Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 16, 2023

How to play The Game of Life? Your mileage may vary

Some tote quite a burden from the mess they choose to carry.

To steal and brag is such a drag, ‘tis but a loser’s game

Embracing guile. Spreading bile. Cloaking deeds in shame.

Chutes and Ladders illustrates both promise and grave danger

Ascend to heights. Avoid mud fights with scornful, vapid strangers.

Beware the chutes that drop one down. So much progress lost

Starve the beast that’s valued least. Feeding brings high cost.

How to play The Game of Life? Traverse the straight and narrow

Pass by the lie of thief Snake Eyes, he’s poisoned to the marrow.

A

Stupendous

Inspiring

Lavish

Lightening

Yearning

Story, to say the least.

I predicted yesterday that something like this would happen. Here’s what I said:

A Furry Gamers Convention will be announced and a known valuable game will be on display, That’ll flush Gameboy down the Chutes. If Tracy is lucky, maybe he’ll run into Mumbles there, too.

Since when did the MCU have green landline phone?

Good morning™, everyone!

It was all Abraham Lincoln’s fault. Milton Bradley had a great seller in a lithograph of Lincoln until Lincoln decided to grow a beard and the lithograph became outdated. As I remember it, a young girl told Lincoln that he would look good with a beard, so he started growing one. Mr. Bradley burned all the no-longer-accurate pictures of Abe and turn to producing a game called “The Checkered Game of Life,” which became a runaway hit in 1860.

Tracy must have been reading all the puns in these comments to come up with that one of his own in the last panel.

Are there two different games Sam’s looking at? I doubt it.

Dick shouldn’t quit his day job, his comedy routine needs a lot of work!

Good morning™, surveillance planners !

Our boy Sam’s been busy. Maybe Lizz or Lee will be MCU’s inside person at the library ?  They should have that guy out of the game in 4 days and then onto Mumbles.

Regarding the Hall of Fame story, here is a video of the dramatic intervention of of Sgt. Eric Webb: https://vimeo.com/316420070

A few more details are here: https://www.gulflive.com/news/2019/02/moss-point-police-officer-honored-for-saving-the-life-of-woman-attempting-suicide.html

Hello, trapped Gameboys!

The trap is about to be set. Will the coppers catch Gameboy and his shady helper? It looks like we’re going to have a game of Mouse Trap this week. I love the coloring and shadowing in todays strip. Shelley continues to outdo herself in the art department. The whole strip looks great and I love panel 3 in particular. No gratuitous guest appearances today (which is good in my opinion). Just a great strip today.

So, in one day we went from close to a week build-up of Sam going to the Pawn Stars to gain insight into Gameboy’s thinking so “we can get the jump on him” to Sam guessing Gameboy’s next move by seeing a P.R. notice on the internet. I’ll just call it more choppy writing on Mike’s part & leave it at that. On the positive side, more great artwork today, especially the contrasting light & shadows.

Okay… What was your first thought when you saw the panel of Sam looking at the monitor with that expression on his face? – Hol’up, better not. The Nannybot will shut this place down.

I’ve just concluded GameBoy is too arrogant…..hopefully he’ll buy the farm against the MCU.

“We can leave Gameboy’s capture to a roll of the dice.” Well, if that’s what’s on the cards…..

The panel in the top right shows part of the game board for the original Game of Life, but “Success” is not written properly. The word should appear rotated so it can be read from both sides of the board, but Shelley has flopped it instead, creating a mirror image at the bottom of the square.

Games were considered sinful by many people at the time when this game was first issued, so Bradley added virtuous aspects of life to some squares. Dice were strongly associated with gambling, “the work of the devil,” so the original game used the “teetotum” pictured in today’s strip. You would spin it like a top and whatever number came uppermost applied.

More details of how the original game worked are here: https://thebiggamehunter.com/games-one-by-one/checkered-game-of-life/

I just learned something. I didn’t know “The Checkered Game of Life” existed.

