So far we’ve just been teased but something fantastic seems to be happening at Diet Smith Industries. Joe Staton’s June 18th rendering of Diet Smith’s new tower project bears a resemblance to Nikola Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower. Funded by a Diet like predecessor, J.P. Morgan, Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower was a pilot plant for a worldwide system of wireless towers that could provide electricity wirelessly through the atmosphere and possibly control the weather and communicate text and images across the globe. Out of this world concepts in 1900 and exciting even today. Unfortunatly for Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi’s far cheaper invention of the trans-Atlantic wireless telegraph signal effectively ended his dreams of a wirelessly powered planet. While we are simply basing this theory on a single strip panel, this does sound like something Diet might be interested in. Plus it gives us a chance to plug our favorite Damn Interesting website where you can read more about Tesla’s Tower of Power!

Today (June 19th), Diet Smith told Oliver Warbucks and Dick Tracy of his plans to recreate the Philadelphia Experiment, an alleged 1943 military experiment involving invisibility, teleportation and possibly time-travel. There are many competing stories on the experiment, which involved enveloping the USS Eldridge in an invisibility field. This field was created by bending light around the Navy Destroyer. According to unified field theory, the process of bending light also bends space-time which can cause teleportation and time-travel. The USS Eldridge is said to have vanished from Philadelphia, teleported briefly to Norfolk Virginia and returned, with many crew members made sick, crazy or embedded into bulk heads. If Diet is trying to re-create this experiment, we wonder which parts he’s really interested in and hope he’s keeping his employees safe! I’m sure all these answers will be coming soon and we can’t wait to see what’s really going on!

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Just a quick update for those who love to see our favorite detective making the news outside of a Wendy Wichel hatchet job.  The New York Times ran a story today (June 24th) on the Dick Tracy’s search for the missing Annie.  Those with a New York edition of the paper can find it in print on page C3.  (Hopefully Mike and Joe get a copy)  The rest of us can read George Gene Gustine’s article on their ArtsBeat blog here.  We here are particularly interested in what art changes we might see when Annie arrives.

The Time’s isn’t the only one printing some words on old Tracy.  Chris Sims of Comics Alliance has written an article on Dick’s quest to solve the mystery of Annie’s abduction cliffhanger, calling this the Crossover of the Year.  Chris writes from the perspective of a non-regular Tracy/Annie reader and just might make you chuckle.  Give it a read if you have the time.  Cheers.

6/28/14 Update

Sam Tweedle of Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict has a great interview with both Mike and Joe about the Annie storyline and how the strip is progressing.  As is always the case with Sam’s work, it’s a great interview.  Check it out!

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Congratulations again this year to Mike Curtis and Joe Staton, who have been nominated for the 2014 Harvey Award for Best Syndicated Strip or Panel.  Team Tracy won the 2013 award, a first for the Dick Tracy comic strip and the Depot wishes them luck as they try to make it two in a row.

The Harvey Awards are a leading comic award that is presented each year at the Baltimore Comic-Com and recognizes outstanding work in comics and sequential art in honor of the late Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993).  Nominations are chosen by and voted on by other comic book professionals (i.e. those who write, draw, ink, letter, color, design, edit and otherwise create), meaning the honors are given out, not by fans, but by peers in industry.

The full list of nominees for “Best Syndicated Strip or Panel” are,

1. Dick Tracy, Joe Staton and Mike Curtis, Tribune Media Services
2. Fox Trot, Bill Amend, Universal Uclick
3. Get Fuzzy, Darby Conley, Universal Uclick
4. Mutts, Patrick McDonnell, King Features Syndicate
5. The Phantom, Tony DePaul and Paul Ryan, King Features Syndicate

Balloting will continue until Monday, August 18th and while we are of course rooting for Mike and Joe there is some good competition with Get Fuzzy and the perennial favorite Mutts back on the ballot along with long loved Fox Trot and adventure strip, The Phantom.  Winners will be revealed on September, 6, 2013 at the Baltimore Comic-Con.

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Earlier this year struggling comic strip writer Vera Alldid introduced Dick Tracy to parody of himself in the form of J Straightedge Trustworthy.  Mike Curtis and Joe Staton gave us Straightedge’s insulting funny paper appearance in full form one Sunday in March and long time readers know this is not the first time we’ve seen a strip inside the Dick Tracy comic.  Tracy’s creator Chester Gould featured two fictional strips himself during the 60’s and 70’s.  The first was Sawdust, written by Chet Jade who was himself a parody of Gould.  In Sawdust, many motes of sawdust (dots on paper) tell wood themed jokes and the lovely Moon Maid later became a key writer of Sawdust strip.  The other comic within a comic was Vera Alldid’s first strip, The Invisible Tribe.  A lazily drawn comic strip that mimicked Alldid’s demeanor, the Invisible Tribe featured invisible characters telling jokes to each other.

