Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 17, 2010

Wait, you were passing out thousand dollar bills to young boys, and you’re surprised that you’ve attracted attention?

The Civil War cap is getting larger! Where’s 3D (or whoever that is) going to “lie low”? In the tunnel perhaps… the plan will go on… to distribute $100 million in $1000 bills to the neighborhood kids…

He is a sitting target for every thug in town…

Maybe he will move up to Highland , Indiana to get lost.

He looks like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz.

I won’t try to guess what the plan is. I can’t outguess stupid.

You can “lie low” at my place for awhile for a price that is since you’re loaded.

“Wow, I can draw one newspaper, use my computer to quickly swap out headlines and WHAM! That’s seven less panels a week I have to draw.”

Here’s some interesting GoComics stats, subscribers to Dick Tracy:

7/13/10 - 22671

8/8/10 - 22729

9/17/10 - 22824

Numbers are going up. Obviously the word is getting out about the great talent here – in the comments section!

What is it will all the newspaper shots? I’ve seen more close-ups of headlines here in the last two weeks than ten years of Brenda Starr, Reporter.

Cripes, might as well call this strip Headline Crimes.

Hey, Homeless Guy Handing Out $1,000 Bills - Casey, Crime Photographer and Jimmy Olson are on your trail. They’ll solve this case before Thick Spacey.

Meanwhile Carl Kolchak is driving a wooden stake through Mrs. D’B. Reporters doing a cop’s job.

So where will Homeless Guy hide? My guess is in the one place where nobody notices anything strange: the Police headquarters sign.

If Locher wanted to use this headline imagery as an actual storytelling device, instead of a way to avoid real work, he could have Thick Travesty leak some insider information from Mrs. D’imbulb. Headlines: “We’re-lyin-twerprises Buys Out D’ingleberry Industries!” “Innovative 3-D Technology Exposed As Hoax!” That would draw the egotistical Dork-Dork-Dork into the open.

Or Thick could do some actual detective work, make some deductions, then follow Sue Doko as she goes to meet her boss in some alley, then hold him for questioning in the matter of that body in his grave … nahhhh!

He’s lying low until Locher thinks up a plan to go with what’s passing for a story.

This makes no sense if Homeless Guy is Dork-Dork-Dork, which is good evidence that he really is Three-Dumbs.

Maybe he isn’t D-cubed; maybe Homeless Guy is someone who has a grudge against D-cubed and his ex-partners, and his master plan is to pull down both of their business empires. Maybe he and Sue Dorko schemed to kill triple-Dork as part of the master plan. Maybe he’s giving away the money because it lets him feel like he’s getting even with the corrupt business men. Or because he can fool the NPD into thinking D-cubed is a potential child molester.

It would be great if Locher gave us all some reliable clues, but as the harem guard told the sheik’s wives, ya can’t give what ya ain’t got.

“Laying low, Seeking out the poorer quarters where the raged people go Looking only for the places they would know” * Capt. Peter Blood decides to go to the ground Even though he still has enough money to go around His plan he still holds as viable He knows that it is “old reliable” Naperville is a really big city But it doesn’t look very pretty It’s no wonder there is so much information When it has four papers in circulation With them around no secrets can be hid Their reporting is about to blow off the lid Twacy would be lost without them to read Detective skills he does not need But the Sunday strip is almost here So grab yourself a frosty beer And just sit right back and rest your head Alcohol will help ease the dread.

Thank you margueritem and marvee.

This guy must be the 4th musketeer that’s been missing, and as for a place to hide, how about the stage at the science museum

Going to lie low ?

Today, the chatacter seems surprised at getting attention after dressing like a BUM, sitting on an alley corner and giving away several $1.000 bills.

This is not a story, its a series of stupid events that in Locher’s mind is called a MYSTERY because HE doesn’t yet know what’s going to happen and Anthony 2816 has put his finger on it. He’s “making it up” as he goes along and still has to “figure out” what the PLAN and the STORY is all about LATER !

The big advantage with a “mystery” IS, it allows a “pass” on the creative effort to DESIGN the Traditional unique Dick Tracy villain !

Locher has generally copied the characters from Chet Gould’s Claude and Elsa Crystal (1957) story, and if he follows that ending too 3-D’s real body is frozen stiff in a locker in the Mansion.

