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

Hope this script is up soon too.

” …I knew this was no ordinary circus!”

wow, I’m underwhelmed…..

Aw fer cryin out loud just pop a cap in the annoyinh bugger already! And could somebody please shoot the clown as well?

Has Pops changed his mind? I thought Tracy et al were to be put in the tiger’s cage so it’d appear as a tragic accident. What became of the tiger? Who’s that on the floor beneath Louise Trapeze? Either she was about a mile up in the air or it’s a very tiny dwarf midget down there! Maybe it’s the Pillsbury Doughboy (or a gingerbread man cookie)! I won’t mention the position of Louise’s right arm and left leg as she fell after being shot by the sniper with a 30-30.

Uh, Pops? The only reason he knows too much is that YOU JUST TOLD HIM!

Flight Suit, it’s ok. He won’t remember it anyway.

See, here in the right column it says ‘Dick Tracy, now written and illustrated by Dick Locher, continues to be relevant as he combines old-fashioned values with 21st century innovation’. I am a fan of Dick Tracy for years and I’ve been collecting the original volume reprints, since they first came out. I even have the Collins Case Files and three DT novels. When I found out DT was still being written, I was thrilled - until I started reading it.

So when does this apparantly ’21st century strip’ actually become relevant? Is there some sort of circus full of part-time badguys (who reveal their plan like a 1920’s melodrama) and a plot that has so many loose ends, it’s like a shoelace shop has been torn apart by a rabid bear, in well written dramas of today?

Regarding the present-day farse, I feel there’s little respect being shown to DT the beloved character, the legacy Gould created and even long time fans of Tracy. They should do what they did with Will Eisner’s ‘The Spirit’, and that’s let other writers and artists reinvent the character in new adventures and release a new team’s creation every month. At least they’ll make money out of it, and the character will change and evolve through the stories.

Ah, the plot thickens - with all the !@#$% Pops and DT divulge!

I thought all circuses had dead women falling from the sky.

“Briiliant, Tracy!” Yeah, right.

I’ve been reading some Chester Gould DT collected reprints for comparison, and I find that as bad as Locher’s DT is, Gould’s work is not that much better.

He doesn’t recap nearly as much as Locher, and his plots are tighter and less tedious, but they still have holes and unreasonable plot twists, and continuity slip-ups.

For some reason, Gould enjoyed drawing grotesque characters. For him, a bad person should look different from other people. In spite of their efforts to conceal their character, it should always pop out as some neurotic tendency, or strange physical feature.

This is what Gould emphasized, and his storys seem to be mostly only vehicles for utilizing his love of drawing grotesque faces. Kind of what Pablo Picasso would create if he had to make his money making cartoons, instead of single paintings. His talent was in painting, not in story-telling. Gould is like that, too.

A well-written comic strip doesn’t need constant recaps. It shows great lack of confidence in writing ability. Maybe it’s Locher’s way of compensating for his lack of plot, this constant recapping.

It’s almost as though Locher has has morphed himself into his own Dick Tracy character: Recap Man. Recap Man’s grotesque feature is that he always re-explains himself, exasperatingly moving two steps forward and one step back.

Tracy wasn’t “snooping”. He was watching the circus and eating popcorn. Locher can’t keep his story straight.

Has DT now lost interest in the “accomplice”???

At least the notes are threatening, not ransom.

Macy must have taken a “Hostage Negotiation” course by corrospondence. He’s been BS’ing Pops non-stop now for weeks on end - keeping him occupied. What he really might be doing is slowly driving Pops nuts! I wonder if they are blaring loud music over loudspeakers to keep Pops from sleeping?

Locher creates Dick Tracy Sculpture for Naperville:

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=324733&src=5

Trickdacy, I couldn’t bear to read that entire article, but in skimming it, I did notice many funny things. For example:

“When he retires, he would like to spend more time with his other hobby, oil painting. But for now, the paintbrushes aren’t getting much of a workout.

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I’m having too much fun.’”

Oh, you’re having fun, Mr. Locher? Well then, by all means, please do continue!

Excellent question, NotNormanChubsyUbsy.

Elementary, Mr Pops. You see, at an “ordinary” circus the trapeze girl would have been stabbed. You gave yourself away with the shooting.

trickdacy,

Thanks for passing on the link on the Locher designed stature of Dick Tracy appearing in the Naperville Daily Herald. Of course we are all happy to see this acknowledgement of a great comic strip character. One, which has in the past given so much pleasure to millions of readers.

It strikes me that this explains in large part, the big “Holla Baloo” Mattie planed for October 4. But I note the commissioning of the stature has been delayed, as is part has Mattie’s.

Since it’s reported that Jean Gould O’Connel and family will be “invited” to attend the statures unvailing it’s easier to understand why the Circus suddenly had that “name” sign.

