Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 24, 2023

Well, they went and did it. Unless Sprocket and Tracy share a spaghetti dinner in the alley, they managed to totally botch her reappearance in the strip.

The strip gets one Goat head as a review.

Susan’s theme song is an old song titled Barefootin’" :-D

Sprocket is headed right for a big spider…

truly, what a tangled web of a story they weave…

I don’t think I’ll reserve much memory space for this story…

Why hasn’t Mini Warbucks been talking to himself?

Mid story plot departure?

“I got a sugar daddy with a lakehouse, so enjoy your underground lair.”

Good morning™, incurable amnesiacs !

Having a bad memory is great when cops are around. Sabs is too nice a lady to be doing this kind of work. Where are her brains anyway ?

Good morning™, everyone!

“I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!” —Schultz

There is absolutely nothing now to implicate Sprocket in this whole affair. That’s the way Mike Curtis wanted it, according to Wichita1.0.

Well, at least she’s made some friends in case she needs them in the future,

“It’s like Halloween”? Is that a cue for Rikki Mortis to return…?

If the place is abandoned, but has power and water, who is paying for the utilities?!

“Suzy Q Baby I Love You Suzy Q”! (Sorry)!

“Whatever you say, say nothing when you speak about you-know-what. For if you-know-who should hear ya, you know what you’d get. They take you all to you-know-where for you-wouldn’t-know-how-long, So for you-know-whose sake don’t let anyone hear you singing this song.” Colum Sands, from the album Unapproved Road, 1982

I wonder if Little Orphan Annie knows what Daddy BigBucks really does for a living .

Where did the Mole go? I think that’s HIS place…

MOVIE QUOTE

“Your pony and your duck will be sold immediately! No sniveling, now!”

Orphanage headmistress Rafaela Ottiano to Shirley Temple—-CURLY TOP—1935

Any ideas what this place could be? An abandoned hideout of some old Tracy villain perhaps?

Okay,this is the former 198.23.5.11 signing in on a computer that doesn’t have the"red house".

The last two days have moved much faster than the bulk of the story,so I hope some of the grumpys are satisfied.

I hope its not THAT Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis has had enough trouble.

So much for my theory about the fire being natural causes—-looks like Madsen was nuttier than we gave him credit for. With their business and cash reserves burned up, Audie and Sabrina are broke and have to start all over again—-so that IS punishment of a sort.

Sprocket realizes she’d better get back home—-that fire is going to make the papers.Remember to shower the soot off,my Barefoot Queen.

Sabrina and her cousin remind me of Sprocket and her brother in the sense t hat they’re loyal to EACH OTHER through thick and thin.(That was unusual THEN, a Gouldian staple was that crooks would sell out their own Mother).

In the Gould days,four charred bodies would be carried out on rubber sheets.He loved reducing crooks to ashes.

Okay,so where do we go from here?

TO RAY TOLER from the former 198.23.5.11

Any of the old Larence Welk crowd still hanging around Branson? I hear at least half of them set up shop there.

Hello,my name is Mordred. I’ve been down in these tunnels for 11 years and I’m running out of Tic Tacs.

……let Sprocket go her way……and theeeennnnn….open that door, and find out that it’s actually where the boogeyman lives………

Yeti’s place? Abner and Rikki’s old place?

And while they are playing tunnel rats, they aren’t going to rat on each other, it seems. One person in custody might be a rat if he sings like a canary: Madsen.

1-AUDIE SIXCYLINDER FUELINJECTED: Ima stay here, girls. My hair keeps coming and going. Maybe it’ll be permanent if I stay long enough! CHAINRING: Well – looks like you got a nice flat screen to watch so you won’t be bored.

2-SABRA: What’s this switch do? THE WARDEN IN THE PRISON ABOVE: HEY! WHAT GIVES?!?! HE SHOULD BE DANCIN’ AND SMOKIN’ IN THAT CHAIR RIGHT NOW???

3-SABRA: Your hair’s gone again. AUDIE: It’ll return. I have faith!

CHAINRING: Here’s my most fetching hitchhiker pose. Do you think I’ll get a ride? AUDIE: I might let you ride in my truck bed – BUT ONLY IF my goats weren’t back there…

like holloween? a lair for the late Abner Cadaver? I keep wondering how rikki was getting on with her baby.

Holy crap….still more?

So, unless Madsen dimes Audie & Sabrina out, Tracy has no reason right now to try to track them down, presumably all incriminating evidence was destroyed in the fire. & honestly, Tracy chasing Audie & Sabrina doesn’t sound like a very suspenseful plot line. Maybe there’s a bigger villain behind all this? Anything to make this meandering never-ending story more exciting?

What is Sabrina writing on the wall in Panel 1?

“YOU ARE HERE”

OT: With a birthday a week off, I.m increasingly depressed and thinking of a friend who died early in the year Death isn’t exactly new to me (I’ve had friends die from everything from being hit by a train to suicide), but when people I’ve been really close to and are younger than I am start popping off, it makes me really think of my mortality.

I have friends and people I know pass on and after three instances where I almost passed, one from a stroke and two instances of sepsis… I think of my mortality even more, which has caused me to look to the Lord for comfort… don’t feel strange about it… it’s just another part of life that we all eventually have to confront… I’ve made my peace with the Lord… despite all the adversity I go through, I am now content, happy and have my peace of mind at long last… and I give my Lord his due for it all… I hope you feel better about it all, Wichy, hang tough and nut up…

Didn’t Audie get shot in the arm? How come there is no bandage?

As we are near the week’s end, and as the trio of escaped assorted perps part, with the promise of not remembering one another, I rashly venture to surmise that Saturday’s (tomorrow’s) strip may mark the end of this tortured, limping arc.

Who knows what this hidden lair may be or have been? At this point, does it matter? —Only, I guess, if some previous denizen abruptly shows up to challenge the proprietorship of Audie and twitchy little Sabrina (who seemingly can’t wait to get rid of “Susan,” who in turn is only too happy to split while she can).

We can hope that we’ve seen the last of this bunch, for now at least (Tracy seems satisfied with having Leeland Madsen in custody)….

Susan and her husband board the train bound for home. Audie’s operation is an ash heap. He can provide character references for those who worked for him. Where will his character reference come from?