| Nah Tay | |
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First Appearance: |
July 22nd, 1965 |
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Known Relatives: |
Unnamed Brother |
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Known Associates: |
Mr. Bribery |
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Appearance of Death: |
February 2nd, 1966 |
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Created By: |
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Can Be Found: |
The Complete Dick Tracy Vol. 22 |
Nah Tay was a Native American from Ecuador who worked for Mr. Bribery. He was a large man with long dark hair that he wore in braids.
He operated a seemingly legitimate business where he sold rugs, ponchos and serapes. One of his specialties was shrinking the heads of Bribery's victims.
Character Biography[]
Nah Tay was a loyal member of Mr. Bribery's organization for some time. After Bribery's failed attempt to kidnap the infant Honeymoon Tracy, it was Nah Tay who rescued the petrified Bribery and Ugly Christine from freezing to death in the snow.
Nah Tay worshiped "Moon Gods" and as such would not harm Moon Maid or her child. However, he agreed to kill Dick Tracy for Mr. Bribery. Nah Tay engaged in a series of rituals to prepare for the murder, which included sending Dick Tracy a wooden carving of his own head, and planting a similar carving in Tracy's yard. Nah Tay then fashioned a spear out of the collapsible leg of a camera tripod, which he intended to use to kill Tracy.
Another element of Nah Tay's ritual involved taking native potions and drugs intended to make him strong. Much of this turned out to be beer, and Nah Tay became consistently intoxicated. In a drunken stupor, Nah Tay decided not to kill Tracy, believing that he was a good man. He decided to kill Bribery instead. Bribery had planted a listening device in Nah Tay's home, and he heard the native man talking to himself about the change of plans.
Bribery double-crossed Nah Tay by bribing Maay, one of Diet Smith's Space Coupe pilots, to kidnap Nah Tay and eject him from the Space Coupe while in orbit. Nah Tay's body was later recovered by Dick Tracy.
Many years later, it was revealed that Nah Tay had a brother who also become skilled at head shrinking.
Notes[]
- Nah Tay has sometimes been mis-identified as "Nan Tay" or "Nah Tey".
- Nah Tay was identified as Ecuadoram. His familiarity with the practice of head shrinking would seem to make him a member of one of the Jivaroan tribes who are natives of Ecuador and Peru.
- The Jivaroan practice of head shrinking has previously been referred to in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick, as well as the 1949 novel Amazon Adventure by Willard Price and the 1959 film The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.
- Nah Tay's appearance was apparently inspired by the actor who played the role of the Jivaro shaman in The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, though the actor was not an indigenous person.
- Nah Tay's methodology of head shrinking is somewhat removed from reality. The tsantsas - shrunken heads - were created from the heads of someone's mortal enemy, and this practice had already been stopped by the mid-1960s. In real life, the flesh of the heads was peeled off the bone, cooked, and filled with sand.