Tracy had a plan, but for it to work he’d need to set the groundwork, and quickly.
“Well B.O., I give you credit, All these years you had me fooled. I always thought you were nothing but a mindless, stupid, ugly, idiotic hillbilly bumpkin and here you are, the second in command of a huge, evil empire!”
B.O. squinted his eyes and hissed; “What do you mean, ‘Second in command?’ I’m in charge of this here crime syndicate!”
Tracy grinned; he knew B.O. ate the bait.
“B.O., my former friend, obviously Ugly Crystal is the real brains and leader of the syndicate. Do you really think Bribery wouldn’t leave his niece in charge while he was picking up soap?”
Crystal quickly interrupted Tracy;
“Shut up, you lousy excuse for a cop! Don’t listen to him B.O., he’s just trying to put a wedge between us!”
Tracy went for the kill; “B.O. if and when Bribery ever gets out, you’ll be goat food before you can say; ‘Yee Haw!’”
Crystal pulled her beloved slingshot out of her back pocket and placed a large, round rock with spikes in it.
“I won’t hesitate to kill you with this Tracy, and then I’ll leak to the newspapers all about your secret Lost Weekend in the Catskills and about what you did to poor, poor Hilda!”
“Ye Gads!” Tracy thought in shocked horror, “The little maggot knows about Hilda!”
“We own most of the papers in the city”, she continued, "and they’d love a juicy story of a beloved detective messed up in scandal!
Tracy, trying to remember where he heard that before knew it was now or never!
To be continued
Every time I try to wrap up the story it keeps pulling me back in!
Well, Nero Wolfe does seem to be in captivity, so maybe he was kidnapped after all. I have a feeling that Mr. Duncan here was a character in “And Be a Villain” (British title: “More Deaths Than One”), but I haven’t read that so I don’t know anything more.
Who are these two men who have obsconded with our reading detective and why are they watching him so intently? I would seem that Nero is not giving them what they are looking for. Time will tell who these mystery men are and what they’re after.
OK … so this story, which happened in Tracy’s past, is supposed to be told from Tracy’s p.o.v., as he relates it to Sam. So how come in today’s strip we see an event, Nero Wolfe in some sort of situation where he’s under observation, simultaneously with Tracy interviewing Archie Goodwin in Tracy’s office, an event presumably Tracy doesn’t know about at that moment in time? Arguably in retrospect Tracy knows what happened to Wolfe, but wouldn’t he relate it to Sam as he tells Sam what his investigation uncovered? Flashback stories can be tricky, & I think Mike may have already tripped himself up. Just saying.
The thing with Wolfe is that he’s happiest doing as little as possible. He loves – in no particular order – good food, cultivating orchids, and books (preferably good nonfiction books) that he hasn’t read yet. Deprived of good food and orchids, but with an adequate library, he will submerge himself in books until Archie comes to get him.
It still isn’t entirely clear if he was kidnapped (although we should assume he was). Did they promise him a secret recipe if he came alone? Are they hoping to keep him in captivity until Wolfe’s cook quits – so they can hire him? If they’re hoping to get information by breaking him with solitary confinement it doesn’t seem to work – threaten to take away the book or only feed him fast-food burgers.
I think I have solved the mystery of what is going on. The telegram was from the La-Z-Boy corporation. They had heard about Nero Wolfe’s sedentary lifestyle. The telegram requested Nero to come to La-Z-Boy headquarters in Monroe, Michigan. La-Z-Boy knew that Nero Wolfe would be the perfect test subject for their new line of recliners.
Right now, Nero is being monitored behind a one-way mirror. The engineers studying him are disappointed that he just sits and reads, and has not reclined and dozed off. The new recliner is a failure.
This guy introduced himself as a private investigator doing work for Wolfe. He answered the door and signed for a telegram while a servant was right there. He’s been hanging around the house for a week while Wolfe’s been gone and now he’s cleaning his office. I guess that’s the work. Must have been a bad year for the P I business.
But ,sir? Isn’t only giving him SEE SPOT RUN to read torture?"
(evil chortle) Yes, all part of my so-wicked plan! And the delicious irony is that I have excised all the parts where Spot actually DOES run. He will be Silly Putty in my hands in mere DAYS!
Another atypical behavior for Wolfe. While there are plenty of times he would have Archie get him something he could easily reach himself, Stout once had Archie comment that Wolfe would actually leave his desk to dump an ashtray. So leaving the telegram on the floor must have been a way for Wolfe to leave Archie a clue.
