Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 23, 2013

Next, Sweat Baux demonstrates donuts for your edification.

Looks like Tracy is going to fast for conditions, as well. He is not Driving With Due Regard! That is gonna surprise the Hiawatha crew whan a Mercedes lands on them!

It’s Lee driving to fast! I thought Dick was driving a few days ago.

Good morning all…*

Floooom! Sweatbox is heading for the Auto-Train!

Sweaty’s days are numbered. Actually I’m guessing one day.

For Sweatbox, the light at the end of the tunnel will be at the wrong end.

She made him bleed with a softball? That kid is pretty strong! Will Sweaty be killed by the train? Will the train hit his car, but, he will have escaped death? Will Lee slow down before she and Dick follow Sweaty to a disaster on the train tracks below? I will really be sad when this story is over; it’s so nicely Gouldian… other than the lack of innocent bystanders being killed by the escaping crook.

There’s a mention of Dick Tracy over on Frog Applause today!

I still have the scar (along with a few others) 30 years later

“Oh, guiding light,Oh, light that blinds,I cannot see,lookout for me!”

Aieee! He’s going to go over/through that guardrail! Or… will he?

Maybe he’ll end up hanging on it? Gosh, I’d hate to see him mess up that pretty train.

If Sweaty Simon Baux doesn’t in the end earn the macabre nickname Boxcar Baux from his notorious mode of death, I will be surprised. He’s going off that overpass onto the railbed below, where the highliner is roaring down the tracks!

“Calling Wile E Coyote! Wile E, Line one!”

I thought Wile E Coyote had the market cornered for falling off of cliffs and being hit by trains. He’ll probably sue Sweatbox for copyright infringement.I guess this is more exciting than the grade-crossing collision we were expecting though.

If Sweatbox times it just right, he could get a ride to Milwaukee on top of the train.

As Tracy screams that Sweaty is “losing it”, maybe he needs to reconstruct his sentence, including a “we”.

Grr… the colorist on this did a lousy job, especially on that last panel! Would’ve looked great if had paid attention to the actual drawing (headlights, flashing light, spotlights, etc.)

Does Sweatbox have any teeth?

The Milwaukee road had the Hiawathas. When diesels were taking over, the Milwaukee (and several other roads) added shrouds tio some of the better steam locos – just for looks – as they added nothing to the performance and made servicing a nightmare!After WWII the main contenders for Chicago to Seattle were the Great Northern (Empire Builder -Oriental Limited (Later Western Star) the Northern Pacific (North Coast Limkited – Mainstreeter) and the Milwaukee Road.However, by 1956 Milwaukee operated passenger service once daily Twin Cities to Deer Lodge, MT only.When Amtrak took over, only the Empire Builder and North Coast Limited survived, with the NCL pulled a few years later.

The Empire Builder began Chicago to Seattle-Portland in 1929, and is thus probably the longest lasting train name in the US(Santa Fe refused to let Amtrak use the Super Chief name)

The Oriental Limited mentioned above by 1948 had become a transcontinental local. My memory of it was one evening, rolling across Montana : A scream came out of the womens rest room!!Followed by ladies hastily exiting.And the smell of skunk wafted through the car!(Appears the toilet was flushed as we ran over a skunk!)

Re yesterday – how fast they left the city and into the country:If you are on I-70 it appears you are in city from downtown St. Louis to Wentzville due to the commercial build up. However, if you turn onto rte 79 going north – you are in country two blocks later.And, if you turn north at Wentzville, the first overpass is over a RR.

As for arbitrarily increasing speed: The Wabash was famous for that (fast as it will run!) And had a record for freight movements.Former Wabash crews silently laughed when the N&W merged and the N&W (Now N-S) management gave them a lecture on how to move freight.

Now if this was a Bruce Willis movie, and Bruce was in Sweatboxe’s shoes, he’d land on top of the train, and jump from car to car, finally dive off at the end……and escape, ha ha.

Of course if (IF??? duhhh…) Sweatbox dies, all those awkward questions of why he signed a confession in the first place, why he then kept killing, how he managed to do so for 70 years, and so forth won’t have to be answered now, will they? Naw, they wouldn’t do that to us……would they? I hope not, lol.

The only questions remains, on top of the train? Or in front of it?

Let’s hope the train is coming OUT of the tunnel – Could be a real pile-up if he lands in front as the train is ENTERING the tunnel!!

Sweat Box is not wearing a seat belt and will therefore, quite deservedly, die.

The first Hiawathas actually ran over the Chicago to Minneapolis route against the Chicago Northwestern’s 400 (400 miles in 400 minutes) and the Burlington Route’s Twin Cities Zephyr. Back in the days when railroads competed for passenger traffic because passengers were potential freight customers.

This kind of reminds me of the Rhodent meeting his fate with the train in 1959.

Or the Brain and his gang…..