Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 21, 2016

Sam’s doing the talking because Tracy is too much of a gentleman to tell Wendy what to do with her story!

Wendy Wichel cherished her jobIt certainly was lovey being a snobGive the viewers a fairy taleJust a twitch of her nose and the ratings would sailIt never mattered if the truth came in lastAnd any consequences she’d get over fastAll she needed was to maintain her controlAnd avoid any Kaos from the spies in the knowThe audience was gullible they deserved what they gotA genie in a bottle or a horse talking a lotThe last thing she needed was this F troop brigadeCausing this impossible mission to fade.

Is This The Wrap-Up …?!

,Good morning guys!.

Also …

… here are some episodes of Alan Young’s 1940’s Radio Show.

I was hoping that Tracy will arrest Notta but publicly coming out with Mr. Niav will give Notta a chance to escape.Pokerface probably fled the scene when he noticed that things are not going as planned.

I am still wondering what was in the package that Bribery asked Blaze to deliver to Notta. I do not recall that it was ever mentioned.

“Where’s the bearded lady”?

She shaved for the evening news.

.Poor old Naiv appears to be “out of it”.

My weekly report will likely be up later today. In the meantime, I have updated the storyline map at http://dt.canadatoyou.com/nottafallarmove. Essentially we have hit the first climax of this storyline with the coming together of the villains and the police during the last three strips. We just need to tie up some loose ends, then we can see what happens with Notta and Blaze, which should be the main climax of this tale.

I will try to do another character roundup today or tomorrow. This week as we enter the final chapters, we only had three characters who were new to the story, the Happydale doctor with the glasses, who uttered one line and two characters that were just mentioned but not seen, Haf-and-Haf and Tracy’s granddaughter, Honeymoon.

No, in the movie it was his son visited by Rod Talor.

“Drat, where’s the bearded lady?”Harley apparently thought he was going to do another scene with Notta. His disappointment in that sense seems quite understandable, so maybe he’s not quite 100% “out of it” after all, if you get my meaning.

Hope the show is “live”…

Sorry to learn of Alan Young’s passing. As a kid, I enjoyed him on Mister Ed, and as a dad, I enjoyed watching Duck Tales (which featured Scrooge McDuck) with my little boy. He gave me many happy memories, which is a pretty good legacy.

I am disappointed we didn’t get to see the Asp do anything.

I don’t know if we will see Notta arrested. She can always claim the video was for personal reasons and leaked to the press.She could throw Blaze under the bus, and publicly blame her, saying it was her jealous ex-lover who sent it out.Screwball knows the truth, but will he tell it?

The expression on Wendy’s face in the last panel is priceless! One can only hope she loses her job over this (and she should). That would give her a motive to seek revenge against Tracy, thus turning her into yet another Tracy villain.

Drat, indeed. Seems a second date is not Niav’s fate. So crestfallen, he won’t be callin’ on the bearded lady so deliciously shady.

Either way, Wendy comes out a winner in this situation. She garnered high ratings by showing the original tape. Now she will double her viewership by having an exclusive on Putty’s confession. Tracy may dislike and abhor everything Wendy says and does but he just put money in her purse by handing her a ratings bonanza.

Tracy’s gamble is that Putty may appear so insane on TV that his confession will not be believed by the public. Tracy could be accused of using a totally insane person to try to cover his own indiscretions.

See last Sunday’s strip, set at Happydale.

A brief, but important role. If he hadn’t been there, it’s hard to say how it would have come out.

(He was also the voice of Scrooge McDuck on the animated series “Ducktales”.)*

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I don’t think anyone’s mentioned this yet, but he was also the voice of Haggis McHaggis on “Ren and Stimpy.”

Heh, if I didn’t know better, Tracy’s smirking!

The one striking thing in this whole story is that the only person committing a crime is the not-human anymore Matty Squared as he’s supposedly robbing a bank with the help of a not-real and not a computer mouse. I guess you could say pulling a gun and threatening to kill Putty Puss is if Tracy and Sam overheard it or Putty wants to press charges, but everything else is perfectly legal.

The “sex” tape (quotations since we can only assume it went beyond heavy petting) isn’t illegal, Putty Puss impersonating Tracy in a non-police capacity isn’t illegal, leaking it to the media isn’t illegal since it was done by Notta and not meant to be kept private. Really, the only crime so far in the main story was done by the Mayor for illegally suspending a union employee without the due process accorded by the collective bargaining agreement. Just strikes me as odd since there’s always a big crime Tracy has to investigate.

The expression on Wendy Wichel’s face (panel 2) says it all. Tracy wins, she loses. Sam plays her just right. She is rattled just before going on her “news” show. Putty Puss, meanwhile, focusses (if that is the right word) on Notta Fallar. Maybe Tracy should now, too…. What has become of the Asp; and Pokerface?

Joe has given us a great portrait of Tracy and Sam in that second panel.

Unfortunately, this will be another exclusive scoop for Wendy. Another feather in her dubious cap.