THE SPIRIT JOINED TRACY TO FIGHT CRIME
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WILL EISNER!
Mike Curtis (writer) and Joe Staton (artist) keep bringing into their Dick Tracy more and more walk-ons by characters from other strips. The most recent completed adventure, which has Will Eisner’s the Spirit partnering with Tracy, also saw the arrival of Daddy Warbucks and Mr. Am from Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, and Hotshot Charlie and the Dragon Lady from Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. There were so many guest appearances that the plot often wanders off into a weedy vacant lot next door, a typical outcome when a parade of cameo actors goes by because each requires some background explanation or a few minutes in the spotlight alone.
Curtis reached out to Denis Kitchen to arrange for The Spirit’s appearance to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Eisner’s birth; as Kitchen & Hansen Agency, Kitchen represents Will Eisner Studios, the family-owned entity that controls Eisner’s intellectual property. Acting for the estate of Al Capp, Kitchen had earlier brokered the Fearless Fosdick/Dick Tracy crossover.
With the end of the Spirit story, Staton is taking off for a few weeks to complete another project that he committed to before picking up the Tracy gig — an encore appearance of E-Man, a comic book superhero that he and Nick Cuti created years ago. In his absence, Tracy will be drawn by Shelly Pleger, who is the regular inker and letterer on the strip. Pleger’s continuity has something to do with cosplaying at comic cons, and at the beginning some other antique Tribune Syndicate characters show up — Harold Teen and his buddy Shadow from Carl Ed’s Harold Teen.
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