Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 02, 2009

This gets worse by the day.

She’s a MAN Baby!!

Ah Sydney, it unfolds as you revealed…

SIGH. I would say I wish this story were over, but having followed Dick for the past year I know the next story will only be worse. How anyone can spend three months setting up a story and still have it be this inane is beyond me.

Either Agent Ennen’s been secretly making out with Ringo, or the contagion responsible for his skin disease is air-borne!

all the critics out there… just reading a Dick Tracy strip makes me smile… I think it is a good start for the month.. the art is great!

I think the tiger should star in his own spin-off series. Each story-arc could involve a new group of idiots being fed to him, each time for a different reason. I’m not sure if Mr. Pops should stay on as his sidekick, or if there should be a rotating cast of evil guest-clowns.

Who’s with me on this?

Matt, are you there? I really think I could be on to something!

Ok, we know that Louise wasn’t about to kill Ringo during her act. So, to avoid attention, Barb decides to kill Louise during her act, in front of all the audience, and this was just so that Louise couldn’t kill Ringo first. Ok, now I get it. What a swell plot.

Flight Suit, I’m with you. The tiger has been my favorite character this whole arc and has even been getting the best dialogue.

Sigh…

I’m flagging jorizaga. That is inappropriate.

“Lock ‘em in, Ringo”. Oh, yeah. That’s gonna look like an accident.

morrow said, about 1 hour ago I’m flagging jorizaga. That is inappropriate.

LOL!!!!

The New strip’s name?? TIGER BEAT!

are they going to escape in the pig on wheels?

Flight suit, certainly the tiger looks like the most intelligent creature in the strip. Just look at the look of infinite sadness in his eyes…as if he understands every cheesy word of the dialog, and being in the cage as he is, has no escape.

DT’s new investigative technique: stand around acting dumb long enough, and the villain will confess all just to get the plot moving again!

OFFAL ?

Where is the Elephant ? Now may be a good time to conduct an analysis and comparison to this bowel movement

And for those that “smile”, the good aroma might be an incentive to head up the investigation.

As a connoisseur of domestic *arts, he may find a synthesis that has eluded us all (?)

I am still completely at a loss about the back story.

Everyone at the circus is a former employee of the arms dealing company? Were they in the circus before Ringo joined, or was he set up as ringmaster at a circus with no other employees? But no, the FBI had files on everyone at the circus.

So if they’re not mad at him because he blew the whistle on the arms dealing, why are they mad at him?

Why am I bothering to try to figure this out?

“YOU get to kill Ringo! And YOU get to kill Ringo! EVERYBODY GETS TO KILL RINGO!”

So now TWO people with guns walking around what should be a taped off crime scene with no other police or FBI ANYWHERE?

Yeesh.

So everyone in the circus is a criminal? Toss in a woman with a snake and you’ve got a lawsuit from Marvel Comics.

I only raised the idea of Kitty getting his own strip as a joke, but enough of you have responded favorably that I now give you…

DICK TIGER!

http://kraptastrophe.blogspot.com/

Wait a minute here. Maybe Sydney alluded to this months ago. Barb Els was in the circus tent with the 30-30. Louise is up in the sky, a moving target. Ringo, whom she wants to kill, is standing still on the ground. So she elects to kill Louise instead of Ringo, thus endangering her plot to kill Ringo. There had better be a good explanation for this, is all I can say. It may be that Barb is a victim of acromegaly, i.e. her pituitary has not stopped producing growth hormone when it was supposed to. This makes you tall and muscular, but makes you clumsy and does bad things to your brain and nervous system. (Think Andre the Giant and the guy who played Jaws in the Bond movies.) I could accept acromegaly as the reason for her illogical action, given her size and facial features. Then again, hitting a moving target at 100 feet or maybe much more…hard to do even for a normal person. Maybe Barb will barge in and shoot the clown to keep him from killing Ringo. This would give DT and friend a chance to escape while she has turned her attention to Ringo.

How did Barb Els happen to get a gun?

<…laughing…> To think I alllllmost quit reading Dick Tracy, some months back! And then I scrolled down and found all your comments…

LOL@morrow… Good strip, Flight Suit… (uh, did I say that right?)

I love trying to figure out why parents would name their babies something like “Barb Els”…those parents must be prescient.

Oh, wait…I meant to say I “hate” trying to figure it out…

Ray C: That would be Richard Kiel in the Bond movies.

Take a second look at today’s mid-panel. Are those pectoral muscles ? I thought the designer version came with “boobs” ?

The only Hero in this big mess, is Teevo …. he had the good sense of smell ,,,, to leave – after ONE panel !

Now it’s all starting to make sense. (?)

Well Cholly got it ….. Chicago got nothing at all !!

Just shows how inefective “TALKS” really are.

Ask current Dick Tracy standing in a Circus ring, Jimmy Carter or Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper !

It’s a “Murder on the Orient Express” scenario. Dame Agatha is spinning in her grave.

Ok, this will be my first and last post here.

I frequent several websites every day to read my daily comics. Dick Tracy was not one of them, but I could read it fairly regularly with the help of one of my favorite bloggers - the Comics Curmudgeon (joshreads.com).

Starting with the robot storyline through the casino fiasco I was astounded by how bad the strip had gotten. Now what, a couple of months into perhaps the worst plotted and illustrated storyline in comics history I have been coming here the last week or so just to see the comments.

This strip seriously needs to retire, or a shakeup of the artist/writers it is so bad. Today I realized that barring whatever statistics are gathered from newspaper readership, the numbers from website visits here (and elsewhere I presume) are responsible for keeping a strip going. My visit just to read comments, and every other person here who has commented regularly only help to keep this fiasco going. I don’t think anyone who looks at the numbers cares if those visiting the website hate the strip or not. They are just numbers to show to advertisers.

So saying this, I will not be back. Not even to see any responses from this comment. Anyone else who really hates the way this strip has degenerated should do the same.

Bye.

As others have noted, the crunch comes soon!! When they actually get put into the Tiger’s cage (Saturday’s strip??) we will get to see if Sydney is right about how they escape. Where is Tarzan when they need him? I think I might have given up on this story if it wasn’t for the suspense waiting to see if Mr. Phillips correctly predicted another rerun. I can hardly wait!!!!

What a suspenseful story! Perhaps the pig on wheels will come to the rescue!

So the tiger is supposed to eat an emaciated DT, and a lady with skin disease for dinner? Someone call PETA.

Good one RichardT!! LOL

Tomorrow TCM at 9am will show two more chapters of a 1937 serial of Dick Tracy.

Barb killed Louise because she wanted to kill Ringo first?? Well, what is she waiting for? Why isn’t she blasting away right now?

Ugh… this is phenomenally bad. There is no way Locher had this planned when he wrote the strip. I’m going to go read a real comic, like Skin Horse.

Flight Suit, loved it!

I don’t know if this is story line has become confusing today or is it because it is Friday night and the “Bacardi” has something to do with it. Where is Barney Fife when you need him???

Reading Dick Tracy these days is like looking at that horrific accident on the side of the freeway: You know you shouldn’t look but you just HAVE to.