Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 30, 2014

OR…Maybe the calendar DOES have signifigance!

No matter what…Nice to see Tracy & Annie together after all these years!

In the words of the Grateful Dead, “What a loooong, strange trip it’s been” Whatever happens next, we’re in for a treat!

Why are you surprised Tracy? You were detective then and Annie was still a little orphan.

1. Yesterday the calendar said “loose lips sink ships”, today it says Immons Corner Grocery Main St.2. Puts some freakin’ eyes in those holes,lol.

I like that the art style changed too.

Gee whiskers! The purpose of the calendar is surely just to make certain that we know that we’ve gone back in time to 1944. What’s really important about the calendar is that it’s important that we know we’re in 1944 and not in some other time period.

The strip has also taken pains to tell both the Sundays readers yesterday and the weekday readers today that we are now in a town called Simmons Corners.

Now I’m confused.

Good morning guys!

I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the show!

Oh and if the calendar is complete (ie goes to December) Tracy can PROVE it is a fake.

December 7, 1941 was on a Sunday. Three years later with one a leap year (1944) would put December 7 on a Thursday.

June is one day ahead of where its days fall from December ie if June 1 falls on a Saturday then Dec 1 would fall on a Sunday putting Dec 7 on a SATURDAY

The ONLY year for June 1 on a Saturday in the 1940s was 1946.

Tracy isn’t the only one who’s very confused, but I’m beginning to think this is all an act and Tracy isn’t in the past at all. Either way, though, this promises to be a lot of fun!

The calendar in today’s strip and the calendar in yesterday’s strip are not the same calendar. The one from today is on the wall near Tracy’s bed, but the one in yesterday’s strip could be located anywhere. The first row of panels in the Sundays strip is always optional so that newspapers who don’t want to devote that much room can just run a two-line version. For that reason, the panel the top right stands on its own and is rarely part of the sequence of panels.

The slogan “Loose lips sink ships” was a very common one during World War II, and it seems obvious to me that it was there to establish the setting. Readers were expected to recognize the slogan but it seems that some did not. There is information about it on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_lips_sink_ships

The Battle of Anzio ended on June 5, 1944, so that also firmly establishes the setting. I can’t say whether starting June on th wrong day of the week is a plot point of merely a mistake. I guess we will have to wait and see.

The calendar in today’s strip and the calendar in yesterday’s strip are not the same calendar. The one from today is on the wall near Tracy’s bed, but the one in yesterday’s strip could be located anywhere. The first row of panels in the Sundays strip is always optional so that newspapers who don’t want to devote that much room can just run a two-line version. For that reason, the panel the top right stands on its own and is rarely part of the sequence of panels.

The slogan “Loose lips sink ships” was a very common one during World War II, and it seems obvious to me that it was there to establish the setting. Readers were expected to recognize the slogan but it seems that some did not. There is information about it on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_lips_sink_ships

The Battle of Anzio ended on June 5, 1944, so that also firmly establishes the setting. I can’t say whether starting June on th wrong day of the week is a plot point of merely a mistake. I guess we will have to wait and see.

I forgot to point out to that yesterday’s and today’s calendars are consistent with the month starting on a Saturday. Annie certainly acts like someone who has been there all along, not someone from the future.

Anzio? mmmm…. Interesting.

Annie must have several plates of those cookies. Sunday’s plate was round; today’s is rectangular. Jus’ sayin; not complainin.

This gets better and better!

So far this story does not appeal to me at all. If I want to see Tracy 70 years ago, I’ll read one of the Chester Gould’s Complete Dick Tracy volumes.

If Tracy was wounded at Anzio, wouldn’t he have some physical evidence of the combat? Like scars, or even bruises? What’s under the bandage? This arc had to be lifted from watching too many “Mission Impossible” episodes!

Please…enough with the wise cracks about Annie’s eyes! It’s the style if the art fer gosh sakes! Annie has never had pupils even in the modern age!

Maybe the fact that June 1944 started on a Thursday is evidence that Tracy and Annie are in an alternate universe. Another tidbit of information is the reference to Simmons Corners. I don’t where Annie was in 1944, but she was in Simmons Corners back in the early thirties. Both the time and place simply are not jiving. And I don’t think it’s an accident. Team Tracy has been too meticulous on details to make a blunder like this.

Tracy is not the only one confused…

OK, we’ll try this again… (first time I posted this comment, it showed up twice, and when I deleted one copy of the comment they both disappeared—apparently GoComics is also in a time warp)…

In the fourth panel, I’m surprised at how un-surprised Annie is that she has to tell Tracy it’s 1944. Almost as if she expected him to not know what year it is. Assuming Simmons Corners doesn’t see a lot of shell-shocked returning soldiers, this is a bit odd. A clue that something is afoot?

this story just crashed headlong into absolutely ridiculous! gweedo, stilldamatt… let me know when its over

Good morning DT and A fans. Maybe Tracy actually meet Diet Smith and was sent back? Or maybe Tracy has been drugged and kidnapped and is hallucinating.

Simmons Corners rings a vague bell in my disordered brain. Is it the town where the Martians landed in War of the Worlds? It’s been almost 50 years since I read the book.

