Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 28, 2015

NOTE TO COLORIST:

The Coat Is Red.

“Blisterfield” billboard …?

Cigarette advertising used to be everywhere

.Good morning guys!.Is the coloring a computerized process untouched by human hands?

Apparently this is a billboard that blows real smoke. I know I’ve seen one like that somewhere before. This one is advertising what seems to be Tracy’s version of Chesterfield Cigarettes.

Tracy is British?I did not know that!;>D

… and I’m assuming that Boss Tracy’s hat is also red so that it matches the coat.

Here’s a short home movie of a smoking billboard from 1964: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kls7DSyPalg

Thought this would be a compendium of cigarette ads.____________________

You mean like these …?

Gweedo remarked,Well helllloooo, pretty Boy Bill !-————————————————————-.I aged 55 years overnight!

Or maybe I’m thinking of a billboard with a giant coffee pot that was pouring coffee …?

Maybe on “The Lucy Show” …?

“Murder is my business” – Dick Tracy

I think he copied that from another gumshoe of pulp novel fame.

“Kook” was a parody of a cigarette brand which used to sponsor television shows like this one …

It is now clear that Ken in Ohio and Neil Wick were correct yesterday in their responses to my post. It is Tracy (in the RED COAT!) up on the supporting structure for that big “Blisterfield” (not to be confused with Chesterfield) billboard. And therefore not Tracy in the middle of yesterday’s panel 3. Since I don’t know what the Midnite Mirror script calls for, I won’t try to guess what Tracy is doing in the RED TRENCHCOAT AND FEDORA [see Comics Kingdom, which gets it right] up there….

Red really isn’t Tracy’s color …

“Murder is My Business” – There’s a line that is so Film Noir it’s perfect! Good one,Mike!

If the red fedora takes a bullet, it’s gonna look very out of place on Tracy’s Wall of Hats.

Compare and Contrast …

If “The Hangman” really wanted to wreak havoc, he’d spike that billboard smoke with something more fast-acting than nicotine.

Of course, this means that Boss Tracy’s coat (and hat?) probably should have been red in the Halloween strip as well.

In other news …

Maybe this was the coffee pot I was thinking about …?

Speaking of director Raoul Walsh …

Could Midnight Mirror’s ending be an homage to James Cagney in “White Heat” …?

I never smoked, and neither did my parents, except that my Mom quit before I was born. So I know this is a biased comment, but:How in the world did those billboards ever entice anyone to start smoking? There, right in front of them, they had a giant representation of just how ridiculous a person looks when they are blowing clouds of smoke out of their mouth! You would think people would have “stayed away in droves” when they saw that, thinking “Ech – I sure don’t want to look like that”. I know smoking was promoted as having sex appeal; I just don’t see how that is supposed to be sexy.

“Blisterfield” for “Chesterfield” is a very nice, Gouldian touch!

I’m late commenting, but in my experience as a colorist, that note on the first panel is not how the penciller, inker or editor would leave notes for the colorist. No idea what it’s supposed to mean, and if someone else came up with a good answer, missed it because I didn’t read all 40 of the previous comments .

The coat is red on “Comic Kingdom”. Go to: http://www.oregonlive.com/comics-kingdom/?feature_id=Dick_Tracy

The smoking billboard also appears in the movie “The Shadow”. And if you will indulge a little shameless self-promotion, here is my shout-out to it: — http://www.kurtoonsonline.com/?webcomic1=chapter-23-a-wild-ride

“A cigarette, Sweet Music and you….” “Yes it’s Blisterfield Time…”

Chesterfield used to sponsor the “Dragnet” radio show. They had commercials about how their tame researcher had studied Chesterfield smokers and “found no damage to the mouth, nose or throat.”

SMOKING BILLBOARDS in Dick Tracy today . . .

Last night, a Big Police “Shoot-Out” near a recent the Home of the Dick Tracy Fan Club in Colorado Springs. And one Officer died. Several were injured. Gunman in custody.

It was in that City, that the ‘late’ Andy Fieghery had the Official Dick Tracy Fan Club, and also produced his Dick Tracy Magazine (SPEC Productions) to cover all of Chester Gould’s work on the stripAnd died suddenly about 2 years ago . . .

I used to have a tee shirt that said, “Let’s make a deal; you don’t smoke around me and I won’t f@rt around you.” My wife threw it out, dammit!

Although it’s not animated, I do remember one, rather evil, smoking billboard from an E.C. Comic. One of the characters was lobstered by a billboard that blew scalding hot smoke rings.

Such real billboards reminds me of the famous “Leave It To Beaver” episode with the steaming cup of coffee billboard.-————————————————————————————That’s what it was in!

Such real billboards reminds me of the famous “Leave It To Beaver” episode with the steaming cup of coffee billboard.

That’s it! That is the episode that I’m associating with Lucy, but somehow mixing up my memories with Leave it to Beaver.

