Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 03, 2012

Ah, the famous wall of hats.

G’mornin’ all!I hope the old friend is Spike, to thank Tracy. Wouldn’t bet on it, though.I’m really enjoying the whole Mr. Crime saga. From Abner Kadaver to Putty Puss’ escape to Cueball’s nightclub, we’ve never known what to expect next!I do wonder what’ll come of Cueball’s – open under new management, or will Mr. Crime simply cut his losses? (Maybe a suspicious fire that destroys the place – and possible evidence?) Ah, we’ll never know…

Good morning everyone…

Things are moving along rapidly, yet we got a chance to see The Wall! So, who’s the visitor (could it be a blast from the past—Vitamin Flintheart?), and will Sam and Lizz ferret out Mr. Crime as the real owner of Cueball’s?

The smile on DT’s face in panel 2 is something that you don’t see everyday.

I hope it’s Vitamin!

Fantastic to get a glimpse of Tracy’s famous hat collection. There should also be one in there that was smashed by the wheel of a single engine prop plane while Tracy was careening across the sky in a magnetic air car. The Hy Jacky story in the early 70’s…

Spike or perhaps Vitamin or, I believe Johnny Adonis was supposed to put in an appearance.

…some people mount animals as trophies they shot,on a wall….Dick mounts a collection of shot at hats…..talk about a trooper….way to go!

Mike and Joe rapidly move to a new adventure … while solidly linking to the adventure just finished … or … was it really finished? Tune in tomorrow Tracyphans!!!!

The wall of hats, LOVE IT!!!

Maybe it’s Tess…..!

Well, I guess the Wall means somebody is kept in business…

You’ve come a long way baby . . .Last time it rained the head was soaking - WET !http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2011/01/04

I thought I remembered that the “Wall of Hats” had labels under each hat, to tell which of the famous gun battles each hat came from The first time I remember seeing the wall was after Tracy’s snowmobile shootout with the Chameleon..

Liz is lookin’ fine in panel 3!!

Yay, the hat made it to the wall. No labels, but a classic touch two days, Wendy & the wall of hats. When did Dick give up hats, during the last era?

Tracy has never looked better. Good job, guys!

As I recall the HAT departed shorthly after Max Collins left. Early 1994 I believe.At that time Dick Locher became the Senior Partner, and was never reluctant to point out that he had ARTISTIC CONTROL !One assumes,- he thought a HAT was something of a relic. The styling had become **’**dated**’**. So, good reason to ‘freshen up’ the Tracy IMAGE (?)Your question has been asked before, here, (and on the D.T. Yahoo Board). No one has ever responded !Yet, there are some posters here (and at D.T.Yahoo), who meet Locher on occasion. You’d think, that, - and reasoning for a number of other changes would be questions one would would ASK of D.L. -if they’re enjoying that sort of “access” (?)If they did, they haven’t cared to SHARE them !

In the Sept. 25, 1973 strip Tracy shaves his moustache, ‘It was getting dandruff’ and it is posted on the wall next to the hats along with his 1971 stache with the heading “Tracy’s cookie dusters that bit the dust”.

If Tracy ever gets a haircut and his hat sits lower on his head, he’s toast.

I would say both are fedora icons, MPH and capmdunzzl. They’re from the same time period, when fedoras were the best thing invented for men’s fashion.

Also, I can’t wait to see the special guest. I’m banking on three guesses here: (1) Vitamin Flintheart’s triumphant return, to tell Tracy about some thing rotten in the state of the legitimate theatre, (2) Spike to thank him for his help, and Son Of Spike promising to play for Honeymoon’s birthday party, or (3) The Mole, to thank Tracy for helping those homeless people in his hotel last Christmas.

That’s a Trilby. :-)

While I know the yellow fedora is the trademark. Especially after the Beatty film. I always preferred the green one Tracy would wear from time to time.

MPH,How I wish those were accurate statemens. Sadly, they are not. !Three quick examples :1) Ice Man (1997) Tracy wading through a blinding Snow Storm, bare-headed and complaining.2) Another occasion El Nino rain and floods seen rowing Lizz home in a row-boat. Rain - no head-gear3) Mordred (March – 2011) Rain -Storm – No Hat !Drenched ! This one you can SEE**:*http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2011/01/16*Jeff** told me many things - but nothing specific on WHY, things like the Hat regularly went missing, Lizz’s facial features significantly altered. Lizz’s loss of her martial arts skills - Cole Lector (un-armed) SLAPPING Her up (?)(We had to wait for Mike Curtis to restore them !). http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2008/04/13

Perhaps you were a little too “respectful”, too timid perhaps (?) to ask these important questions (?)Were YOU ?

