Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for December 26, 2010

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Everyone!!

Tracy made the wrong decision when he drove into the flooded intersection and now he’s loosening Dr. Mordred’s chains. Think, Tracy, why did they need to use chains on Mordred?

This is totally beyond belief.

Christmas Tree Crime Topper–

Crazy Christmas Tracy and Company

Let’s Hope Mr. Mordred can swim.

At least it moved forward a bit.

And Merry Christmas to you today, American Dad–

And from the Whole Tracy crew, “We’re wondering, Dick Tracy…where are YOU!!”

Spare the taxpayers a lot of money Tracy. Let him drown.

“Maximum effort!” Did Testicle Chin get a “Twelve O’Clock High” DVD for Christmas? Wave that fist! Let everyone know they can’t get their feet wet as they dash to the rescue!

Horn Hair’s crossed eyes look so appropriate in this goofball situation. You gotta love the way her nose droops as she goes from one panel to the next. And that second picture of her looks like something out of an Egyptian pyramid, which means Locher hasn’t changed his technique since he quit art school.

How did Thick lose his hat and coat and gloves? How did he get into the rear seat? Why is the surface of the water level with the car’s floor, when the car is nose-down in the water? Did Thick have the key to his chains? Bearing in mind that the water is close to freezing, and it’s a dark and stormy night, how did he manage to get the locks undone? Most people would have their hands go numb within a moment of immersing them.

Does Thick expect him to swim while still wearing his handcuffs, mask and coat?

I’m sure that Thick added his own bit of water to the flood inside the Priapus. With that in mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM5NIi8m_kQ

First - Crimestoppers - Locher you idiot, Christmas is over. All the Charity Fundrasing is done by now. You are a month late with that info.

Now I think we will find out that Mordred is Aquaman and he will swim away leaving Tracy to drown.

This strip should be renamed “The Perfect Storm”

with “The Doors” lyrics written for the song “Riders on the Storm” in the panels.

Hey, yeah Dick Tracy lost his hat and heavy coat in that flooded auto. How did that happen….? Oh right, a flooded auto.

Liz in panel 1 has read this strip for the first time…

If Thick drowns Mordred, we will soon learn that it is a well-deserved irony because Mordred drowned his victims.

Why is everyone so hysterical because Thick is “unaccounted for”? That could mean he switched off his cell-phone or something equally harmless. What if he’s changing a flat tire? Or is the idea that Thick should be dead by now, and they’re afraid he survived?

Can Tracy use his wrist genie or cell phone underwater? It’s a good thing Sam Catchum is on duty to call the shots!

Hey, which character in Slimegobblers is the villain? Is it the man in black or the hideous dwarf? Or has Locher shown two con artists scamming one another?

a) Is it really possible to loosen chains? It’s not like a chain has much elasticity to it.

b) Since the whole issue is that the chains weigh forty pounds, what good will it do to loosen them? If they are still attached to Mordred, whether tight or loose, they will drown him.

c) “Ask about the charity you are being asked to support?” So, Locher, you’re saying that if somebody’s a con artist, they won’t have well-rehearsed, convincing answers?

Instead of giving readers such inane advice, why don’t you direct them to a resource that would actually give them concrete data on whether a charity is on the up and up? Like this one right here:

http://www.charitywatch.org/

Oh the weather outside is rotten, And Thick’s head is full of cotton, But Dick Locher causes his woes: Locher blows! Locher blows! Locher blows!

Locher doesn’t show signs of thinking, And his art is really reeking, And as Thick drifts amid the floes Locher blows! Locher blows! Locher blows!

Amid the froth and bubbles, Thick’s got a lot of troubles. He can’t even use his wrist geenie ‘cause Dick Locher is a weenie.

The strip is slowly dying, And Dick Locher still ain’t trying, And until the time that he goes This strip blows! This strip blows! This strip blows!

Flight Suit, if the Locher Mess Monster did as you suggest, he would have to admit to the existence of the twenty-first century. We’re talking about a man who bent himself out of shape by placing two non-Caucasian guest characters in this strip during 2010.

She isn’t serious, she’s Shirly!

When they handed out brains, Thick thought they said “trains” and said “I don’t need any”.

Today’s Sunday Recap is beyond hope. Even most drunken teenagers know better than to try the stunt Thick pulled. Locher wants us to believe that an experienced, trained detective would be this impossibly stupid. That’s asking a lot.

This is got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.

I’m not a weatherman but you can only get hail in the summertime.

This is another ridiculous story by Locher.

The only reason Spacy’s in trouble is that he isn’t wearing his all-weather gear like Sam knows to do. Same for his car.

“Come on, Tracy, Hold me, squeeze me, love me, tease me, ‘til I can’t, ‘til I can’t, ‘til I can’t tell! Come on, take me to the river, Drop me in the water, Dip me in the river, Push me in the water…”

Seriously, WTF??

