Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 29, 2018

Good morning™, stringers!

We’re finally getting to some serious crime scene investigation. It seems the murder weapon was a gun with a silencer. (No lead pipe this time.)

Flattop is in trouble!

Yes a ‘sonic suppressor’ that muffles the shot and slows the bullet down to do it.

Looks like Pouch in the picture in Panel 1, and Scorpio is in Panel 3. Actually, figuring out the pictures is kinda fun.

Good morning™, crime scene detectives !

Put panel 2 Sam in the movies. That guy’s got charisma !

Going by that the height of the string line going downward from Sam, it must have been someone tall.

Sam’s dressed for “A Night At The Opera.” ✨

If we add @charliefarmrhere’s observation of the killer being tall with yesterday’s hypothesis by @corpcasselbury of this case following the “odd man out” formula, then the tall Dr. Hall with no comedic namesakes seems to fit the bill, fit the bill.

For a real twist though the shooter should be Sam — he’s definitely “dressed to kill”!!

TRACY: “Why’d you do it, Sam?”

SAM: “Tracy, I just couldn’t help myself. These Minit Mysteries are so corny I just HAD to shoot something!”

Presuming the shooter fired from where Sam is standing at the door and going by the angle of the string, the shooter had to be rather tall. which is making it look rather bad for Dr. Hall in his Double up costume

Is it just me or is this Minit Mystery is dragging a bit?

I really like today’s strip. I’m one who has been asking for this kind of forensics, like there was in the strip under Gould. So I’m trying to make this work, but. . .

When we last saw the desk, it was facing the big windows with the open curtains or vertical blinds on either side of the windows. The victim was, just as Tracy says today, slumped down next to the desk chair as if he had been seated at the desk. Now, what angle is this supposed to be seen from today? There is the chair, although the telephone seems to be at the opposite end of the desk from the original view, if we are still looking at the desk from the “chair side”. If we are looking at the desk from where a visitor would stand to face someone seated at the desk, then the chair is on the wrong side. And now the desk seems to be facing a wall with no windows, but with pictures on the wall.

There would ordinarily be no good reason to pick at the art to this degree, except that today’s strip is focused on angles and trajectories, and I’m just trying to figure this out.

Possible Pouch and Piggy Butcher photos to add to the forensic fun. This club could use some variety. Notta Chin Chillar and Painted Lady portraits would spice up the atmosphere.

Is that a new “rogue” picture in panel 3, right above the old-style phone?

There’s that lamp again, in panel 1. Maybe the lamp did it!!!! LOL

I’m going to guess that they’ll find the guy based on the height the bullet was fired from.

Pouch did it. Sam’s pointing to him in the first panel.

Silencers, more accurately known as suppressors, do reduce the amount of sound made by a gunshot, but not nearly as much as what is typically shown in the movies and on TV. And apparently in Dick Tracy as well.

A Night at the opera…maybe it was Otis P. Driftwood in the study with a lorgnette. Again…Hall is probably Huntz..usually portrayed as too dumb to commit a crime. So maybe it’s him.

Ok, there is speculation above that Dr Hall is the shooter based on the “height of the string line going down from Sam” – the thing is, if you look at the Comics of August 23 and 24, Hall is several inches taller than Tracy who is approximately the same height as Sam, or maybe an inch or two taller. The 8/26 comic shows the other club members to be shorter than Dr Hall (including presumably Flattop) – or approximately the same height as Tracy or Sam. So, I don’t think that the analysis (above) that Hall fired the shot based upon the fact that string analysis showed that “the shooter was tall like Hall” necessarily holds water…

I’m just wondering why the killer decided to commit the crime in a house full of other people, that he knew he (or she) wouldn’t be able to leave.

couple the house full of people, with Dr. Howard’s comment of….“I didn’t want him dead” – which depending on how you say it, could insinuate he killed him, but by accident….

Mumbles says: “Big Boy did it, Big Boy did it, Big Boy did it.”

At last! We now know that Roche was shot, probably with a pistol with a suppressor, by someone standing in the doorway, who may be taller than the average rogue… Real cop work being done by Tracy and Broadway Sam the Scarf-wearing Man (reminds me of my old college acquaintance—not really “friend”—Jon Voight). For the moment, suspicion tends to rest most heavily on DoubleUp (who is big and tall); but so far, I see no proof….