Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 08, 2017

That’s not Harold, but his sidekick, right? Who’s the dog?

Shelley really should be doing a ‘Harold Teen’-style strip full-time.

This is Harold Teen’s best friend and often source of irritation, Shadow Smart. Shadow was often shown wearing his beloved earmuffs in the winter and they sometimes had to wrestle them off of him in the spring. He looks right at home with iPod ear buds in his ears.

Here is a pinback button given with Kellogg’s Pep cereal.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/40/97/c2/4097c26b2a7697924b2317b2ce8074f0.jpg

“Well darn my socks!” is one of the typical expressions popularized by the strip. Shadow often referred to his friend as his ‘fran’ and Pop Jenks was even seen to use this word, too, sometimes in the phrase, “my fine-feathered fran.”

The strip also may have popularized those bell-bottomed or at least wide-legged pants also. They were often featured in the strip.

It’s odd that a character last seen circa 1959 should next be seen sporting an mp3 player of some sort.

Weren’t those pants used in the Navy? An interesting anachronism there reminiscent of the commercials for the Walkman, I think.

So, is Harold Teen’s neighborhood now retroactively a suburb of Tracyville …?

Who will guest next? Buster Brown?

According to the counter, we topped off at 165 comments yesterday.

Good morning late for the show, Vista Bill and all you sock darnin’ teens !

Left some replies late yesterday. A little busy to have gotten back on sooner.

The Harold Teen strip took place in Covina. There was actually a Pop Jenks’ Sugar Bowl in Covina, California and you can see 2 pictures and some description on page 112 of this book about Covina:

http://tinyurl.com/kn9uekr

@ Anyface, Neil Wick, and Night-Gaunt49: Walkman, Apple or Android device, all would be out-of-place here. And as a bell-bottomed hippy back in the day, it was no small irony that war protesting kids were wearing a pants style first popularized by the Navy! Of course, even the Beatles wore bell-bottomed pants. // One of my favorite songs of the era was Eric Clapton’s Bell-Bottom Blues. // None of which jives with any era that Sherry may be taking this darn-my-socks yarn.

Of course, my favorite Shadow was Lamont Cranston – the man who could “will” himself to be invisible. // Who knows what evil lurks in the mind of Sherry Pleger? Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

@Newenglandah and Nun’Ya Bidness Yesterday you were wondering about the origin of the word teenager, but I didn’t have time to look it up. The word teenage goes back to at least 1921 and Archie didn’t start until the 1940s, so Archie didn’t really invent it.

He’s the equivalent of Jughead for Harold! Nive the iPod!

Cheapskate0, It’s Shelley not Sherry. She was named after the famous romantic poet Percy Shelley. Percy’s second wife, Mary Shelley, became famous herself for a book she wrote called Frankenstein.

Frankenstein also has a common naming mistake. Frankenstein is the name of the doctor who created the Monster. It is not the name of the Monster itself.

I do give you points for spelling Pleger correctly though. Our name is almost never spelled correctly, and is pronounced wrong almost 90% of the time. For anyone who wants to know it is PLE grrrrr. Ple as in ple dge or ple asure, followed by ger which is just grrrrr. Incorrect pronunciations are pledger, playgirl, or pleeger. Yes, I have heard all three.

I am done tarrying and plaguing for today.

Happy Saturday Guys!

I dunno about this. Will Smokey Stover be next?

I’m anxious to see Shelly’s interpretation of Dick Tracy himself, and Sam and the other regular cast members. I myself prefer her inking of Joe’s Tracy on the dailies over Joe’s inking on Sunday, so I’m looking forward to Shelley doing both pencils and inks. (I hope it is sufficiently “Gouldian”, like when the Gasoline Alley artist did a Dick Tracy tribute a couple of years ago.)

Is Harold Teen about to get involve in some murder scene in which Tracy will have to rescue him?

I guess I’m in the minority here, but I’ve enjoyed these past two days. Love Shelley’s art.

Adios, Gweedo, Av.

Good morning my friends. So many excellent comments today. Have a great weekend everyone.

Where is Joe Staton ?

Well, fan mah brow!

“Darn my socks”? Until now, you don’t ever hear that phrase anymore. I agree that it’s kinda odd seeing a 50s comic strip character with an iPod.

This is not the first time Shadow and Dick Tracy have been depicted in the same universe. The cover of Popular Comics #1 showed them both in a snowball fight scene.

https://static3.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/2/27783/796848-pop_1_feb36.jpg

Welcome Ms. Pleger! If your the new artist, it’s a great rendering :).

Huh, the things one learns reading the comics. Gotta love it.

It’s like Joe & Mike are openly stating they wished they were doing any other strip in the world than Dick Tracy. Maybe it’s time they pass the reins over to a new team who would actually focus on Dick Tracy.

Over 100 Comments again today.

Whatever the team is doing, in terms of generating comments – and, as a corollary, interest …? – it seems to be working.

If it were not for the learned comics-antiquarians on this Comments board, if I were just reading Dick Tracy without reading Comments, I would have absolutely no idea what’s going on here, or who these comics-Zombies are. That is no complaint about Shelley’s art work: it is excellent. But a strip with nothing but “new” (zombie) characters is very confusing to anyone not reading informative comments along with it. Maybe some little “disclaimer”-type banner should have been included for the benefit of anyone reading DT in newspapers, if there are such readers, or for people who don’t read comments (which, I suppose, is why even this GoComics site makes Comments only visible [ordinarily] by use of an optional click), to the effect of “these are resurrected Harold Teen characters; check out that old comic strip!”.

@ Vista Bill Raley and Comet: I’m ready for Smokey Stover! That’s a crossover that would make a lot more sense than some we’ve seen to date! // 1406 NIX NIX!

@ Bob Oscar and your reply to Sisyphos (and any one else who cares): Once upon a time, there were at least nine panels to the Sunday edition; today, there are only six. (I’m deliberately not counting the top panels which have no story in them and were present in the nine panel days, as well). My issue: With only six panels on Sunday, it’s not terribly different than the dailies anymore. // I also notice that Non Sequitur has not given up panels on Sunday; what happened here?

Huntington News was surprised to hear that their town’s former police officer, sheriff, and mayor made the Hall of Fame feature in Dick Tracy two weeks ago. They did a great story about the surprised honoree and the strip. They spelled Shelley’s first name wrong (Sheily) but otherwise it looks pretty accurate.

http://www.huntingtonnews.net/147981