Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 31, 2010

I tell you… with a house and a wife like 3D has/had, I would probably disappear, too! Of course, I’d fill out my Last Seen, Unusual Activity, and Enemies Report first.

LOL, excellent, VB!!

Morning, VistaBill.

Do you fill out your Last Seen, Unusual Activity, and Enemies Report in triplicate? Gotta press hard for the last carbon copy.

Look three, count ‘em, three enemies in panel three!

DICK TRACY: “Were you interviewed by officers Hansel and Gretel from Special Forces?”

MRS. D’BUCKWORTH: “No, I never saw them.”

DICK TRACY (thinking): That’s odd. That looks like one of Officer Gretel’s shoes by that big oven. Must be a coincidence.

Panel 1: Is Mrs D’B demon possessed? Why the glowing eye?

I’m afraid such an image will frighten SimonPenn.

You messed up the sentence in panel one Locher.

Go back, read yesterday’s strip, then this one.

Yesterday Mrs. D’sB is doing her Joker laugh. But today the scene repeats, no laugh, a straight answer.

Locher and Brozman are playing around with my sense of time. This is more mind-boggling than the third act of the movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Will a Star Child float down from the sky?

I’m biting my tongue over a nasty comment.

“So Dick Locher is missing?”

I’ll stop right there.

Sounds a bit like the Three Stooges talking in panel 3.

Anyone notice that yesterday they were in a spooky mansion, today they’re in an office bldg? Oh, never mind…

Panel-Panner said,

Morning, VistaBill.

Do you fill out your Last Seen, Unusual Activity, and Enemies Report in triplicate? Gotta press hard for the last carbon copy. ——————————————————————

They get to be a pain but, like income tax returns, they need to be filled out in case the police ask to see the report. I keep a copy in my glove compartment as well as in my safe deposit box.

Panel One:

It’s nice to see Iron Man accessorizing his helmet with such festive earrings.

But on the bright side-the earrings do match

At least the face in panel 2 looks like a face for once. I’ve been away for a month and almost fell off my seat in surprise.

@Panel-Panner: I’m thinking we’re not seeing a repeat of the same scene, just Tracy being a dolt…

Yesterday (Mrs. D’B): “Did David have enemies? HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA”

Today (Tracy): So, David D’Buckworth have any enemies?

Vista Bill, You’ve HIT the magic button with that comment about “carbon copy” and the assumption that 3-D had “dissapeared” in the face of that wife.

This is a story format ’LIFTED’ from Chet Gould’s Elsa and Claude Crystal tale (1957) and mirrors closely what happened in that tale :

I’ve labeled it CLAU3-D CRYSTAL returns !

1) Supposedly wealthy couple 2) Husband ‘dissapears’ (?) 3) Blind Tin Cup Joe was the earlier beggar, this tale has a STREET BEGGER too (witness? drug pusher ?) 4) And ahead, as we will soon SEE, heavy “withdrawal” of money from the bank, not unlike CLAU3-D CRYSTAL

Even the name 3-D looks like an IDEA for a character name picked up from the back cover of a Blackthorne Dick Tracy comic book # 56 and # 57 which carried the story of the Crystals. Claude was drugged and hidden in a “Locker Freezer” in the Mansion to die.

Don’t know what will happen here (?)

This story start certainly has all the early elements of the 1957 tale.

Anyone having the ‘original’ story should read it and COMPARE !

Please add my name to the growing list of people that want 3-D killed and I don’t even know him!

yep, thumb goes down– kill him

So DD’B had enemies. So they all want him dead. Just so.

What is the stoopidest thing Dick Tracy has ever done?

Forgetting about a body lying on the stage bleeding was amazingly stoopid, unbelievably stoopid. Failing to understand the answer he got to that question in yesterday’s strip and asking it again is amazingly, unbelievably stoopid. Which is worse?

Of course, the entire police department stoopidly ignored the body on the stage. Maybe Tracy could take comfort in not being the only one. Besides, he was distracted, busy running away from a criminal. (In Soviet Russia, the criminals run away from the police!) The rest of the police force had nothing to distract them; they just sat there twiddling their thumbs.

Is anyone else present in this interview? Maybe Mrs. D’Buckworth is the only one to witness Tracy’s embarrassment. And maybe she will keep quiet about it. Who would believe her if she told them? A famous police detective being that stoopid … nah, can’t be. It must have been somebody else impersonating him. Somebody dressed up as Dick Tracy for a costume party….

-Cougar :{)

No editor worth his or her salt would have let that first panel, first dialogue balloon pass!

Once again proving my point that TMS does not have an editor assigned to this strip!

Good God! If I was married to that,I would have disappeared a long time ago. But as ugly as she is,I have to admit it is an improvement in drawing skills-She, at least, is drawn with a personality whereas Dick and Liz and Anja,et al, are drawn looking like zombies. I also see that DT has now morphed into Victor Mature.

Sydney, your observation certainly makes it look like Locher is copying one of Gould’s stories.

But having followed Locher’s version of Tracy, I thought it pretty clear that he’s never, ever read or even looked at any of Gould’s work.

good one groundzero! lots of ha-ha’s and some hee-hee’s