Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 25, 2021

Ace of Spades has changed the game. Contract now rescinded

Cancellation fee is paid. Fences are all mended.

Abner likes to do wet work. His hands are far too clean

Loves to wade into the fray. He works at night unseen.

Patton lays it out most clear: Dick Tracy, bodyguard

“Charlie” must be kept alive, a challenge fraught and hard.

Testimony he shall give will vex the Apparatus

Kadaver’s rates exorbitant. His bloody deeds not gratis.

Contract accepted. Here we go. Old foes to meet again

Change the name of this here strip should Abner kill and win.

When I was reading the Roll of Honor, I wacky-parsed it as, “taken hostage by mutants.”

Good morning™, ex buddy, old pals !

And to think, we used t’ be friends. :-(  Abner is posilutely delighted, in his own morbidly twisted way.

Ahhh, so Abner gets to kill a witness and Tracy at the same time but we already know he won’t kill the latter.

I can’t wait to see Tracy flub this protection racket assignment wherein the real story begins.

And how did Cheif Patton go from having beady eyes to more normal looking one?

Well, Hello Dolly!! From the photo on his cabinet, it looks like Chief Patton is a huge Carol Channing fan. I’ll bet the old guy just loves to de-stress after a rough day at work by throwing on a few things from “Daddy’s special costume trunk” and belting out show show tunes until the wee small hours:

There may come a time, when a lass needs a lawyer. But diamonds are a girl’s best friend…

Like Abner Kadaver Tracy has a reputation where the district attorney believes he is the only one for the assignment.

Looks like Kadaver won’t have to pass on taking out Tracy after all.

Nice touch of having a photo of Pat’s wife, Toby Townley Patton, in his office.

Is that Pat’s wife in the photo or his daughter?

Rikki don’t lose that contract….it’s the only we have….

Good morning™, everyone!

Well, I’m getting a later start today. Tracy doesn’t seem to realize that this babysitting job could be quite dangerous.

I presume that they are still in the Chief’s office, with a picture of Patton’s wife in the background, but why does the door, that had “Chief Patton” written backwards on it, now that “Major Crimes Unit” instead (this time facing the outside)?

Rikki (in her purple outfit that had turned orange for a few days) must have been puzzled when the only real information she heard during the phone call was “No Dick Tracy.” I imagine she should be pleased now to hear of the new contract, because she certainly wasn’t pleased to hear that Abner planned to honour the old one.

Chief: “Besides, I got 50 big ones riding on this, saying you crap the bed on this assignment. Don’t make it too easy for me to cash in, I enjoy the thrill of a close race.”

Getting interesting!

“The District Attorney is insisting you protect this witness.” Is several kinds of stupid, unless the DA is working for the Apparatus and wants to give them a chance to shoot two birds with one bullet. Not best way to protect a witness (as mentioned yesterday). Is it the DA’s job to tell the police how to do what shouldn’t be their job (at least in the way he demands)? Short answer: No. And why is the chief caving in to a ridiculous request?

Charle 21 was Tracys partner ? And the last frame is just out of this world . ?? Where is the smoke from the cigar at I wonder ? It is no big deal for sure . The image is just precious .

Of course…

I thought it was a good Sunday strip. It recaps the relevant plot points from the previous week and sets everything up for next week’s story.

I especially liked that flashback panel showing Tracy and Pat in their younger days. I started reading DICK TRACY during the Collins/Fletcher Era, and that’s a visual device they often used: cutting away from a conversation to show an image of what’s being talked about while the conversation continues in a caption. I think that was a technique Gould used too, and that Collins was following Gould’s style, but I haven’t read enough of the old Gould strips to remember if that was the case.

In the late ’80s, Max Collins briefly scripted a few issues of the BATMAN comic book, and I noticed him using the same gimmick: breaking up a “talking heads” sequence with a panel of the object being discussed, while the conversation continues in a caption. This gave me a sort of thrill of recognition: MAC was writing Batman like it was a Dick Tracy story!

