Dick Tracy by Dick Locher

Tags: DEATH stalks the Circus!!, HEY RUBE!!, new writer please. Add Tags

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VistaBill said, 25 days ago

One policeman? Is he asking the clown to cuff Ringo?
barticle35 said, 25 days ago

Mr Pops is now a minstrel show.
Flight Suit said, 25 days ago

Whoa- FINALLY we have a cop who actually believes it’s a good idea to make people put their weapons way before continuing the conversation!

(In case you forgot, please see my previous rants, on numerous dates, regarding DT’s very relaxed attitude towards Ringo’s brandishing of a whip during their lengthy talk session.)
OneUrantian said, 25 days ago

VistaBill—The policeman has a partner behind him in panel one.
Flight Suit said, 25 days ago

Hey y’all, barticle35 has contributed something to my latest blog entry. Click the following link to see what cell phones looked like in 1910:

http://kraptastrophe.blogspot.com/2009/10/cell-phone-circa-1910.html

It’s very “Frog Applause” in nature.
VistaBill said, 25 days ago

OneUrantian said, “VistaBill—The policeman has a partner behind him in panel one”

The Shadow? “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit!”. Those were the days!
Flight Suit said, 25 days ago

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of weirdly drawn men?
Carlo Coratelli said, 25 days ago

Good art work today, but the plot is bleah!!!
N7326 Foxtrot said, 25 days ago

I worked with a guy who was named David. His mother, who lived close to him and his wife, called to say she had a prowler in the yard. He said to call the police, close the curtains, lock everything, he was coming with a a gun,
When the police got to her house, with weeapons drawn. one yelled “What is your name?” When said “David” he said “OK David, we’ll take over here, now. Good job, Go inside.” He was impressed with them. They never found the prowler tho.
LudwigVonDrake said, 25 days ago

Why did the cops leave originally? “Hey Tracy we’re all heading back to the station. If you need anything have the clown call us.”
wndrwrthg said, 25 days ago

I gloomily sit here and contemplate
The sad downfall that is Tracys’ fate
Once the detective was held in esteem
Now those days are but a dream
We now have come to expect
Panels that are filled with dreck
Surely there has to be
An editor with eyes that see
And an ability to comprehend
That Locher has gone off the deep end
Todays strip in neither exciting or intriguing
In fact it comes across as very fatiguing
The cops should all still be there
But the writer seems not to care
That they would disappear without a trace
Were they really that easily to erase
We the readers are not dumb
But I fear our minds are becoming numb
Daily we are now assaulted
By work some claim is exalted
But from storyline inconsistencies
To characters unintentional deformities
The strip has become a laughing stock
Is it soon to be on the chopping block.
Sydney Phillips said, 24 days ago

Shades of Al Jolsen in stage make-up about to launch into “Mammie” (?) Blackened sole or the Soul of Flattop ? ;-)
Carlo Coratelli said, 24 days ago

Strip 3 in english version:

http://shockdom.com/open/carl/
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

does it need to be pointed out that this is still a murder scene from this same evening/afternoon/whatever it’s been the four months this stuff has dragged on?
Fer Lefer said, 24 days ago

… and that there was a body, and CSI hasn’t arrived yet, and the police was analyzing the threatening notes, and the pig on wheels, the angry elephant, the shrinking-expanding tent, the tent within a tent, etc.
James7344 said, 24 days ago

Nice gun, copper. What is it, a .22?
nighthawks said, 24 days ago

Matthew, just curious, but how do you put your strips together…do you use stylus & computer program or the old style ,ink on paper, wait to dry and watercolor (or colour ) I can’t imagine you are doing it the old way …drawing and painting on computer is so forgiving.
If I was doing a strip I would use two programs, one to draw up the contents of the panels and color them and then load them into ‘comic life’ to arrange them in order and put in the lettering and word balloons and color the backgrounds….really fun stuff….
so , how do YOU do it?
BASSMANB0B said, 24 days ago

Hey NotNormanChubsyUbsy, I’m waiting to see you bash Flight Suit today the way you ripped Matthew yesterday for using the board for personal endeavors. (Wow, ticked off 2 in one sentence!) Having to defend Matthew is not a problem when he’s being unfairly picked on. Those that know me know I’ve given him quite a bit of flack for his arrogance, snobbery, and all around distastefulness. Matthew, the IRONY of all this is I’ll be hated by many and you’ll tell me to butt out of it, you don’t need me to defend you.

