Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 02, 2022

This was not a Minit Mystery, it was a Minit Misery. AND a dull, predictable one at that.

I actually think I could write a more entertaining one if given the chance.

well, this is done… add another MINIT MIS-STORY loss to the win-loss column…

At least Wren does a fine-looking “perp walk”.

Sewer screamer, Jett met his fate

Fetid water raw.

Wren, she flew a crocked path

Straight into trouble’s maw.

Sam and Tracy were on the case

Wrapped it up so fast.

Impatient, time shall never wait

Thus, a Minit passed.

What’s the point of the whole rigmarole?

People complain too much……it wasn’t THAT bad……

Good morning™, all!

Well, that’s done, another villain dead by his own devices, and we should be back to the story that involves Vitamin Flintheart’s new musical play tomorrow.

I see that Dr. Bath’s hat (pith helmet) is indeed a sort of lavender colour, as approximated in the recent dailies. I wonder if Shane actually knew it was a pith helmet or if he only had the view in today’s strip to go by. I expect the latter, because the dailies are rendered a couple of weeks after the Sundays, and she didn’t appear in the previous Sundays.

I especially like the way Shelley has Wren looking directly at the reader… nice touch there…

Where was the mystery?

So, Wren kept the incriminating evidence right in her own studio, about the first place the cops would search. At least there was some consistency in this storyline. Pretty much each day’s strip contained at least one plot point or twist that really made no sense at all.

The Minit Mystery is why these two Stanton and Reimer were allowed to unretire to write this and ruin their reputation.

I called it yesterday.

Much preferable to the silly space aliens. More Minit Mysteries, please.

And THAT was the payoff for the “Rae Water” clue? I thought it was going to be something significant. (sigh). I usually don’t bother griping about the “Minut Mysteries” because the very format makes it impossible to set up a good “Fair-Play” mystery. The best it can do is present a puzzle, and this one doesn’t even do that.

Anita Bath was clean of any wrongdoing, how nice!

I think Encyclopedia Brown would have solved this one faster….

This story was in the sewer from the start.

Minit Mysteries should be about things like missing car keys, deciphering grandma’s meatloaf recipe, what did the dog ate that made him throw up, etc. If it only takes a “Minit” to figure out whodunit, then it should be something that only took “Minit” to do.

Don’t you mean raw SEWAGE, rather than raw WATER, Tracy? And, why it might be as toxic for us, as it was for Basil Jett, raw sewage wouldn’t do the rest of us much good.

Oh, you all’re gonna LOVE the Mark Trail nature mystery…with guest star Shylock Fox.

What is Sam doing to her in the middle panels? Hubba hubba.

Wtf! Why I’m still reading that strip !¿!

Did Tracy and Co. do anything at all here except arrest Wren after her co-conspirator literally tripped and fell to his death while they weren’t even looking?

The idol is Hammie McPherson from the FoxTrot comic!!!

SAM: Well, I solved another case and I’m hungry. For some reason, a Kentucky Hot Brown sandwich sounds particularly good right now.

At least Tracy’s hands are clean with respect to the death of Jett. Unless of course he had to help fish him out of the sewer.

Is it just me, or has Dick not done a lot of “detecting” lately? It seems that stuff just happens around him.

Time to put the Minit Mystery Series out to pasture. No clues whatsoever. Where was the motive? Oh yeah…greed! We the readers were supposed to read into the characters as opposed to reading between the lines. Gosh, this episode sucked. @ Mike and Shelley, if y’all need to buy time for story development…how about two weeks of Crime Stoppers Textbook instead of these mystery things.

When the regular storyline resumes, it needs to have “legs”. The so-called latest Minit Mystery would never have made it as a horse shoe.

Tracked him to the sewer how? Determined that she was his accomplice how?

horse shoes are supposed to be a symbol of good luck… the only thing hanging on these two-week hiatus filler ‘mysteries’ is an albatross, which signifies bad luck… these fillers haven’t got a leg to stand on…

The consensus appears to be a general dislike of so called Minit Mysteries, particularly this latest fiasco. Is Team Tracy listening? I doubt it, they appear to be in a bubble, attempting to change this strip dramatically, and usually failing. Maybe they should review how they started a few years ago. The characters were creative, and new, and the stories, albeit short, interesting. Nothing like that has appeared recently.

And so, with an abundance of compressed, rushed exposition, the Minit Mystery (such as it was) is wrapped up. We learn that Basil Jet is dead sewage dead but that the Froyne was recovered (yay!). We further learn that Wren Christopher was the forger of the fakes (I think most of us suspected as much) and has been arrested. Finally, Anita Bath is cleared of all involvement in the plot and gets off clean (ahem!). We end with Tracy’s sage admonition about the Curse of the Four-Eyed R2D2….

Onward!

The artifact should have been HEAVIER t han Jett and sunk faster,so how did they recover it?