Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

>> Rob: Calling Dear Watchers. Calling Dear Watchers. There is a podcast in progress. Welcome to Dear Watchers, an omniversal comic book podcast where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.

>> Guido: We are traveling with you through the stories and the warehouses and the dock areas that make up an omniverse of fictional realities we all love. And your watchers on this journey are me, kido Mahoney. I just have to pick her as, my favorite character. Of course, of course. But I'm sure I'd have a much more clever name if I lived in universe with our focus of today's episode.

>> Rob: Well, I think I'd be Curly Rob. There must be a, curly somebody in the Dick Tracy universe.

>> Guido: I'm sure there is. There's probably even someone with my name. It has such a long history. Oh, yeah. Not be surprised, of course.

>> Rob: Well, before we get into our journey today, let's find out what's happening in our little section of the universe, other than it being so hot out. Guido, I'm sitting in this room. There's no air conditioning. The lights are off. But you know, Guido, I sweat a lot better in the dark.

>> Guido: I thought you were going to go with a mumbles reference. Just do the rest of the podcast like your mumbles, and everyone has to listen to it on half to hear what we have to say. That would be a fun project for this episode. All right, people who have not seen Dick Tracy have no idea what we're talking about, but we'll explain it to you in just a moment. First, it is summer, and SoCon season's officially here. We won't be at San Diego, though. It's happening in such a short amount of time from when this episode comes out, we're happy to post, along with people who are there and follow our friends, like comic book couples counseling podcast who are doing an amazing panel, which is very cool. And so we are really excited on social media to follow San Diego because, of course, our big con is New York Comic Con in October. And in the meantime, as I mentioned last week, please go check out our evergreen episodes. We have so many episodes in our catalog, and they're not timely because we're always exploring alternate universes so you can go back and check them out. And while you're at it, we would love if you told three friends what we're doing and why you enjoy it, because we're excited to get new people on our travels with us this summer. And thank you for being listeners.

>> Rob: And if you're joining us for the first time we have three parts of our journey through the multiverse origins of the story, exploring multiversity and pondering possibilities. So thanks for hopping on the back of your car and coming along.

>> Guido: And remember, you need to leave us a five star review wherever you're listening, because otherwise you're going to get the bath, isn't it? The bath, yes, we're going to give you a bath, which is concrete bath. And that's it.

>> Rob: And with that, dear Watchers, welcome to episode 138. And let's check out what's happening in our omniverse with our travels. Today's alternate universe. Today we are decked out in head to toe yellow to answer the question, what if Dick Tracy, the movie was instead anhe HBO miniseries, but in comic book form? And we'll explain what that actually means later.

>> Guido: We will get into that what if question. Who knew that the comic book company, one of the biggest companies in the world, asked that question 30 years ago? So it's an interesting world. We've covered movie stuff before. We have some episodes on some of the Elvira, series Evil Dead, a few interview episodes that really touch on movies. But this is our first outright movie adaptation, which we've been looking forward to doing. There are some great ones out there that we will cover at some point, like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. We haven't done the movie adaptation, of course, like the Batman 89 movie.

>> Rob: I love that one. I read that one so many times, my copy is disintegrated, basically.

>> Guido: Yeah. so we will continue, to do some fun movie adaptation stuff. This is a quite unique one, though, because it's a world scene, maybe just once in three issues, but if you count it as the same world that's on screen, then it's a movie and three issues. And of course, that world's been adapted into novelizations and video games, but never revisited. So it's a little hard to nail down canon here. But we're gonna explore all that as we dig in, because this is one of the oldest comic book characters we have ever covered, and this is Earth. Walt Disney's dick tracy. That's what we're dubbing this earth, not.

>> Rob: Oh, I think it should be Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. Forget Walt Disney the comic.

>> Guido: Well, we'll talk about the comic publisher because it's uniquely published by Walt Disney comics, which, not a thing. So that's kind of cool. So it's Walt Disney and Warren Beatty's dick Tracy.

>> Rob: Exactly. Exactly.

>> Guido: It's Madonna's Dick Tracy.

>> Rob: Oh, sure, sure. Well, before, before we get into the character of Dick Tracy, long, long backstory, as you alluded to, Guido, what is your background with Dick Tracy?

>> Guido: Well, it being the movie, being out in 1990 was the perfect sweet spot for this young, child at the time, nine, to get into absolutely every aspect of the movie. Because I already had an existing love of Madonna, I already had an existing love of comics, and then they merchandised the hell out of this movie. So, trading cards. I collected every single one and every book and every t shirt, and, just anything I could find that had these characters and this world on it. They did such a good job to licensing it, so it looked like the movie, but also like a comic. So I loved it. I remember it was one of the first VHS that I looked at buying, because buying VHS wasn't really common.

>> Rob: They were expensive. Yeah.

>> Guido: So I remember it was listed at like, $90 or something, and I was like, oh, my God, I could never get it. I actually concocted a whole scheme. I don't even remember if I enacted the scheme. Let's assume I didn't, so I don't get arrested. I was going to rent it from the video store and replace the video in the case with a blank, no pun intended, and return the blank movie and hope they didn't notice because I was, the clueless child so that I could have the tape. I don't think I ever did that. I think ultimately I got it when it finally came out at a reasonable price for people to buy and watched it over and over and over and over and over and over again. So I possibly have seen this movie more than any other except dirty dancing. So, big fan. Having said that, I never read the comic strips or any comics other than the three we primarily cover today, until now, other than those three comics that adapted the movie, I really had not, read any of the comics. So my world was the Dick Tracy movie universe. And I know you have similar affection. What is your background with Dick Tracy?

>> Rob: Yeah, I was gonna say we're both big fans. I might even inch, inch you a little bit in the fandom, maybe, because I was then, like, going to also look at the comics, the comic strips, when it came out. But like you, this is probably up there in the top three movies that I have watched in my life. And it's the perfect movie for a little boy, because there's violence, there's gruesome characters there, singing and dancing.

>> Guido: Perfect movie for just a little child.

>> Rob: For just a little child. Yes, that's true. It's colorful and colorful, fast moving. It's got all those different things in it. So I just watched the heck out of this vhs. I was at the VHS a little later because mine was definitely not $90.

>> Guido: But I, well, that was always like the starting price. And, they would finally, and it was only. It was a few years later, into the nineties. I think classic park was one of the big first ones where then they, like me, $15 vhs that you could buy at the supermarket and everything. Like, they mass produced them. So.

>> Rob: Yeah, and the movie has a little kid in it. So as you, as a little kid, you go, oh, I want to.

>> Guido: You can identify with, like, him.

