Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 07, 2023

Is the “Dice Gang” here to challenge “The Pack of Cards”?

Hello, Masked Bandits!

This looks like the start to a new story. I wonder if there is some significance to the marking on the mask? At first I thought it was a dice but after taking a second look, I’m not so sure about that. The bank teller is so polite; I don’t want to see him end up dead fish dead. Keeping my fingers crossed for a good story this time.

Good morning™, everyone!

Well, it seems that Sam found the story more exciting than most of us, but now that it’s over, he’s bored.

Meanwhile, yet another bank robbery is happening from a guy with dice on his mask. Looks like a new story is starting.

I noticed yesterday that many posters felt Mike is being treated poorly. This is ridiculous.

Mike is being treated like a Prince compared to the level of loathing, hatred, revulsion, hostility, ridicule, and contempt Dick Locher was forced to endure during his final years of faithful service to the strip. It was downright deplorable and is still a stain of shame many who are still commenting must bear.

Mike doesn’t know how lucky he is.

Hope this new story will more coherent and less boring than Wolfe Crossover

What in the world is polo shirt dude supposed to be pointing,,,a gun???

Shelly dropped the ball on this one.

“You should know, sir, the bank charges a service fee for robberies.”

Good morning™, accounts withdrawers !

We saw Brad’s smiling face but what would he look like in the missing 4th panel ?  Brad’s Keeshond is gonna be awful mopey if he doesn’t make it home tonight.

How long will this one drag out ? Just have the teller surprise him with a bullet to the noggin and move on !

Curtis Crossovers

I’ve started taking notes on all the crossovers (x-overs) Curtis has written into the strip. I wasn’t taking notes of these when they first came out, so I had to start from scratch. I’m able to do this because I’ve taken on trying to read every single Dick Tracy story in the comic strip, alternating between reading Gould’s original strips (which I can read in my complete collection of IDW reprints), the post-Gould pre-GoComics period (which I can read in Newspapers.com) and the GC period. This is a WIP (Work In Progress) that will take a very long time for me to complete. In the meantime, I’ll post that WIP here on the same day I list GC stories, listing the year, then the titles of the stories in boldface and anyone here can use my GC list for cross reference.

IMHO, there are several different types of x-overs: characters from other comic strips, characters from other media outside comic strips (including characters that originate from Dick Tracy media outside the DT comic strip), real life celebrities appearing as themselves, and Written Around Trademarks (WAT) cameos from other strips and media. A WAT cameo is one where it’s never directly stated, so there’s room for plausible deniability, but it’s pretty obvious it’s this character.

Finally, I decided not to include characters based on real life celebrities but with different names, because I feel the changed names mean they’re not really x-overs. However, I will give honorable mention to the two most prominent such characters here, and the stories they debuted in: Jerry King (based on real life wrestler Jerry Lawler) who made his debut in the Thunderchild story, and George Tawara and his husband Brad (based on real life actor George Takei and his husband Brad) who made their debuts in the Sweat Box story.

My list is coming up in the reply.

I forgot Dick was recounting this story to Sam. I think Mike Curtis forgot for a while as well, given all that stuff from the villains’ perspectives.

So that’s it, then? It seems like most people are just glad it’s over and something else is going to start, but honestly this wasn’t too different from the usual. In fact, there were some atypical bright spots: you had a villain who heard the police were looking into his scheme and did NOT immediately panic and sabotage himself, and even more shockingly Dick Tracy did something resembling investigative work! Then the same thing as always happened: set-up goes nowhere, non sequitur pew-pew-pew happens, arbitrary plot resolution disconnected from any positive actions by the protagonists happens, the end. The whole thing was just another drawn-out self-indulgent memberberry binge.

Did Sam just give a sarcastic backhander to Dick about his story?

I like the ‘boundless enthusiasm’ Shelley put on Brad’s face.

COVID again?!

Sam, like your mother told you as a child after using the bathroom, ’No job is finished until the paperwork is done!"

Severe penalties for early withdrawal, Sir!

Let’s name this scumbag Covidtop !!!

Quick, spray him in the face with hand sanitizer !

I get the feeling I’ve seen that crook before.

I had one scumbag come up to my change cage and demand money. I came up from behind my counter and sprayed him in the face using WD-40 and a lighter so it set him on fire. That was end of story for Flametop !

No doubt the die on his pathetic mask will lead to something

“Oh thank heavens it’s not allergy season again.”

Somebody should tell the crook that anyone who actually knows him would recognize him instantly.

could’ve fooled me. :J

Open mind. That’s what I’m telling myself. Have an open mind old boy. That story you came in on was a Bob Newhart waking nightmare . The Dick Tracy you knew and loved in bygone days is about to make his triumphant return.

I will learn whether this guy robs banks as a profession or if he was downsized from his regular job and became desperate.

Might set a trend here…bank robbery season like Spring Cleaning. On second thought he could suffer from S.I.W.S. (Sudden Impulse Withdrawal Syndrome)

That bank is a target for robbers…..so it seems?

