Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 13, 2013

First!

I wonder if Vitamin Flintheart knows Dr. Ghote and considers him a dear friend. I wouldn’t mind seeing him be the one to buy the farm.

Good morning all…

Now the space coupe is heading for the Wheaton Farm! Everone will be there! I can hardly wait to see this event! Bet it’ll have to wait until Sunday when Curtis, Staton, et al have more space available!

The Space Coupe flies again!

Must have inserted an RFID chip in her when she was out of it.

Yahoo, here comes the space coupe!

“It was a dark and stormy night”

Oh, man!Tracy and company are waiting for Hy Pressure, unaware that B-B Eyes, Mumbles and Doubleup are his backup, while Melies and the Munro Brothers are heading there to kidnap Mysta and kill anyone they can.And now Diet Smith and the Space Coupe are flying right into the middle of it all!But since Sail and his backers want the Space Coupe – is Diet Smith unwittingly giving them what they want?How can you not love this story?

I.Can’t.Believe.How.AMAZING.this is!!!!!!!!!!!

Love the Police Space Coupe

Well Hung Hippie: Mentioned a few times already; I think Ghote is already dead!.The Ghote in Sail’s office did not seem cooperative at all – and this was at the moment that moon face showed up – gun already pointed in his general direction…

Good thing Diet’s taking flight to the farm. There will be plenty of sharks in the water below! *(Nightshade09, nice summary.)

It appears that one purpose of the up and coming showdown is to permanently alter the residents of the Tracy-verse….We can pretty much guess that Mysta is in but, so far, it’s anybody’s guess who is taking a permanent vacation..Of course, if Sail/Ghote succeeded in “cloning,” Mark II or whatever, then we will have returned to those thrilling days of Roger Rabbit – and we might get our Flattop back!.Then Mysta will have to be joined by Judge Doom, just to help Dick Tracy put all these baddies down, once and for all!.All silliness aside, I still hope this is Mysta is the “original recipe” (as one poster is wont to call her). She alone has a story to tell, and I want to hear that story. Any version of a Moon Maid “lite” only knows whatever she was told (“implanted”) by her “makers.”.I’m still not keen on a Moon Maid clone joining the regular cast…

Everybody who’s anybody is going to be down on the farm this weekend, and the thundering storm may compete with thunderous, multidirectional gunfire. Interesting that Diet appears quite ready to use the space coupe to get to Wheaton Farm, and “Mysta,” as quickly as possible. This, of course, sets up the possibility of sending off forever, in practice, the improbable Moon Maid and cleaning up the strip (I know her very ardent and loud fans would miss her, but those of us who rued her debasement of the detective strip in the ’60s would be pleased to see her shipped off humanely in the space coupe, maybe accompanied by Retik and Stellaluna, in search of the lost lunarians, with no prospect of returning).

I on the other hand could not disagree more with the previous poster. I welcome Moon Maid back into the strip. I feel she belongs here. She will add a lot of excitement to the stories. In the mean time, what ever happens, I am looking forward to seeing the Space Coupe in flight again. This last year has been one enjoyable ride. LONG LIVE MOON MAID!

I cannot recall so eagerly looking forward to reading a comic strip this much since the 1970s!! Love this storyline and — sorry one or two grouches — so do the overwhelming majority of readers.

The suspense is killing me. Let’s see some heavy duty action!

One thing that doesn’t quite ring true: The whole city is hunkering down in anticipation of this giant storm, but Ghote apparently told Diet he was stepping out to get lunch yesterday. That seems a bit too casual, under the circumstances. And now, having just returned from his “lunch”, he questions going out in this weather.

stilldamatt… maybe mrs flattop? sam DOES seem to have a way with the ladies lol

Just don’t drive it into New Street Corner Lake!!

When is GoComics going to change the masthead to read “Winner of the Harvey Award for Best Syndicated Comic” … ?

YEOWK! I just realized Friday Thirteen comes on Friday this month.

Artwork on last panel is extra cool!

