DICKY TRACY, the renown title character of the comic strip was best known for pursuing a nonstop parade of criminals (each one saddled with a visage more monstrous than the next -- a curse that no doubt propelled them into a life of crime). Up the river they'd go and Tracy would move on to the next. But what most of his fans probably didn't know was that Dick Tracy also sold beer to college kids.
The ads we did used the comic's logo (stolen from the strip) and the character's hawk-nosed profile (also stolen) but eventually DICK TRACY'S SALOON ads involved fake comic strips featuring Dick as the Sam Malonesque owner of the off-campus bar. The first one starred Junior, Tracy's freckle-faced protege lifting his bad grades blues via a frosty mug of suds. The second strip/ad dealt with Tracy's superior entering the bar, cuffed to a collar... only to allow the criminal to escape because the Captain was drinking on duty! Through no fault of the strips/ads (I think) the syndicate that owned the DICK TRACY strip forced the bar to change the name of the place, no doubt as it was being used without permission.
Easy enough. DICK TRACY'S SALOON became TRACY'S SALOON and we designed a new Keystone Cop kind of character to be its new mascot (for which I was paid exactly fifteen dollars. Even THAT was a battle... "Fifteen dollars?!" The manager claimed he could have a friend come up with a design for a free hamburger). John and I did a subsequent strip featuring Tracy the cop/bartender facing off with a couple of baddies, all presumably in his off-duty hours. For years after our days at the Daily, Tracy's Saloon still kept a big framed portrait of my Tracy design displayed in the main room.
Alas, now thirty years later the bar remains but the mascot and his portrait have gone the way of Speedy Alka-Seltzer and the Exxon Tiger.
