SCHTICK TRACY

DICK TRACY (1990)
dir: Warren Beatty

SCHTICK TRACY
MAD #300, January 1991
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

What you [might] need to know:
   -Ishtar was a Warren Beatty movie considered a big flop and to this day joked about as one of the worst movies ever made (Though I don't think so)
   - The kid (Charlie Corsmo) is an orphan Dick and Tess have found, which they could adopt if they were married. He wants to be a cop himself and has no name. He's just referred to in the movie as "The Kid"
   -Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) is a singer at Club Ritz, run by Big Boy
   -I didn't even notice Spaldoni (James Caan) was in this. Caan was a big star in the 70s, his big breakthrough was The Godfather, then somewhat disappeared for a while.
   - "Big Boy" Caprice (Al Pacino) is kind of the Capone character in the movie.
   -88 Keys is Mandy Patinkin
   -Flat Top was William Forsythe
   -Shirley MacLaine isn't in this. She claimed to have had past lives.
   -and of course Warren Beatty is Dick Tracy

There are lots of big names in this which you wouldn't recognize under all the prosthetic make-up, except maybe by their voices.

   -There's a plotline of Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headley) always waiting for Tracy to propose to her, which he never has the nerve to do, and when the time comes, he's always called off on a case. They don't show it in this parody, but she catches him flirting with Breathless, and temporarily leaves him because he seems to care more about work than her.
   -The movie was filmed all in primary colors
   -There are gags throughout of different calls coming through on Dick's two-way wrist-watch radio, like this first one with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

   -All the capitalized phrases in the first panel are references to Madonna songs
   -Mumbles (Dustin Hoffman) is an employee of Big Boy who acts as informant to Dick Tracy.
   -After Flat Top and his henchman capture Tracy by pretending to be from the orphanage to pick up The Kid, they kidnap him and take him to a boiler room in a warehouse where Big Boy is waiting for him. Big Boy offers an advance to Tracy to have him join the gang which he refuses to take because it is a bribe, so they tie him up, leave, and try to kill him with steam from the boiler. The Kid, who has been watching through a window all this time, breaks in at the last minute and saves Tracy.

   -Big Boy wonders how Tracy and his men always manage to be a step ahead, it is because he is being surveilled. They realize there's someone listening in on them.
   -Dick Tracy and The Kid are always eating at a diner and The Kid has a big appetite.

   -Blankface turns out to be Breathless, who ends up having a change of heart and tells Tracy to go to Tess
   -Tracy finally proposes to Tess but he doesn't do it during the climax, but it's the final frame in the wrap-up.
   -The Kid, for helping solve cases, is named an honorary cop and takes the name "Dick Tracy Junior"
   -"Crimestoppers' Textbook" was a sidebar the comic strip this was based on and was used in their Sunday headers

In Sweden, the parody was deemed worthy of the cover.

DINK TRAZY
Cracked #258, November 1990
a: Walter Brogan

   -A comparison is made to Roger Rabbit, cartoon film from a couple years earlier.
   -In the splash are B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie, two Dick Tracy characters who aren't in the movie.

   -Lips Manlis (Paul Sorvino), owner of Club Ritz, was murdered by Big Boy after he took it over. This is why he is being investigated by Tracy and his men.

   Big Boy realizes he is being monitored when the cop listening in on him isn't paying attention and spills coffee through the floor above

Always exploiting a trend, Cracked did several articles about the movie.

NEW VILLAINS FOR FUTURE DICK TRACY MOVIES
Cracked #256, September 1990
w: George Gladir
a: John Severin

   -The woman in the splash panel is Barbara Streisand, known for her nose, which would have made her an appropriate Tracy villain    -Ivana was Donald Trump's first wife, and mother of Ivanka, back when he was just a rich guy (the first time)

   -"A thousand points of light" was George H.W. Bush's campaign motto
   -Stupid Pet Tricks was a feature on David Letterman's original late-night show. He didn't actually own the pets, they were those of guests who came on
   -Don't know what "Grand Prize Winner" means. Maybe something from a contest in an earlier issue? Anyone?...Anyone?

   -Joseph Hazelwood was captain of the ship to have the first major corporate oil spill.

WARREN BEATTY MEETS THE REAL DICK TRACY
Cracked #257, October 1990
w: George Gladir
a: John Severin

   -Warren Beatty was only 53 at the time, so hardly "America's Oldest Movie Idol"
   -Fearless Fosdick was a parody of Dick Tracy in Li'l Abner. I could go on all day with the countless parodies of the Dick Tracy comic strip, even Fearless Fosdick was parodied. I'll just limit it to two below.    In addition to the Crimestoppers' Textbook, another Sunday sidebar in the comic was the "Rogues Gallery" with portraits of past criminals

DORK TRACY
Cracked #257, October 1990
w & a: Don Martin

There was a cartoon series from UPA in 1960. None of the crimes were directly solved by him, but by detectives he dispatched to investigate the cases. People in New York might remember that in 1990, WPIX channel 11, in an obvious ploy to cash in on the hype of the movie, started showing it in their regular cartoon slot for the first time since then. The detectives were almost all ethnic stereotypes, and it was only shown for a week, so my theory is that they showed them without watching them first, and immediately yanked them after realizing what they had. This is one of the few examples I could find that wasn't racist.

Kyle Baker had a feature in National Lampoon for a while recounting his professional experiences. This was in the October 1991 issue.

Here are a couple versions of the comic strip, parodied back in the day.

TICK DRACY
Panic #5, November 1954
w: Al Feldstein
a: Bill Elder

Elder's work is known for "chicken fat" or "eyeball kicks", sight gags all over the place that he improvised in his collaborations with Harvey Kurtzman in MAD. In Panic, it looks as if they weren't written by him, but by the writer of the work. Kurtzman worked closely with the artists and provided breakdowns while Al Feldstein, editor of Panic, just gave pre-made panels with dialogue already written, and it shows.

   -The header had an arrow pointing to his two-way wrist radio, so they had to have a running joke where everything was labeled.
   -Wildroot Cream Oil was a product endorsed in comic book ads by Fearless Fosdick, back when comic books were as popular as TV shows are now.

   -"Dom Da Dom Dom" were the first four notes to the theme from the radio and then TV show Dragnet    -The Kid from the movies was named Junior in the comic.

   The production company for Dragnet was called Mark IV Productions.

   -"And away we go" and the gesture as if taking off is how Jackie Gleason would begin his program.    -Smilin' Jack, a comic about an aviator, slightly resembled Dick Tracy

Two people in the same bed wasn't allowed in movies or television, but since this was before the Comics Code, nobody cared.

TICK DRACY
Nuts! #4, September 1954
a: unknown

There were dozens of imitations of MAD, all of which were put out by people who did crime, horror, romance, etc., every genre but humor, any they obviously didn't know how to do it. It's as if the attitude was that if you just drew things that were supposed to be funny, that was enough.

   Tiny Benny Ho-hum" is supposed to be Li'l Abner. That family's last name was Yokum.

   -Joe Palooka was another strip at the time about a boxer.

The comic strip was also parodied by Daffy Duck back in the day. (By the time you've scrolled down here, this may have gone on to the next video. If so you'll have to refresh this page).

I'm not allowed to use more than 200 characters for the tags, so some things are left out below. ↓↓↓ UPDATE:
From British edition: