Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 11, 2014

This does not bode well for Vera!

Good morning fellow DT fans

Vera’s going to see Mysta? I expect she’ll be as unimpressed with this schlep as we are.

Vera is in for a shock! :")

One can only hope Vera finds meeting Mysta to be a shocking experience…..

From reading Vera’s history in the Dick Tracy ‘pedia, seems like he’s really kind of gotten a raw deal. He’s not really a crook, and the times he got wrapped up in villainy he always tried to do the right thing. He’s just kind of a jerk. If he and Mysta are able to hit it off and “pair the spares,” then hey, why not?

After all, they’ve both got something in common: they were both jilted by their spouses in favor of each other’s ex. (In a manner of speaking where Mysta is concerned, anyway.)

“SECURITY! Get this clown off my set!”

Speaking of Mysta Chimera, I shipped her with Jesse Pinkman (from Breaking Bad) in my crossover fan fiction.

Sparkle decked him. Mysta will put him on the ground another way I reckon.

The question I have: will Moon Maid be dressed like the Moon Maid??

Scott knows! He sees what we see: that Vera is a grade-A jerk, with a large measure of “dumb” thrown in. Mysta is not likely to be impressed, though how far she will go in repulsing him remains to be seen.

Robotech_Master and TraderJoe: I tend to agree with the former on this one. Most of Vera’s “jerk” days were the work of the Fletcher-Collins era – which, unfortunately, are also part of the Dick Tracy “canon.”.Other than his alleged misdeeds from the Fletcher-Collins era, I really don’t see Vera as a bad character. I remain hopeful that Mike may use this episode to help “clear” his name..But then, I am on record as hoping that all of the marital rearranging of the FC period gets undone anyway..Fat chance of that, I’m sure!

i think I’ll go check out Mysta myself..

Boy, it’s been awhile since we seen the title character of this strip. I wonder what Tracy’s been up too? And I also wonder how this turns into the next caper and how this ties into Tracy looking for Little Orphan Annie? The Blackhearts and the Apparatus are getting bored too!

frankenmindy will hook up with vera… after all, she NEVER dated anyone when she was ugly, so to have someone all hot and botherd for her will be an ego boost… just wait til she tells honeymoon about her new boyfriend!

tsull2121 (and others, I’m sure): While it may seem “logical” to pair Mindy off with Vera, I think it would likely “kill off” the Mysta reboot, once and for all..As tsull2121 notes, it would pretty much end Mysta’s relationship with Honeymoon.

Mysta is out of your league, Vera. Day-Day2001 and 60sFan understand the situation quite well. Get back to work on J Straightedge Trustworthy. I’m guessing you have a deadline to meet.

This will turn out to be the day Sparkplug is on set, Vera will do something that accidentally makes Mr. Angus angry, crime ensues.

John Wayne’s real first name was Marion.

As my best buddy and GoComics Man-Of-The-Year SDM says, “Z-z-z-z-z-z”

Let’s all remember that “Mysta” is not the Moon Maid we all grew-up with…that being said (and her own past), perhaps a Mysta-Vera union is possible?

I don’t always read the comments, so pardon me if this observation has been made by others. Doesn’t the current incarnation of Vera look like a character from R. Crumb?

I predict sparks will fly between Mysta and Vera!

Gweedo, you got me laughin’ so hard my eyes are crying! I can’t comment of the p-flick, though! My wife prefers DWTS! Z-z-z-z-z…..

Evelyn used to be a man’s name, as in Evelyn Waugh.

Ummm… Leslie Nielsen?In Panel Three Vera is starting to develop Annie Eyes.

Basically, all Vera “did” was what tons of celebs have done once they became famous……dump their spouses. The big mystery here is what Sparkle ever saw in a poor, blah-looking, self-centered dude like Vera in the FIRST place, lol. I guess considering the awesome lineup Junior has been able to get (Model Jones, Moon Maid, Sparkle, etc) we shouldn’t be surprised….

Interesting Mysta is not playing the (formerly) real life but instead a fictional one from the 1920’s…..

……why on earth, though, if she wants to live a normal life, would she use “chimera” as part of her name???

sorry about the typos in my last post.. my boss is hovering around so i had to type quick.. cause GOD KNOWS that SOMEONE si gonna jump on the fact that i’ve got more than a few typos in my post! lol

Wait, did you hear a noise? No, it’s gone now, never mind.

Oh well since there was an added “l” then I am vanquished—-not.

You forgot about the extra “r” but you’re right, spelling on names is far from standardized. People spell them just about any way they want. There are sometimes regular differences between the spelling of boys’ names and girls’ names.

Some girls’ names become boys’ names over time and more often, boys’ names become girls’ names, but “Vera” is not one of those. In the 100 or so years that records are available in the U.S., Vera has never been in the top 1000 boys’ names, although it was in the top 70 girls’ names in the decades of 1900-1920. After that it declined to almost disappear since the 1980s, but has had a small comeback in the last decade.

The sole reason for the name “Vera” for this character was as a joke. Something tells me that Gould might not have given him such a funny name if he knew the character would still be around this many years later. On the other hand B.O. Plenty is still around and that’s definitely a funny name.

Oh how I long for the detailed art work of Chester Gould, Joe and Mike’s basic 101 art sucks big time.

There’s something about this whole animators sequence that seems to have spawned a more minimalist style of art in the last couple of weeks, but Joe’s art does often contain lots of detail.

I don’t think we’re ever going back to the detail that was in comics strips of the first few decades of newspaper comics. The fact that strips are now printed smaller than ever before and the limits of printing on newsprint prevent any satisfying presentation of strips as detailed as those of the past. You might argue that the fact that a lot of web readers can zoom up the strips erases that argument, but the same strips do still appear in papers and I think that ’s where most of the revenue comes from.

The other thing is that comics have become more stylized over time with subtle gestures suggesting more than meets the eye. Photographs are ubiquitous these days, especially with half the population carrying around a cell phone with a camera everywhere they go. If we wanted photo-realism, we could just take a photograph, but cartoons are capable of more. I’m not saying that today’s strip is a good example of that, but there were really wonderful detailed strips not that many days ago.

And the idea of Vera and Mysta ever being together? Incomprehensible. I’ll be surprised if she gives that clown a first look, much less a second.

DWTS

? ? ?

Dancing with the Stars. I don’t watch it but I knew that one after thinking about it a couple of seconds.

Orphan Annie eyes?.Well, maybe Mike is going to pair Vera with Annie!.I think I am Vera’s sole defender in this forum, but even I agree that pairing Vera and Mysta would not be good for the future of either in this strip.

And his middle name was complicated. He was born Marion Robert Morrison after bothof his grandfathers. When he was six, his mother had a second child and she gave that child the name Robert Morrison after her father, and gave her older son (who she basically hated from the time he was born) the new name Marion Mitchell Morrison, the name of his paternal grandfather – who she also hated. When he signed his first studio contract the secretary preparing it typed his middle name as Michael not Mithcell. He signed it anyway because as far as he was concerned, one name was as good as another. The funny part is that there is no evidence that Marion’s mother ever filed any paperwork to make the name change official, so John Wayne’s legal name may very well have been Marion Robert Morrison.