Oh well, at least it’ll make the day go faster.

Peace.

BB

PS, Sydney, you know I luv ya you old geezer!!!
idarke said, 24 days ago

We’ve entered a world of both shadow and substance. No backgrounds or anything - actually just shadow mostly.

In another comic it would be dark and moody, underlining the clowns evil nature. Here we know by now that it’s just laziness.
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

and heck, if we’re playin’ show and tell…here’s a commercial art job I did some 20 years ago playing with the classic Tracy paradigm. What’s funny is it was written by the staff of a trade journal for urban planners, and even so it tells a story better than Locher’s stuff:

http://jumbobrain.com/comix/swipes/swipes-body2.html
Matthew Hansel said, 24 days ago

Nighthawks:

Both Apollo and Methuselah’s Gate: Water World are produced by hand on 3-ply Strathmore bristol board. I use a number 2HB pencil lead for the pencils (sometimes I use a 5H). For inks: on Apollo everything is Series 7 Windor and Newton #1 watercolour brush, on MG:WW I ink using a wide variety of different types of fiber tipped pens (mostly PITT pens and brushes, tho).

The ONLY thing I do on the computer is colouring of the Apollo Sunday pages (and that’s ONLY because there are certain SFX that are just plain easier to do in Photoshop).

BOTH strips are lettered by hand using an AMES lettering guide (set at the #5 setting) and inked in using a fiber tipped lettering pen (which is actually a scrapbooking pen I found at Blick’s, I really like the line it gives me!).

Long way of saying…the ONLY computer work on Apollo is coloring. On MG:WW I have modeled the ship (once it appears you’ll see more if it), but even then I still draw it by hand. and I did a cityscape that had digital tones in it, but it was still drawn by hand.

MPH
Matthew Hansel said, 24 days ago

Bassmanbob:

Defend away…I will not stop you. ;-)

And, THANKS, too, btw.

MPH
Carlo Coratelli said, 24 days ago

My review of the circus storyline:

http://usacomicstrips.blogspot.com/
BASSMANB0B said, 24 days ago

Of course you will Norm. It’s your right according to the policy of this board. It also shows that your beef is not with personal advertisement but with Matthew. If that’s what rocks your boat then go for it but don’t hide behind any false sense of righteous rage. It makes you look foolish (or should I say like an idiot, your word of choice. Just ask Doty).
Gertie’s looking for you.

Peace.

BB
436rge said, 24 days ago

Hate it when artist take the easy way out and use shadows!
EatDickTracySandwiches said, 24 days ago

Don’t the cops talk to eachother? You think the guy in Panel #1 would know that Dick Tracy is already at that location….

I see that Panel #1 officer also seems very calm considering the fact that there potentially is a murderer around, and that he is quietly holding some type of folder instead of pulling out his weapon on the demonic looking clown that is up in arms.

Never a dull moment!
CougarAllen said, 24 days ago

http://jumbobrain.com/comix/swipes/swipes-body2.html
That was great – and it was actually Dick Tracy related!
-Cougar :{)
Sydney Phillips said, 24 days ago

Jumbo,

Good to see you were once into Dick Tracy art too. It’s rather amazing that on both Tracy boards a fair percentage of readers dabled in that as kids (motivated by Dick Tracy) and some even stayed with it and are practising successful artists that post here on occasion. Mattie is trying to make it now. Best of luck to him !

