Arresting Interest

Like Batman before him, Dick Tracy is hitting the comics conventions--via a slide show produced by Walt Disney Pictures to generate interest in next summer’s “Dick Tracy.”

Warren Beatty directs and stars in the project, which filmed under such hush-hush conditions that, to date, no one’s seen what Beatty looks like as the tough copper. No one, that is, except the comics fans who recently gathered in San Diego and Chicago.

Included in the presentation: single shots of villains the likes of Flattop, The Brow, Shoulders, Itchy, Pruneface, Lips Manlis, The Rodent and Big Boy. And there’s a group portrait, taken in the gangster’s boardroom above the Club Ritz. (There are big stars hiding behind the rather astounding prosthetics. Seriously, that’s Paul Sorvino as Lips, Al Pacino as Big Boy . . .)

Also, shots of a slinky Madonna --brandishing a come-hither look as nightclub songstress Breathless Mahoney. And of Glenne Headly looking perky as Tracy’s (true) lady love, Tess Trueheart.

As for Beatty: he’s at first shown in the shadows. (His face is obscured in a scene that shows him captured by Big Boy’s gang in a boiler room.) Just when you suspect a cheat, there’s Beatty--as Tracy--staring squarely at the camera from his desk at the police station. Wearing his usual face (no prosthetics), he looks handsome--and determined.