Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 18, 2016

.Good morning fellow DT fans!.Purdy? Did you guys check the bathroom?

My body quivers with rageHow dare you betray my trustI own you, you are mine,Obey my desires you mustThere is no you and IThere’s only me and my willYou went and crossed a lineNow it’s time to pay your billSome have tried beforeBut no one ever gets awayI’ll burn before I’ll loseI’m the Queen of how to playNothing matters moreThan having total controlYou’ve forced my hand to graspMy redemption from my woe!

Okay, so Blaze is off to find Purdy (and to keep him out of the line of fire), while Notta continues to retrieve her gun (and then is off to “fix” Blaze).

Gweedo remarked,Why do I get the feeling Purdy’s gonna get in the line of fire ?-——————————————————————————-.Good morning Gweedo!.Purdy sure is in no condition to dodge a bullet!

Can someone please explain Blaze’s sudden obsession with finding Purdy? I don’t get it? Here she is in a life-and-death struggle with some bearded chick who has made it clear she wants to end her life and all she can do is wonder where Purdy is? I don’t buy it! Now I’m sure some might try to say that she feels a sense of obligation being that she has been his caretaker. I’m sorry but if someone is trying to kill me finding Mr. Statue is not high on my list of things to do. What I think the answer might be and I know many will not like to hear this but it’s just an opinion. Perhaps the boys have created so many different stories with so many different characters that they’ve lost track of what’s going on. Just a thought.

What was the purpose of kicking the door open, if they weren’t going to go right in with the element of surprise?

Jim in CT said, less than a minute ago

@avenger09

Can someone please explain Blaze’s sudden obsession with finding Purdy?-Mike gives us little throwbacks of the old “moon era” stories, like Mr. Bribery’s air car escape, but I don’t think Mike has any intention of using any of it as the center of a big story.So Blaze has to be worried about Purdy…So Notta can go off to kill Blaze…And accidentally kill her brother…So when he dies, it ends any chance of Mr. Bribery going to the moon for the hidden gold.So there will be no big “moon story,” just as there won’t be a time travel story.Mike gives us just enough science fiction to make us happy, but not so much as to alter the strip’s format from tough detective to space cop.And that’s why. (I think.)

.

Thanks Jim, but if I understand you you’ve done an excellent Job of explaining Mikes reasoning but not Blazes. Her actions make zero sense considering the sour pickle she’s in.

As for Purdy …He might just be out taking a stroll

By “fix” she means kill.

.

NO!!! You can’t be serious! Really?LOL!

Staton’s art is once again outstanding today. I especially like the third panel.

State of the World of DT

June 18, 2016

Story map: Act 5 heads towards a climax

The “story map” at http://dt.canadatoyou.com/nottafallarmove/ has been updated with another week. We are obviously heading quickly to a climax. It mainly remains to be seen what happens in tomorrow’s confrontation and what happened to Purdy?

So where are we now? Before I answer that, let me back up a little. I never got to write a full post on the state of the world last week, so we need to go back a little way. Blaze explained to T-Bolt in the strip 3½ weeks ago (May 25), “I live with a woman and her brother. We share the caregiving duties for him… I don’t know how she did it alone…” Blaze’s life lately has largely revolved around Purdy, and she admitted to T-Bolt that Notta (the abuser) is barely capable of looking after Purdy.

As she became a servant for Piggy back in the 1960s, Notta told him, “I could be very fond of you, sir. You’re cute.” Blaze has finally been convinced that living with Notta is toxic, but she has grown fond of Purdy and fears for his safety. I believe that is why Blaze asked Tracy for two days to set up the opportunity to catch Notta. She wanted to make sure that Purdy is safe. With Notta being turned over to the police, Blaze becomes Purdy’s sole caregiver. I think she’s a little generous in stating that Notta shares the caregiving duties. We haven’t seen Notta doing anything but lazing around while Blaze does all the work of caring for Purdy. Blaze has to save Purdy from Notta as much as Notta wants to save him from Bribery’s (potential) evil scientists.

Revised act structure analysis

In the State of the World post two weeks ago, I said we were at the mid-point of Act 4, but by the end of the day, I had reconsidered and renumbered it as the end of Act 4, followed by the start of Act 5. In fact, we’ve had three sections of the story, which I’ve numbered Act 3, Act 4, and Act 5, which deal with each of our three main villains in turn: Putty Puss, then Blaze Rize, then Notta Fallar. If you look at my story map, you’ll see that the good guys (Tracy, etc.) appear in the same scene as each of the bad guys at the conclusion of each of these three acts (shown by the heavy blue and red outlines on both left and right and the grey background).

As I said, we are fast approaching the climax, and then we’ll just need to figure out what happens to Blaze, Notta, and Purdy (assuming they survive), and then we should slowly move into the next storyline. Last week, I was thinking that this story might end right before the Fearless Fosdick guest appearance we’ve been promised, but I’ve decided it’s unlikely to be that neat, so I left the end date open-ended again.

Character roundup

Another sign that we are actually coming to the climax is that we finally have a break from the relentless parade of new characters. The only characters mentioned for the first time in the two-week period were Jim Blake and Doctor Noface. We saw images on the police monitor screen but we don’t even know which is which or if they are indeed images of two different characters. This could be the character “No Face” from 1993 who also made a brief appearance in a later story. His main claim to fame was that he was so unremarkable in appearance that people didn’t notice him at all. He tried to kill Tracy after Tracy pushed him aside to get on an elevator because Tracy didn’t even see that he was there.

