Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 10, 2024

Dick is doing an elongated look again in panel one and the fedora looks peculiar on his head…

I told you about Tracyville prison. Even family doesn’t know when the inmates wander away.

Good morning™, everyone!

So, if Blowtop actually thinks that Croptop should be in prison, it makes me wonder what the circumstances are that she is out, but they might just leave that ambiguous. In the other hand, Blowtop might not be being completely honest here.

Blowtop looks like a grown up Bart!

Good morning™, Snooper Troopers !

Looks like the Trace is doing some legwork here. Good for you, Dicky !

Good images and even the MC is doing better.

Guess there are no smoke detectors in this apartment building.

Looks like Blowtop doesn’t know Croptop isn’t in prison anymore.

The third panel of Blowtop is an Hmmm? to me, ab bit too full face for me. The first panel, which is more traditional of Blowtop and kept him thin.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, Germany had a secret police organization called the Gestapo. As a finger on the left hand of the reigning political party, they operated on paranoia derived from baseless prejudice. Common tactics included abuse of law enforcement authority and intimidation, the knock in the night for surprise interrogations, turning people against each other – even their own families, and hunting people down on flimsy or false pretenses to lock them up or kill them simply for how they were born. The Gestapo didn’t even need a reason like evidence of a crime committed to go after someone; if they predetermined that you were a problem, even if it was just because you were born to the wrong family, then you became their target… Good thing Dick Tracy is nothing like that, right?

Apparently Blowtop has a withered grapevine, home girl is not in prison. What’s with this family, is a crime gene embedded in their DNA?

He might be feigning ignorance of the fact she is no longer incarcerated!

Me never knews there was bars inside prisons.

Is Tracy paranoid?

A couple story lines ago Tracy was doing family search on the family tree of Ms. Libris going back to her great-grandparents. He was doing this at the point where she wasn’t even a real suspect in the case. (And, at the time, I complained and there were voices raised in defense of the story – “Of course Tracy should be interested in the family tree of anyone who he has been introduced to – even if she was only introduced as an old book expert.”)

He’s been attacked by member after member of the Jones family, but never did a bit of research on this family with a bunch of known criminals?

Of course, his ignorance makes it easier to have yet another one pop up out of nowhere.

Duh, Tracy, How many Jones have you laid out 6 feet under? Crop is “safe” cause ya can’t shoot her in prison.

“You’ll find her in Woo Gosh Prison.”

WOW! There really is a Blowtop!

Another good day . Blowtop looks like a crook . I like that distorted face .

now I see why he’s got the name Blowtop… :j

BLOWTOP: Why? Tracy, members of the Jones family who encounter you frequently end up dead!

Headed to San Antonio for 5 days to attend my nephew’s wedding.

Here’s what I have on Blowtop Jones. Other esteemed folks have more detailed histories. Blowtop is Flattop’s older brother who easily loses his temper. In later years, he attempts to go straight, but often gets pulled into the sphere of his many criminally inclined relatives. In a bit of revisionist history detailed in 2011, Blowtop is revealed to have performed a job for Big Boy, along with Flattop. In 2015, Blowtop makes a futile attempt to talk Stiletta Jones out of a dangerous revenge plot. 3/50-x/50, 1/82-3/82, late/85, 9/11(retro), 1/15-3/15.

Tracy is getting nowhere with this jerk…he’ lying! Charles great art work……..

MOVIE QUOTE

“That’s the last straw! Bad enough I had to stand by and watch you put crooked gambling on my ship. Then it was cheating. Now it’s gun-play!”

This isn’t a boom town bar-room! It’s the RIVER QUEEN!"

Henry Travers—-THE NAUGHTY NINETIES—1945

Speaking logically (which doesn’t always work in the comics) shouldn’t Blowtop be aware his sister is out? Wouldn’t the Tracy State Department of Corrections have informed him of her release, or, if she escaped, wouldn’t some police agency have come to question him?

THERE he is!! We luv ya, Blowtop. Okay, we don’t REALLY love you. But it’s fun watching you from a distance

Let me commend Mike’s writing for once, at least in this interaction today. He wrote a kind of Freudian slip for Blowtop and had Tracy artfully catch it as indicated in the last panel.

“Safe from you in prison.”

“Why is she safe from me?”

This is something that a good police interrogator would catch and drill down on. Blowtop has guilty knowledge and Tracy picked up on it.

Now for the hole – if she’s supposed to be in prison and isn’t why wouldn’t Tracy already have run her name and found that out?

Mensche Argene Dicht Nicht

German for “Don’t Blow Your Top”

“Don’t call me Woo Gosh.”

1-BLOWJOP: HEY! YOU’RE NOT TRIXIE? WHADAYA WANT??? DT: Brrrrr! I want you to turn up the heat! No wait. I’m here to turn up the heat – on you!

2-…But yes, also turn up the heat. Say – are you smoking a Don Royale El Stinko Supreme illegally imported from Koo-ba? BLOWJOP: What? Where? DT: There! In your mouth. Where I’m pointing. BRRRRRR! I dam near froze off my trigger finger!

3-BLOWJOP: You’re seeing things, Tracy. And as for your trigger finger, you only need it to pick your nose these days! DT: Ouch! Physical AND emotional abuse! You fiend!

SAM from inside the apartment: Is that Trixie? TRACY!!! YOU’RE TRIXIE??? Uhhh, I got somewhere else I need to be – that’s NOT HERE! YUCK!!!

ka-woo gosh

There’s old Blowhard!

Is there some law in Tracytown that all evildoers have to be smokers? Is it to make it easier for the police to identify them?

It’s the Big Boy cigar syndrome. With Apparatus gangsters out of the picture for now,smoke filled roomsare in the background.

Blowtop is my favorite Dick Tracy villain.

Safe from you… Well, he’s not so wrong.

TRACY: Blowtop, I was just recently reminiscing how one of your bank robberies was stopped by me and an associate of Nero Wolfe! Why, you survived that one woo gosh!

(BTW in looking back at the April 2, 2023 Sunday strip, I’ve decided to retcon the blonde woman who tries to buy Wolfe’s black orchids near the end of the Blowtop case as Xaviera Libris’ mother LOL!)