Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 21, 2024

ok, what is Dick up to?…

Sam has a schitt-eating grin on his face…

has he caught on to what Dick knows?…

Tracy looks insane in panel two.

Time for a vacation.

Dick Tracy as he’s drawn here reminds me of Columbo….

Good morning™, Cagey Cops !

Is Pops worried for Tracy or scared of being found out as a ‘helper’ in the Borgia poisoning, attempted murder, caper ?  Sam and Dick are having a real field day with this one.

I suppose the complaints of T. & S. getting goofy when they should be stern and serious will come rolling in any time.

Ashmael mentions Columbo, this sequence reminds me of the ending of a Columbo episode where he’s high up in a cable car with Roddy McDowell, who plays the killer, & Columbo shows him a box of cigars that’s he gathered as evidence & McDowell panics because he created exploding cigars to kill his uncle & thinks these may be leftovers that will go off any second. Will Palmer have a break-down & reveal his guilt the way Roddy McDowell did as Tracy serves the tea? Stay tuned.

Switching the eye patch. Apparently an affectation.

Death skull on teapot. How obveeously omeenous can ya gets eh.

you are so busted!

Good morning™, everyone!

It looks like Tracy has a suspect, a motive, and a method figured out. He only needs to confirm and put those together and he’s done.

Badgering the witness…

The monocle changed eyes today

“In a pot like this.” So, apparently Popski was given a bunch of the new design, and they’re all the deadly tea pots.

1. And Palmer thought no one would notice the unusual design feature?

2. Everything was washed before being used, so Palmer had to load the poison at the table – no one noticed? (Or he had one of them in his pocket when he arrived, and no one asked, “Excuse me, Sir, do you have a teapot in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”)

3. If the secret chamber can’t be cleaned by going through the dishwasher Palmer could have loaded poison in all the secret chambers – to insure the one brought to their table held poison. Of course as the death toll at Popski’s kept climbing someone would have noticed eventually. (Perhaps Palmer hoped to be living in Jamaica under a different name at that point.)

So the teapot has a compartment to hold two cups of non poisoned tea. The first two cups. Then the poisoned tea is dispensed? Tricky bit of engineering there. Or, the poison dispenser is activated when the teapot is tilted to pour the third cup. Nothing like leaving a boat load of evidence laying around!

That’s a monocle, right? He switched eyes? I assume he would notice that he can’t see.

On Monday, Palmer’s monocle was in his left eye. For the last two days, it has been in his right eye. I guess that’s what you get when you buy your eyepieces from Fata. Or, it could be that the artist didn’t pay attention.

So instead of a whodunit, this has become a howdunit! Future “Mystery” episodes will feature the whendunit, whydunit, and finally, “Where’s Tracy?”.

MOVIE QUOTE—-

“What can you do?:

“Nuthin’ .And we don’t do THAT well, either”.

Kathryn Grayson&Lou Costello—-RIO RITA—1942

Honestly! I was convinced this wasn’t as bad as everyone was saying. I was wrong. Apparently once they decided to chop off the Fata arc they threw all caution to the winds and went all 3 stooges on us. (Apologies to the appropriate parties;)

The Number One Suspect is sweating buckets. And from their big smiles, looks like DIck&Sam have it all figured out. They’ll celebrate with non-poisonous strawberry cheesecake.

Suddenly, Sam SNAPS! Foaming at the mouth, he screams “All right! I confess1 I’m the JOKER! My wicked scheme to poison the city with cheap Canadian tea has failed its acid test! Oh, woe!”

Followed by a pretty pathetic giggle.

“COME AND GET ME, BATMAN!”

Guess those cleaning fluids from every time TRACY had him clean the restrooms finally GOT to him.

TRACY (snkickering wickedly): YOU go first!

Tracy detects a ticking sound in the teapot and decides to hold everyone in the place until the would-be killer cracks and tries to make a break for it.

Look at the sadistic Tracy playing with the killer like a cat with a mouse. How cruel. The killer is so rattled he doesn’t even know which eye needs the monocle.

1-PERPSKI: Do I look innocent to you if I put my monocle in the right eye? Whew! It’s hot. You hot? I’m sweating like a whoore in…

2-DT: LOOKEE WHAT I GOT PERPSKI! EVIDENCE! AND, for the first time in forever, a case that might hold up in court! ♪♫ I’M SO GLAD! I’M GLAD I’M GLAD I’M GLAD! ♪♫

3-POOPSKI: Cream? Is that your way of asking for cream? SAM: Quiet Poops! Let Tracy have this rare moment – a WIN!

POOPSKI: Ahhh. That’s why I’ve never seen this side of him before…

https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=_hSiqy9v9FM&loop=0

I think monocle man gets the 1st cup.

He shouldn’t have ordered the Japanese Fugu (Blowfish) sandwich. Cookie hasn’t mastered the technique of removing its poison yet.

And remember….behind that mask, Frank Redrum is laughing at you.

“No, thank you. I don’t care for any at this time.”

I have this figured. Channeling the keen wits of several of my PI characters, I can clearly see the would-be poisoner is……LIL’ OOP! His scheme is to kill off the adult, established strip characters and replace them with juvenile pod versions.