Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 18, 2010

Um…

OK.

I’ll be sure and ask my dealer about those mysterious, extra reserves of power hidden within my phone.

Meanwhile….

Are we to infer that the homeless woman in the last panel is an example of somebody taking up too much space?

Ask my dealer??

What do I look like a dope head??

What about the guy lying on the stage?

She looks pretty well fed to me.

Liz in panel three is downright scary. Re Tracy’s comment in panel five: what acting career????

I love that Locher lives in this fantasy world where the employees at the AT&T store would actually posses some technical knowledge about the phones they’re selling.

Naperville News

FOUL SMELL REPORTED AT SCIENCE MUSEUM THEATRE

An intense reek has caused visitors to the Science Museum to become nauseated. The sickening odor is in the area of the museum theatre, unused for the last couple of weeks after the play, “Dick Tracy Versus The Blank,” opened and closed the same night.

An unidentified mass lays in the center of the stage, apparently the source of the odor.

“Nothing to worry about,” stated Police Detective Dick Tracy. “That object on the stage is just a prop left over from the play. We suspect there is a leaky sewer pipe below the stage that is the source of the smell. After all, the police would never forget to pick up a dead body.”

The detective was asked about a missing actor, I.M.A. Hamm.

“Who? You know these actors. He probably moved on to a better gig.”

“Maybe if we’re not living on the edge, we’re taking up too much space.”

Now THAT is funny.

Does Tracy suffer from a dual personality? He talks so tough at the beginning and end of an adventure but runs away like a little girl when danger appears.

Running away like a coward ain’t living on any edge.

With all due respect, I think it’s high time “little girl” was retired as a euphemism for coward. I’ve known some women who, as little girls, survived things that would have destroyed you or me, and performed acts of heroism that many grown men might not be capable of.

Will we ever hear Johnny Blank’s motive for trying to kill Tracy?

Flight Suit:

How about “little boy?” Or is that too biased against the other gender?

How about “little person?” No, that would upset those who are “height challenged.”

How about I just use the term “chicken?” No, then PETA would be upset with me…

Hey, I’m not coming down hard on you, Panel Panner. Heck, I know women who use the term just as much as men do.

And with more “all due respect” Panel-Planner

Why use my name in there?? Leaky Sewer………..I mean, I think, yes, I am offended!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

;-)

I’ve leaked a lot of things, but never, never sewage.

I can’t wait to see Monday’s installment when the ballet tickets mysteriously arrive at the Tracy household!

Wow. What an amazingly non-story. Although the heavy sounding and totally meaningless dialog at the end is…well, no, there aren’t really any redeeming qualities.

Leapin’ lizards! Now the airplane is in the lobby!

This is a first. The Sunday recap is usually a repeat of what we saw during the week, this time it has nothing whatsoever to do with what we saw during the week.

If you had only seen this Sunday’s comic and not seen anything that went before, you might be excused for thinking that Tracy is a hard-boiled detective. The problem is that we saw everything else so we know this installment is full of (censored).

WOW! I never realized just how gutsy Locher is.

While all this high adventure was unfolding off stage, it would appear that the theatre was totally full. Odd that there was never a peep from the crowd. I know when I am at a function, like a concert, and someone in the band is shot and left for dead followed by the other performers bailing from the stage, a general cry displeasure will erupt. In this case, I wonder at the lack of rotten vegetables hurled or absence of a small panic. Oh well, there were loads of good comments to read and that makes up for the lack of continuity in the strip.

The best part of reading Dick Tracy is reading the pithy comments, since the strip itself makes no sense. I do wonder what some of you people were doing writing comments six or eight hours ago when most people were sleeping. What time does the strip get posted? I may have to set my alarm clock.

That cellphone thing is an urban legend from a chain e-mail. Apparently it’s still 1999 in Dick Tracy land.

Leaky, I’d think ”Leaky Pocket” might be a more accurate ‘nom de plume’, given the incidence of Casino visits ;-)

Hey ! We’ve got a peep of Tracy in Gasoline Alley today !

CORRECTION ! It’s on Sunday July 18

Crimestopper’s Textbook is an urban legend. See www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/cellphones.asp and http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/business/a/cellphone_tips.htm

-Cougar :{)

Repetition is Variety Contradiction is Continuity Stoopidity is Unpredictability Phantasmagoria is Plausibility Delay is Suspense Talk is Action Boredom is Excitement Urban Legends are Gospel

I see Liz’s cowlick is flipping from one side to the other and back, once more, that’s a neat trick

One more thing, Spacy, the curtain never rose on your acting career

Tracy’s all banged up again. Did Liz do it?

Sydney, your right………I took the proverbial “beat down” last week on the Gulf Coast. :-(((

Goodyart; so true-and I squeal like a little girl as I look forward to the next exciting installment…

leaskysqueaky is it as bad as the news reports. I think they finally got the broken oil capped.

That person in the last panel looks like a villian extra from the old Scooby Doo cartoon.

so those who are successful, rich, comfortable or otherwise not living on the edge are taking up “too much space?” that’s totally absurd. Locher just get Spacy ready to run, hide and cower for your next ridiculous adventure and spare us whatever nonsensical drivel (drivelilia factosis?) you’re trying to express.

