Looking for a Lost Child

If you are a member of Prince Valiant's family, then you are going to be frequently placed in danger. In fact, in the case of Valiant's third son (and fifth kid overall), that danger will begin pretty much the instance you are born. 

This is part of a Prince Valiant story arc that ran through late 1983 and early 1984. John Cullen Murphy was the artist by this point, with scripts being provided by his son Cullen Murphy. Hal Foster created the strip in 1937 and, after handing the strip to Murphy in 1971, still continued to provide pencil sketches and scripts throughout the 1970s. Foster is justifiably considered a master (arguably THE MASTER) of the art form, but I'll be darned if I can find a drop in quality in the strip during the Murphy years.

Anyway, it was in 1983 that Val's wife Aleta gives birth to another son, who is promptly stolen in a plot instigated by the Byzantium emperor Justinian, who had become the Valiant family's enemy.

Val's oldest son Arn--by now a young adult--ends up trying to track down the boy. This takes him to what is now Turkey, where he learns that the boy had been given to a family living along the frontier of the Byzantium Empire. Arn soon ends up traveling with a Rabbi named Ezekiel. Because of persecution, there aren't currently many active Rabbis in the Jewish community. So Ezekiel travels from village to village, visiting each one along his route perhaps once a year. He's able to help Arn ask about the missing child in each village they visit.

But things get dangerous--and tragic. Justinian knows Arn is searching for the boy, but his minions don't know exactly where the child ended up either. Troops search for Arn, but he keeps dodging them. So a back-up plan is put into effect. All the young children in the area are to be slaughtered.

The above panel is one of the most heartbreaking ever to appear in a Sunday Comics page. The children in a village that Arn had just left are killed. Thanatops (Justinian's thug-in-chief) pauses here, letting rumor and fear do the job of flushing out the baby they are actually looking for.

Arn soon finds his young brother, who is being raised by a Jewish couple named Matthias and Judith. They've named him Nathan and love him as their own.

Frightened villagers have tracked down the boy as well and Thanatops is close behind them. The troops attack, ruthlessly cutting down any Jews they encounter. Ezekiel is mortally wounded. Arn and his baby brother seemed doomed.

In this brief summary, I'm not really doing justice to how awesome a character is Ezekiel. Learned, wise, compassionate and faithful to God, the story arc brings him quickly to life, makes us like him and leaves us devastated when he's killed. I hadn't read this particular story arc prior to it's recent reprinting, but he instantly became one of my favorite fictional characters ever. 

If I have one criticism here, it's that Arn and Nathan's rescue is something of a deus ex machina. Persian invaders show up (without any foreshadowing) to kill Thanatops and scatter his troops. 

After that, though, the story gets back on track. It's mentioned that the Jewish community in the area is better treated by their new rulers and Arn is able to deliver Ezekiel's Talmud to Babylon. It turns out that the rabbi is one of the chief scholars behind compiling the Babylonian Talmud, which would a key component in Jewish religious thought for centuries to come. 

Arn then takes Nathan back to his parents in Camelot. But what about Matthias and Judith? They've raised Nathan and consider him their son. 

What follows is another favorite fictional moments. The Jewish couple accompanies Arn and Nathan to Camelot. Judith and Aleta stare daggers at each other at first and Aleta insists on calling the baby Egil--his original intended name. But "Egil" is just a meaningless sound to the child and he cries whenever Aleta holds him. It's not until she starts calling him Nathan that he begins to bond with her.

The sequence literally drips with a sense of real humanity and emotion. Aleta and Judith bond as well, with the Jewish couple becoming a part of the Valiant household. Aleta has her son back and the heartbreak of Judith is lessoned when she can still be a part of Nathan's life. This part of the story unfolds naturally and seems real, without a hint of deus ex machina. It's really a wonderful bit of storytelling. It's a great example of how good Prince Valiant remained even after it's creator retired. 

Next week, we'll board an LST off the coast of the Philippians in 1944. 

Drinking Water from a Fork

 

My Dad used to tell me about a particular Dick Tracy story arc he remembered reading in the newspaper (probably the New York Daily News) when he was a kid. It involved Tracy being captured by villains who tried to starve him to death, feeding him only water served on a fork.