Maybe I’ve seen too many Mission Impossible episodes but I think the whole thing might be a set up and Tracy is still in present day.

In funny page time only a minute passes each day. That would make 365 minutes or 3 days a year. So 80 years would be equal to 240 days or 8 months. So Really only 8 months have passed since 1931. But in Reality no time passes at all in a 2 dimentional paper & ink world…Wow…but what is he doing running out into the night and not telling Warbucks and crew about Annie’s letter and his leads..Who the hell does he think he is? Dick Tracy?

All I can say is, I have no idea what’s going on or what’s going to happen next. Sorta like real life, only without the cookies.

Confusing to say the least, but I’m coming around to the view that this is a set-up, to fool Tracy after he was captured on Thunder Island in “the present day” (whatever that is). Either Annie is being coerced into being complicit, or this isn’t the real Annie. Who knows? I may be totally wrong….

Bring back nurse’s uniforms(not the scrub tops and pants of today). They were sexy in a strange way…..

We may be over-thinking this, but there are a lot of inconsistancies. The shape-changing cookie tray, the ad-changing calandar, the creepy eyes on Annie…..oh, wait…..never mind that last one. I do have to wonder if these guys look at the comments here and get ideas after saying “Oh, *#@&%, how did we mess that TRAY up?!?”

Man, those eyes ARE creepy though, huh?

The important question is, what day is it?The D-Day invasion was on June 6, 1944, which, by my math, was a Tuesday.If it’s before the 6th, and he arrived there after being injured in Anzio, he’d have no contact with the preparations for the invasion, and if he’s aware of the invasion before it takes place…

Maybe it’s the Mayan calendar

Many folks here have mentioned the Harold Gray trademark eyes. But, here’s a surprising thing that I didn’t realize before.The Dick Tracy IDW books for 1943 – 1945 show that quite a few of the “extra” characters – walk-ons, police officers on the scene of a crime, citizens caught up in whatever was happening – have exactly the same style of oval eyes with no pupils showing. Given that Gray and Gould were friends, I found that to be very interesting.

I never felt that Gray’s eyes were “creepy”. I somehow understood what emotion he was trying to communicate, even though his characters eyes all looked pretty much the same. I don’t know how, I just felt the atmosphere of his stories, I guess.

Run Tracy! They are harvesting pupils!

Well, duh, Ken! That’s what we DO every time we look in on Dick and company! We’re not really losers with nothing else going on in our lives (well, I’m not, anyway), but it’s the strange addictive nature of certain things. Do I dare call them intellectual persuits?

Actually, looking up the date takes only a few seconds, but someone did it and reported back to the rest of we nutcases. Then the cookie tray. I don’t know how I missed that, so now I’m wondering if THEY missed it….or was it intentional?

I’ve already killed a half hour of today with this one little comic strip. Good thing I don’t watch TV (except baseball). If I did, life would just pass me by.

It sure is a tribute to the guys who write DT that we actually spend so much time with their work, isn’t it? I haven’t paid this much attention to a comic since Calvin & Hobbes bid us farewell. There is some great talent behind this entertainment!

I still think that they are trying to fool Tracy into thinking it is 1944 (as in the Captain America movie). To what purpose, I do not know.

HA! Harvesting pupils……That’s one funny line!

This reminds me soooo much of that movie where the soldier was in a German hospital but didn’t know it until he saw a Nazi symbol unsuccessfully hidden somewhere……betting they’re trying to fool Tracy…..otherwise, why doesn’t he just call himself to rescue him, lol? There would have to be two of them if he went back in time…..

Ken, when I joined, they told me that proper spelling was optional.

I don’t think the cookie tray was round Sunday. If you look closely, you’ll see a corner near the fingers of Annie’s left hand.

Is that a hint from Annie that he should play along?

Man, injured at Anzio and HOME the same month? Still groggy from his injury? Think about it, Detective, something’s wrong here!

Tracy, if you buy into this charade, I have a combination residence/bridge to sell you! Actually, it’s the one SDM lives under.

Maybe like the battle ship he vanished from his world and is now in a Parallel Universe ?

This would explain his war injury as in his world he remained at home and back there was only a ‘part time’ Navy Intelligence man (see 5-18-44)

Late in the day; may have to re-post this tomorrow..Re: The calendar complaints..One: Today, many calculators, and all HP financial calculators, have date calculators on them..Two: As someone else already noted, 06 June was on a Tuesday – likely a significant enough date for Richard to remember – so he doesn’t need no stinkin’ HP calculator to know that the calendar is GNORW..For the moment, the only mystery is, is Little Annie Fanny a fake?.From the other day: Someone posted an interview with both Mike and Joe, in which it was mentioned that Joe enjoys drawing Flattop. However, since it was the collective decision to leave him dead, Joe only gets to draw him in flashbacks..Where Team Tracy could be setting us all up is: A return to 1944 so Flattop can ride once again!.http://epx.com.br/ctb/hp12c.php.A link to an on-line HP 12C calculator emulator that has the date calculator on it (though I admit, you might need the calculator manual to use it!).Enjoy!

Calendar-Gate!!!