Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 26, 2024

and no doubt, SOMETHING will be discovered during renovations…

Good morning™, everyone!

We are finally turning a corner on the setting introduction.

Don’t get "rat"tled by what you see here.

Good morning™, Tailored Turnarounds !

Will crime happen here before renovations get underway ?

So this story is about society’s rejection and redemption? /s

Ben, the two of us need look no more

We both found what we were looking for

With a friend to call my own

I’ll never be alone

And you, my friend, will see

You’ve got a friend in me

Just offscreen to panel 2 is Mister Rat’s brother passing wind.

Finally!!! It’s about time Eric included a real person in the story.

Nice touch that he gave Firestrike a guest role in the 2nd panel!!!

All kidding aside, it definitely feels like Eric is mocking us with this pathetic excuse for a story opening.

He’s writing with a sense of impunity.

Somethings cooking, and it ain’t good looking!

Well we have lots of background….wonder what the crime will be about?

Day 6: and still no plot holes or failing logic. Cities sometimes have picked up such buildings when the owner stopped paying taxes, and will sell them for practically nothing to a buyer with funds / idea for renovations which will provide jobs and pay taxes (assuming that they city did not also give a tax break to the new owner).

Do we have a Chekov rat in the second panel? Having been on the wall in scene one (on the floor, actually) will he (I didn’t look close enough to check whether male or female – so that is a gender neutral “he”) be required to appear later in the story line?

Behind the rat, is that a leaky pipe or did rat have an “accident”?!

“Watch out boys. We’ve been ratted out” ~ Almost a quote from Jack Napier in 1989’s “Batman”.

I’m thinking of a Ray Bradbury story—“There will come soft rains”

At long last our villain, in the first ever Tracy/Disney crossover— Professor Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective!

How anthropocentric. They aren’t turning better for that rat.

But then suddenly the man is gots bites by the radioactive rat and he becomes the amazing rat-man!

Ah so after tired of building all week and going nowhere this plot is finally for sale.

The rats bought the building and turned it into a condo. OH,ant the clock tower is being retrofitted with rocket engines.

Mind you, that’s only a guess…

Just be glad I’m not writing this one. I cold go WAYYYY off the rails with only a few basics.

Oh rats!

Is this another version of Our Town, Tracyville Edition ? I can almost hear the sonorous voice of old Vitamin speaking the lines to an empty theater (except he believes it’s full owing to the cardboard cutouts KK puts in every seat).

I see a flea jumping off the rat! Bubonic Plague is about to decimate Tracyville and there’s nothing Dick can do…wait. Oh. That’s just a crumb of breakfast bar that got on my screen from my overenthusiastic enjoyment of it…

Never mind.

Dick n Sam arrive back at the Station House to find…

1- DT: WHAT THE HELL?!?! WHERE IS EVERYONE? WHERE IS EVERYTHING???

2-: …Chief? Is that you? Has some evil witch put a spell on you?

3- SAM: I think it’s obvious, Tracy. With only one crime every few weeks in a city of over a million people, the powers that be have decided that a police force and its associated costs are unnecessary. AND you have to admit that you haven’t exactly caught any criminals lately – except in Argentina and WHO CARES ABOUT THAT AROUND HERE?!?

I certainly hope the story, if we ever get there, won’t be as boring as this multi-day lead-in.

This is not the first rat we’ve seen in a Tracy strip.

Https://tinyurl.Com/ybbrynyx

Rats ate a villain named Mordred in Locher’s last Tracy story before Mike and Joe took over. You can read the story on GoComics. It began on November 22, 2010.

Is that the same broken Moony Uni clock we always see in the Luann strip? d;o)

Https://www.gocomics.Com/luann/2024/10/01?ct=v&cti=1028975

This is moving more slowly than a Mary Worth story earlier this year about a shlub who spent two months mourning a goldfish.

How incredibly dull this week’s strips have been. Chet Gould must be spinning at high RPMs in his grave over what has been done to his creation.

Regarding the rat, is this story going to morph into Ben?!

Suspense is turning into boredom here.

The building is destroyed and in its place a new city park. On one particular bench sits a 100 year old Dick Tracy, finally retired and looking his age. The kids no longer sit around to hear his stories of the because dementia has largely robbed him of his ability to remember all of the details. It kind of feels like this strip right now.

GAAAAHHH! Is this Dick Tracy or Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom??!

OT: Yesterday was my wife’s birthday. VERY laid back.

I’m happy enough to take the time for the story to develop.

The British mystery unsolved-crime series Unforgotten (not to be confused with the British unsolved-crime series New Tricks or the other British unsolved-crime series Waking the Dead) generally starts out with a construction project (a highway, a building basement renovation, dredging a canal) that comes across a body.