Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 09, 2009

As well they should be with all the lameness going on around them. And Ringo should have followed the advice given in today’s zit picker’s slime book.

Now this is really starting to get funny!!

OK, we’re in a remake of Todd Browning’s FREAKS…

Overall, I think all comic strips are of poor quality.The writing is poor and those strips that are supposed to be funny, are not that funny at all. When I first read comics in the newspaper , we did not have television. Space travel was still science fiction. Comic books and listening to the radio were our entertainment. When Diet Smith took us to the moon, that was exciting because no one had been there before. Over 21,000 people receive Dick Tracy in their email each day. But it is harder today to keep readers interested in a story that only shows you four panels per day. I think that the comic pages will become a thing of the past one day. It is like when I had my first computer - everyone sends you email jokes - but after two or three years, you have seen all of the jokes. That is the problem with Dick Tracy - you don’t have the space to get into good story lines, that people expect today. You can not do a CSI or Law & Order in-depth story in the comics page. I just started buying the books of Dick Tracy with the orginal strips by Chester Gould. You can’t replace Chester Gould. The strip should have stopped, when Gould did and like the comic strip “Peanuts” should have come back as Dick Tracy Classics, reprinting the best of the old strips.

I think all comic strips are of poor quality.

Safeway, maybe you just haven’t looked at enough strips. There is some real artwork out there. I could mention Pibgorn for just one. It might not be to your taste, but the artist has real craftmanship. There are other strips that are really funny–Sinfest is one, tho it’s never been syndicated. Maybe that’s for the best.

Sadly, DT has become unintentionally funny. There are too many things wrong with today’s strip to mention. I agree Tracy should have retired years ago. Make room for new, more talented artists.

No wonder Tracy has to keep repeating himself, he just starts a conversation with Ringo then Ringo turns his back on him (because he doesn’t want Tracey to see him go black in the face)

This strip has always annoyed me by “marking time” day after day, but currently it is taken to ridiculous extremes.

Some comics ARE funny, even if they don’t make me laugh out loud, and others are just entertaining.

E.g. I liked today’s (august 9) “Loose parts” by Blazek.

Dick Tracy is entertaining but probably not in the way Locher & Brozman intended. (They should get themselves a good continuity director ).

“Everyone out of the tent and go home so we CAN’T interview you to see if you saw anything…”

Mr. Ringo is looking different again. Geez guys, CONSISTENCY!!!!

Threats to your family should be reported. I made the threats

Comics review. Mark Trail- good storyline, good artwork Judge Parker-excellent storyline, excellent artwork Mary Worth- good storyline, average artwork The Phantom-excellent storyline, good artwork Rex Morgan, M.D.- excellent storyline, excellent artwork Prince Valient- excellent storyline, excellent artwork Just my opinion of a few.

I think Locher changed the target audience of this classic strip to the numbskull genre. Big mistake! And continuing to try to attract and impress them after all but 50 newspapers dumped the strip is double-dumb. I’m surprised Locher doesn’t have a buggy whip manufacturing operation somewhere.

Clown says “our show could be kaput if we don’t find the next killer!”

You mean, all those freaks in the last panel (oh god, going to have nightmares!) would have to go home and we won’t get to see them ever again? Well, why didn’t you say so sooner? Dick Tracy, I think you should take a nice, long pizza break. Go home everyone!!

This is freaking awesome.

Since when did a career in the circus require working your way up through the Russian Women’s weightlifting team?

Brenda Starr’s artwork is first rate. Pity they cannot take over the Tracy strip. His “Wrist Geenee” looks like an outdated 70’s digital watch. The vintage 2-Way Wrist Radio/TV looked terrific, especially in the classic 1960’s cartoons. The logo @ the top of Sunday’s strips, com- plete with fedora, is the way Tracy should look @ all times. I’m staying with the comic, since it’s not Tracy’s fault concerning his artistic & dialogue challenged shortcomings.

The ringmaster’s hair is blue. His eyebrows are blue. His beard is blue. Yet his moustache is black. Evidently he dyes his moustache.

No, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that?

Unless it’s the custom on his native planet.

Whatever happened to the space coupe in the years I wasn’t reading? Did someone take it on a long journey?

-Cougar :{)

P.S. Also, he is tilted off to his left. It’s not just his head; it’s his whole body. Is his right leg longer than his left leg? Is he a counterclockwise running ridge runner? Does he come from a planet where a counterclockwise running ridge runner DIDN’T mate with a clockwise running ridge runner and give rise to animals with equal-length legs?

:{)

Can I make sure that part of the fee that I unwisely paid to go Genius doesnt go to whoever is responsible for this train wreck? I try, I really do. I want to be able to enjoy this. A murder at a circus? Sounds like an interesting tale. Until you see this mess.

Oh, the pain William, the pain.

I think they are going for the Ernie Bushmiller award.

Back in the 60s or 70s, many of us used to read the Nancy comic strip just to see how stupid it was. Lots of times that is why I read this strip.

Historically, we look back at the Bushmiller stuff with reverence in its simplicity. I do not think history will be so kind to Locher’s Tracy.

On the positive: I do think this story is better than the last. After reading these I find myself waiting for the next day to see what happens.

But I agree, the Mary Worth strip has been a lot more exciting lately. Mary Worth!

That last panel looks like a “Townhall Meeting” without the Members of the reading Public “screaming” and asking –

“WHEN” (?) It’s going to happen ! (?)

WHAT ?? You know –The motive ? The Villain ? Less “marking time”? Some action outside the Circus ring ?