1-DT: So to recap the last 30 minutes, Wolfe is mssing. ARCH: Yes, BUT THERE’S MORE!DT:sigh I was afraid of that.
2-ARCHIE: I found the telegraph a few days later on the day that I routinely clean Mr. Wolfe’s room.
3-DT: So when I asked you 27 minutes ago if Wolfe told you what it read and you said “NO”, you were just playing semantics. If I had asked you if you knew what was IN the telegram, you would’ve said “YES” and then I would’ve had to ask you “WHAT” and then you would’ve told me 27 MINUTES AGO, RIGHT????ARCHIE: Of course!
4-DUNCAN’S BOSS: Has he swallowed any of our chemical-based upscale food products yet? DUNCAN, Diet Industries Tech: No Boss…
5-…He nibbles a bit, spits it out and claims he had better tasting food when all he had to eat was what his Roman masters left in the Vomitorium he cleaned in a previous life.
BOSS: Roman Vomitorium, eh? Give him some of our Italian flavored stuff then.
“Oh, wait! I thought I had it. It must be in my other jacket. I hope it’s not in my brown jacket, I took that one to the cleaners yesterday. That’s funny, today is Tuesday, I always wear my tweed jacket on a Tuesday. I’m just so worried about Nero. Anyway, the telegram. I think that I can remember what it said, something about ‘Always drink your Ovaltine!’ and it was signed LOA!”
Archie can be frustratingly meticulous in recounting his tale: for goodness sake, get to the point and tell Tracy and us what the ding-dong telegram said!
Meanwhile, just what sort of “kidnapping” is this, where the kidnapped Nero Wolfe gets to sit in a comfy chair and read, while being observed by “Sir” and flunky Duncan through what would appear to be a one-way mirror or similar viewport? Bizarre business, for sure.
And big thanks to Tarry Plaguer for that very helpful explanatory post immediately preceding this one….
Intro (skip if you’ve already read any of the previous intros):
Hello, greetings, casual readers of past Tracy stories. I’m here because I’m on 2 missions. The first is something I’ve never done before, read each Tracy story by Mike Curtis (or his occasional guest writer) in one sitting each. I feel his stories are worth it. IMHO, Curtis is by far the best post-Gould writer this strip has ever had, and we’re all lucky to have him.
My second mission is to provide an immediately useful Featured Comment whenever needed. My 3 friends below will reply to me. You can read their replies if you like, but their only real purpose is to bump up this comment to the Featured Comment.
There are 2 basic types of immediately useful Featured Comments: the first type is to provide you with a Mumblespeak translator when needed. The other type is anytime that day’s strip quotes a real song. I will provide an html to a recording to that song so you’ll know the tune even if you’ve never heard it before.
End Intro
But this post isn’t for either of these 2 reasons. Over at Facebook’s Calling Dick Tracy fan club, Shelley Pleger posted that the colors had come out wrong. This is what the Sunday strip is meant to look like:
Pequod over 1 year ago
Just as we were sitting down to a gourmet tasty meal
Doorbell rang. Wolfe did depart. The news his fate did seal.
Left behind a telegram. I have it for you here
All respect, please do detect and find a friend most dear.
In a room he sits alone transacting with the page
Came along so peacefully, did not protest or rage.
In solitude sans attitude he reads and does not change
Peculiar scene. What can it mean? The situation strange.
Brian Premium Member over 1 year ago
Well, cleared that up.
avenger09 over 1 year ago
Tracy Meets Doctor Fix
Chapter 11
Tracy had a plan, but for it to work he’d need to set the groundwork, and quickly.
“Well B.O., I give you credit, All these years you had me fooled. I always thought you were nothing but a mindless, stupid, ugly, idiotic hillbilly bumpkin and here you are, the second in command of a huge, evil empire!”
B.O. squinted his eyes and hissed; “What do you mean, ‘Second in command?’ I’m in charge of this here crime syndicate!”
Tracy grinned; he knew B.O. ate the bait.
“B.O., my former friend, obviously Ugly Crystal is the real brains and leader of the syndicate. Do you really think Bribery wouldn’t leave his niece in charge while he was picking up soap?”
Crystal quickly interrupted Tracy;
“Shut up, you lousy excuse for a cop! Don’t listen to him B.O., he’s just trying to put a wedge between us!”
Tracy went for the kill; “B.O. if and when Bribery ever gets out, you’ll be goat food before you can say; ‘Yee Haw!’”
Crystal pulled her beloved slingshot out of her back pocket and placed a large, round rock with spikes in it.
“I won’t hesitate to kill you with this Tracy, and then I’ll leak to the newspapers all about your secret Lost Weekend in the Catskills and about what you did to poor, poor Hilda!”
