Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 13, 2015

Ah yes, the joy of hope!As dogs return to vomitThe Nitrates act is dopeSpeed on, dear SamuelThe time to linger is no moreWe must make haste to close this caseThat justice may be restoredPerhaps we’ll catch, before thier actleaves carnage in thier wakeWe’ll never know what friend or foeWe’ve saved for humanities sake!.

Shakespeare can rest easy, i’m not much of a threat!

And Silver goes for the pistol …

“Old Pal”? Hate to be friends with those people!

Seems Vitamin was unintentional collateral damage …

… though I don’t think the Nitrates much care either way.

When was the last time we cut between locations within the same strip during the Staton/Curtis era?

Ever?

Vitamin looks to have “Pulled a Tracy” and taken those shots in the shoulder.

They need to get a couple of choppers in on the action!

As we daily give thanks for the wonderful work the current Team Tracy has done to restore relevance to our beloved comic strip can we on this the anniversary of his departure from involvement give thanks to Dick Locher for his many decades of faithful and dedicated work keeping Dick Tracy alive?

.

Thank You Mr. Locher!

That’s an interesting steering wheel Sprocket’s holding on to!

A few observations:

Tracy correctly surmised that the Wonder Car is presently hidden inside a warehouse, which a few readers here didn’t even notice, despite the visual evidence that we had. Note the light coming in through the window in the last panel if you’re still not sure that they’re inside the building. (At least Kandikane and Vitamin certainly are.)

Despite the talk here yesterday about the relative anonymity of the air horn guns being preferred, Silver has now opted for his pistol in preference to trying the other air horn.

Flintheart has been “winged” as we noted yesterday, but I think we can breath easy that he doesn’t seem to be dead.

One of the earliest Dick Tracy strips available on the GoComics site, from 4/20/01, when the Twin Towers still stood, and Mike Killian handled the writing chores.

A neat-and-tidy three panels, love the shot of the 747 in panel two.

As JonahHex said, hope Mr. Locher’s enjoying his retirement.

He’s earned it.

One more thing:

As I’m sure we all knew, Silver would certainly not have hired “that woman” had he known that she was connected with Vitamin Flintheart. Now he finds out and he’s even more bent on revenge.

In Panel 3, there is something about the look on Kandikane’s face that tells me something is building up inside her. She has heard with her own ears that she was the intended target.I am expecting an explosion of rage, something no one would suspect from such an innocent-looking character. The fact that Vitamin, whom she loves deeply, was wounded could be enough to push her to a breaking point. I am expecting the majority of her rage to be directed towards Sprocket. It has already been established that relations between these two women are icy at best.I still predict that Vitamin will live. I feel Mike and Joe have enough respect for Chester Gould to not kill off one of his creations, especially one with a lot of tradition in this strip.

Sam and Tracy will just get there in time. Hearing the siren will force the Nitrates to leave.

But there is still a chance for Vista Bill to help save Kandikane and her Vitamin. Where are those canisters when you need them?

I’m hoping Kandi will surprise us (most of us) and pull a Wonder Woman rabbit out of the hat….. like an Uzi or Streetsweeper.

DANG IT! Lost Glen Larson, then Leonard Nimoy & Harve Bennett, and now Terry Pratchett! I am so depressed.

It is a relief to see that Vitamin is alive and that Kandikane is, so far, unscathed physically. With the peculiar modus operandi of the Nitrates, such that Sprocket has to retrieve from wherever it’s being kept (glove compartment?) and give Silver his pistol, perhaps Miss Lane will have enough time to wrangle Vitamin off to some cover, where they can hold out until Sam and Tracy can arrive to save the day—and remember, with Tracy already upset over the late Mrs. Stiletta Jones, he’s going to be in no mood for any jive from the Nitrates once he sees that Vitamin has been wounded and Kandikane threatened. I expect an expeditious take-down by the chief of detectives and his trusty partner; indeed, if bullets fly, a final take-down.

I like the predictions of Sisyphos and others, but I still feel there has to be a role for Lena in the climax to this story.

Morning, Tracyville!

I wish we had background music! We are heading for an exciting conclusion to this story!

Good morning everyone. ______________@avenger09: you are our poet laureate.

Wow – about 4 days ago, some of us were experimenting with “writing” for this adventure, and I proposed a last minute, “save-the-day” scenario where Tracy and Sam arrive just in time to stop the Nitrates from killing Vitamin and KandiKane. Now it looks like it might actually happen. My idea was that they had found a clue left behind in the old drive-in, whereas it looks like they are heading to the old warehouse based on Tracy’s deductive reasoning, but still. I had no idea – I was just guessing based on what I would like to see.