I’m 6’4" 245, arms covered in tattoos, I get a lot of eyes on me when I walk into a bank. I could not bring myself to wear a mask in one, so to save the folks inside changes of underwear I’ve been using the drive through the last 4 years.

Any chance the bank robber is related to Odds Zonn, the crime lord and biological father of Wingy Plenty? He had a habit of tossing the dices in his hand…

1-SAM: Yawn …and then what happened? DT: Nothing. That was the end of the story. SAM: REALLY? I mean, wow. Exciting stuff.

DT: What was your favorite part? SAM: Oh crap Uh, the part where you came in and saved the day?

DT: Yeah. That was my favorite too! SAM: Whew…!

2-BRAD: Well don’t you look cute! What can I do for you today, sugar?

3-ZZ POP: ♫ ♪♪♫ GIMME ALL YOUR MONEY, ALL YOUR HUGS AND KISSES TOO! ♫ ♪♪♫

BRAD: OH! I can definitely do that, lover! I just need your account number first…

Brad ain’t too bright, is he?

I remember at the beginning of COVID, the first time I went into a bank wearing my face mask, I felt very weird.

“OK – new arc – clean slate – time to be hopeful and give Mike the benefit of the doubt. I want to believe. I want to believe…”

I’m just giving myself a pep talk here. You all keep doing what you’re doing.

If the bank robber doesn’t look like a Tracy villain, it could mean he’s working for someone else.

Can we call back Flattop to “hit” SALLY FORTH’s mother?

The woman is mentally ill and she’s driving everybody crazy.

I’m afraid I didn’t get what happened with Flattop. Did he get shot? Get away?

MOVIE QUOTE—-

“For God’s Sake,pull up your pants!”

“Right.This is a respectable X-rated motel!”

George Segal&Jane Fonda—FUN WITH DICK AND JANE—1977

Most teller cage money is marked these days,so guys who do this are amachoors before we even get started.

But a crime is a crime is a crime.

I’m not sure what it is. But just something about the gunman’s line has absolutely tickled me!

Look , just put your little hand back in the cash register and give me my two dollars and seventy five cents back please .

OT — BAD LOGIC: You want to talk bad writing? I revisited the Hardy Boys today. How does Frank manage a grenade tossed into the room? Throws it out and, when it doesn’t go off,he goes outside and kicks it to see if it’s a dud.

Has he never watched a 3 Stooges short of Bugs Bunny Cartoon??

NOW I know who Brad reminds me of…

remember Smilin’ Bob from those ludicrous but funny Enzyte male enhancement commercials from about 20 years ago?…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgZP2DPsnRE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgZP2DPsnRE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgZP2DPsnRE

He’s not a robber, he just heard that this bank was on the brink and wants to get his deposits out. He doesn’t trust the FDIC.

Brad the teller is one of those gushy goody goody optimists that drive ordinary people like our guy with the die on his mask so crazy they pull out their piece and “go to pieces” in the bank. So, he robs the joint and walks off, stage left, to resume his normal, no-deformities, average guy life and never be seen again.

Or, he could be a_villain_ and key player in a new Tracy story that doesn’t bore Sam to pieces.

Just pick up all the pieces and proceed….

“Allergy Season!” “Robbery Season!” “Allergy season!” “Robbery Season!” “ALLERGY Season!” “ROBBERY SEASON!” …Elmer Season.

So the Flat and Blow get clean away with the haul??

Not rabbit season or duck season?

With Tracy reminiscing about the time he met Nero Wolfe ending (and with Sam even giving a name to the story that I think I’ll use), it appears we’ve reached the start of a new story. When I’ve decided a new story’s started, I do a list of every Tracy story on GoComics. Unfortunately, soon after I started doing this GC imposed an asinine character limit of only 2000 characters which includes every letter, space, punctuation, & html, which means I have to do this over several posts. I’ll do my initial introduction in this post and start the list in the next one, because otherwise, I can’t even get past the second year.

My notes are fairly simple. Just my name for the story (usually the name of the main villain or villains, unless they just aren’t the emphasis) followed by the dates the story began and ended. If someone was the main villain for more than one story, I add a “II” and so on to emphasize this. If more than one villain from a past story are in the same story committing major crimes, I include them altogether. Finally, for the 4 cases of more than one villain with the same name (Chameleon, Mr. Crime, Shaky, the Ace of Spades) I add, “The Second” in front of their names.

Minit Mysteries Note: at the request of people who wanted to see these listed here, I’ve decided to make a separate post for them to keep the listing of Mike Curtis stories in as few posts as possible.

At the start of the GoComics archive, the writer was the late Mike Kilian. Personally, I like his work on Tracy and think he’s very underrated. At the very least, he knew how to tell a story in the daily strip format where every day, something happens that moves the story along, a quality his successor sorely lacked. I recommend anyone here who hasn’t read these stories to check them out.

TBC cuz GC decided to suck now

That’s the end of the last story….that’s it? Ok very disappointed.