The thousand dollar bill didn’t matter no more
When Lizz got naked and lay on the floor
Er, wait, that’s another poem altogether
It involves whips, chains and lots of leather
Are we a finally to see
The retirement of Dick Tracy
For many years now he has been a dick
Once intelligent and young, now just old and thick
Many innovations he has seen through the years
It has been the most remarkable of careers
But now he is in the winter of his discontent
He looks back on it with a silent lament
All those years spent in the name of the law
Now he’s heading for his last hurrah
Oh, the trials and tribulations he has seen
They pass before him like a movie projected on a screen
A plethora of villains march before his eyes
All seeking to bring about his untimely demise
But of all the threats that he has had to face
One that stands to leave him in disgrace
Comes at the hands of one he would never suspect
One who has caused others for him to loose respect
One against whom he never could put up a fight
Was the one who could neither draw nor write.
rightwingmoron, he can solve it, but it will keep him wrapped up until the spring. At that point he’ll bust the Easter Bunny, who has a similar MO to the Christmas Sneak.
Rough case? Look Liz, don’t be an enabler to Tracy’s whining. He spent a few weeks ambling about asking questions on a missing persons case, had Sam tell him who to investigate next, disguised himself and almost immediately found his target by sheer luck. He then confronted his target only to have the entire case explained to him by a horde of other law enforcement agents who beat him to the punch and have the target captured by a convenient homeless person. Oh and the target handily confessed. It’s not like he was being starved to death by Mrs. Pruneface…..
“How did the people who he (3-D) gave the money to manage to deposit (counterfeit) money in their bank accounts. The Banks would have spotted it right away”.
Sound observation ! This activity has been occuring from the begining of the story, and particularly when that logic is applied to th huge CASH sum paid to the Senator in September - and reported in the newspapers.
Wouldn’t that huge CASH deposit _ immediately_ set off an ‘ALARM BELL’ that all was not WELL ?
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/19
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/18/
And what’s the logic of telling yourself, you’re ‘rewarding’ the Senator for helping the poor, when you send him counterfeit bills (?)
Balderdash !
Revealing yet AGAIN, that Locher makes this up ‘day to day’ as he goes along without any conscience or professional ‘respect’ for the twists and turns he laid in stone earlier.. In this case, 2 months ago !
And marvee — I’ll BET (knowing Locher’s propensity for never having an “all points bulletin”) — he’ll leave a bunch of gaps in the refuse barrel along with his dirty clothes ! And readers won’t hear one more word about Sue Doko OR the missing $100 million withdrawal
NEXT CASE ! (ie after one more week of repetition and stalling)
What is the “something very special in the works”?
We’ll learn it at the rate of one revelation per week:
City Hall has reviewed the cost-effectiveness of the Nappingville Police Department.
They don’t like the way that Thick’s bungling led to the dismissal of all charges against both D’Buckworths.
They’ are impressed by the way D-cubed exposed the PD’s many shortcomings, not to mention the generous campaign donations he made to the mayor and city councilors.
The Nappingville PD will be privatized and run by D’Buckworth Industries.
Thick is the prime candidate for phase one of their cost-reduction efforts.
“But don’t think of it as being fired, Thick,” Horn Hair says throughout the last week of December. “Pistol Packin’ Penny wants to hire you as her personal bodyguard.”
As one looks back at the inconsistencies rife in the storyline, the most ’telling’ lines came from Fred Wehreli - Which one could say were an ‘APT’ description of the whole plot line one loaded with ‘accusatins’ and no proof :
It’s all hearsay, and GOSSIP !
and then, he laid out a precient statement by telling Tracy -
You have no case detective !
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/12/
And essentially, he was right on all the major issues !
But lets take an earlier look at Mr.Fred Wehrli’sfrightened ‘CONFESSION’ of GUILT, closeted with his Associates. The newspapers had accused them, of “Grand Theft, Extortion and deceptive practises. You don’t print that without a ‘charge’ or some PROOF, otherwise it could be, a libelous stuation.
Wehrli said in panic :
”We are finished ! Who nailed us ?”
