Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 02, 2024

Here we print gossip with hot lead. Pay the price or know the dread

Headlines with brass used instead. One’s reputation quickly dead.

Enormous font guarantees a sensation

Target of blackmail soon knows consternation.

Humiliation! Degradation! Cannot hold a candle

To the devastation of colossal headline, SCANDAL!

The boss with relish reads the newz. A life forever changed

Should have paid the asking price. To hold out was deranged.

See the press produce the papers. Copies copious

Tactile tabloid hits the street. Impact is ominous.

Good morning™, all!

Wow! A Linotype machine, in the flesh (so to speak). Mr. Gabriel looks pretty happy with the scandals he has cooked up.

Good morning™, Print Shop Workers !

Whether Eric be praised, braised or dammed, I Like the inside views. :-)   P.5. Why does Gabriel look like a cross between an owl and some kind of burrowing animal ?  I can’t tell if he likes what he sees or is about to explode over something done wrong ?   Charles P.1. image is bittchin’ !

Strips like today’s don’t so much move the story forward as embalm it. Still, the art is good even though the images are of old time film strip quality, Two stars.

Well I did mention them using a linotype yesterday.

It’s always nice to watch someone that enjoys their job.

Exceptionally detailed Linotype manufactures plate by Charles.

Dumb question of the day; If Gabriel is a Luddite/old school, why isn’t Topix it spelled correctly as in T-o-p-i-c-s?

A very nicely illustrated manual on how to operate a linotype machine.

Where’s a Sweatbox ending when you need one?

Tip Top Town Topix…I get the impression this is one publication I won’t find in the grocery store check-out line.

That worker looks familiar in the 3rd last panel. Generic or no?

Love to see the “guts” of the operation!

Great images here today . : )

A full artistic description of old-style typesetting and newspaper production. Incredible artwork! Charles, you’ve done it again! Excellent!

Awesome artworks again.Magnifico, Carlos, Magnifico!

I think this level of Luddite-hood may actually be a mental illness.

I am left in total amazement at the detail and realism of the artwork today . I have worked around this equipment and I see it depicted here exactly as I remember it . The fourth panel with the credits especially so because of the quoin key next to the form as the printer is locking it up . Thank you Mr. Ettinger for this trip down memory lane .

Takes me back to my high school printing shop class days, when one of the students, Steve B, got his hand caught in a press.

Yeah, this took awhile lol. Shane did an amazing job coloring though.

Great art of the old style printing process…….nice job Charles!

Obviously this guy is the “confidential source” of Wendy Winchell

Will we get a “Stop the Presses” moment in this story? LOL

FASCINAT… ZZZZzzzzzzzz…..

1-HO LEE COW: In Hong Kong, I was great surgeon

2-I used delicate tools to fix brains. Now I use block of wood and rubber hammer

3-Just to produce lies for bored housewives

4-To make fat man rich while I get lead poisoning

5-_TUBBY WHITESIDES: AHHHH! I found a typo! Should I determine if it’s Ho’s fault or just whip Cherry? Who am I kidding? CHERRY! GET IN HERE! AND BRING THE WHIP!

Nice artwork! Love the last panel.

That is one glorious supervillain grin, 10/10 !!

The Pressman’s union will be happy with the jobs Gabriel brings. But how many Linotype operators are left?(My father was a “job pressman” for our late community newspaer publisher, and, a member of the Pressman’s Union.)

I studied printing in tech school. Sophomore year we learned about the linotype, and we had two of them in our shop. It was so long ago that I’ve forgotten what I’d learned.

In the late 60s, I stood at the giant picture window on the Cleveland Press building at E9th and Lakeside in Cleveland, Ohio, and watched a pressman do exactly what our guy is doing in the lower left hand panel – mounting a curved stereotype printing plate onto the cylinder of the rotary letterpress for an edition change. I knew i wanted to be in that line of work. After my 4 years in the Air Force, I did come home and get into the printing trades, but by then Offset was the way to go. I was a press operator for more than 30 years. There’s nothing quite like putting ink on paper – at least when everything is running right!

So the real Mergenthaler Linotype Company went out of business last year – that must be because the Tracyverse had Tip Top Town Topix as a regular customer, and our reality doesn’t! LOL

This is playing out like a Chekhov’s Linotype narrative – “If in the first act you have a linotype, then in the following one it should print some news.”

The heck with the plot—love the pictures of the printing process!

We used to have Print Museum nearby, until the whole showground and all buildings were sold and demolished. It was run by retired newspaper printers.