Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for April 07, 2011

Good morning everyone…

The villain is worry about real world issues like development facilities and budgets. Amazing! In Locher’s universe, somebody like Virgil Oso woulda already had the thing built and deployed.

Good morning, VB! I so enjoy the drawings now.

Virgil Osho was one of a kind, Flight Suit.

Virgil Osho would have concealed the weapon cleverly inside a violin. Which would then get tossed into a swimming pool to make it go Floooom!

Chikuku, if Ed did that, he’d be committing a felony; the plans are stolen goods. If Ed had any sense he would blow the whistle on Diet Smith, with his claim that Thor’s Hammer didn’t work. But Dick Tracy villains aren’t supposed to have a lot of sense. If they did they wouldn’t turn to crime.

No doubt Ed wants money out of this deal. But he already seems like the sort of wanker who would commit a crime just to show how clever he is.

barticle35 said, “Virgil Osho would have concealed the weapon cleverly inside a violin. Which would then get tossed into a swimming pool to make it go Floooom!”

I believe it was Chris Chendo that rigged the violin for Virgil, barticle35.

Oh, dear - the first major error by the New Management has just been made. See if you can find it.

Yes, what sort of high-toned club doesn’t have a “No tie, no shoes, no eat” policy? Ed just isn’t dressed for the occasion.

Ooo! Ooo! I know! Naperville has enacted a “No Smoking” ordinance in restaurants, and the New Management didn’t realize it! What FOOLS, I tell you! ;D

Thank you Mr. Curtis for clearing up the whole Mike Danger/Joe Staton question. As always keep up the excellent work. Cause it is thoroughly appreciated. Good day/Morning.

AWESOME!! As The Muppets sang “Movin’ Right Along”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMR5JVo21wQ

Hey…maybe it is one of those new-fangled electronic cigars. Besides, he’s a villain. And bad guys have no respect for the law!

This looks like a sting operation to me. Isn’t Filth supposed to be working for/with the FBI? So, I think Filth is pretending to be a “buyer” to flush out sellers link “pony tail boy”, whose trying to sell “Thor’s Hammer”. If I’m right, Filth and Fly Face will one-up Tracy when the FBI busts “pony-tail boy”. Imagine how those two will boast that they out foxed Tracy!

Personally, I like the smoking (I know, I know, smoking’s bad, not p.c. etc.). But, it adds to the “feel” of the then/now timeless feeling of the new direction. A modern day film noir, if you will. Kinda reminds me of Batman the antimated series, Sin City, Pulp Fiction, and it really reminds me of Give ‘em hell, Malone one of my recent favorite movies (even if it got bad reviews I loved it). Even the resturant has that gangster “speak easy” vibe going for it. I tip my fedora to Mike and Joe!

p.s. Yes, this thirtysomething has a bunch of fedoras. No yellow ones though, always prefered the green one. But, that’s just me.

BillThompson: if Ed simply delivered the plans to the government, he’d publicly discredit and embarrass Diet Smith and possibly get Smith Enterprises barred from future government work (assuming Thor’s Hammer was a government funded project, which it might not have been). This would be good revenge for his firing, but it probably wouldn’t deliver the big bucks he craves (especially since he’s probably going to have a hard time finding a job in this field after having first been fired and then becoming a whistle-blowing troublemaker).

On the other hand, he could (through an intermediary like the Fifth) convey the plans to another defense contractor (let’s call it “Locktin Marheed”) in return for a nice bag of money, enough to let him live out his life in the style to which he’d like to become accustomed. If that company then developed Thor’s Hammer and sold it to the government, there’s little Diet Smith could do, as he’d first have to admit he’d lied when he 86’d the project.

Alas for old Ed, it seems the Fifth isn’t thinking along those lines. And I fear that Ed’s a bit too eager to hand a fully-functioning weapon over to a guy who will thereafter have little or no use for him…

The device kinda sounds like an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) contraption where it will stop traffic. But it may have more since it will stop crowds of people (They don’t run on electricity, but our brains do use electrical impulses…)

puddleglum1066, that makes sense, although it sounds like Ed is going for the immediate rewards. Aside from whatever cash he can get from the Fifth, he sounds eager to defeat Smith’s security arrangements. Stealing both the plans and the prototype would let him show off his (imagined) superiority to Smith. “Hah hah, I beat you, aren’t I a genius?”

Smith, of course, is smarter. He called in Dick Tracy.

How bad can Thor’s Hammer be to a world where they can still smoke in a restaurant?

Perhaps Club Gray is a private establishment where smoking is allowed. Mumbles at a drivethru–got a chuckle out of that Rightwingmoron.

Flight Suit, Locher is gone; get over it and find something else to talk about.

I’m still dead

Just wondering… Somebody mentioned the waiter ‘eavesdropping’ yesterday. Is it possible, being ‘Nothing Yonson’s’ old club, that the current owner, through his staff, is doing something similar to ‘Nothing’s’ racket?

Yes Mumbles you are indeed dead, according to Mike Kilian and Dick Locher who had your body ’buried-at-sea’ in October 1994 at the end of the Feets Diamond story !

But I suspect they may have you back for the 80th Anniversary of the strip in October this year with a ”flotilla” of other past characters who are also dead (?)

Possibly via someone’s (?) ”dream” sequence

Max Collins did it in 1985, why not have it - ‘one more time’ (?)

Mike Curtis posted here yesterday that the waiter isn’t Mumbles and that he has other plans for him. That implies that, as far as Mike is concerned, Mumbles is alive, and will be showing up, sometime.

Stay tuned Tracy fans! Same Dick time. Same Dick.. err… um.. website?

For some reason while looking at Ed, I thought of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W_wd9Qf0IE

Evrbdy nos im aliive and tht’s al thr is 2 id.

-Mumbles.

Just wanted to say I have been copying comments and sending them off to Joe, so he’s very flattered as well. We are excited as Gravel Gertie at the Grand Ol Opry to be doing DICK TRACY and hope we serve him well.

All in favor say “Aye” !

“Aye”

think we should regard anything that came from Dick Locher, the same way the producers handled the whole season of Dallas where Bobby Ewing had died; like a bad dream. Other wise we would have to deal with the absolutley stupid and unprofessional way Tracy and the rest of the Napperville Police acted when Locher was in charge, not to mention Junior Tracy having been involved in some horrible car accident, where an evil plastic surgeon had reconstructed Tracy Jr. to look like Locher’s son as part of the strip continuity. As far as I’m concerned, unless Stanton and Curtis say Mumbles is dead, he’s still alive.

A big “AYE!” from me.

The absolute worst thing about that Kilian / Locher story which I consider unforgivable was that it was retconned – it completely ignored both the wonderful George Ozone tale Gould did in 1955 and the “Cloning of Mumbles” story Collins and Fletcher did later. Therefore, I refuse to acknowledge it as part of the Dick Tracy canon.

And I love Mike Curtis’s final word on the matter, taken from the mouth of Mumbles himself. An’ thassa fac’!

A question for the Tracy fans:

as late as the 1960’s, Chester Gould had Tracy armed with a .357 Magnum. The Former Cartoonist Who Shall Not Be Named had Tracy, and everyone else for that matter, armed with automatic pistols.

When did this occur? I know cops carry a mix these days, but most Plainclothes that I have seen seem to prefer revolvers. Dare we hope for that much retro here?