Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 04, 2021

Good morning™, unwilling babysitters !

Somebody draw a target on that guy’s back with a Sharpie™ !

I agree with Sam!

Sigh, this is really turning into a daily clip of a terrible trip down a silly strip that has lost its zip!

Good morning™, duck tenders!

Pretty poor excuse if you ask me. I’ve never seen a café with magazines displayed in the front of it.

I trust Sam Catchem on his instincts concerning Charlie.

Sam: “He’s an accountant, fudge-it.”

Charlie is a tricky one, his real agenda remains to be seen!

For some reason this reminded me of the Superman villain “Mr. Mxyzptlk”.

Considering his behavior, Charlie won’t be a very convincing witness. (He belongs in the Witless Protection program.)

Charlie is a twin, any bets? Maybe even a triplet?

One (meaning me) assumes there is a reason/motive behind Charlie’s behavior that will fit neatly into the storyline when it is revealed!

One has been disappointed in the past.

Though Joe’s inks were growing on me, I’m glad Shelley’s back. Also, it’s nice to see Sam in less blindingly bright greens these days, courtesy of the current (and slightly more subtle) GC colorist.

Charlie 21 uses the Apparatus dead drop, just before he drops dead!!

I wonder if there has been a “switcher-roo” when he went thru one door of the diner and came out another.

What did he do in the few seconds he was out of sight?

Wonder if it is the same Charlie? Or perhaps a payoff to keep quit slipped to him?

1-DT: IT’S GOING TO BE HARD ENOUGH KEEPING YOU ALIVE GIVEN YOUR UNIQUE APPEARANCE, MY “HEY LOOK AT ME” WARDROBE AND SAM’S WANDERING MIND!!!

2-CHARLIE: Awh, I was just having some fun. Check this grin. The boys in the Apparatus used to call it my *“SH** EATING GRIN”.* What would you call it now that I’m on your side?

3-SAM: I’d sarcastically call it the “WOULD I EVER LIE TO YOU?” grin.

DT: I’d call it the BULLSEYE if I was the assassin.

SAM: HA! Good one! WAIT! WHERE’D HE GO???

SAM: let’s sedate him and keep him in a maximum security cell in HeadquartersDICK: Naah it would be too logic

Why the guy who handed Charlie to Dick and Sam didn’t warn them about Charlie’s behaviour?

Tracy’s reprimand is like a slap on the wrist. Perhaps, Sam is right. Time will tell!

Let Abner have him

Did anyone ask Capt. Obvious?

“Sorry ! A magazine caught my eye. Shall we go?” This fellow gives a whole new meaning to the term of “laid back”. Probably plays “Don’t Worry Be Happy” on his i-pod.

It’s a wonder Tracy and Sam didn’t say in unison “Charlie 21….you beat everything”.

Regrets….I see a few….and one of them is a “time out” won’t work on this guy.

Sorry, Charlie. Magazines are extinct!

“You know, Tracy, magazines are gateways to the real evil – books!”

I wasn’t going to say it, but.. Maybe Abner grabbed Charlie when that guy distracted Tracy and Sam, and that’s Rikki in disguise!

you can trust him: he came back

Does “protective custody” cover slapping cuffs on the guy? And an electronic monitor anklet? Charlie 21 is too daffy to be trusted for his own good. His feeble excuse, that a magazine cover caught his eye, is palpably false. Magazines in a hotel at a restaurant entrance are something with which I’m not familiar (and I used to do quite a bit of travelling and staying at hotels; but some small boutique hotels might have a reception area with a news rack and a cafe-bar opening off it—clearly not the case here). It is true that many hotels have a ground-floor restaurant with a separate street entrance, so that people could patronize it without having to pass through the hotel lobby, and I suppose one might in days gone by have found a news stand nearby. Nowadays it is becoming difficult even to find a print edition of a newspaper, since news boxes (the kind one used to see on the corners of any major intersection and often on residential streets, too) have become themselves obsolete or at least obsolescent. My experience is that the terminals of major airports are possibly the last significant refuge of print publications….

….could it be that, on Monday, when some guy asked Tracy for the time, this created a brief window in which certain people conducted “the ’ol switcheroo?” e.i., is this the REAL Charlie 21, or a quickly installed fake?