Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 22, 2024

Well, I was definitely wrong(thank goodness) about how long it would take to get into the club.

However, the lack of anything that remotely resembles action is disappointing.

scumbag predator of the lowest type…

I can almost see the drool dribbling out as he hears the sounds of ka-chinging in his brain…

From Wikipedia:

Pravuil, also known as Vretil, is an archangel briefly mentioned in the Second Book of Enoch as God’s scribe and recordkeeper.

Seems appropriate.

I enjoy Chucky’s obsession with details (such as the nails in the club sign)

Well done, Kemosabee!

Good morning™, Poison Pitchers !

If Gabe were playing ball he would be throwing it at the batter .. on purpose. Is Borden doing a “Larry Tate lunch” ?  Will his response be timid or will he explode and damm the torpedoes ?

Good morning™, all!

Wikipedia: “Recording angels are assigned by God with the task of recording the events, actions, and prayers of each individual human. These include bad sins and good deeds…. In Judaic thought, Gabriel is the principal recording angel … In the Secrets of Enoch [as Brian mentioned above] the recording angel is named Pravuil or Vretil.”

Our villain-in-chief manages to combine both of those names into his identity and he’s got documentation of some of those bad sins in hand.

With a angel like you who needs demons.

I think that the 2nd and 3rd panels should’ve been 1st and second panels, with a small corner text box in the first panel. With P3 with no dialogue showing him holding up the open folder in front of his looking at the photos leading into tomorrow. Where Gabe begins his grand exposition filled with his incongruous mix of Old Englis/Shakespearian-esq prose revealing his blackmailing endeavour to Borden, which shoould easily fill four to five panes of the Sunday edition. But alas we have been here before with Eric, so doubtful.

He grins with evil glee!

Mr. Borden sure looks stressed. What could be the cause? Uh-huh, too much “scratch and tickle” with the woman shown in the June 15th strip. At an athletic club…that’s no “energy drink” in the glass with ice cubes.

Hmm…suspenders definitely making a comeback.

the Squeeze is on.

It makes sense that the City’s version of the New York Athletic Club would be the private club of a professial baseball team’s owner.

1-U.A.C. BUILDING: KEEP WALKING, TUBBY! THERE’S NOTHING FOR YOU HERE!

2-FATTY BELTBUCKLE: Doctor Livingstone, I believe. I jest, sir. It is Mr. Borden? Wait. Am I asking or telling. MR. BORDEN: A new member I see. Or else you’ve never learned where the exercise equipment is kept. HAR HAR!

3-FATTY: Ha-rumpf! Very humorous, sir? Let us see if you find these candid photos humorous! As Mr. Jagger sang in Star Star “TRICKS WITH FRUIT, KIND OF CUTE, I BET SHE KEEPS HER PU…” MR. BORDEN: She DOES keep it clean! So what?

FATTY: To my purpose, sir – I propose to release these in flagrante delicto photos of you unless you choose instead to “purchase” them. MR. BORDEN:: Go ahead. I’ll just marry her. Then you’ll just have elicit photos of boring man/wife sex. FATTY: YOU FIEND! We are most assuredly not finished with one another uh, Mr. Borden?

Another action packed strip …. if, like the writer, your idea of action is people carrying around manila folders & showing other people what’s inside them …

Is this suppose to be a flair of dramatics……..seems more like a comedy…..

Do writer and artist communicate?

Gould’s tales left readers wishing dawn would come swiftly; sadly, today’s plodding prose qualifies as the equal of or better than the finest sedatives available today.

If our villain is planning to run those pictures (if his victim doesn’t “buy advertising space” in TTTT) – I wonder where he will be able to get photo-engravings for his letterpress printing process. I wonder if there are any actual engravers still in business, outside of those who make plates for our currency. They were fading away as far back as 2011, when I retired. We hadn’t used any for years even then, relying instead on photo-mechanical- transfers, and then on digital pictures direct to film.

Although I know there are still quite a few hobbyists and boutique letterpress printers, so perhaps there is a source for photo engravings. But those pictures would raise a few eyebrows, I would think.

Esoteric warning: I was just thinking of how Mr. Gabriel might pronounce his name considering that his name, Pravuil Gabriel, might not be easy pronounce. First, most American English speakers emphasize the first syllable: PRAH-vul GAY-bree-əl. Hebrew speakers would emphasize the last syllable: prah-VWEEL gah-bree-EHL. We don’t have the Hebrew or Aramaic of Second Enoch that the first name might have been written in, nor the Greek translation that it was translated into, but the Slavic that the Greek was translated into. (There’s a question how the ‘v’ made it through the translations given that there isn’t such a letter in Greek, but only in much older Greek a voiced labial plosive was represented by a beta where the ancient European pronunciation was ‘b’ where the modern European pronunciation is ‘v’.) So identifying how it was supposed to be pronounced, much less even written, is nigh impossible. So there are a variety of ways people pronounce ‘Pravuil’. It’s conceivable that the pronunciation would be mixed (prah-VWEEL GAY-bree-əl) might be difficult to pronounce for most people. The character himself, being an old fashioned scoundrel might harken back to a pronunciation of 100 years ago that would be less international, hence the fully American pronunciation. Today, there are enough international influences to make such a pronunciation far less consistent.

Interestingly, ‘pravuil’ doesn’t appear to relate to any word for Greek or Hebrew that I know that means “recorder” or “scribe”. Even in the Slavic languages it means something like “he’s right” as far as I can tell. If someone has more knowledge on the etymology, feel free to enlighten me.

Mr. Costello continues with his graphic novel, great in a comic book, slothful here.

replace that with the D word, and you would be more accurate.

Interesting: The given name, “Pravuil”, means “Cursed One” or “Accursed One”.