Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for February 20, 2011

Good God, I was right: Sam really is driving an AMC Pacer!

And badly!

Compare the angle of the windshield and general shape. He’s driving a Pacer!

http://www.worldinterestingfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/worst-car-of-all-time-AMC-Pacer.jpg

The storm now “Rages”.

It has stopped intensifying.

With those waves, how is Sam going to get to Tracy.

The granary looks like its on it’s last legs.

Also, the granary is an abandoned old building. Why are there lights in the upper floor. In other panels, the windows are shown in black and last Wed. Dick & Mordred were shown with a black background.

And what is this chirping sound. I would think an old building would be squeaking, and cracking instead of chirping.

Looking ahead on Comics Kingdom Viewer, we are in for another week of pain.

Prepare for “Excedrin Headache #519”

Skipping ahead to Monday’s installment…

http://tinyurl.com/66xrlvt

Can you spot the typo leading to the unintentional drug humor?

Slimeglobber’s Wrecksbook: Okay, Locher. let’s hear you explain how to do that.

Panel #1: Is that the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate near Mordred’s shoulder?

Panel #2: Finally, a somewhat different picture of the granary. Not a whole lot different, but it wasn’t entirely xeroxed from earlier pictures. And a wave that size will smash any wood-frame building.

Panel #3: For the past two days, the gun was shown in Thick’s right hand. Now it’s in his left hand. So Thick is a switch-hitter? By the way, yesterday Mordred the Fiendly Drelb said that Thick has been awake thirty-six hours. Bearing in mind that he had no rest after his night in Homeless Alley, it’s been more like sixty hours since he slept. Or shaved.

Panel #4: Why is Testicle Chin giving himself a thumb’s up for doing something even he knows is stupid? And isn’t it odd that his head has the same shape as Mordred’s? Just who is he going to rescue?

Panel #5: Morbid’s collar is rising faster than the floodwaters.

Panel #6: Buildings chirp when they fall apart?

Panel #7: The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate has not aged well since its heyday on Laugh-In.

Mordred has been identified! It’s E.T.!! You can tell from his finger in the last panel.

The chirping sound has got to be the sound of a helicopter dispatched by the AWACS plane, which somehow found Tracy despite his wrist genie being out of commission.

So once again, Tracy will survive not because of his cunning or skill, but because of the efforts of others and plain old dumb luck.

At some point Locher must have thought that his job would be a lot easier if he tried to make sense.

I wonder if the Napperville police Pacer uses a chirping siren.

Some of those police sirens make almost psychotic sounds so it seems that’s a possibility. Further, in the storm Sam could drive right past his friend and not have a clue he’s there.

Pardon me, Sam, but could you spare some Gray Poupon?

FlightSuit - Concerning that typo, that seems to be happening pretty often. Are we sure it’s unintentional?

i really wish they would shoot this version of Dick Tracy and put the old strips in syndication instead of the all around torture this version is giving…

Three more weeks and we’ll be getting a newer and (hopefully) better Dick Tracy

Why doesn’t Tracy just shoot the bad guy and get it all over with?

That’s not Sam in that car. That’s a young Karl Malden! This must be an episode of The Streets of Naperville.

Wait a minute. The Streets of San Francisco ran throughout the mid-seventies. The AMC Pacer was introduced in 1975. Coincidence? Well, yeah, but still.

Looks like Locher is going to prove just how bad he is at this right up to the very end. There’s no place to go but up starting on 3/14.

A chirping building?? Give me a f ‘in break.

How would a computer backup be INaccurate? (And yes, I’m ignoring for now the fact that there’s nothing for the user to back up when banking or shopping online.) Does Locher think you have to back up your computer files by copying down a million ones and zeros in your composition book?

(Actually, I can picture him doing that.)

The Locher reign of terror is almost over.

The “chirping” sound is probably Spacey’s “wrist Weeny” going off, indicating that the AWACs plane (remember that?) is close overhead. Now that the storm is only raging instead of intensifying, communications may be back online.

A chirping sound? This must be the “Beginning of the End”! Now, if only it were the end of the end for this story line…

“if you have an erection lasting more than 36 hours, call your doctor!”

When the Pacer first came out, a friend and I wandered about the Chicago auto show singing the following (to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”):

Glory, glory it’s a Pacer! Shaped like a pencil’s eraser! It’s the only car around that isn’t longer than it’s wide! In fact, you can get eight inside!

The final line, sung out loud and scanned for double-entendre, turned out to be oddly prophetic of AMC’s eventual merger with the French company Renault…

Yeah, Mordred, that’s a chirping sound. Ever heard an AMC running on half it’s cylinders? Wait’ll you hear Sam put on the brakes! You ain’t heard nothin’ yet! THROW IT IN OVERDRIVE, SAM! That ought to scare all the bats outta the attic!

http://tinyurl.com/4uhgsz7

The article itself is laughable enough–how can you talk about “questionable” police procedures when the strip never shows any police procedures? Just look at the artwork on Locher’s desk. It’s obvious that he has enough room for plenty of detail. He just can’t bother with it.

