Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for March 20, 2011

The adventure begins in earnest.

They should have made the Locher Auditorium look like the old Science Museum… but which version?

Nice!

Could the last panel be a subtle dig at Locher’s conservative politics?

Great art work again. Good colors, too. They look different from the weekday colors.

It looks like Flyface and the Fifth are setting up a scam.

Yesterday marvee pointed out that the newspaper headline could have a connection to the story. Thistle Dew and Wormy were killed at an armory. Is the DT universe one where armories are still used to store military equipment? Maybe the story will lead to some sort of weapons racket.

BillThompson said, “Great art work again. Good colors, too. They look different from the weekday colors.”

The coloring for the Sunday strip is arranged for by the authors. I would imagine that the “inking” would be done to suit the color strip. The daily strips are designed to be in black and white and the inking is done accordingly. I imagine the color inking for the daily strips is something that is added by the web or print publishers and are not done by a part of the artistic “team”.

VistaBill, I noticed that one of the weekday panels had that radial coloration, where the center starts out as one color and shifts to something else. If it isn’t what the artist intended, I’d rather have the black and white strips. The details show up better that way (like the two photos in yesterday’s Jackson Banner).

And just about everyone is wearing a hat. Bald spots have reached plague proportions in Naperville!

The colors, the details, the storyline…………

I can’t find the words to truly express what Mike and Joe have done to Dick Tracy, except that we have seen a true “Miracle”

A story that makes sense, is keeping our interest and is moving along fast enough that we don’t dare miss a day or we will miss something important.

Plus the Crimestoppers Textbook has good info.

Don’t they normally name a building after someone, when they have died??? Well, Locher’s creativity died many years ago, so I guess that counts as him being dead, from the neck up.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to read the daily strips in black and white. I checked out the color in the daily strips, but I like black and white better.

The standing joke in our house is, LOOK!!!!, , there is a movie or TV show on the tube that is in black and white - better call dad.

I said yesterday, could Mike Curtis be the long lost son of Chester Gould?????

Found another Pig On Wheels:

http://tinyurl.com/4moyebw

Flight Suit said, “Found another Pig On Wheels:”

Thanks for helping keep PoW alive, Flight Suit. What was it that JD called our beloved PoW… a concession stand?

I thought Sunday was recap day for DT…

Liking the new look so far. Still, it’s only been one week, but I’m looking forward to this new era.

VistaBill, that was the rule under the last regime. Staton and Curtis may be saying “It’s good to be the king!”

Since when has Lizz’s surname been Worthington? Last time I checked, I thought she was still using Groovy’s name, and before that she was just Lizz the Policewoman!

John Pelt, according to the Wikipedia article on Tracy characters,

http://tinyurl.com/4zwbzpx

Lizz’s maiden name was Worthington. Maybe the reset is going to simplify some of the strip’s past.

Well I have been trolling since Monday, I figured I would go ahead and say hi. Mike isn’t the only person working on Tracy that reads your comments, my wife and I read them as well. My wife, Shelley, is the one giving Tracy that great inking and easy to read text bubbles. She should have her name up on the Sunday strip along with Shane Fisher, the official colorist for the Sunday strip. WE DO NOT COLOR THE DAILIES! We also have no control over the coloring of the dailies. Something that we sort of worry about. Like the “blue dress” comment earlier there will be some color references in the future strips. Don’t blame us for color errors in any strip other than the Sunday.

Terry Pleger

Shane Fisher is the weekend colorist, working with Joe, Mike and inker Shelley Pleger. I think the individual papers may color their dailies, but AFAIK, the Trib isn’t coloring ‘em.

Going back a couple of weeks to the “HB Terry” mystery: I think this is a reference to Terry Beatty, who worked with Max Allen Collins, and whose birthday would have been about the same time the artwork was done:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Beatty

I am really happy to see these new Dick Tracy strips. The artwork is fantastic and the storyline is already engaging. I’ve enjoyed Joe Staton’s artwork since Charlton’s E-Man comics. I’m not familiar with Mike Curtis, but he’s doing a great job so far! I think it’s pretty classy to give credit to the entire art team in the Sunday strip.