We’re FOUR Sundays into the story now and HOW MUCH “has happened” it’s a question Locher should ask himself !

In plain language time to cut out the dratted “WAFFLING” (writer indecision ? stalling?), Do you need a wake-up call (?) someone to really SHOUT – “Cut out those clownish adventures in “artistic flatulence” aimed at your readers coming from the “same-spot” every week GET TO HE!! OUT OF THE bleeep CIRCUS RING !!

It’s like - “ready, aim, fire” using an automatic ’ repeating ’ weapon. You’re aiming at little children but thery’re not all little Oliver Twists wanting MORE of the same sloppy gruel you’ve been serving, week in and week out.

Time for a new flavor, a new Aroma ! Seems there is need for a fast working “laxative” here, to get things moving.

The only suggestion of “activity” in this storyline is an illusion, a - “dream” about a Circus, while the Authors “snore” deeply and contentedly in Sleepy Hollow.

Cougar – on the SPACECOUPE.

Gould had come under some pressure, and after July 1974 we didn’t see it again, although the other Moon Era inventions like the “Flying Buckets” remained in use up to early 1977 (Zero Naught case). He retired in late December of that year,

Max Collins the new Writer “used” none of them and in his third story “The return of Big Boy”, Moommaid was blown up by a bomb intended for Tracy on August 6, 1978. (Art by Rick Fletcher). The following Sunday a big panel funeral and Collins had the Governer of the Moon sending a message that he wished to have nothing further to do with the “Earth” thereafter.

The Spacecoupe, space travel and related items haven’t appeared in the strip since.

A few readers who were hooked in then, stiil hark back to those days.

Safeway makes a good point. Comic strips have progressively lost page space for years. A Sunday Dick Tracy in the old days would take up an entire page of a paper. When I was a kid it was still a third of a page (on a much bigger page). There was more room to tell a story.

And, there are restrictions on the format…in spite of space being a premium in the paper, the top third of the Sunday strip needs to be removable (hence the logo and Gobstopper’s Textbook). Also, the Sunday and daily strips need to tell the story independently of each other. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of maximizing the use of what little space they have.

But the question is, where does it go? What percentage of people view this strip online vs. in print? How much does each version make? If a workable business model for online newspapers ever comes around, then page space for comics is no longer an issue, they can be as big as necessary.

marktrail said: “Amazes me all the people who don’t like this strip.. yet keep reading it.”

Personally, as a fan of Dick Tracy since I was just a pup in the 60s, I’m still holding out hope that someday, somehow, it’ll get better.

But I’m also holding out hope that I’ll hit the PowerBall jackpot someday, and it looks like that ain’t happening anytime soon either.

QUOTE: “Brenda Starr’s artwork is first rate. Pity they cannot take over the Tracy strip.”

The current Brenda Starr team is just repeating couple of view angels and copy pasting same panels with different texts. That kind of artwork is bulletproof but dull and dead.

A DT observation: What is happening with the circus tent? What is that yellow stuff in panel 5? Are they going to create some kind of grain silo?

In panel two today, Macy appears to have taken a vague resemblance to Quincy Magoo.

Last panel: Has her name changed from “Louise Trapeze” to “Trapeze Louise?” Or is Tracy just getting senile?

Thank you, Sydney. That explains how Gould got out of that mess, and now that you mention it I think I remember the Governor of the Moon cutting off contact.

So, I guess the creature with the blue hair (and the tilt) probably isn’t from another planet. Is he a mutant? A punk rocker?

Have Locher and Brozman been reading up on the Expressionists and how they used color to express the artist’s feelings about the subject?

-Cougar :{)

What is that yellow stuff in panel 5? Are they going to create some kind of grain silo?

I think the yellow stuff is crowds of people with very long blonde hair – so long and fluffy that from a distance all we see is a sea of yellow stuff with an occasional face in it. They are either streaming into the tent to gawk at the corpse and interfere with the investigation, or streaming out of the tent to evade being questioned and interfere with the investigation.

Evidently the police have not put up those yellow tape CRIME SCENE barriers – and remember, the real police arrived a while ago. Or is this a flashback to before they arrived? No real police are visible today….

-Cougar :{)

.I’ve come back but begrudgingly. Don’t you know Locher has not been doing the art work since March? It is the new guy, Brizman. Locher just writes the story now. If you ask me both guys are killing DT. Let the strip rest in peace.

marktrail queried :

“It amazes me all the people who don’t like the strip, yet they keep reading it”

Mark as a relatively new poster on the board ‘my take” is, most eyeryone likes the strip Dick Tracy. What they DON’T like is the dull, careles blase’ manner in which Dick Locher presents it.

Most are here venting frustrations and inadertenly it has evolved into humorous cut and thrust meeting place, which many find more “entertaining” than the strip. But you have to “read” it to make those comments, or to poke fun at the work.

Not that it matters one hoot to him, but the daily ever-present message to Locher is, that it’s time to go home ! He did some talented design work on Villains back in the period 1995 to 2002 and before with Collins (Snake Eyes, Putty Puss) But Kilian deserves credit for “sparking” the names and ideas in the latter period (eg, Snails ,Smirk & original Dab Stract) but sadly Locher not an effective writer, has not designed any compelling characters in three years and one could say with certainty he’s now a spent force.

It’s a bad thing in a way to seem to “kick” a man when he is down. But much of it he brought on himself.

Mark’s not new, he’s expanding his horizons. He’s an old timer at goComics. On the other hand, many of you probably consider your ole pal Dypak new as well.

Is the guy in the Crimestopper’s Advice panel giving or receiving a threat?