Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 22, 2014

Here we go!

OKAY…There’s a WOW!

Annie’s in the past and trying to contact Tracy?

G’morning everyone…

Now, how would Junior have recognized her handwriting!??

Leapin’ Lizards! It was from Annie!

Junior might have just noticed the “vintage stamp” and thought it curious enough to pass on to Tracy!

Whoa….now THAT is interesting

Maybe this is like Back to the Future, Part 2 where Doc Brown writes the letter in 1885 with instructions that it be delivered to Marty at the precise time and place where he accidentally time-warped in 1955.

Time travel… my favorite genre.

Crimestoppers: Cops with kapu sticks.

So I guess the villain is trying to pull a Per Degaton.

Get a load of Dick Tracy’s wide-eyed expression of surprise in the last frame. Seriously, his eyes must have widened by, like, all of a millimeter or two. :)

O…M….G!

Dun dun dun! —I hear the crashing three notes of the mighty theatre organ after Tracy’s big reveal! Wow!A letter from Annie; how old can it be? How will it tie in to the search for Annie (I don’t see a postmark that would identify, in broad terms, where the letter was posted)? And, what case is Tess Trueheart Tracy working with Johnny Adonis? Is it related?

I’m surprised to see that it’s a 3-cent stamp. That 3-cent violet George Washington stamp (Scott #720) was the first stamp issued for the postage rate increase back up to 3 cents in July, 1932. (The stamp was available in June.) As far as I can determine, it would have gone off sale one year later. More here The Ordinary Postage Stamps of 1932

And everyone thought that the “Moon Period” was too far fetched…Now Time Travel???

I never took time travel too seriously until I started listening to the radio program “Coast To Coast A.M.” with George Noory a few years ago. Several guests have actually made it sound possible. As the movies say, “Crazy? So crazy it just might work.”

OK, so is the letter old, or is it recent and made to appear old?

The “family portrait” photo on the wall is a tribute to Dick Locher, I’m guessing. That looks like the style he used to depict Tess, as I remember it.

I’m sure Team Tracy already has this figured out, but:The characters in DT age, howbeit slowly as compared to real time. But Annie doesn’t age – she is the same age in every era. Sparkle and Jr. grew up and married each other. If Annie was about 10 when Sparkle was a little girl with a singing career, how old would Annie be now? And that dilemma has nothing to do with the time travel aspects of this story. Or does it????

As a Annie fan i’m really enjoying this crossover. I can’t help but wonder if the Tracy team read my Annie story from four years ago. Just kidding.

Peace.BB

Another question. The letter is addressed to Sunny Dell Acres. When did B.O. and Gertie move to Sunny Dell Acres? Wasn’t the singing career before they moved? Just asking, I don’t remember.

Good morning fans. Dick is one step closer to finding Annie. And the search takes on a new wrinkle. What does the letter say?

As Joel/Mike and the Bots would say, “Duhn-duhn-da-DUUHHHHNNN!”

“As much as I enjoy “conventional” police work Tracy, I love these dalliances with the far out fantastic. I bet two-way wrist radio tv was big when it first hit the page.”I’m the same way. I enjoy the conventional police work and all the far out stuff, too. Equally. Even before the Moon period, there was always a fantastical element about Dick Tracy. Not only the technology, but the villains, too. A lot of the bad guys in this story have been more mutants than “real life” characters. Dick Tracy is grounded in reality, but its also grounded in fantasy. It’s a mix! Always has been. So I embrace it all. Time travel? Messages from the past? Space coupes? Mysta transforming into a moon woman? Yes yes yes and yes!

Maybe Annie signed the letter?

Is it an old letter, lost in the post office? Or a letter sent through time?(As long as it doesn’t say, “Drink Ovaltine!”)No question – i’m hooked by this story.

Great Crimestoppers today! Really enjoy the bits of history. Thanks, Jim!

Nice Sunday strip although I am disappointed Tracy didn’t say; “Well blow me down” in the last panel. Lost opportunity if you ask me!

Time travel? Cue Mr. Peabody and Sherman!

