Sam Driver and Gloria Shannon managed to extract the strip, for now, from both Pavel Lebedev’s crime family thingy and the CIA’s scrutiny. This by trading to them all the data available about Ma Parker — Helena Bowen, I learned her name was — and her own international crime racket. This is information neither group could get on their own; so, how did Sam Driver and Gloria Shannon find it?
Ma Parker gave it to them. Yeah, this isn’t said explicitly. But we’re told Helena Bowen wanted to get April Parker her own life back. And that Bowen and Sam Driver planned out the resolution we saw. This isn’t the simplest case for Inspector Bazalo, but it’s also not his toughest case.
Suspended Detective Yelich knows nothing of Driver and Shannon’s plan. Neither does April Parker. And neither do the readers. This is the part that left me unsatisfied. It’s exciting watching a risky plan swing into action, but if you don’t have any idea what the plan is, you can’t know whether it’s going wrong and whether our heroes are in unexpected danger. It all goes to plan, so far as I have any idea what the plan was.
Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 9th of October, 2023. I have fallen out of the habit of reading the comics snark blogs regularly (just no time, lately), but I’m going ahead and guessing that a lot of merriment was made with Yelchin wanting to know how he’s in the dark, possibly with comparisons drawn to the readers being in the dark and maybe Marciuliano himself being in the dark about what was happening and why. Anyway, good narrator work that first panel there.
What the plan was: Sam Driver escorts Helena Bowen out of April Parker’s house, wehre Lebedev’s man can see him doing that. But, since the CIA’s been watching the Parkers’ house, they arrest Bowen, and Sam Driver, first. Lebedev’s man reports Driver’s failure, in time for Shannon to taser him senseless and throw him in Yelich’s trunk.
They race to Lebedev’s mansion and offer a trade. A USB drive with a full map of all Helena Bowen’s organization in it, in trade for being let alone. Lebedev confirms enough of the information to believe the rest. And he says it’s a deal, which Shannon and so Driver believe, for some reason. Word goes out to all the cast to come out of hiding. This seems premature to me, but I guess Marciuliano knows how dangerous things really are for them.
Meanwhile in super-secret ultra hyper CIA jail, Sam Driver bargains for his freedom with the same data. Lebedev is sure to go after Helena Bowen’s operation, and here’s her operation. They can make a deal, right? And while the CIA has both Sam Driver and his USB drive, they agree to let him go, albeit under heavy scrutiny. There’s a similar arrangement between April Parker and Agent Shadewrap.
Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley and James Bret Blevins’s Judge Parker for the 16th of November, 2023. What I would have liked to know is whether Bowen approached Driver, or whether Driver found some way to contact her. We’re given a motive for Bowen to turn herself in — regrets at the end of her life, wanting her daughter to have a life with her own child — but not why this became something she acted on. Given we’re told Yelchin did some work, it would make sense if Driver et al found how to contact Bowen and pressed her to a decision. But I don’t know, and I wonder if Marciuliano does.
So as of this week, April and Randy Parker are back together at home again. The extra cast are also back, or going back, to their homes. And Sam Driver and Abbey Spencer are reunited, and all it took was several months of terror.
Incidentally: so, was the car accident that first brought Sam and Abbey to Peter Lebedev’s attention legit? Or was it staged so the two wouldn’t have reason to question how they ended up on the hook for April Parker’s mother? I can see a case to make either way. If the accident was an accident then Lebedev put together his blackmail plan in the time it took to drive his daughter home. If it wasn’t an accident then we have to wonder who volunteered to crash his car into the one other car on the road. Not unthinkable, especially if the accident was worse than it was supposed to be. The guy getting eaten by a bear has to have been an unplanned accident either way.
Next Week!
After Lebedev realizes Sam Driver gave all this same information to the CIA and orders the entire cast killed? I take on some more lighthearted fare with ghosts and a monster-abuser in Shadia Amin, Emi Burdge, and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye. Don’t miss it!
The blue balloon was something with a secret message that The Pouch was trying to send to an unknown party. We haven’t learned what the message was. Nor who was to receive it. Nor why they shot Pouch over a couple-day delay of it? For this story, at least, it’s a MacGuffin. I expect that it’ll come back later. Staton and Curtis have enjoyed planting things for use months or years later. (But, they have yet to follow up on whatever was haunting the Plenty household years ago, too.)
