Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 07, 2016

Mr. Happydale Doctor is evasive, to say the least, and he’s sweating bullets. There’s definitely something fishy about this one.

Putty-Puss is on the outs.

The Asp is evidently going to be the ass kicker of this trio.

Methinks the Asp is about to put the the old mind control on him.

“State of the DT World” Report"

I have updated my “plot map” for the current story. Find it at http://dt.canadatoyou.com/nottafallarmove/. The direction that the story is headed is becoming clearer, so I have cleaned up the beat map and added the extra week. The text was too wordy, since my purpose was not to replace reading the strips, but just to outline the structure of the story, so I cut the descriptions down.

So where are we now? In my opinion, we entered a new act on Wednesday. The main characters were all introduced by Tuesday, including T-Bolt (who Lee is still portraying under deep cover).

Act 3: The hunt for Putty Puss

On Thursday, we entered the beginning of the end for Putty Puss. Sam, Tracy, and Asp are hunting him down so Sam can arrest him and Screwball is presumably on a hunt to kill. We don’t yet know which one will get to him first (or even if Screwball already got to him).

Blaze seems to have been beaten down, emotionally, farther than she has before and she really is a central character in this storyline.

Characters

We are on Day 32 of this story and 36 characters have spoken or have been referenced in some way. The week just past saw just three new characters who haven’t appeared in this storyline before, another sign that we are getting closer to the midpoint of the story.

T-Bolt re-appeared for the first time in a long time. She has potential to be very important later on.Barney Dhatkham made an appearance two days this week, but he’s almost a prop. He didn’t even have a word to say.Mr. Kleen had a little cameo, but he is also not likely to be crucial to the plot. Maybe he’ll have important duties at the end.

He is definitely not going to put one past the Asp. Better start cooperating, Doctor.

Morning, Tracy Fans!

In the May 5 strip, Niav’s name was Harley. Today, Asp calls him Harvey.

.Good morning guys!.Wecome back and good morning Gweedo!

Looks like Sam and Asp are playing a little “Good Cop – Bad Ninja”

Anyone notice Niav is Vain backwards?

The Asp is Cool. He’s got powers to spare from martial arts to hypnotism…

Obviously his whole name must be Harvey Harley Niav ;-)

Sounds like Harley missed bedcheck.-Gotta love the Asp’s no BS attitude.

I have a feeling that Putty Puss is missing for good. Screwball took him out of Happydale for sightseeing and haven’t come back yet.

Did you mean “Blaze tries to talk her out of it” ?

Yes, of course. Thanks for the correction. It’s fixed now.

It’s actually harder to keep it short, but that’s what I want to do. Wikipedia is so full of plot summaries of various movies in excruciating detail that there is a tag for designating ones that are excessive. What I do want to give details about in the storyline map is overall themes and motivations. The actual strips will give the details. Actually, some details are important to the overall theme, while others are not important at all, so I want to emphasize the proper ones. It’s not always possible to know which ones those are when you’re early in the story, so I tend to constantly adjust as things go along.

No one expects the Asp!

That white-coat guy (doctor? lab tech? orderly?) is sweating Tracy and Sam. Once the Asp is done, he may not even be breathing! On the other hand, the Asp can be very persuasive short of killing, too. This should be fun [but as I did long ago in the Annie crossover arc, I must put on record here my view that Joe’s realization of the Asp does not match “classic” Asp, nor my expectations. Joe’s Asp is very lean and young and not too stoical, whereas classic Asp, IMO, is older. heavier-set, far more laconic and enigmatic than this youngster-version]….

I’m not immune to the typo bug, either! ;o)

Made me laugh, though. A hastily written capital L can look a lot like a hastily written V.

Speaking of Harvey, the Harvey Awards nomination ballots are due by Monday, if any professional comic creative people happen to be reading this and haven’t sent theirs in yet. The blank ballot is on the Harvey Awards site.

Or, you could call it “Neil Wick’s DT World” or “Neil Wick’s World of DT”.

Those are good suggestions which I will think about. I might do something like that.

Who said Oliver paid him? Yes, a sum of money was offered, but I believe Dick turned it down.

I don’t think he turned it down. He did say he had bills to pay. Tracy was suggesting that he didn’t need double pay (jsut for finding Annie, since she found him), but Warbucks suggested he just take the extra to take Tess on a vacation.

I got my shirt with me !!!

You said you’d take a picture of the t-shirt when it got warmer. I want to see it!

I’ve just realized that I’ve been calling the guy in the white lab coat a doctor, but if he is one, then “Mr. Niav is away at a doctor’s appointment” is a pretty poor excuse. Wouldn’t a nursing home like that have a doctor on staff? There are pill bottles all over the place. I suppose he could be a nurse, but do nurses wear lab coats like that?

I just looked through a bunch of Google image search pictures. The only nurses wearing such a white lab coat were wearing a blue “scrub” top underneath, but there are plenty of pictures of doctors wearing a white lab coat over a dress shirt and tie. He think he’s meant to be a doctor of some sort.

Today was the third appearance of the Asp in the current story, and the first one without a trace of a smile on his face. A trace of a smile for Asp (both time likely due to his respect for Tracy) is a big grin for most people!