Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 06, 2020

Mystery solved!

Ray Toler has been calling it for weeks now. (It just seems longer)

What was the point of Smokey Stover yesterday? You’d think that we’d see him again today!

Okay. Today, I take the gloves off.

This was a “hot mess.”

Dick Tracy 2020: Mr. Roboto, Shaky II, the Dethany crossover and now this Minit Mystery. I hate to say it but someone needs to put this strip out of our misery.

Well, that’s one way to kill off two weeks – hope something interesting comes down the pike as we get back to the regular stuff…..

I was just thinking today – we need to see a story with Blowtop in it.

I guessed correctly at the beginning when I said that the decorative wall was the clue, or there was no need to mention it otherwise.

Good Sunday morning™, detectives!

Well, another Minit Mystery is over and I think it started better than it ended. I liked the art at first, but it became a bit inconsistent in style. Also, someone doesn’t know how to count. Tracy says there were indentations, but I see at least six. Back on Monday we did see two indentations and one of them was clearly deeper than the other.

At least Tracy was figuring thing out using clues, which is better that what sometimes happens lately in this strip. The narrative of this Minit Mystery was about the same pattern as the ones that were found in the Harvey Comics. I think it might have followed that formula better in this one than in any of the other Minit Mysteries.

I think we need the Great Pumpkin in a crossover next…..

All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall — Pink Floyd, 1980

So the lightning thing on Presto’s back the other day is just back pains!

Personally, I’d like to see a sequel to an 80’s story arc in which Team Tracy had to deal with the daughters of Flat Top, Pruneface, and Shaky.

And as we close this mystery, we watch the sun slowly sink into the West, till tomorrow my friends when a new adventure rears its ugly head!!!

I think most of youse guys are being overly harsh on this Minit Mystery. I thought that given the constraints of a two-week time limit it actually did pretty well as telling a mystery story. There were problems: inconsistent art work, with Tracy, e.g., looking wildly different from day to day or even panel to panel. And I see no need to have tossed Smokey Stover into the story as if just garnish on a salad. Still, as I say, there was a mystery story, pretty well paced. That Presto’s gimmick seems a little lame is true, but whaddya want in a short short when there isn’t room for big exposition? I especially like the traditional “detective explains all” by Tracy at the end. That was a very satisfying way of ending an iffy story….

Hang up on Robocalls? It makes more sense to just not answer the phone of you don’t recognize the number.

I believe I said this exact thing days ago…that he built the wall around the statue

I don’t get it. Did he build the wall around the statue and nobody noticed the sudden bulge or did he move the statue to the other side of the wall and then finish building that portion? And if the latter, why didn’t someone on the other side of the wall see it. And if the wall is more like a room with a ceiling and all, WHO BUILDS A WALL LIKE A ROOM? This wasn’t the solution to the mystery – it’s the beginning of an entirely new one.

When I get calls like that, “we’re trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty”, or other stuff like that, and I’m alone, I crank up whatever music I’m playing, press one, and then set the phone right underneath my speaker. My playlist ranges from Christian to Metallica… It’s funny listening to the heavily accented person on the other line… “Hello…?”

If this were “Rex Morgan, MD,” the patient would have bled to death.

DT: Hey! Square foot was back. He sure takes tiny steps. SAM: Weren’t we supposed to check shoe stores for sales of big square shoes for some reason?

DT: I think so but I forget why.

CONTRACTOR: Let’s close up this hole boys…WHAT THE HELL? OK. WHO’S THE WISE GUY WHO PUT THE MODERN ART BUNNY RABBIT IN HERE?

LABORER: Probably same guy who said that building this wall was just like throwing your money down a rabbit hole. See, it’s a comment on government waste and…

DT: I got something to tell you Sam. Come on. The news that you’ve been traded to the Firemen’s Softball team will go down easier with a donut and coffee. You really stunk it up out there yesterday. SAM: I like donuts.

In-joke. Needed to name a one-scene character.

So they only real crime here is the union is upset that there was quality craftsman masonry work done without payment?

No one noticed a giant bulge of new stone in the wall where the statue was?

So Presto didn’t steal anything.

So, overnight, Presto was able to build an entire wall(!) around a statue that should have been under guard (since the city received a threat against it). Presto should have just blown the statue up. Presto! It’s gone!

Ta-Dah! And there it is. We actually got a mystery to solve this time.

Staring tomorrow; Dicko meets Krazy Kat and The Yellow Kid. This strip is becoming a late night joke. Hire some writers who live in the 21st century.

It was a giant origami statue. They folded it very carefully, on the seams, and then slid it between the cracks in the wall.

Seeing the very old black and white squad car in several panels I am guessing that this arc is supposed to have taken place in the 30s or 40s.

This being before TV would be why no security camera. But the entire plot is shaky. Because the wall was going up behind the statue, then suddenly, the statue is covered by the wall. No police standing watch? Just how thick was that wall supposed to be, to claim that the statue was buried inside the wall is just downright silly. Suggest this writer read some older mysteries, perhaps get a clue

You all have me thinking, so I’ll let you know how the story would have been written, given a longer page length. I trimmed a ton in working up a simple short. Presto would still have been there, but as a hireling of an established Tracy foe who has if in for both Tracy and the mayor (hence apparent reason for the vanishing of a costly civic gizmo). The theft would have been, of course, a trap to draw in Tracy and company.

Additionally, it would have been revealed to have been imported from overseas, the core of it secretly being platinum. gold, or other valuable metal covered in an innocent facade.

It would have been whisked off to the Superamalgamated Smelting refinery (yeah, longtime Doc Savage reader) to be melted and recast into ingots. And it would have gone from there. The obligatory serious face off at the end.

Let’s not have any more minute mysteries, unless they’re from Groovy Kinda. This one was stupid beyond belief.

According to one Internet source David Copperfield “vanished” the Statue of Liberty by rotating the audience’s platform so they were looking in a different direction when the curtains dropped, restored it by raising the curtain and rotating the platform back.

Hang up on robocalls? I don’t answer them in the first place!

My favourite part of the story was – MINIT MYSTERIES THE END.

On the Crime stoppers…if there’s no name or a name we don’t know on the Caller ID, we don’t answer the phone.