Aquarius and his drug-dealers in the 1312 Bedwell commune had captured Tiger Lilly. Lilly was there to retrieve a stolen blue balloon for information broker The Pouch. Aquarius, meanwhile, wanted to harass The Pouch for chasing away his dealers such as “Dollar” Bill Dolan. (Pouch’s cover is selling balloons at the zoo, and wants disreputable crime like drug dealing kept away from his scene.) The Pouch had, in fact, told Tiger Lilly to take care of Dollar Bill. Lilly did this by killing Dollar Bill and disposing of his body in the woods. I’m not sure if Aquarius knew or suspected that, though. But that’s where we were in January.
Organic farmer Tim Wildman, evicted from the Bedwell Commune a year ago, gives backstory. The Commune’s organizer, and mansion owner, is Peggy Bellum, paraplegic since a car accident three years ago. Her nephew Aquarius was doted on until the accident, which “changed” him, though he still tends his aunt. But the changes brought drug use, and dealing, into the Commune. Meanwhile, Peggy Bellum’s brother Stephan — handling her money — wants to sell the mansion for “development”, which she can’t refuse hard enough. Stephan tells that Aquarius is drug-dealing, a revelation that convinces Peggy her brother is lying to scare her into selling out. So that’s the people with money or property think about all this.
Joe Staton, Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 5th of February, 2021. One weakness to the story is that it’s unclear what’s not suitable for Peggy Bellum here. I suppose that there’s drug users on the property but it’s not obvious to me that implies Bellum’s being ill-treated. But this may reflect a department, or character, assumption that any sign of drug use is proof of abuse.
Where did we get from there? Well, a bunch of parties pursued their own Brilliant Schemes at once. This all makes sense, but it did make the day-to-day action harder to follow.
First party: Tiger Lilly. The Bedford Commune drug dealers caught him and tossed him into the root cellar out back. Not the basement and I’ll explain why that matters. He’s able to break the ropes tying him down. And to break through a ceiling vent (the door is too solid), in front of the cops. I’ll explain why cops are there, too. He doesn’t know that Dick Tracy Jr’s trail cameras spotted his dumping of Dollar Bill’s body. Still, you see why he’d figure he should run. But has the bad luck to try carjacking the truck that B O and Gertie Plenty are canoodling in. So he’s arrested for involuntary manslaughter.
Second party: Pouch. He wants that blue balloon back. He breaks into the basement — not the root cellar — planting a device to release mercaptan. The residents figure it’s a gas leak, and all evacuate. Cheesecake, Aquarius’s girlfriend or possibly wife, takes Peggy Bellum to a hotel to wait the trouble out. Pouch breaks in, finds the balloon, and has to hide while Dick Tracy’s gang searches the place. I’ll explain why they’re there later. But he succeeds, and turns the blue balloon over to his contact. His contact shoots him. This seems like an overreaction even to being days late on the delivery. But we don’t know what the message — seen in black light to be a string of binary digits — was about.
Joe Staton, Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 21st of March, 2021. The contact here also took Pouch’s money. He supposed it was further punishment for the delay getting the balloon delivered. I wonder if the contact didn’t just want it to look like a mugging. I suppose it depends whether the contact rifled Pouch’s wallet, a hard-cased thing that deflected the bullet.
Lucky for Pouch, his titanium wallet deflected the bullet, and park cops noticed and rushed him to the hospital. He won’t say anything about who shot him or why. Less lucky for him, he passes Tiger Lilly on the way out of the hospital. Lilly, reasonably but wrongly thinking Pouch left him for dead, slugs him. (Remember, Pouch couldn’t have seen Lilly, and had assumed Lilly had ditched him.)
Third party: Dick Tracy. He’s got the corpse of Bill Dolan. He and Sam Catchem suspect a link with 1312 Bedwell, since look at those numbers. But the only tie they can find is Tim Wildman. He’s an organic farmer who gave Catchem the tip that the Bedwell Commune was even in this story. He’s glad to give them backstory about the Commune and his eviction from it. Tracy figures there’s at least enough to do a wellness check, in case there’s any abuse of a disabled person going on. And a stray witness is able to tell Tracy and Catchem that Pouch is in this story too, so they hope to interrogate him.
Tracy arrives at 1312 Bedwell with the representative from Child and Family Services. In case you wonder why marginalized people will refuse the civil benefits to which they’re entitled for their protection. They all get there as Tiger Lilly escapes the root cellar. Also, by coincidence, shortly after Pouch sets off his mercaptan bomb.
