The Weekend Color Comics Supplement

Dick Tracy travels to South America for a two week Minit Mysteries installment.

And who better to illustrate the detective’s Buenos Aires adventure than Argentinian cartoonist Leo Batic?

As guest writer Eric Costello says on Facebook:

I got (and get!) a real charge out of today’s Dick Tracy, since it’s the start of a two-week Minit Mysteries arc with a friend of long-standing, the one, the only Leo Batic doing the artwork.

Something of a departure for the strip, since the action takes place in Buenos Aires (Leo tips us off to that in the drop panel, showing a street scene with the Obelisco in the background). A famous tango dancer has been found — dead! Dead by a gunshot to the head. A senior uniformed officer thinks it suicide, but the very shrewd detective inspector on the Buenos Aires force has his suspicions.

Leonardo Batic has an Art Station page showing off his talents in a wide variety of styles.

As for “guest writer” Eric Costello, a week ago he hinted of the return of Mike Curtis to the Dick Tracy scripts:

… Speaking of which Ettinger did a fine job on the art, and I found him very easy to work with. (He also slipped in a subtle gag in Gabriel’s prisoner number which made me laugh.) In fact, I’ve had good luck with all five (!) of the artists I’ve worked with on Dick Tracy. “Hold!” you say, “you’ve had only four stories published, so far.” Indeed. “So far” being the operative words. Keep tuned.

The now-running Minit Mysteries episode would be his fifth story. Will Mike Curtis return on August 26?

Moving on.

Earlier this week Tom Batiuk had his cartoon doppelganger show up in Crankshaft. Today Batton remembers the Good Old Days when he “coulda been somebody.”

Readers of The New York Sunday News still get a full page of Prince Valiant, though as a tabloid not broadsheet. But I can remember 50 years ago when Funky Winkerbean was set to run as a one-sixth Sunday page.

I think this was the first time I was disappointed in the Flash Gordon Sunday.

The problem, I think, is that the Sunday page is a recap of the previous week’s action, but the previous week was a summary of The New Adventures of Flash Gordon up to this point. So the Sunday was a condensation of a synopsis.

By the way, the week of dailies getting everybody up to speed was very enjoyable, both story and art!

That Flash Gordon Sunday above comes from another site, Comics Kingdom runs it as a full half page. Not that they do it every Sunday. Today it was Mary Worth that was reduced to quarter-page format.

(Quarter page being an old term for when newspapers were 13 inches wide, not 11 inches. These days the quarter-page format would be a sixth page. Uh-oh; I’m starting to sound like Tom Batiuk.)

For whatever reason Comics Kingdom reduces a Sunday page a quarter size instead of running the half page version. As mentioned above today it was Mary Worth. Had to go elsewhere for the half page.

As long as I’m complaining…

I don’t read comics on a mobile device so the vertical Never Been Deader for Sundays irritates me.

I have the comic strips set up to fill the width of my computer screen so when Never Been Deader Sundays come along I can’t see the strip at one time; I can’t even see an entire panel at one time!

Oh. The Comics Kingdom Blog had a short Q&A with Never Been Deader cartoonist Tommy Devoid recently.

Comics Kingdom, this past week, announced the return of Johnny Hazard dailies to the daily feed.

It always a pleasure to read the always enjoyable Frank Robbins but it returned today.

Like they couldn’t wait two more days and have the vintage in sync with the current days of the week?