In the meantime, two remarks attributed to Dick Locher on his Editorial cartoons caught my attention. In a way, they ALSO reflect on his Dick Tracy work.

1) “I like to have readers say, I never thought of it that way before” Well bless my soul ! It would be fair comment to say, that has also been achieved with his Dick Tracy work !

2) “A good cartoon must be well-drawn, accurate, contain a history lesson and make its point quickly.”. Let’s put it in kind words - HIS Dick Tracy fails those criteria on ALL counts. Particularly, the one on “making the point” QUICKLY.

He says at the end, that until he retires - “I’m having too much fun”. And not surprisingly, SO too are his readers, everyday, on this board as they read HIS Dick Tracy. Some are probably rolling over with laughter !

Oh Gawd. Locher plans to keep on with DT “as long as man has a criminal mind”. Help! Oh, yeah, and the 12.5 million readers they mention - they don’t mention the more than 75 million readers he drove away!

Thanks for the link, tricky. I notice in the article Locher says of editorial cartooning: “Good letters are fine. Scary ones, you know you’ve done your job well,” he said.

So it seems he thinks what applies to editorial cartooning applies to comic strip work, and the daily trashing his Dick Tracy gets here only reaffirms his notion that pointless, plodding plots with no action or characterization makes for a successful strip.

I wish I’d started scoreboarding this episode a while ago. But for what it’s worth, the clown has now been talking for ten days, or roughly 40 panels. All he’s said is that Ringo is a blackmailer and he wants to feed him to the tigers. You could do that in two strips, tops.

With Louis Trapezz up in the air a being shot the figure below is a person. As if readers had forgotten how the story line began and the creator had to remind readers again. I am close to using sorry that two letter word noone likes to hear myself.

jumbo,

It’s what I have labled “explanation time”. A period of two weeks to tell us of the action that happened, which we never saw. It’s a sort of Phase 2 of “standing” in the ring. All talk, litle action.

AfterTracy enters the cage look for the similarity to an earlier episode with a Tiger (Red Hawk 6-13-2003) See the cage growing vertically all by itself and method of escape. There are many similarities.

Elexia–Right on!! Warehouse eyes, I have no idea what strips you’ve read, but comparing what’s going on now to vintage Gould, is ridiculous. For instance, this present story, over 2 months long, hasn’t moved out of this circus tent. Gould at his worst(60s) at least changed venues. Try the IDW volumes which start at the beginning, most of these issues explain very clearly the “grotesqueness” choices, which was actually the strip’s bread and butter.

Brilliant isn’t the word.

So many complaints about Guns looking like kid’s water pistols.

Rick Fletcher, Gould’s assistant who did all the art when the creator retired was considered the best “gun artist” in the comics business.. And here we are today !

One day the sun shines … another it rains !

Ordinary circuses don’t have Louises shot off of trapezes. Our hero IS brilliant. Who would’ve known?

Your time was up a long time ago…. :(

-Cougar :{)

Chubsy,

FRIDAY is the big day when it is revealed WHO shot Louise Trapeze (aka the “Hit woman”) but it’s the “MOTIVE” given, that will make you wonder how TMS still allows Locher to continue butchering the comic strip.

“explanation time” is a necessity in comic strips to be sure…you can’t count on readers to catch your strip every day. The problem with this strip is that each event that happens has four or five strips reiterating that it happened. And “explanation” is literally that, everything is said and nothing is shown. A clever writer can recap and move action forward at the same time. Here we have no action and way way way way way too much recap.

The fact that they’re building a statue of Dick Tracy tells me that this character is still important to American culture. But I suspect most of the people who know who Dick Tracy is don’t follow the strip any more, and maybe don’t even know it’s still running. And if they did, a lot of them would likely be up here ranting.

Did you notice Syd’s misspelling of STATUE, he consistently spelled it STATURE, now was that deliberate? Hmmm, I wonder what he is getting at with that? Did no one else notice that? It is a better mystery that who the accomplice is, at least it makes you wonder.

trickdacy, thanks for the link. Two words stood out: Brand Bobosky….

Pops’ confession is inadmissable!

Here’s a quote from the linked article: Locher has approached the comic strip differently than her father, but the two men shared similar beliefs, she said.

Ya think he “approaches” the strip differently? What he’s doing is nowhere near the classic Gould strips.

I wonder what the sniper used for a scope?

I ask because it suddenly occurs to me that a trapese artist moving between bars like they do wouldn’t be the easiest target to hit with a rifle. To get a killing shot on the first try—- that took some doing, and probably a really good scope. Strangely enough, Pop’s blunderbuss, which is really an old shotgun, would have been the better weapon for the job.

tracyfan92 , I now see that the word is misspelled as “statute”.

What the heck is going on at the Naperville Daily Herald?

What? A “Fearless Fosdick” fan? God bless Al Capp forever - I thought I would die without seeing the name, FF, ever again. “Come on, Abner, what’s he doing next?”