Kandikane looks pretty scared to me, and doesn’t strike me as the kind to be carrying a gun.-I’m uncertain how this will play out.Will Tracy and Sam arrive to have a gun battle with Silver here or…-Will the Nitrates flee at the sound of the siren, only to turn up at Sunny Dell Acres, to try and scam Aggie.Then we’d have the shoot out there, with Tracy and Sam (and maybe Gertie) ventilating the Nitrates (and their little dog, too). And maybe we’d learn that Silver is the son Aggie gave up for adoption, whose father was the no-good that Gertie and Aggie were arguing about.We’d also learn that the reason Silver was so desperate for money was to afford all those cigarettes he was chain-smoking.(If he’d only quit smoking, the Nitrates could have retired to Costa Rica by now!)

I am grateful for Locher keeping the strip going for so many years. Some of those early years were very well drawn. I hope he will be remembered for those achievements. They far outweigh the couple of years that people seem to like to ridicule.

Now he’s going to shoot them? I thought he was going to feed the hyena with them?

Too many head closeups, almost no wide shots of locations.A shadow of its former self in the 30’s and 40’s. Editorialcontrol limits subject matter so that none are offended. Nocharm here. What do you fans find entrancinging here? I ammystified. I am sure this is an acquired taste.

When fantastic technology fails, (grudgingly) fall back on the familiar…

I’d be so pleased if Kandikane came up with a big caliber hand gun and put a couple of slugs in that varment. I just hate it when a bully prays on a lessor or smaller or timid or weaker soul. Around these parts I am known as a bully destroyer to a lot of folk.

I’d sure like to see that jammed air horn machine gun unjam right just as Nitrate steps in front of it!

I’d sure like to see that jammed air horn machine gun unjam right just as Nitrate steps in front of it!That would be hilarious! :DLive! Vitamin! Live!Die! Nitrates! Die!

Good afternoon fellow DT fans!

Late start today but so pleased to find that Vitamin and Kandi are still with us.

Avenger09: you would surely get an A in any English class.

I started reading Dick Tracy the day Team Tracy took over, and I soon realized much of the flack directed at Mr. Locher was undeserved, as he wasn’t responsible for the artwork.Yes, the strip had gone downhill, but only after Mr. Locher spent decades working on it, and keeping the lights burning in the offices of the MCU.Now Tracy fans like me can be grateful both for Mr. Locher’s dedication, and for Mike, Joe, Shelley and Shane, who’ve done so much with the strip.

Great comments, great poerty! Thanks to all.

I’m following that line from Sprokcet: What WAS Vitamin doing here in the first place? Wasn’t the meeting going to be just between KandiKane and the Nitrates?

Vitamin, we presume, had no knowledge of his love’s relationship with the Nitrates, nor the filming for Silver’s “commercial,” so how did he end up at the warehouse?

I read DT as a youngster, then as a young adult, until our local paper dropped it. From time to time I saw the Fletcher and Collins DT in other papers that I picked up while traveling. Those, to me, were the outstanding mark as far as DT art work was concerned. I discovered DT online about 2 years before Team Tracy took over. The art work during that time was very bad. But I went back on the archives of Gocomics and saw the work in the early 2000s. It was much better. I personally can overlook a lot of “holes” in the story, if the art is good. I have a problem in that I compare comic art to Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, John Cullen Murphy, John Prentice and Hal Foster. Those were the artists of the adventure strips in my childhood and teens. Again, I am glad that Locher kept the strip going. Thank you Dick Locher! And thank you Mike and Joe for 4 years of effective storytelling and great artistic renderings.

On the topic of art, here’s a Tracy strip from 1956 which talks about precisely that …

There is more about Jim on his personal site

Don’t believe TMS when they show last week’s Dick Tracy strips and say that Jim did them: but they have a biography there for Jim Brozman.

Does my BRAIN make it PLAIN that KandiKANE LANE could be driven inSANE?I like it, JPuzz!

The old warehouse, Tracy says, isn’t far,A good place to store the Wonder Car.Thinks that’s where the Nitrates will go,Places like that are their MO.Silver says forget the air horn gun,Seems right now, it just doesn’t run.“I’ll do the job”, Silver declares,“The pistol will end all of my cares.”Sprocket hands the weapon overBut Kandikane doesn’t run for cover.She’s there to protect Vitamin,Never will abandon him.“Can’t believe I missed!” Sprocket does growl,Their plan for mayhem is terribly foul.Silver’s surprised Vitamin’s there,Took a hit to save his lady fair.

Nice one, Chris.

Hey all, Shelley and I saw Sparkle Plenty at the Spring Home Show yesterday. I have proof!

@Tarry Plaguer… and now Terry Pratchett! I am so depressed.

The only good news about Terry Pratchett is that he finished writing a new book. It was due out in September, but may be released sooner under the circumstances. I’ve never read any of his books, but I know he is popular.

the girl is keeping him safe.