Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 08, 2023

And WHY would Tracy give this information to someone he was arresting???

“Art Dekko didn’t get where he is by not figuring that bullets a few inches from his head were meant for him!”

Good morning™, everyone!

So, Dekko admits that someone may have had reason to shoot at him! That comes close to admitting that he and Kryptonite have had business.

Tracy lets us know that Kryptonite was “known to police” and now they finally got him. I see that Sue Reel is being taken to the station along with Dekko, so she might be charged, too.

A detective story with 2 months of zero mystery or suspense but with tons of unnecessary guests appearances and name dropping.

I wonder,,,,,

This would have made a great strip … on Monday.

Dekko is proving beyond a doubt he’s a typical dumb criminal. He doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut when he needs to.

Maybe the story resolution here will be something to brag about, by not leaving out pertinent information.

Kriptonite’s Krytonite was Dick Tracy !!! The assassin said he wanted to get a chance to kill Tracy and he lost !!!

Looks like Sue is in the back seat already … unless that is Lee but I don’t see the outline of a mustache.

Good morning™, free riders !

They’re dead dog detained now. Will anyone be throwing bail, if they even get the option.

I am giving this Dick Tracy episode…10 raspberries. It is hard to believe that my grandfather and I used to read Tracy faithfully every Sunday in the comics section. The adults used to call it the funny pages. Shelley’s art is on the money but Mike needs to take out an ad in the newspaper for a writer.

I hope the upcoming story with Diet Smith and Daddy Warbucks will be better than this “turkey” which is wrapping up. Oh please don’t tell me…their appearances were just “filler”.

I forgot the person who has been giving a laundry list of Dick Tracy stories, but be advised you can leave out this one with Art Dekko, Sue Reel, Agent 99 and Kryptonite. It sucked!

The art is great today, I like the use of shadows where needed!

Did Tracy get that good of look at Kryptonite was he was ducking Kyrptonite’s firing at him on that roof, or, returning fire?

TRACY: “Then again, we never found a body, and this IS a comic strip. He could’ve ducked into that nearby suspicious deli,but that’s too obvious…”

SAM (speaking from Tracy’s wrist in his best Daffy Duck imitation): “I’ll go check it out! Me! Me! Me! Now! Now! Now!Kosher cole slaw! There’s only enough for ME! YUMMMMMM!”

TRACY (reluctantly): “Well, you can go, since you posted your own bail with this $25,000 bill, but…HEY! Wait a gun-totin’ minute! This is counterfeit ! Another blatant forgery!!!”

CHIEF (amazed at this brilliant discovery) Marvelous, Tracy! How did you figure it out?!?"

TRACY (modestly): Well, I was pretty sure Barney the Dinosaur was on the $67 dollar bill. It should have been Hemlock Holmes on the $25,000!"

Sam, who has been quietly stuffing counterfeit money from Evidence into his pockets pauses and shakes his head in disbelief until his brains rattle and departs to commiserate with some thin sliced deli meat and a celery tonic.

They’ve been after Krypto for a while. I’m going to guess that wouldn’t have made as interesting an arc as this one.

And yes, I changed the icon again. Part of a rejected cover for one of my audio books. AI zaniness.

I don’t see any ambulance or backup police cars. I don’t see any uniformed officers around. Where’s the paddy wagon? I see one squad car with BOTH suspects being taken in together. Tracy, who should be shaking with adrenaline from his fire fight is cool and collected. Why is he not assisting the other cops with the investigation of what happened? Isn’t he the best witness?

Dekko is very chatty and calm while being taken in. Both Tracy and Dekko have egos so big that they each believes themselves so important that they must be the only one drawing fire. It never occurred to Tracy that Dekko might be legitimately afraid of being shot while in police custody.

Does Mike know anything about actual police procedure?

“And that’s my ’lil ’ol wrap-up fer this dreary February week…….hoped you enjoyed it! Tune in next week; until then, Peace Out, pantloads….smell ya later”…..“hey, are we off the air? Good. That’ll hold the little b*stards awhile”………

I am a huge fan of very well written detective novels. When I was in college, my roommate was Anthony Flacco, who became one of the leading mystery and crime novelists in the country.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=anthony+flacco+books&crid=10B73COIDK0B5&sprefix=anthony+flacco%2Caps%2C88&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_14

Then, in graduate school, my main professor was Amnon Kabatchnik, one of the leading experts in mystery novels and plays.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=amnon+Kabatchnik&crid=9AV2EIB31QIQ&sprefix=amnon+kabatchnik%2Caps%2C76&ref=nb_sb_noss

I, myself, have directed and staged over a dozen mystery plays. One thing I have noticed is that the best always produce a truth by gathering the origin, the first step, the predicate. I like these kinds of well written novels, not especially because they are entertaining (most of them are that and I do enjoy the artistic form), but because it provides an interesting way to understand reason and logic. How to make sense out of chaos. What IS the truth?

