Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 19, 2023

Familiar face. More than a trace of Hitman’s Hall of Fame

Just look at that: A top so flat. Well known his fitting name.

Wolfe grows tired. Soon expired? Know a Cop costs more

Do a hit then live with it. Don’t ruminate on gore.

He’ll take a fall and that is all. Won’t chew that cabbage twice

His heart shall cease. Zeck shall know peace all for a hefty price.

Good morning™, everyone!

Hitman Flattop. Isn’t he more into bank robberies? Who’s the guy with the straw in the pop bottle?

I’m confused. Yesterday Zeck was face-to-face with Flattop, discussing Wolfe.

And there he is in the full colored, flatheaded flesh… Flattop himself! Shelly’s artwork is fantastic as usual and she does the puckered hitman well. I love the shadowing in todays strip. The hunters have indeed become the hunted. The deadly game of cat and mouse has begun.

the first indirect encounter between Top and Dick?

Good morning™, sinister throwaway panels !

The angle and the shadow on Flattop’s face make him look like a whole different character. It took me some fair bit of scrutiny to realize it is a different view of the same guy. Team Tracy did Great on this one. :-)

When Gould was drawing the strip in 1944, did Nero Wolfe even factor into the plot to kill Tracy?

Methinks some artistic license is being taken or Tracy’s doing a whole lot of embellishment. Sam’s probably in awe and wonder.

Does Mr. Zeck have referrals which resulted in securing Flattop’s services? Somehow, I don’t see him looking in the yellow pages of a telephone book under exterminator.

For the past week I’ve been in serious error. I’d been declaring that we were crossing/had crossed a threshold, that the strip was about to have spent more time without its original creator Chester Gould than it did with him. I was basing this on the 46 year difference between 1931 (when Gould created the strip) and 1977 (when he retired) and comparing that to the 46 year difference between 1977 and this year. But as CRAFTYBRUIN pointed out yesterday, it actually won’t be until March, 2024 that we’ll have reached that threshold. Ah, well, something to look forward to next year, I guess.

Is Mike retroconning the strip here, rewriting Tracy’s history so that it’s Zeck hiring Flattop to whack Dick Tracy instead of the WWII black marketeers in the original version? Stay tuned….

the shadowing on Flattop’s face in the very first panel gives the look and impression that he’s sporting a beard…

while the next panel with Zeck make it look as if he has an ink blotch on his left eye…

Yesterday I was so excited about seeing Shelley Pleger’s rendition of Flattop, and she has met and surpassed my expectations. This is a superbly drawn strip depicting Flattop in all his glory.

Despite being Tracy’s most famous adversary, this will only be Flattop’s 5th story in this strip as a major villain. He debuted in Christmas, 1943, in a story that stretched into the early months of ‘44, ending in his capture. He soon after broke out for his second story only to end up definitively killed off, with his body found, recovered, identified, and buried. His third story came in ’85, a flashback involving a rare explosive called Xylon, that was revealed to be Tracy’s “first” encounter with 4 of his greatest adversaries (the others were Shaky and Mr. & Mrs. Pruneface). His 4th story came in ‘92, when his ghost possessed the body of his honest brother Sharptop and went on a crime spree, until Tracy tricked Flattop’s ghost into thinking his brother was dying (actually just suffering the normal aches and pains of middle age, something Flattop died too young to ever experience) causing Flattop’s ghost to flee his brother’s body. Not counting a brief cameo in the 2011 retelling of Tracy’s first case, this is the first story with Flattop as a major villain in over 30 years.

‘Woody Nikols’… LOL… WAS there ever a character in the strip by that name?…

Great artwork from Shelley there! And the guy with the Glasses Is Ed with a bit more hair obviously younger

I thought we were going to see Flattop vs Fatbottom !!!

Is Mike retconning the first interaction between Dick Tracy and Flattop?

This is confusing af.

Hit him all you want. He’ll just hit you back harder.

And yesterday, ladies and germs, is the exact moment that this dreary, unbelievably boring, aimlessly wandering, plodding story went totally and completely off the rails.

There was the slightest of slight chances that Mike might have been able to make this albatross work, with just a little more information as to the whole point behind..not only the use of, but the “self isolation” of wolfe… but instead…as usual…his seemingly overwhelming lack of confidence in being able to pull of a well thought out, plotted, and executed story leads him yet AGAIN to meaningless “crossovers” which simply defy logic.

Are absolutely 100 percent positive that Mike is a “professional writer”? Because he always seems to back himself into a corner that he cant get himself out of, then everything just goes off in random directions with no sense of purpose until the deux ex machina comes along and “fixes everything”

Woody Nikols did not pass go, does not collect $200…

Shelleys images today are just " fantastic " : )

He will not be Hit. We are talking Dick Tracy here.

Is this a flashback within the flashback? Wasn’t Flattop just dining with Zeck yesterday?

Excellent .

I still hoping for that murderous college boy hitman Frattop to make an appearance!

Finally we get some action…Chester Gould used to put Tracy through a lot of terrible hoops!

I like in this strip whenever someone needs a hitman, they always just call them up on the phone.

Didn’t anyone tell Dick Tracy not to take any wooden nickels :)

1-ZECKERBURG: Hello, Flattop? I bet you’ve been on pins and needles since I hinted at a possible “Second Job” a couple of hours ago.

2-FLATTOP: Who is this? ZECKERBURG: IT’S ZECKERBURG YOU IDIOT!

3-…I want you to kill, murder, do the “extreme prejudice” thing on Dick Tracy!!! I could’ve told you that a couple hours ago but I wanted you to wonder about it.

4-FLATTOP: Zeckerburg you say…oh yeah. Now I remember. You’re the guy with the stingy pours with your booze.

5-ZECKERBURG: OH FOR…WILL YOU DO IT OR NOT??? FLATTOP: I need to know “why” you want this guy killed. It has to be something serious. I won’t do it just because he made you feel bad about something.

ZECKERBURG: Really? Oh. Well…uh… HE CALLED YO MAMA A FAT HO!

FLATTOP: WHAT?!?! WHERE DO YOU WANT THIS KILLING DONE??? ZECKERBURG: Do it on Highway 61

Soda Popinski before he was a boxer?

Tracy is going to be hit? Are we talking a left jab or a right hook?

Isn’t he supposed to be dead? This deserves an explanation!

And, hey, he’s a central baddie, so who wouldn’t want to play with him.

Confusing time changes aside, this Sunday installment is a showcase for Shelley’s version of Flattop Jones, and in that respect it is a great success. The tight focus on the conversing principals, Zeck toying with the beloved black orchids and Flattop, along with his silent, Green River-swilling flunky, playing the cold, pro hitter to perfection, is visual mood-music, a suitably film noir-ish setting for a story clearly implied to have taken place in the early 1940s….

Okay, I’m confused. Did I miss the announcement that we were going back in time, to BEFORE Flattop was killed? Who messed with the space-time continuum?

Don’t take any Woody Nikols,for those who don’t get the joke

Aahhhh,who invited HIM??

When does he say “help,I’m drowning!”

Way cool inclusion of of classic Tracy villain Flattop! Great job, again, Mike C. !!!