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/08
Readers of course know that was just a CLUMSY effort to “wrong foot” (as they would say in - ‘tennis’) - the reading public. But it does seem a crime was committed there … and Tracy ’sniffing’ around has plumb forgotten about it
Wiil we have a panel saying that the bribed and ‘dishonest’ Funeral Director who substituded a fake body with a deceptive tatoo … has been arrested and charged ?
I think panel 2 was just a flashback to the “homeless disguise” Dick was in….
Back to loose ends and inconsistencies…for whatever reason, the coroner could not determine much from the body except for the tattoo. It was never said why …of course, we now know a crooked funeral director supplied the body, since they are awash in extra dead bodies at most funeral homes…
I can’t even call this a story line, arc, or much else. It seems it was several weeks’ worth of random panels kinda stitched together to kinda look like a story. Kinda.
macspacy is much more than $1000 poorer – and what rough case? he didn’t have to run and squeal and hide in terror or get beat up or anything. he just stood around jawing for weeks.
Sydney Phillips, the points you raise are the same ones that made me think we’d see more of Sue Doko and the ex-partners, that D’eranged would turn out to be someone who looms large in Locher’s mental landscape and his wife would turn into a competent evildoer.
In the hands of a halfway competent writer, all the pieces would have fit together. And so far Locher has shown that he’s a perhaps tenthway competent hack. The museum debacle began with someone throwing a stone and note through Thick’s window. Nothing came of it, but at least at the end Locher remembered to shrug it off.
I still think he was trying to editorialize with this arc. Maybe, partway through the arc, he got into an argument with whoever controls the rights to the DT franchise and had to shift course. But even so he still contradicted himself from the start. When the wife recited his complaints about the world, she said he hated Washington and he had many friends in politics. See
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/08/01/
and near the end she contradicts herself on that in the space of one panel. Thick didn’t take notice. And a few days later
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/08/05/
an executive who has the exact same chin as Mrs. D’apostrohe says he could have killed D’cubed. Nothing came of that. In the same day’s strip, a building asks how D’cubed knew so much about the ex-associates and their “product.” Huh? Industrial espionage aside, they used to work for him and were still in the three-D movie business … and what’s with the “product” talk?
Spotting the flaws is an endless game. Everyone hates D-cubed, we’re told, yet the one person who knows him best, Sue Doko, is utterly loyal to him. When we see him, he talks and acts like a saint. or a messiah. In a real story things like that would have been clues, not loose ends.
BillThompson, I was just thinking. If, say, Dick Tracy were to be retired and this whole thing ended, wouldnt there be something about it online? I remember when For Better Or Worse ended and rebooted there was an article, Annie, an article, Cathy, an article, most of them months before they happened with the date of the final comic strip written so that everyone would know to check for the last strip. Theres nothing of the sort here with Dick. So, that said, Im going to hope that with Locher gone we get a new writer and artist, one who knows what hes doing that can make this detective somewhere near if not better than the old days when Gould was writing it.
very good point NVash – i did a brief search and found nothing about locher’s retirement or the future of the strip. has there been some official announcement? are we engaging in wishful thinking?
i did find this bit from August:
http://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2010/04/video-dick-locher-dedicates-dick-tracy.html
I checked that out billdi, thanks for that link. I had no idea Locher was so elderly. I almost refuse to believe that he does the artwork and writing for the story daily but that might explain all the errors. I cant believe he has so many fans. Are we reading the same strip? Maybe he was good once and just had a steady decline. Guess Ill have to wait until the Chester Gould Archives get up to his run to know for sure. Volume 11 has 1947-1948 in it, that comes out towards the end of February of next year. IIRC, Locher started around 1955 so it should be coming up soon.
Now that I think of it, how do we even know hes retiring to begin with? I havent found anything online about that either. I found this, http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2008/08/22/dick-locher-approaches-10000-cartoon-retirement/ , but thats from 2008 and talking about his retirement on his 1000th strip. But then we have this, http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2008/11/14/rumors-of-dick-tracys-demise-are-premature/ , where its denied and obviously proven by the fact that hes still writing many years later.
I hope I haven’t been circulating a rumor that started here about Locher’s retirement. I really hope he goes, and that an actual writer and artist take his place. I’ve searched and found nothing about Locher’s plans or the strip’s future. Frankly I don’t see how either of them even have a recent past, much less a future.
