Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 05, 2022

Square face, square thumb. Tracy is Squareman!

Ferret?

Sam is assuming “The Pose!”

LOL!

The drone saw that?

Sam grew a 4th face mole!

Very Gould-like. Though I’m disappointed that Sam didn’t figure that out, too.

Of course, remembering the „low spark of high-heeled boys“ – Steve Winwood

Good morning™, man killers !

Ferret is already at work and plays a toady real good. Yeti has her “cowed” so he thinks.

Iunno, a foot print? That’s a pretty boring clue. Cliched too. I was expecting something a bit more original to be honest. It might not even be the killer’s. It might just be someone walking through the lawn. Also, was it just Moran and the bodyguard in the house? Because I got the impression that there were servants and such. Didn’t they see anything?

Maybe Ferret is actually a Apparatus assassin using the list Yeti gave her to identify her targets……

A composite sketch of the killer-

https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2012/3-30/hxF554Y3yq-12.png

Good morning™, everyone!

So, we are led to believe that a female going away from the house was responsible for the killings? Even if that is true, I don’t think that Ferret is necessarily the culprit. It could be, but it’s going to take more than a footprint to convince me.

Still, it’s great seeing Tracy and Sam following clues.

Maybe it’s a man in high heels!

Shouldn’t Sam know that after all his years as a detective? Or is this just clunky expository dialogue?

What…only one footprint shown? Is the owner pigeon toed or slew foot? Does she take baby steps or giant steps? I’ll have to stay tuned and find out.

I’ve been reading the Annie story from 2019 and the story involved characters that hadn’t been seen in 90 years and how so many complained that it screwed up the timeline.

I’ve made a decision: I will no longer care about such things as immortal characters and 100-year-old children. It’s pointless. It’s like complaining that the characters in B.C. don’t behave like real cave people did. They’re not supposed to! The strip is designed to comment on this modern world. (Besides, one strip from 2004 mentioned the year 2004 as if it were a long time before. B.C. isn’t set in the distant past, but the distant future. “B.C.” is actually the name of its main character, not the strip’s time setting. The dinosaurs are escapees from a Jurassic Park-like facility is how I figure it.)

Anyway, the fact that the characters don’t seem to age in Dick Tracy is simply a convention of the strip, a characteristic as endemic as wrist radios. You can’t have the strip without it. It’s necessary and indispensible. It is what it is.

Good point!

This footprint is a middle aged heavy woman. A young thin woman it would be a small triangle with a dot behind it. ( I poured concrete sidewalks all my life,)

By the depth of the impression the weight of the subject may be determined, and also how the impression is tilted the height of the person might be guessed at by the perceived gait!

RuPaul? Just thought of that in case this case drags……

Tracys hand looks a little " weird " I think ? And Sams expressions are real cool today .

Either that, or his new villain is called Narrow Heal.

“This looks like a woman’s footprint.”

“How do you figure that?” Sam asked, and goes on to explain, “It doesn’t look like either a right or a left, and shoes can’t be neutral ‘cause feet are either right or left. And where are the tracks leading up to it, or past it? We’ve got one thing that looks like a footprint in isolation. It’s clearly been planted to create confusion. The invoices I shoved into my pocket in yesterday’s strip, when you weren’t looking, will solve this. Oh, and I made sure not to wear gloves when I pocketed them.”

WOW!! Tracy must have sent a trans-temporal weemail to Sherlock Holmes for help reading these clues!! Who else would have guessed?" A Fifteen year old kid yawning cavernously in a high school Forensics Class? Could be!!!

Sam is raising a red flag in my mind. His behavior seems off. Doesn’t seem to know about shoes prints? And taking that piece of paper a few strips back?

Sam needed it explained that that’s a woman’s shoe?

Meh. Maybe it was a man, wearing ’70’s era Elton John style platform shoes………

Not heard the term ‘toe box’ before. Comics are avlearning experience.

Ever seen a cowboy boot, detective?

Tracy will be shocked once he realizes that it is Sam’s footprint….

Dick is not woke…

Okay. reveal. It’a s hopping peg-leg pirate closely following a tip-toe burglar.

1-DT: Get the Plaster Casters here, Sam. I found a clue!

2-SAM: You found a rock star’s erect…oh…you mean those guys who sit around the Station doing nothing until the rare crime is committed that involves a foot or tire tread print.

3-DT: Yeah, those guys. What were you talking about?

SAM: Let’s swing by my place on the way back to the Station and I’ll show you. I did one on myself! Funny story – I didn’t know you were spozed to start with a clay mold and I just poured the plaster right on. OOH BOY! I cry every time I see a plaster-of-paris vase.

DT: I don’t know what’s wrong with you sometime, Sam. Anyway, this here tells me that the killer wore shoes. That’s gonna crack this case wide open!

One would think Sam would catch these clues without Tracy explaining everything.?

Unless ru Paul was on the property

Unless it’s Prince.

All these years of being DTs partner and he still has never looked at a footprint after a crime? I grew up reading Ellery Queen, Sherlock Holmes(my mother had a massive book with all of the SH stories, really tiny print tho.) and Nero Wolfe mysteries, this writer so far does not impress

We’re still at the beginning of the story. It’s too early to criticize the writer yet.

Er, if the ground is soft enough to leave foot prints, shouldn’t there be more than one?

OK, it would have been better to have a newbie uniformed cop there, so Tracy could explain the shoe thing to him or her. But, we have been told this writer only has about 6 weeks to get the story squeezed in; can we just accept that this was a bit of hurried exposition, and stay off of Sam’s case? Of course, Sam knows about deductions derived from footprints.

“Explain again how footprints are made, Dick!”

A clue is a clue. Maybe it’s being a woman’s footprint will in due course point to Ferret (or maybe not)

But that is a pretty darn elementary observation by Tracy (panel 3), and I am surprised, even shocked, that Sam did not recognize it himself (panel 2)! How long has Sam been a detective, and he doesn’t know the difference between the print of a woman’s shoe and a man’s shoe?!

I wish that shoe manufacturers knew that women have narrow heels.

Looks too “fat” to be a woman’s high-heeled shoe.

Break out the Plaster Of Paris)Sketch Paree/Talcum Freely—1949