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

By dream logic, that makes perfect sense.

Ice cream with moxie syrup eh? Who knew that was stuff dreams are made of…….?

Evil-Eye Whammy.-Against twin chins no effect.-The dream is over.

“And I never will again!”

Got Moxie?

http://www.drinkmoxie.com/history.php

Imagine soda water flavored by Angosturia bitters. Both products are based on the extracts from the roots of yellow gentian, Gentiana lutea.

The chins will win…Thanks Joe & Mike for bringing back home the Sunday Funnies…

Dick Tracy and Fearless Fosdick are the Chin Chillers

Why isn’t Tracy at the top of row “2”?

Late yesterday, Jim Kerner asked about character actor Al Nessor, who’s credited with playing Evil-Eye Fleegle in the 1959 L’il Abner movie.

There doesn’t seem to be much information on him, but here’s a link to his IMDB page, for anyone who’s interested.

Dick Tracy teamed with Fearless. Beware their chins so pointedIn the Dreamtime life is strange, reality disjointed. Fleegle with his evil-eye just loves to cast a WhammyWhen his feet held to the fire, says, “Blame it on my Mammy.”In times of greatest danger a squirrel will hide its nutsFosdick’s dome well ventilated: fewer brains than guts.Where might Fleegle choose to strike? The Trustworthy premiere?Fuddonna wears the baubles that Fleegle holds so dear.He marches in so boldly, threatens Whammy of DestructionChins thrust out make Fleegle shout, “‘Tis jawbones of obstruction!”He casts the Whammy to destroy, aims brashly at detectivesWho remain just as they were, the Whammy made defective.‘Tis the hoosegow now for Fleegle, held fast by lock and keyTracy awakes, ice cream forsakes, nocturnal visions flee.

Just to mess with our heads …

Mike & Joe should loop back around to this strip on Monday.

JPuzzleWhiz (yesterday): “Chitty-chitty-chat-chat” was a reference to Po’s teasing his enemy in Kung Fu Panda 3.

Moxie is still available in selected outlets.

My dad liked it.

I bought a six pack for a room party at a con. It takes Moxie to drink Moxie.

I’m excited to announce the project that I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks in whatever spare time I’ve had. There is a lot of useful information in these GoComics comments, but many have noted that it’s hard to find anything once it has gone by.

I now have a very preliminary version of a search engine built for searching the comments on the Dick Tracy strip at this site. There is a lot of work yet to do, but I’m interested in getting some first impressions. I have everything indexed up to the end of May (about 145,000 comments). Try it out a bit and let me know what you think. The beta test version is at http://dt.canadatoyou.com/searchgc

I’ve even had Moxie syrup. I wish I could find some more of it. I can get the soda every time I travel to New England.By the way next Saturday is Moxie Day in Lisbon Falls Maine, I wish I could make it there for that!

I have to say that I wish there had been more of Fosdick, the walking disaster area.

And I figured it would be because they both have such permanent squints that the evil eye would not be able to get through. Team them with Mr Quincy McGoo and they could have taken down a triple whammie.

I guess they would have had to include Oop as their thrid instead.

Winsor McCay, call your office.

@EOCostello: This is a rare bit indeed.

I like the symmetry of the “wake-up break” between the last two panels, as the dream becomes thought balloon: The balance of the scalloped “thought” corners against each other, of the bullet hole in Fosdick’s hat against Tracy’s “thought bubbles” is a nice touch.

I wonder if the artists will switch back now? This is by far the better of the two.

.Good morning guys!.late start!

I needed a good laugh before boarding the plane in Dublin.

I thought Tracy would wake up stating that it would be the last time he ate the Welsh Rarebit for dinner…

Dat’s what Fleagle gets fer messin’ wit the Jaws of Justice!

Hats off to Team Tracy for a fun cross-over. Fosdick denounced violence once. Wise move for one so foolish.

Thanks to Gweedo, Night-Gaunt49, Willy007, Chris Sherlock, Vista Bill and JPuzzleWhiz for the kind words. Much appreciated!

I LOVE the old school comic humor/satire going on here. It really takes be back to the older Mad Magazine days and the days of one shot humor comic books.

Go back to sleep, Dick, go back to sleep! Dream some more!

A century ago it was a standard joke that weird dreams were caused by eating something weird before bedtime. It happened to Little Nemo all the time.