“Ye Gads!” Tracy thought in shocked horror, “The little maggot knows about Hilda!”
“We own most of the papers in the city”, she continued, "and they’d love a juicy story of a beloved detective messed up in scandal!
Tracy, trying to remember where he heard that before knew it was now or never!
To be continued
Every time I try to wrap up the story it keeps pulling me back in!
firestrike1 over 1 year ago
a mystery which leaves the reader hanging and wondering…
Gweedo -it's legal here- Murray over 1 year ago
Good morning™, Studious readers !
Wolfie looks like he submitted himself for some kind of study. This will be one of those times Tracy shouldn’t bother.
Neil Wick over 1 year ago
Good morning™, everyone!
Well, Nero Wolfe does seem to be in captivity, so maybe he was kidnapped after all. I have a feeling that Mr. Duncan here was a character in “And Be a Villain” (British title: “More Deaths Than One”), but I haven’t read that so I don’t know anything more.
markwillman4 over 1 year ago
Greetings, Armchair Detectives!
Who are these two men who have obsconded with our reading detective and why are they watching him so intently? I would seem that Nero is not giving them what they are looking for. Time will tell who these mystery men are and what they’re after.
jonahhex1 over 1 year ago
I’m betting this current tale ends either Saturday or next Sunday.
BreathlessMahoney77 over 1 year ago
OK … so this story, which happened in Tracy’s past, is supposed to be told from Tracy’s p.o.v., as he relates it to Sam. So how come in today’s strip we see an event, Nero Wolfe in some sort of situation where he’s under observation, simultaneously with Tracy interviewing Archie Goodwin in Tracy’s office, an event presumably Tracy doesn’t know about at that moment in time? Arguably in retrospect Tracy knows what happened to Wolfe, but wouldn’t he relate it to Sam as he tells Sam what his investigation uncovered? Flashback stories can be tricky, & I think Mike may have already tripped himself up. Just saying.
GoComicsGo! over 1 year ago
The last panel is superb.
IvanB.Cohen over 1 year ago
“He just sits there and reads”. Apparently he is not worried about the confinement. Even brought some reading material with him.
iggyman over 1 year ago
“Stay tuned”!
Sporteric11 over 1 year ago
He finally found Colonel Sanders’s secret recipe !
Sporteric11 over 1 year ago
It must be an imposter or it would say that he just sits there and EATS !!!
bmckee over 1 year ago
The thing with Wolfe is that he’s happiest doing as little as possible. He loves – in no particular order – good food, cultivating orchids, and books (preferably good nonfiction books) that he hasn’t read yet. Deprived of good food and orchids, but with an adequate library, he will submerge himself in books until Archie comes to get him.
tsull2121 over 1 year ago
Next to last panel, the guy talking to Duncan looks like ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’s old man dummy
LawrenceS over 1 year ago
It still isn’t entirely clear if he was kidnapped (although we should assume he was). Did they promise him a secret recipe if he came alone? Are they hoping to keep him in captivity until Wolfe’s cook quits – so they can hire him? If they’re hoping to get information by breaking him with solitary confinement it doesn’t seem to work – threaten to take away the book or only feed him fast-food burgers.
Tradewinds309 over 1 year ago
I think I have solved the mystery of what is going on. The telegram was from the La-Z-Boy corporation. They had heard about Nero Wolfe’s sedentary lifestyle. The telegram requested Nero to come to La-Z-Boy headquarters in Monroe, Michigan. La-Z-Boy knew that Nero Wolfe would be the perfect test subject for their new line of recliners.
Right now, Nero is being monitored behind a one-way mirror. The engineers studying him are disappointed that he just sits and reads, and has not reclined and dozed off. The new recliner is a failure.
oakie817 over 1 year ago
took him long enough to cough that up
mxy over 1 year ago
This guy introduced himself as a private investigator doing work for Wolfe. He answered the door and signed for a telegram while a servant was right there. He’s been hanging around the house for a week while Wolfe’s been gone and now he’s cleaning his office. I guess that’s the work. Must have been a bad year for the P I business.
Wichita1.0 over 1 year ago
But ,sir? Isn’t only giving him SEE SPOT RUN to read torture?"
(evil chortle) Yes, all part of my so-wicked plan! And the delicious irony is that I have excised all the parts where Spot actually DOES run. He will be Silly Putty in my hands in mere DAYS!
Wichita1.0 over 1 year ago
TRACY (reading): Hmm. ‘You may already be a winner…’ Seems suspicious to me!
