Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 13, 2018

Good morning™, death checkers!

As therese_callahan2002, was saying yesterday, he’s “really most sincerely dead.” We have a few days of wrap up before the Minit Mystery starts on Sunday, but it looks like the strip won’t have a lot more to say about Sawtooth, so I’m going to try to start writing my analysis with the release of tomorrow’s strip.

Sawtooth is deceased.

Shot by Tracy and Ketchem.

A fine way to die.

If Dick Tracy was a Wild West gunfighter, he’d have so many notches he’d be lucky to have a grip on his pistol.

Good morning™, closed sawmills !

Just as well. He couldn’t handle stewing in jail when there is a whole forest of humanity, everywhere he goes, to be chop sawed.

Those shots are very well grouped. Sawtooth should have had some plates in his chest. But I think they must have gotten him in the throat.

Check out this First season Wild Wild West:

“The Night of the Steel Assassin” (Ximes Torres, now the world’s first cyborg, plans to assassinate President Grant in New Mexico as part of his revenge scheme. He fails, is presumed dead.)

James Wesley Malone is probably Sawtooth’s real name

Sawtooth died of lead poisoning, 38 caliber

Now comes the paperwork.

Just a wee bit anticlimactic.

Shockingly so. ✨❤️✨

This is Dick Tracy, Saw Tooth will be back next week.

One shot brought Sawtooth down?

Tony Montana he ain’t!

I may be wrong about police procedures in this day and age, but wouldn’t/shouldn’t Tracy have contacted Minot police before shooting it out in a Minot cemetery? How does he have any jurisdiction in another town in another state? Oh, I know it’s only a comic strip! But one that has pretenses (sometimes) of representing activities in a real universe. It just seems to me that Tracy and Sam should be in a whole lot of jurisdictional trouble.

He’s Dead, Jim.

I’m still not buying it. When Inspector Ishida executed the search warrant and learned that Sawtooth was likely headed to Minot, he should have contacted the local authorities in Minot and told them that first. He should also have told Tracy what the search turned up, since he had been working the case, but Tracy and Sam should not have driven the hundreds of miles into a different state to make the arrest themselves. The cops there should have told them in no uncertain terms to go home. The Major Crimes Unit is not a national police force!

ONE of us made a fatal shot, Tracy. and the other fired six times into the headstone. What’s it made of? Styrofoam? I don’t there’d be bullet holes in marble.

Sawtooth bit the big one. So ends the career of another Dick Tracy villain.

In the immortal words of Darth Vader: NOOOOOOOO!

I’m a little surprised Matty Squared wasn’t involved in doing Sawtooth in, as revenge for killing his “father.” But maybe that’s being held back for the next Bribery story.

Asked why they shot Sawtooth 68 times, Dick Tracy told Wendy Wichel, “That’s all the bullets we had.”

-after Sheriff Grady Judd

IMHO this is one of the best-constructed stories Mike has written. It had action and drama. It led to a final shoot out and ended in Gouldian fashion with the villain going down.

I enjoyed the lead up with the death of Glitch although I wish we would have at least seen the shadow of the deed or something—same thing with Grimm. Seeing these incidents would have made Sawtooth seem even more deserving of his fate.

I liked the participation of Tess and the whole fight at Tracy’s house. I liked the use of Austin, Lizz, and the sub-plot of Crystal’s parentage as a break in the action while Tracy and Sam went on the chase.

All in all, I think this was one of Mike’s best and Joe’s artwork throughout was also outstanding (particularly yesterday’s silent page enhanced by Shane’s excellent coloring).

Again folk, this is a comic strip, other than continuity errors, normal rules don’t apply. Analyze jurisdictions, warrants etc. all you want, Dicko do what and where Dicko do. Also, most humans can’t fly, but don’t tell Clark that. Want “reality”, watch Big Brother (NOOOOT)

Of course Sawtooth met his demise today! Friday the 13th done come on a Monday this month!

Hey Sam, I paid off the cab driver & sent him on his way. Since there are no witnesses around, what say we split this cash? Nobody will ever know! See if you can find a shovel. He paid for this plot, so why not get rid of him right here.

I would note that Sam does not say Sawtooth was shot only once; what he says is that one shot was fatal. The body slumped over the rigged, hinged tombstone with six impact-marks is iconic; maybe “James Wesley Malone” really is his real name (in any case, it makes me think, every time I see it, of John Wesley Hardin, one of the most notorious gunmen of the Old West; raised with Confederate sympathies, he killed anywhere from 27 [by contemporary press accounts] to 42 men [his own claim] before being shot dead from behind in 1895). Sawtooth is dead fish dead, and paperwork/rehash may fill the rest of this week, since five days seems too little to open any new sub-arc….