...
guide, had long been interested in environmental issues. The character is loosely based on the life and career of Charles N. Elliott (November 29, 1906 – May 1, 2000). At the time a U.S.
forest ranger, Elliott would go on to edit ''
Outdoor Life'' magazine from 1956 to 1974. Dodd once said that the physical model for Trail was John Wayt, his former neighbor in north Atlanta.
Characters and story
Mark Trail, the main character, is a photojournalist and outdoor magazine writer whose assignments lead him into danger and adventure. His assignments inevitably lead him to discover environmental misdeeds, most often solved with a crushing right
cross
A cross is a religious symbol consisting of two Intersection (set theory), intersecting Line (geometry), lines, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of t ...
.
Trail lives in the fictional Lost Forest National Forest with his St. Bernard, Andy; veterinarian Doc Davis; Doc's daughter, and Trail's girlfriend and eventual wife, Cherry, and their adopted son, Rusty. "Mark reflects a reverence for God's creatures, nature, and the conservation of woods, water and wildlife" (Hill, 2003). His assignments in later story arcs tended to involve more sleuthing than wildlife photojournalism.
*Mark Trail – Wildlife photographer and writer for ''Woods and Wildlife Magazine''. In his early 30s; honest and upright; his strongest imprecation was famously "What th'?!"
*Rusty – Introduced in 1981, Rusty Wilson is an orphan and the nephew of an abusive alcoholic named Joe. Rusty bonds with Sassy, one of a litter of Dalmatian puppies, against his animal-hating uncle's wishes. When Joe abandoned Sassy in the woods, Rusty went looking for her and became lost as well, until he was discovered by Mark and Cherry. Mark's intervention saved Rusty's life, and he was taken in as one of their own. Rusty was officially adopted into the Trail family in 1993, when Mark and Cherry married.
*Andy – Mark's faithful Saint Bernard.
*Cherry Davis – Longtime (47 years) girlfriend of Mark until they married in 1993, living with Mark and her father (Doc) at Lost Forest. She is usually a supporting character, but she has sometimes (e.g., 1998) had her own wildlife adventures.
*Tom "Doc" Davis – A veterinarian who is Cherry's elderly father.
*Johnny Malotte – A presumably French-Canadian outdoorsman friend of Mark's since the 1950s, living with his family in the Quetico area of western Ontario, and recently reintroduced into the strip.
*Kelly Welly – Pretty wildlife photographer whose flirtations with Mark, and competitiveness with him, land both of them in trouble; a semiregular character.
*Bill Ellis – Mark and Kelly's editor at ''Woods and Wildlife Magazine'', appearing intermittently when sending Mark on another assignment.
*Ranger Rick Rogers – Wildlife ranger (2006), one of Mark's ubiquitous friends and contacts around the country who tend to appear in single adventures (possibly named for the National Wildlife Federation's mascot
Ranger Rick)
Cartoonists
In the mid-1940s, Ed Dodd was employed in advertising. Dodd created ''Mark Trail'', which he successfully pitched to a syndicate, and the strip was launched on April 15, 1946, in the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative
daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates three online sites: NYPost. ...
.''
[''Mark Trail'']
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...
Archived
from the original on February 13, 2016. Artist and
naturalist
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
Tom Hill joined Dodd on ''Mark Trail'' that year. Hill illustrated the
Sunday strip
The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in some Western newspapers. Compared to weekday comics, Sunday comics tend to be full pages and are in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, t ...
, which was devoted to natural history and
wildlife
Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animals and uncultivated plant species which can exist in their natural habitat, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introdu ...
education, until 1978. Hill also took over most of the
daily strip
A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays. They typically are smaller, 3–4 grids compared to the full page Sunday s ...
art after 1950, freeing Dodd to specialize in the scripting. During the late 1940s, the cartoonist
Jack Davis worked one summer
inking ''Mark Trail,'' which he later parodied in ''
Mad'' as "Mark Trade."
