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Supporting Characters
Little Wings "Wingy" Plenty aka Susie Zonn
Young daughter of the criminal Odds Zonn and classmate of Sparkle Plenty, Susan was adopted into the Plenty Family as a young child and renamed.
- Baby Talk: For some reason (traumatized regression?), she at first talks like a kid even younger than she's probably supposed to be. This eventually fades.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: Subverted, since it meant she'd absorbed enough radiation to potentially kill her.
- Delicate and Sickly: Shortly after her adoption, it was discovered that Wingy glowed in the dark, and she was found to be suffering from radiation sickness. It took the intervention of a nuclear expert to save her life.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": She goes by the name her loving adoptive family gave her over the one her criminal father did.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: As seen in the picture, after giving Susie's very wavy hair a thorough brushing, Sparkle notes that it looks like wings and so she's adopted into the Plenty family under a new name. Wingy tends to accentuate this trait by putting it in double pigtails.
- Happily Adopted: Taken in by the Plentys as a second daughter, and she sees them as a second set of parents.
- Harmful to Minors: Odd took her along to his jobs and once used her as the bait in a trap to ambush Dick Tracy.
- Meaningful Name: Sparkle Plenty renames her on the spot after brushing her hair down.
- Not Quite Back to Normal: Once in a while, she still glows, but she's otherwise just fine. That's how radiation works, right?
- Only Friend: While at college, she befriended a creepy loner by the name of Normal Jones, who turned out to be a young man who'd become obsessed with Dick Tracy and his family/associates. After Normal accidentally caused the death of Officer "Groovy" Groves, Wingy pleaded with him to give himself up to the police, to no avail.
- Parental Abandonment: After botching a robbery of radioactive material, Odds abandoned little Susan at her nursery school and then shot her mother before making his escape. Thanks to the intervention of her best friend Sparkle Plenty, she got herself a new family that didn't expose her to either crime or dangerous levels of radioactivity. And really, that's all anyone could ask for.
Villains
Blowtop Jones
Gangster and brother of the infamous hitman Flattop, Blowtop sought revenge on Tracy for his brother's death, by trying to blow up Tracy's house.
- Avenging the Villain: The first of the Jones family to seek revenge against Tracy.
- Catchphrase: "Whoo-gosh!"
- Gosh Darn It to Heck!: His Catchphrase, which couldn't be real swearing for censorship reasons.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Has an incredibly volatile temper.
- Heel–Face Turn: Eventually abandoned his life of crime and drops his vendetta against Tracy, to the point that he refuses to have anything to do with his sister-in-law's revenge plans.
- Reformed, but Not Tamed: Although he's mostly living the straight life, he's still in contact with the criminal members of his family, and occasionally gives them a bit of support—though he won't directly help in their schemes.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Averted, he's the only member of the family who doesn't share their iconic head shape.
Mr.Crime
A mysterious crimelord known only by his nickname, Mr.Crime assumed the same role Big Boy had once held as one of the most powerful figures of organized crime in The City. In reality, Mr.Crime was actually businessman and upstanding citizen George Alpha.
- The Don: The head of organized crime in both The City and quite possibly the rest of the country as well.
- Secret Identity: Businessman George Alpha.
- The Scrooge: Even with all the money his operation's bringing in, he's still shorting Nan and Panda on their rightful payouts, as Nan finds when she hits him with Truth Serum.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Like The Kingpin, Alpha hid his real personality underneath his cover as a respected business magnate.
- Villainous Legacy: His criminal empire is eventually resurrected by computer expert Dave Mylar, who assumes the name of Mr.Crime II using the documents and blackmail material Alpha had hidden away in his old headquarters.
- You Have Failed Me: Had a habit of feeding his minions to either a pool of piranhas, or the deadly Muerte vine if they failed him.
Newsuit Nan
An information broker who worked particularly closely with Mr. Crime.
- The Fashionista: True to her name, she's well-known at all the high-end shops.
- Femme Fatalons: She likes to coat her nice nails in poisons and other drugs, then dispense them with a scratch.
- Knowledge Broker: Her main job in the underworld.
- Mad Scientist: Well, Greedy Chemist.
- Master Poisoner: She creates poisonous serums which she puts on her fingernails.
- Mind-Control Device: She used Mr. Crime's blood to synthesize a mind-control agent/Truth Serum, then scratched him with it. Needless to say, after it wore off they were considerably less enamored with each other than they had been.
- Too Dumb to Live: Double Subverted. she shoots Mr. Crime's barracuda so he can't feed her to it when she tells him she failed, but instead of covering her fingernails with mind control serum, she decides to wear nice gloves when she breaks the news, and he strangles her. Fashionable to a fault, this one.
