Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 08, 2009

Gertie, I’m with ya.

It’s not just B.O. that’s a fool.

I thought we were through with this dreck.

Our foolproof system beat his foolproof system.

Code for: My god is bigger than your god.

It’s theological, I tell you. War in heaven and all that.

Perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at Brozman’s work. Thanks to Locher flying high and reckless, Jimmy’s contribution has some what slipped under the radar.

There are some full time Artists that post here who could give a good analytical assesment and I thought that after 4 months some may have ventured critiques on the work. But not so ! Yes, there has been an occasional jibe, just 2 days ago one poster noted the King’s huge eyes, but nothing reflecting serious assesment.

In the absence I’ll give my “inexpert” observations !

1) He draws regular characters well enough so that we can recognize them and on the more POSITIVE side Tracy’s face appears thinner, a younger look at hand with the gray hair over the temples gone (as it should be). Now, no longer looking a if he were readying himself to retire in December next year, along with Locher.

2) As we look at B,O. in the right hand panel today we see a neat well brushed and trimmed beard. No wild rebelling folicles circling all over the place. Seems the “brush” is here to stay Gertie a bit thinner and less consistently structered. (But not a serious a minus)

3) Where I have a more serious problem is ih his backgrounds, his buildings and furniture detail. They look like they had been rendered in a hurry, at high speed. I seem to recall drawing these items better at Age 9 years as I’m sure he also did. Part of this may have been the practise in plave then in Naperville.

I should mention that recently there has been a sad deterioration rendered by our Author and particularly at the start of this story. Jack’s Casino looks cobbled togather.

Back in late 2007 we remember the truly “impressive” Haunted House, Locher designed for the J. Hennessey Tucker story. From an art view I gave him full credit for that. But the “fade away” from classic Quality since then is saddening !

In closing I note Tracy wearing the Wrist Geenee as he flips the cards (it’s never ther unless he uses it). Could it be connected in some way to the Thermal stuff ?

Nice to have some other comment !

That is one ugly thumb in panel 2.

I think Brozman is a good artist for Dick Tracy.

Maybe Tracy and B.O. can take their digital thermal deck to Vegas, sort of like a remake of “Rainman”.

Or maybe B.O. could get a job selling insulation door to door, and he could use the cards to evaluate heat loss through walls. “Sorry maam, yer walls only got upta threes. We look fer eights in this here part of the country.”

Still with ya, B.O.! Keep the faith and sometime real soon I want ya to show me your system!

Morrow

Gertie is very perceptive. Maybe she ought to lock the money way from BO. And protect it with critter traps.

Grokenstein said, “Hey, if the cards in the Thermal Imaging Technology (tee hee) Pack change into certain cards based on body heat, why didn’t Big Arse pop up the same card?”

Simple, Grok… He’s cold-blooded! :O

Gertie sez it all!!!

God, here we go again with the crying about the bad art. None of these guys are Chester Gould. I wish he was still doing the comic strip, but he’s not. Like all things in life, things change. I thought the story was 1 of the best in quite a long time. Let’s focus on the positive instead of the negative, life goes by so much better that way…

Find me a better story that has been done lately…

That’s the problem Foxy, we want to stop scrambling around in a littered “basement”, and breath some fresn air.

Yeah, I’d love 2 see someone with the story writing talent that Chester Gould had. Wishing that is the same thing as wanting The Beatles 2 get back 2gether and re-create Sgt. Pepper…it just ain’t gonna happen…

Their “system”???.

Their “system” was to (1) have the bad guys let BO go, so he could ge home safely, (2) have all criminals move slowly enough so that DT had enough time to avoid bullets, punches, etc…, (3) have the owner of a casino hand $750,000 (?) to a random detective he just met, and (4) cheat at cards against a criminal mastermind for what appears to be, no purpose at all.

My retirement “system” is to win the lottery.

Grok: I figured Big Ace’s card didn’t change because it want from the deck. It was one he had up his sleeve.

The way I read it was the double or nothing bet was to get Big Arse to cut the cards w/Tracy. Tracy then cheated, believing that Big Arse would react violently to losing, thus creating the need for Tracy to off the henchman. The added charges of attempted murder, conspiracy, whatever, would carry more penalties than just the “bizarre system” crimes did.

You know, its not that we want the writing to be on a level with Chet’s…its just that we want it on the level that adults can appreciate it as well as kids! All you have to do is read some of the other adventure strips that are all around today…The Phantom, Brenda Starr, Annie…the writers of these strips have a grasp of comic strip writing. They don’t start off with one thing, and then change course mid way through a story, or introduce characters one day to be completely forgotten or changed somewhat in style and appearance, the next.

There is no consistency in the strip nowadays as in other adventure strips…and to bring a Deux ex Machina like this Matrix deck (which doesn’t make sense, because there is no explanation as to HOW Tracy’s thermal body heat changed the card into The RIGHT card) makes no sense!

It’s hard to say what Brozman’s art really looks like, without knowing his contribution (ie, is he inking over Locher’s roughs? Doing the whole thing?) Definitely the change is less apparent than it was when Locher, or Rick Fletcher, took over the strip, so he may be under instructions to minimize changes.

Which would be a shame, because this strip SERIOUSLY needs to be changed. It has such potential. Even dried-up corporate properties like the Winnie the Pooh strip are being handled with a certain respect.

I have to agree with Foxybra – Chester Gould is dead and we should be grateful that someone is still there to hold the torch, and I think the story a while back about the little robot coming out of the big police robot”s bleeep and shooting the bad robot into smithereens was great. Has anyone considered that this new fellow, Locher, might deliberately be making inconsistencies to keep interest high?

But what we need is someone to hold Gould’s torch without disrespecting it. This drivel must have Gould spinning in his grave.

If you have resort to inconsistencies to keep interest high, you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Storyline is what keeps interest high. I think Locher would be insulted by that comment.

Hmm…on the other hand, maybe you’ve got something there.

I read all of these posts with diligence and they all have the same thread. Something is definitely missing! I’ll tell you what’s missing; it’s our resident loudmouth, Matthew P. Hansel, Jr. You newer members have missed something unbelievable. He’s the reason I still read this stuff and I know he’ll someday come back. He would start the wildest arguing you can imagine. He’d call us ignorant, uneducated, unimportant, fan-boys, and not on his level of sophistication. He’d go on that we aren’t “important” enough for him, and he had an inside track to Locher. As a matter-of-fact, he frequently consults with Locher and is a confidante in the “in circle”. I really miss his ranting. The first month he started posting with Comicspage.com, he posted approximately a hundred posts! I miss him! I got my daily laughs from him. When I told him I Googled his name (looked his name up on Google), he threatened to sue me! Mattie, BNM, or whatever , as we affectionately called him, is what we are missing! It was Mattie that coined our names as Magpies.