Ah! So the killings are nothing but a means to an end; the clown’s real agenda is to ruin the circus.
Ringo even seems to be acknowledging that his life, and Tracy’s and Ennen’s, are of secondary importance to the matter of whether the circus survives or fails.
Hmmm…
(CUE MUSIC)
Look at me I’m Sandra Dee, Lousie with Trapeze-ity…
Not only the glove was appearing and disappearing, but the sleeve that we saw on the sunday page had no stars, now the arm of the clown has stars and the fluffy thing on its extremity. Oh, the joys of inconsistency!
At the risk of revealing how out-of-touch I am, who’s this BMB that keeps getting mentioned?
Regarding GoComics, it is silly that clicking on a comic just gets you the same pic, blown up. Worse still, it’s a GIF. The GIFs here generally look OK, but one would think a JPEG or PNG would almost surely yield better picture quality.
Regarding your comments yesterday about that Batman-meets-Dick Tracy thing:
You make a good point about the classic, abstract portrayal of Tracy not carrying over so well into a more realistic style. It was interesting to see that artist’s take on the character, but in several panels, I couldn’t even tell if I was looking at DT or at the villain.
The other thing is that the concept of Batman meeting, teaming up with, or fighting characters from other franchises not in the DC Universe has already been done to death. He’s met everything from H.R. Giger’s Aliens to Predators to Judge Dredd to Spiderman.
Interesting, in light of your ongoing debate with Sydney, that the Batman strip firmly identifies DT as a Chicago cop, especially since I’ve always imagined Metropolis as being analogous to Chicago and Gotham, of course, being a stand-in for New York.
It gets a bit complicated if Metropolis, Chicago, Gotham, and New York are all supposed to be existing concurrently in the same continuity. America’s a big place, but we’ve only got so much room for so many major urban destinations.
I like powers - explicitely aimed to adults. And I agree, stuff like sex between two characters should be out of comic books, indeed - and I didn’t buy the A*sex issue with Luke Cage - but then… are comics still being read by children or a younger audience? I think that the target audience for current comics (except archie and disneys) is the thirtysomething male nerdish type.
However, I thought BMB work in “Ultimate Spider-Man” was good. With no f-bombs or adult situations.
@Flight Suit:
BMB is Brian Michael Bendis, a comic book writer who divides the opinion of comic fans. Some of them consider his work brilliant (personally, I still think he does the best “talking heads” sequences EVER) some of them, consider him boring and slow and derivative.
Picture this: a clown with no gloves on and no stars on his sleeve is seen going IN to a tent within a tent – seen by all the cops swarming around the crime scene doing crowd control and gathering evidence, naturally. Unimpeachable witnesses! (Why is there a tent within the tent? I dunno, haven’t figured that part out yet … but there must be a reason!)
While inside the tent within a tent and observed only by the three who will not be testifying later, the clown PUTS ON GLOVES! Then he STICKS STAR STICKERS onto his sleeve! He is disguised! Then three shots ring out. Cops rush over to see what happened. A clown comes OUT of the tent within a tent – but he is not the same clown who went in. The clown who went in had a plain sleeve and no gloves – this clown is wearing gloves and has stars on his sleeve – a different clown, obviously. The police ignore him and he goes away and disposes of the murder weapon. The police are baffled!
9-11 Agent ENNEN: “Yes, Mr. Ringo was given a new identity because he was threatened ……”
9-12 TRACY : “I’ll put Ringo under a 24-hour guard !”
THEN WHAT HAPPENED ?
A) Ringo is “hidden” for his SECURITY in SAME place where, ALL the bad guys who want to KILL him work ???
B) Tracy puts heavily armed Police Security in place for Ringo and the Circus (see 8-27). NOW, where are they when Mr, Pops pulls a gun ?
Locher has A) created astonishingly stupid “REALITY”, B) apparance of heavy SECURITY. Now “Blink yor eyes” - SHAZAM !
It was all there “yesterday”, – but vanished “today”! Must we now believe, it never happened (?), it never existed ??
And that’s not all, snail pacing aside there’s a laundry list of unfit sequences.
This is all MAJOR Crapo !
This in not amateur hour, it’s a presentation that’s stunningly inept, slapdash and sadly disrespectful to the great Dick Tracy comic strip and Chester Gould it’s creator.