@Det.DanDone:I have a Harvey comic book from the mid-50’s, featuring the story (heavily edited, I think) of 3-D Magee and Pony. The cover artist for those Harvey books was not Gould. Tracy is depicted wearing BLUE – both fedora and trench coat.Likewise, they used green on the cover for the Oodles story, and orange for the Empty Williams story. And (I just went and looked) blue for the Wormy story. As a kid, I didn’t realize that the cover was not original Gould art, and I thought those special colors were sort of cool.

Cap,.Re your comment below:.“…the ONLY person a fedora looks good on is Indiana Jones.”.Right off the top of my head, Humphrey Bogart. Alan Ladd. Dick Powell. Jack Webb on the eraly DRAGNET. Stacy Keach when he’s playing Mike Hammer. Dennis Farina on CRIME STORY. Robert Stack on THE UNTOUCHABLES (1959-63). Kevin Costner in THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987). Tom Amandes on THE UNTOUCHABLES (1993-94). Harry Anderson on CHEERS and NIGHT COURT. Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, and Harry Guardino on MADIGAN. Frank Sinatra on THE DETECTIVE. Robert Mitchum in FAREWELL, MY LOVELY. Al Fann on BODIES OF EVIDENCE. Telly Savalas on KOJAK. .I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.

Matt,.Re your comment below:.When this question came up in 2009 over at the Yahoo! group you never offered this information..However, Jeff Kersten, you colleague at the Tracy Museum, offered this insight:.“Very little information is available regarding Chet’s earliest work, butaccording to R.C. Harvey’s fine biography of Milton Caniff, Meanwhile…,CAPTAIN PATTERSON DISCOURAGED HIS CARTOONISTS FROM USING ANY BUT THE PRIMARY COLORS IN THEIR SUNDAY COLOR SCHEMES AS A MONEY-SAVER [emphasis mine] —a directive that was largely ignored.”.Just as an aside, my understanding was that yellow was a bold primary color. But you’re the expert..He goes on:.“Having access to the craftsmanship of the Old World engravers of the New York News gave the cartoonist’s more freedom to explore the full spectrum of the color pallet and knowing this, most took full advantage..“The financial challenges presented by the Great Depression forced manynewspaper’s to get creative with their color when printing their Sunday comicsto conserve ink, leaving collector’s a variety of examples of each page. Beyond the economic and editorial reasons for the variety of colors we find among the various newspaper’s carrying the strip, Chet didn’t quite settle on Tracy’s trademark yellow fedora and coat for many more years, often interchanging their colors from Sunday to Sunday.”.I’ll add that Leigh Hanlon, the current editor of TRACY at TMS, has also suggested that the reason Gould went to yellow was that yellow was easier to reprint on newsprint than more subtle shades..Not saying you’re wrong. Just saying others who have some claim to expertise on this subject have suggested otherwise.

Actually, given the popularity of the fedora in women’s fashion, I am surprised we haven’t seen Lizz wearing one. You’re slipping Lizz.I also wonder how Lizz would look in her police hat. I bet it would be attractive.

@Matthew Hansel:Why in the world would yellow be more expensive to produce? If a comic is going to be produced in color in a newspaper, then the web of newsprint is going to be threaded through all four color units, and there are going to be four color plates made. You could leave yellow off completely, but it would make the other colors look really odd. And if you need yellow anyway, there would be no savings from not using it on a particular comic.Tan, or brown, on the other hand, would typically be made from yellow with magenta and cyan and black screen tints added. It would seem to me that subtle colors with screen tints would be more expensive in the pre-press department, and once you get to the press, again, you need all four colors anyway.

@Matthew Hansel:While I was typing the above comment, yours came in to Jim Doherty. I still don’t understand. Certainly, comics in the 50’s and 60’s had four color, which is yellow, cyan,magenta and black. I know I read Superman comics from the 50’s, and his belt and the background of his chest logo were yellow. Even if the claim was that the yellow ink was more expensive, due to pigment supplies, or something like that, they still needed all four colors to run a comic. I can’t understand the statement that the DC house didn’t even offer yellow to their publishers.As I said, I SAW yellow with my own eyes in 50’s comic books. Anyway, this is very interesting to me, because I am a printer.

DT too

I STRONGLY agree with you.