“So, wanna do a crossover arc where Dick Tracy visits Westview?”
“That’s sounds swell, BanTom! I’m definitely on board!”
“Great! There are only two conditions. It HAS to center entirely around comic books AND it has to be as uneventful as possible. Hello? Hello? Anyone there?”
And today the big Dick Tracy-FW crossover arc reaches its nadir, as our two Very Special Guest Stars are reduced to TALKING ABOUT a (wait for it) comic book auction. They’re not involved in any way, they’re not participating in any way nor are they vested in the outcome. Nope, they’re just discussing it and lamenting the fact that they can’t read them anymore because (of course) Dick and Sam are “good” comic book readers who are only interested in the wonderful old vintage stories and artwork, not the investment potential and yadda yadda yadda. Somewhere along the line this premise became the absolute pinnacle of hilarity in BanTom’s mind, a mind that becomes a little more troubling with each passing day.
Obviously I’ve been following the DT strip this week and, well, the lack of any kind of actual crossover action is odd, although not unexpected. It’s almost as if they were all excited about it for a few minutes then totally lost interest, which any SoSF guest host (as well as FW readers) can totally relate to fully. It probably would have been best left to one Sunday strip, although with those six or seven whole panels to fill, who knows?
Son of Stuck Funky 
Not a bad drawing of Inspector Gadget in panel three, though the coat color is wrong.
Seriously, this endless focus on comic books has crossed the line from fandom into full-blown psychosis. I’m really starting to think that Tom Batiuk needs professional help.
I kind of wonder of Batiuk thinks that mentioning comics all the damn time will boost comic book sales, which he’ll then take credit for and try to get DC or Marvel to hire him out of gratitude.
The Westview Smirk is even more unsettling on Dick Tracy’s geometric jaw.
It looks like Dick and Sam crossed over from A3G. Nice melting facial features.
Seriously, why does Batty feel the need to mute their colors? I gotta admit I think I only read this strip here and for the comments. The only characters I liked are Kili the cat and Buddy the dog… and we’ll never see Kili again.
BC: Seriously. He’s always been obsessed with his idealized vision of comic books but lately everything centers around them in some way. Everyone’s running off to buy them or sell them or talk about them or access collections of them…it’s endless. Just typing the words “comic books” is driving me insane but if you’re gonna discuss FW there’s just no way around it. It’s so bad I’d welcome an arc about pizza just to break the monotony a little bit. I mean I assume he’ll be resuming the Mason Jarr arc after this debacle mercifully ends and we all know that one will feature lots and lots of comic f*cking books too, imaginary ones TB made up, no less. It’s deranged.
Meanwhile, non-melting Dick Tracy is complaining about a bank robbery in a sleepy bedroom community of Cleveland AND telling a bank robber that police officers are required by law to assist local authorities in time of crisis, jurisdiction be damned. Again, this means that he’s doing things in HIS strip and not just spinning his wheels yapping about funny books and eating bad pizza.
You do NOT Funk-itize Dick Tracy! Ugh, who let this guy have a comic strip?! FW should have ended eons ago.
@ED:
Seriously, before the time jump the strip was actually pretty good at having a variety of storylines go on at the same time and actually develop and resolve. Cindy and Funky split up, Funky became an alcoholic and sobered up. Stuff happened. If Batiuk wrote then the way he does now, Funky would be lying drunk in a different gutter every Sunday for years, and Lisa would be entering her second decade of chemo for stage five cancer.
On a related note, I can’t believe Batiuk let the DT crew describe Westview as the town “where nothing ever happens”. I don’t think I’ve heard a more accurate description.
Batom®, you do realize that Dick Locher retired back in 2011, right? You don’t have to trace his work.
Spacemanspiff85: “On a related note, I can’t believe Batiuk let the DT crew describe Westview as the town “where nothing ever happens”. I don’t think I’ve heard a more accurate description.”
Not everyone in Westview gets cancer and suffers ridiculous amounts of soul-crushing despair.
“Looks like a phone bidder is about to walk off with those comics, Sam. Get your gun.”
