What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Why is Mumbles back in jail? April – July 2023

In late May Dick Tracy spent a week focusing on Silver Nitrate. We saw many old Tracy villains in the background as Silver narrated for the audience. One of them was Mumbles, whom we last saw out and hanging around a furry convention. It’s not clear why he’s in jail; we haven’t seen anything he’d done. I think the least bad reconciliation of these facts is supposing the panel is recollections. That it’s not the present immediate situation. But maybe Mumbles is up to stuff we haven’t heard about, too. [ Confidential to C.L.: ping me about this. ]

This should get you up to speed for mid-July 2023 in Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy. If any news about the strip develops, or if you’re reading this after about September 2023, this link should have a more useful summary. If you’re reading this around mid-July 2023, this should be enough of a summary for you.

Dick Tracy.

16 April – 8 July 2023.

Last time in Tracey Town, the new villain Gameboy was on the loose. He’s a game-themed villain committing the most archetypical supervillain crime: themed property theft. Special guest star That Guy From Pawn Stars has an idea what Gameboy’s next target will be. The target is … a printer’s proof of the 1930s promotional giveaway map for a then-new-time radio show. It seems off-theme. “Shouldn’t this be a story Jim Scancarelli puts into Gasoline Alley?” asks Tracy. Ah, no, Pawn Star Guy explains. Jim Scancarelli would just have the old-time-radio characters show up. Tracy tugs his collar loose and makes an embarrassed ‘glurk’ noise before saying, “Let’s explore that some time that’s not now”.

Mike Curtis and Shelley Pleger’s Dick Tracy for the 23rd of April, 2023. This particular strip is about making sure B.O.Plenty and Chick Tracy’s appearance later in the story doesn’t come form nowhere. But there is possibly another story setup being done here. Simmons Corners was the setting for the Li’l Orphan Annie radio series, as you surely inferred from Gameboy’s note. The ap was a real one, printed in 1936. But in the Dick Tracy continuity Little Orphan Annie isn’t a once-popular comic strip/radio/musicals star. And, as you can see, the real map has drawings of Annie and Sandy that we don’t get a clear look at in the comic. I don’t know how this is to be reconciled; the easy supposition is that the Dick Tracy universe map is about an Annie-like character who filled her pop culture niche. But it could be stranger than that. I don’t know the story; I don’t get scoops on comic strip news.

The map is going to be at the Metro Toy Faire, and it’s rare, so why not? Well, someone in a Gameboy mask crashes the Faire, stealing a nothing game. While everyone’s distracted someone else makes off with the old-time-radio map. Gameboy’s got to have a hobby, you know.

Meanwhile, B.O.Plenty is back in the story. He’s got a hen, Chick Tracy, who’s lined up for a modeling job for Chic’N De-Lites. She’s a clever chicken, able to do tricks and be photogenic. More on this to come.

The Chief has an idea for Gameboy’s next target. It’s a World War II prisoner-of-war edition of Monopoly. These were sets made with secret compartments holding files, compasses, silk maps, and foreign currency to aid escapes. The Chief claimed the Red Cross distributed them. He’s wrong, but in an understandable way. I’ve read pop histories mentioning the games and making the same claim. (I would have sworn it was in this history of the Parker Brothers I read once, but I can’t find the book again.) Other aid organizations, custom-created for the purpose, distributed them. This way if discovered the useful service of a true neutral organization could go on.

Mike Curtis and Shelley Pleger’s Dick Tracy for the 12th of May, 2023. We never get, by the way, a definite statement about whether Gameboy had legitimately turned the Milton-Bradley ‘Time Bomb’ toy into an actual toy or whether he was bluffing. I feel sure the elderly man observing ‘Oh look! A time bomb!’ is referencing something, but I’m not sure what. The closest match to my mind is the bit in Doonesbury where an elderly Cambodian couple testifies that the war criminals Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s “secret” bombs were no secret: “Look honey, here come the bombs” he said. Still, there is something Jay Ward about this man’s declaration.

The Chief’s instincts are right; Gameboy can’t resist the target. While another fake Gameboy steals a cheap game loudly, the real Gameboy reveals what he claims to be a real bomb. Luckily, Chick Tracy — there for a promotional stunt — mistakes the bomb for a toy and tugs the string that deactivates it. Gameboy’s captured and all is well.

