Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 03, 2016

She remembers, all the namesShe remembers, all the painShe remembers, the lonelinessShe remembers, not being missedShe remembers, the rage withinShe remembers, the guilt of sinShe remembers, making the vowShe remembers, hating to bowShe remembers, it takes just a callShe remembers, it’s easy to fallShe remembers, who is her friendShe remembers, how this should endShe remembers, to always stay coolShe remembers, that Notta’s the fool

Ouch!

Burn on Blaze.

How much more of Notta’s abuse is Blaze going to take? She needs to stand up for herself.

Aw. I should have guessed that Team Tracy would never let this get easy.

Poor Blaze! You have to feel sorry for her.

Notta doesn’t seem all that well-informed. (She mostly only cares about herself, anyway.) T-Bolt was certainly taken into custody, but made bail right away. Tracy suggested (in the quote I posted yesterday) that Doubleup was likely to make bail quickly, too, so I really wonder if he’s still in jail, as Notta says.

Incidentally, I still think Blaze will ultimately take the fall for Notta before all’s said and done.

Also, I’m still lobbying for a “Virtual Kitty” program to keep Matty Squared company.

We’ve been talking for weeks about how Notta is dominating and abusing Blaze, and we see more evidence of it today. What’s ironic about all that is that in Notta’s original story, she was the one who was dominated and abused by Piggy Butcher.Piggy took Notta prisoner and made her his personal slave, forcing her to wait on him hand and foot, often at gunpoint. There were many scenes of Notta bringing food and drinks to Piggy, just as we’ve seen Blaze do for Notta. Piggy would flirt with Notta, speak tenderly to her, and invite her to his bedroom, then turn around and bark orders at her and demand that she sleep with the animals. He spoke affectionately about the “little housemother” to his men and called on them to treat her kindly, and then guffawed as they forcibly shaved and ridiculed her. Piggy’s transistor radio, which provided a window to his perverted soul, summed up the gangster’s attitude toward Notta: “Love me while I hate you.”Just as we tend to root for Blaze whenever we see how Notta is treating her, seeing Piggy abuse Notta made the readers want to root for her. Granted she had done some very bad things (just as Blaze has), but even so, how could fans not feel sorry for a curvaceous, mostly-naked blonde being physically and psychologically manhandled by a gang of cruel and violent men? Notta was often shown weeping after suffering ill treatment from her captors, which had an emotionally moving effect on the readers. The affectionate nicknames by which she was addressed — doll, baby, love, housemother — also softened the reader’s attitude toward her. Notta’s sexy costume and curves made her a believable seductress, and this further deepened the emotional connection with the fans — a reminder that Piggy was only a surrogate, and that Gould was primarily interested in his readers becoming preoccupied with Notta. It’s no wonder she became so popular.All that said, the relationship between Piggy and Notta was complex, and ultimately not so one-sided after all. Just as she did with Blaze, Notta used sex to get the upper hand on Piggy. Indeed, she was often the sexual aggressor in the relationship, using her feminine charms and her eye-popping dominatrix costume to gain his favor and make him obsess over her. He “promoted” Notta to “housemother,” a clever way of transforming her primary identity from George’s wife to his personal courtesan and fantasy woman. He was shown reading violent pornography, followed by a 2:00am visit by Notta to his bedroom. (Gould explored a lot of adult themes, just as Blaze and Notta’s relationship is doing now.)In Piggy’s fantasy world, Notta belonged to him, and she was there to be physically dominated by him. She played along, always addressing her master as “Sir” and “Mr. Piggy,” and submitting to his desires (e.g., late night bedroom encounters; being suspended by the waist and hung from the ceiling to serve him meals). The only time she ever resisted Piggy was when he wanted to shave off her beard, but he laughed her off and ordered his men to proceed. When she cried out, he stopped them because he didn’t want to hurt his housemother – only to laugh again at her because of the botched shave! (More evidence of Piggy flipping back and forth between tenderness and abusiveness – he was a seriously bipolar dude.)Even after Piggy discovered that his “housemother” had betrayed him to the police, he seemed to have trouble waking up from his fantasy and understanding what had happened. His henchman had to go to some trouble to bring him out of the fog, and even afterward, Piggy bounced back and forth between playfulness with Notta and the hard reality that she had been helping the police spy out his operation.Toward the end of Piggy’s story, shortly before the police invaded his farm, the gangster was shown on two different occasions lying at Notta’s feet, prostrate before her. It seems Gould intended these as ironic visual signals, ways of communicating to the readers that even though Piggy saw himself as master, the ironic reality was that Notta had mastered him. After weeks of carrying on with Notta, she had so captivated Piggy’s mind that he was no long able eat or sleep, and was completely oblivious to her treachery -– even while the transistor radio continually implored Piggy that she was a “Trojan horse.” Piggy’s burgeoning obsession with Notta had made him careless and distracted, and this is what brought down his empire.

Methinks Notta is going to push Blaze’s buttons just a bit too hard one day……

Lots of insight about Notta today. Thank you!

.Good morning fellow DT fans!

I take panel 3 as a dramatic crux. The crushing insult to Blaze has jarred her, as her facial expression betrays (pathos). Her recognition of this (Aristotelian anagnorisis) could lead to a plot twist (peripeteia) that will see T-Bolt help her cross over from the Dark Side, or at least from Notta’s side….

Starting some drawing lessons at my local library today. Lord knows I need all the help I can get! Who knows, this might lead to my own Sherpa strip, “Ya gotta LOL!”.LOL!

Stop it JPW, you’re making me blush! LOL! Thanks for your always encouraging words!

Notta good idea to mistreat Blaze.

Excellent analysis, Willy!

Of course, all that depth escaped me when I first read the Piggy Butcher story line when I was a kid back in 1967.

How could T-Bolt / Lee not have spotted Blaze in the laundromat??? She’s a Dick!!!!

We jumped quite a bit today, which leaves me wondering what happened at the laundromat. Today’s dialog would seem to indicate that Blaze spotted T-Bolt, but somehow hid from her. But, it takes at least an hour, maybe two, to run a big basket of laundry through the washer and dryer. Unless Blaze waited outside, how could they have avoided seeing each other. Did they talk? What happened? If anything significant passed between them, why would Blaze tell Notta about it?

Looks like Blaze’s heel-face turn starts today.

@ avenger09:You know what would be cool? Please post some of your drawings here. I’d especially like to see your interpretation of the famous Tracy profile.I know from personal experience, that is really hard to get right. You’d think it would be easy: sharp jaw, square nose, squinty eyes, put on a fedora and you’re good to go. But I’ve tried it in my doodling, and I have yet to get it to look anything likes Gould’s. But, I never took drawing lessons – maybe you can show us how! (Actually, my personal opinion is that Joe’s Tracy doesn’t look much like Gould’s either, a lot of the time.)

That’s not nice.