Even the 3-D concept was triggered off an Ad on the back cover of a Blackthorne DT comic book containg the Crystal tale !

To Nimblejack: I totally agree. Thank Heaven for the reprint books to satisfy my DT fix. To Sydney Philips: Thanks for your reply and correction. We must guess that some time “off” stage Mary Steel had financial and health problems and asked Tracy to adopt Jr.

Good to see that SOMEONE in this strip has a plan…probably not a good one, but a plan all the same. I swear, if this thing moved any slower it’d be going backward…

ANTHONY! You get the “Super Genius” hat to wear today! Locher just painted himself into a corner and now comes up with the newspaper schtick and the “I better lay low” lame excuse for him to go into the loo, sit down, and try to think up some way to let himself out!

Meanwhile, the sound engineer from the movie “Jaws” has looped the tape, to which we will hear a continuous “DUM DE DUM”.

This week’s Crimestopper:

Don’t get tricked by newspaper headlines

also looks like the daily wipe has a printer problem, printing over the text of the article in panel one

“The Daly Express?” Shouldn’t there be an “i” in there somewhere?(Or an “e” if it’s referring to Mayor Daley?) If I were just going to slap the lettering together using Photoshop, I think I’d pick a font more newspaper-like than italic Comic Sans. And now I see that the newspaper doesn’t fold at all, but it’s only a pile of loose pages.

captainzero,

Good catch, but it actually was supposed to say The Dally Express, an oxyMORONIC reference to the pitiful pace of this boring story.

please curtail your plan! get a new plan! kill someone! kill yourself! kill spacy! anything! do something!

Further to my suspicion that Locher (plagiarized?) ideas and characters from the 1957 Claude and Elsa Crystal / Tin Cup Joe case. I’ve done some research..

It was at the begining of 1957 that Locher started his first working association with Gould and would have assisted with that strips ‘background’ art. Meaning he’d be very ‘familiar’ with all the ideas and naunces of that particular story and useful if you can’t easily think of anything ‘original’.

And readers couldn’t help but have noticed the close similatity in the death scenes of Al Kinda - falling, like the Brow to his death - on the American Flag, and Queenie (2007) falling to her’s like Ugly Christine into a smoke-stack.

To use a local saying - “after one time it’s two time !**

Hey gang! I think I’ve discovered where Locher has been moonlighting. I watched the Season Premiere of “Gray’s Anatomy” last night and for 2 hrs the hospital was under siege from a gunman who randomly walked through the hospital shooting people. The cops were outside doing what Macy did in the bushes with the robot arc. Everyone in the USA (and world) was yelling at their TVs for 2 hrs, “Go in there and get the gunman!” After 2 hrs, a couple of them, with soiled pants, entered the hospital.

I was looking hard at the credits for Locher’s name, It was definitely his type of work.

SydneyPhillips, what’s the general outline for the Tin Cup Joe case? Any too-obvious parallels with the present lack of characters?

Technically it isn’t plagiarism if Locher recycles old DT material; it’s the intellectual property of the DT franchise. But it’s rare for the recycling to turn out a better story.

My guess at the moment is that Homeless Guy is a copy of the Unabomber. Maybe Sue Dorko is his accomplice; maybe Missus D’odo is, too (Sue has a funny name. The alleged widow contradicted herself at least once while Thick visited her, and why did she laugh when Thick asked her if her husband had any enemies?.)

That new hat is STYLIN’!!!!!

I really think the numbers that Panel-Panner quoted above are because of the posted comments. They are always entertaining and almost always more so than the strip. Sounds like Syd is trying to sound like Lawrence Welk….I always enjoy his comments. wndrwrthg is very clever with his rhyming, I know a couple of local collectors who have started to collect them

why not be a bit more subtle, like hiding the bills under plates at homeless shelters, putting them in charity boxes or salvation army offering plates why young boys, and only boys? creepy

BillThompson: The Unabomber??!! Naaaaah….

g6793, I was thinking Homeless Guy might be a brilliant lunatic with a grudge and a willingness to live in squallor.

rabbitrose, the guy could be an egomaniac, eager to see how people respond to the sudden wealth. There’s another oddity here: why put the money in an envelope? If it turns out there is a clue written on the envelope, or something about its origin that connects it to D-cubed, then it’s just going to add to the idiocy of the story.