Dick Tracy Jr. is thrown from a bridge.
Dick Tracy Jr. survives the river.
The sodden Dick Tracy Jr. races into a burning cabin to rescue his foster family. He unties Tracy & Tess Trueheart, who flee as the structure begins to collapse...
Leaving the child pinned by burning timber.
He's rescued, of course. It's touch-and-go. Tess Trueheart & Tracy senior comfort each other in the waiting room. The elder Tracy tries to storm the operating room and is escorted out, firmly:
"Now, sir, please wait here."
Swaddled in bandages except for the tip of his freckled nose, Dick Tracy Jr. calls out for his dad...
-tempus fugit- A week later, Dick Tracy Jr., in recovery, is eager to befriend his new room-mate, a mysterious youth hit-and-run while pushing a baby carriage full of war bonds...
But in the dead of night, a pair of cads steal away with a child: Dick Tracy, Jr.!
Realizing they've grabbed the wrong boy, the childnappers wallop DTJ's bandaged skull with a blackjack. Chee, Tracy!
Rising from his concussion, the kid connives to swipe an adult-sized revolver. The toughs try intimidating the kid, but a crack shot at 11, DTJ put a round clean through the grownup's pants cuff.
Dick Tracy Jr. marches them into the street, to the nearest callbox, having rescued himself for the second time in as many weeks.
I read this sequence of weeks of peril and am struck by how like Dick Grayson the "kid" really is. He smiles like Dick Grayson. His loyalty only exceeded by his optimism.
Putting 1933-1935 aside, I extract 'DCU: The Stories of Alan Moore' from my library and start browsing. The very first story in the collection is 'For the Man Who Has Everything', Superman annual #11, 1985. It's a post-crisis riff: old shared universe, new editorial mandates. New Robin, Jason Todd, accompanies Batman & Wonder Woman to the Fortress of Solitude to deliver birthday gifts to Kal-El...
Only for them all to ambushed by Mongul, a horribly-named supervillain with the design signature of a Jim Starlin creation. Moore renders all the adults in the room helpless and leaves young Jason Todd to do the rescuing. Which he does, using only a pair of gardening gloves.
The energy Moore brings to this swift characterization could as easily be Dick Tracy Junior-- young Jason Todd has no interest in "dames" and zero patience for creeps. Self-reliant, this is the street urchin who was stealing hubcaps off the Batmobile. He's in the arctic, out of his element, out of his league. He shouldn't be able to pull it off. I glimpse young Jason Todd in Pictopia, scuttling behind a painted backdrop of chainlink in silhouette, leaving the imaginary scenery swaying...
No direct correlations today, no obvious influence. Just familiarity: the familiarity of generations thrilling at their kinship, in shared dreams of heroism. Of rising from the gutters and succeeding where adults struggle. I imagine young Alan Moore, elbow deep in gore at the tannery, wondering how he'll escape the Poverty Trap, wondering who could possibly give him a leg up. Eyes on breaking coworkers savouring cigarettes with hands encrusted in scab the colour of brick, breathing smoke across rumpled stained funnypages. The coughing is thick with rheum. The barely-circulating air of the tanning house stinking of shit and mildew. It is 196_, and Alan Moore remembers being sick unto death in bed. Eyes bleary with fever, barely able to focus to read.
He wonders, not for the first time, if Northampton will kill him.
I envision young Chester Gould, fresh to Northwestern U., stunned at the scale of Chicago's streets and nervously inspecting the scrap of address in his hand: The Chicago-Tribune. Thinking about his rented room, and the novelty of indoor plumbing. A man who had never sat on a toilet before. A letter from his mother in his pocket, begging he return to Oklahoma, nervous about what 1922 will bring. Conscience inflamed with stories of jagged-minded soldiers smuggling machine guns back to the states, in pieces, along with their dreams. Johnny Torrio runs the Outfit, and the devil runs the rest. Nobody knows what the future holds.
Except, maybe, the Kid. But it's not the kid's picture. Not today.
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