Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 14, 2024

Good morning™, everyone!

If the secretary, Miss Schott, was done out of a promotion by a rival, could that rival have been Ms. van Duivel? I wouldn’t think so, but maybe she was. Anyway, she is inserting a memory card into a little baseball player statuette which may be some sort of a recording device. She is tricky.

“Now, pardon my while I don my Xavier Libris costume.”

Good morning™, Hot Dames Talking !

What Neil said makes sense as to me it looks or looked like she is pulling the card from it and that it had come from Borden’s office, passed to her by angry reception lady.

They may have hit upon a great promotional nite give-away.“Hey kids, it’s CIA Nite! First 10,000 at the ball park get a free high-tech surveillance device hidden inside a bobble-head doll of your favorite player! Use it to spy on your parents, teachers, or brothers & sisters!”

MCU is going to come against some smooth operators. Not so much as to who done it but how do you catch them?

Can’t says what exactly goin on around here.

The arrow box is very Gouldian. It brings back some of the old Tracy flavor.

Snitches get stitches *itches .

MOVIE QUOTE—

“You all do electric shock treatment here?”

“Not to visitors”

“Well, that’s comforting”.

John Travolta & Brendan Fraser—-THE POISON ROSE—2019

In Panel One, that jacket looks several sizes too small.

They can’t blackmail me, I’m as pure as the driven yellow snow

Interesting expositional question. How many stories do they track for their periodical? Is this scandal the highest level of interest that Cherry would be interested in Sarah’s contact? There should be a level of familiarity where they would have developed verbal shorthand. Something like: “The squealer on the sex scan,” “We found a PT on the bank ex.” Speaking of which…

How does this work? Are all of their stories blackmailees who defaulted on their payments? If they mostly print non-blackmailed material, how believable are they? “Enquiring minds want to know.” If they aren’t believable, then what kind of leverage do they really have? That would constitute plausible deniability because if it gets printed in there, it’s probably not true, or such would be in the minds of the readers. for them, it’s just another trashy publication.

That said, the angels here aren’t working on stories, they are working on potential stories that they hope to never run. Or perhaps their purpose is just to develop and maintain the blackmail side of this nefarious business and there are investigators and writers of the publishable material elsewhere.

I’m just not quite clear on how this scam works with the front end of their ludditesque business. From a practical standpoint, there’s a lot of things to keep in balance in order for it to work.

OUT-LOUD OT: Got sample audio book chapters up on my Facebook page, for one of my PI books (FISH OUT OF WATER) add a pulp hero vs. gangland (ALIAS THE ECLIPSE) book, in case anyone wonders what I do in my spare time. Couple of fantasy books as well.

Yeah, it’s under ‘Mark Barnard’. My first choice, ‘Casper Frizzlebrush’ was unavailable, durnitall!

I remember one of the original Perry Mason novels dealt with this type of “rag” – a dirt-dealing publication. The thinly veiled blackmail scheme was that the publication offered “special consideration” to it’s advertisers. So if the mark was willing to “purchase ad space” in the publication, the publication would forget about whatever it was they had on the mark.

A rather big deal was made out of the fact that this guy insists on staying with the Linotype/letterpress method of printing. We speculated it might have something to do with eliminating any electronic trail. But today we see that both of the women in the office have computers on their desks. Generally speaking, except perhaps in a very, very small publication, Linotype operators did not make up their own stories on their keyboards. They produced the lines of metal type from previously typewritten copy. So if the copy this Linotype operator is reading from was first produced on the computers we see on the desks today, we’re right back to having some sort of electronic trail that could be followed by a forensics team, aren’t we?

Maybe our guy has some other reason for staying with letterpress printing.

1-CHERRY GOT THE WAY TO MOVE ME BABY: How did you cultivate your Knight’s source?

2-SARAH SKNK: I got some DIRT on her. GET IT? CULTIVATE? DIRT? No? I forgot. Your level of humor goes no higher than “The Hangman” comics. ANYWAY…

3-… She doesn’t know she’s a source. She just thinks we both share a love of boss-related” perno. She gives me some on her boss and I give her some on mine! CHERRY: Wait…so…

SARAH: Yeah. No worries. I never watched more than two minutes of the first one with you and Tubby – made me projectile hurl. URRRPP! DON’T MAKE ME REMEMBER!

Nice classic touch with the arrow box. I miss those little helpers from time to time.

We KNOW it’s a 2-way wrist radio, Chet!!

Wow, the action just never stops in this graphic novel