While continuing the tradition of a strip within a strip, Alldid’s J Straightedge Trustworthy is also homage to Al Capp’s famous Dick Tracy parody, Fearless Fosdick.  As Li’l Abner’s favorite comic crime fighter and “ideel” role model, Fosdick first appeared in 1942 and was promptly shot. Fosdick could not be bothered by “mere scratches” however, and reported back to his corrupt Chief and over the next decade went on to battle an absurd succession of Dick Tracy-esque enemies like Rattop, Bombface, the Chippendale Chair and Sidney the Crooked Parrot.

In addition to battling villains, Fosdick maintained a rich love life with a perpetual 17 year engagement to his very own Tess Trueheart, here named Prudence Pimpleton.  Unlike Tracy, Fosdick would never marry. Fosdick’s crime-fighting style was incredibly violent, excessive and dedicated to the extreme. Drawn wearing suit and cap with a razor-sharp jawbone, Fosdick was according to his creator, “pure, underpaid, purposeful” and of notorious bad aim.  “When Fosdick is after a law-breaker, there is no escape for the miscreant,” Capp wrote in 1956.  “There is, however, a fighting chance to escape for hundreds of innocent bystanders who happen to be in the neighborhood – but only a fighting chance.  Fosdick’s duty, as he sees it, is not so much to maintain safety as to destroy crime.”  A prime example of this is “The Case of the Poisoned Beans”, wherein Fearless Fosdick proceeds to slaughter dozens of citizens to protect them from consuming tainted beans.  You can read 20 full pages of the Poisoned Bean case here.

Of course while Fosdick started as a direct parody of Dick Tracy, Capp could not help but develop the character into a complex satire of American society. With Fearless Fosdick, Al Capp could comment on the treatment and nature of our public servants and the unpredictable attitudes of Americans towards them. Ten years after creation and possibly owing to his increased exposure as the spokesman for Wildroot Cream-Oil, Fearless Fosdick branched out into television with a 13 episode NBC-TV puppet show. The puppet show was honestly a bit creepy with the outlandish characters and violent plots and it’s no surprise the show ended after 13 episodes. Granted, this opinion might have more to do modern perceptions of puppets, which saw frequent use in 1950’s television. Once thought lost, rare episode recordings have begun to show up on Youtube and other sites.

Fearless Fosdick was almost certainly one of Harvey (of the Harvey Awards) Kurtzman’s inspirations for creating his Mad Magazine, which began in 1952 as a comic book parodying other comic books and strips in a similar style.  By this time Capp would have been doing Fearless Fosdick for a decade and the parallels are everywhere.  It’s also noteworthy that Kurtzman resisted parodying either Li’l Abner or Dick Tracy despite their prominence of the time.

As a bonus, some of you might be aware the Depot has been collecting old film in a quest to get our hands on all old black and white Dick Tracy series, movies and television episodes that are now in the public domain. We come across a lot of other interesting pieces, including this here 1940’s or 50’s Amateur film titled Fearless Fosdick and The Case of Smuggler’s Cove. The black and white film runs about 8 minutes with only mood music for audio but it is an interesting relic from the Fosdick’s past.

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The Depot sends out heart-felt congratulations to Joe Staton and Mike Curtis for winning their second straight Harvey Award for “Best Syndicated Strip or Panel”.  The win was announced at the Baltimore Comic-Con where Mike, Joe and the rest of the team have been in attendance.

Here’s a full list of the 2014 Harvey Winners:

• Best Letterer: Terry Moore for Rachel Rising, Abstract Studio
• Best Colorist: Dave Steward, Hellboy: The Midnight Circus, Dark Horse Comics
• Best Syndicated Strip: Joe Staton and Mike Curtis for Dick Tracy, Tribune Media Services
• Best Online Comics Work: Battle Pug by Mike Norton, battlepug.com
• Best American Edition of Foreign Material: Attack on Titan, Kodansha
• Best Inker: Wade Von Grawbadger, All New X-Men, Marvel Comics
• Best New Series: Sex Criminals, Image
• Best New Talent: Chip Zdarsky, Sex Criminals, Image Comics
• Special Award for Humor in Comics: Ryan North for Adventure Time from KaBoom
• Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers: Adventure Time from KaBoom
• Best Graphic Album Previously Published: Mouse Guard Vol #3: The Black Axe, Boom! Studios/Archaia
• Dick Giordano Humanitarian Award: Won posthumously by Stan Goldberg and received by Dan Parent.
• Best Anthology: Dark Horse Presents, Dark Horse Comics
• Best Domestic Reprint Project: Best of Comix Book: When Marvel Comics Went Underground, Kitchen Sink Books/Dark Horse
• Best Cover Artist: Fiona Staples, SAGA, Image Comics
• Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic  Presentation: The Fifth Beatle: The Brain Epstein Story, by Vivek J. Tiwary, Andrew C. Robinson and Kyle Baker, Dark Horse
• Special Award for Excellence in Presentation: Best of Comix Book: When Marvel Comics Went Underground, John Lind, Kitchen Sink Books/Dark Horse Comics
• Best Graphic Album, Original: The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, Dark Horse Comics
• Best Continuing or Limited Series: SAGA, Image Comics
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hero Initiative: This award was given to a very deserving Herb Trimpe whom many might know for his defining work on The Hulk and Wolverine
• Best Writer: Brian K. Vaughan, SAGA, Image Comics
• Best Artist: Fiona Staples, Saga, Image Comics
• Best Cartoonist: Paul Pope, Battling Boy, First Second
• Best Single Issue or Story: “Pizza is My Business“, Hawkeye #11, Marvel Comics