In the 1949 Marx Brothers film Love Happy, there is a chase across the rooftops featuring Harpo. Harpo interacts with several billboards including the smoke blowing one. This film was also the debut of Marilyn Monroe.

Harpo on the Kool Cigarette sign

Good day to everyone.-—————--—————-Have a great weekend my friends.

Re: “Murder is My Business” – Sgt. Jim Doherty, the strip’s technical adviser and a writer in his own right, wrote a short story about Tracy entitled “Murder is My HOBBY”. It was available to read on the PLAINCLOTHES website before Curtis & Staton got the job producing “Dick Tracy”.

Makes you wanna run out and buy a pack of “Blisterfields”Big Tobacco…Murder is our Business..

Well, I don’t think there can be any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. These sorts of things have cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error.

<p.-———————————

_“The shoot out was at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Christian terrorism at work.”_-———————————

They haven’t announced the motive yet . . .But oddly, the Policeman that DIED, did so “defending” - the right of others, to do something HE didn’t personally believe in !

Such real billboards reminds me of the famous “Leave It To Beaver” episode with the steaming cup of coffee billboard.____________________

That rings a bell, too.

But I need pictures! Pictures of Spider — Uh — Of that billboard!!

Also, a little digging confirms that the infamous “Leave It To Beaver” billboard was actually advertising soup …

“Christian terrorism at work.”That is an over the top and unproven allegation. The shooter is apparently a loner, who also acted alone in this case. Though he’s listed as a member of a local church, the reports from people who know him say he rarely speaks about religion or his personal beliefs. He’s also known for prattling incoherently, and for inspiring fear in his neighbors, who suspected he physically abused his dog and reported him for it. I’m no expert, but based on the preliminary reports I’ve read, he sounds like a violent, mentally disturbed loner. Especially given the lack of evidence that the man was driven by religious zeal, your accusation that he perpetrated an act of “Christian terrorism” is extremely offensive, and I hope you will apologize for it.

Here are the images of the smoking billboard from that article on the Martin & Lewis comedy “Artists & Models” …

Memory’s a funny thing, in that all of the different billboard references we’ve uncovered are jumbled up in my mind.

Speaking of “jumbled” …

Wasn’t there also a billboard gag where someone was pasting up the strips of wallpaper-like material which an image was printed on, only they were pasting them up in the wrong order?

Maybe that was the “Lucy Show” bit?

It was this episode!!

I like this one:This is an animated scale model by Miller Engineering.http://www.microstru.com/Billboards.html

Maybe it’s just me …

… but that bag of peanuts looks like it’s come down with a case of – to phrase it indelicately – “Montezuma’s Revenge."

Today has definitely been billboard day …

If anyone in Tracyville gets hurt, here’s the number to call …

One tends to get the ‘message’ that the current mystery isn’t really on readers minds, when an inadvertently appearing Smoking Billboard can be the ‘mainstay’, in “Clocking Up” a HUNDRED Plus posts, after a relatively ‘shallow’, earlier week - experience ! ?

What a treat! The small packets of cigarettes that were in the “C” and “K” ration boxes. I would trade my “pan coated chocolate disks” (M&Ms) for a packet of smokes!

Agreed.

I’d always found Mr. Mooney surprisingly sympathetic.

Meanwhile …

… are billboards effective sales tools?

Sydney was born in Warrensburg, Missouri. I was born in Independence, Missouri about 45 miles away. Sydney’s father, Doc Toler, raised racehorses. Eventually their branch of the family moved to Independence, Kansas where Sydney built a large theatre (now demolished) called the Toler Opera House. My family came to the new world in 1609 during the Jamestown colony. I have written a book about my family: Toler Book

In the late 80s or very early 90s, I was in Times Square and saw a “Blisterfield”-style smoking billboard, advertising a movie called “Smoking Gunn II.” Turns out the billboard was part of a movie set, and “Gunn” was a fictional film-within-a-film, “The Hard Way,” starring Michael J. Fox and James Woods. Fox played an action-movie star (the “Gunn” movies were his franchise) who was shadowing a real-life cop played by Woods to research a role. Fox’s character annoys Woods’s, but of course eventually helps him catch a real-world killer. (The climactic scene — shades of North by Northwest — took place on the smoking Gunn-head billboard.)

The setup strikes me as much like the blurring of drama and “reality,” actors and lawmen, we’re seeing in this Tracy arc.

Did guys smoke at the hospital waiting for their kid to be born ?

Well, I’ve heard that there was a tradition (I wonder if there still is) of passing out cigars when a baby was born.

I just found this page about passing out cigars. Among other things, it says, “Some of our veteran smokers out there will tell you — with a wistful smile on their face — about the days when you could smoke inside… even inside the waiting room of a hospital! But the tradition goes even further back…”