Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 17, 2011

Ah, ‘tis a pleasure to read DT again!

Not sure I understand what the musical notes are all about. Is this a reference to some song that those of us who are under 80 years old would not be familiar with?

There, yes, I got some snark in!

But, obviously, it took a lot of reaching on my part.

Let’s face the awful truth:

Dick Tracy no-longer sucks.

Good morning all…

“Special guests?” B.O. and Gertie???

Obviously not a ‘no-fly’ zone. ;D

**Flight Suit,” I found two songs with those lyrics. One is a ballad by a group called Ono:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3PDSScTLn0

and the other is the end song from “Easy Rider:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R4XnKBQ67w&feature=fvst

There’s also something called “Beverly Hills” by a group named Weezer, but I limited my lyrics search to recognizable forms of music.

Yar, ‘tis good it is. I sense suspense in the air.

And the Judds, “I Know Where I’m Going:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phqtC1lcczA

That’s probably the best fit here.

Flyface? That sounds like someone with a zipper up his face–ohmigod that’s who was behind the mask! They’re bringing back Dr. Mordred! Those poor rats couldn’t keep a bad man down!

Love the new team. Hurrah for Mike and Joe!

Flyface & the Fifth! Cool.

I just looked at Locher’s political cartoon, wow that’s rough. He has to pay to post that stuff. He could save some money if he just stopped. His sculpting is not too bad.

I’m no longer ashamed to be a fan of Dick Tracy!

This is a decided improvement. Congratulations to the new team!

My money says it’s B.O. Plenty and Gertie!

It is really amazing how a strip can turn around in just 10 or so panels. I am looking forward to seeing how the new team handles Dick Tracy in action.

Great strip! I love the new team!

One would think that her recent demotion Would bring a strong negative emotion But with a song in her heart and a lilt in her voice Lizz is positively ecstatic about the choice Free from the drudgery of being at the top Now she can go back to being a cop Back to those wild and care free days Of making the crooks see that crime never pays Glad she is to be out of that butch uniform Colorful, sexy clothes are more to her norm So beware all you criminals if Lizz is on the case She’ll flash you a smile, then shove a gun in your face With Dick in his fedora and Sam in a bow tie Lizz is the one that will always catch your eye.

You’re correct. My old friend Dan DeCarlo came up with that gag for Melody in his JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS comic. I asked him about it, and he said his wife Josie had a musical voice When we finally met her, it was true.

Mike

Klypzyxm… All I can say is THANK YOU!!! I feel like I did so many years ago when I first started reading Dick Tracy… every morning I can’t wait to check out the strip to see what’s next. It looks and reads wonderfully so far. Keep up the good work!

It is Fly-Face and the Fith. and it explained why the site “A Tribute Site to the Original Crimestopper” closed in mid-january 2011. They were becoming the NEW TEAM.

But I hope they are not going to use the same story…

P.S. It would be nice if GoComics would show the color version of the strip. They do on Sunday, so why not the rest of the week like: Comics - chicagotribune.com

Speaking of good work, my overdue thanks to wndrwrthg for the clever poems. Keep it coming, dude.

WW Glad to see you can also write in the positive.

Daily B&W, please. “Noir” atmosphere. Those wanting the colorized version can just read DT on the other site. Great to see a return to the strip of my youth.

WW is inspired to write according to the subject. The subject had been negative. Now it is postive! How true!! As always, good work WW!

Hey Mike,

Since you and Joe are both Tennessee boys, howzabout Dick & co. making a trip to Nashville to solve a crime ?

Forgot to mention how great this strip is…just 4 days in !

I have 3 older compilation books ( before they started these hardbound collections ), and this new incarnation is arguably the best Dick Tracy since Max Collins was writing and art was provided by Rick Fletcher, and then Dick Locher.

I read that only 50 papers carry DT now, and this is a bleeep shame; I don’t get this locally…thank God for GOCOMICS !

Even if the “special guests” are Fly-Face and the Fifth, until now the storyline is not exactly as it was on the Tribute Site. I am really excited about reading Dick Tracy again. I stopped reading with the “Mr. Pops” story - then, good to see DT just awoke, Patton is back, Lizz is pretty and I am eager to read DT every morning! Congratulations to the new team.

NO COLORIZATION OF DAILY STRIPS!!!! Stick with glorious black and white. The coloring washes out all the detail of the artwork. If you want color, there are other sites that provide it. Or drop some LSD.

I’m waiting for the sunday pages!!!!

Glad to see that Joe and Mike now have their well-earned byline.

I’m sure that our new “Dynamic Duo” will be incorporating new elements into the story that previously played out on the other website. Not everyone was aware of the “Plainclothes” site, so I have no problem seeing elements of that story again.

Go get ‘em Mike and Joe!