A dispespectful “slap” in the face of the creator, who years before helped give a helping hand to Locher to become a top Political Cartoonist
“This in not amature hour, it’s a presentatio that’s stunningly inept, slapdash and sadly disrespectful to the great Dick Tracy comic strip and Chester Gould it’s creator.”
I agree wholeheartedly. This is just sloppy work. Maybe because it is not a “good-paying” job, considering the tiny number of newspapers the strip appears in?
I think the strip is indeed doomed to failure now, even if a new creative team would start with some decent stories - it would not be likely that papers that dropped the strip would pay for it again, I assume…
Jumbobrain: From yesterday, Prince Valiant is indeed online. Check out Dailyink.com, it’s King’s own website where you’ll find a lot of things you can’t get anywhere else. They do charge a small annual fee, but that’s not uncommon.
Matthew: Sorry I didn’t read yesterday’s request until this morning. I read Gocomics, the aforementioned DailyInk.com and Comics.com. Each site has a few I can’t find elsewhere and I enjoy them all. While my favorite forum is right here at Dick Tracy (you guys are a real kick to read) my favorite comic still has to be FBoFW - I save it for last every day.
@JanCin-
Thanks for the dailyink tip, that’s a neat site. I wish they’d haul out more of their decades of archives though. It’s weird that we now get 15-year-old Peanuts and For Better or Worse reruns in our papers but there’s no resource anywhere to find old strips like Moon Mullins or even Dick Tracy back when it was a good read.
Batman meets Dick Tracy: I mean, what’s the point? Comix fans always wanna see the crossovers and they can be fun enough. But these two characters, I just don’t see the appeal. I mean, why not Dennis the Menace and the Incredible Hulk? Blondie and Wonder Woman?
And finally: YEESH is this comic strip lame or what? If I hadn’t been following the last ten weeks I’d assume some major betrayal was occurring…which maybe it is, but since no time has been devoted to showing the characters backstories and motivation (aside from the interminable conversation about Ringo’s whistleblowing), what they do now is just meaningless. Pops pulls a gun. Pops is a bank robber on the lam. Pops is Louise Trapeze’s estranged husband/father/mafia cohort. Pops and Ringo were lovers. It doesn’t matter if you don’t tell the story properly. Duh.
Roberto,
In a 1994 Interview, Locher sitting on his then “inheritance” (from Max Collins) of 350 newspaper (the considerably more “expensive” Collins gone, lower cost Kilian was in) admitted he was “rich from the strip but not as rich as Gould had been ,,, it had to do with circulation” he said
Under his guidance, in a flurry of naive over-confidence he introduced big changes, new faces, new personalities. Removed the hat serving to alter the image of Tracy the main character. Kilian dropped Gould’s well honed “Chase sequences”, introduced what he called “serious themes”. Traditional villains (like Flattop, Shaky etc) he said would HAVE to take a “back seat”, they would “trivialize” the SERIOUSNES of his presentation. He got carried away - he must have thought he was writing an Editorial for the Chicago Tribune anf forgot it was just a comic strip to entertain people. Senior partner Locher seemed to agree.
In short order, the “sheet” hit the fan, this was a brand new concept of Dick Tracy, most readers didn’t it and they started losing Papers including the GIANT circulation N.Y. Daily News. Reality had struck ! Locher;s Dick Tracy “richness” had dissapeared, just like his Police at the Circus !
Eleven years later when Kilian died they were down to just FIFTY newspapers. An 86% rejection ! The great euphoria, the experiments and changes were all a GIANT FLOP !
Thereafter, Locher did the writing and the art, but STUCK doggedly and mightily to ALL those failed policies and techniques. A man who thought the whole World was WRONG and HE, Dick Locher was right ! A wise man would have turned back (?)
What can I say ? You CAN help a man who has made a wrong turn and wants better. You CAN’T help someone who is determined, stubornly, to continue doing the same NONSENSE and would rather go down in FLAMES (the whole world in wrong) as HE is right !
A musket. I just realized the clown used a flipping unaimed musket to shoot a moving target in mid air. NO, NO, NO. Impossible! Why didn’t Tracy simply examine her body and look at the musket ball hole? Wouldn’t that have been a big hint as to the murderer. I mean, besides the fact that the clown just happened to fire a gun before the faux aerialist was killed? We are not asked to suspend disbelief in the strip, we are required to take it out in a back alley and beat it to death.
