Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 22, 2019

Rare, Four-Panel Strip. ✨❤️✨

Good morning™, frightened cast members!

What has Doc done!?

Some appropriate music, to set the scene …

https://youtu.be/591d-XV5rEo

Is that a gunshot or someone fell down the stairs?

Tracy, or a dummy set up to look like Tracy, for just such a possibility?

Decoy! DT wasn’t wearing his coat and hat yesterday. – Unless it’s a poor sap.

“There was blood and a single gun shot

But just who shot who?"

Dummy shoots a dummy!

Well anyway someone got shot!!! Who or what we don’t know till tomorrow!!!

Good morning™, mystery shooting victims !

Didn’t Dick have his Trademark™ yellow jacket on when apprehending tanning salon girl ?  For all we know that could have been Sam’s gun “working” and now Doc is laying in a heap on the stairs ?

(Cheesy organ music) Is this the end of Dick Tracy? Is our hero to close his casebook at last with a fatal gunshot wound? Ehh… he don’t know me vewy well, do he?

“AAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL AAAAAAAABOOAAAAAARRRRRDDDDD!!!”

And everyone rushes over and tackles the character with the gun.

Yesterday’s last panel made it seem that Doc burst in on Tracy just as he was putting the cuffs on Sally. But apparently not. Looking back, the room Doc entered in the last panel could well have been a storage room, with access to the stairs. So, I’ve been wondering all week why Tracy didn’t have his coat and hat. He put it on a chair in the back room to make himself more comfortable for the lengthy stakeout. Thereby unknowingly setting Doc up with a “dummy”. Once Chester Gould had a story which opened with the crew at HQ discovering that a hood was setting Tracy up for an ambush, so they (HQ) actually prepared a Tracy dummy to ensnare the crook. But this looks more like happenstance.

Double or Nothing that wasn’t Tracy.

1- ♪I shot the sheriffffff♪ … 2-♪ But I did not shoot the dep-u-tyyyyy♪ 3-SAM: Why in the world does Tracy want me sitting here in his coat and hat? I’m sweatin’ balls! “Just sit here and don’t move” he says. Geez…4-STAGEHAND: WHAT THE…Gunshot? It’s only been 10 minutes. It can’t be the third act already??? KID: Awh, it’s probably just the theater doors slamming shut after the audience made a break fer it. STAGEHAND: Yeah, makes sense…

Oooooh, the suspense, Hitchcock rolls over

Well… “Our Town” justgot more dramatic…

As for Tracy… It does look like his trademark yellow hat and coat were either on a manekin or casually differ… It doesn’t look like anyone is wearing them…

So we’ll have to wait to see who did what tomorrow…

Same Bat time… Same Bat Channel…

“All of a sudden a shot rang out, Sally flinched at the sound, did the bullet find it’s mark? Will Liz be a widow? will Honeymoon lose her Popop? " Follow us tomorrow, for a continuation of this exciting, suspenseful story"

It is patently obvious that revenge-crazed Little Doc mistook the Famous Yellow Trenchcoat and Fedora for the actual Tracy; his big mistake, as he crawls around the flies and fires at Tracy’s divested garb. Now at risk, Little Doc could end up being cross-cut down in a hail of cop return fire. But more likely [more in step with our PC sensibilities], he will either be taken alive or shot not more than once or twice, by Sam rather than Tracy if the chief detective is still dealing with the arrested Sally….