Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 19, 2023

Good morning™, everyone!

I like the custom license plate, but I’m not sure why the 7. Like James Bond 007?

Ms. Libris would rather spend money on books than on extra staff, I assume.

good evening, Frau tight-ass Krautengruber…

“Fewer witnesses.”

I was forced to take a one day break from my self imposed comment blackout due to the jaw dropping, leg tingling, eye twitching, teapot steaming “I WANT YOU” tension between these two loved starved lost souls!

This is hotter than disco goat night at Gweedo’s farm.

This is more intense than Firestrike’s most powerful SBD’s!

This concludes my brief return.

I’m thinking that she is the mastermind and that she has a goon doing the dirty work!

Good morning™, meeting of “heads of state” !

Two powerful forces converge. Will we be seeing the result of when an irresistible force meets an immovable object ?  Good night scape scene and an up view of Tracy.

In chronological order, the seventh MCU movie was Iron Man 3.

“By the way, Ms. Libris, my safe word is ‘Flattop’.

She seems to me pretty much unique in the history of this comic strip. Is she a villain? She is unique enough (I know, I know… there are no “degrees of uniqueness.”) to be one of his weirdly exceptional adversaries. Do I love her? As a character, yes. But as a real person? We shall see.

So anyone complaining about Shelley’s depiction of Madam today?

A great many Curly impressions to be had today.

Not trust Goldilocks, Tracy. Me sure she up to no goods.

Well of course she sent butler away. After all the butler did it for her!

Ah…a vanity plate for MCU. I suppose Sam’s vehicle is MCU-6. Liz has MCU-5. Lee got MCU-4. Chief Patton got the number one spot.

Next step, Tracy gets a tour of the house. Her library will probably blow his mind.

“Detective, would you mind waiting here for a moment while I change into something more comfortable?”

I still have hope, although it’s fading, that X. Libris will not turn out to be the villain.

Wind… Blow… Waiting for fire to strike. ;-p

Will she try to confuse Tracy with her feminine whiles?!

She set up Tracy’s appointment a couple days ago, in front of a witness. And (hopefully) she’s too smart to think he came out to the mansion without telling anyone where he was going. So there is no need for murder on her mind, and she’s had two days to hide any stolen goodies in her library…

In which case I’m wondering why she needed to give the staff the night off. A home the size of the NY Museum of Natural History doesn’t clean itself.

…is that Cate Blanchett?…

Does MCU-7 mean anything like the Marvel Comics Universe?

Unmarked police car, license plates MCU-7 what a stroke of genius

Dunno what’s going on with people’s eyeglasses in this arc, but today X’s specs lose an earpiece in panel 2 which reappears in panel 3. Any more of these optometrical illusions (see also 10/7, 10/11) and Tracy’s gonna think he’s the one who needs glasses!

Apparently, like MOST of the Tracyverse, Xaviera only has one outfit—that’s how she affords such a swanky joint

Tracy better be packing !!!

so you have a few children doing stuff… :/

“Good evening” in her best Bela Lugosi voice .

“It was a small subpoena.”

>

“I poisoned them all. After all, a gal’s got to have hobby for those long, increasingly lonelier nights!” (flirt)

I note that X’s cold exterior has caused her glasses to fog up in panel 2.

Looks like a long, bumpy night of ‘Detective’ this and ‘Detective’ that with Ra’s al Libris….

when Lincoln was president you could walk up to the white house and knock on the door, no fences or guards, and if he were home, Lincoln answered the door himself

“Small staff” – Fire’s not going to say anything about that?

Or maybe she just has a bunch of Oompa Loompas.

MOVIE QUOTE—-

“Oh,no! Please don’t, Doctor Jekyll!”

“Doctor Jekyll? We must hide!!

Norma Randall&Shemp Howard—-SPOOKS!—1953

Of course she’s there all by herself. Can’t have the servants witnessing her latest felony. She vants to be alone——but not in a Greta Garbo way.

Most people see that house and think—“I want to be her”Tracy thinks—“Did she earn t his, or steal it?”

When you’ve hung around Diet Smith for over 70 years, the rich make you yawn

Given his name. He just might be sensitive about her commenting on a small staff. I’m just saying.

….I wonder if BOTH of ‘em, y’know, slept in their clothes since, like, last week?

….aaaand: her sporting the mirror sunglasses doesn’t look like a good sign here……

She probably hides the bodies in the cave.

MCU-7 ? I’d thought Tracy would ranked higher.

Ah, “priorities”!

At any rate, we were correct to surmise yesterday that what we were seeing was Tracy driving up to the Tracyville mansion of X. Libris.

And here today, she herself, in her standard grey business suit, opens the big front door for the Chief of Detectives and Head of the Major Crimes Unit, Richard Tracy.

“Welcome to my web, said the spider to the fly”?

At this point, my reading is that we have spent so much time building up Xaviera Libris, and having apparent clues pointing to her as a villain, that either she is guilty herself of the multiple book/manuscript-related murders or that she can somehow provide Tracy with a crime-busting clue to who is.

Wait and see.

Sip some poisoned tea, detective?