In addition to the above award winners, the very first Harvey Kurtzman Hall of Fame Awards was presented to “Peanuts” creator Charles M. “Sparky” Schulz.  Karen Johnson, director of the Schulz Museum and Research Center accepted the award on behalf of the late cartoonist and his family.

“Jeannie Schulz’ suggested a quote from Sparky,” said Johnson when accepting the award. “Sparky said I want to be remembered as EB White remembered James Thurber: “He wrote like a child who could skip a rope.”

“Peanuts,” is without a doubt one of the greatest comic strips since the dawn of the art form and Schulz’s characters and we applaud the committees choice for their very first Hall of Fame winner.

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Having seen Hotshot Charlie’s B-17 flying over Simmons Corner a few days ago and in celebration of “Talk Like a Pirate Day”, I thought I’d do a blog post on Terry and the Pirates.  Don’t worry, I promise not to do it in pirate slang.

Terry and the Pirates was created by Milton Caniff in 1934, appearing in black and white newspaper dailies for the first time on October 22 with color Sunday’s following on December 9th.  An adventure comic strip, Terry’s early plot is best summarized by The New Yorker,

“In this ground-breaking adventure serial, a pair of eager Americans, a boy named Terry Lee and a young fortune hunter named Pat Ryan, land in China to search for an abandoned mine and quickly find themselves facing a succession of gangsters, warlords, pirates, and femme fatales up and down the coast. Period colonialism and chinoiserie occasionally combine for some awkwardly overheated depictions, but Caniff visualized his setup—Robert Louis Stevenson by way of the pulps—with a cinematic flair that remains thrilling because it is played straight. Ryan, a two-fisted, often shirtless he-man, exhibits an arrestingly sexual chemistry with various bad girl.”

King George VI and Terry and the Pirates B-17 Bomber.

When the United States went to war in December 1941, Terry and company went to war as well.  The war years were some of Caniff’s finest work with current events woven into the stories and authentic planes, ship, uniforms and weapons researched and depicted.

Terry himself joined the Army Air Corps (this was before the Air Force) and he quickly became a fighter pilot.  Terry’s entire comic crew joined the fight and many new faces were added, including one Charles C. Charles, aka Hotshot Charlie.  The comically flippant Boston pilot became Terry’s best friend in the air force.

Shortly after the war in 1946, Milton Caniff ceased art and story duties on Terry and the Pirates.  As was normal in those years (and is the case with Dick Tracy) the comic strip was owned by the parent newspaper and would continue without Caniff who went on to write Steve Canyon comics. Terry’s story was adopted by George Wunder who carried the comic strip forward another 27 years into the 1970’s before it was cancelled.  George’s art and story work was not well received by many Pirate fans.

Like Dick Tracy before it, Terry and the Pirates has spun off an 18 episode television series (1953), a cliffhanger serial through Columbia Pictures (1940) and several radio programs from 1937 to 1948.  A choice selections of this media are linked below.

• 1940 Serial on Matinee Classics
• 1953 Television Episode – Macao Gold
• Several Radio Broadcasts on My Old Radio

If you are interested in reading Terry and the Pirates, Idea and Design Works, LLC (IDW) has reprinted the entire Milton Caniff collection in a six volume set using the same high quality production used for the Dick Tracy collections.  Hermes Press is pitching in to print the follow-up George Wunder years.

Happy Talk like a Pirate Day!

P.S.  – Going back to today’s post title did you know that Talk Like a Pirate Day was created by a couple of guys named John, Mark and maybe Brian while playing racquetball in the 90’s?  They celebrated the day on their own for years until they emailed humorist Dave Barry (who I find hilarious) and the special day really started to roll.