Mr, Pops the Clown didn’t shoot Louise Trapeze, Seems he is just the gang leader. In week TWO of the “EXPLANATION” period, ie Saturday, October 2, that “tit-bit” of information will be released.
It’s unclear who owns the Circus and who if any one will benefit from closure. Realistically, a whole bunch of freaks will be out of a job if they do.
I stopped following Dick Tracy in the early 90s before Collins’ departure; and only rediscovered the mess that it now is last year…so I am not familiar with whatever changes Killian brought to it. But looking at the strip now, it’s clear his legacy is not an improved strip.
Obviously, whatever math TMS did to determine that Collins was not worth it to the strip was dead wrong. I’m assuming no papers have picked the strip up in the last decade. I’m surprised any continue to pay for it…it’s a clearly and highly inferior product compared to what it was under Gould and Collins. Much, much worse than it has any reason to be.
Okay, I get it…the clown is a METAPHOR, he represents Locher and he is showing how he has the power to eliminate the whole circus that this comic strip has become. That’s why he didn’t have the glove or sleeve when his gun hand first appeared, see…it’s surreal, like Luis Bunuel. Obviously we are all way off the mark criticizing this strip, when it’s now clear that every single bit of seemingly haphazard writing, shiftless continuity, and unending tedium was all leading up to this moment!
Sydney PhillipsGenius_badge said, about 5 hours ago
fishbulb,
Mr, Pops the Clown didn’t shoot Louise Trapeze, Seems he is just the gang leader. In week TWO of the “EXPLANATION” period, ie Saturday, October 2, that “tit-bit” of information will be released.
It’s unclear who owns the Circus and who if any one will benefit from closure. Realistically, a whole bunch of freaks will be out of a job if they do.
To which Fishbulb can only reply….
AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!! 2 MORE weeks of just standing around??? Sadly, I don’t even CARE who murdered the aerialist. For that matter, what happened to her body? Is it still in the ring? Has it been removed? More missing action. Quick! Stick the clip art tent-tiger-elephant into a panel again. Don’t show the removal of the body, the “ransom” notes being taken to Police HQ,(Tracy used to work there), the departure of Teevo, etc. This entire story is surreal. Time has no meaning. People (the circus freaks, Teevo) come and go at random, logic is nonexistent. Mr. Gould is spinning at warp factor seven.
Most Tracy purists, myself included, would agree that the “moon period” precipitated a decline in the strip’s quality. It was a profound shift in direction and theme…you could argue that it was a bold move on Gould’s part to keep the strip fresh, but it clearly alienated longtime fans who liked the urban grit. You also have to consider that Gould’s black-and-white morality was not as fashionable in the tumult of the 1960s as it had been in the 1940s…and his attempts to seem current, like the “hippie cop” Groovy Groove, only underscored how out of touch he was with the national mood. So all of that played into the decline in readership, yeah. But that was on the heels of three decades of immense popularity…people were complaining about Peanuts in its final years too. Things get old.
Was it a failure? You could argue that it was, since a key measure of a strip’s popularity is readership. And when Collins took over, he clearly reached around this period to Tracy’s golden days by killing off Junior’s wife Moon Maid, as well as Groovy, in order to re-establish the strip’s relevance, and I think it worked while he was writing it.
BUT…even at his worst, Gould drew well, wrote consistently, and his work did not suffer from the glacially slow pacing and utter lack of logic, continuity, characterization and suspense that the current strip does. The best I can say about it is that the art is mostly serviceable, constant reuse of panel art notwithstanding.
I personally would not call any of Gould’s work a “failure,” because even at its worst it’s always interesting and readable.
Do I consider the current version of the strip a failure? Absolutely. It sucks.
Thanks for the valuable information you provided. Something I really enjoy about your posts is the fact that you usually add relevant numbers and references that help very accurately to understand the point.
I am not surprised about the the 86% rejection since the beginning of the Killian period (that I have not read) - but I had no idea it was such a BIG drop in readership.
As you say, “You CAN help a man who has made a wrong turn and wants better. You CAN’T help someone who is determined, stubornly, to continue doing the same NONSENSE and would rather go down in FLAMES (the whole world in wrong) as HE is right !” - and I agree absolutely!