After seeing today’s final panel, my first instinct was Flyface, accompanied by Willie The Fifth Millyun, but the last we saw of those two was in a Hawaiian adventure in which they were drowned by a tidal wave. As for B. O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie, even though B. O. is a smelly hillbilly, he never attracted flies like that. We’ll just have to tune in on a daily basis to see what Joe and Mike have planned. This is GREAT work by this team, and Joe’s art has never looked better. Way to go, guys! Can’t wait to see some action scenes.

I can see right away that these guys know how to write Dick Tracy. Now we need to see some of our old friends like B.O. and Gertie, Diet Smith, Vitamin Flintheart and Junior Tracy along with his wife, Sparkle Plenty. We need to see Liz’s photog husband from the fifities make a comeback. He’d be a great source of storylines working online. Vitamin needs to get back on the stage and run across some hoods muscling in on his theater. Let’s have some of the ol action while staying on the cutting edge of technology. Going to the moon was silly in the sixties, but dealing with people trying to sabotage sattelite launches and getting on a new space shuttle seem reasonable today. Dick Tracy and his crew need to fly through space wit both feet on the ground! How about some sophisticated espionage? Angeltop didn’t die, she escaped her watery grave and heads an international smuggling operation, visciously working her way to the top. Various criminals await, from the suve to the swarthy, crossing racial, ethnic and racial lines. It’s 2011 and Dick Tracy is finally back from the Dick Locher-imposed grave of assininity and stupid ideas! Long live the new, improved Chet Gould-inspired Dick Tracy!

to flightsuit: When Liz was first introduced by Chet Gould in the fifties, he portrayed her as always with musical notes to suggest she was happy and content. I think they are using the notes as a signal that we have returned to the original, glamouros Liz. If you study Cht’s artwork, you will see that he used body definition (both male and female) to suggest emotion, whether it be danger, sensuality, happiness, sadness, relief or whatever emotion one might imagine. Chet was a master at using artwork to convey definitive emotion and move the story along. A gnarled tree might represent danger or age or confusion as the storyline needed it. The color of the sky could denote a certain mood or introduce a change in emotion. Shortly after Bonnie Braids was born, Crewy Lou, a female criminal, stole Dick Tracy’s car, not knowing Bonnie Braids was aboard and not caring after she found out, abandoning the car and baby in the North Woods to die of exposure or be attacked by animals. The panels were silent as we were brought closer and closer tothe damaged vehicle early the next morning. All Dick found was his baby’s belongings and blood on the Where was Bonnie Braids as her Father wept openly? This is the type of stuff I hope to see in the new Dick Tracy. look to the old to find the new, Flightsuit.

If not Flyface, definately some of his kinfolk!

@Night-Gaunt49 Locher had been with the strip continuously since 1983, when he took over the artwork as an emergency replacement following Rick Fletcher’s death. Even before that, one of his first jobs in the industry was as a studio assistant to Chester Gould himself, in the ’50s and ’60s.

Locher was okay when paired with Max Collins in the ’80s, though back then he was pretty much just the artist. I haven’t read enough of the Killian-Locher era to get a handle on how good or bad that was, but I get the impression it wasn’t that great either (though arguably still better than Locher’s solo efforts or the Locher-Brozman team). I would say it’s a case where almost three decades in the same gig, combined with advanced age, just took its toll in the end.

I’m not totally sold on the artwork yet, though I grant it’s worlds beyond what Brozman was doing, no question there. But it just looks so… I dunno, generic to me. Dick Tracy has always had a certain stylishness to the artwork, whether it was Gould, Fletcher, or even Locher. (Brozman tried too hard to emulate Locher’s style, and that’s part of why he failed miserably.) Maybe I just need to get used to it, but so far Joe Staton’s artwork, while very good, looks a bit too much like any other latter-day adventure strip. But opinions can change, especially after first impressions, so we’ll see. I’m hopeful for the future, certainly!

One more thing for the record: As a long-term Dick Tracy fan, I never had any objection to Lizz’s promotion per se. The idea, in and of itself, was not a terrible one; the strip had done far worse things in the past. What I objected to was the way that promotion was handled, especially at the expense of a character (Patton) who’d been with the strip nearly as long as the strip itself had been around. And what Locher did to Lizz’s character after making her Chief was nothing less than criminal, and negated any good that may have come from the promotion.

Kudos to the new team for walking back this horrendous decision, getting Lizz out from behind that desk and back on the streets, where she belongs. And also for remembering her name is spelled with TWO Zs, ;^)

FlyFace and the Fifth. :D. I think I’ve seen part of this one before…

If it is Fly Face and the Fifth, seeing that story again won’t be a big problem. Maybe they’ll get on with the story of Rize and her “special flour” in a few weeks. We never did get the chance to see how that came out (though I hazard a guess that hiding in a flour bin wasn’t one of Rize’s smartest moves).

I like the daily strips better in black and white. They just look right. There are other sites that offer it in color, so it isn’t that hard to get it both ways.

I also comment to the poet laurate of this group.