Analysis - The Fall of the Black Hearts

The “Fall of the Black Hearts” storyline is drawing to a close. On the Dick Tracy Fan Club Facebook page, I’ve posted a few comments that have been critical of this storyline and some of the developments in it. I’ll elaborate further on those comments here. I don't intend to do this often, but I believe that it is warranted in this case.

To begin, I’ll recap the background of this storyline:

The Black Hearts were first referred to during the mystery of the “new” Moon Maid. It was revealed that the Black Hearts was a criminal organization that was somehow responsible for Moon Maid's creation, though their motives were not clarified. Over the next several months, it was revealed that the Black Hearts were increasing their presence in Dick Tracy’s city, recruiting operatives from the second Mr. Crime’s defunct organization and challenging the Apparatus for supremacy in the criminal underworld.

Eventually, the Black Hearts’ leader (Mr. Bigg) arrived in the city to oversee operations. He arrived with T-Bolt, his personal bodyguard/aide/driver. It would later be revealed that T-Bolt was actually Lee Ebony, a member of the Major Crimes Squad working deep undercover. 

Then, two significant events happened in quick succession – Jimmy Choo Shooz, a relatively small-time bookmaker arranged the theft of a billion dollars in gold without the approval of the Black Hearts. He (presumably) died while trying to retrieve the gold from where he had hidden it, and the Black Hearts were able to obtain the gold. Additionally, Mr. Méliès (along with Venus and Apollo) kidnapped Diet Smith and delivered him to Mr. Bigg, since they knew that Mr. Bigg was obsessed with plundering the Moon and they believed that Smith would provide Space Coupe technology if threatened.

It was at this point that Mr. Bigg was revealed to be Mr. Bribery, who had long been presumed deceased.

Thus begins the Fall of the Black Hearts. Honeymoon Tracy and Annie Warbucks had coincidentally decided to visit the display of antiquities at the 52 Gallery, located on the first floor of the building which also houses the Black Hearts’ headquarters. Honeymoon recognized Mumbles as he entered the building, and discovered a ripped piece of Diet Smith’s robe, leading her to believe that Smith was in danger. She and Annie decided to investigate. They hid in a closet and eavesdropped on Bigg’s interactions with Smith. Honeymoon then used her newly-developed telepathic abilities to contact Mysta and notify her of the peril. 

This corresponded with a raid by the combined forces of the Major Crimes Unit and the FBI, who were acting on information provided by Lee Ebony. They stormed the building, engaging in a shootout with several members of the Black Hearts organization. FBI Agent Fritz Ann Dietrich was shot and wounded. Tracy and Sam used a ladder to enter an upper floor of the building, where they engaged in a gun battle with Mumbles, B-B Eyes, and Doubleup. B-B Eyes was seriously injured, Doubleup surrendered, and Mumbles fled to another floor of the building.

While this was happening, Apollo shot and killed Mr. Méliès, mistaking him for law enforcement. Apollo and Venus were seriously injured during a shootout with police. Venus attempted to stab Tracy as he tended to her wounds, but her knife couldn’t penetrate his protective vest and she was disarmed. It was implied that she and Apollo died, but this has not been confirmed.

Mysta arrived via a private helicopter from Diet Smith’s company. She stopped Bigg’s attempt to escape by helicopter, and she used her electrical discharge powers to “zap” T-Bolt. Similarly, Honeymoon used her own electrical powers against Bigg, who was still able to escape using an Air Car that he had acquired and hidden in a secret alcove in his offices. Honeymoon and Annie were also aided by the timely arrival of Punjab (a servant of Annie’s father) who dispatched Mumbles and two of the Munro brothers. 

It was at this point that T-Bolt’s identity as Lee Ebony was revealed to readers (and to Diet Smith, who apparently had never met Lee before) and it prompted my statement that this was nonsense.

