Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 20, 2023

Year number five

I’m thankful I’m alive

But still I’m sad you’re gone

We established such a bond

Reading all the time

Tracy’s battles against crime

We never held things back

When we felt the strip went slack

Your humor and your wit

Gave so many such a fit

But you always spoke in jest

You were simply just the best.

Remembering Morrow

Good morning™, everyone!

So, he’s planning a bank job, but I don’t understand the part about the garage yet. Maybe it’s for money laundering?

Flattop needs to do something about that unibrow of his!

gonna let this play out for now and see how this works out during the week, but I’ll still be around…

Good morning™, car repair schedulers !

“We love customers who pay up”. And what better customer than them who put hard wear and tear on a car, which means more work for us. We’re not fussy about the source of your money as long as you drop some with us.

Love the shadowing in P.1. That car has good detail given its low light surrounding.

So … in the space of several weeks, we’ve gone from the introduction of Agent 99 & the abruptly ended Art Dekko interrogation to Tracy recounting to Sam how Archie Goodwin showed up at his office one day to report Nero Wolfe being kidnapped to seeing Wolfe being held by his arch nemesis in a combination Christian Science Reading Room/nursery/Stanley Milgram observation room to now a major retroconning of Flattop. What’s in store this week? More Oliver Warbucks & Diet Smith? The return of the old man in the garage? Mike seems to have entered the everything-everywhere-all-at-once school of storytelling.

Sounds like he is going to a local dealership like when I got ripped off by Pete Ellis Dodge Auto Group in Los Angeles ! I was glad when those SOBs went bankrupt and suddenly closed. They also tried to tell me a physicist that the 6000 dollar down payment on a jeep did not count for the cost of the vehicle the lying scumbags. I would have paid 24,000 for a 12,000 dollar jeep back in the 80s !!!

Think I see a big con coming!

Is it Alibi Season, already?

A thousand dollars for a tune-up? That expensive in 2023, and would have bought you a car when Flattop originally appears. Of course we don’t know when this retcon is set, but even $500 would have been extravagant when this is probably set (and you’d never get enough customers to stay open if you charged a grand).

Another possibility is that it is something different from as average car, and some ‘special’ work needs to be done on it.

Flatop sharp cookie.

….Oh, the (hey kids! I tried using the title of a REALLY old Bee Gees song…..one word in said title rhymes with “sticks”…..cheeze-whiz, the censor patrol stopped me at the door! Just sayin’……) that are being thrown into this story arc!! You mean someone “cheerfully” pays $1000 for an auto tune-up? In the 1940’s, to boot? What’s getting the tune-up? The future land-speed record holder (Craig Breedlove and beyond type stuff)? A future motorcycle that will carry Evel Knievel clear across the Grand Canyon?

btw: “**icks and Specks”! Just in case Bee Gees (’60’s era) fans are sparse here…….

An alibi for where he was at when the hit on Tracy takes place?

These set up panels aren’t pointing to any action soon……….

That “tune up” must be code for something else. In the 1940s, as noted earlier, even $500 would be an awfully high price for a simple bit of auto repair work I would think

1-FLATTOP: Some nobody cop dissed my mother so we’re taking him out…

2-…Whoever loses this hand has to do it. ED: Uh, you been cheating this entire game. Will you play this hand square?

3-FLATTOP: Of course! Oh. I forgot to tell you that two’s, sixes and red cards are wild. FIVE ACES! What do you think you have – loser ?

MOVIE QUOTE—-“Aw,the hell with these vests,let’s go!”

Richard Widmark—-MADIGAN—1968

Nasty looking “Big F”,right down to the acne.

Flattop’s criminal career could go back as far as 10 years BEFORE he met Tracy.He began as a bank robber(see SHARPTOP posession story)——but when he became “too well known”he decided to switch to the more anonymous contract-killer line.

By the way,Floyd was framed for that Kansas City Massacre thing.Verne Miller,an ex-sheriff turned machine gun artist,was thechief shooter.

Shortly after,he was found tortured and dead in a ditch;no doubt aspunishment for botching Kansas City

Surprised Archie isn’t the target instead of Tracy.They’d no doubt figure him to be a “softer touch”.

Okay,now what’s morse code message for “Send Help”?

$14k for the risk involved? Flattop needs to look into cybercrime.

Ladies and Gentlemen; welcome to Mike Curtis’ Twilight Zone, as the “trip” has just kicked in leading to the meandering story we are experiencing. Don’t get up until the room stops spinning.

Oooh! Plotting and planning, preparing bait for a trap, perhaps… !

Flattop is willing to pay exorbitantly for a “tune-up” (for $1000, in the early 1940s, you could have bought a decent new car, if any had been available during the wartime retooling of the auto industry to weapons production). What he is really buying is local loyalty, plus maybe some hidden scheme coded as “tune-up,” such as money-laundering or access to G & G’s shop for non-automotive work….

More than meets the eye, the windmills of Mike’s mind keep us spinning…. https://tinyurl.com/2qafe82b

“G & G Garage” = Gomer & Goober?