Well, I was delighted a few years ago with the publication of The Complete Dick Tracy, volume 10, which reprinted this story. Sharing this with Dad was nice.

Anyway, the starvation sequence began in late November 1945. Tracy was pursuing a bad guy named Itchy, who had (among other crimes) kidnapped Tess Trueheart. This by itself is not unusual. Prisons in those days were stuffed to the gills with criminals who had kidnapped Tess Trueheart.

Tess is rescued when Itchy's car gets stuck in a tunnel. But in the ensuing confusion, Itchy steals a patrol car. Tracy manages to dive into the trunk of the car as Itchy flees the scene. 

Unfortunately for Tracy, Itchy spots his reflection in a plate glass window. He manages to get the drop on the detective and, along with Kitty--the widow of a crook killed by Tracy--decides to do away with him in a particularly insidious way.

They keep him tied up, feeding him one turnip per day and all the water that will cling to a fork. The idea is to slowly starve him to death, as they often eat full meals right in front of them. Their meals and snacks are all chosen because they smell so good, such as popcorn or hamburgers with onions. 

Chester Gould's villains were meant to represent the depths of evil that human beings can sink to. With Itchy and Kitty, this symbolism might have been the most explicit he ever achieved. They are driven entirely by the need for vengence and this in turn amps up their capacity for cruelity.

Tracy gradually weakens, but the patrol car (which Itchy dumped) has been found. The cops search it and fail to find a clue. Fortunately, Tracy's adopted son Junior is better at being a detective than the actual detectives. He gives the car one more going over and finds a note Tracy had left in the trunk, revealing the address at which he's being held.

Junior sneaks in, cuts Tracy loose and gives him a gun. Then, while Junior goes for reinforcements, the weak but still game Tracy gets the drop on his captors. 

Kitty faints, but Itchy makes the mistake of trying to pull a gun. He's dead before he hits the floor.

I can see why Dad remembered this story arc so vividly. The cruel plan of the villains combines with Gould's disturbing portrayal of a gaunt and starving hero makes the tale very, very memorable. 

Next week, we look at another example of just how much fun it is when Jack Kirby draws a story about a rampaging monster.

Stolen Relics, A Quest and an Ally who is a Kind of Dumb

 One might have justifiable presumed that when Hal Foster retired from producing Prince Valiant, that it was the end of an era. Foster's art was literally breathtaking. His plots and characters melded with that art to bring us an epic saga set not just in Arthurian England, but taking Valiant and other characters to many far-flung lands, including America.

But when John Cullen Murphy stepped up to the plate beginning in 1970, he hit it out of the park (with Foster sending him layouts and scripts through 1979. Though Murphy was an experienced and talented illustrator in his own right, his willingness to emulate Foster's work gave the strip an important continuity of style. Without missing a beat in terms of quality, Prince Valiant continued his adventure. A story arc that ran from March to July in 1977, for instance, is typical of the strip's continued excellence.

A ship approaching the Misty Isles is attacked by pirates, but defended by a knight named Gunther, who is badly wounded in the process. Naturally, Val, Aleta and their family take the young knight in. They find out that his family history is a fractious one. His father was a king. Gunther's oldest brother assassinated both the father and another brother before himself being killed. His five co-conspirators robbed the local cathedral of holy relics and made a run for it.

Gunther is pursuing the thieves, determined to bring them to justice and recover the relics. Aleta urges Val to help out the young knight.

So together they travel to Alexandria. Here we begin to realize that Gunther tends to act without thinking. In fact, though he is brave and skilled in a fight, he doesn't have a lick of common sense. When he, by chance, sees one of the thieves, he kills the guy before they can get any information out of him.

Val, on the other hand, is taking more considered action, employing intelligent detective work and discovering that the remaining four thieves are on their way to Jerusalem to sell the relics. Gunther is all for pursuing them across the desert, but Val convinces the dolt that they should take a ship up the coast and ride to Jerusalem from Jaffa. This will get them to the Holy City ahead of the thieves.

Along the way, they help a girl named Zara escape from a desert raider. This is fortuitous, as Zara is the daughter of a sheik, which gives them an ally and a base of operations in Jerusalem. 