>> Rob: so I. This was one of those movies, I probably watched it, and then I would stop that. I would rewind the tape and watch it again in the same day it was. And unlike today, you had to watch the whole movie. So it was actually also good homework for a little kid to actually sit for 2 hours and watch a full story all the way through. But I also had all of the toys. We still have a bunch of the toys up in the attic. I had a bunch of the cards. I didn't have a lot of the other things that, besides the action figures. But like you said, they merchandise us so much. One of our favorite podcasts, the Purple Stuff podcast, does a great episode where they go through a lot of the Dick Tracy merchandise because, yeah, there is just a lot of it out there. And.

>> Guido: No, we're discovering new stuff. We're collecting stuff.

>> Rob: Oh, yeah.

>> Guido: Like every, every few weeks, I'll look on eBay and be like, wait, they made a tote bag. They made a fanny pack. They made a breathless backpack. Oh, my gosh.

>> Rob: And even though I was only four when this came out, this was my Batman because I was too young for Batman 89 when it came out, which they also, of course, merchandise the heck out of. So this was really the one that I gravitated to so much. And I think I've also held onto it because it's become not a lost movie, but it is not kept up in the, in the pantheon of movies in the same way that the first Batman movie.

>> Guido: No, no. And we can talk about that in our first segment. It's a little strange that it's not elevated more, and we know some of that has to do with the really complicated rights issues of this property, but obviously, Disney does own the right to stream and distribute the movie on home media, and yet they don't even do that. Very much so. I'm not sure what the deal with this is, but, yeah, it's, it's legendary.

>> Rob: And wait, I'm having a thought. It's coming. It's gone. Wait, no, it's back. Let's go into origins of the story right now on this very show, you're gonna get the answer to all your questions. Our amazing story begins a few years ago.

>> Guido: I don't know what it was. You might be pulling some deep cuts here.

>> Rob: That's an Al Pacino line from the big climax of the movie.

>> Guido: He has a lot of lines.

>> Rob: He has a lot of lines. Walnuts, they're, they're good for the liver, but they're bad for the brain. You're getting sloppy, big boy. Yes, that's a Dick Tracy. This is one of those movies I've seen so many times that when there's a one, there's moments where I just know the inflection of characters, when, like the, the kid has stolen the guy's watch and the guy runs out. It's like, stop that boy. Stop that boy. It's like I can just hear him say it in my head. That's how many times I, was.

>> Guido: Like a Broadway musical.

>> Rob: And so anyway, everyone is very big.

>> Guido: We'll get into it.

>> Rob: We'll get into it. But let's first talk a bit about Dick Tracy, who he is and his origin in the comics. So Dick Tracy is a tough but smart police detective in a metropolis known only as the city, where he fights bizarre gangsters while juggling a home life with his love, Tess Truehart and adopted son, Dick Tracy junior. But, but Guido, where did he come from?

>> Guido: Yeah, so maybe inspired by Eliot Ness, Dick Tracy is a comic strip created by Chester Gould that debuted October 4, 1931. We are approaching the centennial of Dicky. yeah, it's debuted in the Detroit Mirror, but very soon it was in over 500 newspapers, being read by 50 million readers. And Gould wrote and drew the script for 46 years, retiring in 1977. So we know comic strip artists and creators have long runs, but my gosh, his must be up there. And this was not a simple, straightforward strip necessarily either. So it was known for being pretty violent and dark. It's fun to dig in. And we watched some videos online of people going through some of the most surprising and shocking moments. And in the thirties, it was actually, actually attacked for being too violent. It's so interesting to hear that when you think about how superhero comics were like such a target of the fifties, and of course, the seduction of the innocent, like, I don't think Frederick Wertham was talking about Dick Tracy, but he probably should have been. I could be mistaken. Maybe he did allude to it, but really, like, more people could read Dick Tracy than could read Batman Robin.

>> Rob: So it's maybe he was assuming that kids weren't reading newspapers like they were also.

>> Guido: Or Dick Tracy was maybe meant more for adults. So, yeah, it also was known, of course, for some sort of Sci-Fi elements, like the classic two way wristwatch radio, something that I used to dream of having as a child.

>> Rob: It basically exists.

>> Guido: Never used, exactly.

>> Rob: Said.

>> Guido: I never use it for that purpose, but, I used to dream about it. The strip's first major villain was Big Boy Caprice, a take on Al Capone. But soon, Gould would introduce wilder villains with really strange appearances or quirks and personalities and weird backstories like flat top and prune face and shoulders and others. And starting in the 1940s, he actually added a whole side of the comic strip to be the Crime stopper's textbook, where people would get clues and puzzles or actual tips to keep themselves safe. He was really kind of just obsessed with crime, it sounded like. Or, actually, I should say what we learned, if this is true, biographically, he was obsessed with policing. So he really just wanted to, like, get policing in front of people and sometimes maybe without the best agenda or the most passionate agenda in the world, but that's what his focus was.

>> Rob: And he would bring in police detectives as official consultants. And even as recently, I don't know if it's still going, but even as recently as just a few years ago, the strip was still using police consultants as well and doing those real, that were actually contributing those real tips to the Crime stopper section of the script.

>> Guido: Well, and what's fascinating about the early strip, which we didn't read for this episode because we want to focus on the movie canon, but is that he's doing that at, ah, the same time as creating these characters that are unbelievable and can't be real. Like, even the, Frost character, I was just looking up earlier today because he shows up in one of the comics we read, like, he's all white. He almost looks like snow. Now, he's not meant to be snow. Like, he doesn't have the fantasy elements of these things, but he's not meant to look like a human being. Can actually look in the same way. Flat top. Like. Like, even with anyone who has some sort of genetic alteration and looks different, like, I'm not aware of anyone who actually has a wide flat head. Like, I don't think that's an actual thing. So he's doing all this really accurate police stuff, but with a lot of fantasy in it. And in fact, like Archie comics, it started to evolve a bit in the sixties. There were aliens, there were some bond inspired elements. And in the seventies, Tracy had a mustache and a hippie sidekick and shaggier hair. So it tried to reflect the times and change, but it was always at its core about policing, of course. And when Gould retired, he was succeeded by the road to perdition. Creator and novelist Max Allen Collins with artist Rick Fletcher and a few other teams stepped in. But then it was taken over by Mike Curtis, who is a comic book artist and co creator of Huntress Joe Stanton. And they reintroduced the classic character, not with the hippie seventies influence.

>> Rob: Yeah, because Gould, Gould was not afraid of killing off characters too. unlike in superhero comics, a lot of the characters were killed off. So later in the strip, all these people who came after him was like, oh, wait a second, flat tops been dead. We got to bring flat top back.