Dodd and
Jack Elrod met when they were with the Boy Scouts; Dodd was a Scout leader and Elrod was a Scout. In 1950, Dodd hired Elrod to work as the strip's background artist and letterer. In addition to Davis and Elrod, Dodd also hired Barbara Chen (who took over lettering) and secretary Rhett Carmichael. The strip's popularity grew through the mid-1960s, with ''Mark Trail'' appearing in nearly 500 newspapers through the North America Syndicate.
Tom Hill's son, Jack Hill, recalled life at Dodd's studio in the Lost Forest outside Atlanta:
:The art studio where Tom Hill (my father), Jack Elrod and Barbara Chen worked was on the second floor, where they had a great view of the Forest. There was also a homesteader, groundskeeper Hubert Hamrick and his family, who lived at Lost Forest and maintained the ranch and animals. Besides native wildlife which abounded in the Forest, there was riding stables, guinea fowl, caged pigeons, a 10-acre fishing lake and of course, Andy, the great Saint Bernard who appeared as Mark’s companion in the comic strip. I would visit Andy every time I went to visit Ed Dodd or to go fishing at the Lost Forest lake. Andy never had the freedom of his fictional counterpart and was kept in a running pen bounded by chain links. Ed’s other dog, Mose, was usually found at his master’s feet as Ed smoked his afternoon pipe. Famous people would visit Lost Forest, such as
Marlin Perkins, sharpshooters, big game hunters and newspaper/magazine journalists. Ed Dodd was a personal friend of Daniel Beard, one of the founders of the Boy Scouts in 1910 and a fellow naturalist and illustrator. They both attended the Art Students League in New York City.
Hill died in 1978, and Dodd retired shortly after. Elrod continued the strip, taking over writing and full art duties, and adding new characters. Based on the complaint of a reader in 1983, Elrod had Mark Trail abandon the trademark pipe that had been part of him from the beginning under likewise pipe-smoking Dodd. In 1993, Mark and Cherry finally married.
In 2010, after years of tutoring, Jack Elrod brought on artist James Allen as an assistant. Allen initially began by assisting on the weekly Sunday page, continuing the themes of wildlife education and natural history and also alerting readers to endangered species and notifications of newly discovered species. Soon after, Allen also started assisting on the daily stories as well.
Starting with the strip dated April 11, 2014, Elrod retired as the strip's primary artist, and Allen formally took over the position, though Elrod-drawn Sunday strips continued to appear for two months. Elrod died on February 3, 2016, at the age of 91.
By mutual consent with the syndicate, after Allen had posted a couple of controversial politically themed tweets using the handle "The Real Mark Trail", Allen abruptly left the position as Mark Trail's artist and writer in 2020. The feature was right in the middle of a story arc, which was left unresolved. Beginning July 27, 2020, ''Mark Trail'' began rerunning daily strips from the Jack Elrod era. New Allen-penned Sunday strips continued through August 16, 2020, after which point Jack Elrod-era Sunday pages were rerun.
After several months of reruns, Jules Rivera, creator of the webcomic ''Love, Joolz,'' took over the strip. Rivera's run began on October 12, 2020. Although Rivera said, "I want to respect the legacy," she also said, "There are going to be jolts galore." Characters have been thoroughly redesigned, and the Sunday strip title no longer has the same lettering from week to week. Instead, titles are designed in tune with the topic. In one strip about butterflies, the "MARK TRAIL" title was hidden in the vein pattern of a butterfly's wings.
Reception
According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, "Elrod's comics typically present information promoting public awareness of imperiled species." A notable exception is the strip that ran on March 11, 2007, which depicted the
African Elephant
African elephants are members of the genus ''Loxodonta'' comprising two living elephant species, the African bush elephant (''L. africana'') and the smaller African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''). Both are social herbivores with grey skin. ...
not as imperiled, but as a peril itself. Letters appeared in numerous papers taking issue with the strip's contention that, "The two main killers in
East Africa
East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the Africa, African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the regi ...
are
HIV/
AIDS
The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...
and wild animals, particularly elephants." Several papers ran letters to the editor objecting to this assertion.