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Easter Egg, homage, having a little fun, whatever you call it, Mike Curtis and Joe Staton are masters of slipping in references to old comic strips. For the past several months one has been staring me in the face and I didn’t have the slightest clue! As we know, Dick Tracy and Annie Warbucks are trapped in a 1944 version of Simmons Corner, where most of the townsfolk are brainwashed by a daily “Belinda” radio show. While we caught the similarities between the radio shows secret code and a Dick Tracy Radio Secret Codes, I was surprised to learn in yesterdays interview (read it!) with Mike and Joe at Comic Book Resources that Belinda herself was an English version of Little Orphan Annie!

The Mirror, Dec 23, 1941

Belinda Blue Eyes was first published September 30, 1935 in the UK’s Daily Mirror by Bill Connor and Steve Dowling who signed with the name “Gloria”. Belinda was a blond-haired orphan waif of similar age and adventuresome spirit to Annie. The Mirror was Britain’s most important newspaper for strip cartoons and much of their early success came from copying American ideas but adding a regional twist for the home market. In addition to Belinda Blue Eyes, the Mirror introduced England to Buck Ryan (Dick Tracy), Just Jake (Li’L Abner) and Garth (Part Superman, Part Terry and the Pirates).

According to Steve Dowling, the Mirror’s Guy Bartholomew was fanatical about comic strips, having been an artist himself and his excitement towards the medium can be summed up with this 1941 comic page. With World War II paper rationing in effect, the Mirror was limited to 8 pages a day yet still they included a full-page of comics. This one page may have been an important momentary reprieve for British citizens directly threatened by the dominant German war machine.

The Belinda strip ended October 17, 1959 with artist Tony Royle and writer Don Freeman at the helm, and now you know.

Thanks to Mike and Joe for keeping it fun!

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Volume 17 of IDW’s professional hard cover Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy series has finally been released and is for sale now. We love IDW’s Dick Tracy collections and this volume, which reprints strips between May 14, 1956 and Dec 14, 1957 completes 25 full years of Chester Gould strips.  Volume 17 starts with the haunting conclusion to the Flattop Jr. saga began in the previous collection and is followed by Lizz Worthington joining the police force.

Following the conclusion of the Flattop Jr. case, Tracy and team delve in to some lesser known stories which make the volume, which is good news because we might not know how a case might end!  Money and death are prevalent in most of these stories which star a new host of crazed villains, including the murderous Kitten Sisters; the Clipso Brothers, Spec and Ivy and comic relief in the form of bandleader Spike Dyke and B.O.’s father Morin Plenty and his sugar-addicted wife Blossom.

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Mural in Pawnee, Oklahoma by Ed Melberg in 1990.

Chester Gould’s hometown of Pawnee, Oklahoma celebrates Dick Tracy’s birthday each year and will do so again this coming Saturday in what is now an annual historical society event.  Chester was born in Pawnee on Nov 20th, 1900 and although he moved to Chicago in 1921 and came to live in Woodstock, he always remembered his roots, calling out former Pawnee classmates by naming stores and such after them during a case.

World Scene Writer Jimmie Tramel has written a nice article for the Tulsa World on the Pawnee celebration with quotes from Chester and his brother Ray from early 30’s and 40’s interviews.  Here’s the link if you are interested.

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With Halloween right around the corner it’s time to get Gruesome!  Mike Curtis has teased us with Dick Tracy’s fall enemy, the fearsome 1947 film foe Gruesome.  Like Cueball before him, Gruesome’s comic strip introduction is occurring six and a half decades after his 1947 film debut and we excited to see him added to the comic strip canon.

So who is Gruesome?  RKO Pictures created 4 Dick Tracy movies between 1945 and 1947, Dick Tracy Detective, Dick Tracy vs. Cueball, Dick Tracy’s Dilemma and finally Dick Tracy meets Gruesome.  This last film was the most star-studded, with horror genre star Boris Karloff (of Frankenstein fame) playing the role of Gruesome against Ralph Byrd’s Dick Tracy.  Karloff was so well-known in 1947 that his villain role was promoted more than that of the hero.

In this Dick Tracy classic which you can watch below, the stern-faced Gruesome is a cold-hearted ex-con who stumbles upon a poison gas designed to freeze individuals in place.  Gruesome is initially exposed to the gas and thought dead, leading to a classic Karloff moment when Gruesome awakens like a zombie in the city morgue, much to the surprise of Pat Patton.  Gruesome and an accomplice use the gas in a daring daylight bank robbery, which goes off perfectly except for witness Tess Trueheart who hid in a sealed phone booth.

Tracy and Pat Patton investigate the heist and gas, relating it to the disappearance of a scientist named Dr. A. Tomic.  These names are very Gouldian, with A. Tomic’s associate Dr. I.M. Learned either helping or hindering the investigation.  The movie toys with several horror themes during their detective work, an example being Pat Patton’s nervous search of a taxidermist shop.  Yet, the movie pokes fun at itself and the horror genre with Tracy commenting that this Gruesome fellow feels like a character out of a Boris Karloff film.

