OK, that’s not news. Anyway, as I’ve complained before, DT is structured for both readers who follow it Monday through Saturday and those who only read it once a week on Sunday. The problem is that details have to be repeated on Monday for those who don’t see the Sunday strip. My local paper only carried DT Monday through Saturday before they dropped it. Anything new on Sunday had to be mentioned the next day.
Oct. 2, Saturday: Woman gives undercover Thick a dollar bill for helping her cross the street.
Oct. 3, Sunday: Man taps DT on shoulder, gives him a $1000 bill for helping the woman.
Oct. 4, Monday: Thick has the $1000 bill in his hand but no repeat of the scene when it was handed to him by the man. On Saturday we saw the woman hand him a $1 bill but suddenly on Monday he has a $1000 bill.
So someone who doesn’t read DT on Sunday is saying, “Hey, how did that woman become a man and how did that $1 become a $1000 bill?”
On Sunday the man who handed Thick the $1000 bill had a moustache and beard but the man he’s putting the pressure on yesterday and today doesn’t have the moustache. This means:
Another continuity error by Locher and Brozman.
Or Thick is really thick, he has no eye for details, a definite asset for a detective. What’s his excuse? “Well, the on-again off-again rain confused me and so did the sunglasses the guy was wearing at night in a rainstorm.”
This story has much in common with the Mistress of Death arc (25 June 2001 - 16 September 2001). In it, a Satanic priestess arrives in Nappingville and begins preaching. Within a week the churches are empty and juvenile delinquency rises. With no evidence of cause and effect, Thick decides the MoD is to blame and vows to find an excuse to arrest her.
No crime motivates Thick’s investigation. Three murders only take place later, when the MoD is attacked by three of her henchmen. She kills them in self-defense, then torches a building to destroy their bodies. The partly-burned dead are misidentified as the MoD and her two adult children, and then cremated and buried.
Meanwhile Thick arrests his own minister for the murders, based on flimsy circumstantial evidence. He had a motive, after all! Then a DNA analysis of the cremated bodies proves the dead weren’t the MoD and her children.
Thick arrests the MoD’s daughter, who has turned against her mother. She cooperates with the police in the hunt for the MoD. Her role is to answer the phone when Mommy Dearest calls. The MoD tells her daughter she is in Morona, Florida, running a scam as a Christian revivalist. Tracy has tapped the phone and hears this, but needs to have the call traced to find her. He sees no other way to locate her.
When he arrives in Morona, he finds the MoD screeching away in a tent. She grasps the center pole, which is promptly struck by lightning. She dies and Thick lives, proving that God is a lousy shot.
I think we’re looking at the same situation. D-cubed offends Thick through his perfectly legal actions, and Thick is determined to find grounds to arrest him. He may do something to entrap D-cubed.
Panel-Panner, I think it’s time we stop thinking in terms of continuity errors and try the easier task of counting the things Locher & Brozman got right. Granted, that will not leave much to talk about …
My guess du jour is that the different homeless guys we’ve seen all work for D-cubed. The magnate has recruited them from among the homeless. Hey, he can trust strangers who live on the streets! He knows where they live and even Thick can find the streets! Locher may be setting up a satire here–a satire of what, I don’t know.
And let’s be honest: didn’t we all have to fight the urge to answer the question in panel #3?
This strip has become so awful that most people only read it for the same reason that they rubberneck a bad automobile accident. Well, that, plus the spot-on comments in here.
Logic? Continuity? Quality? For this strip, all those went out with low prices. If this strip were a dog, it would have been put down decades ago.
I’ve posted this link before, but few probably saw it. If you want to see top quality plotting, writing, artwork, and continuity, then have a look at the work of a true genius in the field - Mr. Carl Barks. And note that this is a COMPLETE collection of his work, which in itself is astounding.
http://disneycomics.free.fr/indexbarksdate.php
Locher, you aren’t fit to tie this man’s shoes, or even to be mentioned in the same sentence with him.
