Human-debris-missing-link-scum-despicable-nonhuman-ghoul-dreaded-killer-with-no-compassion-or-remorse-most-hated-person-in-the-U.S. – is Locher hinting that this prisoner is a bit of a bad character? Such subtle characterization.
Yeah, we all thought Locher was ripping off “Silence of the Lambs,” but he’s really going for “The Odd Couple.” Or maybe, given his lack of style, “The Boys in the Bland.”
And they finally meet but theres not a word spoken between them! The tension is so thick one could cut it with a knife! What will Dick do now?
Seriously, these guys cant be that dumb. Even if Dick wasnt incompetent this is a horrible idea. Wheres his backup? I guess the good news is I doubt anyonell take any shots at him in that downpour so maybe hell make it to his destination without any snags. But wait, then it wouldnt be a very interesting strip. Again Im left wondering how its going to get worse. Its a different kind of cliffhanger but a cliffhanger nonetheless.
Panel Panner, the subscriber list doesn’t tell the whole story. I read comics here, but I’ve never subscribed to one. In fact, I don’t even understand the point. Why would it be necessary to subscribe? What benefit would one derive from doing so?
While Thick Spacey keeps trending upward, other comics with real talent are stuck with low numbers. For example, The Barn only has 8807 readers here at GoComics. Besides increasing the number of readers who only come here for the sarcastic comments, I think we should also promote strips that deserve attention. My vote: The Barn by Ralph Hagen. Let’s see if we can get its numbers above 8900. Why should we keep rewarding bad talent all the time?
I’m assuming that you’re responding not to my last comment but the previous one re: DT subscribers.
Subscribing is like a RSS feed for your favorite blogs. You can have all the sites you’re following in one place. GoComics uses a filmstrip frame at the top of the page with an icon for each comic. You can go backward and forward by date. So if I don’t stop by here for a few days, I can quickly catch up with my favorites.
This is a disturbing thought (except maybe to Locher) but … well, we’ve never had a clear look at the full Mordred, so, what if he’s as anatomically-impossible in his way as anyone else in Thickworld, and the hood is really the cap end of a novelty condom? Thick could be in for the ride of his life!
I’ve just run through the Dick Tracy ilovecomix.com archive for 1963-1964.
Holy cow! Now I know where Locher got the idea to go off on weird, unrealistic, action-free tangents.
Five months of this Moon Maid silliness before Chet Gould remembered he was doing a detective strip. Even then the mystery involved a crime committed in 1918. No action, either, unless you count falling from a ladder because an eighty year old killer gave the ladder a push.
Maybe 1964 was a year of experimentation, and Gould forgot to tell his successors some experiments don’t work.
” Family members of victims have vowed to kill him on sight “
Careless transafer arrangements ! - Right out in the OPEN (?)
The potential target is held imprudently outside, on the street, in the rain, in front of the Sherrif’s office with just 2 armed Guards, while awaiting Tracy’s arrival
An aggrieved family member could easily with rifle and telescopic lens be watching for the Court transfer (for sentencing), to take place, contemplating the best time to take a ‘killing’ shot.
And there he is chained - standing right out in the open - an easy target ! Even for a drive-by shooting.
It’s inconsistent with, and seems to make nonsense out of, the meticulous plan to have ‘look alike’ decoy actors in other cars. Where are they now ? (-“The decoy cars are ready Dick”).
I’ll bet we’ll never see those ‘decoys’ ! It’s all just clumsy ” distracting ” talk, to contrive a scenario to have Tracy drive him alone !
yeah it occurred to no one involved in this bogus transfer scenario that maybe, just maybe more than one person should transport the vilest, most-hated, most-dangerous person on earth … can even locher be that dumb? (wait, no need to answer that.)
this smacks of a set-up. anyway,
Bring back classic DT! Free Gould! Gould Lives Despite Locher!
But think of the instructions we could hear if the decoy cars show up and form a convoy with Thick:
“Okay, Thick, we’ll follow you while you pretend to be our scout. Take the county road twenty miles until you come to the sign that says ‘Reichenbach Falls.’ Turn left, drive for exactly one mile, then step on the gas until you reach the Nappingville Jail.” A pause as Thick gets in his car with Mordred and leaves. “Okay, everyone, after we turn left at the Reichenbach Falls sign, we drive nine-tenths of a mile, come to a dead stop, get out, walk to the Falls and wave bye-bye to Thick.”
