Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 13, 2016

.Good morning guys!.The cast is growing! This is like a Cecil B. DeMille Epic!.Happy Friday the 13th!..Big doings at the cemetery tonight! Dracula’s flying in. Rikki, Dethany, and Abner will join the festivities! And I hope Gweedo will be in attendance. All are welcome to come. Use “DT” as the password and the gatekeeper will let you in. If you need a ride, we’ll send the Cóiste Bodhar to pick you up and bring you direct to the entrance gates. Festivities end at dawn.

Today’s strip has a very moody film noir look to it. Screwball’s seedy-looking apartment with the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, the ancient-looking metal bed frame, the curtain back in the corner, and even the rain running off of Pokerface’s hat all contribute to the mood. Pokerface is a new character to the strip, isn’t he?

So Pokeface (who refers to himself in the third person) owes Screwball a debt. I wonder what kind. I suppose the most logical guess is that it’s a gambling debt (probably playing poker?).

Oh, I was going to quote part of Roger Ebert’s definition of “film noir”:

4. Cigarettes. Everybody in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, “On top of everything else, I’ve been assigned to get through three packs today.”I thought that was amusing.

This means Mr Niav is still alive. If he is not in Happydale, where could he be? Did Notta hid him in a safe house? Or more aptly, a slaughter house?Happy Friday the 13th to everyone. :)

In the City……………….

What does Pokerface owe Screwball for?

A lot harder than you might think… theres been a lot of close shaves when it comes to barber-cide :)

Today’s strip reminds me of the Mad magazine artists, especially Jack Davis and Bill Elder.

The art today is top notch! Dark plans afoot.

So after his movie performance with Notta, Putty Puss didn’t go home to Happydale. Wonder where he’s gone…

Gweedo risked,And for my next trick I will be going over the Falls in a Death Coach, Bill !-——————————————————————-.Gweedo, be very careful! Those old coaches are might not hold up to a feat such as that!

How hard can it be to kill a barber?

I can’t find his appearance from a few years ago at the moment, but I think his hair needs to be a little greener than how it’s depicted in today’s strip.

That other site got the green right in the hair and some interesting shading in the face of Screwball in the last panel.

So Putty Puss is definitely still alive. Looks like it will be a race to see who can get to him the quickest, Screwball and Poker face or Tracy and Asp.

Egads! Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month!

Well, it would if today’s were in b&w !

If course, it’s designed to be printed in b&w. Here’s Panel 1 as issued by Team Tracy:

Ebert specified, “Movies either shot in black and white, or feeling like they were.”

“Screwball” & “Pokerface”……..hmmmm

I discussed yesterday the likeliness or unlikeliness of a bank theft such as Matty Squared was starting to carry out. There is a new story in the news today that seems close to Bribery’s scheme (though probably without an animated avatar). From a story in Reuters today, as reported by SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication):

Investigators probing the cyber heist of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank connected it on Friday to the hack at Sony Corp’s film studio in 2014, while global financial network SWIFT disclosed a previously unreported attack on a commercial bank.SWIFT did not say which commercial bank it was or whether it had lost money, but cyber-security firm BAE Systems said a Vietnamese bank, which it did not name, had been a target. It was not clear if they were referring to the same attack and there was no immediate comment from authorities in Hanoi.SWIFT, the linchpin of the global financial system, said forensic experts believed the second case showed that the Bangladesh heist was not a single occurrence, but part of a wider campaign targeting banks.

A bit late to notice, but yesterday the mouse says 6E 69 62 62 6C 65. That hex code translates to the word “NIBBLE”. Nice touch Mike.

Help? How hard can it be to kill a barber?

Depends on the barber. For example Frank Nitti was a barber. And a lot of old-time hoods ended up dead in a barbers chair.

I wish I had the time to go back to where I left off and catch back up with the stories. I’ll just pick up today and go forward. Where’s Av when you need him?

Oh, man! I was so tired, I had to turn in last night just before I was about to post here. If Pokerface really is Pokerface (and not Putty Puss), maybe Screwball is going to try to off either Notta or Putty Fuss before they can get to him. Who knows who will be quickest on the draw, so to speak?

Here is a link to news of cyber looting of banks; depending on whether or not you have a Financial Times pass the story may not open fully, but even just the headline is an indication….

I don’t remember now but was there a third “Ball” brother in the BB Eyes story in 2011? There could be a big family of these guys like the Flatops. One good one would be Oddball, a mad scientist type or Goofball, who thinks everything is funny. Highball, a druggie type, Straightball, the good guy black sheep of the family. The possibilities are endless.