Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 12, 2023

Hard to explain in driving rain his feeling of unease

Wished to do right knowing this might bring him to his knees.

Small fry feels fright in dark of night. There is no turning back

Deadly blade. The man waylaid. Death loves a night pitch black.

Down the drain. Farewell to pain. The dying of the light

Killer did win. Murder her sin. What’s done can’t be made right.

he be daid…

Good morning™, everyone!

Yeah, Backroom Workman didn’t last long after that little conference with Lee.

Poor guy. Lost his hat in the rain, then died of p-neumonia.

Well he was right when he told Lee she wouldn’t be seeing him again….at least not alive that is…….

Don’t tell me…he got stabbed. The look in his eyes…the mouth…it says no, no! When MCU arrives on the scene. Lee will say well he knew he was on borrowed time.

The body count for this story is really getting up there….

If killers stoopidity is only thing that is get h…er…“they” caught then it a lazy lousy story indeeds.

The exact same look of fear and horror on the faces of Gweedo’s goats whenever he gets home from his crochet class!

Good morning™, recently deceased !

He should have met Lee behind the diner. Shell done a good job at conveying the gravity of book man’s fate despite not doing an old time graphic of the killing.

Very poetic; Ahab’s hat floating down the drain, same as the story has!

Well done, Eric me boy, well done indeed!

Crimestopper’s textbook apparently is telling us to be careful when putting this comic in a deep fat fryer.

Happy Thanksgiving! Great art by Shelley there!

P.1., upper left side. Is that the killer emerging between two buildings ?

Wonder if it’s a stab through the heart? Real bright, killing him AFTER he meets cops and gives info; now they’ll double down the effort to catch the killer…..

Should’ve there be a trail of red color streaming into the storm drain ?

My neighbor deep fried her turkey in the yard away from her house. We have played videos in the classroom of turkey frying to show what can go wrong and to warn the kids to stay away from their turkey deep fryers at home.

There’s no way he could fit through that grating.

Or better still, roast the turkey, or order a pre-cooked one.

A complaint I think I alone, as a member of the AS of BC&D (American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers) for fifty years will have. Bookplates are for wealthy individuals are works of art, commissioned by artists and worthy of being collected in albums (not sure how many I have). There are also little mass produced cheap things you can buy with a blank space to write in the name of a child (they are always pleased to see their own name) or your name (if you make the mistake of loaning books out to friends and imagine they will return the volume if you have your name in it).

The little illustration in the strip today is drawn from one of those cheap commercially mass-produced bookplates. Anyone who has spent hundreds or thousands of dollars for a rare book or mss is not going to buy a box of blank bookplates for fifty cents and scribble their name on one. This is a “fingernails on the chalkboard” moment for me even if it bothers no one else.

Outstanding visuals today! Several of the posters called this yesterday, sad to see his demise did indeed happen!

hello, Georgie.

hello, Georgie.

would you want your boat…er, hat back?

He went down the drain?

Who didn’t see that coming?

Well NOW We have a serial killer on the loose!

cue the dark ambient music with discordant overtones which, although broadly tonal, is inflected with chromatic and polytonal passages representing the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style without being interpreted as an overly heavy-handed metaphor within the context of the thematic material a bit on the frenetic and frantic side with interesting rhythmic devices which seem to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor utilizing a novel imaging technique known as positron emission tomography

“STABBED THRU THE HEART, THIS STORY’S LAME…WRITERS YOU GIVE TRACY…A BAD NAME!” (sorry, it had to be done)

I needs must say I like the art without dialogue . Proof positive that Dick Tracy needs ONLY Shelley Pleger .

Was he actually stabbed? Looks like he got caught out in the open, no blood running in the water with his hat floating towards a street drain. I’m thinking this time it might be a case of vehicular homicide.

To follow up on the wild theory that I posted late last night: The Libris family made a fortune in the chemical business. However, in 1919 (the year that the prayer book was purchased at auction) I assume the chemical industry had a downturn due to the use of chemical weapons of mass destruction during World War I, which led to their eventual banning. The family may have sold some of their manuscripts (with the Libris insignia on each one for provenance) such as the prayer book. That was the book that Ms. Caxton was killed for. Why Libris didn’t keep the insignia is a mistake on X’s part. X is trying to retrieve items that her family once owned, but have been unable to buy back. Yes, lots of holes in the theory, but fun for me to write! LOL

Why do all of the witnesses get killed? Couldn’t the police have put him under protective custody? The poor guy…

I love the artwork today. Great stormy nighttime scene with nice shadowing.