Gunther is wounded yet again, this time in a fight with the desert raider who is still out to get Zara. Zara nurses him back to health and he mistakes her attentions for love. He's now convinced he's found a wife, though her high spirits will, of course, have to be toned down. He's also completely oblivious to the fact that she's overtly in love with someone else. 

In the meantime, Val finds out where the thieves are staying and is looking for an opportunity to nab them and get the relics back. Once again, Gunther jumps into the situation without thinking, though through his undeniable bravery and a lot of luck, he comes out alive and with the relics (muddy and battered though they now are) back in his possession.

The story arc comes to a fun conclusion when the sheik denies Gunther permission to marry Zara and Gunther, storming out of the sheik's head, is immediately distracted from his heartbreak when he sees a pretty Saxon girl walking by.

The story is great fun. Gunther, as a character, can be a bit of a dense jerk, but he fits into the tale perfectly in that role, with the "he hasn't learned a thing" ending being both appropriate and funny.

Hal Foster was one of the best things that ever happened to the American comic strip, but John Cullen Murphy still managed to fill his shoes quite nicely.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll look at the next story in our examination of Animal Comics. 

Enter The Dragon Lady

For the first couple of years of its existence, Milt Caniff's Terry and the Pirates ran separate story lines in daily and Sunday strips. The first daily strip ran on October 22, 1934, with Terry and his guardian Pat Ryan arriving in China in search of a gold mine left to Terry by his grandfather.

That initial story arc ran through January 1935. But, in the meantime, Terry and Pat began to have a completely different adventure in the Sunday strip, which began on December 6, 1934.

For those of us who are obsessed with continuity (probably due to a refusal to completely admit that such adventures aren't actually happening in real life), you can line all this up with a coherent internal chronology. If you own the superb reprint volumes that were published a decade ago, then you read the first daily adventure through the January 25, 1935 strip. Then read all the Sunday adventures that were independent of the daily strips. Then jump back to the January 26, 1935 strip and read chronologically from there. With only a few minor continuity issues, it all lines up nicely.

So you see? Terry IS real! It's all real! I KNEW IT!

Anyway, it's that first Sunday story arc that we're looking at today. Terry and Pat book passage on a freighter to Shanghai. But the it's pretty much impossible for those two to go anywhere without running into trouble. That first evening, the ship is stalked by pirates.

There's a brief fight when the pirates attack, but Terry and Pat are soon overwhelmed and captured. We saw the helmsman of the freighter gunned down by a pirate and presumably the rest of the crew are killed as well.

The person responsible for this carnage is the most memorable of the many reoccurring characters that Caniff will eventually introduce into Terry's universe. This is the Dragon Lady, the beautiful but ruthless pirate and bandit chief who will pop up again and again, often as a enemy and sometimes (especially when fighting the Japanese) as an ally.

At this early point in the strip, Caniff's art was still maturing, so the Dragon Lady doesn't quite generate the "Hubba Hubba" vibe she and most of the rest of Caniff's ladies soon will, but she's still pretty darn close. He also has her speaking in a stereotypical "Chinese" accent, though this started to fade away even before this initial adventure was complete.

But even so, the Dragon Lady is a striking, memorable character right from the start, with the potential romantic tension between her and Pat building almost immediately.  In fact, it's not long before she's trying to seduce Pat into joining up with her, though Terry manages to run interference for his buddy.

The situation changes rapidly when a rival pirate captain named Fang attacks the Dragon Lady's ship. This nearly gets Terry and Pat killed, but quick action on Terry's part saves their lives, though they (along with the Dragon Lady) are captured by Fang.

Fang keeps the Dragon Lady alive because he wants to find out where her hidden loot is kept. He keeps Pat and Terry around because he plans to force them to pretend to be in distress and lure a British passenger ship in close enough to capture it. This forces a reluctant team-up. In return for a promise to help her escape, she slips the boys a mirror, which they then use to secretly send a Morse code message to the British ship. This warns off the ship before it can be attacked and sets the American Navy on Fang's trail.

A Navy gunboat soon arrives, resulting in a desperate fight, with Terry getting a chance to take care of Fang personally.

So the pirates are dead or captured. And the Dragon Lady? Well, Terry and Pat did promise to help her escape. So they tell a fib to the Navy, identifying the Dragon Lady as an innocent hostage. She goes free to continue her own career looting and pillaging.