WilliamVollmer over 1 year ago
Another atypical behavior for Wolfe. While there are plenty of times he would have Archie get him something he could easily reach himself, Stout once had Archie comment that Wolfe would actually leave his desk to dump an ashtray. So leaving the telegram on the floor must have been a way for Wolfe to leave Archie a clue.
Another Take over 1 year ago
1-DT: So to recap the last 30 minutes, Wolfe is mssing. ARCH: Yes, BUT THERE’S MORE! DT: sigh I was afraid of that.
2-ARCHIE: I found the telegraph a few days later on the day that I routinely clean Mr. Wolfe’s room.
3-DT: So when I asked you 27 minutes ago if Wolfe told you what it read and you said “NO”, you were just playing semantics. If I had asked you if you knew what was IN the telegram, you would’ve said “YES” and then I would’ve had to ask you “WHAT” and then you would’ve told me 27 MINUTES AGO, RIGHT???? ARCHIE: Of course!
4-DUNCAN’S BOSS: Has he swallowed any of our chemical-based upscale food products yet? DUNCAN, Diet Industries Tech: No Boss…
5-…He nibbles a bit, spits it out and claims he had better tasting food when all he had to eat was what his Roman masters left in the Vomitorium he cleaned in a previous life.
BOSS: Roman Vomitorium, eh? Give him some of our Italian flavored stuff then.
orbenjawell Premium Member over 1 year ago
…..’course, this could take a nasty turn if Goodwin pulls out a dry cleaning ticket and gasps: Oh crikey!! I left it in my other suit!…….
Durak Premium Member over 1 year ago
“Oh, wait! I thought I had it. It must be in my other jacket. I hope it’s not in my brown jacket, I took that one to the cleaners yesterday. That’s funny, today is Tuesday, I always wear my tweed jacket on a Tuesday. I’m just so worried about Nero. Anyway, the telegram. I think that I can remember what it said, something about ‘Always drink your Ovaltine!’ and it was signed LOA!”
Don Bagert Premium Member over 1 year ago
And here I thought for sure the strip would cut to one of those one-day interludes concerning a future storyline. Oh well! LOL j/k
MuddyUSA Premium Member over 1 year ago
We need less repetition and more forward movement……
General Trelane (Ret.) Premium Member over 1 year ago
Bottom middle panel ? The shading and contrast are good. Could be a bit darker but alright.
IvanB.Cohen over 1 year ago
What is the mission of those two men looking at Wolfe through the glass, to see what makes him tick?
boboscar over 1 year ago
Shelley Pleger didn’t like how the colors turned out here in GoComics and has posted a better version here:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=6719450661404904&set=gm.2058051654384420&idorvanity=2037140249808894
Sisyphos over 1 year ago
Archie can be frustratingly meticulous in recounting his tale: for goodness sake, get to the point and tell Tracy and us what the ding-dong telegram said!
Meanwhile, just what sort of “kidnapping” is this, where the kidnapped Nero Wolfe gets to sit in a comfy chair and read, while being observed by “Sir” and flunky Duncan through what would appear to be a one-way mirror or similar viewport? Bizarre business, for sure.
And big thanks to Tarry Plaguer for that very helpful explanatory post immediately preceding this one….
Raijin31 over 1 year ago
Is there a way to contact Walter Reimer of Tracy’s Hall of Fame?
boboscar 3 months ago
Intro (skip if you’ve already read any of the previous intros):
Hello, greetings, casual readers of past Tracy stories. I’m here because I’m on 2 missions. The first is something I’ve never done before, read each Tracy story by Mike Curtis (or his occasional guest writer) in one sitting each. I feel his stories are worth it. IMHO, Curtis is by far the best post-Gould writer this strip has ever had, and we’re all lucky to have him.
My second mission is to provide an immediately useful Featured Comment whenever needed. My 3 friends below will reply to me. You can read their replies if you like, but their only real purpose is to bump up this comment to the Featured Comment.
There are 2 basic types of immediately useful Featured Comments: the first type is to provide you with a Mumblespeak translator when needed. The other type is anytime that day’s strip quotes a real song. I will provide an html to a recording to that song so you’ll know the tune even if you’ve never heard it before.
End Intro
But this post isn’t for either of these 2 reasons. Over at Facebook’s Calling Dick Tracy fan club, Shelley Pleger posted that the colors had come out wrong. This is what the Sunday strip is meant to look like:
h
t
t
p
s
:
/
/
www
.
facebook
.
com
/
photo
/?fbid=6719450661404904&set=gm.2058051654384420&idorvanity=2037140249808894