A new beginning for an old Crimestopper

This would be a good time to dip into Dick Tracy for a few weeks and see how you like it.

The strip had been drawn by Dick Locher since 1983, but he has just retired and handed it over to a new team, artist Joe Staton and writer Mike Curtis, longtime fans of the 80-year-old strip but who also promise to do a little housekeeping and, specifically, to pick up the pace on a continuity strip that has been moving pretty slowly the last several years.

RC Harvey has an extensive interview and article about Locher here, which, even if you're not a historian of comic strips, you should read at least until you've gotten to the part about the machine gun. It's all worthwhile and a fun read, though. He's not the kind of historian who makes you feel like you're sitting in class.

This change has brought out some mixed messages from the comics community. Most artists and writers are firmly against "zombie strips" but many of them have responded to this development differently, and I think it's because there is a difference between keeping a strip going on autopilot and bringing in people to re-imagine it.

There are few enough continuity strips left -- and so many that just creak along on same-old-same-old -- that the prospect of adding a little life to this one is positive. Tracy has always had a streak of camp, but it's been hard for artists and writers to tread the line between fun and foolish. We'll see how Staton and Curtis do.

I'm not expecting to see Moon Maid reappear, but I am curious as to find out what's next.

 

 

Comments

[ronnie]

I never liked Dick Tracy from the time I was a kid (and the tv show was one of the only cartoons on tv where I lived, more's the pity). In fact I had an almost visceral dislike of the strip, from the artwork to the monster-ugly villains to the ponderously-slow, often seemingly incomprehensible storylines. I'd like to be able to say this change in artistic stewardship is enough to inspire me to try it out again but I fear I'm not a good enough person to make it stick, actually...

[Mike Peterson]

As a kid, I also found it incomprehensible, but I think that was because I didn't see the paper often enough to follow a continuity strip. But the "Crimestoppers" panel on Sunday was something I looked forward to as a very young reader. I think I favored simplicity, though, and the crazy looking characters -- villains and good guys -- did kind of put me off. I liked Miss Peach and Peanuts and Family Circus (and Barnaby, but that was only in books by then). The only graphically complex strip I followed was "Mark Trail," and that only in the Sunday nature panels, which I adored.

But I've added Tracy to my daily diet and we'll see how it goes. These guys are promising some shorter, tighter six-week storylines and that would improve things markedly.

[Sherwood]

When *I* was a kid, the thing I liked best about Dick Tracy was Fearless Fosdick.

[Mark Jackson]

How about "Tricky Prickears, the blind, deaf cop?" (Gilbert Shelton)