Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 22, 2018

Good morning™, guys!

I would have thought Dick Tracy’s “time” went all that way back, but I guess that’s the joke, and I see that Vitamin Flintheart is right on cue. That’s a good skill for an actor!

Deacon and Miller.

Before Dick Tracy’s era.

Enter Vitamin.

Since we are all players in this V. Flintheart is an expert and knows his cues.

Good morning™, movie actor icons !

Donnie is in his element with this story !

I wish they would kill off Vitamin already, he’s such a bore!

Since Vitamin is here… will Vista Bill’s old movies come into play? It’s less than a week till VB’s BD

I hope Vitamin brought Kandikane with him.

Looks like Piotr Volkov was able to skate away from any charges, and the story is moving on.

Since this comic strip began in 1931, Deacon and Miller must have been from the Silent Era…

Looks like I made a lucky guess yesterday

so the search of vortex lair revealed zip?

OK. Now, yesterday, when the narrative took a huge jump, the last panel tied it in to the story with the narrative box promising that the new material does in fact relate to the current story. It was much like Gould’s famous “Meanwhile”. But where Mike Curtis differs terribly from Chester Gould is in knowing where to insert such a diversion, and how long before going back. We were right in the middle of an ongoing investigation, with a pending search of the premises and an opportunity to see Tracy use his keen skills to interpret what he found, and to talk with Sam about whether he believed PV, or if Devilia had talked, etc. Now we have Tracy and Sam kicked back at HQ as if all is settled. Gould used to have fun with the scenes of relaxing at HQ too, but it was always between cases. Some may just consider this a different writing style, which it surely is, but it’s messing with Tracy’s basic character. The Dick Tracy we knew did not relax when there was unfinished business involving a case – he was driven to tie up loose ends almost all of the time. (There is one rather jarring exception in the middle of the Crewy Lou continuity. Gould has Tracy take a break to fetch Tess and Bonnie back from a vacation we knew nothing about, because Gould was maneuvering Tracy into a final confrontation with Crewy Lou in the famous “deep woods”)

Another old character visiting, but when will we see BO and Gertie? And incidentally the cause of those mysterious noises at their home was never found. S&C just dropped that storyline.

Why are our sentences being cut mid-word? Another screwup at headquarters?

Didn’t Devila drop a dime on the entire Polar Vortex operation? Isn’t that the reason Tracy & Sam raided Vortex’s HQ? I guess Vortex comes from the MBS-getting-away-with-it-school.

……it said today we would find out how this involves Polar. I guess I’m just clueless, because I don’t see how it does from today’s panel…..

Deacon and Miller, old-time entertainers/movie stars, somehow tie in with Piotr Volkov (Piotr does resemble an older version of whichever of the duo is the clean-shaven, long-faced one—Miller?). And, on cue, Vitamin Flintheart, old-time actor and once-matinee idol, walks in, just in time to provide the lowdown on Deacon and Miller, who likely were contemporaneous with his own early years in The Business. What’s lacking at this point, however, is any reason for Tracy to care about D & M….

cue the ominous music