>> Guido: And that was the mid eighties. Right. But Curtis is still writing. So 40 years later, he's going to maybe try to beat Chester Gould's run on it. He's still writing the script with artist now Charles Echtinger, who just joined earlier this year because it's still published in papers today and can be read, of course, online at some of the sites that, license the strips for reader. One quick tangent, because, the current writer, Mike Curtis, is a really interesting maybe character. He was a newspaper editor, a deputy sheriff, apparently a comic book publisher, a writer of the new kids on the block comics. He managed a movie theater. He was a tv horror movie host. He was Santa Claus for decades, apparently, and is a minister and might be the third largest collector of Superman memorabilia in the United States. States. He also co created a furry comic with his wife that somehow is modeled off the arab israeli conflict. So this, like, as you were reading these out when we were researching, it broke my brain to think about this person. So who knows? We haven't read any of his run on Dick Tracy. Don't know much about him, but, or his work. But the, story of his life is fascinating. Now, outside of the strip, of course, Dick Tracy has had a bit of a, history in comic books, but nowhere nearly as much as the comic strips. He did make his first appearance in comic books in 1936. So that's just five years after he debuted in the strips. That's in Dell's popular comics but it's reprints of his strips. And he then got his own reprint book starting in 1937. It's not until 1948 that Dell starts a comic book series, Dick Tracy Monthly, which ran for 145 issues originally by Dell and then by Harvey Comics. It wasn't until 1986 that he was revived in comic books by Blackthorn. It began as a monthly series and became weekly, lasted just under 100 issues and was original stories. There were then some other reprint series that ran through the eighties and nineties that were sometimes called, like, the original Dick Tracy. And then in 2018, IDW with Mike Lee and Laura Allred did a mini series, Dead or alive. And I think they did a, follow up miniseries to that too. And most recently, which we'll get into in 2024, he's debuted in a new ongoing series for Mad Cave. But we'll talk a lot about that before we get into the movie canon. Let's hear about the rest of his life outside of comics.

>> Rob: Yeah. So Dick Tracy had a long run on radio starting in 1934 with a weekly series that ran into the forties. He made his film debut in 1937 with a 15 part serial starring Ralph Byrd. So very much following in the Superman Batman tradition there as well.

>> Guido: Yeah, or Green Hornet or the shadow, like a lot of those properties that went through radio comics serials before becoming.

>> Rob: And on comic strips too, because Blondie had a really long running serial also. So all kind of on that world. Four years after the final serial, RKO started releasing Dick Tracy features starring Morgan Conway and later a returning Ralph Byrd. There, Tracy battled such villains as Splitface. That was the one I watched because I got it on vhs after I needed to get all Dick Tracy things growing up. Cue ball, Filthy Flora, the claw and gruesome, who is actually played by Boris Karloff.

>> Guido: So they sound wacky. Are they as surreal as they are in the strips, or do they try to ground it a little more in reality?

>> Rob: At this point, it's grounded more in reality. So splitface just has a scar going across his face. Cue ball is, guess what, bald. So that's, that's pretty legit. Yeah.

>> Guido: Filthy flora sounds like a fun take on poison ivy. I want to watch that one.

>> Rob: She's like a old, like, old woman. Like, I don't know what you would say. Like a prospect of woman, I think, that kind of thing. Well, Bird also played the character on a live action tv series in 1950s. There was an animated series in 1960, a 67 tv pilot from the Batman 66 team.

>> Guido: And you can watch sounds like Batman 66.

>> Rob: It's even got William Dozer as the narrator. Coming up.

>> Guido: They clearly shared sets like the Batman study where he goes down through the. Into the Batcave.

>> Rob: Oh, it's like exactly the same.

>> Guido: Yeah. it's really interesting.

>> Rob: And he even had, you mentioned Archie before. He even had a mini episodes within Archie's tv funnies from filmation in 1971. I've never seen any of those. So one of the people who loves all of these things, though, was a young man named Warren Beatty. He was a, big fan.

>> Guido: Was he named Warren Beatty or did he change his name?

>> Rob: Oh, I don't know. I didn't look. But he was a big fan of the Conway and Byrd films. So it's impossible to go into the very long and twisted history of the 1990 film. But Beatty actually says he started thinking of doing an adaptation way back in 1975, actually. And at various times, Steven Spielberg, John Landis and Clint Eastwood were all tapped to direct. Eastwood was going to star Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Tom Selleck, Nell Gibson. They were all considered. Basically everyone was a big male lead in the 1980s was considered. And the writers, Jim Cash and Jack Epps junior, they wrote a screenplay and beatty actually came on board, as did the great director of the Warriors, Walter Hill. But they actually both left the project. And at that point, the rights actually reverted back to Tribune Media and Beatty swept in and he optioned the rights to the Dick Tracy character as well as that screenplay that had been written. And coming off of the big critical success of his film Reds, he was really could do no wrong. So Beatty and Beau Goldman actually did an uncredited rewrite of the script. And it was greenlit by Disney via, Touchstone in 1988, with Beatty on board to direct, produce and star, and also uncredited co writer.

>> Guido: And it's so cool that it's green lit pre Batman because I think a lot of people look at this movie coming out the year after Batman and sort of see it as trying to capitalize on that, that, success. But it wasn't. I mean, it was in development hell for a long time, but it was greenlit pre Batman. Now, did Disney know that Batman was coming out and want to sort of get ahead of it? Maybe, for sure. But it wasn't the success of Batman that led to this movie. This movie was its own thing. So I like that. I like that because there are so many similarities between this and Batman.

>> Rob: Totally. And Beatty really surrounded himself with the top, the tipty top of talent on front and behind the camera because the cast includes Madonna and Al Pacino and Glenn Heavy and Dustin Hoffman and James Caan and people like Katherine O'Hara who are in the movie and don't even have a line.

>> Guido: Don't even have lines.

>> Rob: It's one of those movies where every single person is, like, somebody at some place.

>> Guido: Yeah. Estelle Parsons, like Stel Parsons, Tony's and, Yeah, these. Yeah, she was in it for, like, 10 seconds.

>> Rob: Estelle Parsons had won the Oscar already, and she's in it for literally about two lines. And, in behind the scenes, it's people who worked on Apocalypse now, it. Chinatown, raiders of the Lost Ark. The co producer John Landau, who actually just passed away just like this week. As of recording this, he's gone on to produce three of the four highest grossing films of all time. So. Not bad. And the score is by Danny Elfman, who was fresh off of Batman, speaking of.

>> Guido: Couldn't get it out of his head? no, it's a very Batman.

>> Rob: It's Batman, I think, done a little better, actually, in my opinion. And the rest of the music is by probably the most acclaimed Broadway composer of his generation, Steven Sideheim, who wrote.

>> Guido: All songs, but sure.

>> Rob: So just a couple of things about how the movie actually looks for those who haven't seen it. So Beatty decided to make the film using a palette limited to just seven colors. So primarily red, green, blue, and yellow to evoke the film's comic strip origins. So only those comics.

