Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 06, 2022

Boss Yeti said

She could be dead

Just like her brother, Rabbit

Gave them this list

Her arm did twist

Harsh treatment Yeti’s habit.

What’s up ahead

Fills her with dread

It is the Great Detective

Moran, it seems

Fresh out of schemes

His life of crime defective.

Don’t make a sound

Quick, turn around

Both the boss and law they dread

Now off they go

Their fear does grow

For the boss may wish them dead.

It looks like Moran isn’t okay.

Unless she’s playing quite a game, it’s probably not Ferret’s bootprint.

Funny strip today, well done kiddies.

Mistakes not worth mentioning.

Peace!

Good morning™, all!

No, Moran is definitely not okay. At least they don’t have to “try to look respectable” until maybe they get to the next checkup on their list.

I think this is why the police car is not parked right in front of the front door. It would have ruined the surprise when Ferret and Ape started to get out of the car.

“Let’s get out here Lenny!” “Okay George.”

Good morning™, shocking discoveries !

Yeh. Ferret looks quite surprised to see Tracy at the house. She surely knows something is up. I bet they make just enough of a disturbance in turning tail that Dick or Sam turn about to see an unknown vehicle suddenly departing and may give chase and call for back up. Tracy call for back up ?  Naaah !

OOPSIE…..this is not going to go well for those two.

First off, that first panel is absolutely gorgeous. It looks like a miniature painting, its that good. I love the blurring effect of the trees in panel two to give the impression of speed. And the tinting of the windshield and glass is a wonderful touch. The artwork is outstanding today. Great job, Pleger!

The story on the other hand…

Ok, there are no cop cars. They’re not parked on the left, they’re not parked off-panel. If there were any police cars at all, Ferret would have noticed them way sooner and she wouldn’t have parked right in back of Tracy. And I don’t buy the fact that Tracy and Sam are so absorbed in their show print that they don’t even notice a car rolling up on them. At the very least, they would have glanced back just to see who it was. And wouldn’t Riger have spotted the car with his drone and alerted Tracy?

Yeti has competition. His distributors are getting erased.

What a way to advertise a product – use it on the competition to show how good your product is.

I just noticed that Mike did not write the story

Shelley is good but why does she seem to have difficulty in drawing Tracy….

No way would a car be allowed to roll up like this. The first thing the police would have done is establish a perimeter to preserve the crime scene. That means a black and white or two would be blocking the driveway so that anyone trying to enter from the street would be stopped and questioned.

Surprise!

Great images today by Shelley , but what are Tracy and Sam looking at ?

Good morning, fellow Boss Checkers! Well, it looks like Ape and Ferret forgot to stop by the Apparatus Deli for their Turkey Salad Sandwiches before they went to Boss Moran’s place. They better beat a quiet getaway before Sam or Tracy catch them there.

Ferret seems to be afraid of Yeti going by what she is telling Ape, but if she’s out for revenge as some of us have thought, Ape may not be aware of that. She could be putting on an act for him too. We’ll have to see….

surprised they didn’t notice them.

Will Ferret replace Rikki as the favored “Bad Gal” for Tracy Fans?

I think today safely rules out Ferret as the source of the footprint, if she and Ape are just arriving on the scene.

Why is Mrs. Evil Homeowner the one to spot the abandoned car? I mean, look how evil-looking she’s drawn!

“I’d recognize that shapely squat anywhere!”

NOTHING gets past Ape! brains of the operation. He keeps them in a matchbox in his pocket.

ka-oops

1-APE: I already told you how sorry I was you had to buy a Peugeot for the extra headroom I need.

FERRET: I hate this hunk a junk. It runs on wine and the horn says SACRE BLEU SACRE BLEU.

2-APE: At least when you park it, nobody bothers it. Probably because they think it might’ve been used in a crime. I read that somewhere…

3-FERRET: NICE DIGS! You go knock on the door…

4-…Crime bosses are almost always welcoming. I’ll hide here in case he’s a rare outlier. APE: Hey look…

5-…Tracy is checking out that alien crop circle. That must mean Moran HAS BEEN ABDUCTED!

FERRET: Wow. If Al’s customers don’t get killed, they get alien abducted. That’s bad luck.

APE: I think I’d choose death over alien butt probes.

FERRET: Hmmm… I wonder if those doctors who do colonoscopies are ACTUALLY ALIENS IN DISGUISE!!! Remind me to take that story to the Tracyville Times or the New York Post later!

“Sam, for the FIFTEENTH TIME, it’s dead grass, NOT an indication of a landed UFO!!!!!” Tracy fingers gun…

….but he wants to get D.T.’s autograph!…..

Where are all the police cars? How about the crime scene tape. Why isn’t there a uniform directing people to not come into the driveway?

You guys don’t know the HUGE bullet you dodged. I came darned near concocting lethargic henchman named ‘Battery’ Low, in honor of the ‘wonderful’ message I get from my Ipod, when I’m 5 minutes into a 20 minute walk and had the perfect audio book i.e., (not one of mine) selected..

My, my, my, the Moran estate must so big that Tracy and Sam do not hear the car when Ferret and Ape drive off. Of course not, they are still in awe of the singular foot print.

Hmm…was Boss Moran really a customer of Yeti? He must have been planning to go out on his own, which explains the packages. Probably bumped off by his supplier who did not stand behind the “satisfaction guaranteed or money cheerfully refunded” clause.

Oops.

The detective’s failed to hear the car arrive and the driver’s door close?

Quick, quietly drive off before you’re noticed

By me, the most brilliant bit in today’s artwork is Ape tugging at his shoulder belt. A tiny, almost throwaway detail that lets you see what life is like from his point of view.

“Dick Tracy” the comic is almost a paradox. It’s not a “comic” in a humorous way, it’s a drama with occasional comic moments. It’s drawn in a cartoony way instead of realistic like Batman or Mary Worth to show offbeat characters as caricatures — mainly, to show the criminals as degenerates.

“Umm, Door Dash for Moran?”

I’ve been there with the seatbelt trying to stop it rubbing your neck.

There was a young minion named Ferret.

Whose hair looked just like Lief Garrett’s.

She must make an escape.

With her sidekick called Ape.

Police questions? She just wouldn’t dare it.

I still don’t get why, for an active crime scene investigation, which at this point would include a full HazMat team to deal with the poison, there isn’t a police or medical vehicle in site around Moran’s mansion. Or why there aren’t more footprints around the backyard. Or why professional mobsters would outsource their security to some creep who lives in the sewers, employs the most moronic henchpeople possible, & gets his news from a print newspaper. This storyline has first draft written all over it.

That should be, “in sight”.

the drone will spot them

From Ape and Ferret’s mission and their conversation today, it seems unlikely that the shoeprint of a woman at the Moran Estate is hers.

And if this is so, then, what other female assassin might be methodically bumping off gang bosses?

1. Alluded to earlier, but in real life there would be a mass of marked police cars and uniformed policemen cordoning off Boss Moran’s property. Ferret would have seen that and not even turned in at the gate; just driven past.2. Story logic could be anything, but at this point, even if Ferret and Ape manage to drive away it is story logic that Dick Tracy will have noticed that a car came in and left. Identifying that car will be added to MCU’s investigative tasks.

Agree

Don’t fire until you see the whites of his yellow coat.

In episode after episode of The Avengers (the original one, not the Marvel bunch), Steed and Mrs Peel get some list of people—scientists working on some project, partners in some firm, stuff like that—and try to interview the people on the list. Going through the list, each time, they arrive just after that person’s been killed by some mysterious assassin. If they had started at the bottom of the list and proceeded upward, they might have found some live ones.