“JEEBUZ!” Thick exclaims, jumping ten feet in fright, while Pistol Packin’ Penny is so startled by the return of Norton & Co. that she finally shoots D-cubed.
And D-cubed really fooled everyone, except for that part where Thick went looking for him, and the Feds pursued him around the world.
Gotta give Dick Locher credit. He sure outsmarted us. There wasn’t one of us who thought that it would be Spacy who stayed and it would be the rest of them who ran away. Nice to see them back, even if it’s without their guns being drawn while Spacy is threatened.
Uh-huh. I know this is lost on a pathetic creature like Locher, but the vast majority of funeral directors are like everyone else: they’re honest. Even if you could find one who’d take a bribe to hand over a corpse to a resurrection man, there’s this annoying bit of paperwork that goes on before a funeral or cremation. Someone at the mortuary has to sign off on the fact that the dead man is in fact dead, and is the proper center of attention.
Now quite a few people work at mortuaries/funeral homes, so you’d have to bribe several people to ignore the hanky-panky. You’d also have to hope that none of the deceased’s family and friends want a final look at the body.
Maybe you could get a body that was scheduled for cremation, and slip it out unnoticed before it and the coffin went into the oven. But you’d have to bribe the people at the crematorium to not notice anything fishy. And how do you transport the body? “I’ll take it in a doggie bag?”
Next, welcome to the USA. Cadavers are embalmed here. How is the ME going to ignore that rather obvious condition? (I think Jewish mortuaries skip that, but I’m not certain.) Intercept the body before it’s delivered to the mortuary? Bribe several workers into dumping the body in a river/lake? And hope they never talk/don’t get caught?
And then you have to hope that, somehow, the body rots enough to be unidentifiable, yet can be mistaken for D-cubed? And that–
Phuqit. If you sold Swiss cheese with this many holes in it, you’d get busted for selling pure air.
Oh, what fools we mortals be
On this I think we can agree
When we seek to make any sense
Of a strip that is this dense
Convoluted is the plot
Of logic there is diddly squat
It meanders and it wanders
Its potential it wantonly squanders
Capricious in its execution
Lacking of any resolution
A foul and fetid deed
It mocks those who choose to read
Like an oozing open sore
It, we have come to abhor
Its very sight now does offend
And to it there seems no end
It was once esteemed and respected
Now it stands forlorn and dejected
Once the object of praise and cheers
Now it’s subject to derision and jeers
The time has come at last
For it to fade into the past
Bury it deep and bury it well
Let toll the funeral bell.
Rightwingmoron, a look at boardofrabbis.org says that embalming isn’t a traditional Judaic custom and is considered optional. But it’s extremely unlikely that a Jewish funeral director would hand over a body for such a misuse. Tattoos are not a common Jewish practice, either–they’re forbidden by one of the books of the Pentateuch, and although some Jews get tattoos it’s an awkward situation in funerary practices.
Circumcision (or lack thereof) proves nothing about religion. And if Butterfly McCorpse had decayed enough, the lack of evidence might cut short any investigation there.
It would make more sense for Penny to have said she knew the ME was corrupt, and could be bribed into misidentifying a John Doe as D-cubed.
An intriguing point here is that Penny says she did all the dirty work at D-cubed’s behest. She never says he committed one overt act; instead she blames him for conning her into doing everything she did (including that long-ago call to Mr.-Rowland-at-my-bank?). She’s lied before and Thick should suspect her of more lying.
And no comment from D-cubed? For an irascible, fighting billionaire he’s quite reticent about answering his accusers. You’d think he would defend himself by pointing out that a man of his genius would never try something as absurd as the plan his wife outlined. Is he waiting for Sue Doko to show up and defend him?
To those who’ve suggested that Locher holds police in contempt* - well today’s strip seems to prove that conclusively.
Anyway now I know how to fake my own death - find an obliging funeral director who is willing to rummage around his stock of un-used corpses with the same identifying features as myself (e.g. an identical tattoo in the same place on the body), and get him to insert it in a swamp.