>> Guido: The exact colors that a printing press had for comic strips. So it wasn't even just to sort of evoke, or follow suit. It was. No, it was to be literal. It was to be a literal translation of comic strips onto film, which is fascinating.

>> Rob: It's kind of like the inverse of when we first got, like, the X Men movies, and it was like, oh, they're all gonna be wearing black leather in this movie. It's like, no, everyone's gonna. Dick Tracy's gonna be in yellow.

>> Guido: Yellow sets are gonna be, you know. Yeah. Surrealistic, because you need everything to be yellow, red, green, like the. Everything. Yeah, yeah.

>> Rob: I think visual 57 matte paintings to achieve it. And this was at the time when things were moving over. But there's a great YouTube videos where, like, you can see, like, he was using miniatures, like, a full giant train that then was, like, projected onto the screen to look like it was cool.

>> Guido: Hollywood practice school. Done, but done really with a lot of money and with the technology that was evolving in 1989, nineties.

>> Rob: And the other big thing is the makeup.

>> Guido: Oh, my gosh.

>> Rob: Almost every actor except for a couple of the leads are in this transformative makeup. It took hours, hours for them to do. Yeah, and as we kind of mentioned, the film had a marketing bonanza that would really need its own episode. But it even helped give us Madonna's vogue, of all things came out of Dick Tracy. Not in the movie, of course, but. And when it was released in June, June 1990, it was actually Disney's biggest opening of all time, which is crazy to think like that was that huge. It made a worldwide gross of $162 million. But when all was said and done, it cost about $100 million to make the movie. And since Batman was such a huge hit, this film was actually seen as a bit of a flop, at least when it first came out. It did do pretty well critically, though. It was nominated for seven oscars. It won three, including Beth Song, which gave us Madonna's classic, iconic performance at the oscars. And to this day, through various legal loopholes, which we'll also take way too long to talk about here. But you can look them up online. 87 year old Warren Beatty continues to control the screen rights and as recently as 2023, has actually talked about doing a sequel.

>> Guido: And he's talking about doing a sequel in character as Dick Tracy. Yes, because, probably to hold on to the rights, he did that very strange TCM interview as Dick Tracy. And that is totally viewable online and well worth everyone's.

>> Rob: It's cringeworthy and also bizarre. Bizarre. I mean, he's an interesting and unusual mandeh. Yeah, maybe one day we'll get an actual Dick Tracy sequel. But until then, why don't we talk a little bit about Dick Tracy, the movie from June 1990 from Touchstone Pictures, silver screen partners and Mulholland productions, and.

>> Guido: As mentioned, written by Jim Cash, Jack Epps Junior, and produced and directed by Warren Beatty. So why do you, why did you love it then? Why do you like what you like about it? Now? Let's start with that question. Since you both are quite fond of this. Let's start there.

>> Rob: Well, like I kind of mentioned at the top, I think it's one of those movies that just has, it has everything in it. It is kind of in that way, I think a proto Marvel movie, because.

>> Guido: I think there's a lot of things that are proto MCU.

>> Rob: It's got the humor, it's got romance aspect. It's got like a little kid character. So it's got like some cutesy things. It has like these really grotesque villains. The violence is actually probably much higher than in any Marvel movie, really.

>> Guido: Human beings are killed on screen. Yeah.

>> Rob: and also, I would say, like, while Marvel movies have a lot of romance, this movie actually has a lot of sex for a movie intended for mostly through the Madonna character as well. But it's just got all of this stuff and it's such, like, crap. And it also just starts right away. This is not an origin story movie. It literally, like, begins with, like, Dick Tracy getting his hat and there is a murder of these, of these gangsters. And, like, he's setting out to find out who did it. We just kind of jump in and we'll talk more about with today's comic, too. But I just love that there's not a lot of set up there. It's just go, go, go. And I think even as an adult now revisiting that, I kind of feel that momentum of the movie. What do you think? What, what gripped you as a kid and now Madonna.

>> Guido: But trying to dig a little deeper, especially rewatching it as an adult, which I probably only went through, like, ten years of not watching it. I watched it a lot, I think when, certainly on vhs, through the nineties, I watched it. I probably watched it when it finally came out on dvd and then I didn't watch it for a while. But maybe starting two, three years ago, I rewatched it a handful of times as I would watch, like, Madonna's oeuvre and go through a Madonna mood. And I think I appreciate exactly what you're saying in terms of it having a little bit of everything and being a really literal comic book adaptation. I think it is such a cool achievement and I think it's fun and interesting and really, really gorgeous to watch.

>> Rob: Yeah.

>> Guido: And where it's like, Batmandhae, frankly, in some ways, I think it's superior to Batman. I think where it's not superior to Batman is the story. And that's why, like, Batman is a better movie. And especially if you look at the first two, Batman, I think, are much better sort of arc and there's a world going on. This doesn't have that depth to it, but in terms of everything, it brings, like you said, with the action and the different dynamics and the visual execution of it and the score and the script with the funny lines and all of this, I just think, wow, this is phenomenal. now, having said that, like, when I watch it, there's sometimes where I feel like the pacing is slightly off and there's sometimes where, like, it starts to lull and I'm like, why am I waiting for the next scene? And, you know, like, it's imperfect, but I think it's just fantastic. And I'm, like you said, astounded. It hasn't been sort of reclaimed as a really, either incredible piece of nostalgia for people your age, my age, slightly older, slightly younger, or as a proto MCU, like, comic book thing. I don't get why. Because it has everything. The performances. The performances. You didn't even talk about the performances. Yeah, but the performances. I mean, you and I were watching it just recently for this episode. Ah. And I just watched it maybe a few months ago. But Glenn Headley is amazing. She is absolutely, I think, my favorite performance in that movie, and that is above Madonna. I am obsessed with Madonna. M. But everyone in that movie is so good. They are playing, they are up to eleven, but not in a way where you're like, wait, what movie are you in? In part because it's so hyper stylized. You have that flexibility where, like, Al Pacino couldn't be delivering this completely over the top performance, and it fits in this world. Madonna can be delivering this, like, almost campy performance, and it fits in the world. That's why I think it's so good and so fun. And you and I both love it because it's, like, almost like camp without being camp.

>> Rob: Mm Yeah. And. And I think it's interesting when you talk about Batman, I think one thing that Batman does have over this movie in terms of, like, the performances and characters is, I think Michael Keated and Bruce as a character versus Dick Tracy, because Dick Tracy and Warren Beatty's great. I think, like, he definitely does the role perfectly on it, but it is, I think, the point of Dick Tracy, and even when you're, when we've been reading the comics and the strips as well, he is a bit of a, no personality. Like, that's the point of the character a little bit.