Thanks, billdi I’d like to see them bring back the classic DT, too. Either reprint the original strip from the start, or reboot the series in a Thirties/Forties backdrop of gangsters and hoods. From the little I’ve seen of the old material, that’s when Dick Tracy was at his best.
This whole “decoy” schtick looks like a set-up. But Locher is so lazy that he may expect this to be taken seriously.
Flight Suit, thats horrible news. I was quite a fan of Tintin and didnt know anything about him being based off a real person.
BillThompson, IIRC most people would rather forget about that whole Moon Maid thing that happened in the 60s. Ill have to go check it out myself, how bad can it be?
I’ve gotten so sleepy reading this arc that I’ve almost lost the laser-like emphasis that Locher presents. What’s the purpose of the hood, anyway? To keep the doc from eating people or to keep him away from the holiday fruitcake dish?
Actually, if he is the right kind of doctor, he might just be able to give Thick that nose job he so desparately needs and has needed fror 76 years!
NVash, the Moon Maid stuff is just totally wrong. The only good thing to say for it is the art \work has a lot of energy.
Moon Maid might have worked if she’d been presented as some sort of crime-fighter, or at least as an alien with a useful un derstanding of human peculiarities. That didn’t happen. She displayed a few convenient powers, when the plot required them, but that didn’t work well.
At a guess, Chet Gould wanted to satirize Project Apollo. But if you want to satirize something, you’d better know what you’re doing. Whether he talked about a habitable lunar valley, or lasers, or the failure of the Ranger 6 probe–he made a fool of himself.
His handling of Dick Tracy wasn’t much better. Junior and Moon Maid take off for the moon in a space coupe. Dick Tracy responds by quitting the police force! He changes his mind when a baffling case turns up, so his retirement was a bit of false drama.
scuttlebutt99, I give him until the end of the year. Well be lucky if he gets Mordred in the car by the end of the week.
BillThompson, I just read the Moon Maid story, or at least all of 1963. It really isnt that bad. Nothing much happened but it seems that even on Goulds worst days he was miles better than Locher.
However the whole time I read it I wondered one thing. Where did Juniors love come from? They went on one date after she got dolled up and next thing you know hes proclaiming his eternal love for her. That makes no sense. Another thing, no matter how many times he explained it I didnt understand the Moons temperature and days and I got tired of the explanations. Maybe it was just me.
I do see your point though. When Dick quit the force I was thinking that was rather unlike him. Just like Pat said, if that was Pat, theyve been together since 31, he couldnt just walk out like that. That again brings to question how old Dick is but Locher will probably never answer.
One thing I found hysterical. The second to last page of 1963, last panel, when they found out Dick was coming back with everyone including Moon Maid, that one man screaming ’Moon Maid? Oh no!’ For some reason I thought that was funny.
BillT There are many readers who were upset with Gould’s introduction of the Moon era (one of his many attempts to keep the strip relevant). And at one time I was one of them.(I’ve subsequently relented to a degree - his story telling technique and art style were at it’s peak then and those stories captured a whole new generation of readers. Some post here right now (e.g. Bribery)
The era needs to be looked at against the backdrop of what was happening in America at that time. Kennedy exaltations to America, the culture of the space race with the Soviet Union, Neil Armstriong was about to land on the Moon, and young America was enraptured with the realities of that time. In hindsight, it may seem silly for a Detective (comic strip) to go to the Moon but the financial reality was that 3 years later Gould would be making more money than he ever had before. Newspaper circulation in the Winter of 1967 hit a new high of 675 papers (rising from 507 in 1962 (i.e. the year in which the Space Coupe first appered).
The reaction of many older fans to the Moon Era could be looked at through the eyes of an early 1930’s fan who said (on the DT Yahoo board), he resented the introduction of the 2-Way Wrist Radio in 1946, as “being too futuristic”
No life was found on the Moon. The bounce of the era was short lived and Gould modified his strip down to earth again.The Space Coupe no longer appeared after July 1974 (circulation then down to, 375 papers), but he retained the Air Cars into early 1977. He retired at the end of that year.