*Come to think of it, Locher holds his readers in contempt too.
Locher outdid himself this time. Usually, the arc’s entire plot is worse than simple-minded. This time, he says to himself, “I know how to get those smart-a$$es at GoComics; I’ll come up with a complicated scheme that will fool us all!”
And Simon Penn, Mattie, and Jeffie once more gleefully lose their body fluids over the genius embedded in Locher’s opus.
How about if the ME gave them a toothless John Doe? And D-Cubed has dentures? Does the dentist who makes one’s dentures keep gum records? Wouldn’t the body have to be pretty fresh to be tattooed? Is it even possible to tattoo a corpse? And who transported the body to the swamp? And how? And what did the guy die from? We’re still waiting for that.
fishbulb, when dentures are made, a dentist makes a plaster casting of your upper and lower jaws, teeth or no teeth. That lets the technicians make a denture which precisely fits inside the mouth of the roof, minimizing discomfort for the wearer. So there would be a distinctive casting of D-cubed’s mouth if he wore dentures.
There are other ways to identify a corpse, or at least to rule out a certain person as the body. Foot prints are a good one–we saw the corpse’s feet, which looked intact. Footprints are normally taken at birth. X-rays of bones will show old, healed breaks. There could be implanted devices such as heart valves. At a minimum the ME could compare the body to D-cubed’s medical records and decide whether or not it could be him.
Penny’s explanation is just absurd. It would have made somewhat more sense to say she bribed the ME to misidentify a John Doe corpse; that way there’s only one corrupt person involved. Of course he will get caught when various lawyers and potential heirs challenge the ID, or when evidence turns up that D-cubed is alive, or when a staff worker tells the local papers there’s something fishy at the ME’s office. But blaming the ME would fit better with Locher’s hatred of anyone who works for the public.
This arc isn’t a story, it’s Locher’s retirement gift to himself. He’s insulting everyone he hates. He doesn’t, and can’t, make sense while he does that. When we finally hear D-cubed’s version it will be equally nonsensical, and paranoid.
(I meant about it ending…I don’t think it can be dragged that long. Maybe Tracy and Co can have a nice simple Christmas story. Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…)
It was a BRILLIANT piece of deception ! Seems , everyone was ”FOOLED” !_— including SimpleSimon, our old pals J&M and evenAuthor Dick Locher -
who ‘vicariously’ enjoyed a HORNSWOGGLE ‘MOMENT’, when he deluded himself !
proof positive (if any further proof were needed) that locher is a drooling idiot, intellectually dishonest and an insult to the Dick Tracy brand and Tracy’s fans.
thanks WW for another great one.
I think we’ll find that Penny acted on her own with the ghoulishness, so she could have her husband declared dead and then claim his estate. Maybe she’s even lying about the story because Butterfly McCorpse is a hit man she hired to kill her husband, and now she’s trying to hide that connection. That would explain her cold sweat and shaky hand in the past few days.
But in Locher all things are possible except rationality.
fishbulb and BillT - That level of conjecture assumes that the strip is written for ADULTS – it isn’t, it’s written for INFANTS … or so I’ve been told. Additionally, the latter “target market” was identified in an early Mike Kilian interview back in 1994. “A new generation of readers” !
Not that it has ever been established that kids ‘bother’ to read it anymore. The original kids are all adults now. And they read it now - out of ’respect’ for the original character.
Locher, when he took over the writing in 2006 hasn’t striven to change that objective, stories continue in infantile mode AND, increasingly are accompanied with “visable” deterioration in the ART, leaving one to conclude that Locher simply doesn’t give a HOOT anymore.
But in it’s present form it leaves abundant room to poke fun at Locher’s nonsense !
Sydney Phillips, I agree with your critique. Anyone who aims a story at children had better realize that kids are a much tougher audience than adults. You don’t win over kids with stories like the rock music-garbage stadium arc, much less with brainless protagonists from the Ed Wood dimension.