>> Guido: Right. He's the straightforward moral compass, and everyone around him is like the weirdo or the temptress or the bad guy or the morally grey questionable one or the desperate one, or, you know, like, they. Yeah. So he is the flat one in the middle in that way.

>> Rob: It's actually like the Marvel movies have actually inversed it a lot because the Marvel movies have invested so much in their heroes, where the heroes are super dynamic personalities, but then you look at the villains, and it's like, the villain just doesn't have often a lot of personality in some of the Marvel movies, like Doctor Strange or something like that, like, the villains are a little lacking here. Of course, the movie is all about the villains, even the people who are not on the screen that much because.

>> Guido: Of just the way they're like, 10 seconds.

>> Rob: Yeah, they are amazing.

>> Guido: I want to own their action figure. You know, you're like, this person is so interesting looking, and I want to know who they are. And that's what was fun about.

>> Rob: There's like that famous, like, screenwriting book, save the cat, where it's like, to establish a hero, you have to save the cat. You have to have that hero save the cat. And in, like, the opening scene of this movie, the rodent, who only, one of the gangsters says almost no line, just, like, takes a cat and just, like, chucks it against the wall. So it's like the inverse. It's like, you know, the way to prove a villain is like, he just takes a cat and just, like, throws it away.

>> Guido: Yeah. So I think it's a great world because it's, mostly for its visual style, but characters, everything. I think this movie is a great world to play in. And that's why we decided to cover the comic that we're about to talk about.

>> Rob: Well, let us, dive into a little world that's known as exploring multiversity.

>> Guido: I am your guide through these vast new realities.

>> Rob: Follow me and ponder the question, what if? And today we are talking about Dick Tracy. Issues one through three from Disney comics from 1990. They are entitled Big City Blues, Dick Tracy versus the Underworld, and Dick the movie. It was later retitled as the True Hearts and Tommy Gun trilogy, originally published as newsstand floppies or Prestige Square bound. All extra length books.

>> Guido: So issues one and two, which were the original stories here, are written by John Francis Moore. Issue three, which is the very direct script adaptation, is written by Len Wein. All the art, colors and letters are from Kyle Baker. More on all of them in a moment. The editor is Bob Foster. So John Francis Moore, who writes the original prequels one and two, is an acclaimed writer. At this point in 1990, though, he had only just gotten started, had taken over Howard taken's american flag, and that's about it. So does Dick Tracy here. And then went on after that to do a bunch of long runs at Marvel with Doom. 2099, X Men 2099 created that X Factor, X Force plus for DC Superboy, a bunch of elseworlds, and some various bat titles. He wrote tv, including the Flash tv series, but he actually hasn't done much in the last 20 years. And I couldn't find out more about his life or if he just chose to retire. So those are the first two issues. The third issue, which is the script adaptation, is Len Wein. At this point, 1990, he is a complete legend. He'd already long ago co created Swamp Thing and Wolverine, wrote X Men, edited the Watchmen series, and just did tons more. That made him already a legend and icon from the 1970s through to today. It's still working. or was still working until he passed away.

>> Rob: I was gonna say.

>> Guido: Wait a second. What do you know over the recent decades? Yeah. And, so really interesting choices there. And I want to talk a little bit about that. But then the art on all three issues is Kyle Baker. So Kyle Baker is massively award winning at this point. Very distinctive artist who started out assisting in the Marvel office inking and then starting to do his own art in the mid eighties at, Marvel and independence. He did the Howard the duck movie adaptation. A few years before this, he did the shadow book at DC, which probably led directly into this because they look very similar. But this same year, 1990, he won an Eisner Award for his graphic novel, why I hate Saturn. So pretty cool that the same year he's doing this Dick Tracy work, he wins an Eisner, one of the most, if not the most prestigious comic award there is. He then started doing more cartoons and caricatures for magazines and newspapers, started doing Hollywood animation, did a DC elseworlds one shot. He worked on Marvel's Truth mini series, which is the Isaiah Bradley Captain America.

>> Rob: Oh, yeah, I can see that.

>> Guido: The escapists and the cavalier and clay comic book adaptations from the Michael Chabon book and founded his own comic company. So really a legend. And quickly, before we get into what these are and our thoughts about them on the publisher. So these are one of just about half a dozen books, all from the same era of 1990, that are published as Walt Disney comics. And so they, it was actually adaptations of Duck Tales, Roger Rabbit, the Little Mermaid, and then a handful of other, like, Chip and Dale rescue rangers that they published. And that's it. So it was clearly meant to be some sort of, like, multimedia adaptation. Didn't, didn't explode, and they didn't continue with it. It's just really fascinating because, of course, Disney's history as a comic company is now that it is Marvel and owns Marvel. So I'm always interested to see sort of how they dealt with comics before moving into Marvel. And still today, because they still license stuff out actually, to other comic publishers. But anyway, so the publisher of this is just interesting, unique project. So what are these?

>> Rob: Well, we won't offer a true plot summary, but the first two issues feature the characters from the films, plus some, more characters from the, strips as well. And it's an immediate prequel, so shows us the backstory on Tess's family on Breathless's arrival to the city and the rise in the club Ritz and Big boy's ascension from henchmen to full fledged moth. Exactly.

>> Guido: So let's start with the question. Can we start with the question or should we end with a question?

>> Rob: no, let's start with the question.

>> Guido: So our question is, good framing. Remind our audience of our question because we had to come up with it, and it was a little harder today.

>> Rob: It was a tricky one. Yeah. So our question was, what if Dick Tracy, the movie was instead in HBO miniseries but in comic book form.

>> Guido: Yeah. So here's what I think about that question.

>> Rob: I'll start.

>> Guido: I think, what we were saying about the movie, all the good stuff in the movie, this almost just feels like an extension of it. Like, I think that John Francis Moore. And we'll talk about Kyle Baker's art completely separately because it is so distinct and is something else. But I think what John Francis Moore does in the writing is he just recreates the movie, truly the movie experience. It's not redundant or repetitive at all as a prequel. So, like, it's so interesting to me. He's playing with the same exact dynamics in the world, the mob and the corruption. And he's really got the spirit of the movie and ultimately the comic strip. But he's using characters either that we know. So, like, we're getting a little bit of backstory on numbers and 88 keys, and we're getting a little bit of those pieces in this. And then we're getting the people, like you said, like the rodent, the. The characters, or as I mentioned, big Frost, though he's called Jack Frost once in here, these people, or Texie Kathryn O'Hara in the movie. You're getting a whole story of these people who either aren't in the movie or have almost nothing to do in the movie, but are, part of that world. But it feels part of the movie. Right. You could completely see this being filmed. I could easily. Now, do I want a Tracy prequel? No. This easily could have been turned into a Dick Tracy prequel. Like, it just works. It's. It's in the world. It's of the tone. It mixes the violence and the people dying with the, sort of comic booky lightness. You've got the kid and his origin story when he's living in the. With, like, the Fagan character and then Steve the tramp. Yes, that's right. I know. I remember he had some weird name from the action figure. Steve.

