Locher won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning with work that weighed in on President Ronald Reagan — with whom he once dined in the Oval Office — home computers and the Middle East.

"I'm still numb. I'm still waiting for someone to come in and say they made a mistake," Locher said upon learning he had won. "My first thoughts were that someone was playing a terrible, cruel gag. This sounds hackneyed, but I'm really proud the Tribune won a Pulitzer. I always thought it was an East Coast institution, and I'm glad to see it made it all the way to the Midwest."

Locher was pulled back into Dick Tracy's orbit in 1983 after the death of Rick Fletcher, who had taken over when Gould retired in 1977. Locher continued drawing the strip until 2009 and kept writing the storyline until in 2011.