Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 10, 2021

“I heard the brisket was delicious. And we have to kill you. But brisket first!”

Good morning™, everyone!

A mysterious deli that Sam has never seen before, but it smells like they have good food at least. As many predicted, Briar Rose is being brought here.

Good morning™, famished flatfoots !

Sam finds a new haunt. Didn’t Ace tell her they would be going to a spot over a deli ?  Sounds like her amnesia is coming right along. She’ll forget who it was that got her in no condition to talk.

Never trust a deli where the person taking your order looks like a California surfing dude. Real delis have people that look like they’re a 100 years old and speak with a Brooklyn accent.

Who’s Marmel?

So Sam drove to an unfamiliar deli. I guess it isn’t near the police HQ. Oh, well…. :-(

One quick question: isn’t it not Kosher to eat meat with cheese?

Like the art today!

Driver: “I’m going to have them make you a sandwich.”

Uhm….

I don’t know how you’ve missed it either, Sam. We readers have been taken for a ride past this corner of Happenstance Ave. and Conincidence St. for some time now. Hey look! There’s Hope Brown’s travel agency. And right over there… what familiar sights do you see, boys and girls?

Marmel is a Germanic name—possibly Jewish. And One Jewish deli here in the ‘Nati used to serve meat with the cheese on a separate plate—so Izzy didn’t sin, it was on the customer.

Gee, I didn’t know I even OWNED a deli! ;-D

I thought rose was going to be given over to the police, but in no condition to talk, she’s about to walk in on sam.

Some member of the Apparatus picks one heck of a time to get the munchies.

Are they on a one-way or two-way street?

Would it really have hurt the writer to have Sam say yesterday, “I’ve heard they’ve re-opened a deli I used to like,” rather than having a clueless Sam think today, “Hmm… How could I have missed this place before?” and take some of the sting out of the absurd level of coincidence?

That must Briar Rose in the car?

Briar was told that the safe house would be right above a deli, so she shouldn’t be surprised.

1-SAM: Doesn’t look like any customers in there. That’s always the sign of a great place to eat…

2-…WHAT’S COOKIN, BRO? See what I did there? I greeted you in a groovy way and at the same time asked a legitimate question.

MAHALO: Yeah. Well the answer to both is ‘nothin’. We just have refrigerated California Wraps brought in every day. You know, kale, sprouts, avocado on wheat toast. You want a bean smoothie with that?

3-SUKIE: STOP! Through the window there. That customer is wearing my favorite color! And the sign’s background is also my favorite! It HAS to be a good sign! I gotta go in!

WHIPPY: What a co-ink-ee-dink. This is your…I mean… our last stop. Final destination even. Leave your bags in the car. I’ll go through…I mean…get them later.

The tasty prelude to the aroma of the recently deceased?

Briar; remember? The Chair of the Apparatus told you that your new safe house was going to be above a deli? (Although it won’t be safe very long, once Ace arranges to kill you.)

I’m hoping one of you super fans can answer something I’ve wondered about for almost 60 years now…

Is “Diet” Smith pronounced like what you do when you try to lose weight, or like Marlena "Diet"rich?

Tracy once “coincidentally” saw Pony Magee placing a newspaper ad in 1953,when the official manhunt had gone sour.

Hey,I don’t care how they catch em’ as long as they catch em’.

And as Tallulah Bankhead once said about herself—Briar Rose is as pure as the driven slush.

TRUE STORY—When I saw Mandy Patinkin’s one man show on Broadway,I got him to autograph my collection of the88 Keyes strips published by Blackthorne.

Specifically on the page where he shot Jinny.

“Just wait until I call Tuner….EEEEEE!!!”.

He was amused when I told him how 88 came to be.Gouldwas so fed up with people asking him why he made hisvillains so ugly that he came up with a handsome one just to shut them up.

Now I want barbecue brisket with swiss!

If that’s not Tracy’s chin in P3 I’ll eat Sam’s hat.

Who the heck wears a ponytail like that THESE days??

NEWS FLASH—

When BIG FROST crashed the police conference in 1948(leading to the murder of Brilliant),he flashed a phony police badge from Enid,Oklahoma.

Nosing around Wikipedia,I found out there is such a townand that it was the hometown of Sherman Billingsley;whoran the famous Stork Club in New York City.

The bio also said that before he became a “respectable”nightclub owner,Billingsley did time for bootleggingin the Federal Pen at Leavenworth.

movie quote—

“Wake up!The killers are in the store!”

“Well,why doesn’t somebody wait on them?”

GROUCHO MARX——“THE BIG STORE”—-1941

Yesterday’s strip brought the narrative momentum to a screeching halt. Today’s strip sent it straight off a cliff.

If the Apparatus is REALLY into efficiency, we’ll discover that, like Sweeny Todd, they “recycle” the people whom they make disappear in their deli. Though Sam is still probably safe; I understand that people taste like pork.

Coincidences do happen. As Sam Catchem settles in with his barbecue beef brisket and Swiss sandwich (I guess he doesn’t keep kosher, or at least not consistently), who should drive up outside the same deli but “our” Briar Rose with the Apparatus chauffeur (and tasked assassin? Whoever the driver is, in panel 3 he does not look like Doubleup). Now what? Does she want a sammy, too? (This time, pun intended.) The mills of the gods grind slow, but exceeding fine….

The hair outline looks like Ms Rose.

“If you want to eat good, always go where the unmarked cop cars go.”

“Why are we stopping here?”, indeed.