Excellent sunday page!!!

This is a decided improvement over what we’re used to for a Sunday DT. Thank you Mike and Joe.

Concerning the weekday strips - I vote for Black and White! Colorizing them is as sacreligious as colorizing old B&W films.

“The Granary” is now a collage for your viewing pleasure!

http://marmelmm.deviantart.com/art/The-Granary-201632327

;D

“Don’t they normally name a building after someone, when they have died???” Curtis and Staton come from comic books and there is a long tradition in comics of naming buildings or streets in honor of past creators on the feature. Metropolis has had numerous buildings named after Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster, Wayne Boring and others, and Gotham has all manner of Kane, Finger, Robinson, Adams, O’Neil and even Breyfogle buildings and streets.

“Don’t they normally name a building after someone, when they have died???” Curtis and Staton come from comic books and there is a long tradition in comic books of naming buildings or streets in honor of past creators on the feature. Metropolis has had numerous buildings named after Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster, Wayne Boring and others, and Gotham has all manner of Kane, Finger, Robinson, Adams, O’Neil and even Breyfogle buildings and streets.

So it’s TRUE? Flyface and The Fifth survived that Hawaiian tidal wave so many years ago? We’ve got us a mystery, Batman! Looking forward to seeing how all this is explained. Great Sunday page, by the way. Advances the story without any recaps, just like the old days. Even the logo looks tons better. Am loving this!

A week now and nothing to snark at! I wonder if the auditorium has a dead actor on the stage and a Stuka hanging by a wire with a cockpit full of poop?

Whoever watch “Major Crime Squad” must have a clue for the next 10 weeks(minimum) because it lasted 60 stripes.

Gotta have the Stuka, hanging by a single wire attached to the antenna— just about the weakest part of the plane you could attach anything to.

Howsomever—- I expect that if these new artists use such a prop in a new story they probably will have done some research first and we’ll see the plane supported as it would be in a real museum, with at least three cables attached to strong points in the fuselage. These guys don’t seem to leave anything to chance, or any crumbs for us to chew on.

If I can remember correctly, when Lizz joined the force in 1956 she was married to either a photographer or detective named Jimmy Worthington. I am not sure that this “Dick Tracy” story will follow the “Major Crime Squad” storyline. In it, Brandon was Chief of Police, not Patton, and the story involved cocaine (which seems to be a taboo in today’s newspaper storylines). I would have loved to have seen B.O. and Gertie’s second child though.

The COCAINE was the 2nd story, the 1st one involve Fly-Face & the Fith and it lasted 32 stripes and Diet Smith should make an appearance. They have to modify it a bit because they put it on the Net at the end of last summer.

Crimestoppers Textbook is about stopping crime???

I wonder if they’ll ever find that dead guy on the stage…. Probably better to just leave him there to rot. That’s at the science museum, anyway. Locher Auditorium is probably not part of the museum, so the stage is probably clear of bodies.

-Cougar :{)

Isn’t Locher and “excitement” a kind of oxymoron?

what a great idea to supplement my income! All I have to do is wait on street corners for the cars stopped at the light and help myself to packages in front seats.

thanks, crimestoppers!

Also worthy of note: Sam’s last name is back to being spelled “Catchem” as Gould intended. (When exactly did it become “Ketchem,” anyway?)

Michael McMillan, it’s horrifying but some museums do suspend aircraft from a single support. The NAS Pensacola museum uses a heavy chain instead of a cable for some of its planes (Maybe one support does less damage to the aircraft–but it puts a lot of faith in that chain.)

However, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry has its Stuka hung from quite a few cables:

http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/transportation-gallery/the-exhibit/smaller-aircraft/stuka/

Great plot so far! Incidentally, does anyone know how to add DT to the GoComics MyYahoo or IGoogle apps? Any help or advice would be appreciated.

I the like the way the Sunday page was done.

You got a quick recap that Pat is back.

In one single panel, it shows that Liz is back as a detective with Sam and Tracy plus they are ready for action.

Then the last 3 panels give us new info.

If this continues, we won’t skip the Sunday Dick Tracy, as it won’t be a entire recap, there will be something new for us.

