Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 03, 2009

Yeah, Tess. Take the dumb kid and head home will you? This is a job for Superman! er, I mean Men. (How dumb can she be if she doesn’t know that Louise Trapeze is laying dead on the sawdust covered floor, bleeding out in front of the elephants??? I mean really????)

Is that a hand just hanging there in Panel 2??

Can someone call Pizza Hut? Dick still hasn’t eaten and he’s craving pizza.

Would it not be prudent to have the members of the audience remain to give statements? I realize there may be dozens of people, but one may have witnessed a crucial item.

wndrwrthg: to answer your question from the stand point of a second generation ex-cop; Yes! Message to Dip Tracy interview your potential witnesses BEFORE you send them home. (One of them MIGHT BE THE KILLER) Gee and I didn’t even look that one up in the “Crime Stoppers Handbook”.

Notice how the feet in panel one resemble tail fins? Perhaps they’re merpeople….

This ‘story’ boogles the mind…

Hey, it’s a circus. Maybe the merpeople are one of the attractions.

This is so sad. Gould would be terribly insulted by this.

Sigh……….

Where is Bonnie anyway? Kinda fishy, that… Maybe Louise stole her boyfriend.

“Would everyone except the murderer please use the exits in a calm and orderly manner? Thank you.”

Good strip. Very good.

EXcellent strip. Cartoonist to be awarded.

Here. Have cookie.

Nom, nom, nom.

What a fool I was. When they dragged me along to the circus, I didn’t think this was going to be any fun at all.

Panel 1: Has Dick changed into a Nehru jacket? Looks like it’s buttoned up all the way to his neck, and somehow the tie is hanging out.

Another DAY at the Circus. 12 in fact !

There’s at least another 17 daily strips to go, all in the same place, and probanbly more. A little more space perhaps but this is “begining” to remind me of that “dull” six week stint with Sigmund Froid in ONE room, Today the same is building, t’was SMALL area with just “TALK” ! Hardly the style and “action” pacing to motivate Cralo to keep on shouting - “Good strip. Very good”!

In panel two we see the “mark of Louzo” in that undersized baby hand. A sure sign that he is still involved in the “pencilling”

Looks like a thumb to me in panel 2. His thumb is tucked in between his fingers. This story has potential, let’s hope they find it before it’s deader then the trapeze lady.

Why are we back to “she’s been shot” when Saturday we had already moved on to asking “why was she shot?” It’s like somebody reversed today and Saturday’s strips. This constant looping back is just lazy writing.

Goodbye to everybody! I’m so tired of the nature of this comment.

Goodbye Carlo. This is definitely a dish not suitable to everyone’s palate.

who the helli is carlo coratelli? I recognize that name from somewhere, I think he is famous.

Dick, channeling his inner officer Crunchy decided after seeing all the blood flowing from the hole in her body to make a bold statement. “This trapeze artist has been shot…” The head of the cleaning crew having seen all the blood on the ground and realizing how much work it would be to clean it up began to shout out loud; “NO, NO”! All this excitement was too much for Dick! Feeling his stomach rumble forced him to quickly run to a bathroom. While sitting constipated in a stall as head clown Matthew stood next to him Tracy called headquarters. “Headquarters! Got a homicide at the circus - - send the forensics unit.” Tess, knowing that Dick was in the men’s room ran down to talk to him. Approaching him, she was not surprised to see head clown Matthew with Dick. “Dick, what happened”? Tracy didn’t have time to answer her foolish question. “Women, Bah!” Dick disgustedly thought. “Got a murder on our hands, Tess. Best you and Bonnie leave, now”! As Tess left the bathroom, Carlo who was using the stall next to Dick also left the building.

BB

Carlo Corratelli,

Come on bacK,. Have the COURAGE of your convictions !

As an Italian it’s GOOD to have you here !

Well, Carlo has a point in that this whole comment column seems hell-bent on ripping the day’s comic to shreds. But heck, it’s hard not to, when there is clearly so little effort put into making the strip live up to its potential.