BillThompson, that Mistress of Death story arc is really choice stuff! I love how it starts out with her somehow being able to rake in sixty to seventy thousand dollars in donations for one night of preaching.
Also noteworthy is the 7/3/2001 installment, in which Dick’s superior laments the fact that we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country.
Flight Suit, the MoD arc just gets wilder and weirder. It also runs less than three months. I wonder if someone at TMS was so horrified by it that they ordered Locher to cut it short.
Where is he going with the current garbage? Is D-cubed supposed to be a satire of Warren Buffet and his philanthropy? (The Buffett Foundation doesn’t give money to people who send them a request; they seek out worthy causes and then give money. Sounds a bit like the situation in this arc.)
There’s no way this guy is really that 3D dude. Nevermind the lack of sunglasses, he looks nothing like James Coburn. Or Rowdy Roddy Piper. He’s actually got a sort of Claude Akins vibe which pretty much suggests he’d never be caught giving money away. Playing a small town sheriff or an ape named Aldo, sure, but giving away money? No way.
Say, if Claude Akins had played a certain Mary Worth stalker named Aldo…
And he’d have been convincing, dammit! Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Claude Akins! Or David Dierdorff D’Buckworth, depending.
All right, I played with your brains yesterday… now here’s how this story’s really going to end:
Though things seem to be getting off on the wrong foot right now, in fact Tracy and Homeless Guy Three will hit it off over the next few days. The key is HG3’s question, “are you crazy?” He realizes Spacey’s having some problems telling people apart. More than that, he realizes the bill Spacey’s waving around isn’t a K-note; it’s just an ordinary hundred–not a common sight on Skid Row, but not a rare, collectible, no-longer-circulated oddity either.
Fortunately for all, HG3 is an out-of-work opthamologist, who lost his business when an insurance company run by Mrs. D’Buckworth found a tiny pencil mark on the wrong blank of a form and denied all claims for a year. He realizes Spacey’s problems stem from a set of experimental contact lenses that Diet Smith gave to Tracy several years ago, and which have now deformed the detectives eyeballs so that nothing is stable or focused in his world.
Though he’s been living on the street, HG3 has a true heart (he’s distantly related to Tess) and comes to Spacey’s aid. With the help of Rowdy Roddy, who distracts the security guard with the question “how can a guy who lives on the street have such perfect hair?”, HG3 and Spacey sneak into the eye-care cube at the local Wally World. There, HG3 quickly removes the Smith contacts and fits Tracy with new contacts (the hundred dollar bill covers it).
Tracy’s eyes are literally opened by this. The world becomes sane again. The POLICE HOOTERS building stops changing shape every time he looks at it. He can recognize the different homeless guys. The “D’Buckworth Mansion” settles into a modest suburban bungalow. Lizz’s rank stops changing every time he moves his head. His old pal Sam no longer seems to have somebody’s reproductive organs hanging from his chin. The “body” in the morgue turns out to be a discarded shop mannequin. The “$100 million in $1000 bills,” upon more careful reading, becomes simply $10,000 in hundreds, which D’Buckworth has been distributing as part of a much delayed Eagle Scout good-deed project.
Alas, Mrs. D’Buckworth remains a hag. Can’t win ‘em all…
With his sight restored and his world again stable, Tracy regains his powers of deduction and quickly resolves the case: no crime was committed. D’Buckworth is neither dead nor breaking any laws. Tracy quickly locates him, serving soup in a homeless shelter, and using his wrist geenee (which he now can see well enough to operate) he allows D’Buckworth to call home and let the old hag know he’s OK.
Strangely, she sounds disappointed at this.
With the case closed and his detective skills restored, Tracy goes on to have a distinguished career tracking down real criminals, and Naperberry enjoys a time of peace and safety on its streets. The End.
