Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for December 08, 2024

Dick being hard…

Good morning™, all!

Okay, we are halfway through and we are finally getting introductions to all the suspects. It’s time to do the Agatha Christie “locked-room mystery” thing.

Didn’t Flattop introduce Mabuse as another alias a few days ago? (I’m not up enough on Tracy lore to know of Dr. Mabuse is as fictional in their reality as in ours, or if he was a real person a century ago in Tracy’s world.)

The “plot sickens”.

Fine, Howard, Derita? Three Stooges?

Good morning™, Game Show Contestants !

Rubba hose and 100 watt table lamp time.

Hmmm… I predict that one of the cosplayers is actually the villain he depicts.

So “Dr. Mabuse” is supposedly his real name? It is in fact the name of a criminal mastermind in a series of movies by German director Fritz Lang, starting with “Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler” from 1922, so he would be a natural addition to a cosplay of villains.

Funny, I was thinking of this just the other day, when Francis Ford Coppola publicly blamed himself for the current glut of sequels, thinking that he started it with “The Godfather”. Well, he was far from the first.

Are they a comedy act?

Soo… the latest installment of my dick tracy story introduced a new employee for tracy investigations, someone who, in my timeline, was a college friend of tess’and was at her wedding to tracy…he relocated back to tracyville from Texas with his son Nate who will be going to school with honeymoon, and his soon to be introduced wife (this may well end up being miranda Wright…going under her maiden name)….and his name? Ah, well…glad you asked…his name is Rick Gould :)

Today’s throwaway panel: Requiem for a cosplayer, or this strip’s future? Discuss!

Back when I was a cop, we had a lady who must have read this tip. She had a habit of locking herself out of her house. We’d find an unlocked window and get in. The next time she had secured that entry point so that “burglars” couldn’t get in, and we had to find another. The last time it happened we had to have the Fire Department come with a ladder, and enter through a second floor window. I told her “If you lock that window, you’re not getting back in your house if you lock yourself out again.”

1- FLATTOP?: Write this down – I didn’t do it. SAM: I’m not taking notes. I’ve decided to be the Police Sketch Artist today. But it’s hard to draw a stick figure sitting down…

2 – BLACKJACK: DRAW ME NEXT! I can’t hold this smile for long!

3 – DT: NO! I’M NEXT! I even put my teeth in!

4- SAM: Ahhh – the lighting is perfect, Tracy – I can’t see your face!

5- DT: Real funny, Pickle Nose. Anyway – back to work. Seeing as how I spotted your feminine features right off, I get why they call you “MA” but what’s with the “BOOZE” part Ma Booze??? FLATTOP?” Huh? Mabuse is my real name! DT: That’s what I said – Ma Booze!

FLATTOP: What? DT: What?

Huntz Hall from the Bowery Boys

Are these characters from the original Tracy strips back in the 60’s?

Dr. Mabuse has a connection to the concept of shared cinematic universes. The police inspector in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) was named Karl Lohmann and played by Otto Wernicke. Two years earlier, Wernicke had played Inspector Lohmann in the movie M, which otherwise had no connection to Dr. Mabuse. So long before the MCU, and even before the Universal Monsters shared universe, the German film industry had the Lohmannverse.

Professor Derita is totally unworthy of such auspicious company.

nyuk nyuk nyuk

Actually, if I recall right, Moe and Shemp started as stooges to Ted Healey. When Shemp left, I seem to recall he suggested Larry Fine replace him. This was before the official Three Stooges days.

Arrest them for “impersonating criminals”.

MOVIE QUOTE

“Has Mister Michael Finn been in here today?”

“No, but he will be !”

WC Fields&Shemp Howard—-THE BANK DICK—1940

Tracy would save himself a ton of time and effort if he just read the strip from September 2nd, 2018.

Case closed!