So Sam has been working his way through the lovely old vintage comic books, apparently in utter ignorance of any “bagged and slabbed” status – or whatever terms the comics book cognoscenti use to described preserved value. This knowledge could send Chester the Molester into paroxysms of fear and loathing at the pitiful fools that think comic books are for reading, while Mailman and Bat Boy weep silently.
Meanwhile, over in the Dick Tracy strip, the authentic Dick and Sam are foiling a bank robbery in Westview, promising the first genuine gunplay in Westview, an event long overdue in a town where Les lives, thrives and survives (I do not recall where Jessica’s father, John Darling was gunned down).
In any event, today’s Dick Winkerbean aggregate finally answers the question: How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?
The day after The Jumbler strip in DT – cited in the Monday thread – Sam was seen in the rubble reading some of the comic books, so it makes some sense. But you’d have to have to be an expert reader of DT post-2011 in order to get that. (And that defeats the purpose of the apparent joke.)
Is Batom® responsible for coloring the daily strips, or is it someone from King Features/North American? I’m tending to think it’s the latter, thus I won’t give Batom® that much grief for the depressively muted colors of Dick and Sam. (And Batom® did a more faithful representation of drawing DT than John Rose did with his “Barney Google-Snuffy Smith” cameo last October, which isn’t saying much.)
@sgtsaunders: From what I remember, My Father John Darling who was murdered just got laid off from Channel 1 in Cleveland along with his entire support staff, and that’s when Pete “Plantman” Moss shot him.
His last words had nothing to do with Jessica Darling (who is the daughter of My Father John Darling who was murdered) but instead was him moping about he’d never be a national figure. The last panel of the pentiultimate strip depicted Peter Jennings leading off “World News Tonight” with the murder of My Father John Darling who was murdered.
Here’s said installment of John Darling’s murder-on-panel from the archives of the Elyria Chronicle Telegram:
Wow! Staton & Curtis are telling a story during this cross over and TB has no story to tell. The upside is that I have now have positive proof that TB can’t draw anything that’s not on his model sheet and he sometimes has problems doing that.
This is like having a cross over with Batman all he does is make a sandwich. And per this strip someone one has bid more than the $50,000 from yesterday which is even more craziness. .
What truly bugs me about this comic book fixation, is not that it’s comic books per say but the books that are being idolized are the 60’s silver age DC comics and they are really not the class of the field – one of the things that made the Marvel comics of the era (Fantastic Four, Spiderman, et al) was their comparison with the silliness of the DC stories.
Once again Dick and Sam are in two different places on the same day, showing that this may be the most poorly coordinated crossover in the history of crossovers. But with L’Auteur Glorieux involved, should I really be surprised?
Furthermore, I can’t believe that L’Auteur Glorieux agreed to this. Comparing these two strips side-by-side, depicting the same characters, shows just what a lousy artist he really is.
Enjoying the snark today. This crossover is giving me head cramps, trying to figure out if Dick Tracy is taking place in the future, or if he’s in the present bringing justice and then returning years later with Sam, who decides to finally return to this hellish place where nothing happens (sorry, TFH, nothing ever happening sounds like Hell to me).
My prediction: Mason Jarr the Actor is the secret buyer, who will gift the comic books to Westview in gratitude for staying at Chez Less. Mason Jarr the Actor will then win several Academy Awards and give one to Less, who for some reason will be a last minute writer/director of Two-buck Jones. Less will whine incessantly.
As a b-movie fan, I do appreciate that the villain in Dick Tracy is named Bronson Canyon. I suppose I should post my appreciation in a Dick Tracy forum, since Tom Batiuk can take none of the credit for this.
Am I the only one who thinks the “phone bidder” mentioned isn’t just some sort of throwaway line?
Ironically, the winning bid for the comic collection was phoned in, just like TB phoned in the strip this week.
@Nathan Obral: Very morbid and creepy stuff. Not to mention immature.
You know, that’s the same exact gun that was shown when Les was dreaming about the kill fee. Apparently, Batom thought we wouldn’t notice.