There’s just one flaw in your logic, puddleglum 1066, just one flaw: the extraneous comma in panel #3. D-cubed is not asking Thick if he is crazy, but if he is Crazy Mac, his lifelong friend, practical joker extraordinaire and co-founder of the Butterfly Tattoo Club For Men.
D-cubed has been in despair ever since Crazy Mac’s tragic death along the shores of Cress Creek Lake, where he slipped and fell into the raging waters of the swamp. In his despair D-cubed has wandered the city, giving away money in accord with an ancient funerary custom of his native Outer Slobbovia. Now made delusional by his experiences, D-cubed makes the common and easy error of mistaking Thick for Crazy Mac, returned from the grave. In joy D-cubed indulges in the Festive Resurrection Ceremony of his native Upper Slobbovia, in which he divides his worldly goods into two lists of equal value. “Choose one!” he tells Thick, who discovers that one list contains nothing but the name of Mrs. D’apostrophe. Fondly recalling his long evenings with the widow, need we ask which choice he makes?
BillThompson, thanks for telling me how to bold names! I also want to thank you for information on that MoD storyline. Now I gotta see if its archived anywhere because it sounds amazing.
Ive just noticed that not only is that not D-Cubed, for D-Cubed looked like a generous and quite decent fellow and this man does not, but also that Dick hasnt opened his eyes in three days worth of strips. He hasnt had them open since 10/4. Hes literally yelling at that man with his eyes shut. Im sure hed feel real silly if the homeless man told him D-Cubed was standing right next to him.
Nvash, you should see three small symbols above panel #3. The rectangular one is a calendar icon. Click on it and you can access the strip as far back as April 2001.
The DT strips in the gocomics archive boggle the mind. I’ve seen some of the old Chester Gould work, and I tell myself that the present version isn’t the “real” Dick Tracy.
The low quality of the artwork makes it impossible to tell what Locher and Brozman have in mind with the story. The summer 2007 arc featured an elderly, short, pudgy, blind ex-East-German spy. In one scene he is attacked by two kidnappers. Suddenly it turns out that he is really Thick in a very cunning disguise. This was not a plot twist; it was a gimmick out of a Saturday morning cartoon–and I mean the cheap and ugly Hanna-Barbera kind.
Thanks again BillThompson, Ill check it out. I agree that this is nowhere near as good as back in Goulds days. I wonder, the collections started at Vol 1 which had 1931-1933. Now they seem to have stopped at Vol 10 which had 1945-1947. Im wondering if theyll ever get to the current Dick Tracy that were reading now and what the reviews for it will be then.
What next? Does someone clobber Thick? Does he persuade D-cubed that he wants to help him in whatever he’s doing? Do we find that D-cubed has amnesia and remembers nothing since this began, which makes him the envy of the readership? Will Thick bring up Butterfly McCorpse? What role do Mrs. D’ingaling and Sue Doko play in this?
Reading this arc is like having the flu. You don’t enjoy it, but you *do* develop an interest in what happens next.
FLIGHT SUIT about 14 years ago
Uh, oh: Dick’s hassling Travis Bickle!
Vista Bill Raley and Comet™ about 14 years ago
This whole business of Tracy and the homeless people leaves me absolutely speachless… I think I’ll go back and read the circus story again…
When margueritem returns, maybe she can wake up the Pig on Wheels.
Panel-Panner about 14 years ago
VistaBill:
Considering the quality of this strip lately, let me paraphrase a line from the movie Jaws:
“We’re gonna need a bigger Pig on Wheels.”
Panel-Panner about 14 years ago
Wait a minute - Locher and Brozman screwed up.
OK, that’s not news. Anyway, as I’ve complained before, DT is structured for both readers who follow it Monday through Saturday and those who only read it once a week on Sunday. The problem is that details have to be repeated on Monday for those who don’t see the Sunday strip. My local paper only carried DT Monday through Saturday before they dropped it. Anything new on Sunday had to be mentioned the next day.
Oct. 2, Saturday: Woman gives undercover Thick a dollar bill for helping her cross the street.