Gould’s Bribery story was his longest, it ran from July 1965 to end October 1966 and would have a brief part 2 following an escape from prison. It was flavored with an array of great supporting chracters, Matty Square, Ugly Christine (sister) Nah Tay, The Chin Chillers and Secretary Miss Deal
For some perspective - when Max Collins left in 1993 circulation stood at 320 papers. Twelve years later (and until today) it’s only 50 papers
Many will agree that the Moon Era strips were considerably better than anyting we have seen in the past 17 years !
BillT, Have to disagree ! Gould did through Tracy’s urging, have Moon Maid “ZAPPING” foes with ‘electrical’ charges, jumping several feet from her index finger. They would become immobilized - frozen on the spot for several hours (Even Bribery and Ugly Christine got a taste sitting on a bench)
It was easier to accept that a few (less gifted) Moon people lived in a Valley on the other side of the Moon than being blessed with supernatural powers.
For me, that was the hardest idea to come to terms with !.
Panel-Panner, I take offense at one of your earlier posts, as I am sure others do. Please edit it. Thanks.
Are you saying that tongue-in-cheek? If not, let please let me know which post, what offends you, and how it should be edited. I posted five times previously and I don’t know what I said that would upset anyone (except Locher and Simon Penn).
You said “There is no God.” I take that seriously. In the same post, you posted the number of DT readers. This isn’t the proper forum for that. By my count, it is the tenth post of the day.
NVash, I suspect her race was all born with it. A Laser Beam it was called. And others may have used it but I can’t recall any one save perhaps the Moon Governor (Moon Maid’s dad) possibly using it (and only once on Earth).
It was after being pregnant she was trapped inside a huge Food Freezer (April 1965) by Matty Square’s gang, and using her “Laser Thought Powers” (mental telepathy), she contacted him as he was leaving Earth. He rescued her and scorched up two gang members in doing so.
And then I do recall later, a panel with her baby daughter (Honey Moon) touching Tracy on his nose and seeing a little ’ spark ’ fly.;-)
But the real point is that Moon Maid having a “Super Hero” power, and using it frequently in Dick Tracy - seemed really ‘over the top’
Sydney Phillips, I couldnt argue that if I tried. It is a little much for the strip. What happened to them all anyway? I know the Moon kind of faded from the story, Moon Maid died a horrible death in that car explosion, what about Honey Moon and Junior? It says on Wikipedia that Honey Moon got a new hairstyle to hide her antennae and she was phased out of the strip. How was she phased out and wheres Junior?
I know nobody can answer this but come now. I just read on Wikipedia, Junior had a son that also became Dicks sidekick. So theres Junior and then Junior Junior, Joseph Flintheart Tracy. His partner Pat retired. When is Dick going to get it that hes too old for this mess?
I agree with the over the top part, Sydney Phillips. Moon Maid’s powers were a deus ex machina. The things she did for Tracy (identifying a radio receiver in an attic, zapping people) could have been done equally well with some Diet Smith invention. And Gould spent half a year on a topic that didn’t have anything to do with crime stories, which was the major flaw.
The two-way wrist TV was introduced in 1964, too. It exceeded what could be done with 1964 electronics, but it wasn’t an unreasonable prediction. More importantly, Chet Gould suggested how it could be used. The one-man magnetic buckets were a reasonable idea, a “What if?” scenario in which something like the Bell rocket backpack could do something useful.
Looking at the Moon valley, I have to wonder why Gould didn’t rip off HG Wells’ “First Men in the Moon” and put the Selenites underground. He asked the readers to believe a lot that went against what was already well-established about the moon and physics. (An underground society was plausible; at the time there were signs of what might have been lunar outgassings–I can’t remember who thought he found spectroscopic carbon emissions in Aristarchus.)
Agree with NVash about the overwrought emotions there. The love-at-first-sight bit with Junior and Moon Maid didn’t seem unreasonable; I was more bugged by Tracy quitting the job, the heel-clickings when he came back, the “Oh no!” about Moon Maid’s return …
Moon Maid said something about her people not needing radio or telephones because they could communicate through their antennae. Gould used “laser beam” as a buzz word; lasers were new and mysterious. Someone called them an invention in search of a use, and for a while their output was jokingly measured in gillettes (as in “the number of Gillette razor blades this laser will cut through.”)
morrow said: You said “There is no God.” I take that seriously. In the same post, you posted the number of DT readers. This isn’t the proper forum for that. By my count, it is the tenth post of the day.