The family photo of Dick, Tess and Joesph looks like Locher’s version of drawing, with the Plaid skirt on Tess. Every woman wore the same type of skirt during his reign. I always wondered about that.

Another Tale for the Time Being…Leapin Lizards & Ye Gods.

I agree with fhofmann, Willy007 and others who voice excitement over the bold direction of this story. The strip has always possessed elements of the fantastic, especially in the “Moon Era.” This was certainly part of what got me hooked as a kid when I first discovered Dick Tracy. The return of Mysta was a captivating story, one that is clearly an ongoing tale. I was sorry to see the moon tech scrubbed, worried that this signified a step back from the audacity of Mysta’s tale. I am pleased that I was wrong. Smith’s “Blue Image” project, coupled with Annie’s mysterious letter (wisely sent to Sparkle at Sunny Dell Acres, where the Plentys have lived since Sparkle was born), reveals that Team Tracy is just getting started infusing the strip with an audience-pleasing dose of the fantastic and audacious. More, more, more!

Annie seems to have answered her own question by sending the letter. I suspect all will be revealed in good time.

Anyone else not liking the science fiction elements creeping into the strip of late? Now a possibility of time-travel?? (perhaps the reference of Alley by Mr.Am was a nod to the time-traveling?)

I bet two-way wrist radio tv was big when it first hit the page.

This was definitely science fiction at the time it was introduced. In fact, it’s still fiction, just not as much. I’ve been following news article mentions of Dick Tracy for several years ago and the wrist radio (with its later incarnations) is the defining characteristic of the strip. Most news reporters remember Dick Tracy as something from a bygone era that they read when they were younger. Few know that it still exists.

News articles over the last few years have repeatedly declared that the real-life counterpart of the wrist radio is finally available, but it hasn’t quite happened yet. The wrist wizard, even in its earliest incarnation, remains science fiction, but the strip needs to continue pushing its limits if it’s to remain relevant to the present day.

When the Hawaiian alphabet was streamlined in 1826, there was no “T” or “B”. The Tahitian alphabet was developed concurrently, and “T” & “B” were part of it rather than “K” & “P”. Thus, “Kapu” in Hawaiian is the same as “Tabu” in Tahitian. We have anglicized “tabu” into “taboo”, but it still means that which is forbidden.

Gee, if I mailed something with a “vintage stamp”, they ‘do return it, lol. But obviously Diet’s new invention will play into this….plus now Mike can bring back Flattop, Pruneface, etc through it…

On a serious note, while time travel is possible, it is only in the sense you can “observe” the past, not actually interact with it. Basically you would function as a ghost of sorts….seeing everything, but without the ability to change it…

When LOA ended its run, weren’t Punjab and the Asp still missing?

Yeah, looks like Doc Wonmug will soon be appearing.

Having read all of the EC Weird Science and Weird Fantasy titles from the 50’s, which examined time travel from every conceivable angle, I’ll be curious to see how this arc plays out. One of those plots involved a time loop in which events occurred over and over – LOA used that plot as well at one point. Since this is a strip in which very few villains ever seem to die (are we sure the Fifth and Flyface were done in this last time?) maybe that is already taking place. Gould probably regretted killing Flattop off, and his substitutes, Angeltop, Blowtop, etc. just don’t do the job.

Interesting, so long as it doesn’t incur an Angus-style lapse in logic.

They would know it still exists if they google it, like I had once upon a time. I’m sure that even the tv part of the radio had already started before I jumped into the funny papers. That would be around ‘63-’65.

Apparently, the wrist TV was introduced in 1964, so that would be around the time you started reading.

The general perception is that is was a comic strip that existed in the 1930s and it was set in the 1930s. The Disney movie reinforced the idea that it was a strip that didn’t deal with the present day. If it’s no longer in their local paper or even if they don’t read comics much anymore, most newspaper readers assume that the strip is no longer published, so they don’t bother to Google it to see if it still exists.

So, do you think that the Wrist Wizard’s replacement is on the drawing board as we read ?I don’t think there’s any need to replace it but it looks like it’s about to evolve once again in some way.

how would he know the handwriting of a little girl, and how would she know the address of someone she never met?