Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 06, 2021

Close-up of framed art in Archival’s library? ✨

This may well be a prized piece of original art from Archival’s collection. We see an expanded panel of Flattop’s first appearance in Dick Tracy (12/21/43). Laffy dies as his war hero brother heads back to the battlefront via a train at (Chicago’s) Union Station. Flattop arrives on the same platform. He wishes to go to the Nobel Hotel. A clever use of comic art collected by the collector, as it is from the very strip we now read nearly 80 years later. A creative homage to Gould. A righteous Flattop appearance, as any comics collector worth his salt would have some prime Gould in hand. Well played.

Beautiful rendering of the original art style!

But an ugly reminder that Mike appears only able to live in the past.

Unless this is going to be yet another CROSSOVER (or some other kind of Special Guest Villain).

Good morning™, major sideswipes !

I see it but don’t get why.

Appropriate that there’s a train in today’s strip! A foreshadowing of what’s around the bend.

Is that Gould on the right?

Flattop Jones!!!

What is going on???

Nice to see some older villains.

Oh no! Someone kidnapped Joe and Mike! The strip is in reruns!

Well, now isn’t this interesting!

Looks like Mike graduated with honors from “KILL MOMENTUM UNIVERSITY”

I remember Flattop from way back in the late 1950s in the New York Daily News my father used to pick up!

If Mike’s about to undo the franchise original sin, more power to him. Even if he has to use time travel to do it.

Jim Douglas about 10 hours ago@avenger09Wasn’t trying to be funny, was serious.

Wow, you struck out on both attempts.

Why don’t you try something you’ve had success with in the past, like being a bore!

LOL!

“Lets to the time warp again.”

So – are we going into story reboots? (Like Star Trek? )

I was just reading Flattop’s history, he had a brother Sharptop, his father was Poptop, (Who disowned him), he was married to Stiletta Top, And had another brother Blow Top. He and Stiletta had 2 children, I wonder what became of them? Interesting to me anyway!

FLATHEAD: Pardon me, boy. Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?

DOIT: No. It’s the Wabash Cannonball.

FLATHEAD: Oh. Well then, are you the Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy?

DOIT: NO! Look. There’s your train – The Ol’ 97. Get on if you’re going to Danville. I hear Engineer Steve can run that thing up to 90 mile an hour. Good luck.

FLATHEAD: But I ain’t going to Danville. I’m going on down to San Antoine. So I need that train that goes by Folsom Prison.

DOIT: Well then, you’ll have to make a connection through The City of New Orleans

Can YOU spot all the train song references? Be the first to grab bragging rights!

ooo…something unexpected happening to Flattop at that point would cause a Nexus event, where an alternate universe would branch out, and then…LOL (Marvel Cinematic Universe joke)

I take it “Flattop” does NOT refer to the popular early 1960’s hair style because THAT AIN’T IT. Dad had one and lots of Butch Wax to maintain it!

Why is he asking FDR?

Memo to Joe and Mike, you all blind sided me with today’s panel.

Thank you very much!! That was the conclusion of the Laffy Smith tragedy and the beginning of this memorable character!! I’ve read them in strip reprint books often – wowee!!

Didnt flattop smoke

According to some here, the first appearance of Flattop coincides with the end of the Laffy Smith storyline. What if the plan is that Diet Smith is somehow connected to Laffy Smith (something that’s never been suggested before), and Diet has invented time travel with a mind to changing Laffy’s fate, but in the process inadvertently pulls Flattop out of his time and into the present?

Well,it’s a cinch THIS guy won’t be helping to rescue Mysta…..

Nice re-creation of the first time we saw Flattop;but he came along in DECEMBER 1943 so this isn’t even an Anniversary t ribute.

I assume this is a balm to the vocal minority who ask the impossible be done and bring Flattop back from the grave. Okay,you’ve seen him close up and in color.Now you can stop chewing on your neckties and get back to your regular lives.

The strip has already brought out the historians talking about the whole family tree,so itcan’t be all unimportant.

The guy who says he “remembers” Flattop from the 1950s is about 10 years too late. Maybe Flattop Jr.? but certainly not Flattop from the mid 40s, the first time I read DT by Gould.

Two more Bios that I’ve added to Dick Tracy/Wikipedia/Fandom(with mild Dimitri revisions)

ROBBIE CRYSTAL and SMELT

“Who wants to know?”

He looks a little like Alfred E. Neuman III from MAD magazine.

Be with us on Sunday,when what happened to Laffy Smith FINALLY happens to The Joker.

Oh snap! The most enduring of Dick Tracy’s foes- one they spun off to have his entirely family show up because he cast such a wide shadow, lol.

What the heck? (A sanitized version of what I was thinking.)

Look, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve been jerked around by sudden changes of direction before in this strip. I’ve read all of the comments, replies, and speculation above (and it took a bit of time). But I have no believable explanation why Flattop at Union Station from 1943 is suddenly plopped into the middle (or third act, who knows?) of the Brock Archival Caper!

Is this just filler? Artsy showboating? Some kind of bizarre foreshadowing of a Time Travel Trip [word chosen with care] upcoming in a future return to the far past? Are the dead rising? (And, if so, are these then the End Times?) Can Saturday possibly avert a train wreck?

Nice art, no context….

I’ve read all the comments and this is what I think is going on:

Today’s strip is from an authorized comic strip about Tracy. I think tomorrow we’ll see Dick ‘n Sam looking at the strip in question in Archival’s collection. Maybe the writer/artist guessed – luckily – what happened when Flattop entered Tracyville for the first time. It’s not a preview of the next story. There is no time travel involved. It’s not an unknown relative of Flattop.

In a couple of hours we’ll see who’s right. Be patient.

Don’t know if this strip fits into the Archival story or is a foreshadowing of what’s ahead. I do know this strip reminded me of why I became such a big Dick Tracy fan. Great job, Joe & Mike!

Its Flattop! : )