For some time, there had been speculation on the gocomics.com page for Dick Tracy that T-Bolt was Lee in disguise. I posted this comparison picture of Lee and T-Bolt’s faces in nearly identical positions, including a rough mock-up of what Lee would look like with T-Bolt’s hair and glasses.

My point was that they have several subtle differences in their features. Specifically:

Their cheekbones are a different shape
Their noses are a different shape
Their chins and jawlines are a different shape
Their upper lips are a different shape.
Lee has a differently-shaped hairline and eyebrows.

So, for T-Bolt to be revealed as Lee, the creative team is essentially abusing the fact that Lee doesn’t have a distinctive face, and they’re cheating the character model. 

I’ll put it a different way: If someone asked me to describe Sam Catchem’s face, I’d say “Well, he’s got a bulbous nose, and freckles. He’s got heavy eyelids. His hair is short, dark, and wavy. His face is sort of square-shaped, and he has a cleft chin”. But, if someone asked me to describe Lee Ebony’s face, all I could say is “She’s an attractive African-American woman. Her features are basically symmetrical. She’s got dark hair that she used to wear in an afro, but later changed to cornrows.” That’s it.

As T-Bolt, Lee looks more than a little bit like Grace Jones. That’s fine, as it’s a distinctive look. And if she had ALWAYS looked like that, I would have no objection. Even if she had only looked like that since Joe Staton had taken over as the main artist on the strip, it wouldn’t bother me. My complaint is that she is being drawn differently specifically to suit the needs of this story, which is cheating. If her appearance is so dramatically different, then she would have to wear a wig and a mask or some other prosthetics on her face that would be difficult to maintain and conceal. Also, as T-Bolt, she was consistently depicted as tall and intimidating, which Lee had not been depicted as previously.

There are other problems with the “reveal” of T-Bolt as Lee. How did she get so close to Mr. Bigg so fast? She was seen to be active with the MCU as recently as the Sweatbox case in early 2013. If we assume a close correlation between real time and “Tracy time”, that’s barely a year and a half for her to infiltrate this criminal organization and gain the trust of its leader. And Mr. Bigg is consistently portrayed as distrustful and fickle, resulting in Méliès attempts to re-gain his favor.

Also, why did Lee’s undercover assignment need to be a secret from readers? Very little drama was made out of the reveal, and it missed an opportunity for genuine tension. If Tracy had stated at the start of the raid “All right, we need to protect Lee and her cover, or if we can’t do that we need to safely extract her”, that would add another complication that is rooted in the characters and their relationships to each other, rather than just coincidence (of which there is TOO MUCH in this story as I’ll discuss later).

When the reveal eventually IS made, it results in a fairly bland information dump that tells readers that Lee has been undercover to provide information to Tracy and the FBI. What kind of information? We’re not told, only that it’s enough to incriminate the Black Hearts. What did she have to do to get this information? What did she do to maintain her cover story? Did she commit any crimes? Did she hurt any people other than in her staged fight with Johnny Adonis? What if Bribery had ordered her to kill Johnny?

None of this is addressed. Lee just stands there with a serene smile on her face until it’s time for her to be handcuffed and escorted out in order to maintain her cover. Again, this is a missed opportunity. Where is Lee’s frustration or anger? “Bribery got away! I spent all that time getting close to him and now he’s in the wind!” she could say. Or “I got zapped by your crazy Moon Clone! You let an unstable civilian breach the perimeter in an unauthorized vehicle and jeopardize our mission? She could have killed me! And she let Bribery escape!” But we don’t get any of that.

As I said, the reveal of T-Bolt as Lee doesn’t really pay off. It explains why she A) didn’t kill Johnny Adonis, B) was kind to Blaze Rize, and C) left Diet Smith with Annie and Honeymoon, but all of those are things that could have made sense if T-Bolt was a different character as well. 