Oct. 3, Sunday: Man taps DT on shoulder, gives him a $1000 bill for helping the woman.
Oct. 4, Monday: Thick has the $1000 bill in his hand but no repeat of the scene when it was handed to him by the man. On Saturday we saw the woman hand him a $1 bill but suddenly on Monday he has a $1000 bill.
So someone who doesn’t read DT on Sunday is saying, “Hey, how did that woman become a man and how did that $1 become a $1000 bill?”
Panel-Panner about 14 years ago
On Sunday the man who handed Thick the $1000 bill had a moustache and beard but the man he’s putting the pressure on yesterday and today doesn’t have the moustache. This means:
Another continuity error by Locher and Brozman.
Or Thick is really thick, he has no eye for details, a definite asset for a detective. What’s his excuse? “Well, the on-again off-again rain confused me and so did the sunglasses the guy was wearing at night in a rainstorm.”
Steve Bartholomew about 14 years ago
You are under arrest for giving away money. BTW, you have no rights.
OldTracy about 14 years ago
Spacy needs the $1000 to pay for medical bills for his broken finger.
Bill Thompson about 14 years ago
This story has much in common with the Mistress of Death arc (25 June 2001 - 16 September 2001). In it, a Satanic priestess arrives in Nappingville and begins preaching. Within a week the churches are empty and juvenile delinquency rises. With no evidence of cause and effect, Thick decides the MoD is to blame and vows to find an excuse to arrest her.
No crime motivates Thick’s investigation. Three murders only take place later, when the MoD is attacked by three of her henchmen. She kills them in self-defense, then torches a building to destroy their bodies. The partly-burned dead are misidentified as the MoD and her two adult children, and then cremated and buried.
Meanwhile Thick arrests his own minister for the murders, based on flimsy circumstantial evidence. He had a motive, after all! Then a DNA analysis of the cremated bodies proves the dead weren’t the MoD and her children.
Thick arrests the MoD’s daughter, who has turned against her mother. She cooperates with the police in the hunt for the MoD. Her role is to answer the phone when Mommy Dearest calls. The MoD tells her daughter she is in Morona, Florida, running a scam as a Christian revivalist. Tracy has tapped the phone and hears this, but needs to have the call traced to find her. He sees no other way to locate her.
When he arrives in Morona, he finds the MoD screeching away in a tent. She grasps the center pole, which is promptly struck by lightning. She dies and Thick lives, proving that God is a lousy shot.
I think we’re looking at the same situation. D-cubed offends Thick through his perfectly legal actions, and Thick is determined to find grounds to arrest him. He may do something to entrap D-cubed.
Bill Thompson about 14 years ago
Panel-Panner, I think it’s time we stop thinking in terms of continuity errors and try the easier task of counting the things Locher & Brozman got right. Granted, that will not leave much to talk about …
My guess du jour is that the different homeless guys we’ve seen all work for D-cubed. The magnate has recruited them from among the homeless. Hey, he can trust strangers who live on the streets! He knows where they live and even Thick can find the streets! Locher may be setting up a satire here–a satire of what, I don’t know.
And let’s be honest: didn’t we all have to fight the urge to answer the question in panel #3?
btmosley about 14 years ago
This strip has become so awful that most people only read it for the same reason that they rubberneck a bad automobile accident. Well, that, plus the spot-on comments in here.
Logic? Continuity? Quality? For this strip, all those went out with low prices. If this strip were a dog, it would have been put down decades ago.
I’ve posted this link before, but few probably saw it. If you want to see top quality plotting, writing, artwork, and continuity, then have a look at the work of a true genius in the field - Mr. Carl Barks. And note that this is a COMPLETE collection of his work, which in itself is astounding.
http://disneycomics.free.fr/indexbarksdate.php
Locher, you aren’t fit to tie this man’s shoes, or even to be mentioned in the same sentence with him.