Something writers forget is that the primary appeal of any story, including a movie, a play, a novel or even a comic strip is the audience identifying in some way with the characters or the situation. We want to relate to them, to see ourselves in them, to have familiarity. We want to see things in the fiction world that are relatable in the real world or there is no way that the story or plot or dialogue will hold our interest. That’s just a fact. Just because Dick Tracy is a comic strip does not mean it should not have elements of procedure and humanity and a proper template with all of the proper steps required in a well-written crime story that we know and recognize. The claim, “It’s only a comic strip” to excuse sloppy writing degrades the art form.

1-ART: That walk to the precinct almost got me killed! Can we take the car now???

2-DT: Huh? He wasn’t shooting at you, dummy! That was Mike Curtis just taking a few shots at the old Marvel Comics HQ. He’s a huge DC fan, ya know…

3-…Anyway, he won’t be a problem anymore. In spite of my urging to surrender, he, uh, turned a hidden 9mm on himself – maybe, depends on accurate I…uh, he was – and then jumped off the building. He’s probably a goner ever though we didn’t find a body and people in Tracyville DO have a tendency to come back from certain death.

ART: HEY! Why isn’t Sue cuffed??? DT: We don’t cuff snitch… I mean, we don’t think she poses a threat because she is cooperating…I mean, WE RAN OUT OF CUFFS! Whew! Almost blew Sue’s cover…

Unfortunately I have to agree that strip’s decline has mirrored that of societal mores in general.

Don’t forget to have Dekko bump his head when you put him in the car.

MOVIE QUOTE—-“Hold out for the first class jewelry.Hang on to your ideals”

Hermoine Gingold to Leslie Caron—GIGI—1958

Just to even things out a little,let’s discuss Gould’s 1968 POSIE story,where he spent THREE WEEKS on a runaway horse and carraige and the driver’s efforts to collect insurance on it!!

Didn’t progress the plot one little bit.

Here’s what will h appen

1.)Sue Reel meets “Jewel Onallit” again.Did they send Lee because they want to keep Sue and Lizz separated?

2.)They give Art Dekko a lie detector test.After 10 minutes,the machine pukes.

3.)Sue Reel guilty of phony animation and KNOWING but not taking part in the Da Vinci plan.

She may figure out she would have been next on Kryp’s hit parade and get off reasonably lightly.By the way,whose name is that shop in?

4.)They put chicken wire across Art’s cell so he can’t crawl out between the bars like Heels Beels.

Fortunately for Art (and Tracy) .. Kryptonite was a TERRIBLE aimer… most snipers don’t miss. (and I’m referring to military snipers)

so Krip was on MCU’s radar already for some previous case… and Dick has no definitive idea as to who Krip WAS after, probably assuming Krip was after Dick himself… unless Art opens his mouth, which I don’t think he will… too much implication for him if he talks…

So, Mustache Suzy went from a chatty conversation to the back seat of Tracy’s car, presumably in cuffs. Sounds like SOP to me.

And we still don’t know why he was called Kryptonite.

Well, obviously it’s because everyone in Tracy’s town has an obsessive compulsion towards all things relating to comic books and comic strips, and the collectable memorabilia surrounding them, and/ or a fetish to dress up in tights or as a fuzzy little woodland creature, and just can’t stop themselves from referencing said items and pastimes several times per day.

Today’s takeaway: the abrupt revelation that the MCU has had an interest in Kryptonite for some time and has been after him. A handy bit of short-term ret-conning. Thank you, talkative Tracy!

That plugs a few of the plotholes, but, like a Tracyville/Chicago street, there are plenty more that need filling before some reader breaks a mental axle trying to negotiate what the story should be, with the help of the comments that do so much of the work trying to keep the plot coherent.

Will “Agent 99” re-emerge as a major player, thus helping to tie together some of the crucial elements that “we” know or have surmised but that the MCU does not, having little or no real evidence to go on? Will Tracy’s case be saved by “coincidence” yet again?

I’m posting this now 3 months after the fact in response to Ray Toler’s first ugly screed above. I’m not replying to him directly because I don’t want a response from him over this. It’s not pleasant to argue with him anymore. But the best argument against Ray’s screed is from Ray himself, from over 6 years ago. You can see it here:

https://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2016/09/18

It’s so good it deserves to be quoted in full:

“If exact police procedure was always followed in fiction, there would be no TV police or detective shows. Heroes always find themselves in danger seemingly too great to surpass. It is the fact that they do overcome these odds that make them heroes.”

There can be no better refutation of the overly nitpicking, hypercritical nonsense from the Ray Toler of 3 months ago than from the Ray Toler of over 6 years ago.