Sorry, but what does the line, “There is no God” (a cliche gag line) have to do with the number of subscribers to DT in a humorous sense? Would it be better if I said, “Where is God’s design in all of this?”
I hope you’re not prejudice against atheists. They have rights, too. Why would you be against an atheist for his nonbelief in God? After all, didn’t God make him that way? You’re not questioning God’s design, are you?
You know the sad thing is that if I were to take a long hiatus from this strip as Ive done with Brenda Starr Im pretty sure I wouldnt miss a thing. At least Brenda Starr is going somewhere. Well it was, last time I checked.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VMCiewc7mE
FLIGHT SUIT over 13 years ago
Good one Bill.
I have nothing to add.
Panel-Panner over 13 years ago
Human-debris-missing-link-scum-despicable-nonhuman-ghoul-dreaded-killer-with-no-compassion-or-remorse-most-hated-person-in-the-U.S. – is Locher hinting that this prisoner is a bit of a bad character? Such subtle characterization.
Panel-Panner over 13 years ago
BillT
Music for the first date?
Steve Bartholomew over 13 years ago
This is getting kinky.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Yeah, we all thought Locher was ripping off “Silence of the Lambs,” but he’s really going for “The Odd Couple.” Or maybe, given his lack of style, “The Boys in the Bland.”
margueritem over 13 years ago
Oboyohboyohboy! Your very own psycho, Tracy!
Midnite over 13 years ago
And they finally meet but theres not a word spoken between them! The tension is so thick one could cut it with a knife! What will Dick do now?
Seriously, these guys cant be that dumb. Even if Dick wasnt incompetent this is a horrible idea. Wheres his backup? I guess the good news is I doubt anyonell take any shots at him in that downpour so maybe hell make it to his destination without any snags. But wait, then it wouldnt be a very interesting strip. Again Im left wondering how its going to get worse. Its a different kind of cliffhanger but a cliffhanger nonetheless.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Can Thick be thinking, “This takes care of my Christmas shopping for Tess?”
Panel-Panner over 13 years ago
There is no God.
DT subscribers at GoComics:
11/19/10 - 22986
11/28/10 - 23008
12/05/10 - 23035
FLIGHT SUIT over 13 years ago
Panel Panner, the subscriber list doesn’t tell the whole story. I read comics here, but I’ve never subscribed to one. In fact, I don’t even understand the point. Why would it be necessary to subscribe? What benefit would one derive from doing so?
Panel-Panner over 13 years ago
While Thick Spacey keeps trending upward, other comics with real talent are stuck with low numbers. For example, The Barn only has 8807 readers here at GoComics. Besides increasing the number of readers who only come here for the sarcastic comments, I think we should also promote strips that deserve attention. My vote: The Barn by Ralph Hagen. Let’s see if we can get its numbers above 8900. Why should we keep rewarding bad talent all the time?
mrbribery over 13 years ago
“Funny Mordred, you don’t look like your drivers license photo.”
Panel-Panner over 13 years ago
Flight Suit:
I’m assuming that you’re responding not to my last comment but the previous one re: DT subscribers.
Subscribing is like a RSS feed for your favorite blogs. You can have all the sites you’re following in one place. GoComics uses a filmstrip frame at the top of the page with an icon for each comic. You can go backward and forward by date. So if I don’t stop by here for a few days, I can quickly catch up with my favorites.
Llewellenbruce over 13 years ago
He must be one ugly dude if he has to wear a hood all the time.
neonleon59 over 13 years ago
What happened to the little miniature lizard-looking things that were hooking his shirt to his hood? They’ve escaped!
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
This is a disturbing thought (except maybe to Locher) but … well, we’ve never had a clear look at the full Mordred, so, what if he’s as anatomically-impossible in his way as anyone else in Thickworld, and the hood is really the cap end of a novelty condom? Thick could be in for the ride of his life!
OldTracy over 13 years ago
Spacy, I just want you to know we’re all counting on you.
flanders22 over 13 years ago
It’s Mikey Myers! WATCH IT DICK!
davidf42 over 13 years ago
I’ll repeat my prediction - Sam Ketchum is under that hood.
Panel Panner - I’ve tried The Barn several times and I just can’t get interested in it. But to each their own.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
I’ve just run through the Dick Tracy ilovecomix.com archive for 1963-1964.
