Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 30, 2013

Evil is my eye, deadly is my aimMan, woman, child, all targets are the same.I’m not paid to judge, to second guess or worryI’m paid to kill the victim, thus I never hurry.This old world is simple when seen through a rifle’s scopeTake aim and pull the trigger, extinguish life and hope.Head shots from long distance, in this I specializeBullets meet their targets then I collect my prize.This contract is on Nellie, down on Wheaton’s farm‘Tis the one who pays me money who means the child harm.For I am just a tool of those who pay my feeI watch. I wait. I execute. Then it’s time to flee.I’ve seen her in my cross-hairs, such a pretty faceIt won’t be when I’m done with her and move on from this place.

Glad to see Stanton and Curtis are keen on environmentalism.

A lot of harm when you’re making threats.

ummmm……threatening to shoot his daughter? Hy would leave on a stretcher if he said that to me….. or most other guys….

By the way, that’s one tiny car Hy Pressure drives.

Now they’re associating fracking with common thuggary and veiled threats on life? The indoctrination to sway the weak-minded to be afraid of fracking know no bounds!

The fracking industry isn’t behind this. The Apparatus is the group putting the squeeze on Wheaton.

…..here we go……he mistakes Moon Maid for Nellie, his shots are then returned with zaps. Hey, btw, can’t we have Dr. Sail bring back 88 Keyes as well while we’re at it, lol?

This allows Frtiz Ann to stay in the story, under RICO.

fracking/destruction of the water table…..major issue here….hell…..give me clean water anyday

The beauty of Hy’s technique is that no threats were made (explicitly). The “threat” exists only in what Wheaton infers from Hy’s remarks. Hence, Pressure is right to say what he says at the end (panel 2).

Funny, Pop’s a crack shot too! BLAM!

That would be well beyond “threatening behaviour” in many countries.

Grrrrrrrrr!!!!

The police? Nah, it’s time to call The “A-Team.”

Time for me to dump this strip. Chester Gould must be spiining in his grave.

Yes, there’s three blonde women on the Wheaton farm rignt now—might confuse the sniper a bit.

Looks like Hy’s amped things up!But — I don’t think the shooter will accidently hit any of the women; I think the target is Pops himself. (Easier, or so they think, to intimidate little Nellie. They don’t know about Sparkle or Mysta.)

Well, the standard operating practice for these drilling companies seems to be to hire lots of lawyers to sue landowners for imminent domain seizure and then bankrupt the land owner in legal proceedings if they try to fight the frackers. Oh, and then when the landowners sign the contracts, the drillers frequently welch on their royalty payments. Right, Chesapeake Energy?

It would be better if late night comedians and comic strips remained apolitical.

Fracking is perfectly safe. The fracking industry says so.

What drivel!

While JPuzzle is correct, in may cases there is something very right with witewater’s term “imminent.”

I agree. Fracking has been used safely for years, and is only recently been in the news. Now the radical left wingers are trying to scare people about it without giving them the facts first. Of course, you would only get the facts from the radical left if it served their interests to supply those facts.

Leave the politics to Doonesbury, but take them out of Dick Tracy, or at least get the facts before spouting off on things like this.

Did ponytail chump say crack shot or cracker???? LOL!!!

S.I.T.O.A.N.M.I.

He isn’t trying to intimidate Nellie. He’s trying to intimidate Pops through an implied threat to Nellie (Nellie doesn’t even need to know about it). And the threat is to shoot, not snatch.

I sold part of the mineral rights on some inherited land. Very little of the land is actually affected and farming continues. I got a boost to my savings and get a small monthly check. Without it, I would need to greatly curtail my standard of living and would have seen my savings rapidly depleted.

Time to wield that pitchfork, Pop !

oh, frack it! time for hy to say goodbye.

Nobody (including the EPA) has ever found evidence that fracking harms the water table if done properly. That is the only role enforcement needs to play.

And drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico does no harm if done properly.

Just read an artical about a Saudi king who is all upset about the increase in domestic crude thru fracking. He thinks it will harm their sale of crude to Amierca… whoopieee!!

