Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 20, 2020

Good morning™, historians!

What I wonder is why is she washing her hands before she thought about flushing the toilet?

Good morning™, Royal flushers !

Jackpot !  Now I wonder if Hoody doody planned on keeping that for himself or at least for him and Shaggy. Didn’t he tell Coney they hadn’t found anything from all that month long of “searching” ?

She may have pulled the chain out of curiosity.

Dethany was last heard of in Bora Bora hiring gigolos…

SURPRISE!!!

And Dethany shows just what IDIOTS Coney and his crew really are….

Should also check the back of the tank to see if a gun was left there for Michael Corleone.

The next ‘On the Fastrack’ collection. “Dethany cashes in”?

OH COME ON, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Okay, my expectations were not high but COME ON!

The Stooge Viller money.

Accidentally, I had the key!

The mystery relieved by having to pee!

With that urge, romance was purged,

But water didn’t surge, moolah emerged!

Had Howdy known, he’d surely have flown,

To not search the throne? Head thick as a bone.

Lots of arresting and ice cream cones melting,

But as we’d been expecting, there wasn’t much detective-ing.

Soon farewells will gush and final tie-ups be rushed,

But few will be crushed to see this storyline flushed.

Jackpot!

Curious when she pulled the chain the whole thing fell apart, guess she has the magic touch!

Way to go, girl!

I have heard of pennies from heaven but dollars from a toilet tank is a new one!

Wow, we all pretty much seen this coming as soon as she headed for that bathroom. Question now is what will Tracy do with the money? Will he let Deathany and her fiance keep it for him being kidnapped?

My thought is that there is another more conventional toilet in there which she used. Her remark that this is an “old-fashioned water tank” could imply that it wasn’t attached to a toilet bowl. Far less credible is that one of the gang wouldn’t have tried pulling that chain. Frankly, who could ever resist that? Howdy said it didn’t work. Unless of course Dethany did something else that primed or unlocked the chain mechanism.

Pulling the chain was all it took, and no one thought to do that, even as a lark, in all of these years?

So she really did have to use the bathroom. Who knew? Oh, and I can’t believe those morons didn’t think to look in such an obvious place.

Now some people might have kept quiet about finding Stooge’s stash o’ cash. But not Detany, she’ll tell Tracy, AND< Ms. Trellis. Letting the lawyers fight out over who gets to keep the money

Dethany is now flush with money.

Coney must really employ the feeble minded, since that would have been one of the first places a real treasure hunter would have looked. On the other hand, what if it’s all counterfeit?

So Dethany used the toilet, washed her hands and THEN flushed?

Finding the money, yay!

But leaving a gator in the bowl, yuck!

Let’s hope the lid was down.

How many girls do you know who will do their business in a decommissioned toilet? Or run off to wash her hands, if that’s all she did?

She’s not weird, she’s just drawn that way.

I’m not usually one to point out holes in a plot, but her boyfriend, who had been kidnapped and tied up, is right in front of her, and she leaves him that way to run off to a bathroom… also, the last panel from a few days ago showed her expression to be one of surprise, like she had figured out where the money is, but it turns out it was just the call of nature. Lame.

I am used to using that Old Style plumbing at my sometimes overseas location. Never had the tank fall apart like that, never found a stash of money, but have had various other “adventures in plumbing” with such overhead tanks.

The plot has problems here justifying Dethany’s discovery. Did she abruptly and suddenly run into the Out-of-Order bathroom because she had to pee? Or did she just want to wash up and/or touch up her makeup? If the former, why didn’t she pull the chain before washing her hands? If the latter, why all the urgency and leaving Guy tied up and gagged? And if the plumbing really is out of order, did she use it anyway? —Just a huge lack of clarity about this contrived discovery, which is hard to accept as having never been made over the years since Stooge Villers stashed his loot. IMO, it’s a lame Reveal….

so because the bathroom was out of order, they never searched it?

1-DETH WARMEDOVER: Whew! Crohn’s Disease sucks. Maybe that chain turns on the fan…

2-YANK!

3-Oooh. So that’s where they put the toilet paper! Guess I oughta use some now that I found it. Kind a moldy looking though. But it looks like just enough to do the job.

KNOCK KNOCK! ALL RIGHT IN THERE? OMG!!! WHAT’S THAT SM…

DETH: OCCUPIED!

This story started out as ridiculous, it ends up as just plain asinine.

I believe it’s pretty apparent that whatever “magic” was brought to this strip by Mike is gone.

It’s raining money. Hallelujah! It’s raining money. Oh honey!

Not that old fashioned. Some hotels in London, England, still use that type of toilet.

She left her boyfriend tied up to… what? Wash her hands?

This story was the Dick Tracy cast with guest star Dethany acting out a reject script from a Richie Rich comic.

You guys have already noted – apparently D did her biz in a toilet that had no water – then washed her hands (the sink had water?), then pulled the chain…

My experience is, if the water closet was out-of-order (or even if the toilet had not been used) for weeks, the bowl would be empty (except for rings of brown colored Lyme). That should have been clue enough right there – as in, go somewhere else.

And if the bottom of the water closet falls out, as shown here, revealing the money, then it probably was never water-proof and should not have been in use – even back then.

Which is my last comment: Considering how way back when is when the money was first stashed in the water closet, the bills are probably worth far more than face value. Especially if any of them say something like “Silver Certificate”… Collectables, anyone?

As in, does anyone remember when all denominations looked pretty much like today’s one dollar bill? Postage stamp sized president, centered on the front of the bill? All bills the same color?

This was the weakness in the most recent Moon Gov story in which he showed us his stash of cash from the last time he was on earth. I’m pretty sure if he went to pass one of those bills today, he just might get – well, I don’t really know if I want to go there.

But he is an alien, after all…

Not exactly how those work, but money is money!

I know money doesn’t grow on trees, but this is ridiculous.

The artwork is great but the story stinks. The chain in Dethany’s hand ain’t the only one getting pulled.

She’ll be able to keep $1.98 after taxes…

that’s not big enough for all those millions

Holy chain jiggling jackpots!

Nobody looked in the toilet because they were afraid they’d find Howdy doody.

Wow; strip is now depending on toilet humor. Can you say FUBAR kids?

So she ran by her lover tied up just to wash her hands? And the money they’ve searched everywhere for was in the toilet tank? They obviously didn’t search that hard!

Dethaney comes out of the bathroom, the pockets of her trench coat bulging.

“Come on Guy, we need to go. Now.”

Actually, that cash is more valuable these days as toilet paper.

Let’s give a hand to the graphics team for a good depiction of an old time necessary device.