Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 02, 2018

Good morning™, excited kids!

It sounds like Crystal Austin is all set for her new life. Mr. Bribery is largely out of the picture now and I don’t suppose that Polar Vortex even knows.

No Ugly Crystal.

Now she has a new father.

Hi, Crystal Austin.

Only Bribery called her ugly till she called herself that. Now she can be the kind of person she will now like to be.

Good morning™, delirious twins !

I’m bursting at the seams with caramel syrupy goodness !

Panel #2 reminds me of … something …

https://youtu.be/JelJ9PTv2e4

Such mush! I miss Dick Locher!!!

Sorry NG49, this is “more than I’s can stands”

The other day we first saw Crystal’s neck and today there’s a hint of cheekbone. At this rate do we dare hope that by Groundhog Day we might see an earlobe? Or perhaps even (gasp!) the bridge of her nose? Since I live near Vegas I’ll happily wager that if we ever do see her face, in true “Ugly Duckling” fashion she will have grown to be a very pretty young lady. But who am I to figure, I’m just a schmaltzy old romantic…

She looks so happy that I almost forgot for a moment that she’s only a cartoon character.

OK, Crystal’s ecstatic, Honeymoon is so happy for her friend she’s starting to look like something created for Disney, Lafayette is “new papa” happy… this is Tracytown – too much happiness is against the law here! Cue the drug dealer villains…

He’s buying a house? Just how well does a job as “Police Informant” pay? I mean Pouch has to sell balloons to make ends meet…

This just made my day!

BLLLAAARRRGGHHH!!!!!

Are we ever gonna see her face?

As an adoptive father, I applaud today’s happy sentiment. Yesterday’s, too.

I sense some skulduggery, probably not by Crystal, down the road.

Love today’s strip

It’s not a real good sign when the comments are actually more interesting than the strip. Can your say Katy Keene kids?

Condolences to Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams who’s teenage son died tragically of a fentanyl overdose. Prayers to all those hurting.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/dilbert-creator-scott-adams-teenage-stepson-dies-of-fentanyl-overdose/ar-BBNP3Uc?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=DELLDHP17

Appears dad does alright as a snitch.

Memo to Joe & Mike: It’s not 1948 anymore. Dick Tracy no longer appears in hundreds of newspapers read by people ages 8 to 80. My guess is the average Tracy reader in 2018 is someone who grew up reading the strip when newspapers still existed and still carried daily strips with running narratives. To put it another way, in a Venn diagram the intersection between Tracy readers & adolescent girls is so small you need a radio telescope to find it. Just saying.

Probably more sugary than we need today. But this is, I strongly suspect, just to set up the contrast between now, full of joy at a new-found relationship and name, and what will happen then, when Volkov’s Nefarious Plot sucks Crystal in and turns her (we hope only temporarily) into a drug addict. Even worse, her new daddy may sacrifice himself trying to save her: how tragic a tale will Mike and Joe present to us?