Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 26, 2009

Arrrgh, he’s been impaled! Unless that’s supposed to be the track of a bullet….

OW! Shot in the back, now that’s dealing form the bottom of the deck. Wait sumtin smells kina funny Bracy, could tet be B.O. a doin the shootin?

Well I must have served my time in exile. I am finally able to access comics again. You know, that may not have been a bad thing with this strip. At last the cops finally shot the clown, unfortunately they missed and hit one-eye.

Jackie shaved his mustache for today’s strip.

This whole sequence is just sooooo dumb! Where is Tracy’s back-up! Why would they just let OEJ grabbed one of their pistols and run away! The incongruity of DL’s writing is just off the wall! What a great bunch of Keystone cops they have in this city. You might as well call for Hemlock Holmes and The Retouchables!

Good strip. Only a question: I’m Italian and I don’t understand the words “snake eyes for you”. In my language it’s a word without sense.

Carlo Coratelli said,

“Good strip. Only a question: I’m Italian and I don’t understand the words “snake eyes for you”. In my language it’s a word without sense.”

No worries, Carlo. In our language it’s a word without sense also.

The problem with today’s episode is that when someone has a gun aimed point blank at someone’s head, you don’t shoot them in the back (unless you don’t like the hostage). Instead, they go for a head shot. However, in the last panel that might be Don Quick Oatie running a lance into the back of OEJ!

Carlo, “Snake eyes” comes from the dice game “craps”

“Snake eyes” is what you get when the dice are rolled and both die come up one.

(“die” in this sense is the singular of “dice”).

If that happens, you lose.

It is bad luck.

For marg and Dogmore: I think that is a bullet-track. My take: OEJ’s gun was a circus-gun, which could fire both ways (and further-rigged with Kollywood-logic, which would result in every shot he fired going into/through OEJ’s body)

I ENJOYED READING ALL THE COMMENTS THEY’RE ALL VERY WELL. I’M WONDERING ABOUT THE ART IN DICK TRACY SOMETIMES THEY DO THE HANDS AWFUL.

How do I locate yesterdays Dick Tracy with the new site here?

jabo, to locate yesterday’s Tracy use the calendar or single arrow in the upper-right corner of the strip

It took the other cop three days to shoot one eye?

Thanks, quasimodo2

Looks like he was lanced in the arm pit, not the back

no-no,, that’s not a spear or a bullet, it’s one of those little bo peep canes they used to use in vaudeville to pull bad performers off the stage………..exit , stage right!

Surprised that nobody mentioned the goofy overbite look on Tracy in panel 1. Looks like Bugs Bunny on a bad hare day.

I think NotNorman has a point, that looks like a spear gun to me. Or maybe Tracy’s backup took the croupiers stick, sharpened it into a spear and then impaled OEJ. Since OEJ is actually a balloon he went ‘pow’.

whether it’s a gunshot track, a spear, or corkscrew, it blew Jack’s mustache off again. Thanks for the tip on how to find the archives spiwsu

The writing and art execution here seem like a spring time frolic in the month of May. One imbided with simplistic almost babyish appeal. If that was the intention I’d have to say Carlos was not being too generous, he was right on …”Good strip” !

Trouble is, the producers may be aiming their offering to satisfy an audience that does not exist. Or perhaps they have been in an unsuccesful “creation” mode for the past 16 years and havn’t realized the lack of success (?) They say that the Internet is where all the readership is today (estimated, 23 million for Tracy), but there is no evidence that a multiple score of puberty seeking youngsters are there, beating up the electronic media to read Dick Tracy (?) Hence, the fractious posting here on this board and a naivly optimistic assumption that youngsers simply are too timid to post and express their opinions ! (?) I just haven’t seen any. I suspect it’s all a grand hallucination, a mirage. That demographic for Tracy just doesn’t exist !

Perhaps we should ask Liam, who monitors this board to authenticate their global hits to verify that 23 million. But he may not respond for reason of “company policy” OR, to avoid embarrassment to TMS on their flattering “guesstimate”.

But enough speculation for today, and leaving with the observation that in what looks like a “word balloon” in the third panel, Jack is shouting out the names of his “producers” as if somehow they had unfairly shot him in the back, while our hero flashes his Anglo Saxon blue eyes again.

This zany style with hillarious graphics augers well for baby boom circulation. If only this audience were actually there.

It’s instructive that Chet Gould also wrote for a young, “just starting to read”, audience. Yet never once seen to pander with simplistic, immature sequences that often reflected flawed police procedures, and humerous Grade 2 art contradictions. (eg vanishing mustaches)

Can’t figure the the upside to structuring presentations in what seems an unnecessary, uncaring manner, that risks excluding adults ? (Other than to just make a quick dime). Saying you’re targeting a young demographic just doesn’t wash as a convenient euphemism for effectively shooting adult readers in the back ! After all, they’re not rogues like Jack ! They deserve to share in the “lollipops” and the “Jackpots” !

Perhaps Jack’s variant mustache is really an unintended sympton. Is there a missing link in the “know-how” department ?

I think it’s that big hook they use to drag the losers off the stage at a talent show.

No, I only wish it were that big hook they use to drag the losers off the stage….

-Cougar :{)

It was Mr. Green in the hallway.

Tracy would not have been sweating, even under fire.