Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 17, 2011

Her hero!

Good morning all…

Bleached hair doesn’t wash out. If he wants to return to his natural color, he’ll need to get some hair dye.

Sorry, I’m just feeling very nostalgic for the old days, when every single installment of DT contained multiple errors. I know, I know, I’m grasping at straws.

After taking care of Tess, Tracy must trace Crutch and Ace’s caper up the food-chain. There are bigger hoods to be foiled. The battle against crime in the city is never-ending!

He’s gettin’ close!

I remember that story, from the Fletcher/Collins era. That arc had very intense storytelling, as I recall. Including a subplot concerning a crooked cop, and the death of Moon Maid, which closed any ties to the moon era.

Every day this strip is a joy to see and read.

Fake explosives?

So – how did Tracy manage that?

" I need to take Tess to the hospital." Really, Dick? You need to watch that left hand, too; shouldn’t be playing “grab-ass” right after a tense hostage situation. Tsk tsk.

I love this ‘flashback’ storyline – a great script and terrific art!Tracy is hands-down my favorite comic strip.

cool

Actually, it looks to me like his hand is on her hip.

Well “Big Boy” will face one Judge in which justice will be given.

His hand is on the side of the leg.

Is Tess’s father alive?

Boy, is Tess in for a shock. Just as in the original story, the thugs told her that her father was still alive.

Does anyone know how the strip is doing since the new team took over? The info page notes that Tracy has 30,507 subscribers but I’m guessing that’s readers through this site and doesn’t count newspapers in any way. I’d like to think that some papers might pick it up but of course that medium is struggling these days.

The long arm of the law strikes again.

New,.Re your question below:.“Did Dick ever put Big Boy behind bars?”.Yes, but it took awhile. In fact, for the first two years or so of the strip, the Big Boy was the most frequently recurring villain, popping up in three daily stories, and three or four Sunday stories (during the time that the Sundays and dailies ran separately). Indeed, during the first two years of the strip’s run, even in those stories in which he wasn’t a featured character, even in those stories taking place after the Big Boy was finally sent up the river, the Big Boy seemed to be the “gray eminence” behind every bit of criminal activity Tracy encountered..Right after the bank robbery, the story continues with Big Boy’s jailed henchmen getting out on bail almost immediately. The Big Boy tries to set up Tracy for a hit, but it fails (and, in the original story, this is where Crutch gets it). .Big Boy then skips town (perhaps to the corrupt suburb of “Homeville,” the analog for Cicero, IL, in Tracyland), leaving his mistress, Texie Garcia (modeled on real-life bootlegger and entertainer Texas Guinan, but resembling movie star Dolores Del Rio) holding the bag. With Big Boy out-of-town, Tracy spends the rest of his first case nailing a crooked lawyer and a corrupt politician in Big Boy’s employ..A few stories later, Tracy takes on “The Buddy Waldorf Kidnapping,” a story running almost concurrently with the real-life Lindbergh kidnapping, and finds that the Big Boy is behind it (in real-life, there were some who thought Capone really was behind the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.).. Finally sending the Big Boy to prison, he deals with him for a few more Sunday stories, as he makes unsuccessful jailbreak attempts, before the Sundays and dailies are fully integrated..For the next few months, Tracy starts to take apart Big Boy’s Outfit root and branch, nailing such Big Boy underlings as Dan Mucelli, who deals dope in Big Boy’s town, and Larceny Lu, who runs a stolen car ring and chop shop. .Finally, finding Tracy too hard to kill, the Outfit bring in an out-of-towner, Stooge Viller, to frame Tracy for corruption, but that also proves unsuccessful..A few months after that, Tracy takes on a protection racket, which turns out to be run by crooked politician “Boss Jim” Herrod, to all outward appearances the image of integrity and a champion of “good government,” but actually the Big Boy’s secret second-in-command, and the man in charge of the Outfit while Big Boy’s in the slam..Tracy kills Herrod in a shootout right in City Hall, but this makes Big Boy is so enraged that he finally manages a successful crashout from Federal stir..It’s several months before Tracy, with the help of a rookie crime reporter named Jean Penfield, finally send the Big Boy back to prison, this time for the remainder of his sentence..20 years later (actually 45 or so in actual time passed), a dying Big Boy has been released from prison, and decides that before he passes on to his eternal reward, he wants to see Tracy precede him into the sweet by-and-by. So he puts out a million dollar open contract. That’s the Collins-scripted story you recall.

Flattop and his brother Blowtop have already had their cameo

Outstanding

Tracy has the palm of his hand on Tess’s waist (you can see some of her belt, or hem line, to the right). His fingers are on her left thigh.

The look on Tess’ face in the last panel is priceless. I wish I had a woman that felt that way about me – but then, I never had to rescue a damsel in distress. Oh, well.

I hope this flashback goes on for some time. To get enough material for a trade paperback or an over sized comic book!