Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 25, 2013

James Bond couldn’t have summed it up better.

And scary looking, too.

Great drawing of Sweat Baux yesterday, and the locomotive today.

I’m just sorry that in real life, the engineer would have nightmares for years.

It LOOKS as if Sweaty is gone… but, until they find his body, I won’t be fully convinced

He’ll sweat a lot more where he’s going now.

Hope he was wearing his seat belt.

Sweatbox’s assistant is still on the loose. He’s likely to know something about the skeletons in the vault, the murder and Sweatbox’s personal life.

Plus it stopped on a dime!

Good morning all…

Bring on Moon Maid!

Still a very confusing mix of styles to throw us off the time frame- front and cow-catcher of steam era, side rails, wheels and horn of the diesel. And it sort of looks like it’s got a tender behind it.

Sweatbox has reached [puts on sunglasses] the end of the line.Yeeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!

I wonder how they’re going to figure out what the deal was with the lake and the bone-stuffed mausoleum.

Looks like Sweatbox has made his last railroad crossing.

The train wins, the car loses.

I still want to know why all the bodies? Who were they? Why were they killed?

And I’ll make the pun…“That’s the way the Mercedes Benz…”

Yeah, fast trains take about a mile to stop. You can stop the wheels, but you can’t stop the train. Very little friction between the steel wheel and the steel rail.Never argue right of way with a train.

(regards the mangled Mercedes sadly) Maybe it’ll buff out?

As always, nary a thought to the innocent victim in all this… ,^.^

I shall wait on our authors for good answers, but there certainly does need to be some. It’s going to be quite a denoument for this story – explanations for the murders at Camp Freedom, the bloody hand print confession, skeletons in the mausoleum and the lake, Sweatbox’s connection to all this, etc. None of it explained yet. Oh yes, and Sweatbox’s assistant’s relationship to the action. He is still alive and roaming around somewhere.

The locomotive in todays strip looks like the child of an ALCO Milwaukee Road Hudson, and a Fairbanks-Morse Trainmaster.http://www.american-rails.com/fm-train-master.html

I’d hate to be the guy who has to sponge Sweatbox’s remains out of the car.I have no doubt that we’ll get the answers to the murders at Camp Freedom, the identities of all the skeletons, etc.

No doubt the Mercedes “check engine” light is on. Mine usually was.

It’s a shame the engineer had to experiance the end of Sweatbox.

NOW woulda been the perfect time for a “Travelling Wilburys” photobomb… imagine it, just as Dick Tracy says Sweaty has reached the end of the line, they all pop out and start singing “Well it’s alllll right…..even if the sun dont shine… well it’s allll right.. we’re going to the end fo the line”

@ MikeyJNod, but it’s not cold where Sweatbox is heading. You think it’s hot enough for him?

btw, team tracy is turning into quite the morbid bunch arent they? Think about it, since i’ve been reading again…(at the end of the abner kadaver storyline october 2011)…. davey mylar killed, sweatbox killed, panda killed, teevo killed, mumbles quartet killed, measles (regrettably) killed… they keep this up and there wont be anyone left! lol

Exactly what was the point of this storyline so far? I’m still confused. Just why did Sweatbox intend to coerce a dud confession out of Sulu, and what does that have anything to do with the skeletons, and is the story coming to a screeching halt…like a train, say?

Gotta love that engine! Even the horn on the side behind the radiator grille. It looks like the squeeze bulb even made it through the wreck!

That mangled Mercedes (or what’s left of it) looks like it’s actually grimacing.

Nice to see Lizz, looking lovely as always.

Today’s art is quite impressive. The way the train was portrayed for example. A mix of older, plus a bit of a science fiction, 50s pulp magazine style it appears.

Also as maligned as the colorest is here at times. I must admit this was a fine job. I loved how the characters was colored. But the train, background, and crash wasn’t Giving a “Reuben” feel to it.

However, I do hope they find the portly pile’s body. I would hate to have to wait six months to find he was /really dead/, much like Shakey was.

Panel one is nice, too. Mole’s protective hand on Toad’s shoulder, the kindly expression on the face of the officer, and Lizz! I sure do hope, though, that we get explanations for all the loose ends, as others have pointed out already.

Dead men don’t talk and we need answers. Taking him alive would be so much better, IMO.

Even Tracy won’t commit to Sweat Box being dead. Now they have to get to the Baux mansion before the assistant finds out and can destroy the evidence.

