Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 18, 2011

Don’t listen to him Dick! He’s hypnotizing you!

This is the eleventh appearance for that image in Panel #1.

At last we see how Mordred kills his victims: he bores them to death. This leads me to conclude that “Dr. Mordred” is really Locher’s secret identity, and his power of death-by-dullness is so great that he can even make a gun get shaky and quiver.

Dr. M doesn’t need as much food or sleep because he’s an alien life form. Possibly a fungus.

Same first panel drawing two days in a row. No wonder even Spacy is falling asleep.

It can’t drop from his hand. Spacy is super-magnetic!

Quiver was Shaky’s daughter BTW. Neither was shot.

And still it goes on (and on and on and……..).

If only there was some way to attach Mordred to a pipe or something, Tracy could take a nap out of his reach.

It’d have to be something like a locking metal loop that would attach to one of Mordred’s wrists, and then have a second locking loop, attached by a chain to the first one; this second loop could be locked around an anchor point.

But where would a police officer get something like that?

Oh no! Stacy’s being hypno-mo-tized!

Mordred’s hypnotizing seems to be working, ‘cause it’s sure putting me to sleep.

HA HA HA HO HO HUH?

That ‘Power of Suggestion’ stuff works pretty quickly on our detective.

It’s March 14th, it’s March 14th, it’s March 14th…

I finally figured out what that stuff is that we keep seeing oozing from the windows in most of the interior shots. It’s some kind of art:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/arts/design/18benglis.html

The storm of the century didn’t matter no more Even though water was sloshing across the floor Mordred looked at Tracy who was holding the gun And wondered what he could do to have some fun Tracy stood there, his eyes filling with dread And his lips just a-twitching’ and face going red The gun quivered and quaked and misbehaved itself While Mordred made a joke about Tracy’s mental health Tracy was beside himself and starting to give in Mordred just stood there with a big bleeep eating grin The danger of the predicament certainly is rife There is every chance Thick could lose his life His lids are getting heavy, his head begins to nod He is after all only human, not some omnipotent god If only there was a way for him Mordred to restrain What he really could use is forty pounds of chain Alas for him there’s none to be found The next nap he takes will be in the ground But buck up people, be of good cheer A new day is dawning, the skies will soon be clear On March 14th the strip shall be reborn All you have to do is weather this terrible storm I have seen the future and to you I can relate What will soon be coming is going to be great It will get much worse before the coming of that day But hang in there, it gets much better, is all I can say.

Thank you all for your comments the other day.

bleeep this is stupid

I knew it! I knew it! wndrwrthg’s a Zappa fan! Yay!

Quick - while he’s distracted! Drop a WWII fighter plan on him!

I got nothing.

Bravo WW much better than this arc. The power of suggestion works awful fast on Tracy but what you consider what he has for common sense, it makes common sense.

i think thick likes it when his gun gets shaky and quivers … oh that gun. never mind.

nice one ww

hey Dick.. just shoot him already and get some sleep… problem solved.

Tracy’s gonna repair his gun with a pair of zircon encrusted tweezers… mmm, tweezers… Wait a minute, lemme sterilize ‘em. Gimme yer lighter…

Great addition, WW!

For months(because of new password) I have not posted a word But this strip I.ve watched all the time Even though nothing new could be seen or heard It’s WW that kept me here with his rhyme.

Since I don’t have anything else to do, I went back to the first day Tracy and Doc “discovered” the granary, January 12. There have been 20 panels showing the storm around the granary since that time, all about the same angle. Only three more weeks before relief. How do you spell relief? S-T-A-T-O-N & C-U-R-T-I-S. Oh, I also looked ahead. Another week of the same conversation, chiding each other. One possibly “important” clue is made on Sunday, then is completely ignored the rest of the week.

If Tracy and Mordred have been in the granary for 36 hours, that means that Liz, Sam, and the storm troopers have been standing around in Police Hdqtrs for that long also. And, where the “decoy” vehicles? Things must be hectic in the city with no communications, a raging storm of the century, and what about the policeman with the stop sign… has he been on duty for 36 hours straight?

Hey, which hand is Thick using to hold his gun? If you can call that distorted thing in Panel #3 a hand. And how does the gun just hover there alongside his open hand? Is gravity itself so bored that it’s fallen down on the job?

If Naperville is 53 miles away from where Tracy started, how many miles did he drive before he drove into the lake, and how does Sam plan to find him? Is he going to start where Tracy started, or is he back tracking from Naperville? Maybe if he power drives into the lake he will find the granary just as it comes apart.

With all communications out (except when Locher forgets) how can Testicle Chin know about the two detours Thick made before he sank the car? Even if he knows about them, what if Thick had to make a third detour? And with no communications and all that rain, what if Testicle Chin has to make some detours of his own? He could find that all the surface roads out of Nappingville are swamped, and all the freeway offramps lead into flooded streets.

Except this is winter, and it snows in winter! How can Locher be that far out of touch with reality?