Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 26, 2011

They’re messin’ with the wrong gal!

This photo was taken earlier in the day. Jerry is still wearing the vest.

An old witch that has a boom stick instead of a broom stick !

@Terry from yesterday

Yeah, something like that :D

Aaron

I just found this and thought I would share. Boston Police Album

Good morning all…

I do recognize “the old witch”!

I didn’t realize they wore vests back in those days. Probably not regularly?Plug ‘em, Gertie! They’re dangerous, low-life scum!

Flattop, Blowtop, 88 Keyes, now Gravel Gertie… this is becoming Dick Tracy Bingo here! Loving it!

Actually, Gertie is available right now. She doesn’t get hitched to B.O. for quite some time.She isn’t an OLD witch neither, just a slightly homely, past her prime, platinum blonde, with really, really long hair.

Wasn’t Gould himself a little confused (or at least confusing) about Gertie’s age? When she first appeared she was a 50+ widder woman, yet after marrying B. O. she was still capable of having kids. Sure, that’s possible, but it felt like Gould scaled her age back a bit.

And if Gould could retcon, why not Mike and Joe and Co.?

These nostalgic strips are great. We are approaching the anniversary.

I wonder if Tracy will actually meet any/all of the old characters in this story. In most of the Gould stories, it seemed pretty clear that he’d never met them before. .In any case, it’s wonderful to see them in the strip and so well drawn in time for the anniversary.

In the last few days I’ve noticed several comments of surprise about all of these characters popping up in this story. It’s an anniversary story…Woo Gosh! All of them may not necessarily be in the main plot, but it is good to see them anyway! It wouldn’t be that unusual for Flattop and Blowtop to run into Gertie like this, nor would it be unbelievable for all of the characters to be around since the comic strip does take place in a certain region.I think Mike’s story is fabulous, and Joe’s artwork is spot perfect!

Jerry is a fan of Casimir !

Great story – I can’t wait to see who else will make a cameo appearance!

Keep up the good work, team.

Someone commented a couple days ago about a DT story that they thought was in the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics showing Tracy in uniform. That is correct. It was an April/May 1935 story with Tracy, Pat and Chief Yellowpony chasing bank robbers Arson and his sister. Tracy is in uniform. The story was combined Sunday and daily. In the book, it is pages 688-710.

Correct, Kevlar was invited in the 60’s.

Yesterday, Tarry Plaguer asked :

Tarry Plaguer said, 1 day ago“Anyone know if 88 Keys and BB Eyes are related? They look like they may be”.

I believe Tarry is connected to one of the producers (so WAS the question ‘tongue-in-cheek’ ?

If not, there is no information to suggest they are. B-B Eyes came in early 1942 and 88 Keyes about the same time, a year later in 1943

Would agree that the “eyes” are similar but nothing genetic. The closeness of appearance may come from the more ELONGATED face Joe provides for B.B Eyes. :See :http://wwwgocomics.com/dicktracy/2011/07/04/For a comprison with Gould’s earlier version of the character – see :http://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2009/06/200-characters-from-dick-tracy-1931.html

Well, of course, this is not the real origin of Dick Tracy. The grotesques didn’t really show up until the 1940’s.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma05/cline/Dick%20Tracy/firststoryline.htm

Regarding the question of vests, remember that Sam has stated that this happened “about 30 years ago.” That would make it sometime during the late ’70’s or early ’80’s..Second Chance, one of the first, perhaps THE first, of the companies providing Kevlar body armor to law enforcement, was founded in 1971 or ‘72. Plenty of time for Tracy and his squad car partner to be using them “30 years ago.”.Now I know the period trappings suggest the ’30’s or ’40’s, but this is partly a form of poetic license employed simply to suggest “the past” in a way that drawing uniforms and cars of the ’70’s or ’80’s would not, and partly a way to allow Mike and Joe to depict Tracy operating in his “classic period,” when he was first becoming a major force in popular culture..Second, re 3pibgorn9’s comment, while it’s true that many of the “grotesques” who have cameos in this story were from Tracy’s second decade, it’s not altogether true that there were no “great grotesques” in the ’30’s. Doc Hump, Scardol, and Frank “The Blank” Redrum were all hideously disfigured villains who made their debut during Tracy’s first decade..Finally, the Boris Arson story in which a demoted Tracy is depicted as being a uniformed beat cop was actually the SECOND time he’d been busted down to harness. The first time was in the sequence popularly titled “The Demotion of Dick Tracy” which ran from roughly the latter part of Dec 1931 through the middle of Feb 1932. .This sequence can be found DICK TRACY – THE THIRTIES, TOMMY GUNS AND HARD TIMES, published by Chelsea House, and in the first volume of THE COMPLETE CHESTER GOULD’S DICK TRACY, published by IDW. BTW, in addition to being in the Smithsonian book on comic strip history, the Boris Arson story can be also found in Volumes 2 and 3 of the IDW series.

Thanks Jim for the reference to the “Dick Tracy The Thirties” volume. I do have that collection and saw the entire sequence. So the history of Tracy gets more interesting all the time. This team is doing an excellent job. The two best drawn dailies is Dick Tracy and The Phantom. For Sunday, The Phantom has a new artist that is doing great work and Prince Valiant is always outstanding. It is fun again to read the adventure comics!!!

Wrong! Bullet resistant vests have been around since WWI and were in use by both law enforcement and criminals as early as the 1920’s. Some vests were even available prior to that time, but they were only for the very wealthy, and weren’t meant for everyday use, being heavy and cumbersome.

The cars implied the 1940’s but the vest routinely worn by a uni officer would not have been the 1940’s.

To Tcayer and Impaducah:.Am I the only one who reads the other comments before posting?.Once more, Sam’s dialog states that this all happened “30 years ago,” well past the time when Kevlar vests had become fairly standard in U.S. law enforcement..The period trappings are meant to suggest “the past,” without being era-specific. Uniforms and cars of the ’70’s/’80’s would not suggest the past as easily. It also gives Joe and Mike a chance to depict Tracy in the (sort of)era in which he was most successful.