From that video it seems that Tribune Media may not be aware that Locher is so horrible. Did you see all the fans? The people with the signs reading We Love Locher? They might just think the guy is quite the talented artist and writer.
wndrwrthg over 13 years ago
The thousand dollar bill didn’t matter no more When Lizz got naked and lay on the floor Er, wait, that’s another poem altogether It involves whips, chains and lots of leather Are we a finally to see The retirement of Dick Tracy For many years now he has been a dick Once intelligent and young, now just old and thick Many innovations he has seen through the years It has been the most remarkable of careers But now he is in the winter of his discontent He looks back on it with a silent lament All those years spent in the name of the law Now he’s heading for his last hurrah Oh, the trials and tribulations he has seen They pass before him like a movie projected on a screen A plethora of villains march before his eyes All seeking to bring about his untimely demise But of all the threats that he has had to face One that stands to leave him in disgrace Comes at the hands of one he would never suspect One who has caused others for him to loose respect One against whom he never could put up a fight Was the one who could neither draw nor write.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Panel #1: In other words, she doesn’t know Dick.
Panel #2: One word, Thick: Ex-lax!
Panel #3: Superman doesn’t change that fast!
margueritem over 13 years ago
The sun rises, and the werewolf becomes Dick Tracy! It’s magic, I tell you!
Vista Bill Raley and Comet™ over 13 years ago
Aha! Tracy was a werewolf after all! The Sun came up and he turned back into the Dick Tracy we know and respect!
Vista Bill Raley and Comet™ over 13 years ago
How do you create so quickly, wndrwrthg? Amazing! Betcha collect fonts, too!
margueritem over 13 years ago
Good morning, Vista Bill!
Another moving poem, WW.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
“Say the magic woid and win a thousand dollar makeover!”
Plus a good poem from Wonder Warthog, although it’s far better than Locher deserves.
Vista Bill Raley and Comet™ over 13 years ago
margueritem said, “Good morning, Vista Bill!”
Good morning margueritem.
FLIGHT SUIT over 13 years ago
Ah. Locher is wetting our appetites for Tracy’s swan song, for the final story arc.
This is going to be epic.
FLIGHT SUIT over 13 years ago
If you haven’t already seen today’s Frog Applause, you’d better go have a look right now.
Wiseking over 13 years ago
Long time lurker, first time posting… Have to admit that was the fastest shave on record,,,(Panel 3)
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
rightwingmoron, he can solve it, but it will keep him wrapped up until the spring. At that point he’ll bust the Easter Bunny, who has a similar MO to the Christmas Sneak.
FourthBear over 13 years ago
Rough case? Look Liz, don’t be an enabler to Tracy’s whining. He spent a few weeks ambling about asking questions on a missing persons case, had Sam tell him who to investigate next, disguised himself and almost immediately found his target by sheer luck. He then confronted his target only to have the entire case explained to him by a horde of other law enforcement agents who beat him to the punch and have the target captured by a convenient homeless person. Oh and the target handily confessed. It’s not like he was being starved to death by Mrs. Pruneface…..
riley05 over 13 years ago
Wait, where’d those whiskers go???
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Continuity, shmontinuity! This may be Locher’s signal that he’s starting a new arc. Either that or Thick is a werewolf and the full moon just set.
davidf42 over 13 years ago
Thanks, Wonderwarthog, I can’t get the image of Liz being naked out of my mind.
coratelli over 13 years ago
tracy it’s a transformer!
sydney over 13 years ago
Yesterday, safeway674 asked the question :
“How did the people who he (3-D) gave the money to manage to deposit (counterfeit) money in their bank accounts. The Banks would have spotted it right away”.
Sound observation ! This activity has been occuring from the begining of the story, and particularly when that logic is applied to th huge CASH sum paid to the Senator in September - and reported in the newspapers.
Wouldn’t that huge CASH deposit _ immediately_ set off an ‘ALARM BELL’ that all was not WELL ?
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/19
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/18/
And what’s the logic of telling yourself, you’re ‘rewarding’ the Senator for helping the poor, when you send him counterfeit bills (?) Balderdash !
