Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 25, 2010

Wow! JOHNNY NOTHING!

Good morning all…

Buy the man a beer - it’ll be getting something for Nothing!

There was a villain long ago, the Blank- but I think in the end it was just a rubber mask.

Howdy everybody!

Tess does appear to be wearing a super hero outfit!

Johnny Nothing, huh? Looks like “No Face,” from the Warren Beatty movie.

“…a rock through our window with a note is threatening…”

Really!? You don’t say!

‘Johnny Nothing’, a new character. That’s perks up my interest a bit. ‘Morning, VB!

I see we have the ‘orbiting’ arm bracelet again. It never touches your flesh as you wear it.

OK, I get it:

Nothing is too good for you, Dick Tracy!

The note is saying Johnny Nothing will steal every scene Tracy’s in, ‘cause Tracy’s just a cop, whereas Nothing is a master thespian.

I like the cat walking in front of Tracy’s yard. Looks like it was hit by bullets when Tracy was shooting wildly at the rock (stale bread) throwers!

margueritem said, “I see we have the ‘orbiting’ arm bracelet again. It never touches your flesh as you wear it.”

It’s one of those magnetic bracelets that cures arthritis and brings good luck.

Johnny Nothing will save on a lot of ink and drawing time.

How DT and the lab tech will figure it out:

DT: Isn’t there any clue on that note?

Tech: No Tracy. No prints. Nothing!

DT and tech (in unison) Nothing? That’s it! It was Nothing!

Good catch, **FlightSuit. This late at night, things slip by me. ;-)

OK… Tracy’s staying at home rehearsing his lines. The producer says that he’ll be at the theater any minute and then Lime Light will had out the scripts…

And the guy inspecting the note says, “no prints”, yet DT detached it from the rock (stale bread). Didn’t Tracy’s fingerprints get on the note? I’m still wondering how the note got from Tracy’s house to the crime lab at Police Hdqtrs. and back to Tracy.

…Or does Tracy have an in-house crime lab with a technician on duty?

I’m glad to see that the broken window has been replaced.

I feel sorry for the poor cat.

One last question… are the trees leaning or is the house leaning?

Oh, well… we have JOHNNY NOTHING to keep us occupied!

Johnny Nothing?

Under that blank face either the Question or Rorschach is slumming in this strip.

Once again the basic flaw of this comic’s structure is revealed: running a story Monday through Saturday while trying to have the Sunday sequence follow the same story weekly for those readers who only get DT once a week in color. Yesterday Dick dropped Tess off at Junior’s but now the strip has backtracked in time to their home. This throws off the pacing and also causes the same scenes to be repeated, thus dragging the action.

Check out the Phantom with its separate Mon-Sat adventures and weekly Sunday stories. No snail’s pace with its plots.

Time for the DT creators to wake up and get with it. Or just face more newspapers dropping the comic like my local daily did recently.

This appearance is The Blank, (1937) aka Frank Redrum (‘murder’ backways) who really used what Gould called a cheesecloth ‘mask’ to hide a scared face. Later, there will be a hint that it”s Redrum’s son. We’ll have to wait and see who’s behind the mask. That’s the only mystery here.

In the movie they did a twist and Breatless Mahoney was behind the mask.

Collins had a 1992 comic strip story with Tracy acting as himself in the Hollywood movie. It turned out that ‘Haf an Haf” was the man behind the Blank’s mask.

There is NOTHING original about this idea., except that Locher seems to have run out of new story and villian ideas. He “pinched” the Brow’s death scene for Al Kinda -2006 and Ugly Christine’s for Queenie -2007.

Don’t confuse this with No Face, a 1993 Mike Kilian “knock-off” of the Blank, where the reading public never saw the face (he wore different masks to look normal), The real FACE was so ‘ORDINARY’ no one could ‘remember’ it.

To go back in time and see 200 of Gould’s best villains 1931 - 1977. These were compiled by Gould fan Matt Masterson

http://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2009/06/200-characters-from-dick-tracy-1931.html

Look for the Blank in 1937.

”Where is HONEYMOON ?”

Both fishbulb and Ludwig asked the question (?) yesterday.

Only Mike Kilian and Dick Locher can answer that question. And Kilian is dead.

After those two teamed up they gerrymandered the characterpool Bonnie who was a late twenties Teacher in 1979 with adult boyfriend Joe Sampson suddely became an adolecent little gir,l back at home again for a 1994 Mumbles return as an old man.

Collins last had Honeymoon in a story (Crime King) in 1992 and Junior had been married to Sparkle Plenty a few years after Moon Maid’s death.

When next we saw the family grouping, Honeymoon apparently no longer “existed”. She had been replaced (2002), with an earth girl named “Jewel” These are in the Archives and can be seen at …

http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2002/10/27/ and

http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2002/12/15/

Too long to give more details but ”Team” - Kilian and Locher have had a FUN past-time of changing Dick Tracy HISTORY

At the end of a mid 1990’s interview he was quoted as saying:

“This job is the most fun I’ve ever had”

In the meantime, team “accomplice” (in change you can believe in) Dick Locher continues to ALTER more than just Junior’s face … he’s retired Patton and is now “writing Sam Catchem out of “existence”. If you’re not in* the strip you’re NO WHERE”!*

Former poster here (Jeff) likes to characterize Locher as taking the D,T,BATON directly from Gould (?)

