'66 Batmobile cameo in Dick Tracy strip

[Jim Akin]

Longtime comic book artist Joe Staton has been drawing the Dick Tracy newspaper strip for several years, and he's had lots of fun dropping Easter Eggs from the world of superheroes into the (slightly) more realistic police saga. Today's strip features Tracy's just-in-time arrival by helicopter to the wedding of his reformed enemy, The Mole -- and among the cars parked outside the affair is our favorite bat-vehicle.

[Bat-Tiger]

I was just thinking of Dick Tracy today, he actually has a few similarities to the Caped Crusader. My Dad was a fan, and I got into him when the movie came out.

They're both detectives.
They both have an iconic look.
They both have memorable villains.

[Jim K, Bat fan]

I really like that - very subtle, actually. I don't think I would have caught it!

Thanks for sharing!

[Jim Akin]

I was just thinking of Dick Tracy today, he actually has a few similarities to the Caped Crusader. ...
They're both detectives.
They both have an iconic look.
They both have memorable villains.

Tracy mainly fought "ordinary" racketeers and robbers in the early 30s, but his nemesis "The Blank," who wore a mask that made his face seem featureless, was arguably the comics' first costumed "supervillain." (The character also appeared in the Warren Beatty Tracy film, but with someone else behind the mask.) Tracy creator Chester Gould introduced The Blank in 1937, a year before Superman ushered in the era of the superhero—and supercrook. (Lee Falk's Phantom began crimebusting in mask and tights in 1936, but as a cross between The Shadow and Tarzan, he mostly fought —and shot—smugglers, pirates, and other scourges of the jungle -- cutthroats all, but not costumed ones.)

I've read in more than one place that Tracy's roster of enemies must have influenced Batman's rogues gallery, but I think it's likelier there was mutual inspiration/appropriation between the two properties: The "classic" grotesque Tracy villains Flattop, The Brow, Pruneface and the Mole all showed up after the introductions of Batman in 1939 and, perhaps more significantly, The Joker in 1940; Two-Face and The Penguin also predate all but the Mole.

More on-topic for this thread, Mike Curtis and Joe Staton, the creators behind the modern Tracy strip, had some Batman-specific fun back in 2012, when they revived a 1932-vintage Gould character, the con man "Broadway" Bates. With slicked-back hair, a monocle, and a protruberant nose, Bates bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain pompous waddling master of foul play (despite having predated Pengy by almost a decade):



Curtis and Staton gave Bates a brother, "Oswald," who favors a top hat over Bates's trademark bowler, and who has a smoking habit. Oswald, who lives in distant Gotham, was only ever shown in silhouette, but there was little doubt about his identity.

Cheers,

QQ

[SprangFan]

I've read in more than one place that Tracy's roster of enemies must have influenced Batman's rogues gallery, but I think it's likelier there was mutual inspiration/appropriation between the two properties: The "classic" grotesque Tracy villains Flattop, The Brow, Pruneface and the Mole all showed up after the introductions of Batman in 1939 and, possibly more significantly, The Joker in 1940; Two-Face and The Penguin also predate all but the Mole.

I'd say there's another important parallel, and that is the distinctive, cartoony art style on both features. Gould's style had a comical, "big foot" feel to it compared to the more accomplished adventure strip work of Milt Caniff or the far more "realistic" work of Hal Foster or Alex Raymond, but it worked in the strip's favor as Gould portrayed scenes of shocking violence and cruelty that would have been deemed offensive, even unprintable if drawn in a more realistic style.

Kane, with his (at best) primitive technique and a resume as a "gag" artist, benefited enormously from Gould's popularity and the fact that Dick Tracy had pre-sold audiences on the suitability of "cartoony" art to a crime-oriented strip. And I would agree a natural development in both strips was to accumulate a Rogue's Gallery of grotesques. Gould and "Kane" were both well suited to creating outlandish characters that made us think on the one hand, "That's ridiculous, no one could really look like that," and on the other, "But ugh! What if they did?" That creepy mix of "silly" and "gross" was a key to both features' popularity, and it's fun to think DC and Gould were in an undeclared competition to out-do each other.

In short order, the "Kane" style became the only way to draw Batman, to the point where when the "new look" finally arrived in 1964, Batman fandom was split over it (as reflected in letters and columns in the "Batmania" fanzine, and letters to DC Comics). To them, it didn't matter how well Carmine Infantino drew; if you didn't draw Batman with a short neck and a lantern jaw ala Kane's ghosts, then it wasn't Batman, any more than Dick Tracy drawn in Hal Foster's style would still be Dick Tracy.

[Jim Akin]

All excellent points, SprangFan!

QQ