Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 10, 2014

Doesn’t appear to be much, but at least we see Tracy & Annie!

Dinner at the Silo house, Tracy loves a home cooked mealHe and Annie on the sly try to disrupt Axel’s deal.Cautiously attentive to the Belinda radio showCould deciphering the message put them in the know?Belinda is a ragamuffin with curly yellow locksA wee bit hyperactive, the little chatterbox.To crack the code no easy task, success brings a brief thrillUntil the two both realize the message is a shill.Tell your Ma, go apprise Pa, you want some OvaltineThen stir it up, dissolve the grit, so tonsils won’t turn green.To take on evil Axel ‘tis not for the faint of heartTo figure out the secret code is a good place to start.Poison propaganda can be tricky to resistTune in to it daily, lies propagate and persist.Best to turn the cursed thing off, start thinking for yourselfAbandon the decoder badge, place nonsense on the shelf.

Great “A Christmas Story” reference!

Always enjoy Jim Doherty’s contributions. Make me want to read further. Thank you, Jim, as always!

LOL, yeah the old Billy Joel song is what immediately came to my mind when I read that line about Kinney.And he served on the KCMO police force, that’s probably why I thought I’ve heard of him before.

Vista Bill wishes everyone a pleasant day!

Lovely Sunday strip with Dick and Annie, and a fun reminder of both the “Little Orphan Annie” radio show and the Ovaltine gag in “A Christmas Story!”

Uh-oh. It may sound like just a crummy commercial for [Ovaltine], but I think it was very unwise of Tracy and Annie to bring out the decoder and expose themselves to the brainwashing danger even if they think they are being “careful” to avoid being hypnotized. And if perchance they succeed in avoiding a dose of brainwash, might they find a code-within-a-code in the Orphan Belinda message?

So, how did Tracy decode the message without looking at the decoder pin? Didn’t Annie tell him he couldn’t look at the decoder unless he wanted to get hypnotized again.

Terrific Sunday strip, team! Thanks!

Good morning fans. Another excellent poem Peqood77! You should publish all your poems in book form. Have a blessed day.

I’m starting to think Mike and Joe have hypnotized everyone to enjoy this story. “Don’t read the strip with both eyes, that’s how they rope the weak minded ones”! LOL!

…classic…

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!! :D That’s funny!

Hello PQ77 & Vista Bill. Great poem/story, as always, and great to see Dick & Annie at their best…to be continued..

Turn your radio on. Jean Shepard is best known as the co-author of the screenplay for the holiday classic, A Christmas Story, which is based on his collection of short stories about his childhood in Indiana: In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. His is the voice of the adult Ralphie who narrates the film. Shepard had a radio show on New York’s WOR for over twenty years. Mr. Shepard can be heard verbally improvising a story on the title track of Charles Mingus’ 1957 album, The Clown. .I like the dual reference to A Christmas Story and the Little Orphan Annie Radio Show. Very witty and, as with the Lum and Abner appearance, a nice light touch, even as the story progresses. When Annie is done trying to decode the Belinda show, maybe she’ll go to the Silo stables and saddle up a horse. A little horseback ride can put one’s troubles in perspective.

Thanks to Gweedo, cpalmeresq, Jonathan K., Starman1948, Willy007, abdullahbaba999, Ray Toler and JPuzzleWhiz for the kind words. Much appreciated!

So the “secret message” doesn’t have hypnotic powers, after all.Maybe I was right. They could be inside Prof. Kenyon’s memories of life in 1944 in Simmons Corners.

Thanks for your latest installment.

Don’t forget, as mentioned in past comments, that there really was an “Orphan Belinda”, which was an Annie imitation that ran in British papers.

Could Simmons Corners be virtual reality?It’s be a lot simpler than time travel or rebuilding a whole town and staffing it with actors, and it would be as accurate as the memories of whoever programmed it.

No expository today. Just comic relief..I guess, of all the permissions Curtis and Staton have, OVALTINE ain’t one of them!

Jim Doherty’s stuff makes the most sense anyway.

I’m sure it’s already been said several times, but I love the humorous reference to one of the best movies of all time.

wonder if the word Oveltine is the word that causes the hyponitic state?

Ovaltine? Ovaltine? I think Randy needs to use the bathroom.

Ovaltine? Ovaltine? I think Randy needs to use the bathroom.

I thought Jack Kinney was the guy who wrote “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

The complete message was BE SURE TO DRINK THE KOOL-AID. It was directed to everyone on the island.

The writer of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” was Jack FINNEY.

In case you do not know, “drinking the Kool-Aid” refers to a real-life tragedy in which the “Rev.” Jim Jones got his followers to drink Kool-Aid with poison in it. This included poisoning children who were unaware of what was happening.

Love it, thanks!

The railroad dick almost captured the Dalton Gang?! Dang, they were my cousins!

Kim and Sam,

To be excruciatingly pedantic, it was Daniel Mainwaring who wrote THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. His film script was based on a novel by Jack FINNEY (as Sam has already pointed out) titled simply THE BODY SNATCHERS (sans the “invasion of” phrase)..Of course, later editions of the book have tended to use the movie title..BTW, the 1978 remake, with the identical title, was written by W.D Richter; the 1993 version titled simply BODY SNATCHERS was written by Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli, and Nicholas St. John; and the most recent version, from 2007, titled THE INVASION, was written by Dave Kajganich, and Lana & Andy Wachowski.

Dinner at the Silo house, Tracy loves a home cooked meal

He and Annie on the sly try to disrupt Axel’s deal.

Cautiously attentive to the Belinda radio show

Could deciphering the message put them in the know?

Belinda is a ragamuffin with curly yellow locks

A wee bit hyperactive, the little chatterbox.

To crack the code no easy task, success brings a brief thrill

Until the two both realize the message is a shill.

Tell your Ma, go apprise Pa, you want some Ovaltine

Then stir it up, dissolve the grit, so tonsils won’t turn green.

To take on evil Axel ‘tis not for the faint of heart

To figure out the secret code is a good place to start.

Poison propaganda can be tricky to resist

Tune in to it daily, lies propagate and persist.

Best to turn the cursed thing off, start thinking for yourself

Abandon the decoder badge, place nonsense on the shelf.

Bwahahaha!!!