I’ll believe Sweaty’s really, completely dead when I see the pieces of his body on slabs in the morgue. Meanwhile, this case is far from closed! Love panel 1 with Mr. Mole and Toad and the Chicago-style uniformed cop (and Lizz, of course); but Tracy should probably leave the quips to the folks commenting here….

A really well-executed resolution. Even if this murder or whatever Sweatbox was involved in was never actually explained.

Anyone remember “Hardac” from the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Heart Of Steel”? (parts 1&2) Well, that’s what the train remind me of.

What are the odds? Dropping off the overpass just as a train is arriving?At least it was coming out of the tunnel – a derailment in a tunnel can be messy!Happened in Hannibal, Mo some years ago – NS mainline crosses the river, crosses the BNSF main and directly into a tunnel that makes more than a 90 degree turn before paralleling the BNSF main. Car derailed in tunnel, and that limits working space to straighten things out!(Think I read someplace this is only RY tunnel in state of Mo.,true or false?)Sure stopped rather quickly for a speeding train! Or maybe tracy drove a couples miles down the main?

Great artwork, but the loco looks like nothing that ever ran on US rails (or probably even the world) But, maybe that was intentional. After all, with Sgt. Jim Doherty, railway detective (Hall of Fame) on the staff -—————-

Yesterday’s strip was a masterpiece. Thought that was worth saying again.

Strangest locomotive I’ve ever seen.

The artwork here is incredible!

Wouldn’t this have caused at least a partial derailment?

Have you ever taken a photo of a diesel locomotive (or steam, for that matter) from a distance, as it is passing by, and then walked up to it when it comes to a stop, and taken another photo of the same locomotive, while standing right at it’s front? I have, and I can tell you, it is startling, the way the size of the engine seems to enlarge from the closer perspective. This art depicts that very well, I think. It always amazes me just how BIG a train locomotive actually is. If you are standing on level ground underneath the window of the cab, you would have a very hard time handing something to a crew member sitting in the cab, reaching out of the window. And, yet, if you are standing across a road from the tracks, you can get two or more locomotives in a single camera frame.

I like the body language of the crew members. It’s as if they are thinking, “Oy, yi yi, what a mess!” I have read more than once that a train crew’s worst fear is an automobile/train collision.

Consistency in it’s size ?Odd, that was the same thing readers asked about those hands drawn by Dicky L.

No salt in the wound, but it’s almost as if Dicky was the one to patent the phrase . . .“**. . . it’s only a comic strip” !*

A simple comparison with other posts show that while most come here to praise, you see *

. . .** everything shaded through dark glasses with a Naperville ’ tint ’

Starring as Sweaty in the movie version of this Goulash of a story? LOL!^^While there IS a resemblance, he’s too young…. maybe he could play the young Sweaty

Sydney & Otto – I stopped in last week to see what was going on with the Marty & Spud thriller, and was told to “get out” by none other than the artist himself! I should have called for SDM to come help me out, except I didn’t know how to find him.

If Sweatbox is still alive, that would mean there’s no body to recover from the wreckage. And if that’s the case, Tracy & team would begin searching for him and not close the case. If Tracy DOES end up closing the case, we can safely assume they found Sweatbox’s remains and that he’s definitely dead.

yep, the baddies tend to die both here and in Gould’s strips……I think the difference is Chester killed off a lot of good characters, too. Speaking of which……if Moon Maid is really coming back, then let’s bring back Model Jones too and REALLY heat it up for Junior, ha ha….

It’s lucky Toad doesn’t live in some states…..they’d probably try to charge her in some way for Sweatroadkill’s death by saying her assault with the softball contributed to it….and even luckier for her she didn’t reside in one of Gould’s strips, because it would be 50-50 she’d have been in that car at the end, too…

This strip reminds me of a sequence in the early seventies when some bad guys left obnoxious boy genius cartoonist Peanutbutter on the back seat of a car parked on the tracks. When Tracy and crew arrived…. Wow! what a mess! Probably mostly drawn by assistant Rick Fletcher. The kid was found (later) to have escaped in the nick of time.

It would appear that Dick Tracy and James Bond were honor graduates of the Snappy Repartee’ School of Ironic Commentary.

Agreed.

I agree, it is a low POV making the tracks appear wider in the foreground and the train look taller. The catwalk also gives the train a wider appearance. An actual track is 4’8.5".