Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 23, 2021

UH OH! This doesn’t look good for Pouch!!

A Punch for Pouch.

Good morning™, fight makers and breakers !

Looks like Tracy and Lee are in the right place at the right time and have a real job on their hands.

(cue Star Trek fight music)

This reminds me of the original 1932 team up of Stooge Viller and Steve the Tramp. After breaking out of prison together they spent the next several months on a crime spree until Steve was caught. Stooge remained at large for the next several months. After he was finally caught, once they finally met again in prison, their first impulse was to punch each other in the face at the same time. XD

Good morning™, everyone!

A happy reunion, this is not! A few of us saw the possibility of it coming. What Pouch says as he tries to escape police scrutiny in the first frames is, I believe, a paraphrase from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the title of the final book in that series: “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Long,_and_Thanks_for_All_the_Fish

I think this is the second time we’ve seen that phrase used in the strip, although I don’t remember when it came up the first time.

HAHAHAHAHA BUST A FACE!

From stitches to snitches… these two are so angry, they’ll each incriminate the other before they realize they’re both sunk!

Why didn’t they put a cop near Pouch’s bed for protection in case the shooter attempted to shoot him again? Moreover the bullet was stopped, but Pouch may have a nasty bruise on the chest and maybe a rib broken. Isn’t he let out too soon?

My money’s on Tiger Lily – to win, and to talk.

Aren’t tiger’s hair red?

May want to stick around, in case you need more stitches…

Over at Rex Morgan today, the writer apologizes to “Chet, Max, and Rick.” They are apparently riffing off a very old Dick Tracy strip.

https://www.comicskingdom.com/rex-morgan-m-d

thee irony.

Which, natrurally, brings the cops a-runnin’…

Nurse to the orderly – “Told ya he was faking it.”

Okay, so I missed the reference to St. Hilaire yesterday – is this the first appearance of that hospital in DT?

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Tiger’s still got a ‘tiger in his tank’! Toldja not to count him out yet….

I think punching Pouch with his flabby skin would be similar to when Putty Puss was disguised as Diet Smith and Tracy gave him a sock in the face:

https://myimages.bravenet.com/833/132/922/GPZ_1616505973.png

Hope at some point why the blue balloon was so important? What did or does it contain?

Shouldn’t cops be guarding Tiger? He’s a homicide suspect.

ALL RIGHT!!! GoComics keeps making me change my Password. Anybody else putting up with that nonsense or are they just trying to get rid of me via aggravation???

1-MEL: _I gotta get outta here. I can’t afford another day. They already maxed out my Titanium AmEx card. The border’s nearby. Maybe I can convince them Canucks that I’m one a them, eh. Free healthcare! Those dumb soocialists with their free healthcare and relatively crime free existence…

2-WHAT THE Well, hi there, um, Frenchy. Thought I’d drop by and see how you were doing. So, ummm, I guess you got hit by a car on your way to do that simple errand for…

3-…HEY! HELP POLICE! UNHAND ME! FRENCHY: ARREST THIS MAN, TRACY! HE MADE ME GO TO THAT HIPPIE HOUSE TO STEAL A BALLOON! A BLUE ONE!

DT: OH HO! A CONFESSION! Murder AND Grand Theft Balloon! It’ll be the chair for you – if we can prove the murder part!

MEL: And battery! They oughta jump the juice all the way to 250 Volts for this maniac!

FRENCHY: Murder you say…? Umm, Nurse? I need a new room. On the first floor. By the Exit or one with a big window…

Ah…this third panel…altogether now…."Reunited and it feels good, reunited we readers understood, there’s one perfect fit, and these two are it, we’re all so excited ’cause they reunited…hey..hey.

….and he’s gonna get more: Tiger ain’t been a happy camper of late…….

No honor ( or love ) among criminals…And Pouch didn’t help himself by “using” Tiger to retrieve the “blue balloon” and getting roughed up and imprisoned for his trouble…

And now… Who will “flip” first ?

Wait a minute, what did Pouch do wrong? He sent Tiger Lilly to find the blue balloon, he got thrown in the root cellar all on his own.

Ruckus down front in St. Hilaire’s!

Patient leaps from gurney to attack patient sneaking out before completing official discharge! Detectives Tracy and Ebony witness the skirmish from nearby and rush to intervene.

This isn’t going well for anyone….

Interesting, Pouch thinks of his assailant simply in the impersonal pronoun “he,” & not by actual name.