Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 09, 2011

This could get very interesting. Very ineteresting! I am repeating myself. Repeating myself!

Ponytail… another cameo from the past, perhaps?

Doubleup already annoys me….I want to see him DIE….

Could it be that Doubleup is an evil cartoonist? Evil cartoonist? Or boss of a cartoon syndicate that holds the rights to the Scarlet Sting? Scarlet Sting?

It looks like the Scarlet Sting is skipping rope on that cover.

Oh, and Good Evening All!

Doubleup has a Dagwood, Dagwood hairstyle.

Hmmm—- Maybe if the producers of the movie can get their hands on a silver cross, that might work. Hold it up before Doubleup to drive him back. It works for vampires, and Doubleup’s hairdo sure looks devilish— get a load of the horns.

JonahHex wants to see Doubleup die—-I’m getting annoyed enough I want to kill Doubleup myself. I just wonder if they’d prosecute me, or give me a medal for it.

Aw, I remember Ponytail when she was just a cute teenager. http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2009/08/ponytail-by-lee-holley-superbly-drawn.html

And when all that Doubleup wanted out of life was a sandwich. A sandwich.

What an interesting room. It appears to contain (among other things) a sofa, an easy chair, a filing cabinet and a big disco ball. Doubleup has quite an eclectic style.

Ponytail looks to me like Lindsey Lohan.

Double up, seems like the mob boss in town. Surprised Tracy hasn’t ran into him before. Maybe they have file on him.

Doubleup looks like an out of shape Quick Silver.

Proffered Explanation for Haku Kou’s Name Message List Reply Message #12668 of 12673 < Prev | Next >

Syd (or some other member of GoComics),

Today Bill Thompson wondered whence the name “Haku Kou” derived. I’dappreciated your posting the following on the comments page:

Re Bill’s Thompson’s question about how Tracy’s Hawai’ian colleague got hisname, I used him as a character in a prose TRACY story, “Murder Is My Hobby,”that I wrote for Mike and Joe’s PLAINCLOTHES site, the site that got them theofficial TRACY gig, and the site where their first two stories initiallyappeared.

Since the word “haku” has several different, Tracy wonders, in the story, aboutthe derivation of Kou’s nickname. Here’s what I wrote. Keep in mind that, atleast for now, it’s not Canon, though I tried very hard not to violate Canon:

Like many people born and raised on the Island State, Hugo “Haku” Kou was anamalgam of perhaps a dozen or more ethnic strains. He was more NativeHawai’ian than anything else, but with generous dollops of Chinese, Japanese,Portuguese, Irish, and light dustings of Filipino, Korean, French, andScandinavian, among several others.

It was unclear to Tracy exactly how Haku had gotten his Hawai’ian nickname. Partly, of course, it was because “Haku” was phonetically similar to“Huko,” the Hawaiian version of “Hugo.” But because the Hawai’ianword “haku” has several different meanings, there were a number of differentexplanations for how this particular phonetically similar word had come to beapplied to Kou, none of which Kou’d ever confirmed.He was a very tall, muscular man, six feet six in his bare feet, which gave hima particularly aristocratic bearing, and there were rumors that some of Kou’sNative Hawai’ian blood was royal. One meaning of “haku” is “lord,”and one explanation for Kou’s nickname was that he’d been dubbed “Haku”because of his lordly appearance and his possible lordly ancestors.

Another story was that Kou had boxed during his stint in the Navy, and thathe’d been a wide-open slugger rather than a finesse strategist. Supposedly,some of Kou’s military buddies had dubbed him “Rocky,” after the real-lifeheavyweight champ, Rocky Marciano, and the fictional counterpart made famous inthe Sylvester Stallone movies, whose boxing styles Kou had emulated. “Pohaku,” sometimes shortened to “haku,” being the Hawai’ian word for“stone,” Kou’s military nickname, according to this version, had simplybeen translated once he was back in civilian life. Tracy was inclined toseriously doubt this account, since the Hawai’ian translation of the propername “Rocky,” as distinct from the hard collection of minerals “rock,”is “Loluki.”

Yet a third explanation was that Kou had worked his way through college as amusician, playing the ukulele and performing his own songs in clubs,restaurants, and luaus. The phrase “haku mele” means “poet,”“songwriter,” or “composer,” and, supposedly, Kou’d gotten thenickname during his short career in show business.

But the version Tracy leaned toward was that it was a nickname he’d acquiredearly in his career in the Honolulu Police, when he’d been the department’stop undercover agent. “Haku’apa” is a phrase that means “fabricator,”“deceiver,” or “liar.” Generally it is regarded as an uncomplimentarydescription, but in this case, according to the story, it was applied to Kou inrecognition of his gift for developing convincing identities that easilydeceived the criminals he brought down from the inside during his deep coverassignments. Kou had been on just such an assignment years earlier, anassignment that had brought him to the Mainland, and to Tracy’s city, when hispath and Tracy’s first crossed.

Not the definitive answer, perhaps, but it was fun coming up with possibleexplanations.

JIM DOHERTY

You don’t have to be in great shape to use a whip.

I wonder if Doubleup is the creator of the Scarlet Sting character and feels he deserves to be paid for the use of his character?

In an earlier time, Doubleup might be named Stuck Needle.

These story lines are moving along like a dog-fight now! In the old days, we’d only been 1/3 through the laser story.

Good afternoon all…

Great strip.

Mike Curtis – Just finished rereading “DERBY DUGAN’S DEPRESSION FUNNIES” and found it to be even better than I remembered. I first read it in 1996 and had forgotten some of the details. Tom DeHaven really captured the time and what I feel the comic strip industry was like back then. Thanks for reminding me of this great book.

Wikipedia to the rescue, once again. List of city name changes

Wasn’t there once a strip called “Ponytail?” called “Ponytail?”

Doubleup reminds me of the character from Goodfellas, Jimmy Two-Times, who said everything twice:“I gotta get the papers, get the papers.”