Revealing yet AGAIN, that Locher makes this up ‘day to day’ as he goes along without any conscience or professional ‘respect’ for the twists and turns he laid in stone earlier.. In this case, 2 months ago !
And marvee — I’ll BET (knowing Locher’s propensity for never having an “all points bulletin”) — he’ll leave a bunch of gaps in the refuse barrel along with his dirty clothes ! And readers won’t hear one more word about Sue Doko OR the missing $100 million withdrawal
NEXT CASE ! (ie after one more week of repetition and stalling)
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
What is the “something very special in the works”?
We’ll learn it at the rate of one revelation per week:
City Hall has reviewed the cost-effectiveness of the Nappingville Police Department.
They don’t like the way that Thick’s bungling led to the dismissal of all charges against both D’Buckworths.
They’ are impressed by the way D-cubed exposed the PD’s many shortcomings, not to mention the generous campaign donations he made to the mayor and city councilors.
The Nappingville PD will be privatized and run by D’Buckworth Industries.
Thick is the prime candidate for phase one of their cost-reduction efforts.
“But don’t think of it as being fired, Thick,” Horn Hair says throughout the last week of December. “Pistol Packin’ Penny wants to hire you as her personal bodyguard.”
sydney over 13 years ago
“Better lie low for awhile” !
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/17/
”However, I don’t have to curtail my PLAN”.
PLAN ??? ‘I’m caught up in a web of CONFUSION here- trying to figure out what the “plan” was ! (?)
Can anyone help ? It just doesn’t make sense.
Every thing this man did, served to draw attention to himself and ALERT the Authorities. Was that the ultimate plan? A sort of death wish ?
A ‘Crapaud’ Author could have done better ! Striving for weekly “SURPRISES”, he’s only managed tie his story into messy knots
sydney over 13 years ago
As one looks back at the inconsistencies rife in the storyline, the most ’telling’ lines came from Fred Wehreli - Which one could say were an ‘APT’ description of the whole plot line one loaded with ‘accusatins’ and no proof :
It’s all hearsay, and GOSSIP !
and then, he laid out a precient statement by telling Tracy -
You have no case detective !
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/12/
And essentially, he was right on all the major issues !
China60 over 13 years ago
I can’t read this garbage anymore…it’s insulting.
sydney over 13 years ago
But lets take an earlier look at Mr.Fred Wehrli’s frightened ‘CONFESSION’ of GUILT, closeted with his Associates. The newspapers had accused them, of “Grand Theft, Extortion and deceptive practises. You don’t print that without a ‘charge’ or some PROOF, otherwise it could be, a libelous stuation.
Wehrli said in panic :
”We are finished ! Who nailed us ?”
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/09/08
Readers of course know that was just a CLUMSY effort to “wrong foot” (as they would say in - ‘tennis’) - the reading public. But it does seem a crime was committed there … and Tracy ’sniffing’ around has plumb forgotten about it
sydney over 13 years ago
Another loose end :
Wiil we have a panel saying that the bribed and ‘dishonest’ Funeral Director who substituded a fake body with a deceptive tatoo … has been arrested and charged ?
Again, I don’t think so
So many story knots … so many loose ends !
JCFremont over 13 years ago
wndrwrthg - Any day’s a great day when it starts out with some Zappa and well crafted poetry. Bravo!
(Do you think I could interest you in a pair of zircon-encrusted tweezers?)
dag8686 Premium Member over 13 years ago
Dick sure did clean up quick…
CougarAllen over 13 years ago
I dunno. Maybe he cleaned up quick … or maybe she talks very, very slowly….
-Cougar :{)
woodworker318 over 13 years ago
WW, another great poem. You should have them all put in a book.
DatBigGuy Premium Member over 13 years ago
I think panel 2 was just a flashback to the “homeless disguise” Dick was in….