>> Rob: It's just Steve.

>> Guido: So I just think. I think it really does take the movie and just turn it into an HBO miniseries.

>> Rob: Yeah, it's. It's funny. It almost reminds me, I wonder if this is what they're gonna be doing with the new Penguin HBO miniseries that's gonna be out, coming out, where it's taking, like, that character in, like, the gang world and, like.

>> Guido: Cause is it a prequel or a sequel?

>> Rob: I don't. I'm m not sure. I'm not sure, but I think it's.

>> Guido: A prequel that it's exactly that. Right. That is totally this project, because. Yeah, I can easily have seen even the way the writing and now mixing with the art works, the pacing, like, it feels like almost episodes, like, oh, yeah. Not just the issues. The issues feel like definitely distinct episodes, but even within the issue, the way it cuts and moves, they were clearly going for something that felt just like the movie experience, which is interesting because they probably didn't see the movie when they did this. They were probably working off of a script, and, maybe they could have seen a work print, but this stuff had to be in production well before the movie got released because they came out together, so.

>> Rob: And why. Why do you think this was created in this way? Not the strict adaptation, of course, but, like, the first.

>> Guido: Yeah, well, I think when we. Is a clue for us, because you're not. I don't know why you'd hire Len Wein to do an adapt to do the third issue of a trilogy. I. There's something about that that doesn't make.

>> Rob: Sense, in which a lot of the text is just verbatim from the film, too. And it's not like he's even. He's not even adding or subtracting a substantial amount.

>> Guido: No, it is literal. It's literal. So my guess, and I don't know, because there's not a ton of information about this series. It's actually even sort of kind of hard to track down anything about this series. But my guess based on that is that there was a project in development that was an adaptation of the movie. And somewhere along the way, maybe it's the editor, Bob Foster, or maybe it's something with pulling Kyle Baker in, though he's not super famous at this point, but his star is rising somewhere along the way, they said, you know what? We don't want this just to be an adaptation. We want a bigger story here. And then they brought John Francis Moore in and said, hey, let's do a prequel series. And we'll just now tack on Len Weins script, but we'll have Kyle Baker do the art for all three. So it's of a piece. It's cool that that is the case. It's cool that, like, you can read this trilogy and not watch the movie and get the complete story.

>> Rob: Mm

>> Guido: Yeah. We covered the Mad Max Fury Road prequel not that long ago, and you were commenting as we read this that it's similar in that it's really immediate.

>> Rob: It's.

>> Guido: It's. Takes place just before the movie does, but that then doesn't have a movie adaptation. So you'd have to watch the movie to complete the story, whereas this, you. You don't have to. And that's pretty cool.

>> Rob: Yeah, that. That is definitely. I would definitely say to our listeners to go back and listen to that recent episode we did on Mad Max and Furiosa, because this really reminded me so much of a similar approach to that, to the point where I was like, I wonder if they do. Who the folks that did that Mad Max Fury road comic even read this? Probably not. I don't know if George Miller. Well, George Miller might be a big Warren Beatty fan, so maybe they're both probably very controlling directors, I would imagine, with a very clear vision. But it is very similar in that it is directly, like, immediately before the movie, and that there are not to the same extent. I think in the Mad Max, there are elements where you're watching the movie. You actually don't know what would be happening unless you read the comic. And you. You can, of course, enjoy the movie without reading the comic, as we had for many years. But I think there are parts here, especially with Tess's story, because in this comic, Tess's father, he's tricked into working for lips manless, and he's killed by, pruneface's men. And I think it also informs Tess's motivations in the film, where she really wants Dick to get a desk job, which is such a big arc of the film. And, of course, you don't need to know that her father, she just wants the man she loves to be safe. But knowing that her father was killed out because of these gang wars only forms our character more right before the movie.

>> Guido: It's all pretty close in time. Yeah.

>> Rob: And I think it also informs that. The other character we get a lot from is breathless. We get breathless, Madonna's character arriving in the city and kind of working her way up. And when the movie starts, she is Lips's, dame. But then, like, we don't really know why that, why that is. We can kind of see in the movie that she then gravitates towards Dick because of whatever, like, he represents. And I think we can see, oh, she doesn't want to be in this world of the gangster. She wants to get out of it in some way. But we also see her motivation, her drive, which is then such a big part of the movie in that she's actually pulling the strings in many ways.

>> Guido: Well, and that's what's interesting too. And I actually, I would be all for a breathless Mahoney series of any kind of. But what's interesting about this, and I actually would like more, if I have any net, anything negative to say about this, it's that I think it just, it actually could have been a little longer, which, it's a long book. All three issues make up a full 150 page graphic novel. But I actually could have used a little more because you, you move quickly through things. And breathless is one of those cases because in the movie, and I'm, okay, I'm gonna spoil a 30, four year old movie. But she turns out to be the blank. And she is like the arch villain of all of this because she is enacting a plan that will take down big boy and give her control behind the scenes. Because, of course, a woman can't have too much control. Catherine Harrah has a little bit, but that's because she runs a brothel. So anyway, she has this whole plan and you have to, in the movie, sort of believe that she's willing to enact this plan, which maybe is a little stretched because we don't know her to have any questionable morals. But in this, you get to see that, like, she kills someone who attacks her on the street and she sort of starts to. She then threatens, the, or gets threatened, but then kicks out the other woman who's working for lips. Manless. Like, you see the way she's moving into the world and it then makes a lot of sense that, like, oh, yeah, she is someone who, like, even if she's more an antihero than an actual villain, she's willing to go there and do it. And so it's cool to see that John Francis Moore is like, seeding things that only pay off in the movie or the issue of this.

>> Rob: It's funny. You're just making me think now, we just saw Maxine, the final movie of that trilogy, of that horror trilogy and breathless and Maxine. There's definitely some shared DNA there. And, like, that character who will just. They just want to be famous. They want to succeed. They're also coming from nothing and really are going to do whatever they can, even if it does mean potentially killing someone. But they're not also evil characters either.

>> Guido: Well, yeah, it's that slight shift in storytelling, too, where they're. I guess it's that they have a little bit of agency, because there. It's not that they're being corrupted by the world they're experiencing, but the world they're experiencing makes them, like, dark and willing to do things that we would normally see as immoral, because they're encountering this whole immoral world around them, which is, you know, the metaphor for patriarchy, of course. So, anyway, yeah, I think that works really well. All right, so let's move into the art, because we're running out of time, and we have a whole third segment to go into. But I want to talk about Kyle Baker's art here, which, let's start with what you thought, because it's such a distinct style, and, sometimes you love those things that are really distinct and look very different, and sometimes you don't. So I'm curious where you landed on Kyle Baker's art here.

