Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 10, 2010

Forget about your David, let’s talk about the hideous stump where your hand used to be. Covering it up with a hanky isn’t such a winning strategy. Time to think about prosthesis.

Mrs. D. suffers from the dreaded ‘Dinky Hand’…

This makes no sense at all.

The wheels of justice turn round and round No-one knows where this crazy train is bound The plot seems to take a quantum leap Using devices that seem real cheap Just read the papers is the way to go That reporter really seems to be in the know How does he come by all this information Next thing he’ll have is the DA’s trial summation Tracy is out to prove there is a murder Away from the truth he moves, further and further Silly old defective with eyes all squinty Missing all the real clues aplenty What a travesty he has become It strikes the reader quite numb The dowager weeps for her Trey-D Believing never again will she see he Oh what a tangled web Locher weaves It’s giving me a bad case of the heaves Like an addiction this strip does grip The only way I can read it is with a morphine drip So jump down, turn around and pick a bale of cotton Knowing that in good time this will be all forgotten.

Amen, WW, amen.

Always a delight to read your works, WW!

Thanks WW, At least i have not the bad case of heaves as yet , but the arc will soon be forgotten I am sure.

WW’s poetry - another reason why this strip has 22798 subscribers at GoComics.

It’s bad when the talent in the comments completely outshine the “talent” producing the strip.

Panel 1: REVENGE FROM THE GRAVE

Using my special Panel-Panner magnifying glasses I can read the article below the headline. It says:

DATELINE: NAPERVILLE

According to shocked witnesses a zombie strangled the editor and then the creative staff of the Dick Tracy comic strip.

After the zombie shuffled away, an ID card was found on the floor of the Tribune Media offices, apparently dropped from a hole in the rotting clothes of the attacker. The name on the ID: Chester Gould.

Dick, your widow said for you to get out of the house–and if Tess catches you hanging out with Mrs. D’apostrophe, she will be your widow … unless the clowns from We’re Lyin-terprises show up at the Mighty Morphin Power Mansion and catch you first. Which they might do, because they now have three options:

1: Do something sensible.

2: Abduct M-S-D, take her to a facility owned by their Old Abandoned Warehouse Subdivision, and get her to reveal the flaws in D-cubed’s vengeance plan.

3: Go to the mansion and try to shoot or abduct the Widow D, because it will turn out she is the crucial witness in the case against them.

Option 1 is always off the table in Nappingville. Option 2 might happen later, but option 3 presents the greatest chance for absurdity. The bad guys can shoot it out with DT, then get caught by one of D-cubed’s clever inventions. At this point they will tell DT they didn’t kill D-cubed because that would be crazy. DT will then sigh and say “So our investigation is back to square one! That reminds me, anyone seen Miss-Sue-Doko lately?”

Or maybe that ID said “Chester Ghoul.”

Don’t tell me those are windows! I can see right through that one! It’s all a misunderstanding, I tell ya, caused by a missing third panel!

The first panel ain’t a headline, it’s the newspaper’s radio schedule! “Today’s episode of Duck Twacy is ‘Revenge From The Grave’ sponsored by the Montezuma Food Group!” Panel two shows a heap of radios from which the voice of Lamont Cranberry declaims ‘Maybe there is justice after all!’” In the missing panel three Tracy explains the mystic reason for piling up all those radios. Then, in the final panel, we see far more than the widow’s lack of faith in voodoo. We see the kind of magic mushroom that Tracy has ingested. He is now so stoned that his own word balloon has turned black and curled behind his head.

I guess Mr. Homeless 3D didn’t want to let his wife in on his plan so he’ll let her suffer through emotional turmoil thinking he’s dead. Nice guy!

Great poem,WW.

“Revenge From the Grave”? Have I missed something? I knew I shouldn’t have cancelled my subscription to The Daily Blast…

Tears prove nothing. She did it.

Most in Naperville read “The Daily Wipe”

Look at that half-smile on Macy’s face in the last panel. He’s fixing to make his move, that sly devil! I can see tomorrow’s strip now-

Macy slips up behind her, slides his arms around her and whispers, “It’s OK to cry, Ms. Cougar……. I mean Penny. I’m here for you”. Penny, thinking it odd that he would be eating a bag of peanuts at a time like this, turns around and asks him where he got “blue” peanuts.

I like the novel approach taken by The Daily Blast: Printing the paper on letter-sized newsprint that folds on the right and using all caps italic headlines? Pure genius!

Does anyone have a clue what the picture on the front page of “The Daily Blast” is?

Is a picture of tall grass on a vacant lot, printed sideways

And while Tracy slips up quietly behind Penny and puts his arms around her, David D’Buckworth’s body remains FROZEN in the Freezer Locker downstairs.

This is Claude Crystal (1957) case all over again.

Are those ‘crocodile’ tears in panel 3 ?

There was so much “artwork” they were barely able to squeeze their signatures in. They’ll make up for it tomorrow though - all of panels one and two will be signatures and panel three will be another Lego house, as assembled by a three year old.

this gets more incomprehensible by the day

Great poem, WW, and great imaginative posts, Panel Panner and BillT. It I were the editor I’d hire the three of you in an instant.

Maybe they are introducing a new character, “Finger Puppet” in the third panel.

It should have been called The Daily Floom.

perhaps it’s an unrelated headline - zombies are attacking naperville as we text that does look like an exploded grave maybe that house’s windows are almost an optical illusion - they kind of pop in and out for me

What if what we see in panel #3 is Mrs. D’apostrophe daydreaming about DT? Has she set her crosshairs (literally and figuratively) on him? Will DT discover that she murdered D-cubed when she moves on him? Never mind her husband’s tattoo, check her for a big red hourglass tattoo!