Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 02, 2016

“Mr. Specs, my people are developing eyeglasses to help with your headaches, without Xray vision, of course!”“Really, thanks but why?”“Because Mr. Specs, I just found out that you are my son!”Specs, overwhelmed with emotion after a lifetime of loneliness begins to weep uncontrollably“Wah, Daddy!”Putin, disgusted with this turn of events stands up and begins to mock Specs.Grow up you imbecile. If we were going back to Mother Russia you would have been shot hours ago. Tracy snickered, “calm down Ivan. Here, have a Snickers!”“Candy, Bah! Give me a shot of Vodka!”“Oh, by the way Smith, here’s your stupid Xray glasses. Somebody had to secure them!”Suddenly the plane seemed to drop below them!BOOM!“What was that!”Tracy looked towards the cockpit and quickly realized an unescapable fact;“The cockpits gone!”“What happened?”Putin strapped himself in his seat and braced for impact“Ahhh, We’re all going to die!”Tracy rolled his eyes and blurted out; “Come on Specs, grow a pair and face this like a man!”Putin couldn’t help but smile; “Comrade Tracy, that’s not Specs crying like a baby, it’s Smith!”“THIS IS IT!”

.

Think this has a chance of being the next weeks story? Nah!

Diet is pretty nice to people who steal from him. It would be cruel to do otherwise, concerning the relief the glasses brought to Specs.

I hope the DT team will clear take care of loose ends at the start of the story.

State of the Dick Tracy World

I’m finally ready to start what I hope will be a weekly report on what we are in the current story. As of today, we are more or less at the end of the Three Detectives/X-Ray Specs story. We are promised a short wedding sequence next but it has already been woven into the current story, so I’m going to consider it part of this story. I’ll give an overall impression of the storyline after we get through the wedding, but I think all the characters are now in place, so I’ll mention the character list now.

Since this storyline began, 82 characters have been referenced in some way (even including Al Capone and Steve Martin). We are on day 101, so that’s almost a character a day. I won’t mention my rules for what is a character. That will be available on my web site when I get it written out. Although it might be an excessive characters for this number of days, I’m not sure that it is. I think the problem might be that the characters don’t get many chances to do anything without the reader having to accommodate yet another new character who is appearing for the first time in this storyline. More about that in a future update.

Based on the number of days they had something to say, and the number of days they were referenced, the main characters in this story have been Specs and Spicy on the “bad guys” side and Tracy, Wunbrow, and Ivanov on the “good guys” side. This comes as no big surprise, though we might have wondered at times if this story was about Kiko, DJ, Diet Smith, or even the Ace of Spades. Here is the complete cast of characters referenced, with the number of days they had something to say and the number of days they were referenced in some way but didn’t have dialog:

40/60 Dick Tracy32/46 X-Ray Specs19/36 Spicy Condiment15/37 Porfiry Ivanov15/36 Francisco Wunbrow10/15 Kiko9/12 Diet Smith8/9 Mendoza6/12 DJ (Dishonest John)5/7 Pat Patton4/6 Ace of Spades4/6 Sam Catchem4/6 John L. Springstein4/4 Mr. Bribery4/4 Double E. (Ernie)4/4 Notta Fallar3/4 Bronson Canyon3/4 Blaze Rize3/3 Unnamed migraine researcher3/3 Cole3/3 Jerry King3/3 Toad2/3 Esteban2/2 Unnamed Apparatus member 32/2 Queen of Spades (Queenie)2/2 Dethany Dendrobia2/2 Boss of Porfiry Ivanov2/2 Ygor Glitch2/2 Alberto2/2 Sr. Zapato2/2 Unnamed safecracker2/2 Louis (Mole)2/2 Sr. Melendez1/3 Lizz1/2 Unnamed Apparatus member 21/2 Bea Thorndike1/2 Bogart the Roach1/1 Unnamed customs agent1/1 Jim Trailer1/1 Unnamed Apparatus member 11/1 Bonnie Tracy1/1 Ms. Steffihawk1/1 Norton1/1 Ralphie1/1 Unnamed man at recording studio1/1 B.O. Plenty1/1 Justin1/1 Unnamed shell game operator1/1 Junior Tracy1/1 Honeymoon Tracy1/1 Vista Bill (VB)1/1 Blowhard (VB)1/1 Unnamed Cuban gang member1/1 Unnamed casino waiter1/1 Unnamed casino tourist1/1 Rose (Toad’s mom)

