Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 03, 2022

He sure has a magnetic personality! What? SOMEBODY was going to do that joke.

Good morning™, everyone!

Back to our story which is really kicking off today. Looks like we have our villain and I think he might be someone new unless you guys have heard of Steelface before.

Ah, he’s gotten the Covid-19 vaccine!

What is that supposed to be in black tie guy’s hand, a glass??

And now for something totally different!

The name Magneto was already taken…

a new bad boy has come to Tracyville, it seems… and his buddy, Gaspar, seems like the typical bar-fly jerkoff…

This looks like a case for Remington Steele Detective Agency !!!

Good morning™, strike forces !

And wotta strike too !   I’d believe the pull on a skeleton key as some were made of steel. Now that Gas’s date has seen the freak show she will be going home alone.

And don’t call him Shirley either!

JPuzzleWhiz crossed sites about 2 hours ago

@Gweedo it’s legal here Murray

Could you be thinking of Comics.com?

To my best recollection c.com merged with this one.

https://blog.kamens.us/2011/06/02/comics-com-has-merged-into-gocomics-com/

I think Steelface will be key to this investigation……

He probably teamed up with Harley Niav, who hates being called “Putty Puss.”

Ah Steelface! Metal Man was already taken!

Where’s Garage Man? I was promised Garage Man! Where is he?

Steelface’s real name is Rusty.

His partner looks a little pale; Gasper = Casper?

A magnetic face might make shaving difficult in the morning

It’s magnet mouth, and how is brass a ferrous metal? Unless he is a walking MRI magnet!

Gaspar is rude when he’s drunk. He should count himself lucky if he leaves the bar in a vertical position.

Is that the most awkward slap on the comics page? Who slaps from right-to-left, but with his hand vertical like that?

If he’s magnetic enough to pull keys out of the air, he’ll probably be easy to shoot.

Steelface aka Magneto?

Gaspar is rather pale. Is he a “friendly ghost”?

Looks like that shadowy guy has magnetic skin, at least on his face. I would guess it’s genetic in origin.

First panel: Now there is a pickup line that has NEVER worked.

Ahh finally…a George Gould type character……Steel Face!

Right. Shouldn’t it be “Magnetface?”

1-GASPAR: This is a 12 ounce bar glass – my huge hands make it look tiny. BETTY: My place or yours?

2-GASPAR: HEY STEELFACE! I TOLD HER THIS IS THE KEY TO MY HEART AND SHE FELL FOR IT!

3-STEELFACE: THAT’S MY PICKUP LINE! OOOOOH! I’M SO ANGRY! WHY I OUGHTA…

Steelface got that way because of all the heavy metals in his diet. This can serve as a profound philosophical lesson to all…

From today’s Comics Curmudgeon:

This lady at the bar is all of us. She just wants to see something unbelievable, or at least interesting, but instead she gets caught up in an internecine feud between mutant criminal lowlife types. This is why more and more people are abandoning the bar scene for dating apps!

O course this is only Day 1, but it looks promising.

Gaspar needs a two drink limit. The lady was so impressed that she shrieked.

Hold the phone…prior to the recent blooper passing as you know what, there was going to be a theater presentation of the Sunday Funnies. How will that relate to today’s action? Oh maybe these three will win sweepstakes tickets to the play.

At a glance, it appears he has a … magnetic personality

I hope those weren’t Gaspar’s car or house keys, either way he is up the creek without a paddle.

Before we get too deeply into this new story, I want to share this with my fellow Tracy-fans:

I just finished re-reading the last Chester Gould continuity before the introduction of Moon Maid. (The Magnetic Space Coupe had already been featured in several stories, but when Diet Smith took B. O. Plenty and his family to the moon, they complained how empty and barren it was, and B. O. had Diet take them instead to his original birth place in Virginia.)

The story I want to discuss is about Small Mouth Bass and one Doctor Aorta, who were supplying victims to a female criminal genius for heart transplant experiments. The story ran in the papers in late 1963 – early 1964, three years before the first successful heart transplant in the real world (1967).

SPOILER ALERT for anyone who has not read this story.

Tracy is brought into the case when a living, beating heart, inside of a specially constructed container, is found in a bus station locker. Much is made of the fact that the heart is still alive and beating on its own. Then they find a body with the heart removed. They use medical science to prove that the heart is from this victim. There is some excellent real-world detective work and leg work depicted, which eventually leads Tracy and Sam to a car rental garage. They find the limo which picked up the victim for his last ride. But then Gould makes one of the biggest gaffes of his entire run on Tracy. They find that the limo is rigged up to funnel its own exhaust into the passenger compartment, and fingerprints on the inside of the windows prove that the victim took his last ride in this limo. it is stated that the amount of carbon monoxide would certainly have killed him while he was struggling to open a window or get out. Yet this is the victim whose live heart is at the center of the investigation.

There are a lot of great Tracy-style chase and death trap moments, and the crooks are suitably captured or killed. Please continue in the next comment

“Don’t call me Shirley.” — Leslie Nielsen

“Stop calling me ‘Sir.’ ” — Peppermint Patty

I like him already.

Looks like he has a magnetic personality

Steelface, AKA key caddy. His other cheek is for storing reading glasses.

Swerving to the magnetic beat of what appears to be an entirely new tack (unless this somehow ties in with the Patterson production planned by Vitamin), we meet Gaspar, probably just a disposable foil, though possibly a minion of the apparent New Villain, Steelface (“Don’t call me Steelface!” so reminds me of Flyface!). We don’t yet know his given name nor his game, but he has a neat trick to go with his steely visage. The lady is just a bar pickup extra; I don’t expect to see her again after this scene has played out….

That’s MISTER Steelface to you!