Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 16, 2022

The Mole Man strikes!

Good morning™, everybody!

Always trust shadowy figures standing by the ATM at night. Wasn’t there a Crimestoppers Tip about that recently? Anyway, shadowy figure seems to have dropped a card that is bouncing off the sidewalk.

Chances are good that one of these two figures is the new villain.

And,,, we’re off to a whole new story.

Thrills!

Spills!

Chills!

And brand new baffling action, decisions and colorings!!!

Good morning™, those about to be mugged !

I will go with Neil’s guess that one of these is a bad egg, and not necrosarilly the dark hulking figure. What if they are both robbers each thinking they are about to get easy pickin’s ?

“And now for something completely different.”

With the previous story all wrapped up, and with today’s strip focusing on two characters we (probably) haven’t seen before, it appears we’ve reached the start of a new story. When I’ve decided a new story’s started, I do a list of every Tracy story on GoComics. Unfortunately, soon after I started doing this GC imposed a stupid, asinine character limit of only 2000 characters which includes every letter, space, punctuation, & html, which means I have to do this over several posts. I’ll do my initial introduction in this post and start the list in the next one, because otherwise, I can’t even get past the second year.

My notes are fairly simple. Just my name for the story (usually the name of the main villain or villains, unless they just aren’t the emphasis) followed by the dates the story began and ended. If someone was the main villain for more than one story, I add a “II” and so on to emphasize this. If more than one villain from a past story are in the same story committing major crimes, I include them altogether. Finally, for the 4 cases of more than one villain with the same name (Chameleon, Mr. Crime, Shaky, the Ace of Spades) I add, “The Second” in front of their names.

Minit Mysteries Note: at the request of people who wanted to see these listed here, I’ve decided to make a separate post for them to keep the listing of Mike Curtis stories in as few posts as possible.

At the start of the GoComics archive, the writer was the late Mike Kilian. Personally, I like his work on Tracy and think he’s very underrated. At the very least, he knew how to tell a story in the daily strip format where every day, something happens that moves the story along, a quality his successor sorely lacked. I recommend anyone here who hasn’t read these stories to check them out.

TBC cuz GC decided to suck now

My money’s on the guy in the trench coat being the bad guy.

The ultimate sleight of hand trick.

One face clear, one hidden……gotta go with the second as the bad guy.

Be wary around ATM machines!

Bumbles: “It was right next to my 9mm when I last checked…”

Oh for…gads either this is a thief waiting to mug this guy or they are going to somehow hack the ATM and drain the guy’s bank account.

What are you wanting to do that requires cash, that you’d be willing to use an ATM under these circumstances? If you can’t use your credit or debit card for the purchase it is probably illegal or immoral – or both.

Is the dropped card an accident, or a diversion? Perhaps a ploy to get the good citizen to bend over to pick it up, only to be victimized in some way? Stay tuned to this channel…same bat time, same bat, er, wait, wrong ending script there, sorry.

Crescent moons always bend down, with the pointy ends pointing up. Bending left probably means it is early morning before dawn, and that Tracy-town is quite far north. … Or the cartoonist screwed up.

Move on, redcoat – move on…

Wow! A fleshed-out “Crimestoppers Tip!” ATM safety!

So….is he gonna pick up the debit card after the guy walks away? And when he does, will it be the LAST thing he ever does?

I like how Pleger has implied that the dropped card is equivalent to a rubber check by having it bounce off the ground. No?

Never mind.

Young guy gonna used the ATM…heavy shady character playing coy? And so it begins!

1-RED COATZARECOMIN: PSSSST – You lookin’ for a date? Twenty bucks…

2-RED: Here’s an ATM right here. *Well, DEUS EX MACHINA! Hold on…

3-…Lemme find my card…had it yesterday…I used it to buy an espresso at the BEAN HOWZ …it was terrible…I was drinking it while reading about the cops bust at Coffy Imports …say, how do you suppose that undercover guy who got shot at from only 5 feet away managed to get away unscathed?…I guess we’ll never know…where’s that card…

RED: Uhhhh, it’s late…maybe tomorrow? TRENCH: WHAT? FINE! YOU’RE UGLY ANYWAY!

I’d walk away right now. It’s why I usually get money early in the morning.

Who says “Phooey” anymore?

I suspect Trenchcoat has something besides an ATM card in (her?) purse. ..or am I being obvious?

MOVIE QUOTE—

“Who’s going to t ell his wife?”

“I am”

Robert Ryan—ACT OF VIOLENCE—1948

How did Franklin D>Roosevelt get into this?(Panel 2)

Thumbs up to our concluded storyline—-Dot View,after 70 years of mourning,finally gets a happy ending.I’mthe sentimental type.Coffeyhead is still alive,to the disappointment of at least50 per cent of the readers.A few side bets we never got to see—-Junior/Bronco reunion;who Luigi/Lugi is/are;who was shooting at who(As a Fed,maybe Bronko had his own heater).

Aboutthe Crimestoppers—-when do we FINALLY get a new version??Honeymoon,Crystal,Annie——only problem is a lack of boys.

And as Sam Catchem said to Coffeyhead at the lockup—-

“What the HELL is "red eye gravy’?

Looks like the mysterious guy has his wallet out in the first panel, if he’s trying to lure marks into letting down their guard he’s certainly trying, but it seems like the guy at the ATM is eyeing him with suspicion. Then again, perhaps he is playing a different sort of game, drawing attention to himself while he deliberately drops his card in the third panel? I’m intrigued!

Friday The 13th came on a captureday this year.

So, we start the new caper with two smucks, ya see? Dilly-dallying and dancing around the ATM, as though neither of them wants to go first. Both appear suspicious (in one or the other or both senses). Red-jacket blond guy could be a Common Mugger, or maybe is analogous to a Star Trek redshirt. The creepy person in the coat and hat, shrouded in shadow, with visible eyeglasses and with the pointy nose and what seem to be chin whiskers in the shadowy profile (panel 2), portly and short, does indeed call to mind Oswald Cobblepot (as mentioned above by blunebottle). He appears to be stalling for an opportune moment as he drops a bouncy card, maybe the debit card he claims to be in search of, and roots around in his messenger bag, where he may have a pistol or some other favored weapon.

Who’s gonna “do” whom, first?

My strictly guesswork bet is that Red Coat is going down and the OC-lookalike will go on to further villainy!

Never visit your friendly local ATM at night………

I suppose I will find out tomorrow if the character holding the bag is a stick up man.