Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 27, 2022

Ha ha, and you all thought we were done with Derby Dugan!

Art Dekko is back!

Good morning™, everyone!

Tom De Haven has not gone away, but he may be here only as a transition to the new story.

The Art Dekko case was featured in 1980. Dekko was selling stolen paintings to the Apparatus, but then he decided to cut out the middleman and tried selling one directly to Diet Smith who became suspicious. Johnny Adonis was introduced as the person in the department working full time on art theft.

Art’s look cracks me up… it’s like he’s wearing a helmet of a sort…

I remember Art Dekko. As a matter of fact he was my first Tracy villain; he was the villain when I began reading this comic in my local paper when I was 15. :) I don’t remember the story arc but I remembered his name when a few years later I took an art history class in college lol. And since we’re not through with Derby Dugan yet, maybe we will see more of Robert and the play.

I like the villain name if only because art deco is the best architectural style

pretty good-lookin’ art today by way of the skillful and talented Ms. Pleger… well done and thank you…

With Tom DeHaven providing a transition from the previous villain to the next (the return of an old “friend”), it appears we’ve reached the start of a new story. 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 4 cases of more than one villain with the same name (Chameleon, Mr. Crime, Shaky, the Ace of Spades) 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

Art Dekko was said to be inspired by Lupin III

It’s kinda odd that they just met yet Tom calls him Tracy.

Seems a little disrespectful.

So, Art Dekko is back, selling fake cells from a movie from the 1930s that was never made, a fact that could be easily ascertained by any potential buyer in nanoseconds of on line research. Not to mention another appearance of Tom DeHaven. Nothing against Tom DeHaven, but I thought in the world of Dick Tracy the “Derby Dugan” strip has been around for 80 or 90 years, which means if Tom DeHaven was the creator he’d be about 120 years old. If Mike wants to do meta stuff in the strip, that’s OK, but it takes skill to do meta well, & Mike needs to work on that skill, because bad meta can be awful.

Curtis Crossovers

At the request of Ray Toler, I’ve started taking notes on all the crossovers (x-overs) Curtis has written into the strip. I wasn’t taking notes of these when they first came out, so I had to start from scratch. I’m able to do this because I’ve taken on trying to read every single Dick Tracy story in the comic strip, alternating between reading Gould’s original strips (which I can read in my complete collection of IDW reprints), the post-Gould pre-GoComics period (which I can read in Newspapers.com) and the GC period. This is a WIP (Work In Progress) that will take a very long time for me to complete. In the meantime, I’ll post that WIP here on the same day I list GC stories, listing the year, then the titles of the stories in boldface and Ray and anyone else can use my GC list for cross reference.

IMHO, there are several different types of x-overs: characters from other comic strips, characters from other media outside comic strips (including characters that originate from Dick Tracy media outside the DT comic strip), real life celebrities appearing as themselves, and Written Around Trademarks (WAT) cameos from other strips and media. A WAT cameo is one where it’s never directly stated, so there’s room for plausible deniability, but it’s pretty obvious it’s this character.

Finally, I decided not to include characters based on real life celebrities but with different names, because I feel the changed names mean they’re not really x-overs. However, I will give honorable mention to the two most prominent such characters here, and the stories they debuted in: Jerry King (based on real life wrestler Jerry Lawler) who made his debut in the Thunderchild story, and George Tawara and his husband Brad (based on real life actor George Takei and his husband Brad) who made their debuts in the Sweat Box story.

My list is coming up in the reply.

Good morning™, fake memorabilia specialists !

Here comes Tom; stuck in old Tracyville again. ♪♫♪  ..And a good thing too. Gecko Dekko is already on the radar and just when he think’ he got a good thing going.

WOW ! Super great images today again , the top right one with the puppy and his our her friend is so cool , but who is the character in the last panel I wonder ? Great job by Shelley again : )

Without that Apparatus angle of the 1980 story, is a little bit of art forgery really “Major Crimes” territory? Or do they suspect something more serious?

I don’t want to be a mark, but I am deliriously happy about seeing Art Dekko again after 50 years.

I’m glad to see Art here, because I remember him from my childhood, but I do wonder who’d be silly enough to buy a cel from a cartoon that didn’t exist.

by the looks of the last panel curly and larry must be nearby

IS this a new story? Or yet another attempt to Scam Vitamin and Sam

judging by the last panel larry and curly should be showing up soon

Has Art Dekko teamed up with Silver Nitrate? Fake animation cells would be Nitrate’s specialty since he was involved in scams connected with classic films.

Are these forged animation cells being sold locally, as is Tom DeHaven? Otherwise would this case of forgery be a Federal crime? And, Tom, is your lawyer handy to sue these forgers for copyright infringement?

