Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 10, 2019

Frank O. King made panels sing

Skeezix and Walt the heart

Ruminative

Cumulative

Nineteen Nineteen the start.

There upon Walt’s own doorstep

Basket with baby boy

All in real time

Rhythm

Rhyme

King’s work a timeless joy.

How strange it seems to celebrate

An anniversary

The gesture’s nice

They meant quite well

I hate to be the one to tell

Perhaps the boys should hire me

To proof the strip I’ll come real cheap

I’ll help them stop the mistakes galore

Before the strip becomes a big bore.

Ya got it all wrong, see !  This shows how far, really far, ahead the Sundays are done. This one needed to be done back in January.

So Mr. Scancarelli is a bluegrass fiddler, eh? I don’t know why I’m not surprised…

Good morning™, aged mechanics !

Best ever Hall panel ever done here !  Happy late birthday, motorheads !

One-off or new crossover on the horizon?

Timing does seem a little odd, though the sentiment is appreciated. ✨❤️✨

There was a lengthy period last year when ‘Gasoline Alley’ was in reruns, having shifted abruptly into such mid-story: New strips returned in time to celebrate the anniversary.

I visited Tomah, Wisconsin 12 years ago. They have a store front museum which has a lot about Frank King and Gasoline Alley in it. I also visited the local cemetery where King’s tombstone has a wonderful relief of Alley’s characters on the back.

Luckily, Walt never became a schoolteacher or sportswriter.

Oh heck “Happy Anniversary!!!” “Gasoline Alley!!!”

I recognized Walt right away and thought he was going to be part of a DT/GA like the Spirit was.

Scancarelli did a very good week or so of Tracy tribute, back before Mike & Joe took over here (I believe). The art was razor-sharp, and a nice break from the porridge that was being spooned out at the time. September–October 2006, it seems to have been. 75th anniversary of DT, according to the original art image I found at Google:

http://photos.auctionanything.com/x/9184/160025b.jpg

Yes, Walt looks that old. The strip established he was 115 back in April 2015, so next month he’ll be 118. (He should be older, but in the 70s an 80s, while Dick Moores was doing the strip, the characters stopped aging. They resumed their day-for-day aging when Jim Scancarelli took over the feature in 1986.

This is a very nice tribute to GA’s 100 years. I read both strips, and enjoy both tremendously. (Although today’s GA didn’t make a whole lot of sense.)

Goin’ home, runnin’ homeDown to gasoline alley where I started fromGoin’ home, and I’m runnin’ homeDown to gasoline alley where I was born…

Would someone direct me to the Sunday Dick Tracy strip with Mr. Sampson appearing?

So is this the first time that Gasoline Alley has been definitively identified as part of Tracyville?

Also, Walt seems insulted that the interviewer said that he (Walt) was one of the original mechanics, when in fact he was! LOL

I liked the part of Jim being a bluegrass fiddler!!

Nice, worthy tribute to Gasoline Alley, though its abrupt appearance here just as the Joe Sampson/serial killer story is warming up is a bit puzzling, at least to me….

If Jim Scarnelli retires from Gasoline Alley, can Staton and Curits take over the strip?

Hear we go again,another comic strip in another comic strip!

With all due respect to the people who enjoy the old-timey comic strip nostalgia - and I used to read Gasoline Alley back in the 70s myself- DT lately is feeling like a new Star Wars movie that’s 50% walk-ons by characters from Krull and The Last Starfighter and visits from R2-D2’s long-lost cousins Twiki and V.I.N.CENT.

Walt’s wife, Phyllis, died in 2004.