Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for November 14, 2009

Broken up? I think you look pretty good, for having just plunged several stories!

Panel Three:

Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Exit, stage left!

Lastly:

We’ve established that Barb loves Snagglepuss. Why, then, would she speak of letting him choke on anything?

Flight Suit, that was my thought, too, on reading panel three….it must be the steroids talking…

MARGUERITEM! Either that or Barb is wearing a catnip scented perfume.

I’ve put some more Frog-Bloggish material on my blog, by the way. Check out the latest entry:

http://kraptastrophe.blogspot.com/

You can’t make up stuff like that!

I love how Tracy is drawn in the first panel, though this whole story felt a little too long to me.

Dylanio21, you say that like the story’s over! It ain’t over ‘til Della Contessa sings!

Uh, shouldn’t they get the tiger to a different holding pen (and FEED him), and leave the seriously injured clown alone for the paramedics? And Barb’s nose! Oh, well, Bob Hope is gone, I guess she can use it. But Jay Leno is gonna want his chin back.

they can’t get fee fi to the hospital because the ambulance is too small

Dick Tracy has in recent years become the ”No shots”,”No bucket” wonder man !

Aside from an overreaction against Big Ace it’s been T-Bone steaks instead of bullets against Basherville’s savage Hounds … and then TWO orders not to shoot in the current Circus story.

11.02 Officer :”Should I take him out Tracy”? Tracy : “Hold it”! (As Mr.Pops shoots to kill the detective - rather than Ringo who he hates with a passion)

11.10 Officer : “Do we shoot the Tiger Tracy”? Tracy : “No! …Get the Paramedics and more back up now” (Heck! Not even a thought on getting Animal Control this time?)

An “altered” hero NOW - No Nuts - Empty bucket - No steam !

Pops doesn’t look right in the first panel, but I wouldn’t blame Locher for that. Broken up is hard to do.

Sloppy the Clown looks pretty good for someone who should be at least paralyzed.

Here’s one of the (many) things that’s sad about this whole mess… looking back for the last few weeks, Tracy himself only appears in the strip about one panel each day, and even then it’s in a very passive role. Can you imaging Gould-era Tracy having just one face shot (and doing nothing) in each day’s strip?

Tracy has become a minor player in HIS OWN STRIP.

We’ve got a cold blooded murder, Barb, guarding a tiger that was about to kill anybody else who got into the cage. We’ve got the only hero of the story, Fee Fi, shot and lying on top of the cage, maybe bleeding to death. And Tracy decides to help the evil mastermind of this whole plot, who just tried to shoot him, and who can’t move anyway, out of the cage. I think someone has an issue with priorities.

Flight Suit said, Dylanio21, you say that like the story’s over! It ain’t over ‘til Della Contessa sings! ————————————- Something that clever and amusing is too much for the present state of this story arc.

Cyber The Tiger looks a lot like the one on my Frosted Flakes box this morning! Macy looks more and more like Melvin Milquetoast.

I actually like that cartoony cuddly tiger in Panel 3. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the artwork, of course, but the tiger has never fit with the rest of the artwork. I think that’s because they do the rest of the art out of their widdle heads, but they KNOW they don’t know how to draw a tiger so they copy that from pictures of tigers. It keeps changing because they copy different pictures, but it’s always better than the rest of the art because the pictures they copy are better than anything in their widdle heads.

Today’s tiger might have been copied from a plush toy.

-Cougar :{)

hey, choke on this…..

Everybody missed Ray C’s pun…

Besides being the WORST story ever, today’s artwork is atrocious. A first grader could do better.

Always a good idea to pick up people by the armpits after they fall 80 feet straight down. Of course, I actually expected Pops to get up and walk out on his own….

Loretta Lynn was broken up.. Pops is a LOSER.

It was revealed in an interview some 15 or so years ago that there was an Original Art exchabge between Stan Drake (Heart of Juliet Jones) and Dick Locher (Dick Tracy)

In a verbal exchange at the time Locher reported that Drake told him he was “working on the best strip in the business”. It seems our Dicky Locher interpreted the comment as a BIG compliment.

But working on something doesn’t mean the quality of work or the end product was the BEST in the comic strip business.

It could more easily be interpreted to mean he had “inheritied” the best strip in the business. And, if ever there was a doubt, current circulation and recent story events have made the “intent” crystal clear !

We don’t need to be born with a wad of hindsight or blessed with Mattie’s superb 3-D Magee “vision” to know that Locher DROPPED the BALL when it was passed. A bad pun might suggest, he couldn’t even Catchem (Sam that is) as it’s clear he let that one drop too

Perhaps he’s back into golf now and “teeing off” with Teevo.

Sadly, he never hit a hole in one, with “small” hands, he just managed - a Teevo in panel one !

And I’ll confess my puns are nearly as bad as he “writes” the Dick Tracy comic strip ! ;-)

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz……………

It’s bad when you have to depend on a cold-blooded killer to save your bacon. All Barb has to do is change her mind and Mr. Pops and Tracy become cat chow. Just a guess here but in a real situation like this I would bet the officers disobey orders and open up on the cat if Barb does change her mind. Oh, heck, in a real situation the cat would have been a rag doll already and Pops and Barb– half of the circus— would be in handcuffs headed for jail. Tell it to the judge tomorrow morning, guys!

It’s getting harder and harder to keep up the comment. Locher is giving us less and less to comment on. That’s baaaaaddd, Dickie! Pretty soon, we’ll be begging Mattie to throw a few insults out. I know he hasn’t run outta them!

Magpie #3 (behind BB and Ludwig)

Yea! Tracy did something other than standing around!

Bring the Pig on Wheels back, now!

Wait a minute! I thought Barb Els was an ally of Mr. Pops. “They” all wanted to get Ringo…

To everybody constantly complaining about Dick Tracy’s passiveness, I have an alternative thought to consider:

Perhaps Tracy is a Zen detective, practicing a type of Aikido law enforcement, in which his mastery allows him to subtly direct the energies around him, thus foiling villains without appearing to take overt or injurious action?

Think about it. The bad guys always do wind up in custody or dead, so who are we, in our unenlightened lack of understanding, to judge the master’s methods?

I thought Barb Els was WITH Pops, not AGAINST him. I’m getting a headache.