Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for January 18, 2013

Hello?

Yay, we in the west get first crack at commenting today.

Old sweatbox is a pitiful looking somebody.

Oh, Finally!!!

Great storyline until now. I can’t wait for tomorrow!

Wow – somehow I think the boards have been down until now. Not often I get to be among the first to say good norning to Vista Bill.

“The new season”? Hmmm…a sports league? A television schedule? Duck hunting? Wabbit hunting?

I think it’s going to be a great story. Old men make great bad guys.

Got to comment about today’s colors! GoComics has him with sparse grey hair, looking as old as he must be. Comics Kingdom gave him a head of bright red hair! (Same color they gave Diet Smith a few weeks back.)The GoComics colorist did a great job today.

interesting… sweatbox is somehow tied to the interment? perhaps he was one of the people that held them in the camp? not sure what “the new season” has to od with the whole thing but i am interested to find out. i’m guessing that my theory of sweatbox being the pedophile mike was talking about months ago is incorrect, lol

The good news for Sweatbox is that even if he gets a life sentence, he’ll still likely to be “out of prison” in twenty years or less.

youre forgetting that tracy is the city’s top detective and as evidenced over the years by the lovely and talented wendy wichell, he is grist for the rumour mill at any given moment. the fact that his name and the story popped up in the papers overnight is really no stretch of the imagination nor any surprise to me.

and now on a personal note… SDMPH, i dont much care if you post regularly.. because truth be told you DO have some valid points and thoughts which make us other readers think about things more in detail, but what i DONT like is your seemingly obsessive need to nitpick, troll, and just all around be a total pain in the tail to most everyone on the boards. IF you can keep your sarcastic “oh the whole world hates me” mouth shhut and keep your stupid comments to yourself (and your nasty riticism of anything "unlocherly) then MAYBE you wont be as despised overall as you are now.

oh and one other thing… i guess “never returning to the boards again” means something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT in SDMPH-WORLD than it does in real life huh? you were gone for what.. three weeks at the most before you popped back up still with the nasty comments and constant goading etc? some things never change it seems.

Last night, someone mentioned that they thought that Sweatbox looked like Major Hoople from the old Boarding house strip, and I can see a resemblance, but, to me, he looks more like a clean shaven version of THIS guy:

Sweatbox could be a NHL team owner. The NHL 2012 – 2013 season begins Jan. 19th because of the lockout.

Magoo’s dog looks like Jim Baccus, the voice of Magoo, Gilligan’s Island millionaire.

From yesterday: “Is the person who spends endless hours trying to label someone a “Troll” is himself a “Troll” for that very reason?”I’d say ‘yes’ to that. I’m not really very fond of this that can be called “meta-trolling”, or becoming a troll as a result of spending too much time calling somebody (and this, sometimes with very little ground) a troll.

Suspension of disbelief. It helps the story develop. We wave a hand to it. We see this a lot in fiction, and it seems to be happening a lot in daily strips.

I don’t think Sweatbox’s nose is nearly bulbous enough to compare him to Major Hoople, Mr. Magoo, or Bluto, but he does remind me of somebody. Just wish I could pull who it is out of the depths of my memory banks.

Per Mike’s comments on Yahoo! Groups re. the salacious nature of the current storyline’s antagonist…I wonder if Sweatbox is based on a certain infamous Penn State sports figure? Timely too— DePalma & Pacino just announced plans for a Joe Paterno bio-pic. Just speculation if the “season” referenced in today’s strip is college football.

Although how that’s going to tie into the camp discovery & upcoming real life guest star is beyond me. Looks to be ambitious (& potentially daring) storyline!

Man,.Re your comment:.“I just don’t see how a ‘rumor’ that Tracy’s interested in the artifacts could attract so much attention and make the rounds so fast Defies logic!!”.Tracy is not merely the City’s Chief of Detectives, and commander of its Major Crimes Unit, he is also a well-known public figure. He’s been the subject of a bio-pic in which he played the lead role, so he’s a movie star, to boot..That means he’s NEWS. .When Eliot Ness (who is belived to have been one of the real-life models for Tracy) was head of the Cleveland Police, the local papers had several reporters assigned to the “Ness beat.” Not just the police beat, mind you. The NESS beat. They were to cover Ness personally, as a news beat separate and distinct from the police beat, the crime beat, or the City Hall beat..Why? Because, like Tracy, he made news, and the local papers wanted someone on scene to be first with the scoop whenever Ness did something newsworthy..Is it so hard to believe that local news outlets would do the same for Tracy?

Maybe he’s thinking about the “new” NHL season? What we need is for Tracy to get to the bottom of that goober from Notre Dame’s phantom girlfriend story…

Truth be told, the “sparring” seen here has proven to have more entertaining value than Tracy’s stories. In other words, I prefer reading the comments fight between tsull, otto, sdm, syd et al better than Mr. Mike Curtis stories. I like Statons art, is really beautiful. Mr. Curtis’s scripts, promising when the arc starts, then they fall as a bag full of rocks. Just remember fishface, mr. crime, mrs. flattop arcs. They start great, they end abruptly. Not good. And now we just had CK and BP with belle. It has been stopped in mid air, just like that swordsman when shot by Indiana Jones. To much build up, nothing coming in the end. Like it or not, that’s the truth. The comment fight here, on the other hand, has been lots of fun to read, But, and there’s a but… it’s kinda boring to see arguments like “sdm did this years ago” and “judy hansel and morrow this and that”. Is it better to just stick to Curtis arcs here, and let aside the fight? Maybe. Not very interesting, though, but more civil.

