Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for May 21, 2013

G’morning all…

Oliver Warbucks?

What next?

A project involving folks from a town named Sweethaven?

Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks?

Any idea why it’s spelled “Lazurus”? Surely the name “Lazarus” is in the public domain.

Maybe it’ll be a “Lazarus Pit,” a la Ra’s al Ghul!

And Diet’s eyes seem to going ‘blank’ in the final panel… but not as blank as in the Annie-verse!

Leapin’ lizards.

I love the way the current creative team mines material from both Tracy’s formerly erased past and ties things into other comics.

I had a Norwegian Forest Cat named Lazarus. Cheaply made beast, he only lived 20 years. I miss him, he was a cat with a mind of his own, and it was warped.

Take a look at that facial expression on DS WOW he looks ticked!

Oliver Warbucks! Yes, Daddy! Love the crossover (philosophical query: is it still a crossover when the Orphan Annie strip has ceased?)!

…………………………………………………………..I suspect “Lazurus” was just a lapse; but maybe Lazarus was avoided deliberately for some unknown reason?

Wasn’t there a Lazarus Project in Heinlein’s work in re. Lazarus Long?

Of course Diet is annoyed—the only Moon Woman on earth had been his protoge and she’s dead! Sail has at LEAST shown himself to be a ghoul! (d)?

Is anyone familiar with Annie from the 80’s and 90’s and can maybe fill us in on Warbucks’ Project Lazurus? I collect the old Little Orphan Annie from the Harold Gray era and I am also very well versed on Annie since 2000, but I don’t recall Daddy Warbucks ever working on a Lazurus project.

The Lazurus Project should have something to do with restoring a dead person to life. In the Bible, Lazurus a man who died and was restored to life by Jesus. This is a pretty good hint about Dr. Sail’s relation with Mysta.

model space coupe on desk is blue? dump these daily colorists. the dailies look best in black and white, fer gawd’s sake!

Oliver Warbucks? Leapin’ lizards.

The "Lazurus Project involved killing and replacing Warbucks’ young ward every year so that she never aged.

Oliver Warbucks?? This is getting better and better!

Any crossover between Annie and Dick Tracy would be especially significant, because Harold Gray and Chester Gould were friends in real life. And both strips had their beginnings redirected by Captain Joseph Patterson – he told Gray to make his character a girl – “put a skirt on the kid and call her Annie.” And he shortened “Plainclothes Tracy” to “Dick Tracy”, and gave Gould directions on the first story. Plus, their original art was somewhat similar in style, at times.

The first “Annie” storyline when the strip was revived in the 1980s involved something called the “Lazarus Process”, except it was a process for extracting more oil out of old oil wells. Not sure how that connects cloning.

Ken in Ohio: To include Lizz’s eyes back in the fifties and sixties – I always thought she looked like Little Orphan Annie with too much eye shadow!

Wow lookit that purty lil red flag that Sail is wavin in front of Diet Smith’s face! Wonder of Mr Moneybags will be clever enough to call in Tracy?

You think he’ll be smart enough to put two and two together (the moon maid sightings and sail’s revelation) and figure out whats going on?

I know, today’s crossover has to do with Little Arf & Nonnie (Walt Kelly), but most of this was written yesterday.

Young FrankenSTEEN: “Just whose brain did you bring?”

EYEgore: “Abby.”

“Abby who?”

“Normal. Abby Normal!”

Sorry. I just couldn’t resist.

I also have such little regard for our pair of docs (with apologies to Allen Sherman) that I still like to refer to the surgeon in charge as the old Ghote!

Though, truth be known, there were times that Sail actually appeared to show compassion for his impatient patient (quoting the current creative team behind Dick Tracy).

Okay. The worst (of this post) is over. You can come out from under your rocks. I don’t think I’ll have any more really bad puns from here on out.

It’s been awhile since the last outlandish theory, so here goes:

Why does Ghote “clone” famous people? Because he’s a fake! Famous people he has allegedly “cloned” include Mumbles, and now Mysta.