While Tracy and Patton’s investigation closes in on the bank robbers, Gruesome plays his role with cold malevolence as he silences those who might lead Tracy to him.  Of course Tracy eventually does still track Gruesome down and they face off in a well done battle complete with a conveyor belt feeding a red-hot furnace.  I’ll not reveal if Karloff’s villain ends up in flames like so many of his other monstrous roles. For now, we’ve only gotten our first peek at Curtis’s Gruesome and it will be interesting to see what traits of the character will remain, if any at all!

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Things are quiet on the Dick Tracy front as I think most of us are happily consuming the current Gruesome story line but we do have some news for Tracy comic collectors.  IDW’s Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy Volume 18 is now available for pre-order.  It’s hard to believe these collections are already through the end of the 1950’s and this book will be covering December 15, 1957 through July 11, 1959.  That includes villains Miss Egghead, Headache, Popsie, Pantsy and Rhodent.

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With Arsenic and Old Lace playing such a prominent role in the current Gruesome story it’s about time we dug in to this Boris Karloff classic.

Arsenic and Old Lace is well-known as one of the most successful and enduring plays in the history of stage. Written by Joseph Kesselring and opening on Broadway in January of 1941, this was a dark comedy starring Mortimer Brewster who returns home while debating his plans for marriage and is forced to deal with his insane and homicidal family.

This wonderful family includes two spinster aunts, who have taken to murdering lonely old men with poison, a brother who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt and digs the Panama Canal in the basement and a murderous brother Jonathan Brewster played by Boris Karloff. In an effort to evade police capture, Jonathan has received plastic surgery from an alcoholic accomplice (Dr. Einstein) and the botched facial surgery is easily one of the most hilarious bits in the play when Jonathan realizes his new face makes him look exactly like Boris Karloff.

During its original run, the play was extremely well received and closed in June of 1944 after an impressive 1,444 performances in New York City. In 1944 this made Arsenic and Old Lace a top 5 all time Broadway play and even today in 2014 it remains in the top 60.

A movie version of the play was made by Frank Capra in 1941 starring Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster. While produced in 1941, the film was not released until the New York play closed in 1944 and play managers prevent Karloff from taking part in the film for fear of lost ticket sales.

Throughout the years following the play’s initial run, Karloff would occasionally reprise his role on stage, radio and even in television. We wonder if Karloff, commonly type cast as a horror genre star might have seen the comedic Arsenic and Old Lace as a breath of fresh air.

Below we have linked a couple good videos on Arsenic and Old Lace:

Karloff and Arsenic and Old Lace Documentary

This short 12 minute photo and audio documentary done by gothling1955 on Youtube has some great Karloff/Arsenic and Old Lace play photos and audio.

Arsenic and Old Lace Radio Show

This radio show, which reprises Karloff as Jonathan Brewster has been done with pictures from the Cary Grant film.

Bonus Material (Lugosi and Karloff, 1938)

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Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy in 1990 movie

When I was growing up our small town had a single two screen theater where I and my friends were regulars.  We had a spot in the front row on the far left side where I sat next to the wall so I could put my feet up on a supporting beam.  Thinking back on it, this was the worst seat in the theater but at the time I thought we were pretty cool.  Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Batman were the big movies of the time and I dragged my brother who was four years younger and still in grade school along with me.  In 1990, Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy came out and it was full of bullets, colors and gangsters.  I won’t tell you it changed my life, I think it had too much Madonna, but it did stick with my brother.  He really got into the movie and soon had an entire line of Dick Tracy figurines based on the movie and while I wouldn’t be caught dead playing with toys by 8th grade, I did get my hands on them when no one was looking so Dick Tracy could heroically gun down Big Boy, Pruneface, Flattop and the others.  Sam usually bought it in the crossfire because it was more dramatic.

I reminisce on this because a couple of years ago I was wondering why we haven’t seen a Dick Tracy movie or television show reboot.  Sherlock Holmes, Batman, heck even the Green Hornet have seen nostalgic resurrections and a serialized Dick Tracy with detective work, fierce action and signature villains sounds like a slam dunk.  The reason we haven’t seen Dick Tracy again stems back to Warren Beatty and the 1990 movie.  Beatty has great affection for the Dick Tracy character and has retained the film rights to Tracy since the movie.  In 2011 the Tribune Company, which had sold Beatty the movie rights sued Warren on the grounds he was no longer using said rights, which was a clause in the contract.  Surprisingly, Mr. Beatty won the legal battle with the help of the Dick Tracy Special.