VanDork, Simon Penn doesn’t write like any of the normal people here. I think he’s a fanboy who believes that someone at TMS reads these comments. He expects TMS to wave a magic wand and give him a job. He probably clicks on the DT strip several thousand times a day to jack up its readership count.
Tigger, you were the first to call it with D-cubed being Homeless Guy. But you still made the same mistake everyone else did: we all assumed that Locher would play fair with the readers and tell a story.
FLIGHT SUIT over 13 years ago
He even fooled the police?
Imagine that!
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
“JEEBUZ!” Thick exclaims, jumping ten feet in fright, while Pistol Packin’ Penny is so startled by the return of Norton & Co. that she finally shoots D-cubed.
And D-cubed really fooled everyone, except for that part where Thick went looking for him, and the Feds pursued him around the world.
FLIGHT SUIT over 13 years ago
PS: Didja see Simon Penn’s comments yesterday? Somebody needs to cut off that guys’ supply of nitrous oxide!
OldTracy over 13 years ago
Gotta give Dick Locher credit. He sure outsmarted us. There wasn’t one of us who thought that it would be Spacy who stayed and it would be the rest of them who ran away. Nice to see them back, even if it’s without their guns being drawn while Spacy is threatened.
Steve Bartholomew over 13 years ago
Sorry, Mr Locher, this makes no sense whatever.
OldTracy over 13 years ago
Classic line if you think about it:
“He had me pay off a funeral director to find a DEAD body and make sure everyone thought he was DEAD”
margueritem over 13 years ago
Not too hard to fool the police in Napperville…
margueritem over 13 years ago
Simon Penn’s in his own little world, where the tooth fairy really exists.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
She bribed a funeral director, et cetera …
Uh-huh. I know this is lost on a pathetic creature like Locher, but the vast majority of funeral directors are like everyone else: they’re honest. Even if you could find one who’d take a bribe to hand over a corpse to a resurrection man, there’s this annoying bit of paperwork that goes on before a funeral or cremation. Someone at the mortuary has to sign off on the fact that the dead man is in fact dead, and is the proper center of attention.
Now quite a few people work at mortuaries/funeral homes, so you’d have to bribe several people to ignore the hanky-panky. You’d also have to hope that none of the deceased’s family and friends want a final look at the body.
Maybe you could get a body that was scheduled for cremation, and slip it out unnoticed before it and the coffin went into the oven. But you’d have to bribe the people at the crematorium to not notice anything fishy. And how do you transport the body? “I’ll take it in a doggie bag?”
Next, welcome to the USA. Cadavers are embalmed here. How is the ME going to ignore that rather obvious condition? (I think Jewish mortuaries skip that, but I’m not certain.) Intercept the body before it’s delivered to the mortuary? Bribe several workers into dumping the body in a river/lake? And hope they never talk/don’t get caught?
And then you have to hope that, somehow, the body rots enough to be unidentifiable, yet can be mistaken for D-cubed? And that–
Phuqit. If you sold Swiss cheese with this many holes in it, you’d get busted for selling pure air.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Flight Suit, Simon Penn’s comments yesterday really impressed me. I had no idea it was possible to get that drunk and still post.
wndrwrthg over 13 years ago
Oh, what fools we mortals be On this I think we can agree When we seek to make any sense Of a strip that is this dense Convoluted is the plot Of logic there is diddly squat It meanders and it wanders Its potential it wantonly squanders Capricious in its execution Lacking of any resolution A foul and fetid deed It mocks those who choose to read Like an oozing open sore It, we have come to abhor Its very sight now does offend And to it there seems no end It was once esteemed and respected Now it stands forlorn and dejected Once the object of praise and cheers Now it’s subject to derision and jeers The time has come at last For it to fade into the past Bury it deep and bury it well Let toll the funeral bell.
leakysqueaky712 over 13 years ago
SimonPenn said, about 4 hours ago
GREAT Dick Tracy comic strip today. Solid drawings of America’s Favorite Detective!