Bill Thompson about 14 years ago
Rightwingmoron, I think I see Thick’s “logic” here. Suspects all have rights. However D-cubed is not a suspect. Therefore he has no rights.
FLIGHT SUIT about 14 years ago
BillThompson, that Mistress of Death story arc is really choice stuff! I love how it starts out with her somehow being able to rake in sixty to seventy thousand dollars in donations for one night of preaching.
Also noteworthy is the 7/3/2001 installment, in which Dick’s superior laments the fact that we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country.
Bill Thompson about 14 years ago
Flight Suit, the MoD arc just gets wilder and weirder. It also runs less than three months. I wonder if someone at TMS was so horrified by it that they ordered Locher to cut it short.
Where is he going with the current garbage? Is D-cubed supposed to be a satire of Warren Buffet and his philanthropy? (The Buffett Foundation doesn’t give money to people who send them a request; they seek out worthy causes and then give money. Sounds a bit like the situation in this arc.)
JCFremont about 14 years ago
There’s no way this guy is really that 3D dude. Nevermind the lack of sunglasses, he looks nothing like James Coburn. Or Rowdy Roddy Piper. He’s actually got a sort of Claude Akins vibe which pretty much suggests he’d never be caught giving money away. Playing a small town sheriff or an ape named Aldo, sure, but giving away money? No way.
Say, if Claude Akins had played a certain Mary Worth stalker named Aldo…
And he’d have been convincing, dammit! Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Claude Akins! Or David Dierdorff D’Buckworth, depending.
Honey, have you seen my medication?
China60 about 14 years ago
It’s fascinating that so many creative comments can be made about something that is essentially nothing.
puddleglum1066 about 14 years ago
All right, I played with your brains yesterday… now here’s how this story’s really going to end:
Though things seem to be getting off on the wrong foot right now, in fact Tracy and Homeless Guy Three will hit it off over the next few days. The key is HG3’s question, “are you crazy?” He realizes Spacey’s having some problems telling people apart. More than that, he realizes the bill Spacey’s waving around isn’t a K-note; it’s just an ordinary hundred–not a common sight on Skid Row, but not a rare, collectible, no-longer-circulated oddity either.
Fortunately for all, HG3 is an out-of-work opthamologist, who lost his business when an insurance company run by Mrs. D’Buckworth found a tiny pencil mark on the wrong blank of a form and denied all claims for a year. He realizes Spacey’s problems stem from a set of experimental contact lenses that Diet Smith gave to Tracy several years ago, and which have now deformed the detectives eyeballs so that nothing is stable or focused in his world.
Though he’s been living on the street, HG3 has a true heart (he’s distantly related to Tess) and comes to Spacey’s aid. With the help of Rowdy Roddy, who distracts the security guard with the question “how can a guy who lives on the street have such perfect hair?”, HG3 and Spacey sneak into the eye-care cube at the local Wally World. There, HG3 quickly removes the Smith contacts and fits Tracy with new contacts (the hundred dollar bill covers it).
Tracy’s eyes are literally opened by this. The world becomes sane again. The POLICE HOOTERS building stops changing shape every time he looks at it. He can recognize the different homeless guys. The “D’Buckworth Mansion” settles into a modest suburban bungalow. Lizz’s rank stops changing every time he moves his head. His old pal Sam no longer seems to have somebody’s reproductive organs hanging from his chin. The “body” in the morgue turns out to be a discarded shop mannequin. The “$100 million in $1000 bills,” upon more careful reading, becomes simply $10,000 in hundreds, which D’Buckworth has been distributing as part of a much delayed Eagle Scout good-deed project.
Alas, Mrs. D’Buckworth remains a hag. Can’t win ‘em all…
With his sight restored and his world again stable, Tracy regains his powers of deduction and quickly resolves the case: no crime was committed. D’Buckworth is neither dead nor breaking any laws. Tracy quickly locates him, serving soup in a homeless shelter, and using his wrist geenee (which he now can see well enough to operate) he allows D’Buckworth to call home and let the old hag know he’s OK.
