A new signature, Jim
Brozman’s, joined Dick Locher's on the strip last winter. Locher may not
retire from writing the strip, but he's surely stepping back a little from
drawing it all. My guess is that Brozman is inking Locher and embellishing a
little as he goes along.
At its website, Tribune Media Services (TMS)
acknowledges the new collaboration, reporting that Brozman has been a published
comic book artist since his days at Northern Illinois University
where he earned his Bachelors of Fine Arts in Illustration. Before graduation,
he published his first comic called Pablo
Picasso: Police Artist. TMS continues (in italic): After graduation, Brozman established his reputation as a comic book
artist when he worked on the Renegade Press comic book called Strata, a black-and-white comic with talking,
sword-wielding otters, Lancelot and King Arthur. This series lasted two years
until his next project at another Chicago-based comic book company, Now Comics.
There, he drew full-color comics, including Rust, The Terminator, Speed
Racer, Racer-X, The Real Ghostbusters, Slimer and The Green Hornet. Brozman
has worked for many independent comic book companies from the 1980s through the
1990s. His latest comic book he created with the help of local color artist,
Josh Warner: called Naperville’s
Finest, it included contributions from
local sports editors to depict all the local high school mascots as superheroes
battling their rival local mascots. A free comic book, it was given away with
the Naperville
Sun at the local high schools. For the
past decade, Brozman has worked on the retail side of the comic book industry
managing stores for Graham Cracker Comics in the Chicagoland area.
So, to finish with a flourish
from the store’s website, is Brozman an artist who runs a comic book store or a
comic book store manager who draws? When asked, Brozman said succinctly: “Yes."
In any
event, my fearful speculation in December that Dick Tracy would be eased into obscurity with the retirement of
Locher has been assuaged: TMS didn’t make Brozman’s participation public just
to shut down the strip his name is now on.
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