Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for January 06, 2024

Good morning™, all!

Uh-oh! It’s not looking good for Patrick.

Patrick Throughton?… was he the target and somehow poisoned in some way?…

So now we have confirmed the “who” (not The Who) so now it’s just the how.

Good morning™ delayed deadmen !

Whoever called poisoning scored. The lamp’s not the only thing that hit the floor.

Now this is still a part of the story which is good, unlike other times when it goes on a lost sidetrack tangent.

Looks like Patrick Throughton just got rubbed out. Fata Morgana is an efficient contract killer.

The lady with the magic act and chainsaw put the hit on this fellow. Talk about deadlier than the male. I guess Rikki will be her apprentice.

Riki was feeling unexpectedly tired yesterday. Did she get a little touch of whatever was used for the hit?

Migraines are excruciating, but I never considered them fatal.

Ah the old kill em with a migrane trick eh.

Good (sad) start of a story.

“You said you would assassinate this guy for me, but he died by total coincidence, so I’m not paying!”

He shouldn’t have had the shrimp….

Fata will regret this when John Pertwee comes for her.

OOOOH! Straightforward yet kinda clever! I like it! Hopefully this will lead to a fun investigation and merry chase!

He’s a gonner.

What if Patrick Throughton hadn’t come to the show? He must have received a free ticket from Fata somehow. How long has Throughton been in the City? How long ago was Fata Morgana booked for the Patterson Playhouse? How was Fata sure Throughton would be willing to be part of the act?

WIFE: There’s an article in the news about a Patrick Throughton being found poisoned in his hotel room downtown – wasn’t that the name of the guy who was the volunteer for the saw-in-half trick we saw in the magic show we saw last night? His name is hard to forget…

HUSBAND: Wow! Yeah! Just think – he survives that, only to be mysteriously dead a few hours later! (pauses) I guess his luck ran out!

Isn’t it lucky that:

1- The intended victim happened to come to her shlock magic show and…

2- Her other “hits” have never been traced back to their attendance at her shlock magic show.

Lucky…

1-THROCKMORTON: UGH! That old bas terd who owns the Patterson must be making his gin in the bathtub

2-… That’s the last time I take advantage of a free show and drink ticket that was mysteriously delivered by a weird, blue chick who may or may not have been pregnant

3-… Yeah. Never again! I’ll just sleep it off here I think. THUD!

the only thing that I don’t get is the subtle and secret familiarity that Patrick and Screweye displayed to one another in whispers just as the illusion was about to begin… if he was supposed to be her partner-in-crime, so to speak, then why is HE her intended victim?…

unless this is NOT Patrick here in today’s strip… I’m starting to think that it ISN’T and Shell drew the intended target too similarly to Patrick…

things just don’t add up here, unless Patrick IS in today’s installment and IS the intended target for some reason… did Patrick cross Screweye in some way?…

I think her borg eye has something to do with Patrick’s apparent death, though this isn’t consistent with acute radiation syndrome. No idea what fictional tech is involved here. I will make her hard to catch in a straightforward way. Tracy will need some kind of way to deactivate her eye or shield himself against it.

So, Fata left Patrick’s body intact, but with a head-splitting headache.

The art is so bad I have no idea who that is supposed to be. Have we met this person?

This dude needs to call Xaveria Libris to bring some pain killers over.

Will he regenerate?

Screw eye did it. Poison.

I see TRACY is scheduled to go public domain in 2026. Not thrilled about that.

To be discovered by the cleaning lady…delayed discovery if a do not disturb sign was put on the door handle.

Uh-oh. Looks like Patrick Throughton is having a delayed reaction to a fatal dose of poison somehow introduced into him. Fata, it seems, does indeed have the Evil Eye!