Which is my primary complaint about the reveal of T-Bolt as Lee: It wastes the opportunity to have T-Bolt as a new, interesting, multi-dimensional character. Yes, she’s the aide to this powerful crime boss, but she clearly has some moral reservations about that. How did she get in that position? She knows krav maga, so what other skills does she have? She encourages Blaze Rize to get out of the organization while she can, but she doesn’t take her own advice? Suppose she had fled before the raid- Now she’s an unpredictable, highly-skilled operative who is out there in the world with connections to the various criminal enterprises and whose loyalties are unclear. She’d be a lot like Blackjack, only not ridiculous (and I realize that this may be a difficult sentiment for Mike Curtis to encounter, since Blackjack is his pet character, but I stand by it completely. Blackjack is ridiculous). 

This also leads to a question of the strip’s racial politics. By revealing T-Bolt as Lee, we lose a strong African-American character, AND a strong female character (side note: Lizz is apparently not involved in this raid. Why not? Because she would be too easily mistaken for Fritz Ann?). Frankly, some of the speculation that T-Bolt was Lee was motivated by the idea that there are currently only 2 African-American women in Dick Tracy’s world, and since T-Bolt probably wasn’t Mrs. Wheeler, she must be Lee.

And, in fairness, the storyline isn’t COMPLETELY finished as of the time I’m writing this, but based on what we’ve seen so far, I don’t have much optimism that the potential elements that I’ve mentioned will be addressed. Which is too bad because there’s an opportunity to really develop Lee and explore her response to the situation. Is there a reason why she seems so willing to engage in long-term, deep-cover assignments? What affect does that have on her emotionally? She is shown to empathize with Blaze Rize, but does that happen with anyone else? Is there any risk of Lee “going native” and changing her allegiance? These are all potentially interesting sub-plots, but I fear that we won’t see them explored in favor of more depiction of Honeymoon’s amazing new Moon Powers.

These aren’t my only complaints about the “Fall of the Black Hearts” storyline. There’s also:

• Méliès motivations are inconsistent. One day he wants to regain Bigg’s favor, the next day he wants to kill him and take his place. Then he goes back to his original plan, and Venus and Apollo seem perfectly content to go along with whatever Méliès is up to. They don’t have agendas of their own?

• Along those lines, Bribery’s plot doesn’t make much sense either. He has a BILLION dollars in gold, yet he’s still obsessed with raiding the Moon and its resources? He had his duplicate Moon Maid constructed so that he could test his defenses against her powers (even though there’s no guarantee that her powers would accurately reflect those of an ACTUAL Lunarian, since hers were initially technology-based and not biological), but he ALSO planned to use her as an envoy to Moon Valley? Personally, I don’t care about the trappings of the Moon Era or about Mysta’s sense of self-worth. If the creative team were to explain the circumstances of how Mindy/Glenna underwent the procedure to become Moon Maid (if it was voluntary or not) and if her father Posie Ermine is still alive and knows about it, THAT might interest me.

• Furthermore, Bribery’s whole revival is a confounding mess. It still hasn’t been adequately explained when/how he was switched with his “body double”, and I don’t have much hope that we’ll get more details. Also, his escape features lyrics to a popular song, which seems to be something that Mike Curtis really likes to have villains do, since Blackjack, Putty Puss, and the Nitrates have all been tied to pop music as well. 

• Putting Honeymoon and Annie there is unnecessary. The “children in jeopardy” plot device is cheap, and is best used sparingly. Honeymoon doesn’t even STOP Bribery from escaping, she just delays him very briefly. Punjab doesn’t stop Bribery either, they only have a quick encounter that recalls the introduced-and-then-abandoned idea of Nah Tay’s head-shrinking brother.

• There are some disturbing elements with regards to Tracy’s tactics when viewed in the context of the current social awareness regarding the militarization of the police. Tracy and Sam storm the building armed with machine guns. If they believe the threat to be that serious, why aren’t using tear gas and flash-bangs? And why aren't they wearing helmets or eye protection? Furthermore, they have machine guns, yet they allow Doubleup to surrender, they only wound B-B Eyes, and they don’t seem to hit Mumbles at all. Realistically, all 3 villains should be dead. Whatever happened to the days of “Don’t ever shoot first at Dick Tracy”?

