Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for December 01, 2024

isn’t that Archie Bunker’s home address?…

and isn’t Eugene Roche an actor who played the character of one of Archie Bunker’s buddies?…

not ANOTHER Flattop…

Good morning™, everyone!

This is a rerun of a story that originally ran from 2018/08/19 to 2018/09/02. There probably isn’t much new that I could say about it.

Booooo on this interruption.

Instead of “Flattop”, Tracy could have met with an “aircraft carrier”.

Why put in the time & effort coming up with new, original material when you can just lob stale, lazy pop culture references totally unrelated to the Tracy universe & then turn to that old narrative stand-by in the Mike Curtis era, adults suffering from arrested adolescence engaging in sadness-inducing cosplaying?

Just when I was getting all wound up about the clock in the tower, a MM appeared!

Well, if this is how this one begins, I’m tapping out for two weeks…tired of everyone “putting their spin on the tracy/flattop story” and thinking that they’re some sort of literary genius…also, the art is rather “abrasive”

Ummm….just noticed the credits are listed as Mike, JOE, SHELLEY, and Shane… so this is a rehash minit mystery then?

What? After over a month of wasting time with clueless unclear snailpaced story which wents nowhere now it suddenly dropped for this? Or this now gonna be Sunday only theeng?

Please let it be a dream… Please let it be a dream…

Not a dream in the strip. I’m praying I’m asleep, and when I wake up I’ll discover they’ve not stopped an on-going strip (even if it appears to have going nowhere) for a brief rerun.

They need to stop this crap. Chester is turning over in his grave…

This strip has devolved into Tracy porn. Why this has happened is the two decade mystery.

Flattop ! My favorite Dick Tracy villain .

so we just dropped the running story for this?

IT’S OFF THE RAILS BY PANEL 2!!! Tracy sent him a package but he doesn’t know to what address??? And all the talk about his “package” and coming by for a look? Doesn’t Tracy know we don’t live in “that” America anymore?!? At least he isn’t drawn with a can of Bud Light. (Presuming that’s even Tracy – doesn’t look like him. Maybe that explains all this – it’s NOT Tracy!)

1- EUGENE: HELLO? HELLO? This is Eugene Roche checking to see if my effort to hack the MCU’s computer system was successful. Can anyone hear me?

2- DT: This is Dick Tracy – I can hear you. Are you related to that Ferrero Roche guy who makes chocolates? EUGENE: No. It’s pronounced the same but he spells his “Rocher”. DT: Too bad. How’d you hack the MCU anyway?

3- EUGENE: I sent Sam a questionnaire that said he would have a chance to win a free pastrami on rye if he answered one question: “What was the name of your favorite pet as a kid?” DT: MINE WAS ROVER! EUGENE: And is that your MCU password? DT: OOOOH! YOU’RE GOOD!

4- : LATER THAT EVENING Wow. Even my shadow looks down and dejected. Cheer up, Pal! Anyone could’ve been tricked with that “favorite pet” ruse! Anyway – Eugene said to meet him here for my prize.

5- FLATTOP: WTF?!? DT: Wow Eugene! You look just like Flattop!

“Ooooolala! The fishnet hose in pink are to DIE for, Tracy! WherEVER did you FIND them?”

Yeah, I knew it!! Sinister Sam has been stealin’ the bodies of downed foes and reanimating ’em. Going to be mighty CROWDED in there.

TOMORROW? Igor B.B. asks Tracy for the password (hint: it isn’t ‘swordfish’ any more) — he changed that. When that fails, he asks ye olde surefire clever Questions Three.

704 Hauser St. – I believe that was the address of the Bunker residence in Queens.

With all of the attempts to kill Tracy over the years, repeating bad Minit Miseries my just do the trick. This development is a worse threat than Flattop ever hoped to be.

What happened to the rest of the clock tower story?

Welp, see you in 2 weeks after this crap is over!

This is already more interesting than the interminable, boring and Mary Worth-esque regular story arc.

Flattop’s head ain’t…….well, completely flat: would YOU try to land an airplane on that slippery slope?…….

Tracy looks as if he forgot his dentures in the last panel.

6 years or 666 years I still don’t care for the artwork.

But maybe we’ll get lucky and they will fire EC during the 2 week hiatus

Hmmm! The art work on Tracy is pale and unflattering!!!

Oh, this is BS – in the middle of a story we get a MM rerun – come on, Eric and Charles can’t have fallen behind they are professionals – there’s something going on and Tribune is covering it up. Perhpas Mike is going to return and finish Eric’s story…and they needed to extend things.

OK, I know the address from “All In The Family,” and I know Eugene Roche from his role on “Soap,” so I guess we’ve got a TV fan giving us the story.

It’s time for another hiatus. I’ll be back in a month or two to see if any continuity has reappeared.

Wasn’t that Archie Bunker’s address?

why the break from the story we were in?

“704 Hauser St.” was Bunker’s (Archie / Edith / Gloria) TV sitcom address.

I love how it seems like Eugene has wondered into Tracy’s computer.

“Tracy, you there? This is Eugene Roche!”

Like he’s just walked in the front door or something.

I’m trying to imagine the mindset that thought, “We need a two-week filler. Hmmm. How about a MM? Let’s see. Okay, this one looks pretty good. The fans ought to like this one.”

Come on, if you’re having writer issues, get someone like Mark or Matthew (what’s with the biblical names?) who have proven to write good stories.

NOW WE GET RE_RUNS??

704 Hauser was the address where Archie and Edith Bunker lived on All in the Family. Eugene Roche (1928-2004) was a character actor who played Archie’s friend Pinky Peterson. He also played lawyer Ronald Mallou on Soap and Christine Sullivan’s father on Night Court.

704 Hauser is the address where Archie and Edith Bunker lived.

MINIT MYSTERIES give me an opportunity to expound on past great stories—-so for two weeks I’ll be doing that.

The prison break has been on the shelf so long they all decided to wait for parole instead