Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 07, 2020

Good morning™, informants!

So, Miss Dyer doesn’t want publicity, just information to help with her role, or so she says. I’m sure there’s more to it, though.

The last time we saw Broadway Bates (apparently a relative of The Penguin) was in 2013. Seven years later and he’s up for parole already. Time does fly!

Good morning™, unpleasant events dodgers !

I’ve never seen Tracy act so dodgy. That hearing can’t take the entire day. If she causes trouble out at the Plenty place I say let L’il Attitude use her for a chew toy.

Tracy should refuse to meet with anyone until Mike and Joe agree to start writing balanced stories!

Anyone know if team Tracy plans to incorporate the current pandemic into future stories?

Bates had better hope he doesn’t end up like Parroll Lea!

no press, no cameras, just you…and me…alone….

don’t worry miss i’ll bring BO he knows all about her.

Hey – nice way to stretch out the story line to next week.

So Bates has been off-Broadway for a while?

We’ve descended into talking heads again. The last two days could have been condensed.

Yesterday, the first panel could have been eliminated. It established that Tracy was going into Pat’s office. There was no need for an establishing panel. When we can see Pat behind his desk, we know where we are.

Today, the middle panel only tells us what we have already seen: that BO has a history with Breathless. Cut Tracy’s line in the first panel, eliminate the second panel and the story moves on.

Since today is Thursday, we will likely get a Friday and Saturday of more talking heads. Sunday? Who knows? It could be another interruption followed by another week of talking heads.

One problem with these stories: based on reading almost all of Gould’s work since the beginning, a big difference is that the stories would be driven by Tracy’s personality and commitment. Here we have the story driven by the whim of the cartoonists and other characters. No drive for justice, no emotion at all on his part. He is a cyborg copy of the original.

1-CHIEF: Arm wrestle Tracy? I’ve a hundred dollars says I beat you.

2-DT: Hmmmm. I’ve beaten you every time we’ve gone…what’s your game plan here, Chief?

3-CHIEF: Awh gosh and begorrah, I should’ve known my best detective would see through that. I cut a hole in the front of me desk and I was plannin’ to stick my barefoot through it and tickle your privates just as you began to win, boy-o.

DT: You tried that last time Chief and it didn’t work.

CHIEF: Aye, but I tried it on SAM with splendid results. He insisted on goin’ five more times! T’was a nice payday for me.

DT: Something tells me Sam thought it was worth it. CHIEF: What? DT: What?

Having not read “THE LOCHER ERA” or truthfully ANYTHING since the “great strike of the 1980’s” by New York Newspapers… most of the comparisons i can come up with are strictly by memory, which admittedly, since i was only in my teens then and quite honestly having a difficult time in high school and not reading the comic strips much.

I consider myself a “GOULD/FLETCHER/COLLINS BABY” since i read faithfully from the whole contract on Tracy by Big Boy story up until at LEAST Torcher… i cant remember the exact chronology.. but i DO remember Perfume Plenty getting stuck atop a Ferris Wheel with the Mayor (?), i remember B.U. Tiffil, Astral Turf (who should be up for parole by now too lol), Willie Wheeler (the kid who swiped purses while on sneaker skates) and the intro of both Lee Ebony and Johnny THE MAN Adonis, Art Dekko and Sue Reel, Dr Will Carver (watch my story for an introduction of a new plastic surgeon who may be quite possibly MORE corrupt than our long gone cigarette huffing “cut king”) but i tend to lose track around that era

Any historians out there wanna give it a go as to trying to help figure out when i ended up stopping following?

But getting back to the subject, it could be because of my exuberant youth and wanting to read tracy that i cant make an honest comparison between Gould/Fletcher/Collins and Staton/Curtis… but i CAN say that at the beginning, Mike was doing great here.. and i came in at the end of the first abner kadaver story when he had tracy tied down to a table with a razor sharp pendulum swinging above him… but the incessant, tedious, dragged out overblown, multiple crossovers coupled with good ideas cut short by deadlines when a COMPETENT WRITER should be able to encapsulate his ENTIRE story within time constraints is just too much to overlook. Mike DOES start off a story good, but then three days later he craps all over it and kills whatever momentum he had going for him

Anybody else catch the HINT here from Tracy saying that tomorrow will be the hearing regarding Broadway Bates and that he will get to the Breathless thing “MAYBE MONDAY”?

Could this mean then that we will see Broadway tomorrow and nothing about the story itself until Monday rolls along… which implies that both Saturday and Sunday will be wastes of strip time?

@tsull2121. Couldn’t agree more and I go back to 1945. But, it ain’t gonna change, creators are locked in to this new motif. So just enjoy the comments section. BTW, Broadway should be a good parole risk, he’s almost 100 years old and probably harmless.

Ping! Pong! Pat Patton receives! Tracy pushes back pleading parole presentation in the case of Broadway Bates. Monday is pencilled in as the earliest anything of note or of forward progress might happen. B.O. Plenty is lined up as the Source for the playacting doxy moll “Breathless,” in RL conniving actress Fortuna Dyer (something of a Bette Davis type, with a little Lauren Bacall thrown in for spice).

I guess there might be a plot in which this stew is being mixed….

this should be good.

Maybe we can work in a Minute Mystery before your meeting with Miss Dyer as well.