Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 20, 2025

First!!! LOL!

Remembering Morrow on the 7th anniversary of his departure to that great bridge in the sky, where he took up permanent residence under it!

“You are still missed, my friend!”

Okay, so not plastic surgery. Long-lost twin, or coincidental look-alike? We’ll find out by May!

does this mean I’m second best?…

Infinite degrees of “schleparation”.

Good morning™, everyone!

The priest is suggesting that the body resembled that of a regular client at the soup kitchen. The trick of substituting the body isn’t working out all that well.

panel three looks like elderly Dick…

Good morning™, Concerned Fathers !

I think he is at the beginning of downright worry as the Sarge would Never miss his favorite meal of beans & wieners and how he can slip a little vodka into his grape juice, undetected. People think Sarge has gone on the wagon but is really just being much more discrete with the swizzling.

Art well done today, and it seems Tracy is closer to figuring this situation out!

Well, since the army fingerprints enlistees, even if they’re not in the criminal data base, the priest’s comment that the guy was called Sarge might have Tracy giving a call to the military. Maybe they can blow up Horace’s stupid plan early and get this over with.

Panel three: Dick Tracy’s brother?

The missing person must have patronized their soup kitchen. What did the nephews do with the stuff they took out of the office? Did they put it in storage or in a garage?

P2: To err is human, but two straight days of ERRing is too much for this errant arc….

So . . .Crooks plant the wallet on the body of the homeless guy, hoping for a false ID. Said homeless guy frequented the Church Soup Kitchen. Some other person rolled the body, but decided to anonymously turn the wallet over to the Church, with a note saying it came from the unidentified body in the park. This leads the cops to the very Church where the victim was known! I must say, that is a coincidence worthy of Chester Gould.

One of my favorite Gould coincidences happened during the Shoulders story. Shoulders, on the run with a cop bullet in his shoulder (!) has Beardsly the Fence drive him to a doctor at the point of a gun. But he passes out, accidentally discharging the gun into Beardsly and killing him. Out in the country, Shoulders runs the car with the body into a lake, which freezes over during the night. He hides out with an antique dealer named Miss Varnish. She learns who he is and goes to the cops. Meanwhile, kids skating on the pond discover the car under the ice, and they try to call the cops at the antique store. But Shoulders pulls the plug on the phone. So when the cops show up to help Miss Varnish, the kids think the cops have gone to the wrong address in response to their call. So they start hollering, which of course alerts Shoulders to what is going on.

Hate to say it, but (for me) this is just taking too long to get to a point. It’s to the point that I’m no longer able to connect the last few installments to the first part of the tale. The details are there, bu there are far too many for a daily comic. This could have been resolved i n a month and possible another week for clean-up.

The plot thickens .

Who has a photo of themselves in their wallet?

MOVIE QUOTE

“Apple pie is not for breakfast”

“It is if you like apple pie!”

James Stewart—-NIGHT PASSAGE—1957

Honestly, I have no idea what’s going on.

Panel One looks like a Rick Fletcher tribute

Meanwhile,at the Argonne National Laboratories…..

He’s not missing— he’s sitting right there on the front steps!

1- DT: Hello Dad? You’re late with your monthly check. I’d hate to tip the Archdiocese about your little, let’s call it an “indiscretion” 90 odd years ago…

2- FATHER DAD: WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LET THAT GO?!? I WAS YOUNG. AND HORNY! YOU SHOULD JUST BE GLAD THAT YOU WERE THE RESULT!

3- DT: BE GLAD?!?! I spent 50 rudderless years wondering who my dad was and that’s on you. I figure you owe me years of child support you bum!

FATHER DAD: FINE! I’LL GET IT! It’s just that the Poor Box was light this month. It only had an old empty wallet and some stupid note. DT: You got till noon tomorrow. CLICK!

Tracy didn’t inherit many features from his Dad. None that we can see in a family comic anyway…

Even in this day and age the Pastor of the Cathedral must see figuratively a ton of people attending services, hanging around the building (homeless and others. ) He must have a remarkable memory to think he even vaguely remembers one.

DMITRIO

Would you please remove an 18 MONTH BLOCk that has long since passed any sense of reason or normalcy?