Leonard Maltin interviews “Dick Tracy”

The Dick Tracy Special you say?  What the heck is that?  Warren Beatty produced this low-budget special in 2009 which served primarily to show he still had plans for Dick Tracy. The half-hour broadcast aired one-time and features Warren playing the role of Dick Tracy as Entertainment Tonight movie reviewer and film historian Leonard Maltin interviews “Dick Tracy”.  Beatty plays Dick as a real detective who has a comic strip and many movies created about his exploits and the interview feels like something we’ve seen time and again in the comic strip.  When asked about his age, Tracy finally admits that he is indeed over 100 years old, but that pomegranates are the key to youth.  Although interviewing a fictional person, Maltin stays true to his classic interviewing form, asking Dick his opinion on various subjects while keeping the audience historically informed with a couple good segments on Tracy’s film history.

The interview portion of the special comes off as a bit odd.  Here we have Tracy/Beatty commenting on the actors who have portrayed him in film and Tracy/Beatty finds himself discussing Beatty and his 1990 film.  Tracy is a bit harsh towards the actor, wishing he was more like Ralph Byrd and wondering about his knee-jerk liberalism.  Still, it’s funny to see Warren poke fun at his public image and I get the sense he really loves the Dick Tracy character.  If we take him at his word, Mr. Beatty still believes he can get a Dick Tracy sequel done, although at his age and after so many years this writer has doubts.  Former strip writer Max Allan Collins wrote the novelization of the Dick Tracy movie and two follow-up novels and I suspect that is the closest we will get to a Dick Tracy sequel and a Beatty led reboot would make much more sense.

While never sold as a DVD or re-broadcast, the Dick Tracy Special is still under copyright. However, like many other television snippets, it can be found on YouTube and will probably remain there until such time as a copyright holder asks it be brought down.  That may never happen with a piece such as this.  The Dick Tracy song when the credits roll quickly got added to my playlist and was done by Gertrude Forsher, Ben Wiesman and Fred Wise of The Chants.  Judging by the lyrics, it came out with the 1961-62 animated Dick Tracy cartoon.

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Thank you to Dick Tracy writers, artists and staff both new and old!

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In the early decades of Dick Tracy, the Tribune occasionally licensed the Dick Tracy character out to other publishers with the caveat that Tracy was still owned by the Tribune and created by Chester Gould. This resulted in the well documented Big Little Books and many other limited publications with no credits beyond the Chester Gould attribute. Many of these one-off publication copyrights have fallen into the public domain due to non-renewal at their 28 year mark. What this means for us is we can let you read them!

The first I’d like to showcase is titled “Dick Tracy and Case of the Purloined Sirloin”. Published by Harvey Comics in 1958, The Purloined Sirloin was a 11 page comic book written for Esso Service Station Salesmen, i.e. it was given to those who worked in Esso stations. Esso is a brand now only seen overseas, having been replaced in the states by the Exxon name.

The publisher, Harvey Comics, was founded by Alfred Harvey in 1941 and specialized in creating comics featuring licensed characters; Casper the Friendly Ghost was their biggest asset. Following a gradual decline Mr. Harvey stopped publishing at his retirement in 1982.

The second Dick Tracy comic is “Dick Tracy Shoots it out…” a six page story in the little remembered Famous Features Stories #1. This one-shot from 1938 was a 66 page collection of written stories featuring nearly a dozen comic strip characters including Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Terry & The Pirates and Tarzan of the Apes. Little is know about the publisher of the Famous Features and they never produced another issue.

The story itself is a bit of a rewrite, using elements of the Dick Tracy strip between Sept 1935 through March 1936 when Dick Tracy took a temporary job as police chief of a mob-infested suburb called Homeville. Chester Gould’s comic strip story featured Cut, Muscle and Maw Famon while the Famous Features story features Jitters, Snipe and Ma Moline. There are many other similarities with minor differences such as the inclusion of the strip regular Toby into the written story.

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Hopefully Joe Staton won’t mind if I boost one of his comments regarding today’s Sunday (1/18/2015) strip.  I found it pretty cool and goes to show the talent working for Team Tracy with inker/letterer Shelley Pleger it stepping up.

“Secrets of the comics revealed. Mike Curtis and I had some problems with the original version of this Sunday and we were running out of time.Shelley Pleger, our resourceful inker/letterer sprang into action. “Here’s a sketch, guys, maybe this will work,” she said. “Perfect!” we replied, and I inked her sketch and it was done. We’re sure she could go on without either of us if the need ever arose.” – Joe

Let me add my voice to chorus, well done Shelley!

Also check out the Ask Chris series on comicsalliance.com where Chris explains the recent Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie crossover to the lay person, describing it as the weirdest crossover of 2014.  It’s a humorous yet very accurate piece!

