Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 23, 2023

Good morning™, everyone!

Nice perspective! The mayor should mind her own business and not run the police department.

It’s been 6 straight days of talk, Tracy posing, and coffee/tea cups.

Can I start complaining yet???

Come on Tracy. It’s obvious – the mayor did it!

Gotta love Lizz’s deranged look in panel 2. Working with Dicky boy will do that to you!

who IS this strange female Dick is keeping company with?..

oh wait, holy schitt, it’s LIZZ…

and she’s sporting some heavy eye makeup… not like years past, but more than recently…

Good morning™, psycho cops !

Lizz is knockin’ me out with those crazy not quite Marty Feldman eyes. Tracy is grace under pressure where a lesser man would go shooting off like Yosemite Sam.

Ahh… MC’s love of grey has returned with a touch of pale blue.

Well to begins with, arrests the butler first.

The Mayor! Now there’s a person of interest!

Maybe it was Cliff Barnes since she was blackmailing Cliffy to stop him from becoming National Energy Secretary on instructions from JR Ewing !!!

I have seen the Mayor in previous strips. She can bring the heat by herself. Tracy, Lizz and the rest of MCU will move with the quickness to get results. Those from above provide funding for their department and an indirect way the coffee they drink.

Well drawn today, and so far a great “Whodoneit”!

If the mayor is such a good friend maybe they need to question her as to possible enemies of Ms Caxton, or valuables the victim owned, or relatives who might profit by her death.

So the search of the premises is over, but they didn’t find the safe or apparently even look for one? C’mon, it’s a simple wall safe behind a painting as seen in millions of crime dramas, not Jack Benny’s subterranean vault….

I get it, it’s a procedural—but this is proceeding with all the speed of a glacier.

Lizz , kick off your shoes .

1-DT: If I hum a tune, can I get a lap dance?

2-LIZ: Probably – from Sam.

3-DT: Nah. He’s got no rhythm. Wait – I know who probably does! LIZ: DON’T EVEN!!!

DT: ??? I was talking about the Mayor. She’s into Ball Room Dancing. Speaking of Ball Room, mine is… LIZ: SOMEBODY GET A UNION REP IN HERE!

From today’s Comics Curmudgeon:

[Dang], did a friend of someone prominent get murdered? Does that mean the MCU is going to have to actually try to solve the crime in a timely fashion? What a drag!

Precious Little is one of the Great Tec’s undercover snitched.

I’ve got it figured. A giant spider lunged at her from the safe and noshed her a bad one.

I keep telling you guys, the butler did it!!!

So, are we now going to see a scene in the mayor’s office where she shows a visitor a new “wonderful toy” that recently came into her possession?

I almost never read this strip anymore. Who is drawing it now? That face in the last frame doesn’t even look like Tracy to me. The face proportions are giving me a headache.

Dat azz.

So go find who did it! Isn’t that what you get paid for? Or do we watch DT sit at his desk for 3 more days?

“If only there were a valuable sports that is never mentioned again. That would crack the case!”

Not really a whole lot happening today, but still it is good to see Lizz again (and she is looking good indeed, both in panel 1 and in panel 2). And in panel 3 Tracy as much as admits the MCU has made very little progress on the Caxton Murder Case so far. Pretty much a Dead End at this point; time for one of those fortuitous coincidences to drop a big clue in their laps, it seems!

As for “heat from above,” as Lizz puts it, responding to Tracy’s characterizing the deceased as “a friend of the mayor,” I’d note that Mayor Armstrong has had it in for Tracy for a long time (maybe jealousy of his successes at stopping major gangsters in “her city”; or perhaps fear that he might be getting too close to some of her questionable accumulation of wealth). Pressure from her in the Caxton Case would be no surprise!

Frankly,Tracy looks like Flattop in the last panel.

The MCU doesn’t mind Mayor Armstrong’s long absence from the strip, as she’s basically been portrayed as a Royal Pain In the Neck.