The first sunday strip I’ve enjoyed in years.

Uh-oh–Looks like the Tracy strip may have to be moved to the editorial page with Doonesbury and Prickly City.

I doubt the “HB Terry” message had anything to do with me. Dick or Jim may have been wishing some Terry a happy birthday – but the date is wrong for me – and it just doesn’t make sense for any number of reasons.

That said – I’m really enjoying seeing Mike and Joe breathe new life into the strip.

The first J. Staton D.T., and all seems quiet. Somehow I don’t see it lasting too long, by this time next week. There’s no telling.

Another thing I like about the New Dick Tracy is that the time of the story happening is today but they throw in some retro stuff from the early days.

Look at Sam’s desk, his inbox is a wooden tray on the desk with the word “IN” on it.

Next desk, has wooden tray saying pencils.

You can see Lizz using a pencil sharpener.

In past couple of days, you have seen desk lamps on the Chief’s and Tracy’s desk. Something that you don’t see in offices anymore.

I thought Willy The Fifth and Flyface were killed in a tidal wave in Hawaii May of 1960. Only the flies survived.

lilislore:

It was explicitly stated that their bodies were never found, and you know what that means in comics. Apparently Gould intended to eventually bring Flyface and the Fifth back, but never got around to it.

Nice thought, Rightwing. I had the same idea to explain the survival of Flyface and The Fifth. We’ll have to see how this all plays out in the next few weeks. Great to have these two back, though. They caused tracy a lot of headaches back in 1959-60.

http://www.againwiththecomics.com/2011/01/dick-tracy-to-become-readable-viewable.html

whoa - crimestoppers is about crime and the recap also moves the plot along yay :)

Rightwing, I agree, the Beatty movie was awful. I also agree that this new team is remarkably better than Locher and whoever. I like the style of drawing. Hopefully the writing will be better. The strip was awful as far as plot lines and dialogue went. I think Collins did a great job but it went downhill after that. Also, Locher putting Bonny Braids back in school when under Gould she was grown up and living in Washington state was another big blunder. By the way, some other questions about Liz. When did her name become Worthington. I thought she was Grove after marrying Groovy Grove on his deathbed? And we never found out her name when she married that photographer before she joined the police force. Anybody out there recall?

If the MCS strips in that article btmosley linked to are indeed used verbatim, then I think there’s already a slight continuity error:

In one of the strips, a character (name withheld for spoiler reasons) refers to Flyface as “Twillbrain,” in the context of it presumably being his real name. Except, if I’m remembering correctly, Flyface’s real name was Felixweather Limpp. “Twillbrain” refers instead to to J. Peter Twillbrain, a bleeding-heart criminal lawyer seen briefly in 1933 during the Steve the Tramp story.

Not a big deal, but a mistake is a mistake…

lilyslore:

When Lizz was first introduced in late 1955, she was shown married to a reporter named Jimmy Worthington, a rather unmemorable character who disappeared shortly after Lizz joined the force. That’s where the “Worthington” comes from, though it was almost never used in the strip. In the ’70s there was a passing reference to the effect that Lizz was a widow, Jimmy having evidently died offstage at some earlier point, and that was that. She did go as “Lizz Grove” for a while following Groovy’s death (you are correct that she did marry him on his deathbed – with Locher drawing no less than Chester Gould himself as the minister!), but that was soon forgotten too.

I like the fact that Sunday’s strip is different. Not just last weeks recycled strips.

I do like the “new” DT but I miss the 80 ft. high tiger cage, the Stradivarius violin rigged by Chris Chendo, “flooom”, the body left on the science museum stage, plane supported by a single cable on the antenna, changing science museum, “Police Hdqtrs” signs, $150 million dollars worth of $1,000 bills in a satchel, Tracy firing randomly from the bedroom window, AMC Pacers, and who could ever forget the Pig on Wheels!

Sorry, folks, nothing but quality from now on. ;)

Locher Auditorium…excitement? Never thought I’d see those words together.

What’s the Riddler doing lounging around in a police squad office?

great strip

oh thank god it’s in color now