>> Rob: I really liked it a lot. I think one of the reasons why it works is because the nature of Dick Tracy and the grotesqueness of the characters and the heightened world that it's. So while it's very different style than the original Chester Gould art, and probably the other artists that came after him to replicate him to some extent, I think it fits in with the ethos of what Gould was trying to do and what Beatty's trying to do in the m movie, which is to really embrace the comic book exaggeratedness of it all, especially with the villainous characters.

>> Guido: Yeah, well, that's where I think it works so well. I think it works great here. I'm. I'm not a big fan of this, art style on my superhero comics. I'm totally for it in non superhero comics here. I think it's perfectly matched because it's his lines and his coloring, too. He's. I think he's evoking the comic strip, actually quite a bit of bit. I get what you mean that it's not literal, but I just felt like in his panel breakdowns, and the hard lines he's using and the sketchy elements. At times, it felt so much like he's taking the comic strip and, like, running it through a blender of his style and making it a little bit more dark and adult in some ways, still keeping something that it looks like a comic strip in some ways. So I thought that was really cool because it did remind me of what Beatty's doing on screen in the movie. Again, even though this is in production, certainly before the movie's released, it's cool that it's another example of an artist trying to take the original and make it, evoke that, but make it their own. And I think it's cool that it's. It's another example of doing that. And the third issue feels rushed. But, yeah, it does be something with the weirdness it does.

>> Rob: I think they definitely invested so much more in the first two issues in the storytelling than the third one. And it's interesting. I just also give Disney a lot of credit or whoever else was involved in decisions, because if you think I mentioned that Batmandhead, the movie adaptation, which I read so many times, that it's barely existing as an actual comic book anymore, and everyone looks exactly like the artist, I don't know who did the art there, but they made sure to make Jack look like Jack and Bruce look like Michael Keaton. They all look like that. And even the Mad Mex comic we just talked about does the same thing. I think it takes, actually, a lot of gumption to say, okay, we've got all these famous people in the movie. We've got Madonna the movie, and we're gonna not make Madonna look like Madonna in the comic book. Like, is it actually a very bold approach to do it that way and Kyle Baker's art?

>> Guido: to be honest, I don't know why. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe this. There are exceptions, but it feels like it's not kid art. It's not. Yeah, that would be for kids. It's why I don't think I. I own these, but I don't think I loved them when I was a kid. I think it's because it's. It's a little strange, the art. And so, yeah, it's not even being produced for, like, the target audience of the movie. It's almost feels like it's being made for someone else. I mean, like, the movie, people die in the comic. Oh, my gosh, it's violent.

>> Rob: It's interesting when you compare and you can't really help but do it as people have been doing forever. And as you mentioned, Batman in this movie. And while Batman, I think, has the reputation for being a darken movie, because it looks visually dark. And yes, there's some stuff with the Joker and stuff that is actually dark. for most cases, like, people get knocked out and people aren't just being killed Willy nilly, but if you watch the Dick Tracy movie, people are just, or read this comic, people are just being gunned down all over the place. And it's not just the villains that are being shot. It's, like, innocent people that are just being killed all over the place in it. So it's. It's interesting that you say that. It's like, even though this was obviously intended or watched by full audiences and then marketed after the fact to kids, there's something both about the art and then about the movie itself that is like, I don't know, was it really for kids? And, certainly kids would be, like, probably scared by how, like, influence and pruneface and littleface and all these other characters actually look on screen.

>> Guido: Yeah. Yeah. So it's an interesting project. Real quick, before we move into a very abbreviated final segment in our extended Dick Tracy episode, do you want to go back to this earth? Do you want more? And let's say, John Francis Moore, Kyle Baker, specifically, like, do you want more from the movie universe by these creators?

>> Rob: Yeah, I think, not that we're ever going to get it, but I do think I would certainly take more. As you said, I think there's the one. This is, this world of Dick Tracy has so many characters. I think one of the reasons to even do this to, issue mini m series ahead of time is just get more of those Gould characters like bbis and the mole, who are not in the movie. Like, get them into some kind of comic book form. And that's just touching the surface. As you said, he worked on the comic for 46 years, just him alone. So there are so many other characters to take a look at. And I think it could perfectly fit with melding the Beatty world and the Kyle Baker world and, all of it together into comic book form.

>> Guido: Yeah, I agree. I wouldn't mind, like, a sequel. I wouldn't mind a spin off. I wouldn't mind, you know, again, a whole breathless series or, or a literal sequel, which would not have breathless because she dies. But, yeah, I think it's great. And I would love more. It's out of print, like, now. It was licensed ish at the time. I mean, it's such a weird property that it is out of print. I was glad that they collected it at the time. The trade paperback is contemporary. It's 91, maybe. So. Shortly after the three issues came out, they did collect them. It's not been reprinted since then, but it's somewhat accessible because, first of all, the original issues are not that valuable. There are the newsstand editions and the prestige editions, square bound bookstop editions, and then there's the collection. So it's out there, but it's not in print. And I doubt they'd ever go back to it. And now the license has moved on, which leads us into our final segment.

>> Rob: I want pondering possibilities now. Will the future you describe be averted? Diverted, averted. Can't do my full owl or I'll blow up my microphone there. There's a lot of Al Pacino yelling.

>> Guido: There's a lot of spitting, too, if you really want to capture that essence. And so please, please don't do it.

>> Rob: So, Guido, what are we talking about for our, pondering possibilities? It has to be the Warren Beatty TCM video, right, that, he made.

>> Guido: We could easily have done that. It's not that. It's not the Allred series, although maybe we'll go back over that at some point. there are lots of. Not lots of. There are a handful of future installations for Dick Tracy we could have chosen. But because we are right now in a fresh retelling of a new universe in an ongoing comic, we decided that we will cover the current comic, which has barely just begun. We got to meet Alex Segura at Earthworld Comics in Albany on Free Comic Book Day, which was really fun. I've been a fan of his for a few years now, and I'm glad that he and Michael Morrissey are doing this. So let's get into the comics and just spend a few minutes. We won't spoil them for people who aren't reading them. We'll only spoil the initial concept and talk a little bit about our first impressions.

>> Rob: Yeah. So this is Dick Tracy issues one and two from Mad Cave Comics from April and May 2024. Issue number three is out very soon, in July 2024, when this is being released. And it was solicited through issue number five so far.

>> Guido: But it's ongoing. Yeah.

>> Rob: Yeah, so far.

>> Guido: Maybe we'll know it's gonna last at least until five.

>> Rob: Yeah. Hopefully we get lots more of it, because, as we said, there's lots of villains to touch on.

