The current Dick Tracy continuity (aka storyline) features a familiar...yet unfamiliar...face...
...who's likely based on a villain most CrimeStoppers (as some Tracy fans call themselves) have never seen!
In the spring of1966, due to the success of midseason replacement Batman, producer William Dozier was asked to try out other comic properties as TV series for the 1966-67 season.
He considered three...
Wonder Woman
(which resulted in
a test reel featuring gorgeous future
Planet of the Apes starlet Linda (
Nova) Harrison as
Wonder Woman...(actually a delusional
Diana Prince's self-image of herself) which you can see
HERE.)
The Green Hornet
(which had a half-hour pilot, then
a one-season series that (damn it)
still isn't available on DVD/BluRay or streaming!
and
Dick Tracy
(in a
half-hour pilot starring future soap opera fixture Ray MacDonnell as the square-jawed hero!)
The villain of the episode was Victor Buono as Mr Memory, a villain who used computers linked directly to his brain...
.....does he look...familiar?
In reference to the "henchmen" the as yet-unnamed character mentions, Tracy made short work of them using karate!
(He was a serious kick-ass in this version!)
There's a kool blog entry about the pilot
HERE with a link to the pilot on YouTube!
Is the character in the strip, in fact,
Mr Memory?
Keep reading in your local paper or
HERE to find out!
(Trivia: there was a Dick Tracy novel by William Johnston issued in 1970 featuring a villain named "Mr Computer".
Since Johnston was primarily a novelization writer doing books based on TV series and movies ranging from Get Smart to Room 222 to Klute to Caligula, I suspect this was based on unused plots for the TV series featuring Mr Memory.)
