Mark Trail comic courtesy of James Allen and King Features Syndicate.

The comic strip Mark Trail follows a conservationist as he travels the world, saving people and educating them about the flora and fauna he finds along the way for 70 years.

But since January, the titular hero has been stuck in a cave. Human traffickers used dynamite to trap him deep within the earth beneath the Chihuahuan Desert with friends Gabe and Carina. And readers are not happy.

William Ade of Burke wrote to The Washington Post:

Please have mercy on the readers of the Comics pages by removing the “Mark Trail” strip. The recent story line following Mark’s adventures inside a cave system is especially egregious, whether it’s the sensual posing of the female character or the stilted recitation of cave facts as dialogue.

What has tipped me over the edge is the fact that the three characters are deep underground without any artificial light source, yet they nimbly climb crumbling rock bridges and dodge falling towers of crystal.

Betsey Anderson wrote to the St. Louis Post Dispatch with a death wish for Trail. “Please, please put all of us comic fans out of our misery and let the cavern ceiling fall upon the three ridiculous adventurers in ‘Mark Trail.’ … This strip makes ‘Marmaduke’ look good.” (Anderson’s isn’t the only call for the adventurer’s end.)

Reader Trent Sindelar responded, calling Trail “one of the last role models to be found on the comics page … Mark Trail is a devoted family man, fearless adventurer and proud American. In short, he is a faultless inspiration for today’s children. Please do not banish him.”

Lawrence Pope wrote to the Portland Press Herald, asking for someone to assist Trail. “Having to read about the antics of [Maine Governor] Paul LePage and Donald Trump is bad enough. Please get Mark Trail out of that cave,” his letter said.

Another PPH reader questioned how Trail could survive for weeks without food.

How, indeed! So we reached out to James Allen, who pens the Mark Trail comic, for his take on the cave controversy.

“I’ve gotten emails accusing me of trying to mislead people” about the light in caves, says Allen, whose comic is syndicated in 175 newspapers. “But I think folks naturally understand that caves are dark. I don’t think my editor would accept blacked-out panels. I hope they don’t read Garfield, because cats don’t really eat lasagna.”

Allen responded to the complaints in a letter to The Washington Post.

But he says the cave story feedback hasn’t been all negative. “The emails run the gamut, they go from good to bad,” he says, adding that the amount of reader response is “about on par, but because the cave storyline has gone a little longer, maybe it’s a little more.” The Washington Post Diversions section has not responded to requests for comment.

The cave story is part of a series Allen has plotted, where Trail goes to environments representing the four elements: water, earth, fire, and wind. This is the earth portion, following an extended period on the Gulf coast for the water-based storyline.

“The story is an underground adventure,” Allen says. “It’s about how to survive underground.” And while that journey has lasted for months for readers, it’s taken about “two to four days in Mark’s time,” he says. “He’s not down there eating crickets for six months.”

But readers wary of more time underground shouldn’t worry—Allen says he’s wrapping up the cave story soon so Trail and his wife Cherry can head to the South Pacific, where “Mark is going to bump into his old friend” and there’ll be a volcanic explosion to kick off the fire journey.

And while Allen says he hasn’t received any criticism from his higher-ups about the cave storyline, there was one time editors requested a rewrite since he took over the Mark Trail column full time in 2014 from Jack Elrod, who he had been assisting.

Trail and his wife were at the Great Dismal Swamp in the Outer Banks. “Cherry’s always been a character that stays at home while he risks life and limb, so I thought, ‘How wonderful is this? I’ll have them interact like couples do,'” he says. “When I had her as more sexually suggestive, editors changed it. I wanted to portray Cherry in a more realistic manner, but folks wanted to see her more innocent side, I guess.”

Sindelar, the St. Louis letter-writer, thinks people’s complaints about Trail typify a new generation of discontent. “Our country has become one that values instant gratification above all else. In this age of gigabit downloads and microwaved meals, I fear that we have forgotten the value of a well-crafted story. These stories take time to develop. ‘Mark Trail’ is such a story.”