Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for December 04, 2023

The light bulb finally goes off.

Ohhh, hope I’m the first today to complain about how boring this story is. Don’t want to disappoint my female groupies!! LOL!

“Sorry Tess I happened to be zapped to another dimension by the powers that be”

I knew it! Tracy’s body language shows he’s grown cold and uncaring towards poor, suffering Tess.

She should leave him!

Why is The Batman’s shadow behind the sofa?

Strange lighting have they a fireplace going?

That long box she was carrying contains a sword!

FINALLY!! WELL GLORY BE!!!

Dicks rapid departure is the first action of any kind in an EC DT penned story!!

Kudos all around!!!

Errol saves the day again. I love Errol Flynn swashbucklers

Ah the old trope of remembering vital clue when someone else mention something about it. But it fail when audience has already knews the obvious long ago. Looks like all focus is on murder weapon instead of actual and logical ways of detectiving. Big fail.

A rapier.

Good morning™, all!

Tracy has finally clued in to what Xaviera Libris’s Olympic sport might be! Note that her Olympic sport has never been mentioned in the story that we have been reading. We have just made assumptions, based on her yearbook quotation.

I wonder what the judge will say when Tracy requests a warrant & lists as probable cause an idea he got while binge watching TV.

Good to see we still have Tess Trueheart, or any of the original characters, for that matter.

I love those Errol Flynn movies! (Especially the ones with music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold…)

I guess DT doesn’t like Errol Flynn movies.

Do swashbucklers swash buckles? Or do they buckle swashes?

Why is it called swashbuckle?

Swashbuckler – Wikipedia

Etymology. “Swashbuckler” is a compound of “swash” (archaic: to swagger with a drawn sword) and “buckler” (a small shield gripped in the fist) dating from the 16th century.

Good morning™, disappearing acts !

One minute he’s here the next he’s gone. Who was that unmasked man ?

Shelley done some nice living room scenes. I like the rock wall behind them, and all THIS on a cops salary ? ? ?

I REALLY LIKE THIS STRIP. Slow and east and my old friends.

Times must be tough when Tess and Tracy take turns drinking from one mug of coffee or is it coca? Empty space on the sofa…he must have left the popcorn on the kitchen counter.

Tess probably just tipped him off about Libris without knowing it.

Wow! Tracy really doesn’t like Errol Flynn.

There is a sword in the long case!

Apparently Libris is actually an alien, perhaps one off the moon people or a race more advanced, who transported Dick away !She was stealing the books and their minds for cosmic history.

And the penny drops, as we said in England.

And the penny drops.

This is the moment where, in the old “Ellery Queen” TV series, Ellery would blink and say, “That’s it!” And then he’d turn to the camera and address the audience: “I’ve figured out how the murder was done, and who did it! And if you’ve been paying attention, you have too!”

I have to admit that I wasn’t paying as much attention as some of the other commenters, who made the epee connection long before I did, but whether I anticipate the detective or not, this moment of detective satori is a traditional part of classic whodunnits, and this one is amusingly done.

To borrow a phrase from Billy Joe Armstrong… wake me up when September comes (cuz I’m pretty sure we’ll still be suffering thru this)

The rapture has happened!

Of course, Tess solves the mystery.

Boing !

Another Minute Mystery: The Case of the Fleeing Flatfoot!

Errol Flynn was slightly before my time, I believe, but I remember the movie posters with him sword in hand fighting the bad guys…and fencing…

You can hear the thunderclap of the air rushing in to fill where Tracy was sitting.

Oh, oh oh…..I’ve got the connection. The Errol Flynn film they were watching was The Sea Hawk which featured actor Ian Keith….who played Vitamin Flintheart in the Dick Tracy films! He’s the killer!

yipes, he disintegrated. :o

Did Tess bring clarity to what the murder weapon is perhaps? ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ ͠⁠°⁠ ͟⁠ʖ⁠ ⁠°͠⁠ ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

That is a huge cup of coffee Tracy left behind……………….

As if the readers hadn’t figured it out 3 weeks ago…

Tracy hates actioh movies. It’s the suspense that kills you!

ALIEN ABDUCTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sam finally makes his move to take Tracy’s place.

Next week? LIL’ SAM AND HIS PALS!

DARNIT, TRACY! STOP HANGING OUT WITH THE SHADOW! HE’S RUBBING OFF ON YOU!

“HONEY! I thought we agreed no more triple chili burritos!!”

(door slams)

This trope of having the detective at home, away from the case and therefor not thinking about it as hard, when something his mate says or does triggers a connection, is a familiar and enjoyable part of detective fiction. I like it.

Ed McBain did this often in his 87th Precinct novels.

Spoiler Alert:

Once Steve Carella and his wife Teddy were playing word games at home, and joking about how some words sound like other words. McBain wrote, “Neither of them knew how close they had come.” The victim had spoken the word “carpenter” several times before he had died. But he was an immigrant gentleman with a heavy accent, and when Steve Carella spoke to his wife over the phone the next day, hearing her accent, it dawned on him that the victim had been saying “car painter”, identifying the man who had killed him.

Another time there was another detective on the squad who realized, after spending time with his girl friend, that a female murder victim’s body had been dressed by a man who obviously had no knowledge of women’s intimate apparel.

Jimmy Buffet’s and X , Both PIRATES looking at 40 well she looks 40-ish.

Also love Tess in those “Laura Petrie Pants”.

1-TESS: Dick…it’s been a while since we… DT: Read my body language, Tess.

2-TESS: Oh, I’ll read your “body” from beginning to end until it has a …

3-…happy ending…Dick? Dick? door slams Where’d you go??? Oh well. Looks like it’s Domo Arigato, Mr. Vibrato time again…

Brooding? As easy as this case is, Tracy is brooding over it?

Is Det. Tracy just fed up with stabbings, or did he finally put 2 and 2 together? It’s a sword in the case? So the letter opener was a red herring?

just another instance of illogicality within the strip…

MOVIE QUOTE

“Who’s it gonna be, them or us?”

“THEM!!”

Randolph Scott&Forrest Tucker—-THE NEVADAN—1950

I thought only Batman could do that

That’s the basement rec room.You’re SUPPOSED to be down there with the lights low.It’s not the Tunnel Of Love, but it’ll do in a pinch

With a better knowledge of classic films, Cate would carry a fashionable unobtrusive walking stick—and Dick and Tess would be watching “Gilda”.

I’d spend an evening on the couch with tess.

Better switch to Decaf!!!

Bingo! Inspired to a flash of recognition by Tess’s casual (and interrupted) description of an old Errol Flynn movie, Tarcy bolts from the TV couch to get back on the case and check out the case Libris often trundles around with.

Gad! A sword! D’oh! What have I been missing?! A sharp-pointed stabby-thing! Oy, the porridge thickens!

Are we leading up to a climatic swordfight between college fencer Tracy and Olympic alternate Libris? (Or better yet, Libris poses ready for the fight, and Tracy shoots her instead :)