Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 28, 2023

now Mad Maddy is onto the law being involved…

more panic, desperation and consternation…

and that’s including the readership here…

yeah, the hooch’ll do it to ya every time…

just ask Gweedo after a night out back in the pens on the farm…

“Dang, that cop car makes mine looks like a pile of junk!”

Good morning™, everybody!

So, if I’m reading this right, his car is inside some abandoned warehouse and the police car is parked outside nearby. That doesn’t look to me like the car Tracy and Sam were in, or does it.

Anyway, he looks a little drunk, maybe, but he is going after the money from Audie, even if Audie thought he might flee.

Good morning™, surprised squatters !

So did Sam and Tracy leave to be replaced by a truck driving uniform ?

So … Tracy & Sam search an empty warehouse, find a candy bar wrapper, but miss the car the gunman is sleeping in. OK…..

Nothing worse than waking up from a Dick Tracy induced hangover!

Looks like Gweedo in the barn after a wild night with his “friends”!

I’m thinking that Audie is going to put him 6 feet under and claim self defense.

It looks like he was sleeping in warehouse next to the surveillance area.

If we assume a logical location (which we can’t) Madsen’s car is located inside some building other than the warehouse Tracy & Sam searched. (Or they would have found it.) Empty buildings seem to attract each other to derelict parts of a city. T&S have left, ‘cause that isn’t the car they were driving. A forensics team has arrived in search of empty candy bar wrappers without Sam’s fingerprints. Madsen now knows the cops are sniffing around.

Which is where all logic goes in the toilet as Madsen speeds off to fulfill his vow of getting his money no matter what.

Don’t look at me. I’ve given up trying to follow this.

Someone’s a little tipsy.

Incidentally, I’d like to take this moment to announce that I’m rebranding as XBat….

The Tracyville CSI unit use an SUV? I guess it would be roomy enough, but wouldn’t a Transit, or, similar, be more practical? Of course, this is the same PD that still uses sedan Interceptors, and, has it’s detectives use marked squads.

So it’s not noon yet – they won’t suspect anything’s wrong LOL

Lives in bars and sleeps in cars .

Three panels of Gah…Overslept…get money and what??

GAH!

So has Anders been awakened yet?

Why isn’t there a stakeout at the TV station? Not even a drone, a tap on new wires running from the building, or wireless frequencies from the hijacked equipment? I mean, they have to connect the phones to the rest of the world somehow. There are all kinds of potential leads here.

And yet we get, “better get this candy wrapper to the lab and send over some boys to the empty warehouse.”

SOOOOO…Madsen – who already has a sizable sum of money that he effectively stole from Anders – is willing to risk everything for what would amount to a few bucks for being a delivery boy of the aforementioned Anders money.

Sure. Makes perfect sense…

Sleeper car was in a warehouse not drawing any power according to the electric co., therefore T&S did not search that building.

1-ALARM CLOCK: ♫ WAKE UP MADDIE I THINK I GOT SOMETHING TO SAY TO YOU! ♪ MADDIE STEWART: NOON?!? DANG IT! I missed the complimentary breakfast!

2-…Ugh. I shouldn’t have left the car running all night. COUGH! Better open a window… SMASH!

3-WTH? Audie called the cops! Next time I agree to be a bagman for forty bucks, I’m asking for half up front!

Looks like he might swap the red shirt for an orange jumpsuit, if he’s lucky.

The good thing about this strip is you don’t have to read it for a week or two and not miss anything.

What we have here is a big brown “gun boat” car (looks like a ’70s or maybe ’60s GM type—Oldsmobile, Pontiac, maybe Chevy), indoors in an(other) abandoned warehouse across from the one Tracy and Sam were searching due its recent surge in electrical usage. Mad Madsen has been “sleeping it off” in his car after drinking heavily; note that in panel 2 he still clutches a bottle of his favorite cheap wine, maybe Annie Green Springs, a ’70s favorite apparently resurrected lately https://tinyurl.com/y3bdyuuc as he staggers from his car to the broken window and is startled quasi-sober by the sight of a police SUV continuing surveillance or search of the warehouse Tracy and Sam vetted (such SUVs seem to be the new standard popo vehicles in many, maybe most, up-to-date PDs, as in my Chicagoland village https://tinyurl.com/29ccnu7b ).

There is little logic as to why Mad Madsen, gunsel, would choose to go on a bender the night before he was going to claim his due from Augie by 10:00 AM and instead oversleep, in his old car, in a warehouse near the Argos one where he shot Anders, until noon. But, given the mess this story has become with Mike’s being off for health reasons and ghostwriters going in different directions, who would expect a linear logical plot line?

Madsen has apparently spent the evening with his close friend,Mr.Jack Daniels.