Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for December 20, 2008

It’s caffeine withdrawal. He’s just a nervous wreck without his cookies and cocoa.

Nice eyes, prof. Noll And again with the hands! He should be more careful holding that test tube!

Shakiest chemist in the west.

Maybe Prof Noll is a descendant of Shakey? That could be interesting…

gassy null is the madman thats making everyones arms and hands deformed. I see it all now Locher was just setting up the next story line.

Those cookies don’t look too appetizing.

Aha! Flubber returns! And Noll’s left hand is able to be magnetized to glass…cool.

That’s not a plate of cookies in panel #2. It is a plate of bad sandwiches.

Mmmmm don’t they look great now that Tess held them up to her face? Thanks for holding them up for everyone to see, Tess, yeah!

Three plot advancements in three days! Folks, I think that Locher is reading these comments.

So, this’ll turn out to be the same guy that Diet and the CIA spook are talking about, right? And now Tess is caught in the middle of it? Just because Dick couldnt just tell Tess that he got blown up by a giant killer robot? Ok, I admit, that would have been difficult. “Honey, I almost got blown up by a giant killer robot but was saved by a little buzz bomb guy that my robot gave birth to at the last moment”. Yeah, Dick’s way is better. But by just a little.

Yesterday I opined that “Locher HEARS but think his readers suggest squat. He belives HE knows it all” Jeff responded:”REALLY? I don’t believe this to be true, as I have no evidence whatsoever to suggest such a thing. REALLY? Please share” Jeff, No evidence? You will do ‘Downwind Jacson’ (look the other way) everytime. Opinion on DL IS my long held “view”. Either DL makes no mistakes in Tracy (?) or he only ‘changes’ items created by those that came before. They must have been wrong ALL the time and he is convinced his ‘changeling’ Dick Tracy, is right for the strip, heavy brows and all! No advice given on these boards ever makes it to the comic strip. No poor habits ever corrected. Why? He thinks they’re better the way HE keeps them(?) You implied so! But Jeff, the shoe really is on the wrong foot! If you dissagree (you ‘know’ the man, we don’t). Has he ever told you anything to suggest that he has taken advice on the strip? What’s uncanny is that he didn’t even bother to take YOUR advice on Diet Smith scenario!(?). In exceptionally sharp contrast the Author of Frog Applause gave you space to make ‘your’ points of view(?) Sorry, never to happen on the Naperville Ranch!

JPuzz asks if the plate of sandwiches is “made with flatbread”? Sure! Or just small slices of bread. tiny sandwiches for all the tiny hands drawn in this strip.

Is Professor Noll’s first name “Web”?

And, Sydney, as I go through Chester Gould’s archive for the new Museum website, there are literally thousands of opinions, critiques and suggestions that Chet received each and every day on how to improve the strip.

Likewise, there exists very little evidence that Chet ever took any of it to heart, much less incorporated any of these suggestions into the Dick Tracy strip.

I’m not here to defend anything or anyone in particular. There is always room for improvement in any endeavor, obviously. Perfection just does not exist anywhere in human endeavor. DL DOES receive feedback from all sorts of sources. How he applies this feedback, if he chooses, through his art and story is actually HIS, and ONLY HIS, choice. It is HIS choice, exclusively. Not yours, not mine, not anyone else.

In fact, he has only his employer to please through his work. The same applied to Chet, though he had much more power given his success and position in his field. It is a BUSINESS, remember, and therefore DL is subjected to the same expectations applied to any one of us in our chosen field, from a business perspective, by our employer.

Clearly, through the events we’ve witnessed over the past quarter, his employer, TMS, must be satisfied, or there is at least an understanding between them that improvement is needed. Or not. Regardless, they are satisfied enough to have DL continue producing the strip each and every day.

YOU, individually, are always critiquing his work through the lens of what came before. That was then, this is now. The same rules don’t apply as consistently as they used to, or we would witness different results. Seems rational to me. Maybe not satisfactory in its end result to everyone, but rational, just the same.

anybody know why there is so much of a difference between the drawing in dick tracy and the dick locher editorial cartoons?

EatDickTracySandwiches says:

That’s not a plate of cookies in panel #2. It is a plate of bad sandwiches.

You’re killing me here!