He’s not my favorite detective, Frank Drebin is.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Maybe D-cubed really is dead, because he’s being remarkably silent amid all this talk. And what happens when Sue Doko appears to fill in the squares?
margueritem over 13 years ago
Leaky, you’re back!!!
margueritem over 13 years ago
Nice one, WW!
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Rightwingmoron, a look at boardofrabbis.org says that embalming isn’t a traditional Judaic custom and is considered optional. But it’s extremely unlikely that a Jewish funeral director would hand over a body for such a misuse. Tattoos are not a common Jewish practice, either–they’re forbidden by one of the books of the Pentateuch, and although some Jews get tattoos it’s an awkward situation in funerary practices.
Circumcision (or lack thereof) proves nothing about religion. And if Butterfly McCorpse had decayed enough, the lack of evidence might cut short any investigation there.
It would make more sense for Penny to have said she knew the ME was corrupt, and could be bribed into misidentifying a John Doe as D-cubed.
An intriguing point here is that Penny says she did all the dirty work at D-cubed’s behest. She never says he committed one overt act; instead she blames him for conning her into doing everything she did (including that long-ago call to Mr.-Rowland-at-my-bank?). She’s lied before and Thick should suspect her of more lying.
And no comment from D-cubed? For an irascible, fighting billionaire he’s quite reticent about answering his accusers. You’d think he would defend himself by pointing out that a man of his genius would never try something as absurd as the plan his wife outlined. Is he waiting for Sue Doko to show up and defend him?
LudwigVonDrake over 13 years ago
So the funeral director dumped the body in the swamp? Puh-leeze.
OzzieJohn over 13 years ago
To those who’ve suggested that Locher holds police in contempt* - well today’s strip seems to prove that conclusively.
Anyway now I know how to fake my own death - find an obliging funeral director who is willing to rummage around his stock of un-used corpses with the same identifying features as myself (e.g. an identical tattoo in the same place on the body), and get him to insert it in a swamp.
*Come to think of it, Locher holds his readers in contempt too.
JCFremont over 13 years ago
This is a great look for Dick. Word on the street is that chicks really dig the Gabby Hayes look.
Word on the street also is that the big bucks are in the funeral business. Plus you get paid in bundles marked “$.”
FLIGHT SUIT over 13 years ago
Regarding this cadaver switcheroo, I’ve got two words for you:
Dental records.
Dr. Midnight over 13 years ago
Actually, Locher surprised me here. I was SURE he was completely going to forget about Butterfly McCorpse.
I guess a totally irrational, implausible and impossible explanation is better than no explanation at all.
I guess.
Morrow Cummings over 13 years ago
Locher outdid himself this time. Usually, the arc’s entire plot is worse than simple-minded. This time, he says to himself, “I know how to get those smart-a$$es at GoComics; I’ll come up with a complicated scheme that will fool us all!”
And Simon Penn, Mattie, and Jeffie once more gleefully lose their body fluids over the genius embedded in Locher’s opus.
fishbulb over 13 years ago
How about if the ME gave them a toothless John Doe? And D-Cubed has dentures? Does the dentist who makes one’s dentures keep gum records? Wouldn’t the body have to be pretty fresh to be tattooed? Is it even possible to tattoo a corpse? And who transported the body to the swamp? And how? And what did the guy die from? We’re still waiting for that.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
fishbulb, when dentures are made, a dentist makes a plaster casting of your upper and lower jaws, teeth or no teeth. That lets the technicians make a denture which precisely fits inside the mouth of the roof, minimizing discomfort for the wearer. So there would be a distinctive casting of D-cubed’s mouth if he wore dentures.
There are other ways to identify a corpse, or at least to rule out a certain person as the body. Foot prints are a good one–we saw the corpse’s feet, which looked intact. Footprints are normally taken at birth. X-rays of bones will show old, healed breaks. There could be implanted devices such as heart valves. At a minimum the ME could compare the body to D-cubed’s medical records and decide whether or not it could be him.