Jack Hill has criticized the strip for declining in quality since 1978. According to Hill, the earlier versions of the strip featured well-written plot and character development and a detailed art style, whereas later versions were marked by a loss of accuracy and detail and "a free-floating approach to perspective." In addition, time froze: scenes and plots have been recycled from the past. According to King Features, Mark now stays "forever 32". However, these changes, along with the uneven art work and misplaced speech balloons (often pointed at foregrounded animals), attracted a new following among fans called "Trailheads".
[
In some cases, daily strips have recycled art and slightly updated plots from 20- or 30-year-old strips. Updating includes deleting pipes and ashtrays, and rearranging panels. Close-ups of recycled animal art are added to cover extraneous word balloons or to create a new panel to add new dialogue.
A parody of the '' Defenders of the Earth'' cartoon, called ''Protectors of the Earth'', is made up of comic strip characters Dr. Rex Morgan, ]Mary Worth
''Mary Worth'' is an American newspaper comic strip that has had an eight-decade run from 1938. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, this soap opera-style strip influenced several that followed. It was created by writer Allen Saunders and ar ...
, Garfield
''Garfield'' is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis (cartoonist), Jim Davis. Originally published locally as ''Jon'' in 1976 (later changed to ''Garfield'' in 1977), then in nationwide Print syndication, syndication from 1978, it chro ...
and Mark Trail.
Radio
On January 30, 1950, Mutual Broadcasting System
The Mutual Broadcasting System (commonly referred to simply as Mutual; sometimes referred to as MBS, Mutual Radio or the Mutual Radio Network) was an American commercial radio network in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the Golden Age of Radio, ...
launched a radio adaptation, ''Mark Trail'', featuring Matt Crowley in the title role. The 30-minute episodes aired three times weekly, and 174 episodes were produced, running until June 8, 1951. A second radio series, starring Staats Cotsworth
Staats Cotsworth (February 17, 1908 – April 9, 1979) was an American actor in old-time radio.DeLong, Thomas A. (1996). ''Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. ...
, was broadcast on ABC beginning September 18, 1950, with 51 half-hour shows that ran thrice weekly until January, 1952. The series then switched to a 15-minute format, producing 125 episodes that aired weekdays through June 27, 1952. Only a handful of the 15-minute episodes are known to have survived.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul, public radio
Public broadcasting (or public service broadcasting) is radio, television, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service with a commitment to avoiding political and commercial influence. Public broadcasters receive ...
station KFAI
KFAI (90.3 FM) is a noncommercial community radio station located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, broadcasting to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
The station broadcasts programming for many of the diverse ethnic groups of the region, inc ...
hosted ''Mark Trail Radio Theatre'' starting in 1991. Produced by Babs Economon, its 17 adventures aired in 228 weekly installments on Friday evenings through September 2002.
In 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is an American scientific and regulatory agency charged with Weather forecasting, forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, Hydrography, charting the seas, ...
(NOAA) began using Mark Trail as its official mascot, making him the voice of the National Weather Service and NOAA Weather Radio
NOAA Weather Radio (NWR), also known as NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards, is an automated 24-hour network of Very high frequency, VHF Frequency modulation, FM weather radio stations in the United States which broadcast weather information direct ...
.
A television pilot for a "Mark Trail" series was filmed in Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
and Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
in 1969, starring Todd Armstrong as Trail, and Robert Dunlap as Scotty. Produced by Bob Stabler, the pilot also featured Michael Pate
Michael Pate Order of Australia, OAM (born Edward John Pate; 26 February 1920 – 1 September 2008) was an Australian actor, writer, director, and producer, who also worked prolifically as a supporting actor in Hollywood films and Ameri ...
