Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 30, 2018

Good morning™, body recovery personnel!

Here we have, not just one, but two views of the dead body! First, it’s on the stretcher, covered by a sheet except for the top part of his head, and secondly, dead in the tank, with Manuel’s tentacles wrapped around him. Ghost is not coming back from the dead. He can be safely added to the death list.

Ghost got a dose of his own medicine

Adios, Mr. Ghost. Live by the poison, die by the poison.

He’s dead, Jim.

His life was too short to have meaning…to us.

How would one fish a body out of a tank with a man-of-war that big?

See? Manuel’s labor IS unhealthy! 3:)

Now we’ll never know why Ghost offed Simon Stagg and it’s obvious Metamorpho who hangs around Simon Stagg isn’t going to be making any guest appearances unless it’s to claim Stagg’s body.

Hey, it must be time to wrap this story up in yesterday’s newspaper!

Why do I feel like a Hypostomus plecostomus?

Yet again!

Everyone have a blessed and safe Good Friday.

My only (admittedly mild) complaint is that Gould would have stretched the death scene out over three or four days. I s’pose modern standards and practices sort of preclude this…

He didn’t have a ghost of a chance!

And there’s enough left of him to identify?

Tracy looks at Manuel and thinks “I’m gonna need a lot more handcuffs!”

GHOST TRAIN, NOW BOARDING AT GATE 86… AAAAAALLLL ABBBOOOAAARRRRDD!!!!

(if you listen closely you can hear the Sweatbox Engine choo-chooing into the next gate)

Now that this is over lets get back to The Moon Govoner, Honey Moon, Ugly Crystal and some other loose ends.

Death by man’o war stings is extremely rare, tho the side affects mimic those of allergic reactions, such as swelling of the throat/larynx. Normally the stings do not kill humans but cause severe welts that look like whip lashes which usually go away in a few days, the stinging effect also normally goes away in 1 to 3 hours…. for Ghost to have been killed, the man o’war would have HAD to wrap its tentacles around his bare skin to begin the sting… salt water stops the effects of the stings, usually cleansing the skin of the “stingers”.. the only bare skin that Ghost was exposing was his hands, feet, neck and face and unless the man o’war wrapped the tentacles around those exposed areas, it is highly doubtful that the stings would have affected him

What, exactly is Chef Boyardee going to be charged with? What have we seen that they can pin on him?

I’d wanted to see his demise, but I don’t think i want to see the results. We’re talking ‘’Man-Of-War’’ here.

Pierre was being flippant, but Ghost really was “sleeping with the fishes”

This is as close as we will get to actually seeing a Gouldian demise of a villain, because of the restrictions placed on Joe and Mike.

Next on the Menu—-Flintheart in front of a curtain then to the next minute mystery. Then to the crossover with The Green Hornet.

“So Pepper was assaulted by a jelly!”, Dick says with relish.

Still not as good as Mordred getting eaten alive by rats.

Ghost Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Tracy owes Pierre an apology. He WAS sleeping with the fishes!

Before things head off into the next crossover or “Minute Mystery”, I’d like to see the back story on Ghost, Pierre, and Stagg…

And I’d like to see the wrap up of the “Moon Governor, Honeymoon, Ugly Crystal, Mr.Bribery” arc and what has transpired since…

Then, go on to the next story line…

Didn’t know there were "restrictions anymore. They certainly don’t seem to apply to the Moon Maid et. al, redundancies. Adios to a good villain. Let’s move forward not backward. Maybe with Phishface?

Today we see pretty much what we (or at least many of us) expected to see. Ghost Pepper is “dead fish dead” on a gurney in panel 2, with a very quick and brief flashback in panel 3 to his death scene, in the stinging tentacle of big, bad Manuel. I regret that this is about as graphic as the censors will allow, because “death is too ugly” for our delicate sensibilities. (Case in point: newspapers have taken to self-censoring anything “too grisly” for the masses; years ago, the Chicago Tribune published a photo of corpse that had been, if I recall correctly, thrown from a car accident and impaled on a fence or something like that, and it was on page one, I think. There were many objections, and in subsequent years, even wartime deaths have become Forbidden from being shown. I think we have regressed. But that’s just my opinion.)

And nobody said ‘Ghost is now a ghost’…

How can Ghost die? That never happens to Casper or Spooky!