Penny’s explanation is just absurd. It would have made somewhat more sense to say she bribed the ME to misidentify a John Doe corpse; that way there’s only one corrupt person involved. Of course he will get caught when various lawyers and potential heirs challenge the ID, or when evidence turns up that D-cubed is alive, or when a staff worker tells the local papers there’s something fishy at the ME’s office. But blaming the ME would fit better with Locher’s hatred of anyone who works for the public.
This arc isn’t a story, it’s Locher’s retirement gift to himself. He’s insulting everyone he hates. He doesn’t, and can’t, make sense while he does that. When we finally hear D-cubed’s version it will be equally nonsensical, and paranoid.
Midnite over 13 years ago
So would it be safe to assume that this horrible storyline is nearing an end or is Locher going to somehow drag it until December?
g6793 over 13 years ago
NVash: I sure hope so…it lost me somewhere…I like what BillThompson has to say about it though.
g6793 over 13 years ago
(I meant about it ending…I don’t think it can be dragged that long. Maybe Tracy and Co can have a nice simple Christmas story. Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…)
steveyorkdesigns over 13 years ago
And you’d think she could trust a professional con man.
sydney over 13 years ago
It was a BRILLIANT piece of deception ! Seems , everyone was ”FOOLED” ! _— including SimpleSimon, our old pals J&M and even Author Dick Locher - who ‘vicariously’ enjoyed a HORNSWOGGLE ‘MOMENT’, when he deluded himself !
billdi Premium Member over 13 years ago
proof positive (if any further proof were needed) that locher is a drooling idiot, intellectually dishonest and an insult to the Dick Tracy brand and Tracy’s fans. thanks WW for another great one.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
For a case where someone tried to cover his own disappearance with a misappropriated corpse:
http://www.bardachreports.com/articles/v_19951200.html
It didn’t work for long.
I think we’ll find that Penny acted on her own with the ghoulishness, so she could have her husband declared dead and then claim his estate. Maybe she’s even lying about the story because Butterfly McCorpse is a hit man she hired to kill her husband, and now she’s trying to hide that connection. That would explain her cold sweat and shaky hand in the past few days.
But in Locher all things are possible except rationality.
Vista Bill Raley and Comet™ over 13 years ago
Welcome back, Leaky!
I see the feds are beginning to return from their break…
sydney over 13 years ago
fishbulb and BillT - That level of conjecture assumes that the strip is written for ADULTS – it isn’t, it’s written for INFANTS … or so I’ve been told. Additionally, the latter “target market” was identified in an early Mike Kilian interview back in 1994. “A new generation of readers” !
Not that it has ever been established that kids ‘bother’ to read it anymore. The original kids are all adults now. And they read it now - out of ’respect’ for the original character.
Locher, when he took over the writing in 2006 hasn’t striven to change that objective, stories continue in infantile mode AND, increasingly are accompanied with “visable” deterioration in the ART, leaving one to conclude that Locher simply doesn’t give a HOOT anymore.
But in it’s present form it leaves abundant room to poke fun at Locher’s nonsense !
veldy over 13 years ago
I still think SimonPenn is one of you
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Sydney Phillips, I agree with your critique. Anyone who aims a story at children had better realize that kids are a much tougher audience than adults. You don’t win over kids with stories like the rock music-garbage stadium arc, much less with brainless protagonists from the Ed Wood dimension.
VanDork, Simon Penn doesn’t write like any of the normal people here. I think he’s a fanboy who believes that someone at TMS reads these comments. He expects TMS to wave a magic wand and give him a job. He probably clicks on the DT strip several thousand times a day to jack up its readership count.
Tigger, you were the first to call it with D-cubed being Homeless Guy. But you still made the same mistake everyone else did: we all assumed that Locher would play fair with the readers and tell a story.
thejensens over 13 years ago
I was a “Fool” for reading this F*ing story!!!!!