Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 11, 2014

“Alley”???! Insult or compliment?

But, before the insults start about the current Oop team (and I Don’t read it), maybe Am’s comment referred to V.T.Hamiln’s run (which was great!

Good morning fellow DT and Annie fans!

I thought that “Pouch” was the ‘official’ source of information!

VB, I think this may be Pouch’s Great, great, great, great (etc.) grandfather!

It’s “someone” named Alley, so not Gasoline.

If Am is so powerful and omniscient, why he has not recovered Annie himself?

Evidently he prefers making cryptic comments stroking his beard…

I think that if the great actor Dick Van Dyke had a long beard, he would quite resemble the great AM.

It would be interesting if Am just started appearing in various comics, like the Mystery Hipster Cops

http://ifanboy.com/articles/scott-snyder-uncovers-bizarre-background-character-mystery/

Pretty obvious from yesterday’s background lesson on “The Great Am” that he is patterned after the great “I AM”….

How sad, Tracy’s turned into an accessory in his own strip!

“Alley”? Would that be “Oop” or “Gasoline”?

Dick Tracy doesn’t resemble Alley Oop one bit, unless Am is thinking about the square jaw.

When was the last time Tracy actually caught someone, The Jumbler? How many times in the past two years has his Yellow Fedora been saved by others, even criminals!

I’m telling you, Annie is being hidden in Gasoline Alley! And I’m not joking!

Good morning to all. Maybe Tracy will have an easy job finding Annie? No, that would be too easy.

I know where The Great Am makes the connection to Tracy! He was working in the Freak Show at the circus and he caught a glimpse of Tracy getting his bacon saved in the cage by the steroid chick.

There are so many characters with mystic power now. Am, Asp, Punjab & Mysta all have super-powers to fight crime..Cool…and Sam’s smoking e-cigs…

jpuzz… youd have to be on WHEELS to be pork chopped out of here wouldnt you? ;)

So many complaints today. I wonder if it’ll be that way all summer long.Today’s strip help clears up where the story ended in Annie, and moves it directly into Tracy’s jurisdiction, with a nice surprise cameo by one of Annie’s supporting cast.I’m enjoying this story.

Absolutely, Gweedo! It was the vaudeville that brought us all together in the first place! That’s what made Mattie famous!

I first heard of “Am” in a “Big Little Book” that my grandmother gave me, out of an old closet of hers, in mint condition: “Little Orphan Annie and the Secret Treasure of Am.” My sisters and I read that book over and over, and wore it out. I really wish I still had it in mint condition. I might be able to buy the Alley Oop comic strip and get it back to where it should be.

Okayyyyy…. if this joker is right, how did Annie escape?

Or maybe Gene Alley, the former MLB player.

Snooze time.

@ Ken in Ohio:“He may be write” should read “He may be right” – I was not trying to make a pun, I just made a mistake. Sorry about that.

Hey, BB! Peace to ya, my friend! And if ya want, I’ll change it to “piece”.

Speculation over Am seems rampant. We shall never know with certainty (Harold Gray, his creator, having died in 1968). But in the present controversy over the reference Am makes to “Alley” (as if to a person), I’d suggest that Gasoline Alley is more likely (even if not a person), because it is a strip from the same Tribune syndicate (which Alley Oop is not), and because an unnamed character closely resembling Annie has shown up in that strip several times recently.

I don’t have the name of who sent the 1937 ANNIE strip. but whoever it was, it was Great ! Thank you, it’s a long link, but very interesting reading.

Read the Anne link you posted. The whole story and now I get it. Harold Gray . Great writer.

You’re welcome. Be sure to check out that whole site to see Classic Annie fighting the Nazis.

Once again:http://www.stuartliss.com/loahp/mram.html

If you didn’t notice, Mr. Am brings Warbucks and the Asp back from the dead in the 1937 continuity. I AM, indeed.

I too am concerned about this strip doing too much too soon and simultaneously. I like LOA and was sorry to see it canceled. Of course, I was one of the last 12 people to read Steve Roper and Mike Nomad before it was canceled.

Yes, it was me who put that link up, and later, I believe it was btmosley who also posted it. I actually just found it doing a Google search. I’m not the one who posted the strips. I may have some other things I can post, but I wonder about the copyright situation.

Just think of it: The Great Am meeting The Great Ham!

I liked you play on words, even if others are ready to chop you to death.

Mr. Am finds Tracy’s face familiar.

Maybe he reads the “J. Straightedge Trustworthy” strip by Vera Alley-did.

I also thank you for the AM strip, it was fun. Who is the Butcher of the Balkans?

Guess what this Friday’s gonna be? The four year anniversary of the final Annie comic strip.

Mr. Am could easily Methuselah or the Wandering Jew or even Cain. Or none of these.

He’s kind of like God in some ways, but of course, he’s not actually God. According to that first story he was in, he’s had white hair for a very long time.

His advantage over other people is mostly that he seems to know a lot and he can make use of that knowledge in mysterious ways. His theory is that people have forgotten the lessons of the past, but he’s been around long enough to know lots of things that “normal” people don’t, including knowledge that has been forgotten.

He never claims to be God at all, but he seems to have a few God-like attributes, like seemingly having the ability to perform miracles and having lived forever. He has a long white beard, longer than the one of God the Creator in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam fresco, but his beard is still reminiscent of the fresco to me. In that first story, Annie never hints at him being God, but does say that he looked like Santa Claus a few times.

I think he is mainly just supposed to be mysterious.

It’s been noticed for a long time that Tracy and annie had things in common. On the ending of Annie in 2010, Chris Sims of comicsalliance.com wrote that “as early as the late ’20s, “Annie” had shifted to focus on almost Dick Tracian levels of brutality and crime, a tradition the last team, Jay Maeder and Ted Slampyak, were keeping alive and well in the current stories.”

Read More: The ‘Little Orphan Annie’ Cliffhanger Finale Is Completely Insane | http://comicsalliance.com/little-orphan-annie-ending/

Morning, Anniephans!