Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for January 02, 2014

Blackjack?

He’s involved too?

Blackjack!

Start playing the funeral dirge for the dear departed Abner Kadaver! ;-)

Maybe it was Blackjack who called Sam on the Wrist Wizard.

Tracy detected the sound of "Tubthumping.

So it was Blackjack who alerted Sam! But where’s Rikki?

Someone (not me) called this, last week!

Abner may be using his hat as a way to get a little air, I can’t see him being killed so easily

I was away last night so please forgive me if I am a little late in wishing a very happy new year to all comics lovers!

BLACKJACK?!?!?!? Ye gods….never figured him to be the one to save Tracy but then again, it makes sense.

Holy cow! Whaddya know?! So, it turns out that I was right about the gunshot not coming from Tracy after all! The late Abner Kadaver misdirected us by saying it was Tracy who shot the cane out of his hand. And Tracy is very quick of wit to guess that it must have been Blackjack, the expert shot, who did it!This is indeed an interesting turn (though I do lament that the intriguing if ineffective Kadaver has become such a hardened criminal and cadaver)!

RIP Abner Kadaver

Good morning all…

Another year of the much improved DT ahead! Abner’s too good for us to lose. I predict that he had some sort of escape hatch under the cement. After all, this isn’t the real world! As for the three in the space coupe, did they find a new existence on another planet? The space ship will return empty.

Bet Abner’s not dead……

Knew Tracy couldn’t beat him without outside help again….Abner’s the CHAMP….too much criminal for Tracy….

All you “Blackjackers” are forgetting that Liz is an ace shot, herself! And for you Kadaver fans, he’s got his escape covered somehow. He’s probably got a Scuba tank under his cape, or as mentioned, he has a trap door that lets him out and not the wet concrete. Whatever.

Yow! Sudden Left Turn!

No, I really don’t think that Kadaver is coming back. To those who were saying yesterday that Tracy survived it, so Kadaver should, too, remember that Tracy swam across it slowly, whereas Kadaver was thrown into it from a height and likely sunk down deep. I don’t think it’s wise to recycle too many bad guys in a strip like this.

Although I do think that Kadaver was a great creation, I don’t like to see villains as recurring characters. Generally speaking, they should be gone when their crime is done. To do otherwise can become a crutch. I’m usually disappointed when a criminal from the past comes back. The writers and artists need to be more creative than just re-using characters from the past.

I think that Kadaver’s done, killed by his own trap, but the feud between the rival gangs is not going to be over yet. That has some time to go. Rikki may escape. That I’m not sure of, but there’s no way that Rikki is Fritz Ann in disguise. Kadaver taught him everything he knew in the time there was available. Maybe she will carry on his legacy.

Looks like we may be getting back to Balckjack, as a few people predicted in that last few days.

Abner dead? C’mon Tracy. I don’t think so. Even when they’ve had a corpse, he hasn’t been really dead.

No Corpse=no death—its an old comics Maxim…

A late Happy New Year from cold and snowy Ohio…

I am disappointed in this 3rd death trap, but at least it wasn’t a cliched acid bath that Tracy had to swim.

In my work, I am around concrete pours and the density of wet cement is about double that of water. One just doesn’t sink in it as Kadaver did, and it is so viscous that one can almost walk across it. But the most critical issue is that concrete sets rapidly. Unless Kadaver filled that 3rd trap just before Tracy entered that room (very doubtful) then it would have set up to the point where Tracy could indeed have walked across it. And that looked like a lot of concrete – how did Kadaver get a mix truck down there?

Found this on the net: (Blackjack arrived in Tracy’s hometown in March of 2012 and robbed his first bank with a three-man crew. Blackjack was said to be very accurate with his pistol.)

I doubt if Kadaver is gone. There will be some way for him to escape. He’s too useful character to go away.

