Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 05, 2015

Tying up loose ends! This should make a lot of posters happy out in Tracyland!

Good morning guys young and old!.Shhhh! My secret wish is that Vitamin Flintheart and Vista Bill will make a brief appearance on October 27th to help me celebrate my 81st birthday. I can think of no greater surprise birthday gift. Hoping!.Thanks for the responses to my question asking if I am the only 80+ year old that comments on DT. I am a tad younger than Bob, Sydney Phillips, and Elizabeth Miller. Four of us so far!

“Is this the wrap-up …

… Or the MCU’s latest disaster?"

What will Diet & Lee have to say?

Can’t wait to see Bribery either in a max security prison or a cold harsh morgue….

Gweedo in his mighty wisdom stated,Good morning, Sigñor senior Bill !(Yer still just a kid !)-—————————————————————————.G’morning Gweedo. I’m a kid in mind and spirit. That counts for a lot! .PS, don’t forget the combination birthday celebration / Halloween festival at the cemetery the week of October 25th, Gweedo! Simply flash (your pass) and the guard will let you in.

Just in case it wasn’t seen, last night, I responded to a post from Elizabeth Miller, who said:“…I am 85, sneaking on to 86, a great grandma and I like Dick Tracy. Read it growing up and lost track of it over the years and glad to have it again.”I replied: “Haven’t seen your comments before, Elizabeth, but (if I may say on behalf of those who post here), here’s hoping that you continue to comment. I promise that we won’t give up on you, if you don’t give up on us! Welcome!”And that was followed by Gweedo – It’s legal here !!! – Murray who said:

“Sorry I waited so long… Welcome from me too, Liz !”Always good to add fresh commentators to this board!

Gweedo mentioned,I hope Abner doesn’t try to do a Silver Nitrate-———————————————————————————————.Gweedo, I am very concerned that Abner’s days appearing in DT might be numbered. I’d really miss that old bag o’ bones!

I chuckle every time I see those “cash register” signs with pics of Doubleup and BB Eyes. Most PD’s have pics of the mayor and other local lowlife. Oops!……… lowlife……. Yep, one in the same!Secondly, can you picture what the EMT said when he found Melies? Too bad they didn’t get a gander of that head before it got hit with the .50 cal.

Gweedo said,I’m gonna miss Abner too, Bill !If he gets ground into bone meal I will want to “use” him to fortify my dirt for next year’s tomatoes-——————————————————————————-.Too late, Gweedo! Devil, The Phantom’s dog (wolf?) has dibs on Abner’s bones!.Good night Gweedo!

Gold recovered. Power of Blackhearts in Tracyville broken. Time for de-briefings.This is satisfying….

Does a man who helped plan, who then actually STEALS Gold from the Train, then SELLS it on to another (Bribery) walk away ‘scot-free’ ?-—————————————————————Maybe I missed it, but I don’t remember anything that said Bribery bought the gold from someone else.

It was with ease, he ‘tricked’ our clever Dick ?(Perhaps as well, our own – Neil Wick ? ;-)Into thinking, all the “loose ends” were tied . . .So closed, they simply laid the Case aside !

Well, I think they know very well that some of the loose ends are not tied. After all, Mr. Bribery is clearly on the loose. Actually, if you go back to reading today’s strip, you’ll see that the Chief seems to think everything is tied up, but Tracy points out to him that Bribery likely has further plans (and I certainly don’t doubt that he does).

As for the person who facilitated Bribery’s acquisition of the gold, I don’t expect to see him again, but it wouldn’t be a big shock if he showed up, either. Mr. Bribery’s pool of potential assistants is pretty thin at this point. I guess there’s Blaze and T-Bolt if he can establish contact with them, but not really anyone else that we know of.

I think what Sydney is driving at is this: Somehow, a whole train car full of gold bricks became light as a feather and flew around town, with no one seeing it. First it was in the train car, in the tunnel. Then it mysteriously materialized at the river bank near Ted Tellum’s house. Then it vanished again and somehow appeared on the top floors of a downtown office building in the city, with heavy traffic all around, and even a museum on the ground floor, which means heavy foot traffic as well. I figured that was all part of the mystery element to this story, but for a mystery story to be successful, there has to be an explanation at the end; otherwise, it’s just frustrating. Sydney’s speculation (I think; his wordiness oftentimes throws me) is that there must have been a mastermind behind all of this, that we haven’t seen yet. ???

Current known status of Blackheart members:Escaped: Mr. Bribery, Blaze Rise, Mrs. Chin Chillar.Not a Criminal: T-Bolt, aka Ebony Lee.Unscathed but captured: Doubleup.Wounded, but captured alive: B-B Eyes.Heavily, heavily implied to be “Dead Fish Dead”: Melies, Apollo, Rocket Munroe, Venus. I won’t bother updating my dead list for any statement that these characters are dead. Venus Is Dead!Fates literally up in the air: Sputnick & Satellite Munroe, and Mumbles. All three were last seen tangling with Punjab the Wizard, who was clearly victorious against all three of them. The thing is, Punjab has this magic blanket he can put over bad guys, causing them to teleport “to the Magi” where none have ever returned. IOW, might as well be dead. I honestly don’t care about the Munroe brothers, but that better not have happened to Mumbles. That’d be too anticlimactic for one of Gould’s most famous creations.

