Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 08, 2009

“Talk the situation out?”

That’s Locher’s solution to everything!

That tiger’s look is too much, LOL!

In this state at least, there is no need to call the police in a fender bender unless there is physical injury. You would only be wasting their time.

barticle35 said:

In this state at least, there is no need to call the police in a fender bender unless there is physical injury. You would only be wasting their time. ——————————————————————–

Yeah, they’re too busy watching people’s houses for them while they’re on vacation.

It’s rerun Sunday again.

Sunday Dick Tracy’s have always been redundant, so that papers can run either just dailies or just the Sunday. But the way this plot moves, it seems like a paper could run just one daily strip a week and not miss much.

And I have to say, for whatever reason the art has been getting worse and worse…a big problem in a strip that has such bad writing to start with. Simple matters of scale and perspective are dead wrong, and the more subtle things like composition and anatomy and visual storytelling are just not there at all.

I really wonder how much longer this strip can survive under these circumstances.

Gweedo, those close-ups of Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Cat looked awfully familiar!

Unbelievable! Let’s have the pig on wheels back!

Oh look, it’s a Sunday strip The color, man, is really a trip Obviously not for the placid They say it’s like being on acid The strip a happy sheen The giant is even a jolly green The tiger looks on with delight Thinking he will eat tonight The continuity though still is lacking The writer soon they should be sacking Though you may find this hard to believe The pig on wheels I did perceive Pink and with a tail that curly-cued It was in fact a bar-b-que Standing in front of a downtown shop There it was, I kid you not Though loath I am to admit I did not take a picture of it

Now that I think of it, I’ve seen one of those things too. In Dekalb, by a small grocery store, they had “Pigs on Wheels” barbecues. You could either rent or buy one as it suited you.

Fee Fi and Pops should’ve read the Crimestoppers and talked it out calmly.

Possibly the stoopidest Grimegobber’s Tipsbook ever. If you don’t want to have a rage problem on your hands the LAST thing you want to do is get into any unnecessary talk with the driver who hit you. Get his information with as little unnecessary talk as possible. Leave it to the insurance companies’ lawyers to “talk the situation out.” They know how to do that without coming to violence over it. That dork who hit you may not.

-Cougar :{)

wow, we just spent a whole week reviewing this. i might as well just read sundays only!

Time to recap the crap.

NotNorman: Yeah, if for no other reason than the police would probably show up without being called.

It looks like Mr Pops is tiger chow…guess we have to wait and find out what happens next…any bets on if this story will wrap up before Thanksgiving??

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz……………

Why does Fee Fi have toes for thumbs?

I just noticed Special Guest Artist Picasso, who apparently drew the cop next to Tracy.

I’ve never seen a tiger with jowls before.

That’s a great line Jumbo ! “But the way this plot moves it seems like a paper could run just one daily strip a week and not miss much”

You have “nailed” the Locher limitation that continues to frustrate readers. Glacial movement in story progress compounded by depressing, Dicky duplication. Why must he feel that readers need to see every “move” repeated three or four times ?

On the D.T.Yahoo board I did an exercise on the Braces (2008) story editing out unnecessary repeat panels and managed to cut the presentation by some 25% without losing one iota of information.

As a writer he seems satisfied to repeat nonsense, What’s difficult to understand is his unwillingness to spend a little time perusing the writing “style” of Gould and Collins to learn some simple techniques and “improve” his own. It seems so simple and logical ! But he doesn’t lift a finger. He’s happy as Pappy blithly producing “Boogu-Yagga” (a Jamaican word) on which you can guess the meaning.

And puzzling, TMS’s easy tolerance of this unacceptable poor QUALITY of work for a strip like Dick Tracy, derisively dumbed down but still there buoyant and bristling with untapped potential.

Someone on this board a few months ago speculated that TMS has, in the light of Warren Beatty’s court action, “declined” to take more positive steps on the strip.

We have to wonder if there is not some truth in that conjecture !

Cage rage

Syndey, yeah, it’s a mystery. Regardless of the situation with Beatty, I just see no logic at all in allowing an iconic character to dry up like this. Plenty of syndicates have scoffed at the artistic value of comics, but I’ve never heard of one scoffing at the financial value.

And in the event that Jim Brozman does read these comments, here’s something that might help: EC Comics Legend Wally Wood’s “22 Panels That Always Work, or some interesting ways to get some variety into those boring panels where some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page”:

http://joeljohnson.com/images2/wallywood22panel2560.jpg

I’ve been reading Dick Tracy comics since the 1950’s. I still find them great to read. Thanks for making it possible.

I was hoping the strongman would replace DT as the main character, as he has done all the work in this story.

DT has become a narration of DL’s life in retirement.

Sunday comics used to be a joy of stark contracts, especially black, white, yellow, red. These are nightmares of clashes. I applaud the artists for vexing me so! Well done.

I will wash my eyes with bleach now. Much better.

Is that the Jolly Green Giant in the fourth panel?

Dick Tracy, Agent Ennen, and the policeman appear to be spectators without the power to do anything here (except for Tracy…he provides the play-by-play commentary). I haven’t seen Ennen the past couple days. Maybe she went to powder her nose.

“Ye Gods!” It happened!

“DT has become a narration of DL’s life in retirement”

Much studied thought must have gone into that insightful statement by Mr.Bribery. I glean a subtle suggestion of a lot of talk and little meaningful action at home, rignt there in Napereville. The analysis has a ring of truth to it.

Not to say the man is not busy churning out a lot of stuff … rubbish stuff that is, “shrunken head” style, while using the mouth of Tracy as a megaphone for his daily grunts, observations and ramblings.

It wasn’t lost on me that on 1-21-2007 in the Dr. Figment Froid story he scripted Tess donating the major chunk of her $5 million inheritance to “Alzheimer’s Research Group.

Seems like an appropriate “choice” for a Writer who has completely “FORGOTTEN”, what the Dick Tracy comic strip is all about !

R_Noonan63 said, “Must be the Worlds Largest Cage.”

Big enough to hold several “ligers”…

http://dalesdesigns.net/hercules.htm

Why warn Fee Fi about the clown’s gat? Didn’t he hear the clown shooting at Tracy? Why didn’t he squeeze Mr. Pops wrist and disarm him? How did Della Contessa get up onto the cage? How did Tracy, Ennen, Fee Fi, and Della all get down from it? If they climbed down, why didn’t Tracy and Ennen climb up on the inside? No logic at all. And that has to be the slowest falling clown ever.

fishbulb said, “…How did Della Contessa get up onto the cage? How did Tracy, Ennen, Fee Fi, and Della all get down from it? If they climbed down, why didn’t Tracy and Ennen climb up on the inside? No logic at all. And that has to be the slowest falling clown ever.

Someone mentioned an escalator a few days ago.

MPH- that’s interesting about the 22 panels. Makes sense really, since Wood’s strength wasn’t so much in composition as in his rendering and imagination. I’ve heard varying stories about how much of Wood’s work was done by assistants in later years…certainly his peak was in the early days at EC.

Either way, I wish more of it were applied here. While I’ve been harping on the writing for months, the art really seems to be slipping the last few weeks. I never liked Locher’s style as much as Gould’s or Fletcher’s, but he did the job and even a few years ago it was much, much better than this.