It's actually an interesting moral dilemma. Pat and Terry do what they think is right to keep their promise. I get that. On the other hand, the crew of the freighter they had been on--one of whom was an old friend of Pat's--were all ruthlessly killed on her orders. Now she escapes justice and is free to commit more murders. So we can legitimately argue that the boys dropped the ball here.

But I suspect the primary motivation for their decision was Caniff's desire to keep the Dragon Lady available for future appearances. He was already building a vibrant and exciting universe in which Terry would battle pirates, bandits, spies and (eventually) the Japanese. It's likely he had recognized the Dragon Lady's potential for future adventures and simply needed a way of keeping her out of the hangman's noose.

But what am I saying? Didn't we establish earlier that Terry and the Pirates are real? Isn't Caniff merely an historian recounting their adventures? So I guess my last paragraph is just so much gibberish. Sorry about that.

Next week, we fly off to Jupiter to meet and giant, evil brain and a disembodied Earthman.

Tarzan Returns to Pal-ul-don: Part 2

When we left the Lord of the Jungle last week, we were about half-way through a magnificent story arc from the Sunday comic strip. Written and drawn by Russ Manning, this arc ran from February 1971 through April 1972. Jane had escorted two women photographers to the outskirts of Pal-ul-don, the dinosaur-infested Lost World that exists somewhere in Africa. As is typical in any story set in Edgar Rice Burroughs' never-a-dull-moment universe, the women end up deep inside Pal-ul-don.

Tarzan and Joiper (a tiny visitor from the valley of the Ant Men) enter Pal-ul-don to find and rescue the ladies. After a series of fast-paced adventures, Tarzan has rescued the lady photographers (Samie and Carli) but hasn't yet found Jane. What he has found is one of the Waz-don who inhabit Pal-ul-don getting pushed into a pack of hyeanodons by some of his fellow tribesmen.

Tarzan rescues this guy, but he's forced to separate from the girls, who promptly get to themselves get kidnapped by the Waz-don. Trying to keep more than one of his friends un-kidnapped at any one time is sometimes a Sisyphean task for poor Lord Greystoke.

Anyway, the Waz-don he rescued is the high priest at the Waz-don cliff city. The priest had somehow ticked off the chief and been given a death sentence. Tarzan ends up in the city and it soon involved in political shenanigans, which in turn leads him to fight (and win, of course) a duel that makes him chief.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Pretty much the moment Tarzan takes over, the Ho-don (the light-furred natives who are perpetually fighting the Waz-don) attack. So Tarzan is soon in the midst of a battle involving soldiers mounted atop several different species of prehistoric beasts.

Manning's art work has never been better--the above panels represent the sort of image I can stare at pretty much forever in rapturous awe--and his story has not just been exciting, but also quite sophisticated as we are quickly introduced to new characters and complicated political situations. The exposition never slows up the story and we never lose track of what is going on. 

During the battle, Tarzan spots Jane apparently leading the Ho-don's in battle. But Jane does not acknowledge him when he calls out to her. She does, though, order the Ho-don forces to retreat.

At this point, the action moves away from the Ape Man to let us know what has been going on with Jane all these months. In fact, Manning is going to emulate one of the Burroughs' most common storytelling techniques. He breaks away from Tarzan at the cliffhanger moment. He'll catch us up on Jane's story, then break away from her at a cliffhanger moment. Then he'll flash back to Tarzan, showing us what he has been up to since we last so him. Then he'll intersect these two stories at a key moment.

Jane, by the way, is also up to her neck in complex political intrigue. I'm not going to try to summarize the details. The important point is that she's being blackmailed into pretending to be a sun goddess by an evil high priestess.

When she attempts to get the upper hand over the priestess, she ends up getting tossed into an arena to be eaten by saber-tooth tigers. She looks a tad worried in the above panel, doesn't she? But for Jane, a situation like this is usually called "Tuesday."

That's the point we break away from her story and return to Tarzan, recounted his adventure in sneaking into the Ho-don city and ending up in just the right place to launch a last minute rescue of his wife. For Tarzan, this sort of thing is also called "Tuesday."

