Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 12, 2021

Good morning™, Rikki fans!

Rikki is looking even paler that usual, I think.

And what’s that sudden puff of smoke at the end? Could it be?

Well, that ought to make some fans happy. Rikki’s back.

Does that mean a return for Li’l Abner?

Artwork is a bit strange today.

Maybe we’ll get a guest appearance from Dethany? (Rikki’s counterpart in an alternate universe)

Abbra Cadabra! Abner Cadaver is back! The guy who refuses to die!

“And now for something completely different.”

With everything all wrapped up yesterday, and with today’s strip showing the return of an old “friend” (and very likely two old “friends”), it appears we’ve reached the start of a new story. When I’ve decided a new story’s started, I do a list of every Tracy story on GoComics. Unfortunately, soon after I started doing this GC imposed a stupid, asinine character limit of only 2000 characters which includes every letter, space, punctuation, & html, which means I have to do this over several posts. I’ll do my initial introduction in this post and start the list in the next one, because otherwise, I can’t even get past the second year.

My notes are fairly simple. Just my name for the story (usually the name of the main villain or villains, unless they just aren’t the emphasis) followed by the dates the story began and ended. If someone was the main villain for more than one story, I add a “II” and so on to emphasize this. If more than one villain from a past story are in the same story committing major crimes, I include them altogether. Finally, for the 3 cases of more than one villain with the same name (Chameleon, Mr. Crime, Shaky) I add, “The Second” in front of their names.

Minit Mysteries Note: at the request of people who wanted to see these listed here, I’ve decided to make a separate post for them to keep the listing of Mike Curtis stories in as few posts as possible.

At the start of the GoComics archive, the writer was the late Mike Kilian. Personally, I like his work on Tracy and think he’s very underrated. At the very least, he knew how to tell a story in the daily strip format where every day, something happens that moves the story along, a quality his successor sorely lacked. I recommend anyone here who hasn’t read these stories to check them out.

TBC cuz GC decided to suck now.

Hey, it’s “Upinnapuff.” The cigarette-smoking magic dragon.

Good morning™, Grave Yard Ghouls !

Looks like somebody wont be making their hearing. Cue the Crypt Kicker 5.

And Rikki gets sprung.

Yay! Nothing against Shelley, but I enjoy seeing Joe’s inks on the daily strips from time to time. I hope we get a whole week before she comes back from her break next Monday…

Ol’ Abner? Maybe?

Don’t you hate it when people act so innocent? They just look around and say “Wait! What’s that?” instead of owning up to the fact that they just broke wind.

He’s returned from the grave?

“Look! It’s a guy with a blue balloon! How unusual.”

and we’re still running on the cruder, blocky sunday art style

That background doesn’t look like a very secure facility. I’ve seen antiquated county jails that look a bit like that. One guard? No waiting police vehicle? No one checking for person or persons unknown waiting to aid an escape? You might as well put a revolving door on it – like they have at Arkham Asylum in Gotham.

Rikki Mortis?

Looks like Rikki’s missed Abner so much she’s turned blue. Vista Bill would not approve :)

Looks like Abner Kadaver will do what Professor Moriarty couldn’t.

“Mortis?” A new story….whoopee!

1-GUARD: Come on, honey. You are in some serious need of sunshine…

2-…Or oxygen. Anyway, the sheriff is tired of seeing your weird color.

3-RIKKI: If he’s so worried, maybe he should move me to a cell that’s not right above the old emergency generator.

GUARD: Yeah, it does go off a lot. Given the bad wiring around here and the fact that you’re locked in, I’d be more worried about fire than bad air if I was you.

RIKKI: And there it goes again. COUGH

Let’s be glad of the cartoonist team who contributed this splendid artistic style to the comic strip as to ensure the creator’s own nature of noir within!!

From today’s Comics Curmudgeon:

We’re finally done with Dick Tracy’s hippie nonsense and have moved onto a new storyline here, which seems to involve a prisoner who, based on her pallor and catchy nickname, is clearly deceased. I guess it’s no surprise that in the carceral Neo-Chicago police state, not even death can keep you out of the clutches of the punitive justice system.

Looks promising— and not a Minit Mystery, thank Gouldness!

cue the dark ambient music with discordant overtones

And there she goes, Miss Death’s Charioteer, Rikki Mortis! Yay!

Most of my fellow fans/commenters above are, I fear, leaping to conclusions, albeit the most likely conclusions, about the direction of this new story, based on just one day’s appearance by the stylish prisoner, Ms. Mortis, and a puff of smoke.

Okay; yes, it looks as though the dual pointers of Rikki & a puff of smoke may imply the Return of the Not-Entirely-Dead Abner Kadaver. But, even if that is the case, as we should have learned from the just-concluded tale, it does not necessarily define the overall course of this new arc.

We shall see, if only we are patient….

I believe Rikki and Madonna buy their bras at the same shop.

https://media.glamour.com/photos/56959070085ae0a8503782f8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/fashion-2013-04-jpg-6-main.jpg

“Wait! What’s that?” has said every tragically dead secondary horror movie character ever. I’m willing to bet the rule applies here, too.