What looks very “familiar” in your pseudo-Tracy is your bad guy Diamond. I’m sure he was inspired by one of the Big Shot boot-leggers that hired Flattop to take out Tracy, See Sunday, 1-30-44. Not Zolla the other black haired boss.

The whole thing looked really good given the need to avoid copyright infringement.

It would be good if others here who share a bond with the original Tracy could put up links so that we could enjoy their work.

I know “Brine” has done so on the Yahoo DT Board and his art is staggeringly good ! Why not share here too Brine?
Matthew Hansel said, 24 days ago

436rge:

I want to address your comment of “artist take the easy way out and use shadows!”.

As an artist that uses shadows quite a bit, it is certainly NOT taking the easy way out. There is a FULL drawing under those shadows.

Shadows serve a useful purpose, used properly of course, to play up DRAMATIC action/events. Comic do NOT have the ability to use music or other audible cues to provide a HEIGHTENED sense of drama, so shadows are used to provide such.

I frequently will use shadows to make things more mysterious, or to attempt to get a certain vibe from the reader of DANGER or MYSTERY or such.

MPH
Sydney Phillips said, 24 days ago

“EatDTSand”, Has a great point ! The arriving Officer MUST know that a MURDER was committed, and that Tracy was on the case at the Circus. (Homicide, i.e. Lt.Teevo was already called in).

To get that sort of call from the Circus they should have contacted Tracy by Two way Wrist Geenee to find out WHAT the problem was ! That’s simple logic !

But Tracy already had a Squad on guard there. They just dissapeard. Didn’t HQ know this ! Tracy has a Taser on the Geenee, he doesn’t use it in a life or death situation or even call in fresh back up.

How much more ludicrus and infantile can Locher get in “beating down” and rediculing this great comic strip ??

The man should be “fired” on the spot ! He has “shamed” Gould’s great creation ! This is reckless carelessness and incomprtence !
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

Thanks Cougar and Syndey!

And Syd, you are exactly correct, I swiped Diamond right off of one of the guys who hired Flattop. You’re the only person to catch that in 20 years. Lizz of course inspired the blonde sidekick, and the construction worker was based on Pat Patton. Cookie was an original, it helped that I only needed to draw him once.

The weird part of all that was that after I did it I found a lot of Gould’s technique creeping into my own cartooning. It’s funny, in terms of anatomy and perspective Gould was nowhere near as talented as his contemporaries like Foster or Caniff or Kelly….but his work really packs a visual punch.

Regarding “spotting” (ie, the use of solid black areas for composition). It was a Gould trademark. Here, though, like so many other details it really just seems to be used as a timesaver, like, say, endlessly recycling an exterior shot of a circus tent.
Matthew Hansel said, 24 days ago

jumbobrain:

One thing I have to say about the current team’s use of spotted blacks on the daily strips is this, at least on the comics page of the Chicago Tribune, it really does make the strip stand out. Those juicy black areas really call attention to the strip. This is especially true since so many comic strips DO NOT spot blacks at all.

Take a look at many of the strips even here at GoComics…many of them look like coloring books and have few, if any, black areas spotted in them.

Even in a “more simple style” of PEANUTS, Schulz spotted blacks effectively.

MPH
MaxStarmanJones said, 24 days ago

The whole reason I added Dick Tracy to my comics list was the excellent 75th anniversary tributes from other comics. I thought, “Hey, I remember this strip. It was fun.” I added it.

The experience has really saddened me. It appears the DT franchise doesn’t care whether the strip lives or dies. In a day when newpapers are shrinking and/or going under, only the best comics survive.

This comic is dead. All it has is name recognition. I am painfully embarrassed as I check on it from time to time. BTW that’s now once a week to see if the plot has advanced. This is probably the saddest storyline I’ve seen since I rediscovered DT.

I wish they would just run old strips like “L’il Abner” does. It would be a lot less painful.
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

Matthew,

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Tracy in a newspaper but I imagine you’re right, especially given that there are a LOT of poorly drawn strips out there these days. Actually this strip is better than some of the others, the angle of the wrist in panel 2 echoes the clown’s head in panel 3, which helps hold the strip together. But still, for random recycling of art and lackluster execution, I think Dick Tracy still wins.