Blackjack? Haven’t seem him in a long time! And I thought he was a villain? What’s he doing helping out Tracy?

seanyj: Recall, about a year ago, at EJ’s bar and grill. Blackjack doesn’t want to kill Dick Tracy. He likes to match wits with him. To Blackjack, being chased by Dick Tracy is his chief source of entertainment..Alas, but is this really Blackjack? Probably – or Mike wouldn’t have dropped the hint. But I hope not..I’m with Neil Wick on this one: Li’l Abner has run his course. We need new criminals, not just re-cycled old ones..And the same goes for Tracy’s as yet unidentified benefactor..Perhaps the only thing more disappointing about Abner’s performance is that, lame as it was, it was still too much for Dick Tracy! He had to have help – once again..On another note: Perhaps avoiding recycled characters is why Mike decided to go with Franken Mindy, rather than bring back the real Mysta..Perhaps even Mike is thinking – let’s have a new Moon Maid, rather than recycling the old one..That said, when are we going to learn more about Venus and moon-cheese-head (Melies)?

Since Brooke McEldowney doesn’t allow comments on his comics pages, I thought I’d mention an interesting and touching tale he has been spinning in 9 Chickweed Lane..He began around Pearl Harbor Day with a story about one of his women visiting a cemetery, where the tombstone seems to be telling the story of a USO singer and an unfortunate soldier at Utah Beach in World War II..Perhaps the best yarn I’ve seen him spin.

CALLED IT CALLED IT CALLED IT CALLED IT!!!!!!! Sorry, I seldom predict anything but this time, this is what I’ve been saying (over and over) for a long time. Hooray for Blackjack!!!!! *Of course, this is Tracy so I may be a day early in my celebration…

Abner will be back… you dont really think he didnt plan for the eventuality of him falling in the cement himself do you? I’m betting theres a trapdoor somewhere underneath all that cement and that he managed to escape somehow.

now.. as for blackjack… ya think he’s gonna turn the tables on stiletta and her plans to off tracy?P>

by the way… yet ANOTHER promising story that gets the “SWEATBOX TREATMENT”. this story couldhave run for a while.. i shoulda known the second that they**SOMEHOW** rescued bonnie and ray that it was gonna happen, in fact.. i believe i DID call it back then that sweatbox was lurking somewhere

I wouldn’t bet on a corpse recovery. It is wise to leave options open for future possibilities. As with Belle, we may or may not see Kadaver again. Rikki would be smart to take a vacation once the Murder Mansion is secured. Mrs. Flattop is sure to want a refund, and payment could come in cash or a pound of flesh. The Blackhearts have suffered their second setback. The Space Coupe was purloined, only to go missing. Venus bragged to Griswold that Tracy would soon be “dead-fish dead.” The demise of the Apparatus may not yet be at hand. To whom might Méliès and Venus be answerable for this latest debacle?

I am and always will be a Blackjack fan. Mostly because BJ is a DT fan as well.

I don’t think the TV show was a waste of our time. While not action-packed, it made Dick Tracy a little more three-dimensional, which was the main goal. It also introduced us to Ray Tracy and (re-)introduced readers to Bonnie Braids. Lastly, it provided material for Kadaver’s ill-conceived plan to fool the police as to Dick’s status while Kadaver was trying to lure him through traps. It was a device with a lot of uses. Whether it accomplished those things well is open to debate, but that’s what it was trying to do.

You are certainly in the minority here on you assessment of a “once fine strip” considering this is nearly the best it has every been.

He was commenting on the state of the strip just before Staton and Curtis took over. It’s pretty hard to deny that the strip was not at the top of its form in the last couple of years before Staton and Curtis “took stewardship over” it. The last couple of stories by S&C have been among the best ever in the entire history of DT. (In my opinion, of course.)

Could one of you fellow Tracy fans help me out with something? Lizz and that FBI Agent who has the hots for Sam look identical. What’s the deal with that? Is Sam married? Is Lizz married? What is that FBI agents name? You think Sam should give her what she wants? : )

I was kind of betting on Rikki as the one who helps Tracy, but then that would prove him wrong, wouldn’t it… can’t have that, now can we?

Like hardened concrete, wet concrete is pretty dense. Does a body sink or float?

Stilldamatt, Matthew P. Hansel was the number one poster on that terrible excuse for a strip. Thankfully, it put itself out of its own misery.

Yes, I know about the ability to comment being removed on Pibgorn & Chickweed. I was bummed at the time when it happened. I just found it odd that out of dozens and dozens of comics on GC, the comment showed up under DT.