[Given that the original Gould
continuity had no title, I’ve chosen to label the sequence after a
phrase used by Tracy to describe his opponents.]
In Jay Marder’s definitive study of
DICK TRACY and the strip’s author, it’s mentioned that Chester
Gould tended to script his storylines in a rather free-form fashion,
making things up as he went along. This may be one reason that even
when Gould conceived compelling villains, their stories all follow
the same pattern: (1) exposition on the type of crime being
committed, (2) the detection of the crime by Tracy, another cop or
some witness, (3) the criminal’s exposure, pursuit, and capture or
demise.
Since the only comics I read up to age
10 were the kiddie-types, I don’t know that I saw anything
comparable to a “rogue’s gallery” in such entertainments as
Popeye, Mighty Mouse, or Uncle Scrooge. But I *may * have got my
first taste of such an assemblage of diehard fiends in the 1961 DICK
TRACY TV-cartoon. At a time when the ongoing TRACY strip wasn’t
coming up with any decent do-badders, the cartoon culled weird crooks
from assorted periods of the comic—most memorably, Flat Top, the
Brow, the Mole, Pruneface, and Itchy. Even as a kid I knew that the
cartoon was terrible—Dick Tracy barely appeared, serving only to
introduce the hijinks of lesser comedy-cops—but I liked the
villains. Eventually, the mass reprinting of the TRACY strip gave me
a chance to see all of the great villains in their original
storylines.
Having read the original stories now, I
find that most of the famous villains boasted only fair-to-middling
adventures, lacking the concrescence that makes mythicity possible.
Flat Top, the Brow, and Pruneface were all masterpieces of visual
design, but one was just a contract killer and the other two were
just spies. Gould just didn’t give them personalities to match
their physical attributes.
Gargles, principal villain of THE
MOUTHWASH BOOTLEGGERS, is not as memorable as the more famous TRACY
rogues. He doesn’t have a freaky physique like the Brow or
Pruneface, or even a vocal peculiarity like Mumbles. Gargles is most
like Itchy: defined by a weird habitual activity—Itchy scratches
himself all the time, and Gargles habitually gargles at every
opportunity. And though this felon doesn’t have a backstory, and
barely anything like internal thoughts, it’s possible to imagine
that at some point in his life he decided to channel his personal
obsession with mouth-cleanliness into a racket, albeit the unlikely
one of bootlegging mouthwash.
But BOOTLEGGERS doesn’t start with
Gargles. Rather, Dick Tracy stumbles across a man who gets choked to
death in a revolving door, apparently because his drunken girlfriend
keeps pushing on the door, not comprehending that she’s killing
him. On the face of it, the incident sounds like a candidate for “The
Darwin Awards.” But it doesn’t take the master detective long to
figure out that the dead man—George Empire, head of a
pharmaceuticals empire—fell into the revolving door because some
third party slugged the victim from behind. Tracy is uncommonly
generous toward the drunken woman—a local radio celebrity with the
bizarre name of “Christmas Early”—in that she’s never charged
with accidental manslaughter. Later on, she even helps the top cop
track down the real murderer of George Empire.
Though Christmas didn’t witness
Empire’s assault, nor catch sight of the assailant, she later
remembers that the rich man was complaining about trouble with a
“mouthwash salesman.” But even before Christmas makes this
recollection, the reader has the privilege of seeing said salesman in
action. Gargles, who apparently doesn’t mind the nickname given
that he’s seen gargling at every opportunity, runs an operation in
which his confederates concoct phony mouthwash consisting of colored
sugar-water. Gargles’ thugs then extort small druggists into buying
the bogus germicide by damaging their stores—most often, by
smashing their store windows (which will prove an important point
later).
Here it should be interjected that it’s
extremely unlikely that any crook anywhere ever made money with a
“mouthwash protection racket.” Almost certainly Gould simply
wanted to rework some of the story-tropes associated with the
Prohibition years—during which time gangsters did force vendors to
carry cheaply made, often dangerous liquor—so the author just
transferred said tropes to the idea of “mouthwash bootlegging.”
Probably the idea of Gargles and his freaky habit came first, and
Gould tailored the crime to fit the villain’s compulsion.
Toward the end of the story, Gargles
admits that he personally assaulted George Empire, but at the story’s
opening, the reader does not see this, nor does Gargles see clearly
the face of the woman in Empire’s company. However, by the God of
Comic-Strip Coincidence, he happens to be very fond of Christmas
Early’s morning radio-show—so much so that he writes her a
fan-letter. At roughly the same time, one of Gargles’ victims makes
a complaint to Tracy’s department. Christmas just happens to be on
hand when Tracy reveals a clue that the analysts found going over the
phony mouthwash, and the radio-star connects the clue with the
fan-letter. Having determined that the unidentified bootlegger
listens to the radio show, Christmas decides she’s going to “wring
a dinner date out of a murderer” by pitching woo to him on-air.
