Mark Trail
Encyclopedia
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
created by the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
Ed Dodd
Ed Dodd
Edward Benton Dodd was a 20th century American cartoonist known for his Mark Trail comic strip.-Early years:...
. Introduced April 15, 1946, the strip centers on environmental
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
and ecological themes. In 2006, King Features syndicated the strip to nearly 175 newspapers.
When Mark Trail began, it was syndicated through the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
in 1946 to 45 newspapers. Dodd, working as a national parks 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
Park ranger
A park ranger or forest ranger is a person entrusted with protecting and preserving parklands – national, state, provincial, or local parks. Different countries use different names for the position. Ranger is the favored term in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Within the United...
who edited Outdoor Life
Outdoor Life
Outdoor Life is an outdoors magazine about hunting, fishing, survival and camping. It is a sister magazine of Field & Stream. Together with Sports Afield, they are considered the Big Three of American outdoor publishing. Outdoor Life launched in Denver, Colorado in January 1898. Founder and...
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 crossCross (boxing)
In boxing, a cross is a power-punch like the uppercut and hook. Compubox, a computerized punch scoring system, counts the cross as a power-punch....
.
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 recent years have involved 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 is famously "What th'?!"
- Rusty - Introduced in 1999, Rusty is the son of an alcoholic and abusive father. Mark's intervention saved his life, and he was adopted by Trail in 2001.
- Andy - Mark's faithful Saint Bernard. Neutered 2000.
- Cherry Davis - Longtime (47 years) girlfriend of Mark until they married in 1993, living with Mark and her father (Doc) at Lost Forest; usually a support character, although she has sometimes (e.g., 1998) had her own wildlife adventures.
- "Doc" Davis (Tom Davis) - Veterinarian; 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 RickRanger RickRanger Rick was originally titled Ranger Rick's Nature Magazine. Ranger Rick is a children’s nature magazine that is published by the National Wildlife Federation. Kenneth B...
)
Jack Davis, Jack Elrod, Tom Hill
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
. In 1950, Dodd hired Elrod to work as the strip's background artist and letterer. During the late 1940s, the cartoonist Jack Davis
Jack Davis (cartoonist)
Jack Davis is an American cartoonist and illustrator, known for his advertising art, magazine covers, film posters, record album art and numerous comic book stories...
worked one summer inking Mark Trail, which he later parodied in Mad
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...
as "Mark Trade." In addition to Davis and Elrod, Dodd also hired Tom Hill, Barbara Chen (who did the 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.
Artist and naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
Tom Hill, who joined Dodd on Mark Trail in 1946, drew the Sunday strip
Sunday strip
A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...
, devoted to natural history and wildlife
Wildlife
Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....
education, until 1978. Hill drew most of the daily strip
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....
art too after 1950, freeing Dodd to specialize in the scripting. 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 on 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 PerkinsMarlin PerkinsRichard Marlin Perkins was a zoologist best known as a host of the television program Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom from 1963 to 1985.-Biography:...
, 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.
Dodd retired in 1978 shortly after the death of Hill. Elrod then continued the strip, adding new characters and taking over the Sunday edition. 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 pipesmoking Dodd; and in 1993, Mark and Cherry finally married.
Reception
According to the 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 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 AfricaEast Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
are HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
/AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
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". The characters no longer evolve or show much of their earlier personalities. Ironically, these changes, along with predictable villains (who invariably have facial hair with especially pronounced sideburns), uneven art work, quirky dialog, and misplaced speech balloons (often pointed at foregrounded animals), created an amusing charm that attracted a new following among fans called "Trailheads". In many cases, new daily strips are recycled art and only slightly updated plots from twenty- or thirty-year old strips. Updating includes things like 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 dialog, but very little (if any) new art is drawn. .
Radio
On January 30, 1950, Mutual Broadcasting System
Mutual Broadcasting System
The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American radio network, in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, MBS was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow...
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, was broadcast on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
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 station KFAI
KFAI
KFAI is a community radio station in Minnesota. The station broadcasts a wide variety of music, and also airs programming catering to many of the diverse ethnic groups of the region...
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
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , pronounced , like "noah", is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...
(NOAA) began using Mark Trail as its official mascot, making him the voice of the National Weather Service and NOAA Weather and All Hazards Radio
Weatheradio
A weather radio service is a broadcast service that airs weather reports. When the radio is on and tuned to the weather band, it airs both normal and emergency weather information...
.
A television pilot for a "Mark Trail" series was filmed in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
in 1969, starring Todd Armstrong as Trail, and Robert Dunlap as Scotty. Produced by Bob Stabler, the pilot also featured Michael Pate
Michael Pate
Michael Pate was an Australian actor, writer and director.-Early life:He was born Edward John Pate in Drummoyne, Sydney...
, Gordon McDougall, and Susan Lloyd. .
Books and magazines
Fawcett Publications
Fawcett Publications was an American publishing company founded in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota by Wilford Hamilton "Captain Billy" Fawcett . At the age of 16, Fawcett ran away from home to join the Army, and the Spanish-American War took him to the Philippines. Back in Minnesota, he became a...
and then Standard/Nedor/Pines
Nedor Comics
Nedor Publishing was a comic book imprint of publisher Ned Pines, who also published pulp magazines under a variety of company names that he also used for the comics...
. 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 Smokey Mountains National Park and the Southern Appalachians by Ed Dodd (1989)
For the United States Fish and Wildlife Service
United States Fish and Wildlife Service
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is a federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats...
, 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 Open Road for Boys
The Open Road for Boys, a boys' magazine encouraging the outdoor life, was published from November 1919 to the 1950s. The magazine was a monthly for the first 20 years and then switched to a schedule of ten issues a year. It began as The Open Road, which expanded to The Open Road for Boys in...
. 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
Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail, generally known as the Appalachian Trail or simply the AT, is a marked hiking trail in the eastern United States extending between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine. It is approximately long...
in Georgia to be designated the Mark Trail Wilderness
Mark Trail Wilderness
The Mark Trail Wilderness was designated in 1991 and currently consists of . It is named in honor of Mark Trail, a daily newspaper comic strip created by the American cartoonist Ed Dodd. The Wilderness is located within the borders of the Chattahoochee National Forest in White, Towns, and Union...
. 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
Pogo
Pogo is the title and central character of a long-running daily American comic strip, created by cartoonist Walt Kelly and distributed by the Post-Hall Syndicate...
and the Okefenokee Swamp
Okefenokee Swamp
The Okefenokee Swamp is a shallow, 438,000 acre , peat-filled wetland straddling the Georgia–Florida border in the United States. A majority of the swamp is in Georgia and protected by the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and the Okefenokee Wilderness. The Okefenokee Swamp is considered to be...
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.
Sources
- King Features Syndicate. Mark Trail.
- Agena, Eric. Mark Trail, by Ed Dodd. ComicStripFan
- 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