Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 16, 2010

Looks like we have a new curved police sign to match the building.

Does Testicle Chin always whine when there’s good news? Wouldn’t the Nappingville PD already have patrols downtown, or is the high-rise business district too dangerous for them with its lack of doughnut stands? And is Thick reliving “An Incident at Owl Creek bridge”?

The characters at Police Hooters have become so dense that their combined stupidity has warped the space-time continuum, causing time to flow backward and the building to start an inward collapse. Even Neon Noodle is caught in the gravitational collapse! NEON NOODLE! If a supervillain like him can’t escape, what hope is there for the rest of us?

He needs a LOT of help.

“Please don’t hurt me. All I’m gonna do is run away.”

I love the new sign! “Send a patrol downtown”, says Liz. Don’t the police have patrols on the streets all the time?

Just love the new sign. Tracy keeps protesting that he has a job to do. He hasn’t done it in months…

Locher, come on, have Thick fall out of bed and wake up already!

As part of this endless nightmare, Thick has just realized that the disembodied hands are under the control of the real supervillain behind all this confusion. Having fingered the villain, Thick makes the obvious demand!

So confusing… They grab him, then the next day he’s free, and then they grab him again, and then he’s free, and then they grab him again… Some day this strip will be used as a textbook example of bad continuity.

I just have to ask: Has DT done even one thing right? He went undercover with no backup, made an attempt at arrest without sufficient cause, didn’t have backup in a hostile environment, probably a dozen other mistakes. These days a cop doesn’t pull you over for speeding without letting his superiors know where he is and what he’s doing, and nine times out of ten another cop shows up before the first one has finished saying “Do you know why I pulled you over?”.

This situation should have been swarming with undercover officers, and so far DT is the only guy carrying a badge in sight.

I don’t know if Thick has done anything right. The same goes for Horn Hair, who allowed him to go undercover, and the ME, who can’t ID a corpse. I think the ME ruled out homicide, though–but it’s odd that a “badly-decomposed body” would remain intact enough to show a tattoo and have feet that could hold a toe tag.

Right now Thick could find himself in all sorts of real-world trouble for his actions while undercover. For example, he should have know better than to reveal D-cubed’s identity. His drama-queen schtick put the man at risk.

If this story is heading toward some sort of rampage on the part of the homeless, Horn Hair could get in trouble, too. If she’s sending a patrol downtown, they might be heading into a riot situation unprepared. Or will it turn out that Thick briefed her on his suspicions, gave her supporting evidence, and Locher was too incompetent to tell the readers?

I think the “Because …” jive is the drum roll to some dramatic and unexpected event, like an insurrection, or the murder of D-cubed, or Thick doing something that makes sense.

Now what was with those three stick figures? Are they Thick, Sue Shi and a third man? Are two homeless guys chasing D-cubed? Or is Locher ripping off “The Adventure of the Dancing Men?”

Next, Tracy will whip out his badge and say, “I’m a cop.”

Then, the 3-20 bums that are there will whip out badges they bought at the dollar store and say, “We’re cops, too.”

All patrols are busy at the circus tent, chief

New Circular Police Sign atop a Circular building ?

Have all the Police Hooters moved into a NEW circular structure (?) …better to enjoy their musical - ‘ring around the roses’, and their ‘shake, shake senora’ routine along with other undercover sporting activities ?

Well, that shape certainly looks ‘familiar’. Could this building be their new HQ location ?:

http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2009/12/19/

“When you’ve got a job to do you’ve got to do it well. You’ve got to give the other fellow heck…”

(Hey, it’s a family strip. I don’t want to tick off the word police. They actually do their jobs, ya know.)

Yes…amazingly enough, given his ineptitude, lawbreaking, and constant violations of basic police regulations, he [still] has a job…not to do, based on past history, but to screw up.

Also, that’s a pretty hot look the chief is directing at Sam.

The new Police sign bears a suspicious resemblance to an accordion. Has Police Hooters been infiltrated by a new super-villain? Does the accordion atop the new and chintzy building mean we’ll face the evil landlord Low-rents Welk and his accomplices, A. Juan and A. Thieu?

Tomorrow it will be raining AND the money will be flying.

Somebody must have told Locher that the way to keep people reading is to put a cliff-hanger at the end of an episode. But it doesn’t work if you’re so senile that you forgot you did it and never resolve the cliff-hanger you set up!

Plus, he pulls this WAY too often.

run mac run! maybe the patrol will see a squealing homeless guy running and they’ll open fire – macspacy will expire in a hail of friendly fire at the corner of jefferson and ewing with penny by his side

Not hands, Tracy, paws. The line is, “Take your stinking paws off me, you #%@! dirty ape.”

Why would the homeless guys want to let Thick do his job? Assuming that they believe he’s a cop and not a violently delusional schizophrenic who needs to be restrained for his own safety.

’Because again’ …

A former poster here has a ‘belief’ that Locher drops very SUBTLE clues in the strip on what is about to happen.

I think we may be seeing ‘one such’ on Chief Lizz’s sleeve as she looks - not at Testicle Chin, but outward as if speeking to his readers

Let’s check that concept out tomorrow !

JCFremont, “It’s a madhouse!”

Sydney Phillips, does this mean she’s going to throw off her disguise as a mild-brained police chief and morph into Octobriana?

Scuttlebutt99, please don’t insult women by camparing them to Tracy.

BillT In this madhouse strip anything is now possible. Locher may even surpise us by having Lizz go ’topless’ at she serves patacakes at the Bar.

Perhaps he now has her ’looking outside’ for something more, as she’s observing Tracy for what he has become as a Detective — Dick Spectator !

With no ‘back up’ and all that threatening muscle around, you’d think Tracy would use the Taser or (the blinding) Atomic Light feature on his **Wrist Geenee.

Chief Lizz reminded Testicle Chin that he was wearing it :

http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/10/01/

But Locher wouldn’t know how to write a story if he had to acknowledge the The Wrist Geenee was anything more than a Cell-Phone !

When Dick went down to “Skid Row”, nobody was worried about him because he had his Wrist Geenee. So why doesn’t he use it!!!!

Another comment said that Liz was going to send a patrol car down to the area.

But knowing how this strip works, it is mostly likely they are sending “Car 54, where are you????” with officiers Toody and Muldoon. (for you young foks, Car 54 where are you? was a TV comedy on NBC which aired from 1961 to 1963

BillThompson said, “The new Police sign bears a suspicious resemblance to an accordion. Has Police Hooters been infiltrated by a new super-villain? Does the accordion atop the new and chintzy building mean we’ll face the evil landlord Low-rents Welk and his accomplices, A. Juan and A. Thieu?”

I like your new characters!