Back to loose ends and inconsistencies…for whatever reason, the coroner could not determine much from the body except for the tattoo. It was never said why …of course, we now know a crooked funeral director supplied the body, since they are awash in extra dead bodies at most funeral homes…
I can’t even call this a story line, arc, or much else. It seems it was several weeks’ worth of random panels kinda stitched together to kinda look like a story. Kinda.
billdi Premium Member over 13 years ago
macspacy is much more than $1000 poorer – and what rough case? he didn’t have to run and squeal and hide in terror or get beat up or anything. he just stood around jawing for weeks.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Sydney Phillips, the points you raise are the same ones that made me think we’d see more of Sue Doko and the ex-partners, that D’eranged would turn out to be someone who looms large in Locher’s mental landscape and his wife would turn into a competent evildoer.
In the hands of a halfway competent writer, all the pieces would have fit together. And so far Locher has shown that he’s a perhaps tenthway competent hack. The museum debacle began with someone throwing a stone and note through Thick’s window. Nothing came of it, but at least at the end Locher remembered to shrug it off.
I still think he was trying to editorialize with this arc. Maybe, partway through the arc, he got into an argument with whoever controls the rights to the DT franchise and had to shift course. But even so he still contradicted himself from the start. When the wife recited his complaints about the world, she said he hated Washington and he had many friends in politics. See
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/08/01/
and near the end she contradicts herself on that in the space of one panel. Thick didn’t take notice. And a few days later
http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2010/08/05/
an executive who has the exact same chin as Mrs. D’apostrohe says he could have killed D’cubed. Nothing came of that. In the same day’s strip, a building asks how D’cubed knew so much about the ex-associates and their “product.” Huh? Industrial espionage aside, they used to work for him and were still in the three-D movie business … and what’s with the “product” talk?
Spotting the flaws is an endless game. Everyone hates D-cubed, we’re told, yet the one person who knows him best, Sue Doko, is utterly loyal to him. When we see him, he talks and acts like a saint. or a messiah. In a real story things like that would have been clues, not loose ends.
Midnite over 13 years ago
Easy come easy go Dick, thems the breaks.
BillThompson, I was just thinking. If, say, Dick Tracy were to be retired and this whole thing ended, wouldnt there be something about it online? I remember when For Better Or Worse ended and rebooted there was an article, Annie, an article, Cathy, an article, most of them months before they happened with the date of the final comic strip written so that everyone would know to check for the last strip. Theres nothing of the sort here with Dick. So, that said, Im going to hope that with Locher gone we get a new writer and artist, one who knows what hes doing that can make this detective somewhere near if not better than the old days when Gould was writing it.
billdi Premium Member over 13 years ago
very good point NVash – i did a brief search and found nothing about locher’s retirement or the future of the strip. has there been some official announcement? are we engaging in wishful thinking? i did find this bit from August: http://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2010/04/video-dick-locher-dedicates-dick-tracy.html
Midnite over 13 years ago
I checked that out billdi, thanks for that link. I had no idea Locher was so elderly. I almost refuse to believe that he does the artwork and writing for the story daily but that might explain all the errors. I cant believe he has so many fans. Are we reading the same strip? Maybe he was good once and just had a steady decline. Guess Ill have to wait until the Chester Gould Archives get up to his run to know for sure. Volume 11 has 1947-1948 in it, that comes out towards the end of February of next year. IIRC, Locher started around 1955 so it should be coming up soon.
Now that I think of it, how do we even know hes retiring to begin with? I havent found anything online about that either. I found this, http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2008/08/22/dick-locher-approaches-10000-cartoon-retirement/ , but thats from 2008 and talking about his retirement on his 1000th strip. But then we have this, http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2008/11/14/rumors-of-dick-tracys-demise-are-premature/ , where its denied and obviously proven by the fact that hes still writing many years later.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
I hope I haven’t been circulating a rumor that started here about Locher’s retirement. I really hope he goes, and that an actual writer and artist take his place. I’ve searched and found nothing about Locher’s plans or the strip’s future. Frankly I don’t see how either of them even have a recent past, much less a future.
buildingbridges over 13 years ago
Tomorrow’s strip: #1: (Chief) “Turns out …” #2: (Tracy) “Yes?” #3: (Chief0 “Penny was in on the plan the whole time!”
Midnite over 13 years ago
From that video it seems that Tribune Media may not be aware that Locher is so horrible. Did you see all the fans? The people with the signs reading We Love Locher? They might just think the guy is quite the talented artist and writer.