And now, my big, bright idea:

Ghote and Sail were around at the time of Big Boy. Ghote, known fake and con man, knew he needed someone famous to “clone” – and he chose Dick Tracy!

Surely, Ghote was aware of the mega lotto contract out on Tracy, so he was keeping in touch (Pouch?) with all possible venues where Tracy might get killed. I’m also thinking Ghote was stalking the Tracy home, (one) because it was the most likely place for the death to occur, and (two) he may have already had insider information as to the IED in the car.

Ghote may or may not have been involved in Tracy’s bombing – but his stint with Mumbles means he was not above associating with those who would attempt murder!

Ghote and company were there when the bomb went off, but got the wrong body! Okay, so they might have swiped the body from the coroner’s, but my point is the same: Ghote and company were out to swindle with a fake clone of Dick Tracy, but Tracy did they not get!

Buying time with the wrong body, Mysta, they hastily pushed forward with the fake Mumbles clone. In the meantime, they discovered that Mysta wasn’t really dead! So, in the rubble of the Mumbles debacle, a new swindle is born!

A new ruse with a new muse! (Sorry, I love puns)

All that remains to be asked is this: With all of the criminal activity that Ghote and company have been involved with, has Oslo ever rescinded his Nobel Prize?

Last, and certainly least, for all those who insist that Mysta be a clone or some other kind of fake or, if she is “real,” that she (or Sparkle) must die: Why?

Divorcing myself from “retroactive continuity” (retcon) and Tracy “canon” for the moment, again, I ask Why?

Why must Mysta “die” again? Why must she be a “clone” or any other kind of fake? I think that would be the nail in the coffin for this strip.

We’ve already offended non-Space Era fans by bringing any semblance of Mysta back to the strip. For most of them, it was better that we pretended she never existed. On the other side, we have waited for her return for so long, to yank her away again would only offend Space Era fans as much as the non-Space Era fans are already offended. (And death, a “clone,” or any other “fake” Mysta would be the same as “yanking her away again”)

That’s a classic lose-lose scenario.

I don’t think Dick Tracy could handle that.

At any rate, that’s all the news that isn’t! (with apologies to Michael Feinstein of public radio’s Whadaya Know)

The August 7 on Mysta’s tombstone had to do with 07 August 1978. Mysta’s death was depicted on the Sunday, 06 August and Monday, 07 August panels.

The original Zy Ghote and Mumbles story was summer of 1979.

I have speculated before that, in fact, both Mysta’s death and the Mumbles clone were one-two punches meant to kill off any traces of the “Space Era.”

Mysta’s death – and Moon Governor’s subsequent (and immediate) termination of contact with earth people “killed off” the moon people. The Mumbles clone story was to place a wedge between Dick Tracy and Diet Smith, thus ending contact between Tracy land cops and Diet Smith’s science fiction inventions.

Of course, we have seen just how successful each of these “punches” were!

Hey, how about a nice Hawaiian Punch?"

“Sure!”

(Commercial from that era)

Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks first appears in a Little Orphan Annie strip in September 1924. He acquired his enormous wealth producing munitions during World War I..There was a Lazurus Project, spelled Lazarus, that attempted to resurrect extinct frog...Lazarus Project

Woo Hoo! An Oliver Warbucks reference!After guest appearances from Brenda Starr’s Hank, Charlie from Terry and the Pirates, and Walt from Gasoline Alley, any Annie refernce is welcome!Sigh. Love to see a story with Annie featured.

Considering that Annie is back on Broadway and there is an Annie movie in the works … one has to wonder why Tribune Syndicate decided to end the Annie strip.

Hello all. Been on vacation visiting family in Edmond Oklahoma, very near Moore Oklahoma. Watched in horror on live t.v. as it was wiped out by a tornado. Many lives lost, many lost everything. Nothing but debris left. Lives just shattered. I’m very thankful the storm stayed to the south of us, still it’s just so tragic. Talk about your reality t.v. I’m grateful to have Tracy as a distraction here. I’d like to encourage everyone here to send a few bucks to your American Red Cross office as they’re doing everything possible to help here. Thanks.