- Truth Serum: While Mr. Crime was under her sway, Nan made him confess to numerous times when he had shorted herself and his henchman Panda.
Panda
Mr. Crime's henchman, who later henched for his successor.
- Bald of Evil: He's bald and he happily does dirty work for criminal masterminds.
- Irony: He'd been very fond of throwing people to the barracuda on Mr. Crimes's orders. Unfortunately for him, years later he would be confused by Abner Kadaver's fog and fall into Mr. Crime II's barracuda pool...
- Undying Loyalty: He stuck with Mr. Crime, even after learning that the crimelord was shorting his payouts. Then again, quitting a hench job can be pretty risky.
Flattop Jones Jr.
The teenaged son of Flattop and Stiletta Jones, who eventually followed in his father's footsteps and embarked on a life of crime.
- Avenging the Villain: Averted, he's one of the few members of the family who doesn't care about avenging his father. He's just a rotten punk.
- Cool Car: A genius mechanic who heavily modified his beloved car, which contains a TV set, record player, kitchen appliances and running water!
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Doesn't like being referred to as Junior, insisting to just being called Flattop.
- Generation Xerox: Looks exactly like his father, other than being slightly shorter and slimmer due to his age.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: After seemingly disappearing for several months he was eventually discovered by Lizz in Ivy's underground hideout, emaciated, white-haired and nearly insane. It was unclear how long he'd been hiding there in particular, but technically going on the lam is in itself a form of isolation. Especially when the only company he had was a ghost.
- Hidden Depths: Despite his sociopathy, Flattop Jr was a mechanical genius and a talented artist.
- Kids Are Cruel: Was raised by his aunt who laments that he was a jerk even as a child, and has only gotten worse since.
- Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: "Skinny", the daughter of a woman who ran a boarding house, grew enamored of one of the boarders, a quiet young man around her age. In time she learned that he was a skilled painter, and eventually managed to convince him to allow her to model for him. When she offered to put his painting in a contest, he refused, but she entered it anyway behind his back. It won 500 dollars and even got in the papers! And that's how Dick Tracy (who had other samples of his art) figured out what city the fugitive Flattop Jr., wanted for murder, was hiding out in. Just a little too late for Skinny, unfortunately.
- Nervous Wreck: Becomes this after he begins being haunted by the ghost of a girl he murdered to cover his tracks.
- Teens Are Monsters: Not even 18 yet and already a murderer several times over.
- Vengeful Ghost: It may a ghost or his vengeful conscience, but either way, this kid is haunted in a more literal way than usual.
- Villainous Legacy: Despite having had a normal childhood away from his criminal parents, he grew up just as bad as them.
- Youthful Freckles: Freckles around the mouth are actually a Jones family trait, but he is also a teenager.
Joe Period
Teenaged delinquent turned armed robber and murderer, and accomplice of Flattop Jr.
- Calling the Old Man Out: When his mother visits him in prison and laments that she and his father went too easy on him and that's why he turned out so rotten, he mocks her and tells her to fuck off.
- Commonality Connection: He and Flattop Jr. were disaffected delinquents who hit it off immediately.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: An innocent-looking, wide-eyed kid who's willing to steal and murder without remorse.
- The Farmer and the Viper: After Joe's near-dead body was thrown onto a train, a hobo who used to be a doctor happened upon him and saved his life. Said Hobo mended his wounds, kept him warm, and used some of the money in his wallet to buy food and other supplies in the town where the train made a stop. On this trip to town, he learned that Joe was a fugitive, but believed that he looked like a nice boy. When the "nice boy" woke up and found some of his money missing, he committed his first outright murder by throwing the hobo off the train.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Started out as a runner for crimeboss Nothing Yonson, and ended up a murderer several times over, including his former boss.
- Meaningful Name: Joe Period represents the teen delinquents of the 50's.
- No Honor Among Thieves: He may have been BFFs with Flattop Jr., but he still tried to steal his Cool Car, only to be foiled by a secret parking brake. Luckily for him, he managed to play his attempt off as a joke.
- Not Quite Dead: When Joe staggered into "Nothing" Yonson's club fresh off fighting a man over a lady and killing them both, the heavily-bleeding young tough begged for a doctor. Yonson made him think he'd be getting one and when Joe passed out, had one of his men stick the body in a violin case and huck it onto a passing freight train. Needless to say, Joe had a few words for his former employer when they met again. Words like "BLAM BLAM (reload) BLAM."
