Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 29, 2015

Blaze is sounding quite police-like! We know she’s not, but her phrasing is interesting!

“Goo Gal” – or Googal – A “Numbers” reference …?

Good morning guys!

Has Shooz hoofed it?

‘Mornin’ VistaBill.

Can’t figure out the significance – If any – of “Krimheldes” …

Any thoughts?

It’s definitely a bookie’s office, Jim. :)

From a structural standpoint this has definitely been a unique tale, truth be told.

Good morning, DT fans!Blaze would make a good cop, maybe she’ll reform and join the force;)

And maybe Doubleup will get killed. Get killed. I’ve had enough of him. Of him!

No problem there! He is just taking a nap at his desk after a long tiring meeting with Jimmy Choo Shooz.

Goo Gal=Google, as in Barney Google, owner of Sparkplug. Krimhelde’s Re=Krimhelde’s Revenge, the classic silent movie based on the Nibelungenlied Saga.

… Krimhelde’s Revenge, the classic silent movie based on the Nibelungenlied Saga.

You may have something there, although the film title is usually (always?) spelled “Krimhild’s” with an “i” and no “e” at the end.

I notice that Slim refers to them as “the big bosses.” I figured that Doubleup and Blaze were more like lackey’s but I suppose they do work at the Blackhearts HQ. As I was saying a day or so back, it’s obviously unusual for collectors to come out to Jimmy’s hideout.

Looks like Jimmy popped the Cork.

Ouch!

Morning, Tracyville!

So who is (was) Cork anyway? And what was his relationship with Jimmy Choo Shooz?

Jimmy could be a degenerate gambler

Jimmy has left the building! Or is this a mystery they’ll need Dick Tracy to solve?

Good morning everyone. Lots of interesting information. Will Blaze now dust for fingers also? LOL. Maybe kill the elderly gentleman So that there are no one to call the police? Have a great day my friends.

Now, as Blaze searches the office for clues to Jimmy’s whereabouts, will she find his book?Was it left behind? Left behind?(Sorry, it’s contagious.)

Blaze is definitely showing character that has been sadly missing in the bunch of thugs she works with. Most of them have been as dumb as a box of rocks. She just might work her way up the ladder!

I notice in panel 3 that the window is open. Jimmy escaped out the window! Out the window!

looks like jimmy took the loot and hotfooted it outta town! That aint gonna sit well with Mr Bigg and company

VB I heard rumblings that yer old pal Vitamin might turn out to be Mr Bigg! (well.. its actually a scenario I was writing here the other day in the comments til my system wouldn’t let my type anymore and everything was lost lol)

Living in what used to be an organized crime neighborhood (now gentrified), there was a bookie joint in a little storefront on the corner for a while. I never went in but the door and window were wide open and they did their business in the street with loud voices. Not well hidden.

What would Jimmy be doing there? Trying to sell some gold? Seems like a strange stop after his heist.

Jimmy seems to be gone so what does BR think that she’s going to accomplish? And who’s she to be spouting off a bunch of orders anyway? At some point in the future Blaze is going to need an attitude adjustment, different clothes and a different hair do. I wonder if she even carries a gun?

“Slim” looks like Tommy O’Connor from Abe’s gang (see April 22 strip and compare). Maybe this is how Jimmy found out about the 1924 heist – and the never-found tunnel?

Now gleeb, lets not get nasty now! We already got two persons who like to use whips, we don’t need to bring any more kinkiness into the strip!

May I respectfully dissent from the notion that Blaze is sounding like a cop? To me, she sounds more like someone who has spent enough time in the big house to pick up the terminology one would hear coming from the screws there. Prisons have lock-downs from time to time to establish, secure, or impose discipline. Jimmy is involved with bookie joints either as a client (which seems to me most likely) or as a mid-level supervisor for the outfit, or both. The late and unlamented Cork may have been the book to whom Jimmy was directly in debt, before BB-Eyes came around as an enforcer for the big bosses, the Blackhearts. But in any case it is good to see Blaze taking charge!

Ok, new ID here b/c apparently MrBribarysShrunkenHeads will not be making an appearance…but…

Is “Mother’s Li” Mother’s LIttle Helper? Or at least Mother’s Little, implying the rest?

But where’s the Gold???

Wonder if Cork was the bookkeeper, and if Jimmy decided to take the bookie joints’ take as part of his ‘retirement package.’Either way, there’s gonna be a job opening real soon. (And I don’t mean Cork’s.)

I keep thinking (really!) that BB Eyes knowing (or suspecting) a connection between Jimmy and the gold train, when Mr. Bigg didn’t, isn’t going to look good for BB Eyes. Jimmy Choo Shooz had best get some of those Acme Rocket Shooz from Wily C. Coyote, cuz he’s gonna need ‘em. Maybe BB, too! If Jimmy got the gold, why would he mess around stealing a drop from the gang? My money is on his dropping it in the drink because the boat wasn’t big enough. For that much gold, he’d have to have commandeered a barge and a tug.

Yes, I suppose that he could have intentionally hidden gold at the bottom of the lake, intending to send divers to retrieve it later on. That would be tricky. The only downside is that several people would know it was there and it would essentially be unguarded. In that case, it wouldn’t be an “error,” but I still think it is a little unlikely to be the scenario. We are rather in the dark about the actual current whereabouts of the gold. All we know is that it isn’t on the original train car and it was ready to be shipped out of state some time ago.

I just realized something about the “vigorish.” There are two senses of the word:1: a charge taken (as by a bookie or a gambling house) on bets; also : the degree of such a charge <a vigorish of five percent>2: interest paid to a moneylender

The hypothesis that I was going with was that Sense 2 applied in this story and that Jimmy had borrowed from the Blackhearts to finance the train robbery, but now it’s clear that it really is Sense 1. It’s clear now that Jimmy works for the Blackhearts and he is supervising bookie operations, so the vigorish is the Blackhearts’ share of the money gamblers have bet and not interest on a loan-shark loan at all.