Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 16, 2024

the hunt for long-lost missing booty begins…

“Ye God’s, NOT ANOTHER FLASHBACK STORY!!!”

Ooo, a story. Everybody snuggle up under the blankets.

nice facial shot of Croppie…

I said ‘OF’, NOT ‘ON’… LOL…

Chucky, is that Baldtops finger or his pet snake in panel one?

Just askin’!

Good morning™, all!

It was too good to last before a 1939 Dick Tracy villain appeared. However, I have hopes that they are just going to chase his loot that “never turned up” and we are not going to hear a long story about those long-ago robberies.

I thought he held up gas stations as Broadside was saying in this strip. I really wonder if the bank robbery thing is a retcon. I don’t have the original story to refer back to.

Looks like Scardol got too close to one of Gweedo’s goats. They don’t like to be pressured.

Good morning™, New Story Wrinkles !

Thanks for the Scardol history lesson, guys !  P.2. Really good closeup on Flufftop. Spare hairtop is emoting real good. Can’t quite get the word for how he looks but his expression blends well with his text.

According to the Dick Tracy Wiki when the Scadol sequence originally appeared in 1939 he was robbing gas stations only, repainting his car & changing the license plates afterward to elude the cops. CropTop says today he started out robbing banks, I don’t know if it counts as a ret con if you add something that appeared before the original story. 1939. The world was on the brink of war. Thankfully it’s a different world now!

Scardol was one of the verycfirst grotesques before they became one of Gould’s trademarks. He also appeared on the cover of the enlarged reprint of Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy volume five . Quite an honor to an obscure thirties’ villain.

What did Scardol do? Write his autobiography? Is he a “role model” for her?

From robbing banks to jacking up gas stations, seems regressive as opposed to progressive. Somehow, I get the feeling when he said, fill her up" he was not referring to his car’s gas tank.

If this Scardol has his act together, why has he not considered audio CD’s or e books? Then Croptop and company could read about him on a tablet.

What an ugly mug!

So… I’m thinking this ‘book’ is Scardol’s diary that will reveal the location of the missing loot?

Uh, the present owner must know what it is if she / he is asking a high price for it. But, if the present owner knows it reveals the location of the missing loot why sell it – go out and find it yourself. Maybe she / he already has and Croptop & Co. will go find an empty hole in the ground with a discarded shovel to the side.

Croppie? What does it say about your business model if a successful bank robber decided it was safer to go into knocking over gas stations?

Know the Competition…

Scardol? He look more like Pimpleshead.

Well, at least Scardol has an entertaining nightmarish appearance.

Having a Tracy villain who predated Flattop is interesting, who now is revealed to have even earlier robberies.

Hey now ! This is really getting good .

There is always a story about hidden loot, and Croptop believes it’s true. She is on a mission to buy the book that supposedly contains clues about where the lost treasure is hidden.

Scardol (from 1939) was covered over and killed by tons of concrete. If he survived, it is a miracle. See the action here (remove the spaces):

HTTPS :/ / Tinyurl. Com / 2kwcx29x

Some really Chester Gould type characters appearing……..and well drawn by Charles!

Excellent artwork today. Interesting story so far. Bringing back a very minor villain is typical, but hopefully the exposition of the back story will not be too long and stretched out.

1-BOWLING: HEY! My stack is all singles!

2-CRAPPIE: Yeah. I knew you wouldn’t wanna make it “rain” at the BIG N JUICY BOOB N BOODIE CLUB with twenties. BOWLING: Oh. Yeah. Thanks. That’s thoughtful of you.

CRAPPIE: I knew a guy who, right after a bank job, went to that very club and made it rain twenties and fifties – until the dye packs exploded on the girls. They were so pist they all tackled him and held him till the cops got there. That was the last girly action he got for 20 years.

of course

As he robbed gas stations, could Scardol be a play on the old Bardahl motor oil?

I remember reading what happened to this character – he wound up being buried beneath a heft overhaul of concrete in a highway construction as depicted in a certain Dock Tracy reprint book I read long ago!!