However, I think the problem is that he is mostly an artist (probably feeling old and tired now) and you need a certain mind framework to plan and strucuture a story. Jim Brozman arrival has even worsened the situation, as I think the art is now embarassingly bad.
Thank you for the information about the “Killian years” - I really had no idea so, the disappearence of the classic grotesques was his idea… and probably the removal of the “chase sequence” started paving the way to the non-action of today’s strip?
Llewellenbruce almost 15 years ago
Like you would be around to worry about it.
margueritem almost 15 years ago
Not sure why Ringo is worried about the circus….
FLIGHT SUIT almost 15 years ago
Ah! So the killings are nothing but a means to an end; the clown’s real agenda is to ruin the circus.
Ringo even seems to be acknowledging that his life, and Tracy’s and Ennen’s, are of secondary importance to the matter of whether the circus survives or fails.
Hmmm…
(CUE MUSIC)
Look at me I’m Sandra Dee, Lousie with Trapeze-ity…
fleeglebeagle almost 15 years ago
I think the elephant will come to the rescue!
Vista Bill Raley and Comet™ almost 15 years ago
If the circus goes, the elephant, tiger, and pig on wheels will all be out of work! The other performers can get a job at Wal-Mart!
riley05 almost 15 years ago
Blecch!
Arrgh!
Can’t get worse…oh wait…It Happened!!!
watcha almost 15 years ago
And here I thought the whole idea was that they want to kill Ringo in revenge, but NO, it seems he want to ruin the circus. It all makes sense…
Fearless_Fosdick almost 15 years ago
Yes Ringo…..I am your father. But don’t call me Pops.
LudwigVonDrake almost 15 years ago
Ringo needs to see a dermatologist for his skin condition.
Sloppy the Clown is one tough clown.
roberto.alves almost 15 years ago
Not only the glove was appearing and disappearing, but the sleeve that we saw on the sunday page had no stars, now the arm of the clown has stars and the fluffy thing on its extremity. Oh, the joys of inconsistency!
Morrow Cummings almost 15 years ago
And just when you thought it couldn’t get worse!
poopa33 almost 15 years ago
it did
MisngNOLA almost 15 years ago
OMIGOD!!! It just HAPPENED on The Dinette Set too!!! It’s contagious!!!
Froxkrybra almost 15 years ago
I told u all clowns are evil…
FLIGHT SUIT almost 15 years ago
MisngNOLA, you’re right!
Matt:
At the risk of revealing how out-of-touch I am, who’s this BMB that keeps getting mentioned?
Regarding GoComics, it is silly that clicking on a comic just gets you the same pic, blown up. Worse still, it’s a GIF. The GIFs here generally look OK, but one would think a JPEG or PNG would almost surely yield better picture quality.
Regarding your comments yesterday about that Batman-meets-Dick Tracy thing:
You make a good point about the classic, abstract portrayal of Tracy not carrying over so well into a more realistic style. It was interesting to see that artist’s take on the character, but in several panels, I couldn’t even tell if I was looking at DT or at the villain.
The other thing is that the concept of Batman meeting, teaming up with, or fighting characters from other franchises not in the DC Universe has already been done to death. He’s met everything from H.R. Giger’s Aliens to Predators to Judge Dredd to Spiderman.
Interesting, in light of your ongoing debate with Sydney, that the Batman strip firmly identifies DT as a Chicago cop, especially since I’ve always imagined Metropolis as being analogous to Chicago and Gotham, of course, being a stand-in for New York.
It gets a bit complicated if Metropolis, Chicago, Gotham, and New York are all supposed to be existing concurrently in the same continuity. America’s a big place, but we’ve only got so much room for so many major urban destinations.
roberto.alves almost 15 years ago
@Matthew:
I like powers - explicitely aimed to adults. And I agree, stuff like sex between two characters should be out of comic books, indeed - and I didn’t buy the A*sex issue with Luke Cage - but then… are comics still being read by children or a younger audience? I think that the target audience for current comics (except archie and disneys) is the thirtysomething male nerdish type.
However, I thought BMB work in “Ultimate Spider-Man” was good. With no f-bombs or adult situations.
@Flight Suit:
BMB is Brian Michael Bendis, a comic book writer who divides the opinion of comic fans. Some of them consider his work brilliant (personally, I still think he does the best “talking heads” sequences EVER) some of them, consider him boring and slow and derivative.
