Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for January 06, 2014

So….Silver and his sidekick Sprocket enter the scene….bootleg movie business perhaps?

A goodie or a baddie? I was delighted to see mary Perkins yesterday.

Silver Nitrate film is both highly combustible and explosive. That is why in the 1950’s, movie studios started changing from “Silver Nitrate film” to what is known as “Safety film.”

Silver nitrate? That’s what silent films were shot on, highly flammable, which is why so much of the early cinema was lost… Hmmm… Kadaver loved old film, maybe he and Rikki have survived and will hide here with these two. (Until I see the body……)

Good morning, everyone! Looks like a promising story’s beginning! They don’t seem baddies, but we’ll see!

By the way a Sprocket is the wheel cog on which at the beginning movie film was made to roll.

Theaters no longer use film, now it is all a digital file (or two for 3-D on two DLP projectors).

Hmmm…Another villain couple. Interesting pattern.

I was hoping to see Mary Perkins.

Silver? Sprocket? Hoo boy, I can think only of what Roy Roger’s late steed was called, and of what George Jetson’s boss sold lots of!! OOOOF!!

The beautiful Portage Theater, home of the Silent Film Society of Chicago, is currently closed. Located at Six Corners, this is one of several classic movie palaces to be shuttered in recent years. It is indeed a grand old movie theater. I’m suspicious of Silver and Sprocket.Portage Theater

Ok, is this guy working for Melies and Venus or is he working for the Apparatus?

Smoking around nitrate film’s a good way to end up like a Dick Tracy villain.

I didn’t know that smoking was allowed in a movie theater. (Beat ya to it, Stilldamatt!)

Mary Perkins came on the funny pages when I was 10. I thot she was HOT….we used to get 5 horrors movies at the old Fox Theatre for 15 cents…good old days…

I remember how Johnny Carson used to talk about the one feature film he was in, and how it was so terrible the studio had deliberately transferred it to flammable nitrate stock.

No one said anything about not liking it but you. Read you first post. You don’t like the endings, so you say. I happen to like the endings and if it is OK with you, I will continue to read the strip. I just commented about the smoking – something you have done in abundance. Meanwhile, you can spend your time trying to influence the appropriate folks to give the Harvey Award to the Marty & Spud (Thud?) team.

Silver? Trigger? Champion? Bat Masterson?Wld Bill? Jingles? OMG! When you get into a hole, good advice is to stop digging. let’s let one play out folk.

If Silver owns the theater for his own private viewings, then the ‘No smoking in public places’ law doesn’t apply.

Now, eating popcorn with a cig in yer lip, THAT’S the real trick.

Get off my lawn!

Mr. Nitrate, I’m sure.

Kind of wish the past great story didn’t have the usual 2 minute drill type of ending……so I’ll wonder what became of Rikki, wish we had had at least a little commentary from Bonnie and the Rev, what the Blackheart’s reaction to BB Eyes being thrust upon them was, actually observing Tracy making it through “challenge” # 3….as well as WHY it was so easy….and for that matter, why Dick could make it across a room in it but Abner couldn’t even stand up in it….and why you would give up someone as dead after a few seconds of no air bubbles……of course, there was time to address this earlier but it was spent on a rather irrelevant side trip to that Tracy interview show. Going from climax to another storie’s start is kind of like waking up in the middle of a nice dream…a little more closure would be nice, that’s all. And bottom line is the bar WAS still raised again with this otherwise great story!

Gene Barry played Bat Masterson on TV, which I believe was orbanjawell’s reference.

Good afternoon everyone…

I forgot to sign in! I recall one smal theater where smoking was permitted. The haze was terrible.

Silver Nitrate and Sprocket, on the old-time film theme, suggest a possible forthcoming involvement of Vitamin Flintheart, that old rascal. Old cinemas are still numerous in the Chicagoland area, including but not limited to the Portage (which I have driven by often)….

Yes, the gritty, violent nature of the strip was a big draw for me as a kid discovering Gould’s work. The outline of Bribery’s body, which had plunged though a roof, Piggy and Chin Chillar on the slabs at the morgue, Posie in the quicksand, the mummified corpse in the hidden room (in the Haf and Haf story), all these and more riveted my morbid curiosity as a kid. A special “the nitty and the gritty” edition in book form would certainly find a large audience. Gimme!

I’m noticing some confusion here about film and photochemistry. Silver nitrate was involved in black and white photography, but only in undeveloped film. Where light hit the film, it was converted to silver particles. The residual nitrate was washed away in processing. The substrate for the emulsion started out as celluloid, a.k.a. nitrocellulose which is quite flammable. Another synonym for the same compound, in fine filaments, is guncotton.

Does this mean that maybe if these two live, both Abner and Silver will do a team-up in a later arc?

I just love the mutual admiration societies on these boards.

u r a troll