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Today Dick Tracy begins to get a little funky with the Funky Winkerbean universe wandering right into the Dick Tracy world.  Things have begun innocently enough, Dick and Sam are on the way to Finley’s Pharmacy, last visited during the climax of the Jumbler case.  The Jumbler case you may recall was part of a Dick Tracy / Daily Jumble crossover in 2013.  Today we have a comic book auction for a Westview charity in the works.  Don’t see the crossover yet?  I’ll point it out.  Westview High School is one of the focal points of the Funky Winkerbean universe and even better, take a look at today’s Monday Funky strip, which features Funkyverse slackers John Howard (a comic shop owner) and Crazy Harry (I think, not an expert here) heading to the same charity auction!  It’s unclear how long the crossover might last, but it looks like Funky himself will make an appearance Tuesday and we may want to spend time reading both strips!

Read the full panels at www.gocomics.com/dicktracy and http://comicskingdom.com/funky-winkerbean.

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In honor of Valentines Day I thought we might take a look back at a family of women who have kept Dick Tracy on his toes numerous times over the years. These fiery ladies faced down cops and criminals alike with their killer instincts, lust for cash and sense of vengeance.  Yet behind the remorseless exterior, each had a hidden streak of good.  I am of course talking about the Mahoney girls.

Breathless Mahoney

Breathless Mahoney was the first and most well-known of the four ladies we’ve seen to date, thanks primarily to Madonna, the 1990 Dick Tracy movie and Tracy’s soft spot for lounge singers. That’s right isn’t it? Not so much.

In May of 1945 when Chester Gould introduced Breathless, she joined a series of golden age foes such as Flattop and Pruneface. The attractive and slender blond was the step-daughter of confidence man Shaky whose hidden $50,000 would drive the plot for over a year. Breathless’s recovery of Shaky’s secret treasure led to a tug of war between her and her mother Elia which in turn drew Tracy’s attention to a possible crime. There was no singing or flirtations with our favorite detective, although Pat Patton admitted the girl was aptly named. Breathless was a journalism student, far to interested in the cash prize, which she finally won from her mother after a battle of wills to see who could stay awake longer.

Breathless was determined to keep her money and bludgeoned or killed several men who one by one tried to take her treasure. Eventually she found herself on the farm of B.O. Plenty who also schemed to deprive her of $50,000. Tracy’s investigations led him to Plenty’s farm, but this was before the two knew each other and B.O. was not helpful to the detective. On a second trip, Breathless gave Tracy and B.O. drugged coffee and fled, only to later be caught by B.O. who nearly strangled her to death and left her unconscious. Tracy arrested her soon after but Breathless’s future was sadly short. While in prison she contracted an unidentified but fatal illness. Her life of crime led to a final act of kindness and when she heard news about B.O.’s reform and impending marriage to Gravel Gertie she wrote a letter absolving him of his crimes.

While Breathless’s adventures led to her death, her legacy only grew as versions of her character appeared in two episodes of the Dick Tracy TV Show, Archie’s TV Funnies and finally the afore-mentioned 1990 performance by Madonna. As with the family if Flattop Jones, various Mahoney family members took a crack at Dick Tracy and B.O. seeking revenge or money.

Click to watch Breathless in 1950 –>

Elia Mahoney

The first was Elia Mahoney, Breathless’s mother. Elia held little love for her daughter after their fight over Shaky’s money and she tried to go straight after Breathless’s incarceration. Her greed got the best of her though and she paired up with her husband’s friend, Itchy Oliver and soon they hatched a plot to get the $50,000 from B.O. Plenty. Elia befriended B.O., hoping to get her hands on the money but Itchy’s arrival soon had Elia having second thoughts as her partner tortured B.O. to make him talk.  Tracy and Patton would arrive to save the day but found themselves in Itchy’s cross hairs.  Elia, like Breathless before her turned away from crime in the end and jumped between the Tracy and Itchy to save Dick’s life.  Itchy shot her dead before fleeing with the detectives in pursuit.

Restless Mahoney

Little Boy, Restless Mahoney and Hi-Top Jones

The Mahoney girls went quiet for decades, Breathless’s television and movie forays keeping the name alive. With the arrival of the Dick Tracy movie there was a resurgence of interest in the characters and villains featured in the film. Unfortunately most were already dead, so a new generation was introduced. In January of 1991, the troubled teenager Restless Mahoney graced newspaper pages. Restless was the daughter of an unnamed sister to Breathless and a dead ringer for her aunt. She caught the attention of Harold “Hi-Top” Jones, the grandson of Flattop. Hi-Top introduced Restless to Little Boy, the grandson of Big Boy and Little Boy proclaimed the trio the new city royalty. Little Boy ran a drug ring targeting schools but Restless had a secret that would shake things up. She sought justice for her older brother, who died of an overdose and turned on Hi-Top and Little Boy at a key moment and aided police in dismantling the drug outfit. It should be noted that Little Boy’s relation to Big Boy later turned out to be a lie.