CougarAllen almost 15 years ago
Now I see the clown’s diabolical plan!
Picture this: a clown with no gloves on and no stars on his sleeve is seen going IN to a tent within a tent – seen by all the cops swarming around the crime scene doing crowd control and gathering evidence, naturally. Unimpeachable witnesses! (Why is there a tent within the tent? I dunno, haven’t figured that part out yet … but there must be a reason!)
While inside the tent within a tent and observed only by the three who will not be testifying later, the clown PUTS ON GLOVES! Then he STICKS STAR STICKERS onto his sleeve! He is disguised! Then three shots ring out. Cops rush over to see what happened. A clown comes OUT of the tent within a tent – but he is not the same clown who went in. The clown who went in had a plain sleeve and no gloves – this clown is wearing gloves and has stars on his sleeve – a different clown, obviously. The police ignore him and he goes away and disposes of the murder weapon. The police are baffled!
-Cougar :{)
sydney almost 15 years ago
FACT TODAY ? – FORGOTTEN TOMORROW ?
9-11 Agent ENNEN: “Yes, Mr. Ringo was given a new identity because he was threatened ……”
9-12 TRACY : “I’ll put Ringo under a 24-hour guard !”
THEN WHAT HAPPENED ?
A) Ringo is “hidden” for his SECURITY in SAME place where, ALL the bad guys who want to KILL him work ???
B) Tracy puts heavily armed Police Security in place for Ringo and the Circus (see 8-27). NOW, where are they when Mr, Pops pulls a gun ?
Locher has A) created astonishingly stupid “REALITY”, B) apparance of heavy SECURITY. Now “Blink yor eyes” - SHAZAM ! It was all there “yesterday”, – but vanished “today”! Must we now believe, it never happened (?), it never existed ??
And that’s not all, snail pacing aside there’s a laundry list of unfit sequences.
This is all MAJOR Crapo ! This in not amateur hour, it’s a presentation that’s stunningly inept, slapdash and sadly disrespectful to the great Dick Tracy comic strip and Chester Gould it’s creator.
A dispespectful “slap” in the face of the creator, who years before helped give a helping hand to Locher to become a top Political Cartoonist
roberto.alves almost 15 years ago
@Sydney Phillips:
“This in not amature hour, it’s a presentatio that’s stunningly inept, slapdash and sadly disrespectful to the great Dick Tracy comic strip and Chester Gould it’s creator.”
I agree wholeheartedly. This is just sloppy work. Maybe because it is not a “good-paying” job, considering the tiny number of newspapers the strip appears in?
I think the strip is indeed doomed to failure now, even if a new creative team would start with some decent stories - it would not be likely that papers that dropped the strip would pay for it again, I assume…
roberto.alves almost 15 years ago
… and probably being a political cartoonist pays more than writing Dick Tracy.
However, what I don’t understand is how Jim Brozman (with a degree in fine arts or whatever) keeps making these atrocious drawings.
And I wonder… what happened with Mustasha? That was an unforgettable name!
@CougarAllen:
Brillian explanation of the stars-and-glove mystery-within-a-mystery!! LOL!
JanLC almost 15 years ago
Jumbobrain: From yesterday, Prince Valiant is indeed online. Check out Dailyink.com, it’s King’s own website where you’ll find a lot of things you can’t get anywhere else. They do charge a small annual fee, but that’s not uncommon.
Matthew: Sorry I didn’t read yesterday’s request until this morning. I read Gocomics, the aforementioned DailyInk.com and Comics.com. Each site has a few I can’t find elsewhere and I enjoy them all. While my favorite forum is right here at Dick Tracy (you guys are a real kick to read) my favorite comic still has to be FBoFW - I save it for last every day.
jumbobrain almost 15 years ago
@JanCin- Thanks for the dailyink tip, that’s a neat site. I wish they’d haul out more of their decades of archives though. It’s weird that we now get 15-year-old Peanuts and For Better or Worse reruns in our papers but there’s no resource anywhere to find old strips like Moon Mullins or even Dick Tracy back when it was a good read.
Batman meets Dick Tracy: I mean, what’s the point? Comix fans always wanna see the crossovers and they can be fun enough. But these two characters, I just don’t see the appeal. I mean, why not Dennis the Menace and the Incredible Hulk? Blondie and Wonder Woman?
