Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 20, 2024

Imagine that

A sewer rat

Does deftly slip away.

Ring! Ring! the phone

Tracy alone

Shall fight another day.

A burner left

Leaves Jay bereft

Perspective everything.

A two for one

Brothers undone

A high price for a fling.

yeah, it ends just as I thought it would…

in the wind…

The “crack” investigators rack up another victory.

Raising the question, why didn’t he speak into the office who he was before entering?

Good morning™, all!

Okay, so he was having a “… meeting …” with Rosemary, as we guessed. As Minit Mysteries go, this one wasn’t bad, but I don’t quite understand Tracy’s remark claiming that Mr. Mirror might not have shot the wrong Scar Brother. Why would that be?

JPuzzleWhiz rebutted my butt about 4 hours ago

@Gweedo it’s legal here Murray

It’s still a lot better than the electronically-produced techno-trash put out today. At least they used real musical instruments back then instead of electronically-produced noise.

I listen to plenty of “organic” made tunes. Pandora takes me back to the 1950s and up. I have 3 Techno channels; Kraftwerk, Moby and Tangerine Dream. Some of that stuff is pretty neat and it helps keep me from grinding my love for the oldies down to nubs.

Not a bad MM. Above average. It definitely was quite funny(unintentionally, I’m sure).

On to important matters,

“LET’S GO YANKEES!!!”

Take notice, in the bottom left corner of the last panel, it says “THE END”, but with a question mark after it. This makes it look like this story will continue at a later date.

Now the MM has ended Sam will be able to collect his green suit and green hat from the dry cleaners and put the orange garb in the closet.

So, it was a family affair!

Thanks for another Minit Mystery, even if I’m the only one who likes them.

So… Who is dumber? Jay for forgetting the scheduled hit, or the killer for coming back to “correct the mistake”? And exactly how does that correct the mistake of killing the wrong brother in the first place? And how did he know he’d killed the wrong brother? This happened soon after the killing (the police were still there, Sam commented how near Marcus must have been to get there so fast)? I guess MM might have been listening to a police scanner, but if he was payed in advance there is no point in going back – Jay is in no position to complain. And if it was payment after the job is done Jay is in no position to play. So we’ll shoot Marcus while he’s talking with the head of the MCU and Salami Breathe?

Ok, so I was about 99% right in my guess as to the whole scheme, I just extrapolated it a bit more than necessary.

Now…here comes the fun part… my criticism of the story….well, I….i….

I GOT NOTHIN’! i absolutely LOVED this story, oodles of new characters (2 less now tho lol), good pace, excellent artwork, and a good flow to it…hopefully we will get treated to MANY MORE STORIES from this team…I dont have enough “thumbs to up” for this minit mystery…I only wish it was more than two weeks…and I hope that we see Mr. Mirror again soon!

Too bad this had a two week time limit, because it forced the writer to follow Mike with the “Oh well, he got away – no big deal, we’ll get him later, maybe” attitude Mike has been writing into his stories these past few years. Otherwise, this was in a lot of ways a nice return to what Dick Tracy used to be. A full-on Tracy story would have had a second part, where Tracy and his team chased the Mr. Mirror guy, following clues and leads, until they caught him. But since this was a so called Minute-Mystery, it was nicely done.

Mr. Mirror told Tracy that they had met in the past. Today we see a little bit of Mirror’s face. It looks like auburn-colored hair in a pompadour style. Also long eyelashes. Could Mr. Mirror be a woman? Any idea who it is?

Huh? Do any of these modern Tracy scripts have plots?

(wretched sigh) Account re-set number 7. Yet again, I couldn’t get logged in yesterday, and my ‘save’ setting had dropped. I am to the point of blaming a Tracy Villain (and Sam, you know who you are!).

Wtf!¿!

…..this guy never did get Sam’s hat on his head right……..just sayin’…….

OK, one- WHY come back to kill the right one? The one who ordered it was dead. Two- how were WE supposed to figure any of that out with the details they gave us? Three- the guy got away.

Holy crap!

I really like the additional panels in a Sunday strip.

I love the shattered glass panel. Great work by the guest team on this mystery—hope to see more from them in the future!

I wonder if MM’s true identity could be Heartless Mahoney. She dislikes her own face and has a history with Tracy.

Just wanted to stop by and thank everyone for giving our guest spot a read. Howie and I are lifelong fans, and we wanted to deliver a slice of classic Tracy in the Gould tradition with a bit of the 1990 movie sprinkled in for good measure. I’m really happy with the result, and Howie’s art was a perfect fit. (Howie created an illustration to celebrate our story over on his various social media pages (search H.C. Noel), so be sure to check it out. It’s incredible.) As the longtime Tracy fans among you know, Dick Tracy is rarely just a mystery strip, so that limitation proved an interesting challenge. Rather than rush the story of our villain in a two-week stint, I decided to make this mystery about who hired Mr. Mirror, while giving readers a glimpse of the character in action. We have hopeful plans for a return of our villain (if Team Tracy was happy with this outing), and we’ve already included a few clues as to Mr. Mirror’s true identity. In the meantime, you can find more of my work at matthewkmanning (dot com), where you can sign up for my newsletter for more inside info on our Tracy run as well as news on some future projects. Thanks!

Great story, great art. THANKS, GUYS!

Tracy will return after his dental work is complete, as he ground his teeth down to his gums these last 2 weeks. But, great art and a nice new villain for a change. These guys should take this strip over, because they seem to want something original, not old, rehashed, sometimes dead villains like the boring rut Curtis has fallen into.

So if both are dead, how does Mr Mirror get paid ? And what happened to the cheating TRAMP ? Does she end up with the money from both ?

Doesn’t say much about family ties for hard core criminals when one brother puts out a contract on the other over a two-timing wife….

Loved the “jagged mirror panel”—-Tracy’s jawline looked a little broken mirrorish itself.