Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 30, 2009

WOW, he called for an ambulance, and one actually showed up!

“unusual fall…something didn’t look right”. Perhaps the artwork?

Do murdered people fall differently than people who fall accidently?

Perhaps Ringo keeps saying It Happened cuz he’s pre-emptively setting the stage for his future insanity defense.

Yes, actually it did f–king happen. Get over it!

It’s too soon for Tracy suspects…but the strip is good. C’mon Locher!!

Yeah, Macy. Something didn’t look right! Like the extra hole in her! Like Carlo, I’m pulling for Locher to surprise us and earn his keep!

Morrow, I have no faith that Locher will do the right thing.

CAN I BE OF ANY ASSISTANCE??? What a ludicrous opening line to start off today’s strip!!! He’s a police officer…trained in all manner of emergency procedure…and this is what we get today!!!

I have read this strip since the mid 60’s…its a hard habit to break, that’s why I continue reading it…but it’s hard to grit your teeth on such goofy dialogue and artwork like this when there are so many other adventure strips out there DOING IT RIGHT!!!

Check panel 3 from yesterday… either yesterday or today Tracy is holding his badge upside-down. Sheez.

I have enjoyed Dick Tracy ever since I saw the first strip when I was a young kid….always I knew that Tracy was on the job! keep it up Tracy !! :-}

Too late for an ambulance….she’s Happened.

Unusual fall, almost as if she was shot by that gun that we heard go off when she had her unusual fall……hmmmmm.

Hmmmm….why is the net 15 feet over to the left? Hmmm.

I guess now that Ringo knows the cops are here, he has to stop pretending this is part of the act.

I was going to mention that as well. I’ll bet this circus loses its insurance policy, putting nets where the trapeze artists miss them when they fall.

Of course, the plaintiff family will have to call in experts to prove that the gunshot alone would not have been fatal, and that she was not already dead by the time she hit the ground.

Exhibit 1, of course, will be the comic strip and the big smile she had.

Bonnie Braids: “Daddy, now at the circus is over, will you get me some cotton candy?”

Too late for an ambulance because she’s getting up. Not a scratch on her. All part of the act, folks. Please return to your popcorn, Dick.

Tracy was ticked off that the ringmaster seemed to be ignoring him. “Let me take my badge, shove it in his face and repeat myself”, Dick decided was his best course of action. “Police, can I be of assistance”? “POLICE”? The ringmaster exclaimed, startled at this funny looking man standing before him. “No way he’s a cop””! The Ring Master muttered under his breath, figuring he was part of the traitorous clown act while dismissing him as an unimportant member. Tracy was annoyed that the ringmaster continued to ignore him. He decided to forget about the disrespect for the moment. “That was an unusual fall. Something didn’t look right”. Tracy thought to himself while wondering if he could get a refund for his ticket. “Ambulance is here – make way.” Shouted the lead clown Matthew from the sidelines. “IT HAPPENDED”! The ringmaster exclaimed yet again. He loved the way the words rolled off his lips. Tracy suddenly looked at the victim. It never occurred to him that there was a reason she wasn’t moving and her limbs were twisted in awkward positions. Dick suddenly felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach that felt exactly like it did when Tess said no, which was too often. “Too late for an ambulance. She’s…. The ringmaster gave Tracy a sideways look. “Is this buffoon kidding me”/ he wondered as he slowly moved away.

BB

yes, she is dead.

channce, thanx for the linx!—may I amend to your comments on ‘girl genius’ …..GREAT art!….the attention to detail in the backgrounds and the obvious knowledge of human anatomy is refreshing and awesome…….I’ve added this to my daily comic stops

I found the fall to be pretty unusual too! It didn’t take the body two weeks to hit the ground.

What’s up with that Dick Tracy?

I realize this story has been stretched out, as usual. But how long did it really take DT to run down to the ring? I mean he calls the ambulance from his seat, and by the time he gets to the ringmaster, the ambulance is there? Was there an EMT in the parking lot? He must have really been in the nosebleads… or maybe has trouble going downstairs in his old age.

“Sure, you can be of assistance! Grab that shovel and start cleaning the elephant room.”

Carlo wrote : “It’s too soon for Tracy suspects …. but the strip is good, C’mon Locher !!!”

That’s what worries me Carlo, this looks like Locher is shaping up to have a MYSTERY story here. Gould seldom used that plot device. The drawbacks are “plodding PACING and “NO VILLAIN” seen or revealed till story end.

I’m hoping that one day Locher will surprise me but he has usually used this device to AVOID the creative work of presenting the traditional unique villain

I’ve peeped ahead, FOUR weeks from now Tracy will still be hanging around the Circus “talking”, and you will only have a “villain” who remains a mystery ?”

It becomes a bloody boring tale and you are not on the edge of your seat wondering WHAT is going to happen, but rather WHEN and WHY Locher is taking so long to pull the plug and get to the point (?) And instead of excited “expectation” you experience impatience and “annyoyance”. There is a dictinction !

Some years ago TOP Artist Stan Drake (Heart of Juliet Jones) told Locher that he was”WORKING on the best strip in the country”.. Seems as if our man took it as a “compliment”.He put tt in an article. But he was “working” on another man’s creation. And, there is a BIG distinction between “working on”, and “producing” the best strip.The distinction seemed lost on Locher as is the amount of time he often wastes getting to the point in his tales.

nighthawks said, about 2 hours ago channce, thanx for the linx!—may I amend to your comments on ‘girl genius’ …..GREAT art!….the attention to detail in the backgrounds and the obvious knowledge of human anatomy is refreshing and awesome…….I’ve added this to my daily comic stops —- Wait! Is this a reference to Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius? By the incredible pen of Phil Foglio? What a great comic. I’ve been a Foglio fan since the very early 80’s. Enjoy Nighthawks, you’ve got a lot of good reading ahead of you. —- All you PIbgorn fans out there, if you’re not reading Girl Genius, you should be. To everyone else, sorry if this post is out of place. Dick Tracy is great! Or he sucks, whichever you prefer! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php

Bad luck. A cop in the room.

It’s really frustrating. What we will see for the rest of this week is a small dose of the fare we have to endure for the following three weeks. It’s a Circus “Misarable-Go-Round” offering the same or similar things.

The only relief is a ONE panel arrival of Teevo who thereafter, like in Annie, does a Punjab “under-the-blanket” dissapearing act.

It amost seems that it is IMPERATIVE that Dick ACTS ALONE. Some readers may be wondering if we are witnessing a case of distorted perception here, where “Delusional” Dicky resents a “partner” on Tracy, AND having our hero working alone, is actually a manisfestation of that psychosis (?)

How about a Blanket for Brozmon ? – “He wouldn’t even continue drawing my favorite Rubber Duckie on Sundays !”

BB, as usual, you are the greatest! Keep on explainin’ it to me! Locher confuses it too much. Someone really important, as you are, needs to keep the genius of this strip alive.

…dead!

Please, please, can’t the syndicate hire some talented young team of writer/cartoonists who actually want to make this strip work? This amateurish mess is a disaster, and an insult to the legacy of Chester Gould.

This is worse than when King Features let Bobby London draw Popeye. At least his art was passable.

Maybe they should just go the same route as Popeye (or Peanuts, Calvin, etc) and start running classic strips - there are decades of them, any single one of which towers head and shoulders above the trash that has been masquerading under the name Dick Tracy for the past few years.

I wonder how many client papers are still running this atrocity?

vancourt:

At the lowest point in my relationship with KFS - and they brought me down pretty low - I gave them stories and art of a quality far higher than your half-baked criticism.