And finally: YEESH is this comic strip lame or what? If I hadn’t been following the last ten weeks I’d assume some major betrayal was occurring…which maybe it is, but since no time has been devoted to showing the characters backstories and motivation (aside from the interminable conversation about Ringo’s whistleblowing), what they do now is just meaningless. Pops pulls a gun. Pops is a bank robber on the lam. Pops is Louise Trapeze’s estranged husband/father/mafia cohort. Pops and Ringo were lovers. It doesn’t matter if you don’t tell the story properly. Duh.
sydney almost 15 years ago
Roberto, In a 1994 Interview, Locher sitting on his then “inheritance” (from Max Collins) of 350 newspaper (the considerably more “expensive” Collins gone, lower cost Kilian was in) admitted he was “rich from the strip but not as rich as Gould had been ,,, it had to do with circulation” he said
Under his guidance, in a flurry of naive over-confidence he introduced big changes, new faces, new personalities. Removed the hat serving to alter the image of Tracy the main character. Kilian dropped Gould’s well honed “Chase sequences”, introduced what he called “serious themes”. Traditional villains (like Flattop, Shaky etc) he said would HAVE to take a “back seat”, they would “trivialize” the SERIOUSNES of his presentation. He got carried away - he must have thought he was writing an Editorial for the Chicago Tribune anf forgot it was just a comic strip to entertain people. Senior partner Locher seemed to agree.
In short order, the “sheet” hit the fan, this was a brand new concept of Dick Tracy, most readers didn’t it and they started losing Papers including the GIANT circulation N.Y. Daily News. Reality had struck ! Locher;s Dick Tracy “richness” had dissapeared, just like his Police at the Circus !
Eleven years later when Kilian died they were down to just FIFTY newspapers. An 86% rejection ! The great euphoria, the experiments and changes were all a GIANT FLOP !
Thereafter, Locher did the writing and the art, but STUCK doggedly and mightily to ALL those failed policies and techniques. A man who thought the whole World was WRONG and HE, Dick Locher was right ! A wise man would have turned back (?)
What can I say ? You CAN help a man who has made a wrong turn and wants better. You CAN’T help someone who is determined, stubornly, to continue doing the same NONSENSE and would rather go down in FLAMES (the whole world in wrong) as HE is right !
His Dick Tracy world is close to Ashes !
fishbulb almost 15 years ago
A musket. I just realized the clown used a flipping unaimed musket to shoot a moving target in mid air. NO, NO, NO. Impossible! Why didn’t Tracy simply examine her body and look at the musket ball hole? Wouldn’t that have been a big hint as to the murderer. I mean, besides the fact that the clown just happened to fire a gun before the faux aerialist was killed? We are not asked to suspend disbelief in the strip, we are required to take it out in a back alley and beat it to death.
CougarAllen almost 15 years ago
It was a blunderbuss (not exactly a musket) and he not only wasn’t aiming it, he wasn’t even looking in the right direction.
-Cougar :{)
MrBriberysShrunkenHeads almost 15 years ago
Is Tracy going to smoke out (not) Pops? Where does he keep his stash?
sydney almost 15 years ago
jumbobrain,
You want reprints of Moon Mullings ? Ypu’ll get them and more at Spec Productions – (Andy Feighery - (719) 685 - 9086)
Plus everything Dick Tracy ! Visit them !
jpozenel almost 15 years ago
He’s making it bad for all the good clowns out there.
sydney almost 15 years ago
fishbulb,
Mr, Pops the Clown didn’t shoot Louise Trapeze, Seems he is just the gang leader. In week TWO of the “EXPLANATION” period, ie Saturday, October 2, that “tit-bit” of information will be released.
It’s unclear who owns the Circus and who if any one will benefit from closure. Realistically, a whole bunch of freaks will be out of a job if they do.
jumbobrain almost 15 years ago
I stopped following Dick Tracy in the early 90s before Collins’ departure; and only rediscovered the mess that it now is last year…so I am not familiar with whatever changes Killian brought to it. But looking at the strip now, it’s clear his legacy is not an improved strip.
Obviously, whatever math TMS did to determine that Collins was not worth it to the strip was dead wrong. I’m assuming no papers have picked the strip up in the last decade. I’m surprised any continue to pay for it…it’s a clearly and highly inferior product compared to what it was under Gould and Collins. Much, much worse than it has any reason to be.
