Comic strips

Dick Tracy, With Special Guest Stars… (continuing)

Skip to comments

D. D. Degg December 6, 2019 1 minute 4 comments

Earlier we managed to get through the first three years of special guest appearances
by comic characters in Mike Curtis and Joe Staton‘s run on Dick Tracy.
Let’s try get through the next three years (2014-2016) in this installment.

The guest spots come early as the first Sunday of 2014 presents Vitamin’s co-star.

Mary Perkins shows up occasionally in this theater-based story.

It would be in June of 2014 that Mike and Joe would present to the comics reading public a master stroke. So good that all future guest appearances would be judged against it.
And forcing all future guest stories to be SPECIAL.

Four years earlier on June 13, 2010 the Little Orphan Annie (then titled Annie) comic strip ended, with Annie having disappeared “somewhere in Guatemala.” Unable to find Annie a desperate Daddy Warbucks manages to get the world famous detective Dick Tracy to take up the case. A case that turned into a four month extravaganza; including a side trip to 1944.

And that four months doesn’t include some foreshadowing earlier in the year.

The Annie story also featured a brief appearance of another strip character,
something that would become a regular habit in future comic character stories.

And a couple others:

It should be noted that Little Orphan Annie debuted August 5, 1924; so this story was a 90th anniversary celebration. Though, disappointingly, Annie didn’t even show up in the August 5, 2014 Dick Tracy strip.

It may be noticeable that I am struggling not to use the word “crossover” in regarding to these strips, since there was no strip to crossover with in the previous stories. In early 2015 we have an honest-to-goodness crossover.

Those without a subscription to Comics Kingdom do not have access to the Funky Winkerbean strips; but going to the January and February 2015 posts on the Funky blog can read them there.

In June 2015 Annie returns for a month-long visit with Honeymoon.

Next is another crossover, but just a two day fling.
Tracy, at a detective convention, sees a familiar face. Why familiar? Because a year earlier.

That same day in the On The Fastrack comic strip:

Next in 2016 is a really strange team-up.
Anyone remember those “Steve is dreaming” strips by Milton Caniff in the ’70s and ’80s?

Well…

The partnership lasts only a week. Notice that Fearless Fosdick and Evil-Eye Fleegle are used with the permission of Capp Enterprises. Unlike Little Orphan Annie, Mary Perkins, Hotshot Charlie, and some others, Fosdick and Fleegle were not Tribune properties.

Also not a Tribune property:

So this three-day guest remains a mere phantom.

And that’s about it for the 2014-2016 years.
Well, there are a few guests introduced before the year ends.

But the story involving them is really a 2017 episode. So, Stay Tooned for Part Three! Plus an Afterword.