Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 18, 2023

Yep, no splat. No waiting Sam either, it’s a . . . creepy haunted building?

Well, I was wrong about Madsen biting the dust, although that doesn’t diminish how implausible the action the past few days has been and how erratic the whole story has been the past few months!

yeah, Mad Maddy will be doing an unintended kamikaze from the uppermost floor and do a swan dive to the ground floor…

and if he has enough speed to him, he might even make the basement in record time…

a SPLAT of a different sort…

Good morning™, decrepit derelicts !

How far of a chase was it to get to this place ?  How many fire engines must a man dodge to get his stooge ?

Good morning™, everyone!

I’m guessing that this abandoned building is just across the road from the abandoned TV station. This city has an entire neighbourhood of abandoned buildings! It looks like it has three floors, right? (Not counting any possible basement)

The candy bar gave Madsen an energy rush. He beat the fire truck.

I can see it now, a shoot-out taking place on every other floor.

Going up is never a good idea, because you have to come down some time!

Tracyville seems full of these places. Seems like the planning committee really stinks at their job

Sam has just wandered into “Blade Runner”

On Tuesday, 8/15, Madsen was standing behind the window in the television station, relatively near where Tracy stood. Tracy reported to Sam he was getting no life readings from his wrist tricorder/computer/radio/television/holographic projection/and social media device. No reading, and Madsen was close. Now Madsen has had a good head start, has been out of Tracy’s line of sight. But today Tracy’s miracle device can assure him it’s found Madsen (and not some homeless guy crashing in the vacant building) and pinpoint direction.

Did they switch writers in mid-week?

I’m guessing those are “motion lines” supposedly indicating that my boy Madsen fell? Cuz at first I thought they were pillars…and how the hell is Sam supposed to know what “building” tracy is talking about? And maybe it’s just how I’m looking at the perspective, but that looks a HELLUVA lot more than 20 feet

perfect… he’s either planning a surprise attack or he panicked, got lost and cornered himself.

So is Madsen going to make like Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces in the abandoned warehouse? When is Father Pat O’Brien showing up?

What goes up must come down .

No Splat-sen. Instead we have a Bat-sen up there scaring the pigeons.

Maybe we’ll get a Tracy shootout after all.

“He’s been carried off by a giant pigeon. Weirdest thing.”

1-SAM: Looks like lunchtime – you hungry, babe?

2-DT: BABE?!?! I’M IN HOT PURSUIT HERE! SAM: Oh sorry, Tracy. I was talking to Officer Hotty and forgot this thing was on.

23 OTHER NEARBY OFFICERS WITH WRIST THINGEES: I could eat. Count me in. Where we going? I feel like chicken. Is it too early to have a cocktail? Someone will have to spot me – I forgot my wallet. You ALWAYS say that…

3-DT: THANKS EVERYONE! THERE GOES MY ELEMENT OF SURPRISE! Damit! I just ran two blocks and now I have to climb stairs! Hmmmm…

TRACY TO ALL UNITS – SUSPECT HAS ESCAPED! STAND DOWN. And somebody drive over and pick me up. I could eat if we find a good burger somewhere…

HOLY SHAMOLEY!! Did he beat that truck? That boy’s fast!

Huh, pulled a fast one and let him live. I thought the truck got him…

yesterday it was a fire truck in his way, how difficult was it to go around the back of a freaking engine?

Ok, back from the Urgentcare… got the prescription for the inhaler done (forgot to pick it up…I’ll get if later), my lungs sound pretty clear, ekg is fine, oxygen levels are perfect, chest xray looks good…recommended going to a PCP (my current one sucks) and have them do a CAT scan for the nodule…she said they couldn’t even see it on the xray…aside from that (and I told her about the dizziness and the intermittent sharp pain in my neck) everything looked fine, stopped at the comic book store on the way home but the guy screwed my order and didnt pull the issue I wanted, so he reordered it for me (Alpha Flight….Canada’s answer for The Avengers…4 issue mini-series, came out on the 16th but is sold out already), and I put air in my tires…they’re all at 34 now :)

Not quite sure why Madsen ran back into a building, where he can be trapped & cornered, after losing Tracy on the street thanx to the fire truck. But then very little has made sense since this story started in a prison, six, seven years ago now, it seems like.

I suppose Sam’s wrist device, like Tracy’s, has a kind of GPS app that allows them to track each other’s locations. I further suppose that Leech ducked into the first abandoned building he came to “on the other side of the street” after beating the fire engine that did, however, delay Tracy. Now, as Tracy enters the derelict multi-story office/apartment building, hotel, department store, or whatever it once was, he determines (by wrist device GPS?) that Madsen has run upstairs in his frantic attempt to escape. But running upstairs leaves Leeland cut off from further flight, by Tracy and eventually other cops below. This sets the stage for a climactic gun battle or hand-to-hand struggle up along that creepy stairwell, with a high probability of Madsen taking a fatal plunge to his messy demise (which of course we will not actually see for ourselves but only hear about, ‘cause we’re too delicate for such non-PC violence, fer criminy sakes!)