Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 21, 2021

Good morning™, everyone!

A lot is happening in today’s strip!

I’m thinking that it’s Diet Smith that they found under those wallboards. I’m not sure what Tracy is doing with his arms, but it looks to me like CPR.

I’m pretty sure that’s the security guard that was holding Briar Rose. He said in yesterday’s strip, “I was knocked out by…” but Tracty interrupted before he could finish. I think Rose may have knocked him out. In any, we see her running from the scene in the third panel without handcuffs. After he was knocked out (by whatever means), I suppose she managed to get the key from the unconscious guard and remove the ‘cuffs. (There is no sign of her bracelet, either, but she already didn’t have that the last time we saw her.)

The last panel strongly reminds me of my favourite picture of the 9/11 attacks in New York.

https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-880w,f_auto,q_auto:best/newscms/2021_36/1703366/ss-160909-911-attack-mbe-630_19.jpg

Here is the story of how Suzanne Plunkett took that picture:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/10/photographer-twin-towers-terror-september-11

The grey-haired man on the left with the black shirt recently died from Covid-19.

Go Red Go!

Neil, a couple of days ago, I made a joke about Eliot getting eaten by a dinosaur and you said he’d better not step on a butterfly, obviously referencing Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder. Playboy magazine reprinted the story in an anniversary edition and I got Bradbury’s autograph on it. I then mentioned it to someone else and he told us that someone submitted a story to the magazine he worked for entitled A Deafening Sound of Thunder. It was Bradbury’s story, word-for-word. He repeated what he told us to Bradbury himself and he was amused. I wish I could meet him again.

Oh, and I bet the person being rescued in panel 2 is the other security guard.

Good morning™, decuffed suspects !

I think it’s time for JonnyK to retire that b!tch !  A big strong man like guard guy must have been mighty preoccupied that Rose was able to get over on him with a conkus to the nogginus. I’ll bite; that could be diet that Tracy and the fireman are pulling up.

Will this disaster ruin Diet? Will he be able to recover? Will he be sued?

Wow! They are really stretching the tension, will we find out tomorrow?

I think in panel 2 they are simply trying to move Diet(?) to a safer area without the smoke and flames. They are in a hurry, so it isn’t being done too elegantly. CPR is almost always done flat on the floor, for many good reasons.

Since we’re Speculatin’ and since the person trapped in the rubble hasn’t been shown, is it POSSIBLE that the Time Drone brought someone BACK through time?

Super great images again today , and what a mess this is . The expressions in the last panel are just fantastic , great job : )

Diet Smith won’t reach the hospital alive…

“When in worry, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”

Why am I kind of happy that Briar Rose is escaping? (Great job on having the faces tell the story, BTW.)

1-FIREMAN: UP AGAINST THE WALL YOU TWO WOULD-BE LOOTERS!

DT: HEY! I’M DETECTIVE DICK TRACY! This other guy might be a looter though. He fits the profile. GOATEE GUARD: What?

2-DT: I FOUND AN ARM! FIREMAN: I FOUND A LEG!

DT: What a coincidence – that’s what it’s gonna cost Smith Industries to clean up this mess – AN ARM AND A LEG!

DT, FIREMAN, GOATEE GUARD: HA HA HA!

3-Meanwhile, oblivious to the horror behind them, fans of Styx rush the box office to get tickets to the band’s REINCARNATION TOUR and a meet-and-greet with Dennis DeYoung!

An idea for a future DT anniversary: a veteran fireman reflecting on some of the many MCU cases like this that involved firefighters.

I think Tracy’s doing that old comedic thing of wrapping your own arms around yourself and pretending someone else is hugging you passionately. Seriously, looks like lifting someone free of the rubble, with the face deliberately not revealed to extend the suspense.

Rose got away and is mixing in with the crowd.

Yesterday’s strip didn’t quite convey the danger,but today I think the firemen are hustling Tracy out of the danger zone for his own good.

How do you explain what happened when there may be no LOGICAL explanation for what happened?

Miss Rose is making her great escape. Her purse and laptop will be found among the debris.

Unless she can reconstruct her interview with Diet Smith from memory….everything just went up in smoke and ashes.

When Mumbles sees this in the news….well what he says would have to be bleeped out. On second thought the Apparatus will be the ones using salty language.

Where is Ace of Spades? Oh he is loading up his SUV with all his belongings. He and his lady were last seen heading toward an interstate highway. Music coming from their vehicle is an i-tune. Bobby Brown’s " I’ve got to get away, I’ve got to get away…."

More likely the “Wanna Get Away?” airline commercial

I keep flashing back to when Blowtop blew up Tracy’s house in 1950.I don’t think we’veever had a more realistic looking disaster from then until now(And the fireman did have to pull Tracy out of that one).

MOVIE QUOTE—-

“You wouldn’t shoot a man in the back,would you?”

“I would you”.

Randolph Scott—-MAN IN THE SADDLE—-1951

I’m pretty sure that’s not Tracy. The artist has made sure to keep his chin obscured.

Some really great stuff going on this week, and the art looks great too!

Kudo’s to the First Responders for being so quick to act, wow!

Wait!….I’m pretty sure Diet caused this whole thing! Leave him for the buzzards.

The Disaster at Smith Industries now seems to have been even greater and more extensive than I at first supposed. More than one building has suffered severe blast damage and the fire(s) seem to be spreading. That great scene of fleeing employees, plus gritty and determined Briar Rose, in panel 3 is mostly if not entirely white collar office staff, not technicians nor factory hands. And it looks like the fire (etc.) is approaching them as they flee….