Holy cow! Now I know where Locher got the idea to go off on weird, unrealistic, action-free tangents.
Five months of this Moon Maid silliness before Chet Gould remembered he was doing a detective strip. Even then the mystery involved a crime committed in 1918. No action, either, unless you count falling from a ladder because an eighty year old killer gave the ladder a push.
Maybe 1964 was a year of experimentation, and Gould forgot to tell his successors some experiments don’t work.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
davidf42, I hope you’re right about that. Can you imagine the consequences when Thick unwittingly abuses his partner?
(Sure, yesterday Locher made it appear that it’s actually Dr. Mordred under the hood. But with Locher, what does evidence mean?)
Donaldo Premium Member over 13 years ago
If the gimp raped Marcellus Wallace what could it do for me?
Jtranser over 13 years ago
That’s not Mordred. It’s his twin brother, the true King of France.
FLIGHT SUIT over 13 years ago
You guys, Tintin has died:
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/huld-obit/
sydney over 13 years ago
” Family members of victims have vowed to kill him on sight “
Careless transafer arrangements ! - Right out in the OPEN (?)
The potential target is held imprudently outside, on the street, in the rain, in front of the Sherrif’s office with just 2 armed Guards, while awaiting Tracy’s arrival An aggrieved family member could easily with rifle and telescopic lens be watching for the Court transfer (for sentencing), to take place, contemplating the best time to take a ‘killing’ shot. And there he is chained - standing right out in the open - an easy target ! Even for a drive-by shooting.
It’s inconsistent with, and seems to make nonsense out of, the meticulous plan to have ‘look alike’ decoy actors in other cars. Where are they now ? (-“The decoy cars are ready Dick”).
I’ll bet we’ll never see those ‘decoys’ ! It’s all just clumsy ” distracting ” talk, to contrive a scenario to have Tracy drive him alone !
billdi Premium Member over 13 years ago
yeah it occurred to no one involved in this bogus transfer scenario that maybe, just maybe more than one person should transport the vilest, most-hated, most-dangerous person on earth … can even locher be that dumb? (wait, no need to answer that.) this smacks of a set-up. anyway, Bring back classic DT! Free Gould! Gould Lives Despite Locher!
btw, great stuff BT – love is in the air
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
But think of the instructions we could hear if the decoy cars show up and form a convoy with Thick:
“Okay, Thick, we’ll follow you while you pretend to be our scout. Take the county road twenty miles until you come to the sign that says ‘Reichenbach Falls.’ Turn left, drive for exactly one mile, then step on the gas until you reach the Nappingville Jail.” A pause as Thick gets in his car with Mordred and leaves. “Okay, everyone, after we turn left at the Reichenbach Falls sign, we drive nine-tenths of a mile, come to a dead stop, get out, walk to the Falls and wave bye-bye to Thick.”
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Thanks, billdi I’d like to see them bring back the classic DT, too. Either reprint the original strip from the start, or reboot the series in a Thirties/Forties backdrop of gangsters and hoods. From the little I’ve seen of the old material, that’s when Dick Tracy was at his best.
This whole “decoy” schtick looks like a set-up. But Locher is so lazy that he may expect this to be taken seriously.
CougarAllen over 13 years ago
Love is in the air … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNC0kIzM1Fo
-Cougar :{)
Midnite over 13 years ago
Flight Suit, thats horrible news. I was quite a fan of Tintin and didnt know anything about him being based off a real person.
BillThompson, IIRC most people would rather forget about that whole Moon Maid thing that happened in the 60s. Ill have to go check it out myself, how bad can it be?
Morrow Cummings over 13 years ago
I’ve gotten so sleepy reading this arc that I’ve almost lost the laser-like emphasis that Locher presents. What’s the purpose of the hood, anyway? To keep the doc from eating people or to keep him away from the holiday fruitcake dish?
Actually, if he is the right kind of doctor, he might just be able to give Thick that nose job he so desparately needs and has needed fror 76 years!
Morrow Cummings over 13 years ago
Panel-Panner, I take offense at one of your earlier posts, as I am sure others do. Please edit it. Thanks.
Morrow
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
NVash, the Moon Maid stuff is just totally wrong. The only good thing to say for it is the art \work has a lot of energy.