After a remark like that, Tracy needs to adjust his sunglasses, while Roger Daltrey screams in the background!

Shelleys images today are just " super " BIG TIME ! Sams expressions and the real " cool " image on the top right is real cool . I not sure what it is but it is real cool : )

Let’s hope that “Gameboy” likes playing with electric trains too, cuz I sure wouldn’t mind a Sweatbox Express right about now

Aw, I thought it would be Candyland next……..

if there wasn’t any use of color in today’s installment, it would really pop with the appropriate use of lighting and shadow, giving it a really noir-ish look… as it is, even with today’s color, it’s got that noir feel and look to it… or does that constitute it as being neo-noir?…

……perhaps if you just give the arrow on the spinner-thing a good flick……..

From Gameboy to GAME OVER !!!

Are they going to send two cops named Mario and Luigi ?

Sam takes…a Critical Roll!

Next, Gameboy will be after a 1949 U.S. version of Clue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluedo

Now, has there ever been a Sunday DT strip with the MCU characters playing Clue? LOL j/k

my name is Thomas F. O’Connell

TRACY: "SAM! Surfing really ‘Naughty Ladies Run Amok’ again?!?! That’s ten times in the last hour!!

SAM: “There are LOT of naughty ladies, Tracy. Trust me on that.”

TRACY: “And this is solving the crime HOW exactly?”

So sam made his intuition roll?

Good exit line for Tracy on that last panel.

So far, however, Game Boy does seem a little bland for a Tracy villain. He doesn’t seem to have the panache of Blackjack, or even of The Jumbler, to name a couple other of Mike Curtis’ gimmick villains. Unless we see a little more personality from him, I fear he’s going to be another one-shot.

Great art work…really excellent helps the story……

1-SAM: Hey Tracy – did you forget to replace the burned out light bulbs like I told ya too? DT: Sorry.

2-SAM: What the hell Tracy? Get your head back in the game. Speaking of – what should be my opening move in this online checker game?

3-DT: Uh…is this the one with pawns and kings? No?

4-…Maybe we should try to catch that Gameboy character before he steals another valuable game? SAM: Good idea. Go see if he’s at the deli. If not, bring me back a ham on rye.

5-DT: Something feels off today but I can’t put my finger on it. I’ll ask Chief Of Detectives Sam about it when I get back from capturing Gameboy at the deli… Chief of Detectives SAM? DARN HIM! HE’S TAKING ADVANTAGE OF ANOTHER ONE OF MY SENIOR MOMENTS! Just for that, he’s getting MAYO on his ham on rye!

Editor’s Note: I know this is an uninspired effort. My apologies to Shelley for not doing more with her marvelous art work. And to both of my readers. What? One? When he’s not got something better to do? Fine…

If they did leave Gameboy’s capture up to a roll of the dice, snake eyes would indicate “CAPTURE” and everything else would be “ROLL AGAIN UNTIL YOU ROLL SNAKE EYES” Yes, I’m saying the game is rigged.

I’m grateful the cameo celebrity only appeared in one strip of this arc and didn’t carry over for days.

Thank you for the article about the life that was saved!

Nintendo must be furious.

I guess the MCU got rid of thos funky shaped monitors on a pole that popped up the picture of anyone they talked about.

I gotta say, I haven’t read this strip in a while and now that I’m back I’m really enjoying Shelley Plegers’ art. I’ve always been a big Joe Staton fan and his art on the strip was outstanding but Pleger just knows how to illustrate that Tracy profile with the utmost expertise.

In the dim glow of the computer screen, Sam susses out what is likely to be Gameboy’s next target, and Tracy concurs and even cracks an ironic joke, the perfect exit-line for today’s strip.

All would be for naught, however, if Sam has guessed wrongly. I think his intuition will turn out to be correct, though. The Gould Library O’Connell Gallery looks to become Gameboy’s Last Stand, as this skimpy arc rushes to an apparent conclusion in just one more week or so….

Excellent illiteration with the acronyms! Nicely done!