Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 21, 2021

Spill the beans. Know that it means a lifetime on the run

Paranoid and filled with dread is no way to have fun.

Smith Industries did have a mole. A man consumed by greed

So certain he could look ahead. He could not even bleed.

Incinerated. Decimated. Just a hand was left

Hoped that he’d be living large. Instead, he was bereft.

The money train ran off the rails. ‘Tis time to dry your eyes

Old cash is stacked and counted. See what blood money buys.

Look to see uber-wealthy. Two gents with their own stacks

Rebuild or no. On with the show. Get past the time attacks.

Good morning™, everyone!

That last one that Mumbles went after was $20 million of the $70 million all by itself. The coffee served to make a useful screen of steam on which Briar Rose could project her thoughts.

Reconstruction is well underway at Smith Industries, but I have a feeling that Smith is not about to do anything that would potentially aid the Apparatus. Anyway, Tracy and the gang will probably be closing in on them soon.

Mumbles gives the “thmup”.

I am really loving Shelley’s art.

Is the Mad Colorist now a 24/7 gig? Not only have Rose’s clothes changed color, but the Ace of Spades ‘s emblem is red. (But perhaps it’s just following the Blackhearts’ lead?)

Gotta luv the magic coffee steam which is able to show video flashbacks! LOL!

Even for a comic strip that’s pretty loony!

Good morning™, both kind of reconstructors !

Smith needs to have an underground experiments bunker where the next, and there will be one, explosion, wont have such devastation.

Daddy is just goading Smith into having another go at time travel/peeping. To find a child’s long lost parents could be a powerful inducement. Ace talks like they have another “bug” in the works to take up where Sterling left off.

You know, there are people out there (not too many, but some to be sure) who have no idea who their children’s biological parents were. We are among them.

Diet’s decision regarding the time drone follows his decision to destroy all of his “moon tech” following the Dr.Ghote/Dr.Sail/Munro Brothers story arc…

And don’t forget the public hates him for the destruction caused by Sterling Eliot… He didn’t have that with Dr. Ghote…

I hope that poor grammar in the Crimestoppers was intentional. It should read, “Your account’s frozen.”

I recorded a message on my answering machine that’s intended to discourage robocallers.

I hope Rose stays around, I’m warming to her……

You’re Annie’s real parent in all the ways that count, Oliver.

….after what you’ve experienced in recent weeks? Let it lie, Oliver, Let. It. Lie. Annie’s been “your girl” for like how many decades now? Perhaps Oliver’s “I wish I may, I wish I might” rejoinder nudges Diet’s “I may not” to “I WON’T”?………

Gotta say Ace is a thug of remarkable patience and optimism, thinking all he has to do is keep Tracy off his back, wait for Diet to rebuild, plant another mole, and then start plundering the past again like nothing happened. Piece a’ cake!

Happy Birthday to Chester Gould, yesterday.

https://travsd.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/on-chester-gould-and-dick-tracy/?fbclid=IwAR10dloz1s-8bStLlCkaMMPaKywG9-1Tx2_4Uz94RuXXsoJrg3ej8i8MZF0

Very nicely done! Nice flashback panel with Briar Rose; nice, smooth transition to the Apparatus as they discuss, and nice final link to what looks to be the next Annie Cross-over plot. So THAT’S why Warbucks has been hanging around lately!

I have never seen any explanation of how present~day programmers could guide time drone to treasure locations if date and place of concealment are unknown to them. Did I miss something?

Consider the time-frozen arm that appeared in the debris, shouldn’t they have the area cordoned off and on 24/7 monitoring, instead of being cleared out, at least for a while?

I know in the movies “Miss Hannigan”, her brother, and, his girl friend conspire to defraud Warbucks by claiming to be Annie’s parents, using a the matching locket recovered when Annie’s parent’s bodies were found. Is that part of the (Little Orphan) Annie newspaper continuity as well?

1-SUKIE: WHOA. WHAT’S IN THIS COFFEE?!? I’m seeing Scarfy watching Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates on TV…

2-…NOW the Apparatus changed the channel to a documentary on D. B. Cooper ! Looks like he survived the parachute jump!

3-MEANWHILE AT APPARATUS HEADQUARTERS RATFACE: All in favor of using our ill-gotten gains to help rebuild Smith Industries say AYE or die…

4-MEANWHILE AT THE FORMER SMITH INDUSTRIES SITE DOIT: Nice of the Apparatus to help me rebuild. I can’t imagine what their interest in my affairs might be…

5- WARBUX: And all they want is an hour a day with the Time Drone when it’s rebuilt. Probably want to research family histories.

DOIT: Probably.

That first frame of Briar Rose looks like a take on Sharon Stone in Basic Instincts. She also reminded me of a modern version of Brenda Starr.

Only to find out Annie is an alien clone sleeper planted here with her evil controller, Sandy, to initiate the overthrow of all mankind. ’Arf" is an infinitely nuanced comment! Just say no, Smith. Say no.

I wonder how much Marvel paid for the product placement.

First note: As Rose reported, the local news knew all about Elliot long before Tracy thought Rose was up to no good.

First possibility: This is the end of the time drone story. We may never hear from Rose again. After all, we had a whole week of „talking heads“ for all the exposition that Mike will likely ever give us.

Worse possibility: This is the beginning of an Annie cross-over with Warbucks looking for Annie‘s parents.

Worst possibility: In the process of moving Tracy, Annie, and Warbucks through time, we finally get that Flattop rematch that Mike seems „itching“ to spring on us.

But it does appear that this present (part of the) arc is over.

So, I look forward to boboscar s summary of Tracy Capers.

Too bad the Apparatus can’t make an investment of start-up money for rebuilding the time drone complex. Who would be their go between without arousing suspicion? Maybe someone on the level of a Steve Forbes or Bill Gates type.

BTW – the glass workers did a fast bang-up on the building Smith and Warbucks are in….I would find it beyond belief the Drone Complex explosion didn’t shatter every window in that structure.

What, even if Diet Smith revives the time drone program, he’s not going to have tighter security in place to avoid another Sterling Elliot? You’d think the Apparatus would be smart enough to know it’s time to count the winnings & move on.

I like the art of the steam coming off the coffee becoming the picture

Good silos of Tracy and Pickle Nose.

cue the dark ambient music with discordant overtones which, although broadly tonal, is inflected with chromatic and polytonal passages to utter sound in tremulous tones.

She’s a cool one, that Briar Rose. Gotta grant her that. Her tale winds into the coffee steam, and cool Shelley mutates that into the background for the smokey Apparatus boardroom and the speakers there, including Ace of (red) Spades—I grant license for his blazon variation, so as to provide a contrast with his black bodysuit. He leaves departure time for the renewed money train to Diet. And Diet Smith and Daddy Warbucks survey the rebuilding underway at the Smith Industries campus (which I imagine to be on the outskirts of Tracyville, not near downtown).

Ironically, what they see out their window is what I see out my window: across the street from my condo, a parochial co-ed high school (merged from adjacent formerly separate boys’ and girls’ schools sharing a large campus) has closed and in the last few weeks been demolished by heavy cranes and other such equipment, and so also the former athletic fields directly opposite me, all in preparation for an ill-conceived (IMO) multi-units, high density housing development—with little thought to impact on traffic, public safety, or public utilities: my village seems to be bedazzled by the thought of new property tax income….

Only a real fathead would rebuild the Time Drone after what happened.

Warbucks has a cocktail.Diet Smith sticks to milk.

And don’t all those “poisoned coffee” people feel awfully silly>?

Remember how long it took to rebuild The World Trade Center.

Diet will be operating out of a broom closet for some time to come.