Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 31, 2009

Top o’ the world, Ma!

Panel Three:

Uh, Mr. Pops, sir? You’re just whipping out your gun. It’s not necessary to get undressed!

He always did like to chew the scenery…

Just a minute……..lemme go “rattle that cage” hehehehe

This would be the perfect time for a 8.6 magnum earth- quake.

Is that a Magnum in your clown suit, or are you just glad to see me?

Will we finally get to see that funny dead duck?

Gosh, is there ANYONE who doesn’t already know what is going to happen here with Pops balancing precariously on that tiger cage? It’s so predictable.

I’ll miss Mr. Pops the clown.

Though a killer away did run Tracy did not pull his gun He stood with a worried frown As he tried to talk Mr. Pops down Pops proceeded to loose his composure While standing at the top of the enclosure What a miracle this cage is really It can change its shape quite freely First a square and then was round The shape today does confound The roof that was there is now not Where on earth could it have got His gun in his hand Pops makes his stand And why in the last panel do we see The gun and right arm so disproportionately Larger than what we should expect It’s just another sad case of neglect.

The last panel artowrk it’s horrible.

And the tags today are so funny!!!

The artwork today is so poor. So is there a top to the cage in the second panel or is he just balancing on the edge? If he’s balancing he would HAVE to fall when he pulled out the gun.

But he can’t fall because there was a top that appeared out of nowhere on the huge cage that appeared out of nowhere. If it would support Della Contessa it will support Chuckles. And what the heck happened to his right arm in panel 3?

Mr. Pops….loook down….your show is untied.

..ummm..

aren’t those the cutest little stubby teddy bear arms you’ll ever see?

Tomorrow, Mr. Pops pulls the trigger, and…

It’s a clown gun, of course, and all that comes out of the barrel is a little flag that says “BANG!”

And Tracy just sorta stands there looking confused. Then he falls over. Asleep.

Strip 4 with english version:

http://shockdom.com/open/carl/2009/10/27/striscia-4/

Right you are NotNorman. It has gotten so bad that I quit commenting. There’s not much left to say. I do still miss Grok’s comments and I enjoy Sidney’s perspective. I remain so grateful for the Gould archives that make this stuff even more disappointing. As our old friend would say,

SIGH………………………….

ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz……….

Let’s see, clown on top of tiger cage whips out a gun … will Tracy shoot him and he’ll fall into the cage, or will the fact that Tracy has no gun leave it up to the cop that showed up??? Will Tracy use his wrist_geenie’s taser and zap Mr. Pops into the cage???

So much drama, I can’t wait!!!

VistaBill: from yesterday - it is standard practice in a circus to move the big cats from their “home” cage to the ring cage in a small rectangular rolling cage that is a bit larger than the cat. These rolling cages have removable bars at both ends and can be lined up end-to-end to form a tunnel. With the bars removed, several cats can be moved into the show ring without having to change out the individual rolling cages. I’ve seen as many as 12 of these little cages in a single show. Obviously, the first shots we saw of this tiger were in his rolling cage while all of the “action” (and I use this term loosely) happens in the show ring. I do not, however have an explanation for the changing size and seemingly removable top for the show ring cage. By the way, did you know that the ring cage is made of netting, not bars. It is collapsible and stored in the wooden ring itself which has a removable top. When they attach ropes and pullys to the net cage, it is pulled up out of the ring and a barred door is attached as is the first of the rolling cages. The door is not lockable and there is no top.

Meanwhile, everybody seems to have forgotten about Barb Ells. She is the only one to have killed anybody in this story and the last time we saw her she was carrying a rifle. Since she’s the only cold blooded killer, why is she not blasting away right now. Alternatively, why is she not the first one they disarm and arrest? Pops can wait; he’s not going anywhere on top of that cage. Talk about ridiculous police procedures.

If the tiger eats Mr. Pops, Would he taste funny?

Okay, today I’ll ignore the gaping holes in logic here (like, Tracy couldn’t manage to climb the cage bars but the clown shoots right up to the top in spite of being surrounded by cops, and has a gun even though he was disarmed earlier, or why he suddenly wants to kill Tracy when his plan all along was to get vengeance on Ringo). No, rather than dwell on that I’ll just say wow, the art is pretty bad today too.

It’s also kind of sickening now that the end of this story is near, to see how so very much time was spent saying so very little.

I have added “Clown strip tease” on the tags. :D

JanCinVV said, “VistaBill: from yesterday - it is standard practice in a circus to move the big cats from their “home” cage to the ring cage in a small rectangular rolling cage that is a bit larger than the cat. These rolling cages have removable bars at both ends and can be lined up end-to-end to form a tunnel. With the bars removed, several cats can be moved into the show ring without having to change out the individual rolling cages. I’ve seen as many as 12 of these little cages in a single show. Obviously, the first shots we saw of this tiger were in his rolling cage while all of the “action” (and I use this term loosely) happens in the show ring. I do not, however have an explanation for the changing size and seemingly removable top for the show ring cage. By the way, did you know that the ring cage is made of netting, not bars. It is collapsible and stored in the wooden ring itself which has a removable top. When they attach ropes and pullys to the net cage, it is pulled up out of the ring and a barred door is attached as is the first of the rolling cages. The door is not lockable and there is no top.”

Aha! Thanks for explaining things to me!

So, Pops is going to fall into the cage that Tracy, the FBI Agent, Fe Fi and Della have been dancing on top of for a week now and get eaten by the tiger. Am I right?

That would be my guess . About Christ-mass day ?

Carlo Coratelli I like your comic, thanks for translating it into English.

Dypak, all I will say is that it gets sillier (if that’s possible).

Tracy & the officer are doing OK I think. For example, they can look up at the clown and keep an eye on him without tilting their heads or even opening their eyes…

Wonder if the guys over at F-Minus have been watching:

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/f-minus

Wait, what?

Bassmanbob, what’d I steal?

It appears that Mr. Pop has more than one pistol. The large on that he is using today and the smaller one he had some days ago. What happened to the rifle he used in his act? I wanna see the pig on wheels again! And… the girl on the elephant. I shoulda saved those strips.

We have about three more weeks of this story. The next hint of the new story is 11/25.