Characters who appeared or were mentioned but didn’t have dialog:0/2 Purdy Fallar0/1 Comet (VB)0/4 Little Gorilla0/3 Ferdinand0/2 Chicory0/2 The Dropper0/1 Nero Wolfe0/1 Wendy Wichel0/1 Mayor Armstrong0/1 B-B Eyes0/1 Jacques0/1 Debby Thorndike0/1 Holbrook0/1 Abner Kadaver0/1 Rikki Mortis0/1 Grandmother of X-Ray Specs0/1 Xavier Ramon Esterar (grandfather)0/1 Matty Squared0/1 Flattop0/1 Moon Maid (Mysta Tracy)0/1 Mysta Chimera0/1 George Chin Chillar0/1 Lupita (VB)0/1 Senator Brown (VB)0/1 Al Capone0/1 Steve Martin

What do you know, an Honest Russian Cop.

I hope that someone here with the expertise and resources to find and reproduce strips can help me figure out exactly what happened the day Spicy drove a very reluctant Specs to Diet Smith’s factory to see if they could do something to help alleviate his terrible migraines.

We know now that Diet Smith Industries was secretly attempting to develop both X-Ray specs and anti-migraine specs (surely quite separate projects?) around this time and that a/the best/the only experimental pair of X-Ray specs had been mixed up with the experimental anti-migraine specs by an Apparatus spy working at Diet’s.

We (and the Apparatus!) by now also know that the specs Specs stole because they instantly fixed his migraines only also work as X-Ray specs for Mr Specs and for no-one else… or he and Spicy would very quickly have found themselves dead fish dead!

My questions are (A) how did Diet Smith Industries know that that particular experimental pair of specs had any X-Ray properties whatsoever without Specs’ co-operation after he’d stolen them and (B) how come specs designed to X-Ray solid matter also happen to suppress Specs’ migraines so effectively?

This is All Okay, after all its the funny pages

.Good morning guys!.Wow! That’s quite a big undertaking, Neil!

Just as I thought! Ivanov isn’t a smuggler after all. I’m glad he didn’t wreck his integrity.

Thanks for not portraying the Russian as a bad guy.

do you have a life????

Haha, that’s a good question sometimes. I try to update my database every day, which doesn’t take much time, but I recently got way behind and had to catch up. It’s been my main hobby lately, when I have time for it. It’s rather fascinating to me to observe some of the patterns these stories produce.

Why should airport security care about x-ray glasses?

How did Specs steal that which was given to him?________________________________________________

They were for testing purposes. He was not supposed to walk out of there with them. They might have made some customised glasses for him later, just as Diet Smith is offering him now.

You didn’t include your web site address.

There isn’t really anything on it yet. I’ll let you know when there is. Right now everything is either on my computer or in my mind. I have a few story diagrams on paper, too.

What Neil does must be a skill that someone would pay well for in a work place.

I wish I could find such a workplace. Actually, this is going to be part of my skills portfolio, so it does have some serious purpose, besides being fun.

Might Diet’s deed lead to a similar turn by Specs?

You never know. Specs does seem like a reformable guy. He was feeling quite guilty and remorseful about his role as an accessory to attempted murder. He does seem like the sort who could go straight.

Specs is actually an example of a well-rounded character and Mike is to be commended for making him and complex as he did. Yes, he has participated in criminal activities and probably needs to be punished, but he does also have good qualities and he’s easy to empathize with. He is almost just a victim of circumstance, though not entirely without blame.

Moments of satisfaction: as I had felt certain, Ivanov did indeed have the specs. And as I was sure (and said as much here), he did have them hidden in his sling.On the other hand, what I just as assuredly did not expect is that he would pull them out on the plane and apparently offer them back to Diet Smith. I say “apparently” because they are still in his hands, he did not explicitly say he was actually returning them, and there is thus still the possibility of another plot swerve in which Porfiry keeps the specs to take back to Russia after taunting Smith by openly showing them (e.g., a hijacking of Smith’s jet). But it probably is more appropriate for Ivanov to remain a “good guy,” and to gloss over his taking and hiding the specs in the first place (maybe he feared the Cubans would seize them?)….

So is the never-confirmed-as-dead Jimmy Choo Shooz going to crash the wedding?

It’s The Legend of Zorro, which came out in 2005. The critics didn’t like it much but it was a pretty good box office success. It grossed $147 million, compared to $250 million for the original.