Dick Tracy travels to South America for two weeks Minit Secrets Rate.
And who could better illustrate the detective’s adventure in Buenos Aires than the Argentine cartoonist Leo Batic?
As guest author Eric Costello says on Facebook:
I got (and still do!) a real kick out of today’s Dick Tracy issue, as it’s the start of a two-week Minit Mysteries story arc with a long-time friend, the one and only Leo Batic, doing the illustrations.
A little change for the film, as the action takes place in Buenos Aires (Leo alerts us to this in the drop panel, which shows a street scene with the obelisk in the background). A famous tango dancer has been found – dead! Dead from a gunshot to the head. A senior uniformed officer thinks it was suicide, but the very clever Buenos Aires police detective inspector has his suspicions.
Leonardo Batic has a sort of station page where he showcases his talents in a wide variety of styles.
As for the “guest author” Eric Costello, a week ago he hinted at the return of Mike Curtis about the screenplays of Dick Tracy:
… Speaking of which, Ettinger did a good job with the art and I found him very pleasant to work with. (He also included a subtle gag with Gabriel’s prisoner number that made me laugh.) In fact, I’ve been lucky with all five (!) artists I’ve worked with on Dick Tracy. “Wait a minute!” you say, “so far, only four of your stories have been published.” Indeed. “So far” is the operative word. Stay tuned.
The currently airing episode of Minit Mysteries would be his fifth story. Will Mike Curtis return on August 26?
Let’s move on.
Earlier this week Tom Batik had his cartoon doppelganger appear in crankshaftToday, Batton remembers the good old days when he “could have been somebody.”
Readers of the New York Sunday News still receive a full page of Prince Valiantas a tabloid, not a broadsheet. But I can remember 50 years ago when Funky Winkerbean should appear as a Sunday sixth page.
I think that was the first time I was disappointed with the Flash Gordon Sunday.
The problem, in my opinion, is that the Sunday page is a summary of the previous week’s events, but the previous week was a summary of The New Adventures of Flash Gordon up to that point, so Sunday was a summary of a synopsis.
By the way, it was a lot of fun bringing everyone up to speed this week, both in terms of story and design!
The Flash Gordon Sunday above is from another site, Comics Kingdom shows it as a full half page. Not that they do it every Sunday. Today it was Mary Worth, scaled down to quarter page format.
(Quarter-page is an old term for newspapers, which were 13 inches wide back then, not 11 inches. Today, quarter-page format is equivalent to one-sixth of a page. Uh-oh, I’m starting to sound like Tom Batiuk.)
For some reason, Comics Kingdom is shrinking a Sunday page to a quarter of the size instead of publishing the half-page version. As mentioned above, today was Maria Worth. Had to go somewhere else for half the page.
As long as I complain…
I don’t read comics on a mobile device, so the vertical Never been deader for Sundays annoys me.
I have the comic strips set up to fill the entire width of my computer screen, so on Never Been Deader Sundays I can’t see the entire strip at once; I can’t even see an entire panel at once!
Oh. The Comics Kingdom Blog had a quick Q&A with Never Been Deader cartoonist Tommy Lee recently.
Comics Kingdom announced last week the return of Johnny Hazard Daily newspapers for daily feed.
It is always a pleasure to see the always entertaining Frank Robbins but it came back today.
As if they couldn’t wait two more days to adjust the vintage to the current days of the week?
