Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for December 14, 2023

Good morning™, all!

Now that we see it closer up, it does indeed look like a book case rather than a weapon case, but it seems it can be used as a weapon. Instead of the Choate Club “C” logo, this case seems to have the mark of Zorro on it. I have a feeling that the reference was intentional.

She did manage to knock the gun out of his hand before the thrust to the chest of the last panel, but it’s even more impressive how she managed to chop his hat in two in the first panel. I wonder if that is going on the wall of hats.

crazy-ass bi-t-ch… out of her mind to make a play for Dick this way…

The commenter predicting the hat will get it is right! Come collect your certificate.

third panel = crazed look of desperation in her grimace and eyes…

Great, if unrealistic and buffoonish action!( I’ll take it!)

Tracy looks like he got scalped in panel one(terrible job by Shelley)

Tracy’s gonna have to drink his MCU coffee with his left hand.

And superb illustration of ice queens rage in panel three (super dee duper work by Shelley!(see Ziggy, I CAN give compliments!))

Eric, please stop with the silent panels, they don’t work.

Looks like Tracy made the mistake of bringing a gun to a sword and book-holder fight!

The real mystery is; “Why did Libris change glasses between panels one and three?”

I know, I know, “distance, angle, lighting, etc…”

Nope, none of the above. It’s just another blunder that will be ignored by the Sheldroids! LOL!

Another hat for Tracy’s collection.

The real mystery is why didn’t Tracy use his gun before she got close enough to knock it out of his hand.

Tracy’s gotten real slow on the uptake it would seem.

When I was a kid the very second Tracy saw someone like Libris he’d have shot them right between the eyes.

Oh by the way….looks like there will be another hat for that wall.

That move with the hat in P1…she obviously rehearsed doing that as she realized DT was moving in. ☜⁠ ⁠(⁠↼⁠_⁠↼⁠)

Tracy’s going to change his name to “Nick.” Not much of a change… For the rest of his life he’ll suffer from small Nick syndrome.

Tracy has a talented and worthy adversary.

First she goes for beheading? Can such skinny sword even be used for beheading? Then using bag in left hand for the gun? How’d she gets close enough so fast for left hand to knocks away gun? And in every murder she is goes for stab heart directly but now first tries to beheads? Also yesterday she far enough for Tracy to shoots before she coulda gots any closer. Even today there enough scope to shoots in sef defense. But noooooo. Only one word me is has for this. Preposteridiculudicrous.

Good morning™, curtains for cops !

Tracy has one last chance if he can get the left arm up to grab her cutter hand at the wrist. Libby getting a hot lead delivery from behind works too. Gotta hand it to revenger for calling out the P.1. Lennon glasses change to the P.3. more stylish feminine variety.

A little surprised Libris didn’t just make a run for it when she got the tip-off the cops were moving in, instead if waiting around & fighting it out. I’m sure she has the resources to disappear & start a brand new life somewhere. I guess not every crook is an Agent 99.

Firestrike was correct about the hat in response to my comment yesterday but I was wrong about gun trumps sword by neglecting what was in other hand .

Is she going to do a Lobotomy like Nurse Wretched in A Cukoo Flew Over The Rest ?

The sword appears to be aimed at Tracy’s throat, poised red to thrust. What happened to her M.O., “one swift thrust to the heart.”

Well, it’s been a while since Tracy had a hat to add to the gallery. Previous ones were shot up. This one got sliced.

Ooh! The impact of a little case. The chief of detectives will have his wrist in a sling.

The look of love is definitely not in her eyes.

Ahh, A Fencing Femm Fatale!

So Cate Blanchett is on her mark for her dialogue tomorrow in P3 after her stunt woman did the action sequence in P2/3?

“Say hello to my little friend, Tracy.”

I just hope she realizes how hard it is to get blood stains out of all that yellow.

I told you she was fast and catching him by surprise with that speedy attack!

That sword is a full-on rapier with at least one razor-sharp edge in addition to the point. Otherwise it couldn’t cut the hat. Now without his gun, Tracy is really in trouble here.

This story may not be to everyone’s taste, but I’m LOVING it. For me, the gentler pacing and the build up to a ferocious finale has been well worth it.

All in all it’s just another hat on the wall…

“Let me show you how I got this dueling scar in Heidelberg, Tracy”

Shelley , left this one in the starting blocks , just super images : )

looks like Zorro got to her case first.

As I stated yesterday, police ballistic armor is going to stop her sword.

Libris should have remember the wise words of her mom, years ago, when she first took up fencing, “You could put your eye out with that thing.”

Does the fencing training create an ingrained habit that prevents Libris from going for the face? Is she unable of police body armor? Is the writer unaware of ballistic armor and Tracy will be saved by his old little black book (that he carries for purely nostalgic reasons)?

Personally, I’d “Velma” her and knock her glasses off, lol

oh she’s in trouble now…cut his hat in half?? it’s the hoosegow for you!!

Blah blah blah… he’s wearing a stab proof vest.

D’Artagnan I’m not but to the best of my knowledge epees don’t have sharp edges as a cutlass or saber would, so cleaving anything tougher than a spider web would be nigh on impossible. XL is doing her best to make sure her point to Tracy; did the fearless flatfoot get it??

Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z . . . . . . .

It’s the “Nano-Fiber, Mono-Molecular Epee” by Ronco. It slices, it dices and makes 1,000’s of Julienne fries! And it’ll make short work of cheesy fedoras!