Michael McMillan said, about 12 hours ago

I wonder if the Napperville police Pacer uses a chirping siren.

Some of those police sirens make almost psychotic sounds so it seems that’s a possibility. Further, in the storm Sam could drive right past his friend and not have a clue he’s there.

—————————————————————————- Sam can’t drive by his friend, he isn’t in a boat. I also wondered about the lit windows. I have wondered all along where they got the light in the beginning to see in the granary. Maybe is was the light in the night from above.

I can’t believe Thick hasn’t asked Mordred to unmask so he can put a face with a name. What’s Locher’s feeble thinking with the mask? Unless, he plans to bring back one of the old baddies again. It’s highly unlike the FBI to dress their captives up in costumes to transport them. (Did this arc start around Halloween?)

Napperville……….. the only police department on the planet without cuffs. Figures.

morrow, I looked ahead on the Comics Kingdom Viewer. This week’s change of subject has Thick ask Morbid to reveal his face. Morbid takes off the mask, but we don’t see his face; it’s just described as the hideous result of some failed reconstructive surgery. This ain’t exactly Lon Chaney in “Phantom of the Opera.”

I don’t buy the mask excuse. If nothing else, you wouldn’t want Morbid to be able to hide his identity in case he escapes.

Locher is just too lazy to create a face, memorable or otherwise.

That’s a MOMSTER wave in panel 2 coming out of a river ! It reaches 3 or four floors up !

I’m not sure if they often reach that hight in the Ocean in a Hurricane ?

In the meantime, Locher has triumphed in again, finding dialogue to say, effectively the ’SAME’ thing his characters have been saying for weeks.

That’s real ‘skill’ PAPA !

… and the mask is a design avoidance measure.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this article on Locher’s ‘retirement’ from Dick Tracy …*

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-dick-tracy-cartoon-20110220,0,27\ 98546.story

Flight Suit & BillT …… That definitely is a typo. Locher isn’t clever enough to use innuendo effectively. At this point, the (normal) reader doesn’t really care what Mordred looks like. It’s quite obvious that Locher is too fr*ing lazy to draw a character and be consistent. This way, he draws a bag with a zipper and redirects the eye slits every other day. Eeee-Zeee! Pitiful! Locher would be at home with one of those strips where the characters are stick figures.

NOW, BOYS AND GIRLS, you gotta read the Trib’s story about Locher’s retiring! It is not just a hoot, but it is an insult to anyone’s intelligence who reads the strip! Locher, in the interview, maintains DT’s invincibility like a superhero. Whaaaat? He makes our hero out to be a winner. Maybe he means “wiener”, because all I can remember is Thick running, hiding, shrieking, and more running. Above all, in Locher’s eyes, DT is a cunning as a fox as a detective. The Thick I’ve been following is as dumb as a box of rocks. He makes Moe, Larry and Curly look like founders of the Mensa Society. Y’all read it. They had a pic of Locher sitting at his desk and I swear I saw Mattie’s elbow under it.

“…the hideous result of some failed reconstructive surgery.”??? What? Cher is Mordred? I knew it was a chick all along.

Sydney Phillips, the tinyurl link for the Trib article works better. Here it is again:

http://tinyurl.com/4uhgsz7

Funny how Brozman gets slighted. The picture shows that Locher does the Sunday strip in black and white, so someone else is responsible for the loony colors.

I think one reason Locher avoids showing Morbid’s face is to avoid creating any sympathy for him. There won’t be any pity, deserved or not.

Know what would be great? If Testicle Chin reveals that Morbid was about to be sentenced to time served, because the judge discovered that his eleven victims were the sadists who mangled his face. This makes no sense, so there’s a real possibility Locher will do it.

Is Sam embarking on a suicide mission or about to give up? The thumbs up (which may be an accident of poor artwork) doesn’t go with the sigh at the end of his statement. It’s called cognitive disonance.

Would the AMACS plane make a chirping sound?

they have apparently moved to a seaside scene or,if in a katrina situation, there’s more than just these two who need help really, who cares anymore? crickets chirping?

I just read in the Tribune article that he tries to have a mini-cliff hanger every day so that the people will buy the paper the next day to see what happens next. HAHAHAHAHAHA

Yep, Dick is a switch shooter, depending on the criminal, no doubt.

Now we know. D.L. never by any chance sees any of this, if he did he couldn’t possibly have said what he did in that article. He might have done one of two things though. He might have tried to improve the work, or he might have gone the Pibgorn way and tried to stop all comment. Somehow I don’t suspect improvement would have been the method chosen.

From the article: “The comic strip is more challenging now than it was for Gould, Locher said. Although Gould used five rows of panels for his Sunday strip, Locher must tell the story in only three.”

No comment.

Gould tells the Sunday story in three rows of panels? That’s a lie. Take a look at the top row. There’s the huge and useless Dick Tracy logo, and Slimedroppers, and then one small frame of Morbid saying nothing relevant.

And since when was Morbid sentenced to die? When this crappy arc started, we were told he was on his way to sentencing. Nice continuity, Locher.