Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 02, 2021

It’s over Sam’s head. ✨

Good morning™, everyone!

An explosion through time! Poor Sam, things are just going over his head lately. I hate to break it to you Tracy, but think this is anything but a “routine homicide.”

Tracy looks different today, but no artist is obliged to draw the same as a predecessor. This is Shelley’s version, not Joe’s.

Ask Dr. Wonmug!

Good morning™, leading P.O.I.s !

I see Rose on a standard monitor. Does that mean the pole peanut unit will go to being square or rectangle ?  Sam is getting all whooshy with that arm. Hope he doesn’t lose it to some random sporadic time slip.

In today’s strip, Tracy looks like the Gould’s version.

An explosion in time? Well, I’m sure that won’t be a problem.

Also, why are they assuming it’s a homicide? Was there some reveal of evidence I missed?

While they should be continuing to look for Briar Rose, “We’re going to treat this as a routine homicide” makes no sense. You’ve got a potentially dangerous piece of equipment blowing up. A smaller version blew up before. You have a nosey woman, who we have no evidence from the strip was within a hundred yards of the equipment, and was being detained at the time of the explosion. There is no evidence of homicide, routine or otherwise. The examination for evidence should continue but this should look like an accident in any normal playbook.

Just look for the cigar ashes… and read a 100+-year-old paper on tobacco ash written by an S. Holmes. (You might want to check the library.)

I was wondering when they where going to come this conclusion. But I’m disappointed that that they did it so quickly, it’s like they skipped a couple of days. I wanted to see the lead up their reactions to the realisation that’s what had happened.

Does anyone else think that Briar Rose is the future daughter of Abner Kadaver brought back to the past by Sterling Eliot? Why else did they announce Nikki was pregnant?

Briar Rose, sequestered at the Apparatus HQ grows resentful and determined for revenge. She educates herself and using the notes from her interview with Diet begins her own investigation into TIME ITSELF.

After years of failure, old and bitter, still locked in the basement of the Apparatus she has a breakthrough! Success!

Her first attempt to travel through time? A trip to our recent past where she will STOP Elliot from blowing up Smith Industries.

Unfortunately it turns out that her journey through time somehow created a temporal resonance, and she causes the explosion that she came back to stop, oh the irony! Briar Rose really DID kill Sterling Eliot!

“Every Briar Rose has its thorn.”

Looks like Ralph Byrd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Byrd . This is cool.

i bet he’s not dead and comes back for his hand

Tracy is talking directly to us in the 3rd panel!!! I got chills…

1-DT: Ugh. This case has me feeling my age.

DOLL: Yeah, and coloring your hair ain’t foolin’ nobody anymore, Ronald Reagan.

2-DT: Age and stress don’t seem to be affecting you any, Sam.

SAM: Oh yeah? I used to be this tall but the osteoporosis and loss of musculature has brought me down 4 inches – even with the high heels I wear to counteract it!

3-DT: DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU, READERS! Get your daily recommended amount of calcium through dairy and green leafy vegetables and most importantly – RETIRE BEFORE YOU’RE 90. Don’t end up like me, Sam and The Gipper.

This has been a Public Service Announcement

I’m interested to see what role the former “Annie” strip characters figure into this. Annie Warbucks traveled through time to Atlantis, and on the way back to the present even met a different “iteration” of herself in the 1930’s (meaning parallel universes as well). Of course, how much of this will be treated as DT canon is another question…

How does Tracy „know“ this is a homicide?

And a routine homicide at that?

Granted, right now, we have a better idea what happened than he does. Among other things, we appear to know that Elliot died as a result of an explosion that, in all likelihood, he (Elliot) caused.

We‘re not even sure Rose got in to see him; we do not know at what point Smith‘s „rent-a-cops“ apprehended her.

As Ray has said, this is one of the better stories in a long time, but it still has enough holes to qualify as Swiss Cheese.

Pleger is great. Great art!

I’m actually REALLY loving the new art style!!!

A thought occurred to me recently, re Sterling and his quest for lottery winnings. He tried to send the drone into the future so that he could discover in advance the winning lottery number. That blew up in his face because (at least in this story) “you can’t travel into the future.” Maybe he didn’t know that, though he should have, since Smith knew it. (I’d expect that there would be warning signs in the control room.) But he could have tried a different approach. What if he’d waited until the lottery number was published and then went to work. He could have painted the winning number on the side of the time drone, then sent it back to “look at” himself a few days earlier! His earlier self would see the numbers, play them, and reap in the mega-bucks. Sure, that’s “changing history” but we don’t KNOW that is impossible in this story.

Tracy does look a bit “off,” especially in the frontal view (panel 1), with a very low forehead (not naturally proportioned anatomically—the eyes are more nearly halfway down the skull in most humans), but that’s artistic license and a matter of style. What I like is seeing face-time given to the four lead members of the MCU in a brainstorming session, with their individual reactions. As group leader, Tracy directs their attention (and ours!—panel 3) to “our one lead,” Briar Rose. Whether it is premature to designate this affair a “homicide” or not is not the point; rather, it is a matter for the MCU to treat in their usual way….

What!!?? Briar Rose would never do anything wrong!

However Tracy, your one lead is underground courtesy of the Apparatus. Briar Rose is bound to get R.L.S. (Restless Leg Syndrome)

OK, there was an explosion at a lab. We have been led to believe by the author that it was wozname messing around with science and technology that were beyond his—or maybe anyone’s—comprehension. No a priori reason to believe that it was anything other than an accident. Sounds like an investigative job for OSHA or the local equivalent, maybe the Arson investigators of the local FD, and (if the explosion is found to have come from a device rather than, say, a gas leak) maybe ATF. Although Tracy & Co should certainly be helping find any witnesses (e.g., Briar Rose), a proper investigation would be beyond their remit or competence, unless or until it is shown that this fatal industrial incident was intended, or otherwise no accident.