Joe Staton, Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 12th of March, 2021. Oh, using the dumbwaiter. OK, great plan but letting everyone else on the expansion set to Betrayal at the House on the Hill know; the dumbwaiters connect you to the next landing one floor up or down. They don’t connect to other dumbwaiter rooms. I know, it’s not what we expected either and we kept making that mistake.
So. Pouch is able to hide from the cops, and gets to his appointment to be shot. Tiger Lilly escapes his confinement, only to get clobbered by B O and Gertie Plenty and arrested. Ty, the drug dealer who took up Dollar Bill’s beat, comes back to the house in time to get arrested. And while they’ll get to interrogate Pouch in the hospital, he won’t say anything about anything.
Fourth party: Oscar Grubbard. I know, who? I’m not positive, but he seems to be working for Peggy Bellum’s brother Stephan. But after Stephan tells Peggy about Aquarius’s drug-dealing she fires him. This as he’s bringing tea to her. My best guess is he’s meant to be Stephan’s caretaker for Peggy?
Anyway, with Peggy declaring she’ll revoke the power of attorney given Stephan, Grubbard acts. This in drugging Peggy Bellum (and incidentally Cheesecake). His brilliant plan: smother Peggy Bellum, let Stephan inherit all the money, and then abscond with the money to Bogota. It feels like an improvised execution. Aquarius’s unexpected visit to his aunt foils it, starting a fight that Tracy and company are luckily on hand to interrupt.
So this gets things resolved as well as they could. Tiger Lilly’s arrested for manslaughter. The cops would like to ask Pouch about his “I am innocent of the crimes you are investigating” T-shirt but he refers them to his T-shirt. Oscar Grubbard’s arrested for assault and attempted murder. Most of the 1312 Bedwell residents get charged with drug possession or trafficking. Aquarius also gets a false imprisonment charge. The strip doesn’t specify if this means imprisoning Tiger Lilly or imprisoning Peggy Bellum. Peggy Bellum donates the house “to charity”, and moves in with Tim Wildman.
I’m sympathetic to people who didn’t follow the story as it unfolded. There are a lot of threads, and they were woven together. And the plans of some parties interrupted plans of others. If you have a GoComics membership I recommend going back and rereading it all at once, though. The pieces do fit together well. It’s easy to imagine this as a competing-capers-gone-wrong movie.
So the 11th of April finished off that story. The current story began last week, the 12th of April. Abner Kadaver, back from the dead, breaks his accomplice Rikki Mortis out of jail. That’s as much as I can tell you now.
I’m sorry, Uncle Albert, but I’ve been stuck thinking about something I witnessed when I was getting my car registration renewal and license plate tags at the Secretary of State office nearby. I avoided any embarrassing presumptions about what one might or might not do at a Secretary of State office. What’s interesting is as I was leaving, a woman came storming out, telling her companion, “My license is suspended — indefinitely!” And he then made this into my favorite genre of accidentally overheard conversation, People Telling Other People They Totally Have To Get A Lawyer. “They can’t do that to you. You should get a lawyer.”
“I haven’t even been in trouble,” she went on to explain, “not since I got those three tickets in one day.” And he agreed that this was outrageous and he bet any lawyer would love to take the case, since this could get a million-dollar settlement. “I’m not even dealing anymore!” And that’s when I realized that I was one of the background characters in the establishing scene of a comedy about a couple people who are about 75 percent capable of handling the caper they’re about to undertake.
So I want to know what the plot is, and whether the movie turns out to be any good. I think I’d make a great background character in this sort of story, what with how I have nice expressive eyebrows and always look like I don’t know why I was brought in to this meeting.
![[ One man is tased. Another is shocked ... ] Yelchin, looking at Shannon, who's just tased a henchman who now slumps over him in his car: 'How long were you waiting out there with a taser?!' Shannon: 'Was following this guy following you. Now help me get him into your trunk. We gotta be somewhere.' Yelchin: 'How is it I got all the data but I'm the one in the dark right now?'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/judge-parker-2023-10october-09-marciuliano-mike-manley.jpg)
![Oscar Grubbard, holding a pillow over Peggy Bellum: 'I had a more leisurely exit planned, but you forced my hand, with your threats of investigation, old hag. In time, Mr Bellum will see it was for the best. In a few minutes, he'll have the family fortune. His drug-dealing son will be in jail within the week, and I'll be in Bogota.' [ Elsewhere ] Aquarius rides the elevator up to Peggy Bellum's room.](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/dick-tracy_joe-staton-mike-curtis_3-april-2021.gif)
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