
Merry Christmas from 1979, Junior, Honeymoon, Tess, Tracy and Joe; Groovy Grove, Sam, Lizz and Patton, and of course Vitamin.
Merry Christmas from 1979, Junior, Honeymoon, Tess, Tracy and Joe; Groovy Grove, Sam, Lizz and Patton, and of course Vitamin.
I have a confession that will surprise no one. I am a huge Ralph Byrd fan. Oh I wasn’t originally, but in my endeavors to learn everything there is to learn about Dick Tracy I quickly came upon the Dick Tracy Serials, Movies and Television all starring Ralph Byrd. I watched and collected everything I could find, I edited video, cleaned footage (to the best of my untrained eye) and documented each chapter of the adventure. I saw a lot of Ralph Byrd, and when I think of Tracy on film, I see Mr. Byrd in my mind’s eye.
So I’m excited to see a character honoring both Ralph Byrd and fellow Tracy portraying actor, Morgan Conway in today’s strip. I’ve seen Conway in his two movies as well, and there is nothing wrong with his performance. Chester Gould himself preferred Conway to Byrd, but Ralph is still Dick Tracy in my heart. I’ve been sitting on this biography for a while now, and I feel today is a good day to let it out.
Tracy and comic fans near Conway, Arkansas, this weekend, November 13th through the 15th, is ComiCon-way and will be your last chance to catch both Joe Staton and Mike Curtis together in 2015. You can expect at least one if not both to be in Dick Tracy garb and handing out their Dick Tracy Meets the Film Pirates comic featuring the first Silver and Sprocket Nitrate story! The Depot has gotten our greedy hands on one and it’s awesome!
The ComiCon-way is free admission so there’s no excuse, if your neighborhood you should stop by and tell the boys hello!
Update: Inker and Letterer extraordinaire Shelley Pleger will be at the Eugene Comic Con in Oregon with her husband Terry and they will have additional copies of Dick Tracy Meets the Film Pirates. Thanks for letting us know Terry, Oregon you’re up!
Tracy poet Pequod’s poem helps us kick off Dick Tracy’s next story, titled “Midnight Mirror” by writer Mike Curtis. The story title, also the name a local newspaper is key and this evil looking Sam Catchem accosting a man named Keyes has certainly opened some reader eyes. Has good and evil been flipped, are we in a dream sequence, can this all be explained with twin brothers? The theories are flying and we can’t wait to find out!
Happy October Tracy fans, hope you are enjoying the wrap-up of the Blackheart case after an explosive finale. With the action easing up I thought you might be interested in a something a bit different and I might have just that with a Dick Tracy retrospective podcast.
Kelly and Johnny of Place 2 Be Nation have launched a monthly Imaginary Stories podcast where they discuss classic comic books and strips with an emphasis on history and lesser known bits of information. For their second podcast the boys are targeting the Dick Tracy comic strip and the pair spend a couple hours with a thorough retrospective.
Among the topics discussed on this show…
So if you have some time, hop on over to their podcast page and enjoy a journey into the past.