Markup tools fail to load in their frame and hang that mail window?

I'm having a strange occurrence with choosing to mark up a photo included in an email. Seemingly randomly when I click the markup control and choose markup, the window associated with the image grays, the image is brought forward in the floating frame, but no tools or buttons populate the top bar. At this point that particular mail window is "hung", and can't be closed, canceled, continued from, anything. Other windows continue working as normal, but the mail app is rendered unable to quit either. A force quit is required. When the app is reopened usually one's mail content that was being edited at that point isn't lost, but upon occasion it is (as if the "hang" of the window happened before an auto-save to drafts of some sort happened). I wish I could insert an image here - that seems to not be working even though i've converted the screen shot to a file type and size that meets the image rules.

Ugh.