And yeah, Schulz was simply a god. His style has been so influential it’s hard to imagine how fresh and different it must have been fifty years ago. He invented a lot of devices that everyone uses now, like the idea that the gag isn’t the action, but the character’s commentary on it.
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

Starman, it’s funny that you lament this plot not changing in a week…this story has been going on, with the characters essentially standing around in the tent, since July. I think the comics syndicates have never really understood or appreciated their product– look at the battles Berke Breathed or Bill Watterson faced before they gave up and retired.
Some old strips, like Gasoline Alley or Prince Valiant, have stayed strong after their creators retired, mostly because their successors are passionate about them. But you’re right, there’s just nothing here. It really surprises me that any papers still run it at all.
Part of the problem, I’ve heard, is that no matter how unpopular a strip is, some readers will complain loudly when it’s dropped. And new strips always take time to find an audience.
But if I were an editor, I would drop this strip in a flat second and get in something new and good like Lio or Yenny or the Knight Life.
Flight Suit said, 24 days ago

Carlo, great stuff! As previously mentioned, it really does bring back fond memories of Tin Tin (everybody, “Strip 4” has been posted).

Jumbobrain: I love that “500 Gigabyte computer!” Really nice illustrations, too!
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

Flight Suit:
Thanks!
VistaBill said, 24 days ago

I hope we get to see the pig on wheels again before this tale is finally told. He’s been my favorite character in the months gone by as the story unfolds.
Flight Suit said, 24 days ago

Quick, Mr. Pops, your girlfriend’s here with the getaway car!

http://tinyurl.com/de3kzq
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

VistaBill, I vote for a new comic strip where the giant crimefighting robot and the pig on wheels elope in the moon coupe!
And that might help Dick Tracy after all, since it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna improve until pigs fly.
Sydney Phillips said, 24 days ago

I’ll agree with Mattie on the advantage of using many areas of black to help the strips stand out. One could say that was a Gould “TRADEMARK” !. And say, at least one good technique Locher “retained” from the master.

Where the current team differs (more Brozman - I think) is they use it EXCESSIVELY on FACES. Not to say that Gould did not on occasion.

Recently I recall seeing an Annie strip, well drawn, but seeming near “invisable” due to the complete absence of black spaces
morrow said, 24 days ago

I still think Macy ought to go into a side story with Della. Would make for more excitement and awaken the curious!
Araldite said, 24 days ago

I think I was censored., but apparently not banned.
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

The excess of talking heads is the biggest problem with the strip at the moment. Except for last week’s tiger moment, we’ve had FOUR MONTHS of nothing but characters standing around talking. I’ve reserved judgment on Brozman’s art because he’s been given so little to work with…though I have to say it’d be nice if he were able to transcend the bad writing with some awesome art, instead of recycling the same half dozen panels ad nauseum.

This strip could be SO MUCH BETTER THAN IT IS. Why isn’t it?
Johanan Rakkav said, 24 days ago

What I’m wondering is why the cartoonist himself isn’t weighing in on all this criticism of his work. Defend it, change it, something…

I know that a good many creative people hate conflict more than anything in the world (and I’m definitely one of them), but how about it, Mr. Locher? Are we missing something here? Or being the occasional visitor and fast reader that I am, have I missed something…?
jumbobrain said, 24 days ago

Johanan,

Locher, Brozman and Tribune Media have been repeatedly baited here, to no avail. I’ve also written TMS’ editor twice now, nice civil letters asking why they continue to run such a substandard product, and I’ve never heard back.
It’s kind of amazing, when you consider the inherent value in a character like Dick Tracy…he has huge name recognition, up there with Bugs Bunny and Superman. So you’d think even if no one cared about making the strip entertaining, they wouldn’t let a commercial property like this rot on the vine. But they do.

Dick Tracy by Dick Locher

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