Moon Maid might have worked if she’d been presented as some sort of crime-fighter, or at least as an alien with a useful un derstanding of human peculiarities. That didn’t happen. She displayed a few convenient powers, when the plot required them, but that didn’t work well.
At a guess, Chet Gould wanted to satirize Project Apollo. But if you want to satirize something, you’d better know what you’re doing. Whether he talked about a habitable lunar valley, or lasers, or the failure of the Ranger 6 probe–he made a fool of himself.
His handling of Dick Tracy wasn’t much better. Junior and Moon Maid take off for the moon in a space coupe. Dick Tracy responds by quitting the police force! He changes his mind when a baffling case turns up, so his retirement was a bit of false drama.
Midnite over 13 years ago
scuttlebutt99, I give him until the end of the year. Well be lucky if he gets Mordred in the car by the end of the week.
BillThompson, I just read the Moon Maid story, or at least all of 1963. It really isnt that bad. Nothing much happened but it seems that even on Goulds worst days he was miles better than Locher.
However the whole time I read it I wondered one thing. Where did Juniors love come from? They went on one date after she got dolled up and next thing you know hes proclaiming his eternal love for her. That makes no sense. Another thing, no matter how many times he explained it I didnt understand the Moons temperature and days and I got tired of the explanations. Maybe it was just me.
I do see your point though. When Dick quit the force I was thinking that was rather unlike him. Just like Pat said, if that was Pat, theyve been together since 31, he couldnt just walk out like that. That again brings to question how old Dick is but Locher will probably never answer.
One thing I found hysterical. The second to last page of 1963, last panel, when they found out Dick was coming back with everyone including Moon Maid, that one man screaming ’Moon Maid? Oh no!’ For some reason I thought that was funny.
sydney over 13 years ago
BillT There are many readers who were upset with Gould’s introduction of the Moon era (one of his many attempts to keep the strip relevant). And at one time I was one of them.(I’ve subsequently relented to a degree - his story telling technique and art style were at it’s peak then and those stories captured a whole new generation of readers. Some post here right now (e.g. Bribery)
The era needs to be looked at against the backdrop of what was happening in America at that time. Kennedy exaltations to America, the culture of the space race with the Soviet Union, Neil Armstriong was about to land on the Moon, and young America was enraptured with the realities of that time. In hindsight, it may seem silly for a Detective (comic strip) to go to the Moon but the financial reality was that 3 years later Gould would be making more money than he ever had before. Newspaper circulation in the Winter of 1967 hit a new high of 675 papers (rising from 507 in 1962 (i.e. the year in which the Space Coupe first appered).
The reaction of many older fans to the Moon Era could be looked at through the eyes of an early 1930’s fan who said (on the DT Yahoo board), he resented the introduction of the 2-Way Wrist Radio in 1946, as “being too futuristic”
No life was found on the Moon. The bounce of the era was short lived and Gould modified his strip down to earth again.The Space Coupe no longer appeared after July 1974 (circulation then down to, 375 papers), but he retained the Air Cars into early 1977. He retired at the end of that year.
Gould’s Bribery story was his longest, it ran from July 1965 to end October 1966 and would have a brief part 2 following an escape from prison. It was flavored with an array of great supporting chracters, Matty Square, Ugly Christine (sister) Nah Tay, The Chin Chillers and Secretary Miss Deal
For some perspective - when Max Collins left in 1993 circulation stood at 320 papers. Twelve years later (and until today) it’s only 50 papers
Many will agree that the Moon Era strips were considerably better than anyting we have seen in the past 17 years !
BASSMANBOB6 over 13 years ago
Mordred attacking Dick who’s screaming like a little girl!
sydney over 13 years ago
BillT, Have to disagree ! Gould did through Tracy’s urging, have Moon Maid “ZAPPING” foes with ‘electrical’ charges, jumping several feet from her index finger. They would become immobilized - frozen on the spot for several hours (Even Bribery and Ugly Christine got a taste sitting on a bench)
It was easier to accept that a few (less gifted) Moon people lived in a Valley on the other side of the Moon than being blessed with supernatural powers.
For me, that was the hardest idea to come to terms with !.
Midnite over 13 years ago
Sydney Phillips, werent those other Moon people equally as gifted?