Got a murder on our tiny, squashed hands, Tess.

Carlo Coratelli is an Italian cartoonist. http://esulastriscia.splinder.com/

Panel 1: Why are there fish hanging in the middle of a circus tent? They’re large fish, too – tuna, maybe….

Panel 2: The fish are gone, but suddenly there are two solid vertical walls – but we haven’t moved, the cartoonist put in the hand of the man on the right in the first panel to show we haven’t gone anywhere….

I only started reading Dick Tracy again recently and I’ve been finding it confusing, but now I think I’ve figured out what I missed. Sometime during the years I wasn’t reading, Dick Tracy suffered brain damage in one of his adventures, and now he is a brain-damaged lunatic, subject to hallucinations, he’s forgotten everything he used to know about how to be a cop, and of course he had to retire – but he still thinks he’s a cop. The strip shows only his viewpoint, so we see all his hallucinations as if they were real. He’s hallucinating a fish market, then the fish disappear and walls appear – it’s like a dream. And of course in his dream-like hallucinatory experience of the world he can give orders just as if he were still a detective – and we can’t know how people respond to that. We can only know what he sees (since the strip uses his viewpoint) so if he hallucinates people obeying him we see people obeying him and treating him like a real cop. If he hallucinates people shooting at him, that’s what we see.

How do we know what is real and what is hallucination? We can only guess.

He showed a badge to the ringmaster – or he thought he did. Was it a real police badge? Was it a plastic badge he got out of a box of breakfast cereal? Was it a badge that exists only in his imagination? All we know is he thinks it’s real….

-Cougar :{)

Thanks, Cougar. Finally it all becomes clear. Now I understand the little lightnig bolts coming out of his Timex.

Carlo is the guy who created Pinocchio

I think that mystery hand in the second panel belongs to an Eskimo wearing a parka. Now if only we could figure out how he got there. That might be the mystery of this story.

CougarAllen: That was an excellent analysis. I feel better already.

Yah, Yah, Yah! This is an interesting story. Most of you just want something to complain about! Meanwhile, “Brenda Starr” is moving too slow. As a long time fan of Dick Tracy the present stories are still better than “Little Boy Beard”, “Moon Maid”, and the geeky kid who called himself “Peanut Butter”!

And no one has even talked to Mr. Pops. His blunderbuss could be an AK-47 in disguise!

Looking at Panel 1 again … why doesn’t Tracy’s necktie hang vertically? Evidently it is being blown by a wind. So that’s an outdoor fish market that he is hallucinating in the middle of the circus tent.

In Panel 2 he is obviously indoors, but his necktie still doesn’t hang vertically. He must be hallucinating a fan blowing on him – or perhaps an air conditioner. He is feeling hot. Is it really hot in the circus tent, or does it only seem that way to him?

In Panel 3 we see scars on his face that have been stitched up by a surgeon. Remnants of the misadventure that caused the brain damage?

-Cougar :{)

The scars are from a recent plastic surgery. How else do you think he hasn’t aged in 75+ years?

Hmm … maybe he’s not brain-damaged by misadventure – maybe it’s senility? Nahhhh … other comic strip heros & heroines are even older than Tracy is, and they’re not senile. I think it’s his adventurous life … he was bound to get hurt sooner or later … too bad it was his brain….

Of course you could well be right about the scars. Especially if we can find some on Little Orphan Annie too.

-Cougar :{)

Carlo Coratelli said, about 21 hours ago Good strip. Very good.

Goodbye to everybody! I’m so tired of the nature of this comment.

SOMEBODY get the Kool-Aid out! Carlo is leaving!!!! Sorry to see you go Carlo. Do not take it so personally. We just want QUALITY not junk and this is junk. Don’t think so? Look at some of the early Dick Tracy stuff. This is worse than a Lindsey Lohan Movie starring Britney Spears. If it wasn’t for the comments, none of us would be here every day.