I'm pretty sure that if you look up the word "awesome" in the dictionary, it shows you the above panel as the definition.

Jane, despite having a broken arm, gets her licks in on the priestess, then she and Tarzan escape from the city, finding a place to rest and heal from their respective wounds.

But what about the two girls? What about Joiper the Ant Man? (And if I was going to criticize this story arc at all, it's that Joiper didn't get much to do during this last half.)

Well, it turns out that Tarzan and Jane are destined for most adventures in Pal-ul-don before they get home. But Manning made his readers wait for that. The next five months of strips would focus on Tarzan's son Korak. The strip would return to Tarzan and Jane in September of 1972 and give us another full years' worth of adventure in Pal-ul-don. I won't promise when, but we'll take a look at those strips eventually.

Next week, though, we'll return to the Wild West for the second of the four adventures featuring the Yankee Lee Hunter and the ex-Confederate Reb Stuart.

Tarzan Returns to Pal-ul-don: Part 1

J. Allen St. John

The land of Pal-ul-Don first appeared in Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1921 novel Tarzan the Terrible. Located in an almost inaccesible area of Africa, it ranks up there with ERB's best Lost Worlds--not just because it has dinosaurs in it, but also because of the sophisticated world-building Burroughs did in creating the world, which allowed him to craft one of his most engrossing and action-packed stories.

As I've mentioned before, the writers of the Dell and Gold Key comics featuring Tarzan and Korak took the Greystokes back to Pal-ul-don on a number of occasions. The commercial value of this is obvious--an excuse for including dinosaurs on a comic book cover and in the story itself always helps a book stand out on the spinner rack. But it was also a good idea in terms of storytelling. Pal-ul-don is a rich world in which a lot of adventures can take place.

Inevitably, other writers started adding to Pal-ul-don to open up yet more storytelling possibilities. The comic books added several purely human cultures to the mix. But I believe that it was Russ Manning's Sunday strip that added several very important additions and ideas to that world.

One of my favorite story arcs from the Sunday strip ran from February 1971 to April 1972. It is a breathlessly fast-moving adventure--especially when read as reprints without a chance to catch your breath between entries. 

Manning adds several more items to the increasingly complex Pal-ul-don mix. In a story arc from the daily strips in 1969, he had introduced Wieroos--the brutal race of wingmen who normally lived in another of ERB's lost worlds--to Pal-ul-don. 

Actually, I should add a caveat to that. As far as I know, the first appearance of Wieroos in Pal-ul-don is in those 1969 strips. There may have been an earlier comic book or comic strip appearance that I'm not aware of. I checked with Jess Terrell, one of my co-hosts for the ERB podcast, but he wasn't sure either. 

Manning also introduces the idea that Pal-ul-don exists in a different time than the rest of the world--the paths that lead there literally take you back in time. For purely personal ideas, I don't care for this. As far as I'm concerned, Pal-ul-don, Caspak, Pellucidar, Skull Island, the Valley of Gwangi, Challenger's plateau, Dinosaur Island and the Savage Land all exist in the here-and-now and I'll be able to take a dinosaur-themed vacation one day. A world were this isn't true is simpy an intolerable idea. But we can look at the comic strips and comic books--excellent as they are--as an alternate continuity and, personal feelings aside, placing Pal-ul-don in a different space-time location is a perfectly viable idea.

Let's dive into the story arc we are concerned today, Tarzan is recovering from wounds at a remote oasis. Jane, back home at the Greystoke African estate, is asked by two women photographers--Samie and Carli--to be a guide and take them to Pal-ul-don. Jane agrees, but only if they stop at the outskirts, take a few pictures of some Eohippus, then go home. That way, the journey should be safe enough. Nothing should go wrong.

It is beyond me how anyone living in the Edgar Rice Burroughs universe would think this plan would work. Of course, things go wrong. Samie disappears and Carli thinks she sees Jane get scarfed down by a T-Rex before she flees back into the desert.

Tarzan, meanwhile, has healed up and gotten home. An Ant Man warrior named Joiper lets Tarzan know where Jane has gotten off to.

