Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 26, 2016

You guys sure have, Sam !

.Good morning guys!.Ready for the next assignment, Gweedo!

Hangover from yesterday…

✯✯ Vista Bill Raley and Comet ✯✯

.Gweedo, marguerite and I have the wooden pow image. You might be able to find it in the comments from the circus story days (2010).

Thanks, Bill !  Didn’t want to spend time rooting around for it but had considered it would be on some page somewhere. Cut up peppers for homemade salsa I am building. -Good morning Vista Bill and trusty steed, Comet !

Gweedo, being ever alert and completely on top of things in the wee hours of the morning elaborated,Good morning Vista Bill and trusty steed, Comet !-———————————————————————————————-.Good morning Gweedo. Back to bed now!.Here’s the pig on wheels jpg if you want it for your collection:.https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s526x395/14045678_10201951694709690_974256117408630055_n.jpg?oh=3ad7f1367a8dbdb0aeb47f8556f8323d&oe=5810C8D2

NEXT: “The Funeral.”

Does anyone know for a certainty if Mike & Joe will be attending the Baltimore Comic Con again this year?

As mentioned, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be able to visit, but maybe some of the other posters might.

Sam was so startled, he dropped his toothpick.

We really need to cut to a jubilant Mr. Bribery next.

Tracy should take the opportunity to play dead and go full-on “Matches Malone” for awhile, so Bribery won’t see him coming.

So-o-o-o-o… Rikki fooled Sam and Lizz into thinking they were cracking down on Kadaver, but Kadaver was off trailing Tracy through Europe the whole time.

Better yet, Batman ’66?

Also, the boys should know that I’m surprisingly good at keeping my trap shut.

After all, I sat on the “Fearless Fosdick” intel for months.

What kind of reaction was that?Did Tess just tell Sam, Tracy could be dead?Or does Tess even know about the fight with Abner?Why am I even asking?- It’s a good indicator of how slow this story has been moving that we were guessing the identities of the tourists watching the fight.

I wonder if – In Tracy’s world – There’s a website fans can visit to check on whether Tracy is alive or not, like the one in our world to check on the status of actor Abe Vigoda.

[ Abe’s dead, sad to say. ]

Upon further reflection …

The most likely guest star would seem to be The Spirit, though one cannot dismiss either Batman or The Shadow.

And, to toss off an outside possibility with a certain degree of Modesty …

Could be Tarzan.

Could be The Green Hornet.

Poster for the Japan release of the 1966 Modesty Blaise film, starring Monica Vitti …

It’s not a terribly faithful adaptation, and Vitti spends most of the film as a blonde, which is a pity as she looks fabulous when properly outfitted …

The colorist over at Comics Kingdom was lazy with today’s strip. They didn’t even color in Abner and Rikki on the monitors.

The Gothic pipe organ is playing requim dirge now.

Sounds like Sam and Lizz have been “Fooled Again”! “Who” could have done it? Maybe these guys:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYMD_W_r3FgPlaying now on station VBEEDO!

Sam’s statement is rather odd. Dethany has told of Rikki’s background. While Kadaver’s involvement was a logical assumption, the detectives have not been played. I would expect Sam to say, “Lizz, Tracy is missing!” Always good to see Sam and Lizz…and the monitors of supporting players.

Concerning Sam and Lizz, hadn’t they figured out that Rikki Mortis was responsible for the vampire car? Did they think Abner (and not Rikki) was in the car when it sped by police HQ? Or just that Abner was directing Rikki from somewhere in Tracyville?

I think we are all being “Played”…..TBC

O.K. Here are some observations after reading today’s comments, that Mike and Joe are planning yet another crossover, and it is said to be an actual full length story, not just a cameo, with full integration of the casts of both strips:First of all I do enjoy reading Dick Tracy every day. And, I must admit, I’m curious who this new crossover character will be. My guess – The Phantom – based on the comments about how close some of the other guesses have been, coupled with the fact that Tracy has already brushed up against “Mr. Walker” at the airport.However, when Mike and Joe were interviewed right at the start, when they were first called upon to take over the strip, I remember that they both made a point that the 40s and 50s were their favorite era of Dick Tracy, and they hoped to make the strip “feel” that way, even thought they would introduce modern themes. That idea has certainly gone right out the window, in my opinion. We’ve had costumed villains and costumed sympathetic characters, moon travel and cloning, almost a dozen crossovers with other comic strips, and very little of the “CSI” type of detective work that Tracy was famous for, especially in the 40s and 50s.Over 65 years, I’ve figured out that nothing really stays the same. Things change. So, I plan to come along for the ride. I just wonder what happened to Mike and Joe’s original “vision” for their take on this classic comic strip.

We also know that Abner is a state magician and can be very tricky.

Awhile back, I’d postulated a complex time-travel tale for the 100th Anniversary story, now I’m thinking such a story might actually simultaneously explain the existence of a Lunarian civilization within the Tracyverse.

If you’re gonna dream, dream big.