Further to my comments on Mr. No Face (who seems to be Doctor Noface now), Mike was discussing him last September and speculated that Noface might show up around this September. Of course, predicting things in this strip a year in advance is about as reliable as a long-term weather forecast. Things do change. Mike and Joe are always involved in various wheelings and dealings, it seems, bringing us visits from characters from other comics and such. Those things are usually very hard to predict far in advance.

Why Blaze’s sudden interest in Purdy? Simple. It fits with her known personality.

She first got involved with the criminal element trying to avenger her sister’s death. Because she is really a “good person” who cares about others.

She risk her life trying to save Davey Milar (Mr Crime) and then gave her profits from the gang over to his mother to care for her. Again, because she cares.

Even now, in the middle of a life and death struggle, her first thoughts go to “someone else” – Purdy. Again, because she cares.

She has all the symptoms of someone who has been in a string of abusive relationships. Include the “martyr” complex where she will endanger herself and take – even expect abuse – so she can “help others.” That is where she gets what little self-worth she has.

Her actions in thinking about Purdy first are consistent with the character that Mike has given us.

Purdy: “Geez, between you two fighting and shooting and all, how’s a guy supposed to be unconscious here?!?”

Can anyone verify the inker on the strip now since the 6/11 daily is Shane Fisher, and has he taken over the dailies if so? Was Shelley Pleger the inker and now just the letterer?

Blaze is not a “Good Person” who cares about others. Attempted murder, working for a crime syndicate, questionable side job, etc. Show that she’s not.Now you want to say she’s a “Confused Person”, sure I’ll back that idea. Anyone can be redeemed and turn thier lives around if they want to.

More than a little off-topic, but since Bill enjoyed that POPEYE cartoon, here are the trio of two-reel color shorts which were produced for theaters, some of which employ Fleischer Studio’s patented 3-D background process …

1936

1937

1939

And a non-POPEYE Fleischer, for good measure – apologies for not being able to find a cleaned up, restored copy.

This one scared the bloody bejeebus out of me when I was a kid!

Speculation seems to favor Purdy coming out of the fog to a more cognizant state.________________________Well he was cognizant enough to undo his own seatbelt on his wheelchair.

Way to control the scene there, Tracy.

I don’t think Tracy will appreciate seeing Notta holding a gun and, like smoking, it is dangerous to her health.

Notta, don’t do it! I agree that the only person who can stop her now is Purdy. Do it, man!

This is a purdy good story!

I think that Blaze’s motivation in trying to find Purdy has at least a little something to do with what happened to Dave Mylar. Even though he was the second Mr. Crime, Dave was really something of an innocent in the world in which he found himself. Blaze had feelings for him (to the point where I really hat that Mike has stated that she is a lesbian; I had though of her as a bisexual woman who preferred women but was forming an attachment to Dave that might have led somewhere…but that’s beside the point). She failed to keep Dave, who was ill-equipped to protect himself, from being killed in the gun battle that destroyed his organization. She recognized the consequences when she visited Dave’s mother.

In Purdy, we have someone else who is ill-equipped to protect himself; not really an innocent but certainly not in control of the developing situation. Aware of her failure to protect Dave, it is my belief that Blaze is determined that she won’t allow her previous failure to be repeated. She intends to keep Purdy safe both from Tracy and Liz and from Notta.

Either that or she’s still covertly working for Mr. Bribery and is trying to secure Purdy for him even as Notta’s scheme collapses (as both Bribery and Blaze probably knew that it would). Bribery needs Purdy and what’s inside his brain; he really doesn’t need Notta.

AnyFace offered,This one scared the bloody bejeebus out of me when I was a kid!-——————————————————————————.Cool! Thanks, AnyFace!.Why did Walt Disney’s “Snow White” and “Bambi” scare me but not the Universal Studios monster moves?

By this hour, previous commenters have pretty well analyzed and re-analyzed Blaze’s character and motivation. So I won’t go there.How complex can the layout of this lair be, that Tracy and Lizz are taking so long to get to where all the noise is coming from? It’s a device, rather, to set up Notta’s dive for her gun and whatever is going to happen in the Sunday climax: will Blaze be shot by Notta? Or will Purdy take the bullet accidentally? Will Tracy (or Lizz) shoot Notta before she can fire? Will any of these characters die tomorrow (I think not)?

Night-Gaunt49 confessed,I was born just 23 years later.-———————————————————————-.Youse is just a kid, night-gaunt49!

Dr. No-Face and False Face can get together and see which is better at disguise.

Mike and Joe apparently have very specific plans for Dr. No Face. We can only guess what those plans may be.

This week was going fine until today. Now it seems illogical. Are Tracy and Liz in the same room as Notta? If not, why yell at her from another room when they can’t see what’s going on? For all Tracy knows Notta could’ve already killed Blaze. What makes him think Notta would just give up? Why would Notta tell Tracy she was going to “Fix” Blaze? That will just get Notta shot. Why didn’t Blaze go for the gun first, then look for Purdy? Nobody seems to be thinking straight today. Seems almost certain someone will be shot on Sunday.

Blaze needs fixing? All right, who broke her? Fess up! ;o)

It sounds like something Yosemite Sam might say, “I’ll fix you, you varmint!” (I don’t think he ever said that, but I don’t think it would be out of character.)