I Must have missed the panel where Stick says “hold my beer, I gotta see this”

For the first time in a long time, I am ROTFLMAO before I even got to the comments! The comments this morning are great, but the clown act in color beats all! Mordred’s gotta be laughing, too! ALL of the decoy cars are safe and sound, all parked around the Krispy Kreme Donut shop and the Pride of the Police Department totals their Prius! Priceless!

I predict tomorrow’s strip opens with Mordred letting out a string of Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho’s out his mask for all three panels.

See, this is what happens when you pinch pennies and give the Dickster an ordinary car (except for the floating steering wheel and seats) instead of running up to the Dells and borrowing a Duck from Tommy Bartlett.

Alright, Locher, you owe us an explanation. How in the name of all that’s Holy and maybe half that’s not Holy did your version of Dick Tracy ever manage to keep his job this long??? Any rookie that made the mistakes this guy has made would have been fired in his first week. He’s been a danger to himself and the entire department. He NEVER would have been asked to escort a dangerous criminal unless, just maybe, the people responsible for the request wanted to off the guy and make it look like an accident.

Wait, wha???????

Instead of releasing Mordred, Tracy should just throw a Stradivarius in New Street Corner Lake and clear out the water with one big FLOOOOOM!!

H’mmm. Great time to ask if he can swim…the metal will slow him down at any rate. Nice poem, BillThompson.

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas. :)

gee, NObody’s questioned how did a hole that size appear in the intersection?!

oh, right–sorry: looking for logic in this strip is like… is… oh, right.

Unchained Melody http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1lTXhXTasA

(Yes, I’ve been saving this for a while now … knew I would need it eventually….)

-Cougar :{)

I don’t believe that sleet and hail ever occur at the same time. Not that weather facts matter to Locher.

But I’m way ahead of all of you. Unfortunately, Macy will survive, and, as he pants and gasps across the finish line, telling Chief Liz that he really needs a rest this time, she will just smirk and say “Not yet, Dick”. So what can the next adventure possibly be? You remember what happened last time Macy and Tess tried to take some R&R.

Chief Liz(z): “You IDIOT! Where is the department’s new Toyota Prius?”

Thick: “Honest, Chief - I wuz having a deep conversation with my friend in the back seat when the steering wheel came off and I handed it to him. Then I thought it a good time to practice a Power Jump just like Bo and Luke Duke do on TV.”

Chief Liz(z): (mumbles unintelligible four-letter words)

The maximum effort is those three in their all-weather gear??? You’ve got to be kidding.

After a few minutes in freezing water, you lose consciousness. If Thick manages to get Mordred out of the car and onto dry land, he’s liable to collapse from exhaustion and hypothermia. Mordred will probably pass out as well.

Now imagine that someone comes along with one of them thar newfangled cellphone thingies what makes movin’ tellyvision pichurs (I’m phrasing this in terms Locher might understand). Our civilian finds Thick unconscious on the ground, tangled in the chains wrapped around a man in fetish gear. The pictures should look stunning on the front cover of the Daily This and the Daily That, not to mention the Weekly Weasel and all the news channels.

And I want to see their all-weather gear! Does it include parkas and beach umbrellas, with pith helmets, mittens and sandals?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRlvgpOhzWg&feature=related

The car looks like a sub when it crash dives. GLUB, GLUB, GLUB.

Radish: for the water to be that deep, he had to drive clean off the flooded road and into a major drainage ditch… or into one of the smaller Chicago potholes.

FlightSuit: well, I know from experience that it’s possible to loosen and tighten the chain on a motorcycle, and that just a tiny bit of change in the tension can greatly affect whether it grinds the sprockets to dust or whips against the back side of the transmission. So… we’ll give Locher a “maybe” on that thing about loosening the chains. I just want to know where the adjusters are…

BillThompson: According to interviews with a guy who’s personally experimented in this area, you can actually stay conscious and functioning for a half-hour to an hour in freezing water (e.g., Prudhoe Bay). People die quickly when they fall into cold water because they reflexively gasp, drawing water into their lungs and drowning. Suppress this reflex and you can actually last a surprisingly long time in cold water. Long enough, perhaps, for about six months worth of Tracy strips…

puddleglum1066, I was thinking of people without any training, such as the survivors of that 1985 airliner crash into the Potomac. Looking at different sites, what you say about gasping is a major factor in survival.

Not that Locher’s “art” work means anything, but it looks like Mordred is bound in regular chains. There wouldn’t be any way to adjust the links there, short of undoing any locks. Maybe Thick’s idea of an adjustment is to shatter all of Mordred’s bones and squeeze him through the chains like toothpaste.

“Golly, Testicle Chin, you use your tongue purtier’n a twenty dollar whore!”