Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 30, 2023

Good morning™, all!

It’s a clue! A clue, stucco’d in the corner of the floor.

Just like at that building we just left?

shaped stucco?… beats ME…

the schitt-eating grin on Dick’s face makes me wonder what he’s making of this clue and what HE knows that I DON’T……

Good morning™, mysterious clues !

Now really, Dick, how many stucco buildings are there in town ?  I imagine he and Sam will head over to the call center and that could be a stuccoed structure. I hope the find/connection will be credible and believable.

Shaped stucco! That explains everything!

Riffing on Sherlock Holmes are we?

This indicates the murder was done by a stoned employee !

The murderer did not stucco around .

What look is Shelley trying to achieve with Tracy today? He looks like he’s a failed kindergarten cut and paste project. What is that gray slime around his hand?

Maybe she’s trying to distract us from the ridiculous stucco revelation.

If so then nice try, but nothing could do that!

It’s also evidence, and as such tracy SHOULDN’T be handling it without gloves and an evidence bag

“Sam, I think the person we’re looking for is a master builder.”

I grew up in a house made of stucco.

The killer is Ben Grimm?

“I noticed it when we were here earlier, before the murder. So it has nothing to do with the crime. I meant to tell Anders that the cleaning service Argos used did a bad job.”

X-RATED O.T.: Waiting for feedback from the (possibly sinister) Animation Cabal. Last night, I ran into a request to include adult thees. Which, IMHO, would limit markets to pitch the end product to. Plus, I don’t do adult content by personal preference.

I think I’m becoming hyperaware of the art … what weird position is Sam standing in, in panel one? Elbows bent 90 degrees and fists held at the waist?

This is going right to the top of Dick’s World Famous Stucco Collection. Right next to amorphous stucco and quick-dry stucco.

♪♪ Down in the corner,

Out from the wall,

Where the stucco is layin’

Just for Tracy’s eyes to fall…. ♪♪

Apparently stucco wasn’t applied to the outside of the freight office building, so it is out of place. But Gweedo has a point. Is stucco that rare in Tracyville that finding it in the freight office is a major clue?

1-SAM: WHAT’D YA FIND? WHATD YA FIND? DT: Another body no one noticed. I can still feel the heat coming off it so it hasn’t been dead long.

2-…Finding missed evidence like this that nobody else noticed is why I’m great.

3-SAM: So, shot like the owner here? DT: Nope. Stoned to death. We’re looking for an old Testament eye-for-an-eye killer.

SAM: Oh… or maybe a fundamentalist Mus… DT: SHUT UP! WE DON’T GO THERE!!! They’re touchy.

“You can put up any kind of walls you want. You can even get stucco – oh, how you can get stucco!” (Groucho Marx, The Cocoanuts, 1929)

I like the angle and shading in P1. The gloves are a nice touch.

I sure hope we’re not headed for the “giant hands Tracy” of Mr. Locher fame.

An out-of-left fielder.

In 1961,trained panthers were being used to commit crimes and gangster Trusty Hubbub was complaining the cats were destroying the expensive furniture in his apartment.

I saw the same kind of “curved supercouch” IN A Bloomingdale’s catalogue today—-FOR $5,000.00.

MOVIE QUOTE—-“You can get any kind of a home you want, You can even get stucco. Oh,HOW you can get stucco!”

Groucho Marx—-THE COCONUTS—1929

Tracy’s expression in Panel 2

“See,Sam?That’s why I’m Number One and y ou’ll always be Number Two!”

Okay, BACKUP MOVIE QUOTE!

“Oh,Richard,we’re spies!”

Joan Crawford to Fred Mac Murray—-ABOVE SUSPICION—1943(she likes the idea)

OT: Waiting for a call fro the animation product people. I’m getting rinky about some of the things they want.

wasn’t Stucco one of the Marks Brothers?

(Relieved) Parting of the way with the animation people. I get to keep the up-front money, and they keep my format and character ideas. Turned out they hope to sell it to Netflix (don’t get me started on them) and were slanting it for a mature audience (something I wasn’t told up front). Not too unhappy, so long as my name isn’t in the credits if they succeed with production and marketing.

Remember that Elvis hit…stucco on you?

The new baddie is Plaster Puss. Has a face like 9 3/4 miles of bad road, and he can never be easily ID’d because kids keep scrawling graffiti all over his face, and that changes weekly.

@ charliefarmrhere

Called N-G this afternoon ………………… and now three hours later…

He had his left baby toe removed a couple days ago and is home. He intends to do a story insert tonight.

Strikingly fine art and angles today; Orson Welles would have been proud! Panel 1, we get the POV of the piece of stucco looking up at looming Tracy and Sam. Think German Expressionist cinema.

Panel 2. superb Detective Tracy, detecting!

And in panel 3, we’re looking through Tracy’s insightful eyes, seeing the shaped stucco fragment/clue, and puzzled Sam beyond.

I must admit, Tracy is well ahead of me, as I do not how the sherd of shaped stucco will help solve the murder of that dirty little coward Mr. Anders and/or tie into the phone scam investigation…..