Neil, the search engine looks good. Keep up the good work, and being a fan of Dick Tracy.

And before Little Nemo, Winsor McKay did “Dream of the Rarebit Fiend,” which constantly replayed the same theme.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Rarebit_Fiend

See the animated film based on the strip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g98eVbp0zic

I should have written “special effects” rather than “animated.”

Winsor McKay had so much space to work with that I can’t find a scan of this big enough to clearly read the words …

I know that this came out, but I’ve almost no memories of it …

How much of our culture will be remembered in 100 years?

It’s amazing that this still exists.

Speaking of which …

Took awhile, but I found a few pictures of actor Al Nesor as Fleegle. Most of them are very small.

This was the biggest …

By the way, this story was exactly the right length.

As a kid, I always loved the fact that a “L’il Abner” movie existed.

It’s definitely an odd duck though, the choice to replicate the “Dogpatch” exteriors in-studio and the use of so many wide shots makes it feel more like a photographed stage play than a film, for good or ill.

Gotta adore those bright colors …

Back to the “Little Nemo” movie for a bit …

Seems the struggle to bring the strip to the screen was a long and difficult one for Japanese animation studio TMS.

Just turned up this “Pilot” film from 1984, which seems to be a “Proof-of-Concept” piece.

Thank you, Tracy, for answering the question I asked back on Wednesday (29 VI 16), “What did Tracy eat last night?” (—Although that was geared more towards the multiple satiric Tracy derivatives that were appearing in his dream.) Now that Tracy has awakened in his chair, with a generous portion of the ice cream with moxie syrup still visible on the end-table, he appears not very refreshed. It seems likely that the whole dream sequence was of very brief duration on Tracy’s world. What now? I would guess we proceed to the summer’s big story next….

From the Playbill of February 11, 1957, we get this brief biography of Mr. Nesor:

AL NESOR (Evil-Eye Fleagle)Mr. Nesor, a product of Manhattan amateur shows, burlesque free-for-alls and the Borscht Circuit, was recently Benny Southstreet in “Guys and Dolls” and the First Gangster in the City Center revival of “Kiss Me Kate.” A dancer turned comedian, he has appeared in leading nightclubs for several years and on innumerable television entertainments. You can swipe through pages of the program if you follow that link for the Playbill. On the last page is this interesting note (standard, I’m sure, at the time but something you’d probably never see now):Thoughtless persons annoy patrons and distract actors and endanger the safety of others by lighting matches during the performance. Lighting of matches in theatres during the performances or at intermissions violates a city ordinance and renders the offender liable to ARREST. I’m sure that’s not a problem these days, but it’s been replaced by cell phones ringing.

Publicity photo of Al Nesor from the film (click to enlarge):

Another picture of Al which might be from the Broadway production (different shoes, click to enlarge):

Rather astonishingly, actress Billie Hayes – Who played Pansy Yokum in the 1959 film – is still with us!

[ She was younger than lead actor Peter Palmer at the time. ]

Happily, “L’il Abner” lead Peter Palmer seems also to still be with us.

While the 1959 film with Stubby Kaye as Marryin’ Sam is very well known, there was another movie made in 1940. The film starred Jeff York (later a Disney live action stalwart in the 1950s) as Abner and is notable for the appearance of Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat. The movie wasn’t a musical but did have a theme song the lyrics of which were written by Milton Berle.

I enjoyed this crossover. And it was the right length, like Anyface said.

We’re well over 100 comments today, thanks to several different topics driving discussion.

Remember when a billboard in the background of a panel during the “Midnight Mirror” story did much the same?

I’ve had Moxie Soda (not bad), but never Moxie Syrup. I wonder if an ice cream float made with Moxie would be like.

Only just now thought to check, but Leslie Parrish is still with us, too.

Abner, Daisy Mae, and Mammy survive.

Some nostalgia convention should throw together a reunion event, ASAP.

Here’s something about Moxie for anyone who might be interested.Moxie: A Flavor for the Few

Couldn’t find ready-made Moxie syrup (… though there are recipes for it) but I did find something else.

Are you ready for this?

Well, what do you know.

The 1940 “L’il Abner” movie is on YouTube!

This was great! And I like the Hall of Creators. Great touch!

I tried Moxie once, back around 1972..It tasted like novocaine, or as close to it as you can get..

Dick Tracy, the only guy with multipart episodic dreams. Same Tracy skull, same Tracy brain!