Looks like a “tool” (with all the “know how”) our new man plum dropped at the start and (50 newspapers only) Locher’s race is almost over.

When he retires I guess he can PAT himselt on the back and convince himself that, the* yellow rubber duckie* was the most important ‘accomplishment’ of all in carring Dick Tracy forward !

Wow! A modern version of The Blank! Great.

Dick is studying his lines ? The script appears to be on;y two pages long.. a play about the blank would be much longer and their gonna need a Kid to play JR since he was first saved by then forced to witness a double murder committed by the blank, Since Blank then tried to Blow up Tracy and Pat and finally trapped Tracy in a decompression chamber and tried to do him in again .. thats a lot of action for two pages.

Panel-Panner said, “Time for the DT creators to wake up and get with it. Or just face more newspapers dropping the comic like my local daily did recently.”

Perhaps Johnny Nothing will be the turning point.

I must say, there’s some really informative comments today. It’s as though Dick Tracy’s coming back…

Well, except for the mysterious changing house. gillbillvolume1 mentioned that since the house is next door to a nuclear power plant, it could be radioactivity that is changing it. That could also be the reason Tess’ arms are short and Tracy has distorted fingers.

I sure hope the cat is ok.

My cell phone tends to be in my pocket.

Tess is wearing the new WWE Heavyweight Championship belt.

I’m glad Tracy had time to patch the broken window. Missed that strip.

what is that creepy thing coming out from under the sheets in crimestoppers?

So if I’m reading the Crimestoppers Textbook correctly, it infers that when you’re in the presence of other people, there’s no need to keep your cellphone near you?

What if those other people are of the threatening variety?

And the guy inspecting the note says, “no prints”, yet DT detached it from the rock (stale bread). Didn’t Tracy’s fingerprints get on the note? I’m still wondering how the note got from Tracy’s house to the crime lab at Police Hdqtrs. and back to Tracy.

Its really simple, Tracy faxed a copy of the note to HQ to have it checked for prints keeping the original at home which in this strip would constitute a full weeks police work for him, amazingly there were no prints on the Faxed copy! Later Wonder woman shows up demanding her belt back !

Too bad we can’t see the rest of the Crime stoppers textbook image or we would see that even though the guys cell phone was near, crooks have broken in and shot him before he could grab it and that doesn’t look like a cell phone but a cordless house phone anyway.

The hand in the Textbook looks like that of a murdered person! Don’t think the cell phones gonna help! Jhonny Nothing! Shades of Sperman’s old villian the Chameleon!!! :)

No prints because Tracy’s fingers are all the same length and cannot grasp anything well…..

I always keep my Tracphone in my car in case I actually need it sometime.

Well, cool!! My internet was down for a few days and I apparently didn’t miss a thing! :) Awesome! Just goes to show you, Sunday is really the only day you need to read the strip…

What is that hand signal the lady with the Antigravity Bracelet is making? It might be the Vulcan sign for “Die soon and in poverty!” but that would be out of context here…. Perhaps secret agents from Buttfukistan have subverted Locher and are using the strip to send each other secret messages. In that case it might mean something like “Execute the secret plan at dawn.” Or Locher has gotten into commodity trading. Then it might mean “Sell pork bellies.” Or “Buy buffalo chips.”

Or … could the lady be about to female dog slap Johnny Nothing?

-Cougar :{)

P.S. I wonder about those gold hoops the lady with the Antigravity Bracelet is wearing. They look like earrings but we can’t see where they’re attached … they might not be attached at all. :o

:{)

For a moment there, I thought she was about to rip off his mask, and then we’d see Locher’s surprise … NOTHING between the collar and the hat

well at least it will be one character that’s easy to draw

In the movie Dick Tracy Madonna as Breathless at the end was posing as The Blank.

…And yet STILL not as good as my idea for Jean Erique.

The textbook looks like a victim tried to leave a dying clue. Call in Ellery Queen.

Panel 1. A film enlarger is being used to check for prints.

Panel 2. What the heck is wrong with Tracy’s hand?

Panel 3. A tree about to fall over. The sidewalk apparently leads into a wall, not to the front door.

Panel 5. Isn’t this a photocopy of a weekday panel colorized to save work?

Panel 6. Limelight looks like Death in The Seventh Seal. Maybe he and Tracy will play chess later.

Panel 7. Yup, the zero g bracelet returns. Angelodious relatives had a yard sale.

No fingerprints, eh? Tracy has been putting his all over it for the past few weeks.

Johnny Nothing as Frank “Ankle” Redrem aka The Blank from 1937. This story has some interesting potential but given the way many of these stories have been hit or miss I have to wonder