However, Chirstmas is spared this dubious date when Tracy tracks down
Gargles’ current residence. But though Tracy’s squad exchanges
gunfire with the bootlegger’s henchmen, Gargles himself escapes,
hiding inside a rigged-up flower-box display.
Throughout this narrative, Gould also
re-familiarizes readers with characters from a previous arc:
professional singer Themesong, one of Gould’s many precocious
brat-kids, and the kid’s mother. In the earlier arc Themesong and
her mother lived in poverty while the little girl sang for pennies on
the street while covering for mobsters. But like other such sinning
juveniles, Tracy converts the child to the ethics of law and order,
so that in BOOTLEGGERS Themesong supports herself and her mother with
her singing-talents. However, being on the side of law and order
doesn’t protect one from the vicissitudes of evil. Gargles, having
temporarily eluded the police, wishes dearly for the chance to kill
Christmas Early, having overheard that she was complicit with Tracy.
However, the gangster realizes that he has to lay low, probably in
“some germ-ridden dump”—and who does he choose to rent a room
from?
For some days, neither Themesong nor
her mother notices anything odd about their new renter, except that
he gargles a lot. However, Themesong gets a new camera and snaps
photos of several locals, including one of Gargles. Instead of simply
ignoring the incident as any smart crook would, the bootlegger
becomes hyper about re-acquiring the photo, even without knowing that
Dick Tracy is acquainted with Themesong and her mom. As if to goad
him further, Themesong and her mother just happens to take her film
to a local pharmacy for development—and it’s one of the
pharmacies Gargles shook down. The pharmacist only has a minute to
recognize the photo as his earlier tormentor, when Gargles enters,
killing both the druggist and Themesong’s mom. Themesong escapes
with the photo, but Gargles escapes the cops by hiding in a
coffin-sized tool box belonging to a repair truck. The repair truck
is only nearby to fix the drugstore-window smashed earlier by
Gargles, but this bit of good fortune proves deceptive.
While Gargles gets transported to the
truck’s destination, a glass factory, Themesong mourns her mother.
Christmas Early shows up, giving Themesong the chance to air her
grievances on the air, warning Gargles to give himself up. The radio
broadcast does reach the glass factory, but if it doesn’t soften
Gargles’ hard heart, the girl’s description of the fleeing felon
helps the factory-workers identify the fugitive. At the same time,
Tracy’s squad arrives on the scene. Gargles takes refuge in a high
room, but when Tracy makes a frontal assault—the detective being
protected by a sheet of bulletproof glass—the villain loses his
footing and falls. In addition, several sheets of breakable glass
fall as well. Thus the glass-breaking thug—who, incidentally,
complains twice about “cracked glass” being a source of
germs—gets turned into the equivalent of veal cutlets. However, his
throat remains whole long enough for him to confess to the killing of
George Empire—a very uncharacteristic generosity from this brutal
gangster, but one which Gould evidently wanted so as to tie things up
neatly.
One impressive aspect of BOOTLEGGERS is
that Gould evidently gave some thought to the ironic way in which he
would kill off this particular transgressor. All of the early
references to glass in Gargles’ life seem inconsequential until the
reader sees that he’s destined to be impaled by glass shards.
Another impressive aspect is that not until the end does Christmas
Early’s name take on possible significance. The dominant
connotation of the words “early Christmas” is that someone
receives a gift ahead of the Christmas season. If as I believe this
notion was being directed at the character of Themesong, then the
“gift” is also steeped in irony, for Themesong loses a mother
before she gains a musical mentor. “I’d like to get into radio
like you are,” the grieving tyke informs Christmas, and although
neither character made many more appearances, it’s suggested that
Christmas becomes Themesong’s manager, and perhaps substitute
mother. This scenario does not fulfill as obvious a wish-dream as the
one in JUNIOR TRACY FINDS A DAD, wherein Junior’s natural father, a
blind old man, gets killed off so that it becomes convenient for
Junior to be raised by his ideal dad, tough cop Tracy. Still, even
without wish-fulfillment as such, Gould orchestrated a rather strange
three-part harmony between a clean-freak gangster, a celebrity
implicated in manslaughter, and a good-hearted brat-girl with talented tonsils and a termagant tongue.
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