Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 18, 2020

Good morning™, everyone!

Please welcome Shaky’s best friend, “Itchy” Oliver and his famous foot-burning torture. That’s another reason that I’m sure B.O. Plenty doesn’t want to be reminded of this era.

Good morning™, de hatted hillbillies !

I bet if this were a Groovy Kinda strip Itchy would be scratching, graphically, at a lower elevation.

Regarding the discussion yesterday of whether there was a comment on how Bob Oscar Plenty smelled, here is an example of a comment by Tracy from early in the Itchy story:

http://worldofdt.info/img/dt19450918bosmell.gif

Panel to Barry Goldwater makes a guest appearance!

I love this storyline. I want more flashback.

Was Pruneface a cohort of Itchy at sometime! I recall the pair together at some point.!

As a relative newcomer to the Tracy-verse I quite enjoy these flashbacks and back stories. I don’t recall any of the newspapers or comics carrying Tracy when I was a kid. And the only cartoon on the telly was a strange one where Tracy introduced a guest detective in each episode and only appeared at the beginning and end. I always felt cheated with that one. It wasn’t until the 1990 film that I got an inkling of what it was all about. And even then it left me wanting more. Thank goodness for the internet.

You, know $50k isn’t worth the bother stealing, much less all this fuss and killing.

I’ll think about it,50G is nice pin money

And today, the leeches on her hands are gone. Maybe they’re done sucking her blood.

1-FORTUNE: And even after buying all that stuff I just told you about, I had some of that 50 K left so…

2-…I called up my investor uncle. He was a real character. And boy was he rich. He was so rich that he always packed a piece in a shoulder holster. But every time he thought he needed to pull it, he’d get flustered and wind up with his arm stuck in his undershirt. Anyway, I put the rest the fifty into…

3-…a sensory deprivation chamber he was sure would take off.

DT: I remember those. The company cut costs by using the sewers.

FORTUNE: Yeah, the sewage overloaded the sense of smell while terror overloaded the others. Good concept but eventually the company failed.

DT: On day one I believe. FORTUNE: Michael Jackson liked it.

Tracy’s comment about B. O.’s death trap makes it seem as if Tracy was involved. Actually, Tracy never saw it. I suppose it could be that B. O. told him about it at some point, off panel. (Joe must have had fun drawing all these old scenes from the original story.)

For reference, these panels are reprints from Harvey Comics:

(Breathless is in prison. Her mother has just been killed by Itchy when she jumped in front of a bullet meant for Tracy. Itchy has tortured BO by burning his feet with cigar lighters to get him to tell where he hid the money—in the Kewpie Doll.)

https://i.postimg.cc/5NHwvVVB/BO-Sewer-Trap-01.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/L6rj3b9r/BO-Sewer-Trap-02.jpg

This is the first time I’ve seen Itchy. He seems like a nice guy, I like him already.

Flushing B.O. down the drain! What a way to go.

Maybe the Tidybowl Man rescued him and gave him a lift on his little boat out to sea to meet that China steamer. (No more fantastic than some of the stuff we accept in comics.)

I am kinda curious why Tracy is so accommodating to Fortuna; maybe he doesn’t want to risk the mayor’s wrath if he were to cut her short….

Ken Osmond (Eddie Haskell on Leave it to Beaver) is dead at the age of 76.

He had been a motorcycle officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, but his police partner said that he had been in ill health for some time.

This artwork!