Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 25, 2010

So there’s an audience already, even though they’re still rehearsing?

Panel Three: Looks like the flasher’s gettin’ ready to open his raincoat!

I won’t even get into the funny hand holding the cardboard cut-out gun in Panel Two, nor discuss how the previously seen box of three guns now seems to have yielded a fourth.

Liz, Sam Catchum, and the entire police force are at the Science Museum! Tracy’s snubby fingers grasp a revolver. Oh, how exciting!

I’ve figured out the two versions of the Science Museum. The large one is the front with the entrance. The small one is the stage door at the rear. It’s elevated to keep the autograph seekers away from the door.

Why, it’s Sam Catchem! And what of the mysterious 4th gun? Not to mention the fabulous flasher raincoat.

This is such a BAD strip it takes two non- artist and authors to bring it down!!!!

As the Brits would say, it’s another bleeep up by Locher.

Amazing. The net nanny here makes my comments sound bad by inserting that stupid bleeep.

Let’s try these:

Tracy readies himself for action; he bleeep his gun.

Johnny Nothing struts around like he’s the bleeep of the walk.

Tracy searches for the missing antique vane. Who stole Diet’s Smith’s atomic weatherbleeep?

Johnny Nothing’s didn’t give enough thought to his plan. But he went ahead anyway, half-bleeeped.

“But I didn’t know the gun had real bullets,” Johnny Nothing said to the dying Tracy. But Sam Catchum thought that story was bleeep-and-bull.

Junior asked Tracy for advice regarding a pet. His choices: a cockapoo, a cockatiel, a cockatoo, a cocker spaniel, or maybe a even a peacock or rooster.

Tracy replied that unless Junior enjoyed hearing cock-a-doodle-doo at cockcrow, he should skip the rooster.

Junior ended up getting an unusual pet: a cockeyed cockatrice from a cocky cockney.

Is it just me or does anyone else think GoComics’ net nanny is just cockamamie?

Gee, all that work and some human gets wise to me. Or maybe it’s just the word bleeep that sets off the bleeeper.

Or does it?

Hey, this is more entertaining than the DT strip, isn’t it?

http://shockdom.com/open/carl/2010/05/25/striscia-19/

Carlo, thanks for another installment of your fine strip!

Panel-Panner, you’d better be careful, as it is very easy to get your account banned around here. The worst part of getting your account banned is that you can still log in, and you can still post messages, only nobody else can see your messages!

So you don’t even realize you’ve been banned, and you’re just sitting there wondering why nobody ever responds to your comments!

This happened to me once, but Liam and company were really cool and allowed my current account to remain active despite the fact that I’d been previously banned. They are nice people, I think. Just don’t fail to respect their rules.

Flight Suit:

Thanks for the info. I can respect rules – good rules. But as I’ve shown with my posts, you can work around the bleeeper by using quotes and sometimes certain words will go through or just get bleeped. And when they’re bleeped, it makes what I said appear to be worse than what it really is.

If I use the f-bomb – OK, way out of line. But the words I used that have been censored here aren’t anything like that. In fact, other posters have said things more “censorable” than my choice of a particular word.

Years ago AOL tried a net nanny system to cut down on porn problems. The trouble is that one of the banned words - breast - caused problems for the breast cancer survivors group that met on AOL. They didn’t have the freedom to access their group.

The automatic net nanny system bothers me because it limits responsible speech while things even worse can slip through. You can’t replace humans with machines when it comes to free speech.

DL has been firing blanks for years. And Tracy has become a 3 panel gag strip. Emphasis on the word gag. Sam makes another pointless appearance. Wonder if he’ll be doing anything in the aftermath of the upcoming boredom? Or just vanish into thin air again? Attention criminals of Naperville! Rob, loot, steal, mug and deal drugs to your heart’s content. All the cops are attending a play. At the Science Museum. Seriously.

I’m assuming that’s Tracy picking up the gun with his thumb, given that Johnny still has his flasher uniform on

Tracy bleep bleep the bleep. Bleep that!

I know from what we see Tingling with excitement we should be But excitement is a thing of the past Because this strip has become half-…… The boring script, the tired art It has lost all its heart On life support as it is now It’s time to throw in the towel And when the going gets tough Locher says he’s had enough He has given up even trying All we are left with is sighing What he feels passes for excitement Is nothing more than an indictment For what clearly has become a crime Against a strip that once was sublime.

Flight Suit, I assumed that the funny looking hand was replacing one of the prop cardboard cutout guns with a real cardboard cutout gun so that whomever fires it at Tracy will put us out of his misery.

It will surprise you later to find out that the pinched cardboard HEAT won’t fire SHEET … it will discharge BLEEEP, BLEEEP BULLETS and get BLEEEP, BLEEEP BLOOD.

First we see Johnny, rather obviously having something stretched over his face to hide his features…

Then (Sunday) we hear all this talk about shooting blanks….

Then (today) Johnny seems to be preparing to flash everybody….

Suddenly, it all comes together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YFC0O393DQ

That’s odd–Sam doesn’t look a bit older than he did 50 years ago. Must be the clean living.

ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz…………

I kind of liked that strip a year or so ago where this little robot came out of the big police robot’s bleeep and kicked the criminal robot’s butt. The strip has gone downhill ever since but better this than no Dick Tracy. Brilliant idea! Why not print reprints of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy? Also – all those people asking for Moon Maid’s return – she got blown up by a Radio Shack worker (although they never specified Radio Shack) some years back by a car bomb meant for Dick Tracy. I suppose Gould was embarbleeeped with Moon Maid’s very existence close to the end of his own existence. I’m posting this rather later in the day so please comment tomorrow because I’m erasing today’s strip and won’t be coming back to see how well my annual comment was received. I notice every time I write the three-letter word for butt it magically transforms to “bleep.” as in “jackass!”

Has anyone heard from Bassmanbob? I miss him - unless he’s here in disguise.

He has posted a couple times a week or two ago on the Annie or Brenda Starr board. That’s the last I recall. But I’mm sure he reads here.

No matter how bad it gets, hard to move away from the chiseled profile.

me, i like the mutant hands better than the profile dress rehearsal? run through? looks like the kids school pageant, but less professional and fun one whole page of script?