But wait, there’s more! Act now and we’ll include “The Amazing Armor Plated Book-Bag” absolutely free! All you do is pay additional postage of $29.99 ninety-nine!

Call now, operators are on duty! And if you’re one of the first one hundred callers we will include, absolutely free custom design monogramming! Yes, I said free! As long as your initial is the third letter of the alphabet monogramming is free!

This is where Sam steps in and we find out that before he became a cop, he worked at Fogo de Chao……

Dispels the old don’t bring an epee to a gunfight theory.

Aren’t Liz and Sam right behind Tracy?

From today’s Comics Curmudgeon:

I was about to do a riff here about how today’s Dick Tracy is aimed at the fairly narrow audience of people who like to erotically ruminate on the prospect of being bested in combat by Cate Blanchett wielding a rare book case in one hand and an epée in the other, but honestly that doesn’t seem like a particularly narrow audience now that I think about it. It’s probably significantly broader than the audience for the Dick Tracy comic strip, if we’re being honest.

Excellent art effort Shel! And the turn of events are shades of Chester Gould!

I kinda wish Tracy wasn’t wearing that hat. Then, maybe, she woulda just killed him.

OMG! I SAID HIS HAT WOULD PAY THE PRICE! GIMME ONE A THOSE ADD BADGES!

Greetings and salutations Slicers and Dicers!

The lady is fast, I’ll give her that. I think Tracy’s gonna need 2 pins to hang that hat on his wall. Hopefully Lizz, Lee, or Sam is close by to blast the steam out of this crazy wack-a-doodle.

OT: So, after almost 9 hours in the ER and a “psychic reading” by another patient (I’m serious), I found out I have another GI infection. As to not get too graphic, I got sick when they were doing a CT scan of my abdomen. The nausea meds they gave me beforehand didn’t work. They gave me more along with some pain meds. I have no appetite and all I want to do is sleep. Thank you all for the well wishes yesterday. All is appreciated.

On a somewhat comical note, my armchair “psychic” told me that I have a short, dark-haired lady in my future for romance. Any of you who know me will know why that is comical. :)

1-XL: YOU FOOL! YOU BROUGHT A GUN TO A EPEE AND…

2-…BOOK SATCHEL FIGHT!

3-…I confess to everything you suspect me of doing and I will acknowledge that you read me my Miranda Rights because YOU WON’T BE AROUND TO TESTIFY TO ANY OF IT IN SPITE OF ME GIVING YOU A MINUTE TO EITHER BE RESCUED BY THE OTHER DETECTIVES OR TO USE AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE AN UNANTICIPATED COUNTER MOVE! BWAAAA HA HAAAA! WELL???

DT: (squeak) help…

She reminds me of the fencing done in a few episodes by Mrs. Emma Peel in episodes of the old Avengers British TV show, which I enjoyed watching!

MOVIE QUOTE—

“If I were on this Council ,I couldn’t look in the mirror without vomiting. You talk about Law and Order? You’d sell out for a copper penny!”

Robert Ryan—-THE PROUD ONES—1956

Okay,one more ruined hat.If it doesn’t have bullet holes does it go into the Hall of Fame anyway?

Dick probably has his bullet proof vest on,and she’s got a bent sword.

And Dick has three armed buddies in t he room.Hey,one of the MCU shots goes wild and hits the book bag.,A priceless relic is destroyed.Libris emits a blood curdling scream and falls dead from t he shock.

Well,at least a sword is more realistic than the Piggy Butcher giant death ray gun that vaporized 3 people and half a city block

Sometimes you never bring a gun to a knife fight.

Now she looks ferocious instead of hot.

How will Tracy get out of this one?

Find out Sunday!

Looks like she threw the book at him—giving him a disarming glance—before he could throw the book at her.

An epee doesn’t have a sharp edge like a sword. I doubt she could slice his hat in half that way!

Well, at least there’s one point on which we’ve reached a clear consensus these past two days: Never bring a knife/gun to a gun/knife fight.

I really like this strip. It kind’a irritates me when self-centered people call for its demise. Yeah, I got Freedom Of Speech too.

After this preliminary contest,we move on to the main event—-Lou Costello vs.Buddy Baer.

“Wait a mibute,I’m caught on something…WAIT A MINNIT!….

I gotta hand it to her….she’s pretty good.

R.I.P. Dick Tracy, October 4, 1931 – December 14, 2023. He died without a whisper.

I wonder how many more times we’ll hear about, “not bringin’ a blade to a gunfight”, before this story runs even further out of gas as it chokes to a ignoble end on fumes alone?…

much like this oft-used line for the last couple of days…

ok, who’s next?…

and believe me, there WILL be a next…

Whoa!

I did not expect Xaviera to get the drop on Tracy. I have to admit, she’s quick! She still has that Olympic spark. Tracy’s fedora falls first, sliced and diced by the Libris blade (methinks an épée could not do that, so maybe she is indeed brandishing an unbuttoned foil, or even a rapier, though the hilt is not rapieresque). Using her sturdy bookcase as a secondary, left-hand, weapon to knock Tracy’s pistol from his hand before he can fire, she closes in for the potential kill, glaring with berserker blood-lust (panel 3). Dazzling action! Will Tracy survive, and if so, how? Will he be able to turn away her sword? Or will one (or more) of the other MCU arrest team save the day, by gunfire or otherwise?

(And it is odd how her glasses shift style from panel 1 to panel 3, as observed above.)

The Perils of Being Tracy!

He’s wearing Kevlar and expected this. He will pretend to fall then POW!