Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 16, 2022

Informant? Armsmen? GrubHub?

Geez, if these dingbats did something other than sit on their rear ends drinking coffee they might realize there’s an insurrection going on!

Someone Loyal? ✨

Dick has a stubby dinosaur hand in panel one! Shelley must have been watching Jurassic park!

I like the way Shelley is drawing Tracy. Nice job.

Good morning™, Substantial discussions !

This is one “talking heads” strip install I really do like.

Good morning™, everyone!

Coffee break time (again), but it seems that Tracy has been busy enough to identify all the council members involved. It’s not clear if he knows who the “high-ranking one” is. One guess about who is at the door. (Thorin seems to be sending Tracy to answer it, so he doesn’t have to answer his own door if he has someone else available to do it.)

a different and cleaner look to Dick by Shelley, I like it… and how DID the Lunarians get hooked on drinking coffee?… and so much of it and so often?… and Dick and Thorin seem to a step or two behind what’s going on with the faction… I would have thought by now that his investigating would have produced a bit more results than what we’re seeing here today, especially during the time he was undercover… perhaps more results of his detecting are forthcoming shortly…

I am surprised that Thorin has no idea who are involved in the plot when he already knew that a faction exists. He should seek asylum at Tracyville or he will be dead fish dead. That’s what usually happens when a coup succeeds.

So.. the Governor doesn’t know who has control of his armed forces? Yeesh…

It’s Sam! “Hey Tracy, I was in the neighborhood. How’s the Moon Brisket?”

You’d think if the Lunarians had the technology to build flying space coupes & vast underground cities, they’d be able to invent doorbell surveillance cameras so they’d know who was at their front door.

Who guessed it yesterday that we’d cut back to Tracy? Wow! The suspense is really high. Good job Mike and Shelley. And Tracy looks great in the last panel

Knock Knockwho’s there?CooCoo WhoCoup d’etat!

Is it about to hit the fan? I kind of think the knock is it.!

Don’t open that door … unless you are prepared Tracy !!!

Could be the execution of Marina was the tipping point for someone else in the group and they decided to slip away and tell Tracy…we shall see

Just hope Tracy has that ring…the “Ring of Power” bwa ha ha haaaaa.

Well thought Tracy, as always!

Shelley’s art HAS been gradually improving and getting better and better as of late, especially with her closeups… yesterday’s Sloe-Gin expression of shock and anger and today’s Dick, especially in the last panel where he is looking over his shoulder… suspicious Dick… and IF it’s Sloe-Gin who is at the door, then there goes logic out the window again, as I can’t believe that after her outburst, the faction would simply and willingly let her walk out and leave the auditorium premises… but we shall see..

Opening the door could be dangerous?

Now this is one of the things that bothers me most about the current state of this comic strip. It’s called Dick Tracy. It’s a detective/law enforcement story. And yet, what have we been shown in the last months? The amb/gov specifically recruited Tracy to help him detect who is behind the insurrection. So we see Honeymoon having some fun with her new friends, we see a moon woman trying and failing to seduce Tracy, we see the inner workings of the break-away group, we see the group’s leader trying to seduce another moon woman, and now we get Tracy reporting his findings to amb/gov. What we don’t see is Tracy in action discovering what he is now reporting. (Except for one random conversation on the street with a passing couple, and one panel showing Tracy covered in a blanket) How does Tracy know the details he is now reporting? How does he now know all the council members that are involved? The whole point of detective fiction is seeing how the detective solves the mystery. This is a fairly interesting story, but very disappointing detective fiction, unless there is some sort of surprise reveal still to come.

I wonder how many of those enforcement type personnel are still loyal to the Ambassador? It looks like Ro-zan and Tesla has the lion’s share in their corner.

If Tracy gets in their way…he’s toast. Would they put the Ambassador and his wife a lunar type prison? Not known to me as to whether they have enough Space Coupes to go around for an invasion of earth.

Maybe it’s Gertie at the door. “Ah heared you Moon folks moved in here. Ah jes’ thought ah’d do the neighborly thang and brung y’all some vittles. Welcome to the planet.”

She did it with Mr. Memory, so anything is possible:

https://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2022/06/11

MOVIE QUOTE—-“Don’t tell them a dame tripped me up”

Dying gangster Humphrey Bogart—KING OF THE UNDERWORLD—1939

Okay,some action coming up soon—-Dick’s outnumbered so how will he get the advantage?

Maybe Influence will show up and hypnotize Roz-An into thinkinghe’s a dog or a cat.

I’d like to think t hat boiling lava pit is here for more than “show”.

I remember an old noir SLEEP MY LOVE 1948 where the first shot was of a 4-story circular staircase—-and I’m thinking—-no way that’s there just for decoration.

Sure enough,at the end the villain took a 4-story fall while trying to kill his wife.

1-THORIN: Coffee Dick? DT: No. It’s just a regular one. OH! Sure…

2-…I’ve been thinking. THORIN: Did you hurt yourself? DT: Huh?

3-THORIN: I hear knocking. DT: In my experience, that means somebody is at the door. Or someone is so scared their knees are knocking together.

THORIN: Nah. Somebody probably just filled the Space Coupe with Regular instead of Ethyl. That’s just the engine knocking.

DT: We used to have lead in our gas to stop that from happening. Not anymore. So I outfoxed those government nannys by putting pencil lead in my gas tank at every fill up.

THORIN: Uhhh, that’s not the same… DT: No knocking from my car! It’s worth all the new fuel pumps I have to buy.

THORIN: Hmmm. Did you have any lead exposure as a kid by chance. DT: Well, I grew up next to a lead smelter in Detroit. Why? THORIN: No reason. Just trying to better understand you…

DT: Sounds like that Space Coupe is still at your door…

“Are you expecting anyone, Ambassador?” “No, normally I have no visitors during the coup planning meetings”

Tomorrow—-Purdy Fallar as lead contestant on THE BACHELOR

As Tracy dangles his teatime theory-tales, someone is at Thorin’s door. It could be Shay-Gin, ready to rat out Ro-Zan, if she somehow managed to get out of the cabal meeting alive and free. It could be a squad of Armsmen loyal to the xenophobic cause, come with orders to vaporize Tracy, “cabal enemy #1,” and maybe Ambassador Thorin, too. Or, maybe we’re being misdirected and it’s just Mysta or Honeymoon (not sure where either of them is supposed to be just now). Or even, I suppose, someone else entirely….

Someone’s at the door!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fGA5lxT6nc