They must have read my mind, maybe this “Warbucks” thing could lead to Dick Tracy rescuing Annie from that Killer!

Now Diet will want to get Tracy to investigate._______________________

I don’t know if Diet Smith will immediately call in Tracy on this. Although he is a friend of Tracy’s, it seems to me that he has always acted in his own interest first. During the Cloning of Mumbles case, Smith wanted to clone himself so that he would have someone to leave his money to. Despite the fact that Ghote was convicted of fraud, Smith did not want him to serve time. He wanted Ghote released in his custody so that Ghote could continue his cloning research. Smith’s attitude at the time caused a rift in his relationship with Tracy.

I’m thinking that if Smith believes that cloning is possible, he will be on board with Dr. Sail. Calling Tracy may be the furthest thing from his mind.

Also the explosion could have thrown Moon Maid’s body hundreds of feet out of the car._____________________

You may be correct. We know little about Moon physiology. Perhaps her body was not blown to smithereens. Perhaps Moon people are more invulnerable than previously known. Moon people have incredibly long life spans. Moon Maid once told Junior (during a heavy smooching session) that the oldest Moon person lived to be 1300 years old.

Two misspellings on the same day? Lazurus (Lazarus?) and the apostrophe in panel three, which should come after the “s” if it is the name of the Little Orphan Annie tycoon?

Time to find out what is REALLY buried at Mysta’s gravesite I’m thinking….

Night-Gaunt49 and Ray Toler: I, too, have been thinking about Mysta having been blown from the car, not blown up in the car.

Precedent (if that is appropriate in a comic strip): In 1959, Rhodent kidnapped a girl named Fattie, with intent to murder her. Trapped at a railroad crossing with police cars coming from both directions, Rhodent rammed the rear of a passing train, which dragged his car – and him – to his fiery death.

Where was Fattie?

She had been tied up in the rear seat of the car yet, when the burned out vehicle was found, there was only one body in it – the remains of the “rat faced man.”

It would be a few weeks later that they found Fattie, up in a tree, where it was surmised that she had been “thrown” by the gyrations of Rhodent’s vehicle as it was dragged by the passing train.

As a kid, it made for a good story, though I look at it now and see just how nonsensical that answer really was.

“Tossing a bone” to non-Space Era fans, I suppose any form of Mysta’s survival from the 1978 explosion is nonsensical, let alone her having been thrown from the car.

Nevertheless, it’s starting to look more and more like that may have been what occurred.

Of course, Tracy may have to investigate the coroner since it is looking more and more like the body recovered from the blast – and buried in Mysta’s tomb – is not Mysta!

Still unanswered is why, if Mysta survived, was there no contact from her.

This causes me to lean back toward my earlier suspicion, which is that Ghote and Sail (or whoever Ghote’s accomplice was at that time) were indeed holding Mysta prisoner – along with a bit of Hollywood-style amnesia for the ride.

Still, Sail has shown occasional signs of compassion toward Mysta; I have seen nothing of the sort from Ghote. Retik and Stellaluna have certainly had compassion toward her.

And, other than Ghote, none of these people may have been around in 1978 or 1979 when the blast occurred – and when Ghote was documented as hanging around the violent Mumbles!

The Little Orphan Annie crossover makes the return of Mysta a snap: Mr. Am healed our heroine.

The Space Coupe was yellow. The model should be yellow.

You said: “There is an Annie movie in the works. . .”I didn’t know that.*******************I Googled out of curiosity and the only info I could find on a current Annie movie was a mention on some blog where it says they’re making a version with a black Annie and Will Smith’s daughter was set to play her but it was changed to Quvenzhane Wallis. Doesn’t sound like an “actual Annie style adventure” but who knows. And who knows if this obscure mention is even accurate.

Let’s see we’ve had references to Terry & The Pirates, Brenda Starr, and now Annie! We need an Annie Cross-over! Who wants to see Honeymoon and Annie team up?!!

I love these crossovers. And I am totally loving this story. We’re only now beginning to understand how truly great this strip can be now that the creative shackles have been taken off Staton & Curtis.