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

Murder at Rogues’ Gallery. A gathering of ghouls

Made up to look like criminals. Set sail this ship of fools.

Flattop, Shakey, and the Brow. One’s heart could skip a beat

Blackjack. Pruneface. Doubleup. The gathering complete.

Place each man in the hot seat. Just who might spill the beans?

All claim they are innocent, yet we know what that means.

The killer lied to Tracy. What could the motive be?

There upon the desk of Roche, a clue does Tracy see.

Paper had some writing, which made a strong impression

Vital clue! Tracy knew he’d need no rare confession.

Observe and question, then deduce. Know Blackjack is the one

Confronted with the evidence he cannot hide or run.

Thus ends our Minit Mystery. Tip hats to Rick Burchett

We turn to a new storyline, which hasn’t started yet.

Okay, I see that. I just don’t get it.

BJ1: You ain’t the only one.!

I said it was Blackjack’s cosplayer!

This doesn’t seem like enough evidence to win a conviction in a court of law.

Sigh. The only thing we could deduce was how the murderer would be identified.

I like Curtis and Staton’s stories when they create drama. They are good at making characters. They have some rather cartoonish villains that can be fun to watch, but they also have some rather more 3-dimensional characters that we can care about. Which is all good in storylines where we know the culprit from the beginning, or where the journey to a surprise conclusion itself is the point.

But if they’re going to continue this Minit Mystery format, they’ve got to do better than this.

There is a pretty good murder mystery if you all the way back to the beginning of the GoComics archives, a murder on a plane story by Killan and Locher. Of course, that’s a full storyline rather than this compressed format.

When did Tracy did rubbing… a lot of things happened off panel and we are supposed to solve this mystery.

I thought these were supposed to be ones, we the readers could solve….guess I had the wrong idea….oh well, was fun to read anyways

Good morning™, shocked suspects !

Some Midnight Mirror style story here; with the fake Blackjack having killed the fake Dick Tracy while the real Blackjack adores the real Tracy.

Has the jalopy left the station yet?

What a waste of 2 weeks.

I hope the boys enjoyed their vacation to Sesame Place.

Readers here aren’t the only ones who notice how Dick seems to hardly ever bring ’em in but now this guy is calling it out…

https://www.gocomics.com/riphaywire/2018/09/02?ct=v&cti=2243733

Loving the irony of who assists Tracy in the second-last panel.

Very disappointed! Two weeks worth of strips — that’s 15 days and just over 50 panels! — and we were never even told Roche was club treasurer?! Establishing a silencer was used, AND mentioning it more than once, then leaving it dangling as a loose end?!

Don’t get me wrong, I love this strip and think very highly of everyone on the creative team. We’re VERY fortunate that this team doesn’t stick us with a week’s worth of reruns a various points throughout the year in order to give themselves a break. But for the next “Minit Mystery” Joe should consider bringing in a guest writer as well as guest artist. Or how about it being by the winner of a fan-fiction contest? Likely there’s an intern at Tribune Content Agency (they’re a big company so of course there are interns, lot’s of them!) that could screen the entries down to a managable number of finalists that the team could then read and decide on a winner. Of course I also suppose that because they’re a big company there is probably a team of corporate suits who can give a half-dozen knee-jerk legal and/or contractual reasons why it can’t be done. “But you gotta have a dream… ‘cause if you don’t have a dream… how you gonna have a dream come true.”

On that evidence, he’ll be out in a minute…

I bet Chaplin feels a right Charlie…

That ending had a Lance Lawson-esque feel to it.

It has a certain symmetry, as the real Blackjack is a big fan of Dick Tracy.

Good Morning Absent Neil and The I Told You So People!!!

The graphite rubbing was a clue and it did catch the killer. But like a lot of you I wonder where the silencer is???

Matty Square is the upper portrait in the last panel. Who are the others? The only fun to be had in this story was identifying the portraits.

If this was intended for the reader to participate and solve the mystery, it was a huge fail.

Glad this is over. Can we get back to serious business please?

I suspected Blackjack, though my reasoning was in error.

Right now I think I’ll pass on the next Minit Mystery – haven’t seen and don’t expect to see one positive review of the past 2 week’s storyline. Rather, what has been leveled by the faithful is a barrage of criticism as to its lack of clues and dirth of meaningful evidence. I read the comics to be entertained and occasionally challenged, not frustrated and subject to negativity to the max.