Morrow Cummings almost 15 years ago
This is sooooo bad, it is funny! A bunch of thugs pretending to be a traveling circus!
jumbobrain almost 15 years ago
Okay, I get it…the clown is a METAPHOR, he represents Locher and he is showing how he has the power to eliminate the whole circus that this comic strip has become. That’s why he didn’t have the glove or sleeve when his gun hand first appeared, see…it’s surreal, like Luis Bunuel. Obviously we are all way off the mark criticizing this strip, when it’s now clear that every single bit of seemingly haphazard writing, shiftless continuity, and unending tedium was all leading up to this moment!
fishbulb almost 15 years ago
Sydney PhillipsGenius_badge said, about 5 hours ago
fishbulb,
Mr, Pops the Clown didn’t shoot Louise Trapeze, Seems he is just the gang leader. In week TWO of the “EXPLANATION” period, ie Saturday, October 2, that “tit-bit” of information will be released.
It’s unclear who owns the Circus and who if any one will benefit from closure. Realistically, a whole bunch of freaks will be out of a job if they do.
To which Fishbulb can only reply…. AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!! 2 MORE weeks of just standing around??? Sadly, I don’t even CARE who murdered the aerialist. For that matter, what happened to her body? Is it still in the ring? Has it been removed? More missing action. Quick! Stick the clip art tent-tiger-elephant into a panel again. Don’t show the removal of the body, the “ransom” notes being taken to Police HQ,(Tracy used to work there), the departure of Teevo, etc. This entire story is surreal. Time has no meaning. People (the circus freaks, Teevo) come and go at random, logic is nonexistent. Mr. Gould is spinning at warp factor seven.
jumbobrain almost 15 years ago
quick rebuttal to quick point:
Most Tracy purists, myself included, would agree that the “moon period” precipitated a decline in the strip’s quality. It was a profound shift in direction and theme…you could argue that it was a bold move on Gould’s part to keep the strip fresh, but it clearly alienated longtime fans who liked the urban grit. You also have to consider that Gould’s black-and-white morality was not as fashionable in the tumult of the 1960s as it had been in the 1940s…and his attempts to seem current, like the “hippie cop” Groovy Groove, only underscored how out of touch he was with the national mood. So all of that played into the decline in readership, yeah. But that was on the heels of three decades of immense popularity…people were complaining about Peanuts in its final years too. Things get old.
Was it a failure? You could argue that it was, since a key measure of a strip’s popularity is readership. And when Collins took over, he clearly reached around this period to Tracy’s golden days by killing off Junior’s wife Moon Maid, as well as Groovy, in order to re-establish the strip’s relevance, and I think it worked while he was writing it.
BUT…even at his worst, Gould drew well, wrote consistently, and his work did not suffer from the glacially slow pacing and utter lack of logic, continuity, characterization and suspense that the current strip does. The best I can say about it is that the art is mostly serviceable, constant reuse of panel art notwithstanding.
I personally would not call any of Gould’s work a “failure,” because even at its worst it’s always interesting and readable.
Do I consider the current version of the strip a failure? Absolutely. It sucks.
margueritem almost 15 years ago
CougarAllen, your explanation of ‘Pops” was wonderful.
roberto.alves almost 15 years ago
Sydney,
Thanks for the valuable information you provided. Something I really enjoy about your posts is the fact that you usually add relevant numbers and references that help very accurately to understand the point.
I am not surprised about the the 86% rejection since the beginning of the Killian period (that I have not read) - but I had no idea it was such a BIG drop in readership.
As you say, “You CAN help a man who has made a wrong turn and wants better. You CAN’T help someone who is determined, stubornly, to continue doing the same NONSENSE and would rather go down in FLAMES (the whole world in wrong) as HE is right !” - and I agree absolutely!
However, I think the problem is that he is mostly an artist (probably feeling old and tired now) and you need a certain mind framework to plan and strucuture a story. Jim Brozman arrival has even worsened the situation, as I think the art is now embarassingly bad.
Thank you for the information about the “Killian years” - I really had no idea so, the disappearence of the classic grotesques was his idea… and probably the removal of the “chase sequence” started paving the way to the non-action of today’s strip?
countoftowergrove almost 15 years ago
“Don’t call me pops!” Kwai Chang Caine IV, Kung Fu: the Legend Contiues