Hey, I think Liz in panel three looks very hot!

Sam has morphed into Randy Quaid. Tomorrow,DT will inforn the chief that he’s been offered a part in “Police Academy 7”. Meanwhile the dead guy is still sprawled on the stage. The brainless audience is still waiting for him to get up and take a bow and start tap dancing to “Putting On The Rirz”. Meanwhile,Warren Beatty has made a statement to the AP..”That was NOT ME in that movie about Dick Tracy”.

I just got back from the Verizon store.

I don’t know what they thought was so funny about it when I asked!

Only one Macy knows is taking too much space is Diet Smith. It cracks me up to hear someone who hasn’t a clue about anything try to impress with some off-the-wall string of words he just heard. What message does Macy (Locher) try to plug with the “too much space” line? Should I sell my modest little house and go for one of lesser footage? I’d be glad to share my little abode with…… Sandra Bullock. If she brings her checkbook, my wife would welcome her!

And I would add, if you’re only drawing LARGE heads in those Sunday panels (like today), I guess it’s really too much SPACE !

Hmm ! - But a lot better than ‘baby’ hands !

LOOK at ALL those bruises, bandages and plasters !

And by tomorrow, ALL gone — not even a SCRATCH !

Ladies and Gentlemen, now on display; THREE new never before seen limited edition Lizzes! Never to be seen again. Collect them all.

Kab Buch……I think that is only temp. until they can drill the relief wells.

goodyart said, “The best part of reading Dick Tracy is reading the pithy comments, since the strip itself makes no sense. I do wonder what some of you people were doing writing comments six or eight hours ago when most people were sleeping. What time does the strip get posted? I may have to set my alarm clock.”

It’s up at 1:15 am edst.

Wow, another GREAT Sunday strip! Seeing that first panel IN COLOR is a very POWERFUL image. Again looking like an enormous shark devouring Anja Nu!

And just wonderful to see our HEROES together, Dick Tracy, the Chief and Sam.

What a DYNAMIC Collage in the last recap panel—-the Chief, Dick Tracy and the plane. Overlapping these images, with dynamic color shows the strengths of these characters.

And a GREAT new panel to peak our curiosity. Wonderful.

You know what’s really, really sad about the current state of this strip? (Besides the obvious, I mean?) It’s that whenever somebody actually attempts to post words of praise for it, it always comes off sounding like sarcasm.

Note I said “sounding” – I’m not saying that it’s intended to be sarcasm. For all I know, the praise-poster is being entirely sincere. But then I look at the strip itself … today’s, yesterday’s, all last weeks .. actually, all that has appeared for the past several years … and the “praise” just seems to dissolve into sarcasm because of this.

And I find that incredibly sad…

I just overloaded. The very idea of Tracy living on the edge. This is a guy who shakes in terror when the neighbor starts his lawnmower.

Liz has lost it, assuming she ever had it. If she had any idea how Tracy spent his time she would fire him on the spot. Come to think of it, if Tracy had any idea how the illustrious Napperville police department spent its time while all this was going on, he’d probably quit on the spot.

The time has come, I think, to carry out an earlier statement.

(Quietly places “detective badge” on desk and leaves.)

Looking back on the last three arcs, I fail to see anywhere where DT was “living on the edge.” Maybe somewhat in the Robot story… Blank’s motive was clear: revenge for the death of his grandfather. Anja’s motive, to “liven up a second-rate play” is not only absurd, it’s different from the motive that Blank attributed to her. Still, I read it. And rubberneck at accidents on the interstate. Human nature, I suppose.

I used to read DT many, many years ago when I was young but haven’t for some time as the paper stopped carrying it. I just started to look at it in the past month to see if it was as bad as the comments that people made about it on Brenda Starr. Everything that they said was true. I know that comic strip writing can be hard to keep a story line going but this is pathetic. I can’t believe that he gets paid to write this.

http://www.gocomics.com/gasolinealley/2010/07/18/

I think that homeless woman in the last panel was on ‘Freakazoid’ once. She made scary wind sounds when the camera wasn’t looking!

Now we have a third version of Anja Nu’s motive! First, she herself said it was revenge. She didn’t specify what she wanted revenge for, and Tracy doesn’t seem to remember anything about what he did to her in the past … but his memory is getting pretty unreliable…. It must have been something pretty important, though. She felt so strongly about it she shot Johnny Nothing to keep him from depriving her of the pleasure of being the “first” to kill Tracy.

Then Johnny Nothing said she wanted to kill Tracy and pass it off as an accident, to make herself famous. Evidently being the director of the play that was going on when Johnny Nothing murdered Tracy would not have been sufficient fame for her. She had to be the one to kill him.

Now The Great Defective says she did it because there’s no possible better way to liven up a second-rate play than “a real murder.” That’s what he said, but clearly he must have meant “a third murder.” The play wasn’t lively enough with one actor shot right on stage and Tracy about to be shot by Johnny Nothing – BOOOOR-ING! She had to murder Johnny Nothing & Tracy to liven it up a little. Naturally. Anyone can understand why she had to do it. If she had put on a play with only two real murders in it, she would never have been able to live it down! Oh, the shame!

-Cougar :{)