Good afternoon everyone…

A late start! I hope MM/Mysta sends some high voltage to Hy Pressure and the sniper!

Oh yeah, evil big business. Is there ANYWHERE a more tired cliché. Les artistes rant against industry when almost everything they use, from telephones to toothpaste to tube steaks comes from the same source. Hint… it ain’t government! What was strictly Dick Tracy syfy 40 years ago with the wrist TV is now in everyone’s pockets, and soon to be in our eyeglasses, too. Sheeessh, a break give me, as Yoda would say!

I just want to go on record again as saying that all opinions about fracking are those of George Wheaton. The creators of this strip are not being political, they are just using it as a plot device. If Haggar the Horrible stated that he wouldn’t take his boat out beyond sight of land because he might fall off the edge of the world, would you all say that the authors of the strip were spouting flat Earth stuff and being political? I doubt it. Give it a rest already.

I’m an independent business owner and, as I wrote above, I’m just so weary of this moth-eaten cliché of evil business plaguing the nation. It’s NOT just a plot device as someone suggested. It’s the go-to default position of all ‘bien pensants’. Aside from the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged movies who here can name me a positive, approving look at so called big business in the arts? It hasn’t been done since the days of the Medicis. It’s so trite I just groaned when I saw it inserted into Dick’s strip. It completely spoils the arc for me. Go on, and try writing from the other point of view, just once!!!

The anti fracking movement puts out a lot of lies and misdirections. The places with flaming water had flaming water before the fracking because the gas was already there. That is why they do the fracking to get it out.

Looks like the Right Wing has called for trolls to hit Dick Tracy. Check out the commenting past of our politically-focused visitors: (Just click on their name, and have fun!)PianoGuy 24 is a veteran politcal troll, commenting only on politics. (His latest included "just like I’m always called a racist…)Larry Culley hasn’t commented on any comic strip here for more than A YEAR, before defending businesses here.Nafstar hasn’t commented in 4 months, before answering the call to go after that liberal Dick Tracy.So don’t bother responding to them; they don’t care if their leaping at a non-existant target (a liberal bias to the strip).They’re just answering the mating call of the trolls!

Ray Toler and Tarry Plaguer have both made excellent comments on this issue. I certainly do not have enough information to make any statements about fracking one way or the other. I suspect the truth is some where in the middle. It is probably safe if done right, but there have probably been plenty of times where bad things happened due to poor practices or just plain mishaps.

BUT – the point of this story is that Mr. Wheaton has the perfect right to say no, even if his reasons don’t make sense to some one else. And, we have been told that the crime syndicate is behind this particular attempt to buy his land. That is certainly a real world idea. There have been times in the past when a crook has tried to force the sale of land, so that he could move in and get mineral rights and make big bucks. That is the point of this story, and it has been done in mystery literature before. Read “The Black Thumb Mystery” by Bruce Campbell, one of the Ken Holt young adult mystery stories of the 1950s.

Good pun.

On right now on my local radio station KLCC

Fracking and Public Health

I’m still trying to figure out how Hy Pressure fits into that car, he must have pulled out the front seat and sits in the back. On another note, I wanted to say I really enjoy how we have different storylines going at once and crossing over each other. I wonder what B.B. Eyes, Mumbles and Mrs Flattop are doing in their meeting.

Please don’t turn this strip into a morality play for environmentalism.

Evil is my eye. Deadly is my aim

Man. Woman. Child. All targets are the same.

I’m not paid to judge, to second guess or worry

I’m paid to kill the victim, thus I never hurry.

This old world is simple when seen through a rifle’s scope

Take aim and pull the trigger, extinguish life and hope.

Head-shot from long distance, in this I specialize

Bullets meet their targets, then I collect my prize.

This contract is on Nellie, down on Wheaton’s farm

‘Tis the one who pays me money who means the child harm.

For I am just a tool of those who pay my fee

I watch. I wait. I execute. Then it’s time to flee.

I’ve seen her in my cross-hairs, such a pretty face

It won’t be when I’m done with her and move on from this place.