Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for December 16, 2018

A storm so fierce

No light may pierce

The moon now fully hidden.

In his dark room

Beset by gloom

Strange voices speak unbidden.

I hate the rain

And getting wet

Loud thunderstorms upsetting.

So let us wait

The hour late

A soaking brings regretting.

You both are wrong

Now hear my song

Such deluge masks our bold flight.

Let us soon leave

Make others grieve

Our escape shall be timed right.

WOW!!!

Day one of a brand new story which already is filled with suspense, drama and excitement! And what artwork!Superb!!!A perfect beginning!

Too bad it’ll be all downhill after today and most of us will be left dazed and confused,,,,,,,

ONE MORE TIME!!!

A nice start. Now we will see if they learned about not writing more story than they can fit into the strip. I’d rather them work hard and fail than succeed with a thin story.

Wertham Woods = Arkham Asylum?

Good morning™, multiple personalities !

Me, myself and I are bustin’ otta here … as soon as the rain stops.

My guess: Haf-and-Haf!

It’s the Phantom…. The Ghost Who Talks (to himself) :D

Good morning™, psychiatric observers!

So, we leave the emergent production of “A Chin to Die For,” at least for now. Whether we will return to it later is hard to say.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, we have Wertham Woods. The University of Oxford owns a semi-natural woodland called Wytham Woods, but more important to us is Dr. Fredric Wertham. Wertham’s 1954 book , The Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth, helped to inspire the Comics Code, which specified what comics could and could not show for decades to come. He had also written an earlier book connecting comics and other media to violent crimes.

https://www.lambiek.net/comics/wertham_fredric.htm

“And now for something completely different.”

With Vortex arrested and the scene shifted to new characters, I feel a new story has begun. And since the Flintheat/Alldid situation has been left unresolved, I feel the story began with that situation. 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 a stupid, 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 two cases of more than one villain with the same name (Chameleon, Mr. Crime) 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

I’ll bet that’s Putty Puss!

Alright you Dick Tracy history buffs….which of his numerous foes (who aren’t in Boot Hill) has multiple personalities at least one of which seems to be a murderous personality?

Insanity Claus?

Glad they limit comment size….saves me some fast forwarding, lol

Finally things are looking up!

A brief interruption to invite folks to celebrate the 100th anniversary of “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” coming up this week! We’re celebrating over at “Lum and Abner”!

http://www.lumandabnersociety.org/Comic-Strip-Home.html

AAAAAAAAAND A BIG WELCOME BACK TO TULSA TUZON!!!!!!!!

“So he began to think and speak for her; giver her half his life, you might say. At times he could be both personalities, carry out conversations. And at other times, the mother half took over completely – now, he was never all Norman. But at times, he _could_be only Mother.” (Psychiatrist, Psycho, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

An update to First Responders Roll of Honor : The shooter was captured.

http://www.nleomf.org/officers/search/search-results/abimael-castro-berrocales.html

Snoopy:" It was a dark and stormy night" Off to a great start I would think! Can’t wait!

I love the doctor’s face in panel 2!

Is this Wortham Woods a facility for the “Criminally Insane,” or, just a regular psychiatric hospital? Cause the guy featured in the last couple of panels sounds like he’s suffering from “Multiple Personality Disorder.” (Though think today’s mental health professions have disavowed that diagnosis.

Our man in shadows seems to be having a conversation with himself…except he seems to have 3 separate personalities, two who are arguing and one who seems to be in charge. Although there are shadows in the room, they seem to have no specific shape.

The sillouette seems to have smooth hair on his right side and kinky hair on his left. That indicates to me that the villain is Haf n’ Haf whom it was suggested was placed back into an insane asylum after his last story arc.

http://ray-toler.com/Tracy/Haf%20n%20Haf%20mental.JPG

(As a side note: This story involved filming the life story of Dick Tracy. During this tale, Fame, a young starlet with criminal intents who got Haf n Haf involved to further her own career, was engaged to Vitamin Flintheart, who was playing himself in the movie (sound like a similar situation?). Fame eventually killed herself by jumping off of the Hollywood sign rather than go to prison.

However, there are two Haf n’ Hafs.

During the Dab Stract story by Killian and Locher, Dr. Beau Tox, a plastic surgeon whose treatments eventually wore off, was splashed with acid on half of his face by Heartless Mahoney. He shot her but she survived. Because of his scarred face, none of the witnesses could identify him at his trial and he was released and his case dismissed. He hasn’t appeared in the strip since.

https://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2004/01/24

Rest Well, Officer Berrocales.

Now this looks like it could be very good! Atmosphere baby!

One of the Asylum doctors resembles Dr. Tim Sail.

The facility in panel 1 & 2 reminds me of Rockland State Psychiatric Center in NY – we used to play golf at Broadacres golf course which was on the grounds of the maximum security Hospital Building and surrounding non-lock up residency buildings – when you came up to the last green, the hospital towered a few hundred feet away. The windows had bars but apparently could be opened – inevitably, as you were lining up your put, one of the patients would scream through the bars on the 5th or 6th floor “get me out of here” – to which I replied “let me put this out and I’ll be right over” – true story I swear…

Here begins our new story. As atomicdog and Ray Toler have speculated, Haf n’ Haf is a prime suspect as the muttering man arguing with his selves over the wisdom of escaping in the rain. The original Haf n’ Haf story kept me captivated as kid (Haf-and-Haf in 1967). Mysta helped Tracy discover Mrs. Steele’s secret room that held her mummified husband’s corpse. Great stuff for the morbid curiosity of this young fan. While “Little Tulza’s” quick confession and wish for death was a rapid wrap up, I was hooked on Tracy. Great art again today as the doctors gaze out at the storm. Seems the third “perspective” is the dominate voice, so an escape is imminent. Where will he go and what foul deeds might he commit? Looking forward to finding out.

It would be great, if they did a “Dick Tracy: The Animated Series”, based on the noir style of the outstanding Batman series from the early 90’s.

“Wertham Woods” is almost certainly a poke at the memory of psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, who famously led an anti-comic book crusade begun his his book “The Seduction of the Innocent.”

Argh. Make that “in his book.”

Could this be, Tracy’s Joker? On-pins-n-needles minds want to know!

William K. Raley October 27, 1934 – December 16, 2017. Remembering Vista Bill. May his soul rest in peace

Is this the return of Putty Puss?

Now THIS is how you begin a story! I’m eager to see what’s next

What a day to come in late. ✨

Very good start, but I fear Avenger is prescient. Relative to Wertham and his “one cause for everything” premise, the real downside of his screed was the decimation of Bill Gaines’ entire EC lineup, which included some of the best stories and comic art of the times (1950 etc) Gaines got called before the infamous HUAC committee and refused to cooperate. The only present remainder of the EC line is MAD magazine.

Looks as though all three of him will soon be on the loose, and wet. Was he skull-marked by the Phantom in former times?

Mike has hinted, over on that social networking site, that this is sorta kinda Haf n’ Haf, but that he has changed….

Wertham Woods Psychiatric Facility, a.k.a. looney bin, named for the man who practically killed comic books in the ’50s, until their resurgence much later. I was in my prime comics-reading days back then, and the contrast between the free-wheeling, sometimes gory pre-Code comics and the emasculated cream-puff comics that followed was sorely distressing to me….

A multi personality psychopath,now this should be a ‘’good one!’’

Wertham Woods lol.