The stolen gold has been recovered. BB-Eyes knew Shooz was up to something, going so far as to ask if he might need the help of any of the Blackheart “specialists.” We don’t know if Shooz availed himself of any “specialists,” but we know the gold Jimmy stole was soon stolen from him by the Blackhearts. Shooz assumed it was buried by the lake (near the place where the abandoned railroad line that Mole showed Tracy exited), yet it had been removed. Bribery was pleased with the efforts of BB, Blaze and Doubleup (6/17), although BB-Eyes’ contributions remain vague and off-panel. Is Purdy feigning his poor health? Did he rise from his wheelchair to lead a recovery team to secure and transport the gold? Was it Axelrod? Late night digging by a secluded lake and transport to Ace Tower don’t strike me as especially mysterious activities, simply clandestine. Will BB-Eyes use what he knows to shorten his sentence? While I think we will eventually learn some of the details, the gold and the Blackhearts organization are now in the past-tense. Is Mumbles in limbo? We didn’t see Punjab’s blanket bandied about. Whether subdued or sent on a journey to “the Magi,” he is currently out of commission.Speculation is fun. This story has been a gas. The extended action in Ace Tower was very entertaining. I speculate that Team Tracy secured their next Harvey Award nomination when Mysta landed on the roof and melted the chopper blades. Sweet!

Is Purdy feigning his poor health? Did he rise from his wheelchair to lead a recovery team to secure and transport the gold?

I doubt that Purdy was involved in transporting the gold, but something is up with him, or something will be up, sometime next year, I believe.

@Neil Wick

I tend to speak, when I have a comment on the strip, or to others here. I remain quiet not because of negativity from others, I should add, for everyone here, is a gentleman (or lady :)— There never seems to be as many comments from woman as I think there ought to be.

Bribery had an air car. He also had a large organization rich enough to engineer a Moon Maid Chimera. Could that organization and their scientific knowledge have reverse engineered the air car and created some sort of air transport to lift the gold to the top floor of Ace Tower? We do not have the information to say specifically but it seems like a possibility.

As readers we tend to think of the Blackhearts as only the few we have met in the strip (Venus, Apollo, Melies, etc.) but if we recall, the Blackhearts organization encompassed an entire European branch (and likely branches in other countries involving many other members).

Bribery has always been like a spider sitting in the middle of his web feeling the tug of any string leading to another division of his large empire. I estimate he will be back and that the Blackhearts will somehow rise again.

In the past when Bribery was temporarily foiled by Tracy he whined and cried. This time he flew off in his air car with maniacal laughter. Was he secure in his knowledge that although Tracy and the FBI were successful in their present raid they had only put a chink in the armor of what is a larger criminal enterprise than they knew.

Good Morning, Bill.

The strips you have posted show Locher’s art at its best. It even demonstrates that if he wanted, he COULD draw hands.

I always appreciated his stylized use of black and white in his daily panels but detested his use of only bright primary colors in his Sundays.

It was sad that his artwork degraded in his later years. His early work was stellar.

Gweedo asked,Not even a tibia or ankle bone[dis]connected from the knee bone ?!-—————————————————————————.Devil’s a big boy, Gweedo! Don’t make him “grrrr” at you!.Good afternoon, Gweedo.

Bribery fled the scene in an air car while cops were all over the place. Even Diet Smith’s chopper was aloft. Now an air car ain’t exactly an airborne Lamborghini, and we know the police have choppers of their own, why didn’t an air chase happen? Did he just sail off Mary Poppins-style? I am sure others have had the same thought.

I had hoped that before the story got so far along we would be shown in various ways how that gold made it to the building.

Apparently, that wasn’t the story that Mike wanted to tell. It appears that how the gold made it to the building was just an extraneous detail.

Gweedo spoke in the unknown tongue,Now, Bill, ahma teh-you this but wun tahme !…-————————————————————————-.Whut language are you a-speakin’, Gweeedo?

That thar baby is gonna have a reel purdy mouf when he gits all growed up.

Gads! It’s spreading! It’s like a virus! Is there any hope for the world? Gweedo’s unleashed himself!.If anyone out there can read this, the internet has shut down! Neil Wick cautioned about that occurring,

Now you’ve gone and done it, Gweedo. Verizon just called and they are taking my 25/25 FiOS away and replacing it with 300 baud dialup!

Gweedo stated,As long as we got our direct to DT line, who cares ?!-————————————————————————.This cursed black fog is limiting my vision! (hack, hack). What have you wrought upon us now, Gweedo!

Good luck, Gweedo! I gave a beautiful brand new expensive router to my son-in-law recently. I still have one brand new Netgear on hand but with FiOS, I am using the router Verizon installed (no charge). So far, all is fine. I am connected via CAT5 to Comet (my dream machine) and wirelessly to my other three computers. I like computers!