Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 05, 2017

What is that place? A finishing school for assassins and criminals???

Yup, it’s that type of “Finishing School” all right.

Good morning all!

Is that a Trumark ?

http://www.slingshots.com/

Good morning, Vista ‘dead eye’ Bill and the resta you marksmen at the school !

We already like her so much that it drove us over the “100 Comments” threshold yesterday.

The slingshot can be a deadly weapon. I saw S.Korean riot police firing glass spheres at protestors using sling shots. UNCLE agent Illiya Kuriakin was quiet good with one.

This was an effective and economical three panels.

Out of curiosity, does anyone(Neil?) know exactly how many unfinished, open end plots are out there?

Does Bribery has a first name? Or his first name is Mister :) Odd to be called by your niece as Uncle Mister. :)

Just ask Goliath how deadly a slingshot can be!

Wow! What an aim.

Bribery in shadow is classic. Crystal has mad skills with the sling-shot and the (Bazooka?) bubblegum. Pop! Snap! Twhak!

Ugly Chrystal has her slingshot. Her aunt favored spiked heels, used with deadly effect on at least one occasion. (When operating in South America, where he found Nah Tay, Bribery used the name “Joey Packet”, but I believe that was an alias. I guess if we want a first name for him we could settle on Joseph.)

I wonder how long it took her to align the three candles? Actually, if she was a geometry buff, she only had to align the middle one. The outside candles already defined the straight line.

I once saw a TV movie that starred Sam Bottoms and Andy Griffith, in which Griffith was trying to kill Bottoms, who had witnessed an accidental killing that Griffith wanted to cover up. Bottoms ended up using a slingshot to overcome Griffith. I can’t remember the title, but it was quite good.

Like a Robin Hood trick shot, or better still, Odysseus as he reveals his identity and makes ready to lay waste the suitors at his palace in Ithaka, so here Ugly Crystal reveals what deadly skill she has learned at “finishing” school. The bubble-gum serves to iconize her youthfulness and distinguish her from Ugly Christine. But she seems to be a ready asset to her Uncle Bribery and his nefarious schemes….

HAPPY BELATED 86TH BIRTHDAY DICK TRACY!

“Snap, Thwack and Pop” – don’t tell me she plans to become a “cereal” killer!

Here is a very interesting article about the last remaining Swiss finishing school and what they do these days. It’s not quite what it used to be but there’s no talk of shooting slingshots while popping bubbles, either.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/lifestyle/mastering-manners-at-switzerland-s-last-finishing-school-1.3504448

Just as a follow-up to yesterday, I appreciate that Joe & Mike like to offer “coming attractions” of upcoming plots by dropping brief vignettes into on-running stories, but timing is everything, & when the Public Domain/Sprockets story was apparently reaching its climax was not, it seemed to me, a time to interrupt it. Building anticipation does have its place in storytelling, but so does building & sustaining narrative momentum. It’s mis-steps like this that, in my humble opinion, prevent Joe & Mike from being great comic-strip storytellers instead of just really really good ones. Discuss.