RANCE RANTS

Born dirt-poor, I made a vow not to soil myself

So you're asking yourself, 'Who is this cantankerous scribe, this irascible bard behind 'The Dick Profane Mysteries?'' Just a kid who scribbled his thoughts on brown butcher paper in his mother's kitchen in a brownstone tenement on the lower east side in which there was not very much food to eat because jobs were scarce and we were poor and therefore couldn't buy very much food, that's who. On Christmas morning, the only thing I found in my stocking was my foot.

My old man was one tough bird. A Pinkerton railroad dick who the neighbors called 'Pinky Cop!' Many a schoolmate wound up with a fistful of sandwich if they dared use that epithet in my presence. "That's PINKERTON," I'd snarl. I was always hip-deep in water up to my neck. Is it any wonder that, when approached by Marty Baumann about going public with my Dick Profane concept, I would pick up that ball of wax and run with it in spades?

Are you waiving your Miranda or are you just glad to see me?

My movie idols were always the tough guys -- Bogie, Caggy, Edward G. Robby. And I devoured the detective fiction classics -- Earle Stanley Chandler, Dashiell Gardner Stanley, Stanley Myron Gardnerman. Hardly-boiled was the way I liked it -- gunsel-toting roscoes, shapely gats, smoke-filled dames and grammar-like prose that grabbed you by the eyes and wouldn't let go until you said, "Please let go."

A technical school dropout with no skills, no experience, no credentials whatsoever, it was only logical that I pursue journalism. Quicker than you can say Jack Pulitzer I was overseeing the city desk of a major metropolitan daily, a post I held for 16 years, manufacturing some of the most sensational news stories ever to scandalize the bustling burg I now called home. But the police beat was always my first love. The scene of the crime, the thrill of the chase, the bump of the grind. It came as no surprise when, years later, I was tapped to serve as technical advisor on the long-running TV series "Dr. Quincy: Frontier Forensics." (George Peppard remains a close friend to this day).

I loved the hustle, it was the bustle that made me self-conscious

But Hollywood wasn't for me. Scriptwriting by committee was starting to get under my hair and my nose began to itch for greener pastures in which to sow my oats. One oat in particular demanded immediate sowing, and that oat was cartooning. Sure, that bluenose fine art is all well and good -- Monet, Manet, Man Ray, Ray Milland -- but my yen hungered for something more direct. You've all seen those "draw blinky" ads. Well, I drew Blinky -- with a faceful of scars that hinted at something dark lurking behind that Bambi-like puss of his. Sure enough, the Famous Artists Academy saw something meaningful in my scribblings -- a latent talent that seemed to cry out, "Hey, I've got this latent talent." For those of you familiar with history, the rest is history.

I wore many hats, and it made my head look very, very tall

I began as an assistant letterer on Robert Ripley's famous strip "Let's Gawk at the Freaks," later renamed "Believe It Or Not." But I chafed under the inky bridle of syndication and, on my own, I struck out. The idea for "The Dick Profane Mysteries" had been stewing in my goose for some time. I had the skills: I could draw like Houdini and my writing was on a par for the course. All I needed was a soapbox -- that soapbox we now call the worldwide internet. If you had told me 20 years ago that one day, people would be able to read things that appeared on an electronic screen through a service that cost them $240 a year on a machine that cost them $2,500 waiting 3 to 5 minutes for each page to load, I'd have said, "That's very interesting."