I have always enjoyed the way Manning weaves places and characters from various Tarzan novels into his stories. Joiper, who will accompany Tarzan to Pal-ul-don, is a great character. Though he has his own distinct personality, he reminds me quite a bit of Reepicheep from the Narnia novels--small but brave, noble and skilled with a sword. He's a tad more head-strong than Reep was, but there are a lot of parallels.

What follows is a wonderful, non-stop action set-piece that runs for several months, with Tarzan, Joiper and Carli dodging dinosaurs; Tarzan using his tracking skills to determine Jane is alive; Carli getting captured by Wieroo and discovering that Sammie is already a prisoner in their city; then Tarzan and Joiper pulling off a daring rescue. Manning's kinetic and breathtaking art highlights the fast-paced writing, making this one of the most purely entertaining Tarzan stories I've ever read.

To quote one member of the "For the Love of All Things Edgar Rice Burroughs" Facebook group:

When you consider Manning's beautiful art and his writing skills, he has probably done more than anyone else in portraying the real Burroughs feeling.

They get out of the Weiroo city and back to the surface of Pal-ul-don, with Tarzan determined to stick around until he finds Jane. The August 22, 1971 strip ends with them all encountering a group of natives shoving someone off a cliff into a pack of carnivores.

The story shifts gears somewhat at this point, with Tarzan getting involved in a civil war. So we'll pause here and finish up the story next week.

Tarzan vs. Pirates

If you are a pirate--don't mess with Tarzan.

Actually, if you are any sort of bad guy, you shouldn't mess with Tarzan. In 1951, writer Dick Van Buren and artist Bob Lubbers (who is excellent and should be better remembered than he is) showed us that this bit of wisdom particularly applies to pirates.

It begins with Tarzan on a small boat, trying to get back to mainland Africa after having an adventure on an island. He sees a ship, which would normally be a good thing. But this particular ship is a pirate vessel, commanded by a sadistic captain named Aved. Aved's second in command is a brutal Englishman called by the unoriginal name of Limey.

The pirates suspect Tarzan of working for a local trader named Philip Toll--someone the pirates have been robbing blind recently. They string the Ape Man up by his thumbs, but Tarzan works loose and we are treated to a very well-choreographed fight scene. Tarzan keeps moving, employing hit-and-run tactics against the pirate crew and pulling off a Douglas Fairbanks inspired rip-down-the-sail-with-his-knife manuever.

Tarzan eventually jumps over the side. He fakes getting hit when shot at and manages to get away, eventually making it to shore. Here, he meets Philip Toll, the trader whose life is being made miserable by the pirates.

So far, its been a fun, fast-paced adventure, highlighted by Lubbers' kinetic and detailed art work, highlighting Tarzan's skill and cleverness when fighting as an individual.

The next sequence, though, is something that makes this particular story arc stand out for me. We are reminded that Tarzan isn't always a lone hero. When the situation calls for it, he is a more-than-capable leader and a brilliant tactician. (Leading the Wazari against slave traders in The Return of Tarzan comes to mind as an excellent example of this from the original novels.)

Tarzan comes up with a plan to equip Toll's ship with a ram. They sail out to fight the pirates, discovering that Aved actually has two ships now. The ram, followed by a boarding party, takes out one ship and removes Limey from consideration. But Aved's ship sails into a cove protected by cannon.

Toll thinks they are stalemated. But Tarzan, of course, has a clever plan. Half the men in Toll's crew can be floated ashore in barrels. Tarzan will lead the others ashore, swimming underwater while using reeds as snorkels.  This will get everyone past the cannon and allow for a two-pronged sneak attack.

Though there are a few tense moments when Tarzan's group is outnumbered while waiting for the other group to show up, but in the end the pirates are overwhelmed.

The story arc ends with a Tarzan vs. Aved sword duel, made interesting by the fact that as skilled in hand-to-hand combat as Tarzan is, he's not a trained fencer. Aved is. But Tarzan muscles through the fight and brings Aved's piratical career to an abrupt end.

Tarzan often is a lone hero and that's fine--he's well-qualified for that role. But one of his important character traits is his ability to act as a leader of men and come up with clever, innovative tactics to win a battle. Van Buren and Lubbers were well aware of this when they gave us this particular story arc. Both script and art come together to give us an exciting adventure in which we are reminded that Tarzan can outsmart us all as well as outfight any of us.