I see Superman in the final panel, partially obscured behind Art Dekko’s speech balloon.

Oh, no! It’s the return of the art thief, forger, and kidnapper Art Dekko! I wonder if his lady accomplice is with him. I loved the original story and I hope this one will be just as good!

“And next, I’ll undermine Tracy’s rep by using these crude fakes to create a bland series of cartoons in which a brainless talking mutt and other oddballs do the actual ‘police work’ and he shows up for a few seconds to pose for the papers. It’ll wreck his standing on the force. Now, pardon me while I indulge in a hearty Renfield chortle over my brilliant plan!”

Seriously, I recall how under-impressed I was with the UPA ‘toons. I expected to see Tracy carry the action, not juvenile comedic blundering by both the cops and the baddies. I still can’t manage to watch them.

No more Daisy Dergan stories, please.

Tom DeHaven wrote Derby Dugan trilogy in his bio but who was original creator of the character?

It looks like a Superman print on the wall in the room of Art Decco. I guess covered so there can be no trademark infringement.

WOW now here’s a blast from the past!

why does he have actual ‘eyes’?

Weird, Dekko crossed my mind just yesterday, haven’t seen a storyline about him since the late 70’s.

NO NO NO! NO MORE DE HAVEN FAN BOY MATERIAL!!! AND NO MORE DERBY DUGAN!!!

I appreciate the chronological layout regarding the characters and writers who were a part of them. Now I am inclined to believe what boboscar posted may have been a factor as to why the local newspaper in my home town only carries Dick Tracy from Monday to Saturday.

Is this storyline going to involve an art museum? It maybe up Peanut Butter’s alley. Maybe Art Dekko did not cut corners but someone he knows did. Why else would Tom De Haven be meeting with Tracy? What crime took place? Aha…theft of the author’s intellectual property.

1-DT: What brings you here, Tom De Haven? Sam’s imagined a lot about you since he talked to you for 10 seconds at Sugar Daddy’s theater.

TOM D: Yeah. And I used to imagine that you had to be kind a smart to be a cop. BOTH: HA HA HA!

2-TOM D: Look here, Tracy. Somebody is selling Alt Takes* of my Derby Dugan comics that make it appear as though the dog is afraid that Derby is going to, uh, can I say “BU-F…

DT: HELL NO YOU CAN’T! SAY “HAVING RELATIONS WITH HIM!”

3-DT: BUTT I see what you’re saying! I’ll start an investigation into this Derby Dugan pervert right away!

4-TOM D: It’s a comic, you dolt! And Derby Dugan is my best selling character! If this gets out and is accepted by my readers I could lose tens of dollars!

5- SCHMOE: GET THE DUGAN DERBY CLUB TOGETHER! I’VE GOT EVIDENCE OF PERVERSION THAT WILL BLOW THIS CLUB TO PIECES!

Alt Takes is a registered trademark of ANOTHER TAKE ENTERPRISES.

Good Lord – I see this character has returned from the beyond to haunt us readers who saw his first exploit in the color!!

Tom de Haven is the least stupid person in the strip. He met Detective Sam Catchem in person, and despite making that connection immediately decided, “Yeah, there is no way I am going to THAT moron with my problems.”

Looks like Ringo Starr merged with Mojo Jojo.

Can we expect Sue Real? Might as well drag up another rehash.

OOOOOOOOH I think this could be some fun on the horizon! We haven’t had film related forgeries since Silver and Sprocket?

I agree with Neil that this could be a very nice segue from one story to the next. I also whole heartedly agree with those who have been pleading, no more Derby Dugan/Tom DeHaven references. Mike, you’ve had your fun. Now please move on.

Looks like someone is pulling pages from Silver Nitrate’s playbook and making improvements.

I guess I can (barely) tolerate another dose of Tom DeHaven FanBoyism here if it is indeed merely a device to introduce Tracy to the cartoon-cell forgery racket and then DONE.

Elsewhere, only the last panel of this somewhat loggy Sunday strip is needed to introduce the garish presumed perp, another revived Old Villain, as I gather (the original Art Dekko series being from a period when I was not seeing Dick Tracy in the local paper where I was working). The story has the elements that could make it great fun, even if the thematic storyline kind of rips (or, if you prefer, riffs) off the Nitrates….

Art Dekko was one of my first tracy rogues gallery members..that was just around the time i started reading the strip…y’know, when it was actually GOOD!

If there was no actual cartoon, then are these even forgeries? Normally there’d need to be an original. Seems more like copyright infringement.

Did Mike take a day off ?  No Monday strip here.

Art Dekko.Boo.Hiss.Bring on the sexual harassment suits.