Heartless Mahoney

When writer Max Allan Collins left in 1992, most of his characters vanished from the strip and so Hi-Top and Restless were not to be seen again. The next and final Mahoney woman to challenge Tracy was Heartless. Sister to Breathless (but not Restless’s mother), Heartless was nearly as attractive owing to her strict regiment of diet, exercise and beauty treatments. She sought revenge on Tracy and B.O. in 1995 and attempted to make Tess believe Dick was having an affair while also tricking B.O. into acting as a getaway driver for a bank robbery. B.O. was arrested but Tess believed Dick when he explained it was a setup. Tracy spread her picture to beauty parlors around the city, effectively banning her from her treatments and with her looks deteriorating she fled town. Like her sister before her, she sent Tracy a letter exonerating B.O. before she left.

Apparently no longer upset with Mr. Plenty, Heartless still returned to torment Dick Tracy. Believed by authorities to have died off script, the Mahoney sister used a series of optical illusions and holographic devices to appear as a ghost named Deathless, accusing Dick Tracy of killing her two sisters. Tracy was a bit spooked by the appearance but battled through the holograms to find the old woman behind it all. Because of her age (apparently she aged much faster than Tracy) and her legal status as dead, he simply sent her out-of-town with a one way bus ticket.

Heartless would still return, like a skipping record.  Her good/evil level seemed to correspond in opposite measure to her appearance and this time she posed as a nurse in Dr. Beau Tox’s cosmetic surgery office. Tox’s chemical cosmetic tricks had returned Heartless and Pruneface family member Prune Hilda to their youthful good looks and all three plotted revenge against Dick Tracy. When the plan deteriorated, so did their cosmetic enhancements and the ladies attacked and disfigured Tox with acid in their fury. The doctor shot Prune Hilda dead but was arrested himself with Heartless testifying against him.

By the time of the second and third Heartless stories, elements of the Dick Tracy movie seem to have worked their way into the narrative with Heartless suggesting her sister was a singer who was romantically involved with Tracy. There are a number of continuity and consistency problems in the 1990’s and 2000’s and this is just one of the minor ones.

So there you have it, the Mahoney ladies for Valentines day. Wether its Restless or another Mahoney, hopefully the current Tracy team will eventually give us another story featuring these fun women.  I’m sure they can still take our breath away.

The post A Very Breathless Valentines appeared first on Dick Tracy Depot.

The city of Woodstock, Illinois has declared February 22 Chester Gould Day in honor of a documentary airing on the local WTTW-Channel 11 that day about the late Chester Gould.  Titled “Chester Gould: An American Original”, the documentary follows the celebrated cartoonist’s life from his childhood in Oklahoma to the farm where he and his wife, Edna, settled to raise their family.  While most of us will be unable to watch the documentary, a nice article about Chester has been written by Jami Kunzer and can be read here.  The work was spearheaded by Tom Firak and his sons, John and Steve and based on their comments they hope to fund raise enough for another piece focused on the artistic perspective of Dick Tracy.  Some WTTW documentaries have been made available online, so hopefully we’ll find this one on WTTW’s website in the future.

A premiere on Sunday in Woodstock as well and was attended by a number of Dick Tracy dignitaries, including Dick Locher, Max Allan Collins and Jean Gould-O’Connell.  Max in particular has written very nicely about the event on his blog at his personal blog.

The post Happy Chester Gould Day appeared first on Dick Tracy Depot.

Sometimes I feel like Dick Tracy is regional and I’m in the wrong region.  If you live in central Kentucky near Nicholasville (pop 28,000), the Creative Art League of Jessamine County will be doing 3 performances of the Old Time Dick Tracy Radio play, “The Case of the Big Top Murders.”  The March 7th and 8th showtimes are already sold out but tickets for the March 14th show were available when last I checked.

The show involves a cast of 13 performers doing the April 6, 1946 radio play live for an audience, complete sound effects, original commercials and a pair of Frank Sinatra songs that should help extend the normal 30 production.  You can read more about it on the Jessamine  County Journal.

Many Dick Tracy radio broadcasts have survived to the digital age and the Depot has cherry-picked several for our radio section.  The Big Top Murders case, however, is not one of them.  Instead it has the distinction of being the only Tracy radio show with a full script easily found online.  The Create Art League is the latest to take advantage of this script.  Doing a Google search on Case of the Big Top Murders will reveal several amateur reproductions of the episode.

Now if you are into fashion, costumes or are just a big fan of Warren Beatty’s 1990 film, Dick Tracy, Arts Illustrated magazine has an article on the vibrant costume design of the movie.  With its solid primary colors taken straight from the comic pages and the 20’s and 30’s gangster style, the Dick Tracy movie looked different from anything we’ve seen before or after.  While you will have to buy the magazine online or paperback to read the article, Clothes on Film has a preview I found worth reading.

The post Old Time Radio in Kentucky and a Costume Review appeared first on Dick Tracy Depot.