All that forensic work, and the case is solved the “old-school” way…

Good morning™, revealers!

Chaplin was the only one named after a comedian that didn’t have family involved in his act. So, it wasn’t all in the family after all.

So what was the motive? I assume Roche was demanding payback of the loans and Blackjack/Chaplin didn’t have the cash. I don’t believe using the club account to set up a loan would be illegal. It’s not like skimming funds into B/C’s account or money laundering. Repayment was expected.

So Roche was embezzling funds from the club as private loans to Chaplin? Why? Was he doing Chaplin a quiet, yet illicit favor? Or was it strictly a criminal endeavor? (Either scenario, Tracy helped out a crook w/ the wardrobe loan.) AND if either one of those scenarios is the case, why would Roche bring the real Tracy into all this…going so far as to personally invite him to the club? AND why was a real dead character actor who has no fixed association w/ Dick Tracy used as the murder victim? Roche was a recurring guest star on Magnum P.I. but don’t see the affiliation ‘tween that P.I. role & a standard 40’s noir who-done-it. These Minnit Mysteries are Mike Curtis’ nadir. He’s not a mystery writer. Team Tracy needs to find another way to fill Joe Staton’s vacation time. Art MUCH better than last guest artist though. If these stints are soft intro’s for new FT artist, Rick Burchett has my vote.

Wonder if they could recruit MAC for the next fill-in or has that ship sailed? MAC could do a tidy & LOGICAL mystery, I have no doubt.

I also sent Bart Bush a Facebook message this morning re. frequency of pop quiz poster on the DT Fan page. Suggested some temperance w/ the sheer bulk of such posts.

AND YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

I think it might have been better if they did the “reveal” yesterday, and use today’s strip to explain how everything went down and why.

This was a bad story. I have decided that I want to follow Dick Tracy, just out of curiosity. There is a certain gentleman who uses his own picture as avatar that amazes me at how he can do mental gymnastics to validate the poor choices Mr. Curtis makes. I think I am starting to enjoy to see just how bad Curtis’s writing is. So I will stick around. At least I can see a difference with another bad written comic, such as Alley Oop: they don’t have the iconic and wonderful Joe Staton as an artist. Another note: this was not a Minit Mystery, because they already set it that Minit Mysteries had clues to be solved. This is Lazy Writing Mysteries. Expect to read more from me. I am sticking around to this awfully written comic!! Ta taa.

Seems to me they need a refresher on what a mystery is and how it is handled in the genre. You don’t bring up things then drop them then hit us with something there was no previous mention of.

Bad writing after a pretty good Sawtooth story. This was one of Curtis’s worst and sloppiest.

Will Joe be back at the drawing board tomorrow?

I said that Tracy would rub the graphite from a pencil on the pad to reveal what was written and who killed him.

I think the portrait under Matty Squared in the last panel is another shot of 88 Keyes, this time without his cap. In the original story, he wore that cap while on the run and hiding out on a farm, but he also had been introduced first at his job at a nightclub, playing the piano with no cap.

Also, back on August 23, there is a half portait right at the edge of a panel which I believe we missed before – I think it’s Mole.

Too bad that the cosplaying “Blackjack” was the murderer, because that reflects poorly on the real Blackjack, whose convoluted values and actions make him one of my favorite characters among the current Villain roster.

I am certainly disappointed with this rushed little story as a supposed example of the Minit Mystery genre, wherein the readers are supposed to be given a fair chance to solve the crime (I think “Ellery Queen” used to do this better, if I remember correctly). Readers had no chance at all to solve the mystery, and only very little chance to identify what clue would prove crucial; the suppressor bit of misdirection might work in a full-length story, but here it was just an irritation: no meaning, no value, no payoff….

so much negativity….. half these complainers couldn’t draw a bath never mind a strip, the art work is great a great replacement if ever needed in the future….. great work rick

The real Eugene Roche did voice work on the Batman cartoon, http://dcau.wikia.com/wiki/Eugene_Roche

This mini mystery reminded me of the ending of “Murder by Death” where the host complains about how key clues are withheld from the reader.