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

Freckles there seems uncertain about the new girl. Sprocket really seems uncertain about the Daddy Warbucks clone. Aaa, she’ll be running the place in a couple days.

Good morning™, all!

She still doesn’t really know anything about the job, except that it’s selling, which was written in the want ad. At least she has seen the oddly-behaving boss now.

“Any questions?” “What time’s coffee break?” “Coffee is for closers.”

what is that supposed to be on Sabrina’s t-shirt?…

Good morning™, perplexing personalities !

Sprocky will certainly keep an eye on this turkey, buzzard.

I thought that was Liz undercover!

Shazam! This guy gives another dimension to the term “thinking out loud”.

Conversation between Susan and Sabrina. Susan: your boss sure is strange, I noticed he has no head phones on who is he talking to? Sabrina: " He’s strange and we notice, strange, just the way he is". Or Sabrina could go Run DMC and say " It’s like that and that’s the he is".

What could top today’s scene? Seeing this guy drink from a thermos the same brand of coffee, they have at MCU. Uh-huh…that’s it! His symptoms came from drinking coffee loaded with caffine. All the more reason to switch to decaf.

When Susan gets back to the hotel or where ever She and Adam are staying. Adam: How did it go today? Susan: Fine, the boss has two-way conversations with himself. I can adjust to it. Adam: two-way conversations? Susan: yeah, the guy starts and finishes them. Adam: you don’t think he has post traumatic stress syndrome? Susan: I don’t think so, no body there mentioned if he had been in the military. He could be one of those “trust fund babies”. Probably couldn’t handle the social status.

Who’s perfect? Susan (Sprocket) or Sabrina? And what coat?

This story has gotten tedious rather quickly

“Who is that guy?” Susan whispered to Sabrina as Audie walked by, muttering to himself.

“He’s this crazy guy I hired to just walk through with a clipboard every now and then.”

“Why?”

Sabrina dropped her voice, “Well, some of what we do here is a bit sketchy. I tell everyone he’s in charge – so if the cops raid the place everyone points to him as the boss and the rest of us just claim we’re following orders. He’s so loopy he thinks he is in charge.”

“Didn’t work at Nuremberg.” Susan thought to herself as she planned to not come back tomorrow morning.

He’s talking to Perfect Tommy and Buckaroo?

I’m liking the girl in green next to “Susan.” I hope she plays a major part in this story instead of being a one-off background character.

So I’ll get an unpaid day of training listening to the phone scammers?

Sprocket likes to be in touch with mother earth and she’s thinking Audie is in touch with some other planet.

MOVIE QUOTE—-“Where else can I always be sure of a congregation this size?”

Prison Chaplain Charles Bickford—-MUTINY IN THE BIG HOUSE—1939

SPROCKET—“Oh,great.My boss is Lex Luthor on a bad day!”

The gal with the freckles looks suspiciously like the one Sam saved from being killed at the “Apparatus Deli”.

What about the elephant in panel two?

Audie is so far gone that it is amazing that he can hold any job.

1-SABRA: You’re in my chair. CHAINRING: Yeah. Shows initiative – like I’m after your job. GREEN SHIRT: Wow. She must’ve been born in a chicken coop to be that “cocky”.

2-AUDIE MURPHY: TALK TO THE HAND ‘CAUSE THE EARS AIN’T LISTENING! HAND: I AIN’T LISTENING EITHER! EARS: I’M LISTENING BUT I’M NOT HEARING – YOU KNOW, LIKE SHERLOCK HOLMES SAYING “YOU SEE BUT YOU DON’T PERCEIVE”

HAND: OH YOU’RE SO CLEVER, EARS! SMACK! TRY TO DO THAT! EARS: OWWW!

NOSE: sniff I SMELL FEET!

oh he’s talking on phone

One unanswered question—does Adam Austin KNOW who Sprocket is, or has she kept her disguise on for three years?

Shout out to Buckaroo Banzai and Perfect Tommy!

Boiler room mise en scène is well set for “Susan Keats,” though nominal supervisor Audie is a disturbing note for anyone not used to his auditory hallucinations. (Speaking of which, what percentage of Dick Tracy readers, a demographic skewed to the older side, will have recognized a line from a 1984 cult film, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, a line not even mentioned in the IMDB “Quotes” section?)

I still find reading Audie difficult, and am not at all sure whether he will eventuate as a villain or not (maybe just an unfortunate bystander when the smoke clears [not a reference to Canada being on fire and U.S. air fouled not only on East Coast, which gets the most news coverage from media based there, but also in the Midwest] and someone else has been the prime malefactor of this story as it lurches along from scene to unrelated scene)….

Nobody else gets the Buckaroo Banzai reference in panel 2? sigh