Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for January 04, 2011

Before concluding that all of the satellites have fallen to Earth, perhaps you should consider the possibility that water may not be good for electronic devices.

What really amazes me about this strip is not just the fact that Locher draws really weird hands, but that he is continuously finding new and innovative ways of drawing hands poorly.

Look at today’s hand. Look at how the top edge is just one perfectly horizontal line all the way from wrist to knuckle.

Now hold your own hand in the same position and see how different it looks.

The satellites have fallen down? We have a problem here all right. Initials DT.

Panel #1: Here we see the origin of the phrase “No sh1t Dick Tracy!”

Panel #2: Jim Lovell said it first, and better.

Panel #3: I can’t do it. I can’t find a retort adequate to the degree of stupidity shown here.

Modred can’t see the weather for himself, so DT interprets for him.

Here’s why you don’t loan Dick the keys to your Veyron:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NJmB1F2mdE

More like your Chinese made radio watch is a piece of junk.

It’s only January 4th and Spacy has already assured himself of the award for the 3 stupidest comments for the entire year. (And yes I know that Spacy has 361 more days to top them).

Anybody notice that they gave Spacy a wristwatch without hands on it? Figured he wouldn’t need it or else couldn’t read it.

Remember your desert survival course Spacy- remain in the car and wait for help to arrive!

So the entire (pick one) Globalstar/Iridium/Orbcomm/Inmarsat constellation is off-line? Uh-huh. Too bad Locher didn’t include a stem on the grist weenie, so Thick could wind it. Or didn’t show some brains and have Thick say “We’re out of our coverage area!” or “The lightning must have knocked out the system.”

At this point any sane person would enter the twenty-first century: replace the wrist gizmo with an actual watch, and handle communications through a cell phone.

you can say now that Tracy is no regular police officer.

He is a “Storm Trooper”

Uh, Bill—- I’ve had the misfortune to drop a cell phone into water before. I’m thinking it wouldn’t work any better than his wrist geenie is now. At least, unless Diet Smith has come up with a waterproof cell phone.

Even without water damage, I’ve had occasion where my GPS-enabled equipment was off-line. How there could be holes in coverage is beyond me, but there are places where either it doesn’t work at all or it’s spotty— or the carrier we’re using for the company phones is junk.

Diet Smith doesn’t have to come up with a waterproof cell phone. They already exist in the form of the Samsung Rugby and many others that are built to Military Standard MIL-STD 810F.

Michael McMillan, you’re right. I didn’t think it through on cell phones and water damage.

Spotty GPS coverage isn’t impossible. The GPS satellites are in fairly high orbits (about 20,000 km) and well-distributed around the earth. But commercially-available GPS systems depends on using three satellites for triangulation, then checking the results against a fourth satellites. There are various inaccuracies in the system (it’s impossible to perfectly synchronize their atomic clocks; the commercial system is designed so it can’t be used for precision weapons guidance; the commercial software traded precision for affordability). Plus there are only about thirty active GPS birds, and sometimes not enough of them are high enough above the horizon to give a reliable signal (in theory air is transparent to tyhe radio signals. In reality the ionosphere can cause problems.)

(Sorry to get off-topic here, but satellites interest me.)

I wonder if Locher has ever heard of hypothermia? It would appear not.

Try your cell phone…it never failed you before…

SHEESH!

Where IS Diet Smith,anyway?Might as well bring the Space Coupe out of retirement.That thing could take a pounding,but I guess we gotta keep it real,right?

that is some storm if it brings down satellites.

This is the first time I’ve heard that the Wrist Geenie is served by satellites. Especially ones that go down and have to go into the shop for repair.

The driver of that Bugatti that went into the lagoon (see Flight Suit’s link) was talking on a cell phone while driving. According to him, a pelican dived at him and distracted him. That’s his story. (Video seems to show him fishing around the floor for a dropped cell phone when he went off the road into the water. Maybe a pelican attack made him drop the phone, though.) What is Tracy’s story? What is his excuse for driving into the water?

And why was there no sound effect??? I think we should have a re-do to put in the sound effect. After all, we’ve already had one re-do…. I propose “FLOOOOOMM!” but who knows, maybe Locher can think of something even more humorous than that.

Locher could get some ideas from reading Rip Haywire.

-Cougar :{)

I wonder if his account will be credited 4 the loss of signal, like they do with cell phones?

duh, there’s problem all right. it’s taken all this time for spacy to realize this? Poink!

Well, with Brenda Starr and Annie gone we just have to make the best of it with Dick Tracy warts and all. After all, serialized comic strips are a vanishing breed it seems. I also still have the Phantom, but he’s on another website. By the way did you notice the killer looks like Jabba the Hut with that mask on?

Had a problem with my phone line and couldn’t get on the internet since Thursday… finally repaired. I see that the five days I fell behind didn’t make much difference.

Bill, you could have taken a 2 month leave and nothing would have progressed.

Tracy should be a TV weatherman. He interrupts programming to state the obvious!

STRANGE ! No problem for the Sheriff to talk with Chief Lizz via their cell-phones, but Tracy’s powerful Wrist Geenee is DOWN ?

This road trip is taking forever!

Hello everyone, Ive been gone for quite some time but still reading the strip every day. I noticed Locher didnt bother to say Merry Christmas or Happy New Year to anyone, what was that? A Happy Belated Holidays to all.

This strip has gotten even worse. I did not think it possible. Wonder how old Dick will find his way out of this one.

I’m 59 years old. I remember reading the Tracy strips in the NY Daily News. Some years ago, I found a pair of collections of Tracy strips in large format trade paperbacks.

The stories were the classic Tracy strips from the 30s into the 90s. The last few strips in the collection were written by Max Collins. Drawn by Locher.

Curiously, both the stories and art, were pretty darned good.

Whoever is writing the strip needs to be force fed the classic Tracy strips, and Locher needs to be reminded that he used to be able to draw. Compared to the stuff from the 90s, he’s just phoning it in, more than he did back then. LOTS of “lets use a panel from yesterday’s strip and just reletter it with vaguely new dialog.”

Don’t know why I bother continuing to read this strip, maybe I’m hoping that one Monday, there’ll be a new artist and writer.