, Gordon McDougall, and Susan Lloyd.
Books and magazines
Between 1955 and 1959, ''Mark Trails adventures were reprinted in comic books by Fawcett Publications
Fawcett Publications was an American publishing company founded in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, by Wilford Hamilton "Captain Billy" Fawcett (1885–1940).
It kicked off with the publication of the bawdy humor magazine ''Captain Billy's Whiz ...
and then Standard/Nedor/Pines. The strip spawned numerous books and coloring books, including:
*''Mark Trail's Book of Animals (North American Mammals)'' by Ed Dodd (1955)
*''Mark Trail's 2nd Book of Animals: (North American Mammals)'' by Ed Dodd (1959)
*''Mark Trail's Hunting Tips'' by Ed Dodd (1969)
*''Mark Trail's Cooking Tips'' by Ed Dodd (1971)
*''Mark Trail's Camping Tips'' by Ed Dodd (1971)
*''Mark Trail in the Smokies!: A Naturalist's Look at Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Southern Appalachians'' by Ed Dodd (1989)
For the United States Fish and Wildlife Service
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or FWS) is a List of federal agencies in the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior which oversees the management of fish, wildlife, ...
, Elrod wrote and illustrated coloring books which have been distributed to students throughout the U.S. They include: ''Wetlands Coloring Book'', ''Take Pride in America with Mark Trail: A Coloring Book'', and ''Mark Trail Tells the Story of a Fish in Trouble''.
The 1950s magazine, ''Mark Trail: The Magazine of Adventure for Boys'', merged with ''The American Boy'' and '' The Open Road for Boys''. The magazine was aimed at boys in the 9-17 age group to guide them in natural history and conservation.
Awards
''Mark Trail'' has won more than 30 conservation awards from private organizations and government agencies, including the American Waterfowl and Wetland Association, the Georgia Wildlife Association, the National Forest Association, the National Wildlife Federation, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. An annual Mark Trail Award is presented to individuals, organizations or corporations that assist in expanding the radio network, or recognizing courageous effort in saving lives during weather or civil emergencies. Mark Trail has also appeared in a number of publications by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in efforts to educate children concerning conservation and environmentalism.
In 1991, Congress allocated 16,400 acres (67 km2) of former logged forest along the Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian Trail, also called the A.T., is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States, extending almost between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, and passing through 14 states.Gailey, Chris (2006)"Appalachian Tra ...
in Georgia to be designated the Mark Trail Wilderness. As of 2006, Mark Trail remains the only comic strip character to be recognized in such a manner, although an official association between Walt Kelly's '' Pogo'' and the Okefenokee Swamp
The Okefenokee Swamp is a shallow, 438,000-acre (177,000 ha), peat-filled wetland straddling the Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia–Florida line in the United States. A majority of the swamp is protected by the Okefenokee National Wildlife Ref ...
was established in 1987, with an Annual Pogo Fest, followed by ''Pogo'' and the U.S. Postal Service's 1989 inauguration of a National Wetlands postcard dedicated to the Okefenokee Swamp.
See also
* Smokey Bear
Smokey Bear is an American campaign and advertising icon of the United States Forest Service, U.S. Forest Service in the Wildfire Prevention Campaign, which is the longest-running public service announcement campaign in United States history to ...
* Woodsy Owl
* Johnny Horizon
References
Sources
King Features Syndicate.
*Gunn, Jerry. 2007
Mark Trail, alive and well and now 60
AccessNoGeorgia.com, NE Georgia History Center.
''Mark Trail'' radio log by Dick Judge and Frank M. Passage
External links
New Georgia Encyclopedia: Ed Dodd
{{King Features Syndicate Comics
1946 comics debuts
Adventure comics
Trail, Mark
American comic strips
Comics adapted into radio series
Trail, Mark
Educational comics
Trail, Mark
Trail, Mark
Trail, Mark
Trail, Mark
Comics set in forests
Comics about animals