Robert Mills: I agree – and I first mentioned earlier this week – that Diet has made a deal with the devil (Ghote or Ghote lite) and that devil has to be paid..Ken in Ohio: Ghote going to lunch? Yeah, right. I rather think he was ducking around a corner so he could get fed his next set of lies – er – lines from moon face to give to Diet! (Another hint that this Ghote may be a fake – the real Ghote, if he was really the brains behind this deal, wouldn’t need a lunch break!).Sisyphos and others who want Mysta, Diet, and the space coupe to be permanently dispatched: Don’t forget that Honeymoon is also a lunarian and still has her powers!.But then, I remember one cruel poster earlier this year who said something to the effect that it was too bad Honey wasn’t in the car with Mysta that night! And that this error on Fletcher-Collins’ part is what led to this current storyline!.I think Mike and Joe have already put too much into Mysta’s character to just send her away (like Jar Jar Binks?) in another week or so..And I agree with yumpinyiminey that, while Moon Maid is back, for good, don’t worry about the excesses of the sixties. That was your Christmas present from 2012..In the meantime, I do believe that Diet is becoming expendable, especially since it doesn’t look like we’re going to be making regular trips to the moon!

Yes, the art is tremendous yet again. The use of silhouettes and the third panel’s image of the storm and Smith Industries make for powerful visuals. I hope that all subsequent volumes of Calling Dick Tracy! will offer the dailies in both black and white and color. Mr. Staton’s art is exceptional and other than Sundays, the use of color is usually superfluous, imo. B&W > Comic Kingdom color > gocomics color

Hey Guys, Wake up! Where’s Nellie?

Night-Gaunt49:.“What are you some kind of racist? Why is it so important to you that she may be a clone? How does that make her any less of a person?”.Not sure how you get “racist” out of my post. But, as to why it is so important to me that she not be a clone, I think I have explained that already: Only the real Mysta would have a story to tell – all other Moon Maid possibilities would be imposters, and not the original..In a second nod to another poster, anything other than Mysta survived-the-car-bomb would be Moon Maid lite!

You said:Since the space coupes use EM fields they could be easily protected from the worst of the super storm.When the Space Coupe was first introduced in the early 60s, Diet took Tracy for a ride to demonstrate it’s capabilities. Speed, of course, and silent power (no “fire and brimstone”) – but he also took the Coupe and hovered right in the middle of a hurricane somewhere. Diet was quite proud of this.

she’s not even THAT night gaunt. until it is verifed ON PANEL what she/it is… moon maid lite is a construct of some sort…DEFNIITELY NOT “the real thing grown back from her corpse” as there would not have been much of ANYTHING left after the fire to regrow her from, and i would wager HARDLY even a corpse

Haha. Yes, when you consider how well received the Moon Maid story has been I think Staton and Curtis will be strong contenders again next year. No doubt about it.

tsull2121: I have forgotten both who and when the Honeymoon comment was made. Go Comics makes it nearly impossible to research these things without having both who and when..And yes, because I couldn’t find it directly, it came out mangled when I tried to paraphrase..If I recall correctly, the post did go so far as to call Honeymoon a “brat.” So, yes, I still consider that post to be rather cruel..Horns? I seem to recall that she said she had “bumps” on her forehead where the horns ought to be. And then there’s those magnetic fingertips..Of course, there have been inconsistencies in the reporting of all of these things. In addition, further obfuscation has been added because so few characters seem to trust each other in the Tracy-verse. Even the best of characters seem to hold back when telling the truth..And that’s when they’re not out-and-out, pants-on-fire lying!.Sisyphos: Dare I take on a second topic? But I’ll try..I agree that anything less than survived-the-car-bomb Moon Maid will not likely be a sustainable character. It is one of many reasons that I most sincerely hope that she is Moon Maid, “original recipe.”.The above is also a second answer to Night-Gaunt49..But back to Sisyphos: I also happen to agree that the sci-fi stuff that accompanied the original Moon Maid was horribly flawed – with the ill-fated timing of the Apollo moon missions which pretty much eliminated the possibility of Mysta’s original existence..Against that background, I do have to wonder what Mike and Joe were thinking when they decided to re-introduce Mysta..But I like that Mike and Joe are carefully crafting a way to have Mysta the Moon Maid without the Moon Colony..And who knows? If Diet is among those who buy the farm in the next few days, even the means of getting to the moon will be removed from the strip, as well..As for the uncomfortable situation that only the original Mysta would bring to Junior’s marriage, well, that’s the story I have been hoping that Mike and Joe were going to delve into:.What becomes of the previous spouse mistakenly declared legally dead!

Can you say “repeat winner”?

I think I will be disappointed if they don’t win next year as well. I certainly think they should.

Thanks for the summary, Willy007. I suppose it would be fair to say that Moon Maid was significant last year, but it doesn’t compare to the long story this year.