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The 14th of May starts a weeklong diversion. The rarebit fiend Dick Tracy has an adventure with Fearless Fosdick, his parody from Li’l Abner. It’s a reference many commenters didn’t recognize. GoComics needs to expand its selection of Li’l Abner strips to repeat.

The current story starts the 22nd of May, with Silver Nitrate narrating his and his sister’s backstory. They were making film forgeries. Last time they were out, Sprocket escaped, taking on a new life as “Susan Keats”, girlfriend of novelist Adam Austin. Sprocket is thinking of taking a temp job at a place that claims it won’t mind her barefoot-everywhere in-touch-with-mother-Earth vibe. (I don’t know whether Adam Austin knows about Susan’s past.)

Mike Curtis and Shelley Pleger’s Dick Tracy for the 7th of June, 2023. I’m not sure that Susan’s talk here is that good, but it is an economic way of showing that she can talk people past their immediate concern, needed for any sales position. Also, I mean, she’s being considered for a telemarketing scam organization. The actual bar is likely “doesn’t blurt out ‘I love my job at the FTC!’ during the interview”.

What the job is, is telephone scams. But she’s good at that — it’s not far off the work she and Silver used to do — and her supervisor seems nice. And the boss, Audie, is always wandering around quoting old movies at nobody in particular. So she’s working for an Internet nerd, though mediated by a human.

And then storylines intersect! It turns out the scammers are targeting B.O.Plenty and his wife Gertie pretty hard. Only the intervention of Chick Tracy can stop them falling for every call. Tracy agrees to tap the Plentys’ line and see if they can figure something out.

Which, with the aid of detection, they do! In what is unmistakably an act of scientific detection, Tracy finds a distributor who reported a hijacked shipment of telecommunications gear and a would-be recipient who didn’t. They ask the shipper for information on the buyer. They’re barely out of the office when the manager, Mr Anders, calls someone to say Tracy’s on to them and he’s got to get away. Tracy and Sam Catchem can barely find the false address of the “buyer” before Anders is found murdered.

And in another unmistakable act of super-detection, Tracy searches Anders’s office and finds … a bit of shaped stucco. Now where in town is there old shaped stucco? Well, the Nomar shopping area, built around fifty years ago, during the great Art Deco era of the … early 70s. They prowl the area. They can’t find which of the many buildings in the neighborhood is missing a thumb-size chunk of stucco. But Anders’s murderer, Madsen, sees them prowling and thinks they’re on to him.

Mike Curtis and Shelley Pleger’s Dick Tracy for the 6th of July, 2023. And a note to head off future confusion: Madsen here is lying. He shot Anders dead and, I assume, kept the payoff. That’s what we’re seeing the gun for. Yes, I know this is a lot of “unreliable” narration this recap — Madsen lying about what he did, possibly Silver Nitrate having a montage rather than interacting with something in the present, possibly Gameboy faking a bomb — but Madsen we at least that he’s lying and have a good idea why.

Madsen meets up with Audie, claiming to have paid off Anders and that, once Audie pays him off, he’ll be out for good. No links for the cops to find. Audie says he doesn’t have that in petty cash, he used it all to pay Anders to get out of town. And, meanwhile, Sprocket/Susan is figuring she’ll be out of here in a few days, when Austin’s book business meetings get done.

And in a weeklong interlude starting the 12th of June, Diet Smith discovers a Space Coupe in his backyard. He shouldn’t have one; his was lost somewhere in deep space when a couple guys hijacked it, and he doesn’t have plans to build another. It’s a gift from the Moon Governor. Smith asks Tracy if he knows where the Lunarians are. Tracy doesn’t answer.

There was also a single-day strip, tagged with a note to expect next year a story about Little Orphan Annie’s parents. I’m surprised there are still open mysteries about her parents. But I trust Mike Curtis’s understanding of the canonical Annie.

Next Week!

Prince Valiant and his son join together on an adventure into Wales to find out: what’s the deal here, anyway? I get a week of plot recaps even I can’t be late on as I review Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant, if all goes to plan.