Ah, yes. I know, “TMS imposes a fixed time for each arc written.” Great. So here’s a funny idea: “do not build your arcs that much, keep a balance between how you build your stories and how you end them, hear the crowd, for God’s sake.” Oh, what? TMS now allows more time for the stories? But we don’t see this now, because stories are written six months in advance? And we will see this very soon? Well, OK, then, but that doesn’t imply, then, that new stories will have a larger build up and always a very abrupt ending? Not illogical to expect that, is it? And I hope, I really, truly hope that these new stories will prove my predictions wrong. Been (mildly) disappointed so far, want to enjoy future DT’s arcs. And not just the beautiful art and somehow complex setup work.

Otto, how does one apply for a position in the Axis of Evil? What are the hours and what is the pay? Finally, is it “open shop?”

He’ll definitely need to get his Troll Vaccination; lest he catch it.

Ya know, if you can’t have a little fun in life, then you are in the wrong place. I guess I’ve been lucky in that regard for the last half of my life. In a way, I figure I won life’s game!

Sweatbox and his young pal remind me of two men named Joseph ang Georg..

Man (and Daedalusomega),.Re Man’s comment:.“Hi Jim, my answer to your question is yes. What I questioned earlier today was the speed in which the rumors started. Yesterday’s strip is very specific that at the exact time Tracy is finding out about the artifacts Sweatbox is being told about the rumors that Tracy is interested in them”.Actually, it was NOT very specific about that..The caption simply reads "Elsewhere in the City . . . ".You’re assuming that the additional phrase “At that same time,” is the implicit prefix to “Elsewhere in the City . . .,” and that’s simply not necessarily true..Now I grant that, if the phrase was not, “At that same time, elsewhere in the City . . .,” neither was it, “Later that same day, elsewhere in the City . . . .” I’ll also grant that presuming the events in the two panels were roughly coincident is not unreasonable. But I would also argue that, given the revelations in today’s strip, we must conclude that the unspoken prefix is “Later that same day,” and that this is a conclusion based on evidence, not presumption..Maybe Mike should have made that more clear, but, in the “scorched earth” environment of putting out a daily strip on deadline, details can sometimes be missed, even when an artist, an inker, a syndicate editor, and a police technical advisor are all vetting the scripts..And, Omega, if you don’t like Mike’s work, you have a right to your opinion. Preferences are proof against argument. If you prefer vanilla to chocolate, or Agatha Christie to Dashiell Hammett, no one can convince you otherwise by logical debate. Your preferences are your preferences and you’re abslutely entitled to them. .I can only say that I think he’s been doing a fine job (leaving aside the accursed Moon stuff), and, even though I’m on the staff, I still look forward to reading the strip every day. I’m proud to be a part of his team.

Just how old is Sweatbox, anyway? If he was in any sense connected to a murder which was confessed to 70 years ago (and therefore took place even earlier, though how much earlier we don’t know) he would have to be at the very least as a witness in his mid-70s or more (a kid younger than at least 5 won’t make much of a witness) or as the perp in his 80s or more likely 90s….

Otto & SDM… C’mon you guys, you were both being so pleasant the last week or so, don’t ruin it now, the both of you let Tsull stir the pot and got you going again; so, ignore Tsull, kiss and makeup, guys!

Man, you guys have a lot of free time on your hands

You said: “…the speed in which the rumors started…Unless the news media has bugged Tracy I still say that I.M.H.O. that defies logic.” -—————————————-SDM, you’re forgetting the cable TV news channels – and Tracy’s old adversary, Wendy Witchell in particular. As we’ve seen in the Mr. Crime story, Wendy ran a story on info Tracy alledgedly had on Mumbles before he even received it – meaning she moved on it before even confirming the truth of the story.So while the rumor probaly wasn’t in the paper, it would certainly be on TV or the Internet.

Yes, Night-Gaunt. I am aware of those time limits. But I don’t think that justifies having abrupt endings. I think the skill of a writer is to produce great quality even when dealing with constraints imposed by a third party, meaning, I won’t blame TMS’s tyranny (which I accept, has been present) for the way these arcs ended. I can see Mr Jim Doherty, whose work as a consultant all of us here deem very worthy, believes Mr Curtis’s handling of stories is satisfactory. I don’t think that way.

As far as Sweatbox’s comment on “the new season,” I’d have to say it’s the upcoming baseball season. Unless Mike is using a crystal ball, he couldn’t have known the NHL would finally get back on the ice now when he wrote it several months ago.

Yopu said: “Internment camp? Under a lake??…”-——————————————————— Radish, go back and read the strips from last Sunday to today. We’ll wait.

No, sir, I am not one who doesn’t stand imperfection for any reason. I complain about stories showing flaws in their wrap-ups. These flaws occur very systematically in this strip. And as a matter of fact, I have been wondering if it was possible to have alternate endings to these stories. I even dared to wonder what if these alternate stories were presented here, in the way you do in the Alley Oop page. Because better and more coherent endings are possible.