Strangely, she sounds disappointed at this.
With the case closed and his detective skills restored, Tracy goes on to have a distinguished career tracking down real criminals, and Naperberry enjoys a time of peace and safety on its streets. The End.
Bill Thompson about 14 years ago
There’s just one flaw in your logic, puddleglum 1066, just one flaw: the extraneous comma in panel #3. D-cubed is not asking Thick if he is crazy, but if he is Crazy Mac, his lifelong friend, practical joker extraordinaire and co-founder of the Butterfly Tattoo Club For Men.
D-cubed has been in despair ever since Crazy Mac’s tragic death along the shores of Cress Creek Lake, where he slipped and fell into the raging waters of the swamp. In his despair D-cubed has wandered the city, giving away money in accord with an ancient funerary custom of his native Outer Slobbovia. Now made delusional by his experiences, D-cubed makes the common and easy error of mistaking Thick for Crazy Mac, returned from the grave. In joy D-cubed indulges in the Festive Resurrection Ceremony of his native Upper Slobbovia, in which he divides his worldly goods into two lists of equal value. “Choose one!” he tells Thick, who discovers that one list contains nothing but the name of Mrs. D’apostrophe. Fondly recalling his long evenings with the widow, need we ask which choice he makes?
Midnite about 14 years ago
BillThompson, thanks for telling me how to bold names! I also want to thank you for information on that MoD storyline. Now I gotta see if its archived anywhere because it sounds amazing.
Ive just noticed that not only is that not D-Cubed, for D-Cubed looked like a generous and quite decent fellow and this man does not, but also that Dick hasnt opened his eyes in three days worth of strips. He hasnt had them open since 10/4. Hes literally yelling at that man with his eyes shut. Im sure hed feel real silly if the homeless man told him D-Cubed was standing right next to him.
Dr. Midnight about 14 years ago
“Yeah I’m crazy! CRAZY LIKE A …, well, actually, just crazy.”
billdi Premium Member about 14 years ago
“I don’t know karate but I know crazy!” (James Brown)
Bill Thompson about 14 years ago
Nvash, you should see three small symbols above panel #3. The rectangular one is a calendar icon. Click on it and you can access the strip as far back as April 2001.
The DT strips in the gocomics archive boggle the mind. I’ve seen some of the old Chester Gould work, and I tell myself that the present version isn’t the “real” Dick Tracy.
The low quality of the artwork makes it impossible to tell what Locher and Brozman have in mind with the story. The summer 2007 arc featured an elderly, short, pudgy, blind ex-East-German spy. In one scene he is attacked by two kidnappers. Suddenly it turns out that he is really Thick in a very cunning disguise. This was not a plot twist; it was a gimmick out of a Saturday morning cartoon–and I mean the cheap and ugly Hanna-Barbera kind.
Midnite about 14 years ago
Thanks again BillThompson, Ill check it out. I agree that this is nowhere near as good as back in Goulds days. I wonder, the collections started at Vol 1 which had 1931-1933. Now they seem to have stopped at Vol 10 which had 1945-1947. Im wondering if theyll ever get to the current Dick Tracy that were reading now and what the reviews for it will be then.
Fusnr about 14 years ago
Lots of comment today, so much WW didn’t even write a poem.
Bill Thompson about 14 years ago
What next? Does someone clobber Thick? Does he persuade D-cubed that he wants to help him in whatever he’s doing? Do we find that D-cubed has amnesia and remembers nothing since this began, which makes him the envy of the readership? Will Thick bring up Butterfly McCorpse? What role do Mrs. D’ingaling and Sue Doko play in this?
Reading this arc is like having the flu. You don’t enjoy it, but you *do* develop an interest in what happens next.
Midnite about 14 years ago
Thick ought to do something about that arm coming out of his chin. Its very distracting.
countoftowergrove about 14 years ago
Macy is channelling Lenny Briscoe. He always accused the wrong guy first time around.