(And not just in regards to this one visual technique; Collins also gave his villains punny, Gouldsian names, like “Ma” Gunn, the owner of an orphanage who trains her charges to steal things and whose first name was “Fae” — “Fae Gunn”, geddit?)

I remember there was a lot of grousing about Collins’s BATMAN stories at the time by comics fans who liked their Batman Grim ‘n’ Gritty. His run came right after Frank Miller’s BATMAN: YEAR ONE storyline, and I think the fans were expecting more noir. Collins had been scheduled to write six issues, but only five were printed. He re-tooled the script for the sixth into a short story which ran in an anthology book a year or two later.

Personally, I liked the brief Collins run on the Batman, and would have liked to have seen more.

Looks like Pat is using some of that Just For Men hair color to gradually wash that white away.

1-DT: I’ve finished putting the Steel-Gray rinse on your hair chief. I can’t say it makes you look any younger.

2-CHIEF PAT: IDIOT! I WANTED IRISH RED! Or Black Irish…3-…like I was in the old days!

4-…and I wanted it styled like this guy! You know my wife is 40 years younger than me but believes she’s only 7 years younger! I gotta stay in style if I want to keep her and her family money!

DT: CHIEF! YOUR IRISH BROUG IS GONE! CHIEF PAT: OOPS! Ummm, begosh and begorrah?

5-RIKKIE TIKKI TAVI: Why’d we get a place that shares a wall with Chief Pat’s office? He’s always yelling.

ABBY: Because my dear, keep your…I wanna say “friends” close…and the police…no that’s not right…and your…

AWH, WHATEVER! I NEED TO HEAR WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT DUMMY!

Guess who?

….Jeeze-Louise, those specs on “Charlie 21”…..I can almost hear him singing “Video Killed The Radio Star”……Brrrrrrrr………

Is Charlie 21 related to Yoda?

Bottom line: My, how Patton has aged! But Dick Tracy doesn’t look a day older! And we know who’s really immortal here: The great Abner Kadaver!

RIP Officer Nurbagandov.

Tracy – Hmm… Charlie the glasses and hair are to iconic, we need you to blend in and not stand out so much.

https://lthumb.lisimg.com/446/6379446.jpg

Tracy – OK, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

As I posted in a reply somewhere up there, the photo is Pat’s wife Toby.

https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/Toby_Patton

Love how Tracy tried the reasoning approach at first.

The art style changes, but the characters remain the same.

cue the dark ambient music with discordant overtones

1) Since when is Tracy Chief of Detectives?

1a) Why does no one call him “Chief” then (or have I missed something)?

2) What kind of strapped for cashed PD makes someone the head of TWO major departments?

SAM’S SCHOOL FOR SUPERVILLAINS – Bayonne, Marsailles, Whitechapel Lesson #243: Serendipitous Circumstances: Graduates of our school tend to run with the most… interesting crowds. Frequently, these crowds also include our adversaries in law enforcement. You don’t have to be Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle to realize that – despite the previous “contract” being cancelled – the paths of Chief Tracy and Abner Kadaver are about to cross yet again. Given the latter’s “stick-to-it-iveness,” he will most likely use the opportunity to try to try to bag both his established quarry and Detective Yellow Hat. Given Tracy’s somewhat long roll of the dead who have gone up against him, we believe Kadaver’s sidekick fears for his safety. However, we have heard rumors that the great Sherlock Holmes actually lamented the loss of his archenemy Professor James Moriarty (pre-SSS era student). This might be an interesting encounter.

Nothing surprising here today. Tracy gives voice to the appropriate objections to being made a baby-sitter for Charlie 21. Chief Patton gives the rebuttal made obligatory by the Chain of Command.

And Abner tells Rikki they have a Job To Do—and we can be pretty sure its name is Charlie 21….