Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for December 19, 2014

Gruesome on the lam.

Sparkle’s giving birth.

Dick Tracy has the perfect wife.

The people on stage are “good” though a little dusty/sooty from the “smokescreen.” I think this strip may have inherited a little of Orphan Annie’s cross-hatching lately. I never noticed if it had any before the Annie story.

Good to hear that Junior did let Grandma Tracy know that the baby is on the way. As for “Grandpa,” as I said a couple of days ago, “duty calls.” Sam may have missed the first night of Hanukkah, and it looks like Tracy will miss the birth, but it can’t be helped. It’s also good to know that there are police on the job that at least spotted Gruesome’s car, even if they didn’t catch him. A “clew” is always a useful thing for our great detective to follow up on.

What’s that little Shadowy thin in the last panel? I’ve seen Ghosts and invisible people drawn like this.

Clew is from Middle English clewe, from Old English cliewen and was fairly common in the first half of the 1900s, but has since faded out. As far as I remember, clew was the spelling that Chester Gould always used in the strip, even after clue had completely overtaken it in standard usage. A clew can also be a ball of thread or yarn that helps a person find their way out of a maze, and now can be used to solve most puzzles of other sorts.

Liz, you ask what happened? I’m thinking she would have heard the BOOM. Not important, as it’s time to find Gruesome.

Morning, Tracyville!In panel 3, Lizz’ Wrist Wizard is beeping. Another message is coming in.

Tess can go to the side of Sparkle for reassurance,moral support, and maternal bonding, while battered and dusty but not really injured Dick and Sam go after Gruesome (thanks to that tip called in via Lizz, probably from a uniformed patrol, they know which way to go). Maybe fresh air will clear their heads enough that they recognize MonsterCon as worthy of investigation. Or, the arrival of the Nitrates may distract them!

Good morning friends. Excellent comments today. Tomorrow will we see Gruesome, the Nitrates, Sparkle & baby, or another storyline introduced? Y’all have a good day.

I notice that the audience has left the theater. Did any of the MCS call for assistance?

Good morning guys!

Where’s Vitamin?

Really like today’s art.Joe has three panels with the same scene, but he’s given us a different viewpoint in each, so it doesn’t look repetitive.And Sam’s in each panel as a constant reference point.Very nicely done.

I hope Vitamin is ok and in the comforting arms of Kandikane…

I found a 5 year old strip over at the Comics Curmudgeon. I had forgotten just how bad Locher was.

Although the explosion happened 7 days ago for the readers, it has only been a few minutes for Tracy et al. I’m not sure EMTs or other officers have actually had time to respond.

Looks like Tracy is the only one shaken up from the KAFLOOM. Everyone in the room now twitches their noses with that all-too-familiar smell that somehow follows Tracy when danger lurks. Tess rolls her eyes, hoping Sam’s forty years of smoking has deadened his sense of smell.

I don’t believe Gruesome intended to kill anyone with his bomb; he just wanted to create a diversion so he could slip away.

The show must go on…who will be the new GrandTracy???

A really good Xmas present would be a healthy child, and wrap this arc up in a bow and move on.

Otis’ corpse is somewhere in the rubble, so there’s at least one body in the ruins of the set. Here’s hoping Vitamin and Kandikane are safely reunited out on the street.

Dick’s wife ! He thinks he’ll keep her.An old Geritol ad. I just tried to find it on YouTube but, unfortunately, came up empty.

Dick has the kind of life priorities that often result with wifey saying “bye-bye” actually. He basically thinks work is more important than family here……doesn’t trust his co-workers (Liz, Sam, the rest of the force, etc) to get the job done with Gruesome……sorry, Tracy, but there are tons of criminals and you can chase them every day; you don’t have a grandchild born every day…..

The new Annie movie starts today, as many of you may remember from our discussion in the summer. If the New York Times review is any indication, it certainly won’t lead to a revived Little Orphan Annie strip.

Although the Times calls Quvenzhané Wallis in the lead role “a born movie star,” it says that the “hacky, borderline-incompetent production” is “a chaotic shambles.” It doesn’t work as a musical either. “The mouths don’t move in time with the music. The dancing is a chaotic stew of flailing limbs.”

Whereas Gray’s strip strongly objected to FDR’s New Deal, the musical of the recessionary 1970s (and the 1982 film) included Roosevelt and suggested harmony between government and private enterprise. The new film “gives Roosevelt a brief shout-out and then flees from any implication of historical or social relevance.”

You can read the whole NYT review here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/movies/annie-remake-stars-quvenzhan-wallis.html

@Neil Wick: a very good point. Thanks.

I spent several minutes looking for that Geritol ad and all I found was a lot of people wishing they could find it.