Panel-Panner over 13 years ago
morrow said, about 4 hours ago:
Panel-Panner, I take offense at one of your earlier posts, as I am sure others do. Please edit it. Thanks.Are you saying that tongue-in-cheek? If not, let please let me know which post, what offends you, and how it should be edited. I posted five times previously and I don’t know what I said that would upset anyone (except Locher and Simon Penn).
Morrow Cummings over 13 years ago
You said “There is no God.” I take that seriously. In the same post, you posted the number of DT readers. This isn’t the proper forum for that. By my count, it is the tenth post of the day.
veldy over 13 years ago
He got the quote wrong, should have been “the fool says there is no God”
sydney over 13 years ago
NVash, I suspect her race was all born with it. A Laser Beam it was called. And others may have used it but I can’t recall any one save perhaps the Moon Governor (Moon Maid’s dad) possibly using it (and only once on Earth).
It was after being pregnant she was trapped inside a huge Food Freezer (April 1965) by Matty Square’s gang, and using her “Laser Thought Powers” (mental telepathy), she contacted him as he was leaving Earth. He rescued her and scorched up two gang members in doing so.
And then I do recall later, a panel with her baby daughter (Honey Moon) touching Tracy on his nose and seeing a little ’ spark ’ fly.;-)
But the real point is that Moon Maid having a “Super Hero” power, and using it frequently in Dick Tracy - seemed really ‘over the top’
Just my reservation.
Midnite over 13 years ago
Sydney Phillips, I couldnt argue that if I tried. It is a little much for the strip. What happened to them all anyway? I know the Moon kind of faded from the story, Moon Maid died a horrible death in that car explosion, what about Honey Moon and Junior? It says on Wikipedia that Honey Moon got a new hairstyle to hide her antennae and she was phased out of the strip. How was she phased out and wheres Junior?
I know nobody can answer this but come now. I just read on Wikipedia, Junior had a son that also became Dicks sidekick. So theres Junior and then Junior Junior, Joseph Flintheart Tracy. His partner Pat retired. When is Dick going to get it that hes too old for this mess?
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
I agree with the over the top part, Sydney Phillips. Moon Maid’s powers were a deus ex machina. The things she did for Tracy (identifying a radio receiver in an attic, zapping people) could have been done equally well with some Diet Smith invention. And Gould spent half a year on a topic that didn’t have anything to do with crime stories, which was the major flaw.
The two-way wrist TV was introduced in 1964, too. It exceeded what could be done with 1964 electronics, but it wasn’t an unreasonable prediction. More importantly, Chet Gould suggested how it could be used. The one-man magnetic buckets were a reasonable idea, a “What if?” scenario in which something like the Bell rocket backpack could do something useful.
Looking at the Moon valley, I have to wonder why Gould didn’t rip off HG Wells’ “First Men in the Moon” and put the Selenites underground. He asked the readers to believe a lot that went against what was already well-established about the moon and physics. (An underground society was plausible; at the time there were signs of what might have been lunar outgassings–I can’t remember who thought he found spectroscopic carbon emissions in Aristarchus.)
Agree with NVash about the overwrought emotions there. The love-at-first-sight bit with Junior and Moon Maid didn’t seem unreasonable; I was more bugged by Tracy quitting the job, the heel-clickings when he came back, the “Oh no!” about Moon Maid’s return …
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
Moon Maid said something about her people not needing radio or telephones because they could communicate through their antennae. Gould used “laser beam” as a buzz word; lasers were new and mysterious. Someone called them an invention in search of a use, and for a while their output was jokingly measured in gillettes (as in “the number of Gillette razor blades this laser will cut through.”)
Panel-Panner over 13 years ago
Sorry, but what does the line, “There is no God” (a cliche gag line) have to do with the number of subscribers to DT in a humorous sense? Would it be better if I said, “Where is God’s design in all of this?”
I hope you’re not prejudice against atheists. They have rights, too. Why would you be against an atheist for his nonbelief in God? After all, didn’t God make him that way? You’re not questioning God’s design, are you?
Midnite over 13 years ago
You know the sad thing is that if I were to take a long hiatus from this strip as Ive done with Brenda Starr Im pretty sure I wouldnt miss a thing. At least Brenda Starr is going somewhere. Well it was, last time I checked.
Bill Thompson over 13 years ago
“He’s all yours.” Is that addresed to Thick or to Mordred?
Midnite over 13 years ago
The World may never know.