• Similarly, we don’t actually SEE much of anything actually happen. The whole “joke” of Méliès is that he was doomed to be shot in the eye, yet we don’t see that. We don't see Venus or Apollo being shot/injured. We don't see how or where Fritz Ann was injured. The unarmed Punjab dispatched Mumbles AND the Munro brothers (all of whom had guns), but we don’t see how and aren’t even TOLD how. There’s not even any aftermath, such as Tracy or Sam saying to Punjab “What happened to these guys? Are they alive or dead?” It’s a long time since the days when Captain Patterson would tell Chester Gould to “show the bullets going through the bodies”.

• There’s also the question of how Punjab even got there, since the building was supposed to be cordoned off by the combined forces of the police and FBI. We’re presumably meant to attribute it to another of Punjab the Wizard’s mystical abilities, which seem to be whatever the story needs them to be.

• How big is the Black Hearts organization supposed to be? We see numerous scenes with the known members, but it’s implied that there are many (possibly dozens?) more lower-level criminals that Tracy, Sam and the FBI have to get through to reach Diet and Lee. Yet we don’t see these people, just the implication of their bodies. It keeps the Black Hearts from seeming like a significant threat or worthy opponent to Tracy.

• There's more confusion about the fate of the Moon technology. Was it returned to the Moon, or dismantled, or placed in storage? What difference does it make what the cover story is, and why does it keep changing? Bribery escapes in an Air Car, and a whole day’s strip is devoted to speculating about how he could have gotten one. Yet, no effort seems to be made to pursue him. Why isn’t Tracy yelling “Scramble the helicopters! Diet, you’ve got one on the roof, tell your pilot to get after him! Get some lights on that Air Car, now!”

• What was Johnny’s role in all this? To get beat up by T-Bolt to help her cover story? And then he just HAPPENS to be in the same part of Florida as Mumbles? Remember, Johnny is not a police officer, so if he was monitoring Mr. Bigg’s activities it’s because he had a client who hired him to do so. Unless it was all a set-up JUST so Bribery could see T-Bolt assault him. If that’s the case, though, that’s only really significant if Bribery knows that T-Bolt is Lee. “Well, she beat up her former colleague," thinks Bribery, "So I suppose I can trust her.” If Bribery DOESN’T know, and the fight WAS set up, then it would have been much more effective to have the assault be against a uniformed police officer (maybe K-9 Officer Doherty? And have T-Bolt kick Mugg to prove her villainous bona fides?).

• There was an ever-so-brief implication that there might be some spark of romance between Fritz Ann and Sam Catchem. Fritz Ann has been continuously (and unprofessionally) flirtatious with Sam, who has consistently been depicted as happily married (and discomfited by Fritz Ann's attentions). Yet, when Fritz Ann pushes Sam out of harm's way, he softens to her. They seem to agree to only be friends, making the brief encounter a frustrating tease. Personally, I wouldn't want to see Sam end his marriage for another woman, but it would be a true-to-life thing and would result in some genuine human drama for the MCU. (BTW, if the creative team DID want to explore the issue of Sam's marriage, I would point out that Sleet is still alive, could be out of jail, has a mad-on for Sam, and would not be above trying to jeopardize his marriage as part of a revenge plot...).

To conclude- I think this story has been an unsatisfying mish-mash. I understand that the creative team is trying to appeal to fans that have a fond opinion of the Moon Era, which is why Mysta features so prominently and we see the return of Mr. Bribery, the consummate Moon Era villain. However, if the story had remained a more grounded “internal strife in the criminal organization undermines their operations just as the police and FBI close in on them” tale, I would have been much more invested. Of course, a story like that would tend to draw comparisons to the Mr. Crime story from 2012, which was much better, not least of all because it did NOT feature the villain making his escape in a flying bucket.