Since everyone else is picking today to speculate about the January crossover, I’ll give my two cents worth. We have two clues:1. When Curtis made his announcement on the Dick Tracy fan club, he declared that this character is BIG, even that, “calling them big would be belittling them.” So I think this is something that practically everyone has heard of.2. When a fan asked if it was “Batman, James Bond, or the Spirit”, Curtis replied, “you’re getting warm.” What I take from this, is that it isn’t any of these three, but something similar to at least one of them and comparable in fame.Now I’ll go over these three example to decide which one of them is “warmest”, from least likely to most likely.The Spirit: The thing is, he’s “big” but only among comic strip enthusiasts of “great” comics. I don’t think that’s a large enough crowd that’s entered the mainstream consciousness, AnyFace’s example notwithstanding. The only mainstream media adaptation he’s had that I’m aware of is the film version by Frank Miller, a critically panned box office flop. That film has gained notoriety among bad movie enthusiasts, but again, that’s not a large crowd. I don’t think calling the Spirit big would be belittling him. He is big, but only in certain circles. He doesn’t have fame comparable to the other two examples, so I don’t think it’s him or anyone similar to him.James Bond: He’s definitely big enough that “calling them big would be belittling them”, but when trying to come up with something similar, the only thing I can think of that’s comparable in fame is Jason Bourne. And I don’t think it likely that Curtis could get the rights to him, or that Curtis would especially want to (no offense to Bourne fans).Batman: In trying to think of something similar to him and comparable in fame, two examples immediately leap out at me. And if you know anything at all about Mike Curtis or comic strips, it would make perfect sense that he’d want to do a crossover with either of them. These are my two candidates for whom the crossover could be:1)SUPERMAN! Because Mike Curtis is a huge, huge, HUGE Superfan.2)SPIDERMAN! Because just like Tracy, Spiderman also fights crime in his own daily comic strip.So I think those are the two most likely candidates for the crossover. Calling them big would be belittling them, they’re “warm” to Batman, James Bond, and the Spirit, and they’re somebody Curtis might want and could get the rights to using.And to anybody who thinks superpowers would be too much: we also have Moon Maid.

I could be wrong, but I can’t help but wonder if the man with the dog head cane (the one that looks like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) is Dick Tracy in disguise.

“To say this character is big is belittling them. It will be a full on adventure with their cast and the cast of Tracy. And I think it will be the biggest surprise we could do.”

theres something about this that makes me wonder…..“it will be a full on adventure with THEIR CAST and the cast of tracy.” so whoever this person.. or PEOPLE are, they’ve been well established.. and spidey, batman and superman have a cast WAAAAAY too large to be included in a “full on adventure”.

Brenda Starr, terry and the pirates, the phantom, mandrake and tarzan DO come to mind… and the first three have appeared (or their cast has) before in this strip… but are they “big enough”? I don’t think so.. and I don’t think manrake would be either.. Tarzan, on the other hand, could be and there WAS just recently a tarzan flick in the theaters.. maybe its him?

but I still think that the “big” isn’t a reference to status, rather a reference to STATURE instead

No one’s guessed ARCHIE yet.

… just to cover all of the bases.

This speculation has been fun – thanks to those who shared the news, for those of us who do not have access to Facebook, or wherever you first heard about it.

Another subject, closer to today’s strip:This reminded me of another time when Tracy and Tess were on vacation, and Tracy went missing in water, presumed dead. Tess called Sam that time too. Of course, the location was not overseas, it was in the “North Woods” that figured so prominently in Gould’s Tracyverse. But Sam and the Chief came at once to help in the search, which also involved Sparkle and Bonnie Braids.

Did we not get a clue to the upcoming crossover when Oliver Warbucks gave Tracy some assistance during the Notta-frames-Tracy story line? He did say that Tracy would be doing him a huge favor later on.

Putting Spiderman in Tracy would be a horrendous idea mainly because the comic strip version, which I think is completely separate from the movies and even comic books, is just horrible. He’s a blithering idiot that doesn’t even solve most of the storylines going on in the last year or so.

I could actually see it be either The Phantom or Superman. DC needs all the good press it can get after the movies have been panned (BvS wasn’t that bad, just not great). If it’s January and a full-involved crossover, that would get it close to the launch of Justice League.

Nice of Tess to make the international call to Sam, and practical, too. But I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes in day-to-day Tracyville policing to realize that they are dealing, in the case of the Vampire Mechanique, not with Abner Kadaver himself but with a stand-in (Rikki Mortis, as even Sam should be able to deduce). Carry on, coppers!

As for the coming big crossover, there has been so much speculation already that I have nothing of value to add. I’ll merely note quizzically that I wonder why the Cotillion-by-the-Sea ComicCon is The Place of choice—that’s “Ball-le-Mare” in the local dialect (one of my closest friends is from there, lives near there, and was college-met when we attended in D.C. long years ago)….

My crossover guess, for no other reason than it’s what I want to see, is The Shadow.

Mike says, “For those who wonder about such things, I am in the middle on Nember on scripts, but prefer to be a couple months more ahead. But I can’t start the January story anyway, as I have to get reference material on the character guest starrring in that story. Look for the sign announcing the character at Baltimore at Joe’s table!”

Folks – one suspects we will see a stand in for Sherlock – if not Nero Wolfe or a Watson. The Ghost Who Walks had a cameo, one feels we could have The Saint or even Hercule Poirot. Albert Campion would be 116, and Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey would be even older.