- Parental Abandonment: Joe's mother visited him in jail, blaming herself for his turn to crime and pleading for forgiveness, but Joe angrily had her sent away and she threw herself in front of a truck. this might count for Self-Made Orphan.
- Teens Are Monsters: Introduced as a symbol of the teenaged delinquency hysteria of the 1950's. Notably, Gould was firmly on the side of those who blamed inadequate parenting, as demonstrated by Joe's mother.
- You Killed My Father: Killed policewoman Lizz's sister by accident, when her pet bird startled him and he shot it, hitting her as well.
T.V Wiggles
A former wrestler turned extortionist, and eventually kidnapper and murderer.
- Character Tic: He wiggles around a lot, kind of like the Tremblys.
- Clean Cut: While fleeing Tracy he ended up running into a repair garage, accidentally knocked a bunch of sheets of metal down onto himself—and got sliced up like lunch meat.
- Expy: He closely resembles Gorgeous George, who was very popular at the time.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Sliced by 5 tons of sheet metal.
- Jerkass: He tried to murder a little girl and he wrecks peoples' TV sets. Unforgivable!
- Shame If Something Happened: His original racket revolved around charging protection money from bars and other public venues by threatening their television sets, which were a significant investment in 1950.
- Would Hurt a Child: After Sparkle Plenty hit it big as a child star, he tried to extort Vitamin Flintheart for a cut of his take as her agent, threatening to put the five-year-old girl into a coma with a special wrestling hold if he didn't pay up. After Flintheart told Tracy about it, Wiggles tried to shoot Sparkle.
Tonsils
A would-be singer hired by the former racketeer known as Dude.
- Brainless Beauty: Naïve and dim, but also considered quite handsome in-universe.
- Dreadful Musician: What made Dude hire him was his good looks. At first, Tonsils was an self-admittedly awful singer, couldn't stay on key or melody and was too dumb to remember the words of songs. Eventually, after a lot of rehearsal his voice improved enough to start showing some real potential.
- Fed to the Beast: His ultimate fate.
- Giftedly Bad: As awful as his singing was, after Dude forced a DJ at gunpoint to let him sing on air people got interested in him as a novelty act. He was noted for putting a lot of energy into his singing and dancing.
- I've Come Too Far: He really didn't want to shoot Dick Tracy. Unfortunately, at that point he'd hit rock bottom and the only way to go further down was to be fed to a barracuda.
- Mad Eye: He's got one squinty eye and one wide blue eye.
- Near-Villain Victory: It should be noted that Tonsils got VERY close to killing Dick Tracy, arguably closer than any of Tracy's more-notable villains that came before or after him, having sniped him in the back of the neck.
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Signature Song: "The Rainbow Turned Muddy When You Turned Me Down", written specially for him by a friend of Dude's. - A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: If he had only let Dot View explain that he wasn't wanted by the cops or the mob, he'd probably have stayed a singer and hooked up with her. Instead he blew his top and smashed a glass gasoline bottle on hers. Don't worry, she lived.
- Tragic Villain: He started out as just parking cars for a living before Dude saw his looks and forced him into a singing career. Just as he stood on the cusp of success as a singer and the beginnings of a relationship with the beautiful TV host Dot View, Dude's former associates came out of the woodwork and tried to kill him. After he escaped that trap, he erroneously believed that the mob and the police were after him for murder and took refuge with a nice farm family. After Dot managed to track him down, he blamed her for his bad luck and believing she'd led the cops to him, made the step from from a dim, easily-manipulated guy to a criminal by impulsively smashing her over the head with a glass bottle of gasoline and inadvertently starting a fire. Escaping, he ended up in a greenhouse doing odd jobs, until Mr. Crime kidnapped him and told him to kill Dick Tracy or he'd be fed to Crime's barracuda. Believing he had no choice Tonsils took the rifle and made the shot while Tracy was out boating with his daughter and Sparkle Plenty. When he got back to Mr. Crime's hideout, the mastermind fed him to the barracuda anyway.
- We Named the Monkey "Jack": Panda, who was the first Mr. Crime's henchman, named the second Mr. Crime's pet barracuda after Tonsils, apparently out of fondness.
Dudley 'Dude' Doorne
Dudley Doorne, the man known as Dude, was the manager for the singer called Tonsils. Dude had had some success as a criminal. He was a racketeer who had made career packing and selling horse meat. At some point, Dude decided that he wanted to give up his criminal lifestyle. He discovered a young man parking cars and became convinced that this man could be a successful singer. Dude called the singer "Tonsils" and declared himself Tonsils' manager. He forced Tonsils to rehearse relentlessly, holding him at gunpoint.
- Alliterative Name: Dudley Doorne
- Cigar Chomper
