Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 02, 2011

Good morning all…

This is like real police work!

Great drawing in panel two. I agree, Bill!

Panel 2 reminds me how awful Angel Glorious was…

convenient turn of events, who’d a thought they wouldn’t have blown themselves up by now.

Is that Lee Ebony in panel two?

The word “Funkytown” was used the other day. Today, I was watching an episode of Ciminal Minds and they referred to the case the unit was on as “Funky”

I don’t get why Tellum moved the bodies.

He wants to exploit the news, so what better story then dead men with beards in his parking spot.

It’s the new, electronic cops, kids! Great communications, swift work, and the baddies won’t know what hit them!

Lee Ebony is back too. Wow, I just can’t get over how not so long ago we were spending all summer standing around a circus tent with a pig cannon.

oh and? LITTLE LIGHTNING BOLTS comin’ outa their wrist thingies. Awesome.

This is just so cool . . .

Great work. I haven’t posted here in a while but I’ve kept up with it, and this is so much better than what we had before.

but why arrest tellum. he was a good guy who got scared by the terrorists. tracy should use better judgement

he alowed junior to take evidence home, and that is a firing offense

Wow. A six inch arm coming directly out of Tracy’s shoulder in panel 1. Is this a shout-out to Locher, or is Curtis just getting lazy?

Nah. In the next two panels, Lee and Liz have their elbows cocked back to bring their heads closer to their wrist genies. Dick’s coat has such an oversized collar it’s hard to tell exactly what angle he’s holding his elbow.to do the same.

A year ago, that building would have had a huge Hooter’s-like sign over the door saying “DA Office”.

Welcome back, Lee Ebony!

way cool! I just wonder how the big girls will deal with D.T.

This is great – real police procedures, moving the story along!

And (in a Hurricane Irene delayed comment) Tellum wasn’t an addict needing hospitalization. He’s been so scared, he’s been drinking and pill-popping, and those shakes in his cell were from fear – fear that Tracy would discover he was the money man behind those terrorists!

LEE EBONY WELCOME BACK!!!

@ Daddy Warbucks, Not sure I’d call Tellum a good guy. His kind of talk show does a lot of harm, IMO, spreading misinformation and fear-mongering. I do wonder why he moved the bodies. Two assumed mid-eastern, assumed terrorists, dead in a van could have played right into his fear-mongering. Probably his anxiety, fueled by his illegally gained pain-killers, interferes with rational thinking.

I agree with all the comments on the quality of this strip now, both the story and the art. (I think Dick’s elbow is bent in panel 1, but the perspective of the hand could have been better.) As to the search warrant, looking at last known location of homicide victims seems very legitimate to me. It just goes to show how hard we have to try to find anything to criticize.

At the end of the story, will Dick and Lee breakout into song by singing “Ebony and Ivory”

Scut,.Re your comment below:.“A search warrant based on what exactly, Dick? That a nursery sold fertilizer?”.When a search warrant is applied for, the existence or lack of “probable cause” is based on “The Totality of Circumstances.”.In this case, you have two known terrorists (and, legally, law enforcement is regarded as a monolith; if one member of law enforcement knows it, all of law enforcement is presumed to know it), whose vehicle has traces of an explosive substance, the same type used by Timothy McVeigh, the OK City Bomber. .And you have a manifest that shows their last stop as being a nursery that sells that substance in, (and, yes, you have this much right) their fertilizer. .Maybe they were buying it for legal purposes. Maybe, even if they intended it for nefarious purposes, the nursery was innocently duped..But the nursery was also the last place they were seen alive before turning up murdered..The nexus of time, terrorism, materiel, and death add up to a totality of circumstances that would lead a reasonable person to a conclude that there is a strong likelihood that evidence of crime is present at the nursery. In other words, there is PC. .At the very least, it’s a reasonable argument, and Tracy and staff have nothing to lose by at least trying to get a warrant. The worse that can happen is the don’t get it, and can’t make the search, and since, if they don’t at least try they can’t make the search, anyway, they have nothing to lose by trying..I grant you that they might be better off maybe keeping the nursery under surveillance until they saw enough other suspicious circumstances so their assertion of PC would be a lock. But this is a terrorism case, which means time may very well be of the essence. They have to do something, and I think applying for the warrant makes more sense than waiting around until you’re a hundred per cent sure that all your ducks are in a perfect row..If they’d made the search without trying for a warrant, you’d be on them for that. Exactly what should they have donr in this situation that would’ve met with your approval? Not investigate at all?

I have a question for DDD, Jim D, and Mike C. The towing company that hauled off the van. If I was a tow truck driver and I was notified that I had to pick up a van in the personal parking space of a talk show host who regularly talked about terrorist on his show. I might question whether or not a bomb might be in the van. Have you ever had a towing company notify the police of a suspicious vehicle they were afraid to approach? What courses of action can they take? Call the bomb squad? It just seems to me that placing a mercury switch in the van and waiting for a tow truck to lift one end off the ground is a great delay method.

I love the third panel, is so different from Locher art!

@Tarry Plaguer.I have only had our tow truck companies call about a suspicious vehicle AFTER they moved it. You know, hey we found some drugs, a weapon, etc. In answer to your next question, calling the police for any suspicious vehicle is never a bad idea. You never know what can be inside. Not just bombs RV’s have been used as mobile meth labs. Which can be just as dangerous. Then we the police can dispatched the appropriate unit. Mostly my dept. uses K9 we have drug and bomb dogs. If they detect something then its time to call one of the special units.

Comng up, Dick Tracy and Sam Ketchum vs. thelady wreslers! Who’’ll come up on top?