Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 01, 2024

wistful and melancholy Annie…

ZZZZZZzzzzz,,,,,

Let me rephrase that

ZZZZZZzzzzz,,,,,

Good morning™, all!

It’s a lot for Annie to take in. She has certainly had a rough life at times. What if her parents had not disappeared? What if Warbucks had never taken her in? What if anything in her life had turned out differently?

Good morning™, Wistfully Crestfallen !

Annie looks pensive. I think she is having curiosity about her ‘parents’ more now than ever. I think this story’s gonna make it to the August finish line. LOL ! :-D

“We noticed that he has a lot of money. Whoo boy, does he have money. We want our kid to get in on that action!”

But he DOES have custody of Annie. So what’s the big deal?

I guess the Grays couldn’t have cared less about Annie having a fine mother to help her grow up too.

I heard Mike he’s going to revive Annie’s strip and leave DT strip to someone else maybe Costello

Warbucks not only has custody. He officially adopted her already!

3rd panel is awesome!

Are the Grays related to original Little Orphan Annie creator Harold Gray?

ANNIE (thinking): Warbucks must PAY for that last unsettling story! One quick shot in the dark and I’ll be DIAMOND ANNIE, the queen of the Vegs Strip!!! And after that? TRAVEL! A week in LIL’ OOP, a fortnight in RIP HAYIRE! Then off to NANCY to steal that hunky Sluggo away from that little Oreo-haired trollop!…………………………………………………………………………………………Weirdly, Nancy’s hair always reminded me of Oreos.

(continuing to write) The ten million and trading stamps he gave us convinced us. ’Sides, we wanted a boy, and Annie killed the deal with Walter Lantz for the LITTLE ORPHAN ANDY PANDA cartoon franchise!

seriously, why is this here? is viewership at ‘little orphan annie’ down that much? or are they trying to kill off dick tracy?

It’s a hard knock life, Annie!!!

Will Ovaltine become a sponsor of this strip?

Continuing my thoughts from yesterday, I think that the Grays still had the half the locket – that apparently was a last-minute decision, made after the letter was sent to Smith. Even if the Grays are dead, their half might still be out there, with the other half apparently still somewhere in the orphanage…

Make this stop ! ! !

MOVIE QUOTE—-

“My second-in-command has been locked in his bedroom by his mother!”

Basil Radford—-WHISKEY GALORE!!—1949

Wouldn’t it be a heckuva thing if The Junior Crimestoppers solved the case when the grownups couldn’t?

Nicely drawn strip today. Great on the reflection in P3. I loved the variation in angles. It gives some life to some pretty lifeless dialogue.

Agree that Panel 3 is wonderful. And she’s probably thinking about the VERY long detour before she ended up back with her “rightful owner”> If you were a kid and that happened to you ,could you just shrug it off?

Ya know, it seems like that was made clear to us yesterday. Lemme check…yes. Yes it was.

(I know Neil – maybe some people missed yesterday’s episodic non-adventure.)

I have to admire the artwork in the third panel, although Annie seems to be looking at an older version of herself in her reflection

1-DADDY-O: Tell me why I should be glad Tracy took my hands from around your worthless throat! BOB ESQUIRE: Uhhhhh…because my bowels would’ve emptied on this nice couch if he hadn’t? Anyway…

2-…The Gray’s had a small sum stashed away for Annie’s future which was invested in Amazon. It’s grown to a sizable amount in the interim…

3-…but of course, my fees over the last several years will take it all so, tufftitty!

ANNIE: Hey Bob – c’mere and lean out this window. I wanna show you something interesting down on the sidewalk.

Don’t worry Annie, the sun will come out tomorrow :)

If Annie look’s pensive it comes from her reflection in the window…I guess for dramaticpurposes……

Only 3 more months of this story to go!

If I recall correctly, when they started to make guest shots on DT, Warbucks had (at long last) formally adopted Annie… so why is there a big deal now?

Before you squawk about long stories,harold Gray’s original stories

1.)Nick Gatt&Axel—-Middle of 1939 to middle of 1940

2.)story after that one also ran a year—-Bill Slagg&Peggy,and Oliver Warbucks makes it back from a prison camp.

3.)December 1941 to January 1943—-Pearl Harbor made it into the strip as fast as Gray could do it —Annie finds a home with an unselfish Doctor Zee; and founds The Junior Commandos.

This is Annie NOT Dick Tracy

LAUGHING AND SCREAMING OT: Spent a delightful day reworking the new book. I have no idea how, but the version that went up is scrambled. As a result, we’re having to reproof and correct it ASAP, working around some major business planned for midweek. Whee.

Poor Annie. After years of imagining her parents, she discovered how weird they were. Maybe now she’s even thinking it was a good thing she never met them.