>> Guido: Yes, there are. And so this is written by Alex Segura and Michael Morrissey. Art is by Geraldo Borges. And colors are, by Mark Engelart. Letters are Jim Campbell. It is edited by Chantelle Amy Osmond. So this book from Mad Cave is, again, an ongoing. That sort of reboots. But let's talk, I mean, I'll add one thing for our listeners, because it's sort of the premise. It shifts the time to the late forties. So all the other Dick Tracy stories that we covered today take place in the thirties, contemporary to when the strip started. This book shifts them to the late forties. And I think they do that for some really obvious reasons, starting in the second issue, especially to make, some background for the characters, I think. But what did you think overall on these two issues and the start of this new world?

>> Rob: Overall, I think it really taps in very well to the world of Dick Tracy into the Chester Gould world. I think the all red ones are, have a little bit more of, like a Sci-Fi kind of element to them. And here I think they really went back to, even though they updated the time a little bit, they really went back to the original, kind of gritty, violent world that we see in the original comic strip. And then also in the Beatty movie and the tie in comics, though, I.

>> Guido: Think what this does, I think, and I haven't read the black thorn issues, any of them, from the eighties. So I can't say no comic has ever done this. But nothing that we've seen yet has translated the world of Dick Tracy into a at least modern comic book form without evoking the strip or without pulling from the movie universe. So this does that really well. It feels like a comic. I think you could probably. I don't know for sure, but you could probably have no exposure to the Dick Tracy universe. But if you're someone who likes crime comics, let's say you could probably pick this up and enjoy it. The art reads like a comic. The pacing, the panel breakdowns, the dialogue mixed with the narration, it really is translated into comic book form with the essence of the world and the characters of the world. But it's not doing that, like, homage to comic strip thing that I think Kyle Baker was doing and that some of the other iterations were doing, which I think worked totally well on its own. But this is sort of very fresh because it feels different. Even though it's the same world, everything about it feels a little different.

>> Rob: Yeah. And I think one of the things, without giving, like, too much spoilers, is we were talking about earlier, the character of Dick actually kind of being this blank slate character and everyone revolving around him. And I think one of the things that the authors are trying to do here is give the character a bit more of a depth in backstory in terms of being a veteran. And I think we're only kind of touching the surface in these first couple of issues as to what that will be. It was kind of giving, reminded me a bit of like, Don Draper and how they use the flashbacks in, in Mad Men as well. It's like to give, tell us who this character is and how we got to this point, and I think we'll only see more of that. And I think the other thing, I think that's very interesting here, and obviously, we haven't read some of the comic strips going back to the thirties, but Dick is established, but we actually are kind of introduced to Tess. And Dick and Tess are not a couple here. And I think, like, that's a big contrast to the Beatty movie or those tie in comics where they've already been a couple for a long time. And now we're kind of getting introduced to her as a character, and she's like much more of this Lois Lane type character that gave her a lot more agency in that character. Even though Glenn Headley is amazing in the movie here, she's, you know, she doesn't work at a flower shop. She is like that hard bitten kind of journalist character that we kind of know. So I think that also will help Dick as a character because it will give him a little bit more to play off of also.

>> Guido: Yeah. And I'll be curious. It's so interesting, because I'm not a fan and steeped in the lore of the original strip, it's hard not to feel like Alex and Michael have to be being influenced by the 1990 movie.

>> Rob: Oh, yeah.

>> Guido: Even talked to Alex a little bit about the movie, and you were wearing your movie t shirt when we talked to him. But so it's fun because while they're not doing any sort of adaptation of that world, there's stuff like mumbles is in this. And it's hard not to imagine that Dustin Hoffman's, portrayal of Mumbles is what's playing out while you're encountering this character.

>> Rob: Oh, totally.

>> Guido: And that's actually, I'd say, a featured character. And we're just now meeting about to meet Flattop, which is not a spoiler. He's on the COVID So it just feels like there's such a deep bench of characters, but they're pulling the ones out from that are also featured in the movie. If we see breathless or the blank come up, I'm gonna be love it. But it's obvious that these are people who grew up, as we did with this movie in mind, and that is in the background without this being a literal translation of them.

>> Rob: Yeah. While Flattop, I think, was one of Tracy's biggest villains mumbles, I have to think, like, yes, he was in the comics, trip, but were people really gonna be going back to that character if it wasn't for the movie in which Dustin Hoffman is so fun and played such a big role, even, like, recording.

>> Guido: Him and trying to decode it, which happens in the comics, but it happens differently than it does in the movies. is a cool part of it too. So, yeah, I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to more and think it's a really successful translation of this world.

>> Rob: Yeah. If I only had one criticism and not really criticism, I think it's just a stylistic choice. The art here is done more in the realism style than the super grotesque style. So where we.

>> Guido: Oh, see, I liked it a lot.

>> Rob: Oh, see, I wish it had gone a little further.

>> Guido: And see, I think it. I think it fits with translating this into a, modern comic.

>> Rob: I agree. I think. I agree that. That it definitely, it fits into a more realistic world, which they're doing here in general. But I think, like, when we see prune face, for example, like, he just looks like a wrinkly older man, rather than in, like, the movie and others. And even in the original ghouls, where it's, like, he's, like, deformed in some way. Yeah, exactly. So I think that was definitely, it makes sense for the adaptation here. Just, like, my personal love of how crazy those characters look in the other things, it was like, I wish they looked a little bit more heightened. But also, we're only in issue two, so maybe, like, we'll get there as we introduce to more characters that are, like, the mole, who. It's like, I don't know how you're gonna be able to depict that character without, like, going full throttle into, like, that world.

>> Guido: Well, there is a, there is a groundedness without it being, I think, a misguided groundedness. Like, we could say some of the early X Men movie decisions were to this because there was a moment when we're in, when a character is going to talk to lips Manilis in a. In a big dramatic reveal in the second issue, and he's, like, raking, leaves on his lawn. And I was like, wow, this also has to be inspired by the Sopranos. There has to be sopranos in here, which is a cool thing, like, to imagine. All right, what if we throw that in the blender now that we're pushing Dick Tracy through and see what it would be like if it was a little bit like the Sopranos? These really interesting, quirky characters living in a world of organized crime. So that's why I'm into it. Yeah. So we will keep reading and perhaps we'll revisit some segment of the Dick Tracy universe one day. But for now, dear watchers, that is a wrap. Thank you for listening. I have been Guido Mahoney and I've been Curly Rob. The reading list watching list today is in the show notes. You can find us on social media. Please find us on threads or Instagram or Facebook eerwatchers, and leave us a.

>> Rob: Five star review wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll be back soon with another trip through the multiverse.

>> Guido: In the meantime, in the words vuatu, keep pondering the possibilities.

>> Rob: And I always get my bandaid.