Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 27, 2023

Sam and Dick have turned into toys in panel one.

Please don’t tell me Shelley did a great job today.

It’s terrible!

Sure Sam, sure, they’ll definitely get your prints off the wrapper!

“We got a clear set from a ‘Sam Catchem’.”

“Sounds dangerous, send SWAT.”

This story is being made up as they go along, isn’t it?

No one in team Tracy has a clue how to end it.

Good morning™, everyone!

So, now he puts it in a Ziploc bag! Anyway, let’s see what Tracy can learn from the Argos regional manager.

Greeings and salutations, fellow Coppers with no backup!

So, Tracy’s going to meet with the regional Manager solo. He apparently has no clue what he’s about to get into. I hope he’s good at dodging bullets being shot from two directions. He may have his hands too full to worry about apprehending Sprocket. I’m assuming it’s Audie he’s meeting and if so, will he get there before the Mad Shooter does?

Good morning™, tampered evidence gatherers !

Good luck sorting out those co mingled finger prints. If Sam gets the urge to pick up a granola bar on the way will he absent mindedly toss both wrappers ?

Not sure what the “Argos regional manager” can tell them that Anders didn’t. The again, I’m not sure about anything in this “story” anymore, other than Tracy & Sam seem unable or unwilling to follow the one solid lead in this entire storyline — a lit-up TV station drawing power in a run-down abandoned section of town.

If there was a lot of activity in this building, Sam may get more prints than he bargained for. Especially if some are overlapping others. The crime lab can sort it out.

The lab will be able to get Sam’s fingerprints from it at least.

Crimestoppers Tip: Wear your disposable vinyl gloves when examining a potential crime scene.

This has been moving so slowly I’ve forgotten what the original crime was. “Moving too slowly in a comic strip,” maybe?

So Sam is handing off the baggie with the wrapper in panel 2, and then Tracy in panel 3 has the baggie and tells Sam to “work on it” (is analyzing evidence something he learned from one of his many previous careers?) So panel 4 would be Dick giving i right back to Sam?

Okay, completely off (my) mark here. I wrote no candy wrapper, no mention of fingerprints, and I had them going to the directly to the station, where the endgame was already in progress (having started when Madsen arrived at the station in a state of high paranoia over the police car and decided it time to cut out). Evidently the dirty dealing at Argos went beyond Anders, as I’d worked it up.

The warehouse was initially written as just a red herring to indicate that Tracy is capable of a wrong guess (a trademark of my writing is the heroes either have pronounced flaw or make occasional errors — case in point, being the OTHERWORLD books, in which the male lead is terrified of heights and is pushed off a 200-foot cliff, forced to travel in a ramshackle balloon, and required to scale a vertical rock spire).

Evidently the intent is to stretch this storyline 1-2 months more.

In spite of poorly handling possible evidence, I’m bettin’ dollars to donuts that Sprocket’s prints will come off that wrapper, much to Tracy’s surprise…

z z z z z z z z z . . . .

1-DT: DAMM IT SAM! I TOLD YOU NOT TO RUN THE CAR THROUGH THE CAR WASH! NOW YOU’VE GONE AND SHRUNK IT!

2-SAM: Oops. Will you validate the receipt so I can get reimbursed?

3-DT: Oh, fine. I’m sorry I lost my temper. After all, you found the evidence that will crack this case wide open. SAM: About that. I lost it. Will this wrapper from the snack I just ate be ok?

DT: DAMM IT SAM! NOW WE’RE BACK TO A SINGLE PIECE OF STUCCO EVIDENCE! SAM: About that…

MOVIE QUOTE

“Ladies, could you spare a coin for a moral cretin?”

Peter Lorre—TALES OF TERROR—1962

Where’s Tradewinds309 at??? One of the few who appreciated my AltTakes has disappeared. I WON’T LET THAT HAPPEN! If you’re waiting for some kind of organ donor, Trades, let us know. I’ll see if Gweeds or Fire have a spare one. (Judging from the way Gweeds frugally fixes old things though, I imagine that all of his organs are already second hand. And Fires’ – well, you wouldn’t want those)

Seriously though – fingers crossed that all is well with you.

Do Moon people eat Mars Bars?

Or do Mars people eat Moon Bars?

Okay,we’ve got a chance of chocolate coated fingerprints in a slow moving 3-panels.

Gould always had plastic wrappings on cigarette packages leaving perfectly clear prints—-but do they ACTUALLY?

Must shepherd a friend to the doctor’s office tomorrow—-shall return Monday the 31st—-when I am certain SOMETHING will be all o ver.

And SOMEBODY say a kind word about the late Groovy Grove.

So they’re taking the old car, no nudge bar.

Not going to ever get another KIA from the local outfit a block away. First, we bought a car to be shipped from Korea, were told it’d take month to reach here, then found out it had been pre-sold by another salesman, who had forgotten to mention this to anyone.

o we went for another, different shade of silver an upgraded model. Then they rescheduled the delivery date 5 times. AND forgot to bleed the brake lines when it came (coasting into oncoming traffic with no brakes was fun). Then came the discovery that the 2024 model already had a recall (which no one mentioned) before we bought t.

Well, today I went in on the recall, which amounted to an hour o reprogram the electronics. So, what else did they do? Lost my electronic key. another half hour before they located it.

SAM could have done a quicker job of that.

Have to agree that panel 1 is not the best art work (tiny car, rigid figures) and that panel 3 is somewhat confusing (the brim of Tracy’s fedora is unfathomable, looking more like a circular lamp, and that hand, if Tracy’s left, has the most swollen pinky I’ve seen in a long time). And I think most of us agree that clumsy, thoughtless, lazy detecting by Sam Catchem (to be redubbed “Sam Loosem”) has contaminated the Granola wrapper by picking it up with his naked hand before bagging it (though he does look good in panel 2)! And what the heck does the “Argos regional manager” have to offer that is relevant to anything?!

All in all, not the arc’s best day (and that is saying something)….

Well at least the crook is eating healthy .

with lateness, cell one, in respect to Sam they should have shaded his face too. Even amateur artists know it’s near impossible to draw small faces.