Next week, it's back to the Lost Valley for another visit with Turok and Andar.

Fire, Ice and Horrific Deaths

Last week, we looked at the first act of Dick Tracy vs. Shaky, which ran Tracy's daily newspaper strip over the winter of 1944/45.  That first act was action-packed, with the events that took a number of weeks to show us probably only covering a single day. It ends with model Snowflake Falls escaping from Shaky after jamming the crooks hand in a door frame. Shaky, though, has escaped along with his last two henchmen.

Artist/writer Chester Gould was really good at pacing and knew that his readers would need a breather after several weeks of chases and shootouts. So the story proceeds at a more casual pace for its second act, while Gould sets up the next phase in the story's plot. This also allowed him to bring back one of his most successful and endearing comic relief characters--the ham actor Vitamin Flintheart.

In the volume of The Complete Dick Tracy that reprints this story arc, Max Allan Collins has some insightful remarks about Vitamin, who was originally a direct parody of real-life actor John Barrymore:

Vitamin is a particularly well-realized comic character, with universal appeal and resonance... [He] grew in both appeal and warmth, and came to represent all "ham" actors, not just the tragic Barrymore.

Vitamin auditions Snowflake and gives her the co-starring role in his new play. The play is a hit. Also, Vitamin and Snowflake fall in love. Here we see that though Tracy might be a brilliant cop, he's less than skilled at giving personal advice. Warning Snowflake about the danger of a May/December romance, he just gets everyone mad at him. Stick to your skill set, Tracy. Tracking down villains doesn't qualify you to play Dear Abby.

In the meantime, Shaky is looking to get revenge on Snowflake. When he and his friends meet Vitamin, who is tying one on after being "betrayed" by Tracy, he sees an opportunity to get his hands on the girl once again.

Shaky convinces Vitamin to elope with Snowflake and offers to throw a party for them. It's not much of a party, though, as Vitamin is knocked out, then robbed of both his fur coat and his lady.

This opens the final act of the story arc, with the pace of the tale speeding up once again as we race to what can only be described as a brutal finale.

Shaky tosses Snowflake into the river. Fortunately, she lands on a barge and is later rescued just before freezing to death. Gould was not shy about killing off likeable supporting characters and, in fact, had just done so a few months earlier in an earlier story arc. So newspaper readers that winter must have been on the edge of their seats, wondering if Snowflake was going to survive. In Dick Tracy, there were no guarentees. This is one of the reason the strip was such a great one.

In the meantime, Shaky and his two men are sleeping in a cheap hotel, using a portable heater to keep warm. When Vitamen's stolen coat falls onto the heater, the hotel is soon engulfed in flames.

The ensuing sequence is brilliant, with Gould's expressionistic artwork dripping with a sense of terror, panic and danger. The henchmen both come to horrible ends (one burns, the other jumps off the roof in a panic). Shaky brutally kills a fireman and tries to make a break for it. He steals a car, but the ensuing chase leads him to a dead end at the waterfront.

Shaky sends the car off a pier, hoping to make it look like he died in the crash, then hides in a nearby hole. The next week's worth of strips has Tracy and his men trying to recover the car and confirm Shaky's death, while the crook gradually realizes that ice is sealing him up in the hole. By the time he decides to shout for help, no one can hear him. And the air supply in that hole is limited...

Shaky was a violent sociopath, but Gould presents his death with such stark brutality, that you can't help but feel a little sorry for him despite realizing his fate is well-deserved. To quote Max Allan Collins one more time:

Life is harsh in Gould's world. Death, too. There are thrills, there are laughs, there is compassion, but there are mostly consequence, and sometimes just plain cruel fate.

As I mentioned last week, a paperback reprint of this storyline (along with another paperback reprinting the Pruneface story) was my earliest experience with classic adventure comic strips. Because of Chester Gould's brilliance as artist and storyteller, I was also later drawn to Milt Caniff, Hal Foster, Alex Raymond and Roy Crane. I wish I had had a chance to meet Chester Gould. I would have liked to have thanked him for enriching my life.

Next week, we'll stay in World War II (though via a story from 1975) as we look at the formation of the Marvel superhero group The Invaders.