Dick Tracy (10/4/09)

Fancy coloring aside, what excites me about today’s Dick Tracy is the “Crimestoppers Textbook.” My fiance is originally from the southwest suburbs of Chicago and she once took me to see the Riverwalk in downtown Naperville, not far from where she grew up. I enjoyed the peaceful, verdant path, but didn’t think I’d have occasion to go back. But now that a nine-foot Dick Tracy statue has been erected there, I’ll definitely be making a return trip. And even though it seems curious to place a statue of a hard-boiled city detective on a nature path in a tony suburb, the drive will be so short that I won’t bother getting worked up about the contradictions.

Dick Tracy (4/17/09)

That’s quite an image in the third panel of today’s Dick Tracy. It seems as if the woman at the base of the stairs is being cornered by an aggressive mob of moneybags eager to do her harm. The fact that some of these bags are shrouded in darkness makes the scene even more ominous. Maybe I’m responding this way because the bags are abnormally large – approximately the size of a squat Dick Tracy thug – but I’m also taken with the notion of a person being bullied by a room full of money. It seems like an apt metaphor for our current (and apparently unrelenting) culture of corporate bailouts.

Dick Track (4/6/09)

This seems like an overly harsh assessment of a simpleminded jackpot winner, even coming from the new casino-themed Dick Tracy villain. I don’t think it’s fair to call someone stupid just because they’re not “bank literate.” Sure, it behooves all of us to understand the basics of balancing a checkbook, paying bills on time and using credit responsibly. But when it comes to complex financial transactions, most of us are in the dark. Not only is the average Joe not “bank literate,” but it seems as if large banks and even the U.S. Treasury are not “bank literate.” If they were, then Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Washington Mutual and Wachovia wouldn’t have been allowed to drive our economy into a sinkhole.

Dick Tracy (7/7/08)

Now that’s more like it, Dick Tracy. Just when I thought this strip’s villains were becoming generic, I open the newspaper to see a pair of hell hounds and a chrome-domed baddie with a bulging eyeball. Even the foreground villain looks menacing, thanks to the dark lines above his eyes. It’s a fine return to form for a strip that’s traditionally relied on the grotesque.

Dick Tracy (5/25/08)

Today’s Dick Tracy is full of unexpected treasures, from Tracy’s stoic condolences in panel five to the introduction of a tissue-obsessed villain. But what I love most are the surreal proportions featured in the penultimate panel. It appears as if Lieutenant Shirl Locke Holmes is nothing but an enormous, floating head with a train of thought bubbles emanating from her ear. It’s an image that tickled me no end.

Dick Tracy (4/21/08)

On rare occasions, I’ll choose a comic to post because it’s completely inscrutable and I get a kick out of its sheer and utter denseness. That’s the case with today’s Dick Tracy, which features a bad guy with a crossbow and a suit that changes colors depending on which way he twists. The jump cuts remind me of a Jean-Luc Godard film, although I don’t think the famous French auteur ever had a character say, “Ulq!”