We deep fried a turkey many times until one fateful day. Flames were shooting up like a volcano! I had the fryer next to the pool, so I kicked it in. That solved one problem and caused quite another. So much for quick-thinking.

Still think it’s too easy that Cate Blanchett is the killer. It’s whomever that other guy called. Now Tracy will put the screws on that guy with a subpeona and a possible accesory to murder charge. He’ll fold quicker than a 20th century magazine….

Slipped down a sewer grate. How Wile E Coyote-y.

yup, he got caught… poor guy.

Run cold water in the cavity of the turkey if it might have been frozen to make sure there are no ice crystals remaining – - then drain very fully before immersing in hot oil – or you’ll see that ice/water boil and the expanding steam will overflow hot oil on your burner – a fire any home extinguishers will be insufficient to extinguish. Remember this is an oil fire – - no water

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3: splash splash

4: HOLY CRAPOLIE!

5: gurgle

Great art Shelly……

“Join us Book Guy, we all float…”

I guess he was killed by that flow of hot turkey fryer oil!

These images are just " super great " BIG " time : )

A well-“written” strip today! d;o)

So that’s why my kitchen sprinklers go off when we are deep frying our turkeys there. Gee, thanks for the tip

OK, ladies and gents… who won the pool?

Pennywise must have got ’im.

Once again… kudos to the artist.

Looks like that fellah’s headed for that big bookstore in the sky.

Well goodbye Darby, the Death Coach is on it’s way. The colors on this Sunday are slightly faded for some reason. you can see how the panel should look, on Facebook, here:

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It was a dark and stormy night. Very noirish!

Very Will Eisner today!

That Little Old Pressman made it back to the book bindery alive and closed out his day’s work there. [Aside: commercial retail/book binders are difficult to find nowadays. Some while back, I had found one in Chicago not too far from where I lived that I used to have some paperback monographs put into hardcover. Don’t know if it is still in business.] But he chooses to walk home, perhaps out of routine, in the dark and dank rainy evening. Big mistake. He suspects he’s being followed. He starts to run for his life! Too late! He sees Death in front of him! …We see his cap, from under his hoodie, floating in the gutter towards the drain. We understand: he has been murdered; likely stabbed by a sharp and pointed weapon.

R.I.P. Little Old Pressman, snitch….

To quote Brian Keith from CHARLIE CHAN AND THE DRAGON LADY’S CURSE “It’s another **** bizarre killing!”

Did it HAVE to be raining??

Once there was a sitcom called EvENING SHADE.I remember an episode where Burt Reynolds tried to deep fry a t urkey and burned down half the house.

Anyway,there IS a “turkey hotline” for those who can’t figure out what a Brussel Sprout is

Well,it would be small comfort to a dead man. But this shows that the guilty party is getting panicky.

I’m reminded of how after 19 years of partnership, Oodles bumped off Mrs.Vulcan;figuring he’d disposed of the only link to him.

But all he did was provide a series of FRESH clues that pointed right to him.

This reminds me of Will Eisner’ Spirit

Intro (skip if you’ve already read any of the previous intros):

Hello, greetings, casual readers of past Tracy stories. I’m here because I’m on 2 missions. The first is something I’ve never done before, read each Tracy story by Mike Curtis (or his occasional guest writer) in one sitting each. I feel his stories are worth it. IMHO, Curtis is by far the best post-Gould writer this strip has ever had, and we’re all lucky to have him.

My second mission is to provide an immediately useful Featured Comment whenever needed. My 3 friends below will reply to me. You can read their replies if you like, but their only real purpose is to bump up this comment to the Featured Comment.

There are 2 basic types of immediately useful Featured Comments: the first type is to provide you with a Mumblespeak translator when needed. The other type is anytime that day’s strip quotes a real song. I will provide an html to a recording to that song so you’ll know the tune even if you’ve never heard it before.

End Intro

But this post isn’t for either of these 2 reasons. Over at Facebook’s Calling Dick Tracy fan club, Shelley Pleger posted that the colors had come out wrong. This is what the Sunday strip is meant to look like:

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