Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 20, 2012

Good morning all…

That was certainly a surprise!

Hey, I was right (for once)! Yesterday I said the boys’ “farewell appearance” would be arranged by Blaze or Abner (okay, I was half right).But will Mumbles take the hint?(And, oh, yeah – morning, crimestoppers!)

So much for their farewell performance of “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire.”

I think Mumbles is not going to mumble anything.

Wow! I didn’t see that coming! But it is an effective way of sending a message to Mumbles while not killing him off. That’s 3 down.

Mumbles finally had his band blown up as he wanted back in 1947.By the way, what year is in the strip? IF it’s real time, Dick and Tess will celebrate their 73th wedding anniversary, this year!

Tracy time has no relation to “real” time. One example: Junior stayed the same age through the thirties and forties; suddenly in 1950 he was a teenager interested in girls (well, one particular girl.) The deliberate mixing of past and present in the current strip helps gloss over the inconsistancy of an eighty year old serial, always set in the present, whose characters aren’t much older than when they started.

Dick Tracy, although a realistic strip, is a myth. If Tracy was 20 back in 1931 he’d be 101 now if he was real. I like the fact that he doesn’t look a day over 40. I love seeing the old time villans mixing with the new. Dick Locher once speculated that Bonnie Braids and Joe, his children would take over when DT retired but that never came to be. I love the strip the way the new team has done it now and hope it continues another 80 years with Tracy, Tess and JR. younger than ever.

“They blow’d up good, they blow’d up REAL good!”

So, you see what happens after the first two panels, kiddies….thusly, smoking is bad for your health

So long boys. What a great exit. I really like the timeless quality of the current strip as well. Tracy and the others don’t need to become senior citizens or keep aging simply because the rest of us are.

Wow!

..WoW!Good strip…

At least if didn’t go “F-L-O-O-O-O-O-M!”

ok so theres THREE down, i dont know if youd consider them part of the “villains” but mike said thered be at least 6 villain deaths and a gunfight… so if the three of these guys count, theres only three more deaths to come. i dont think panda will last very long, mumbles doesnt look too pleased :)

oh and for the record, i LIKED the way junior looked when he “grew up”.. not that i dont like the “pineapple head” look, but he looked like more of an adult with the different hairstyle and appearance

Awesome strip today, as always. I like the station wagon with the wood on the sides I had one of those in the eighties.

As the kids used to say, the Mumbles Quartet’s last performance was…DA BOMB!!!

nice representation of an older chysler station wagon…no sure what year but I’m guessing the 70s

Not quite sure if Panda killed Mumbles’ cronies as a warning to him to straighten up, or if Mumbles lied and said they were responsible for the Vinyl business going wrong.

The Quartet’s vehicle reminds me of the Griswold’s station wagon in “Vacation”, the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, designed by George Barris, who also designed the Batmobile.

Excellent today.

This strip rocks! Just keeps getting better!

Joe, Mike, Shelley, Shane and Jim –Best Sunday strip I’ve seen in twenty years. It has everything … great writing, drawing, inking and color … the pacing and dramatic development is perfect!!! Kudos all around!!!!

Team Tracy has it together.

Bad diner! MAJOR case of heartburn!!!

Dang… just as I was starting to like the purple-bow-tied lounge lizards…

It is better to keep the comic strip character’s ageless—-It’s sad enough that we all have no choice bit to become old.

So, Panda (and I presume, Mr. Crime) spared the life of Mumbles, who went out on his own and messed up their grand plan, but killed off the 3 cronies who were trying to cooperate. What did they gain by that? Of course, who says crooks are smart? But still, Mr. Crime is supposed to be somewhat clever, isn’t he?

Notice the juke box with the flip menu of songs to choose from in the background of panel 2. Great attention to detail!

Whose strip is this anyway.We haven’t seen Dick in a Sunday strip in almost 2 months!!!.And he only shows up in the dailies parenthetically..**Guess we’ll have to wait again until next week to see Dick.

&@DrSid1.Let us not forget the Munster’s Koach

@AshmaelAs far as the characters not aging, you have to remember, the strip doesn’t take place in real time.The events seen in the last four strips (including todays) all take place in a span of a few hours. And the entire bank robbery-chase climax of the Blackjack story ran for 16 days!With so little space to advance a story, adventure strips’ can’t possibly tell a story in real time, so Tracy and company can’t possibly age like the rest of us.Which makes Team Tracy’s idea of a “timeless” combination of technology perfect.(Insert my wildly enthusiastic applause here!)

Today’s strip is fantastic — great story and exceptional art (love the scene outside the diner!), and another interesting Crimestoppers textbook!Thanks Mike, Joe, Shelley, Shane and Jim!Your work is amazing!

This is a great strip and this sunday is fantastic! I think the DT story takes place in a metatemporal time. So we have late seventies cars,sixties juke boxes and state of the art flat screen computers in police headquarters! Love this!

Like I said yesterday .. and I still bet Mumbles will wind up dead!

In the overall narrative though— what exactly was the reason to incorporate the Quartet? And not sure I buy killing them off instead of Mumbles himself…even as a message (especially when they were in agreement w/ Panda & Mr. Crime).