Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 12, 2021

Good morning™, forensic examiners!

Smith has said before that he could tell the difference between his Coupe and the Moon people’s Coupes. He says that only one of them could have travelled that far.

Smith still says that’s a picture of the surface of Jupiter. Whatever! Mike needs to do a bit more research.

Well, our speculation that he meant a moon of Jupiter kind of goes out the window.

Looks like my guess of that Space Coupe taking a one way trip to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter was right.

My question is, why are we spending 3 days on a rabbit trail that seems to have no connection to the goings on with either Mysta or Honeymoon?

Flash Munro said the stolen Space Coupe was on a crash course with Jupiter back in 2013. Diet is just confirming what we’ve known all along.

Someone is OBVIOUSLY off their a.d.d. medication

I would much rather Team Tracy stick to one plot from start to finish. When they jump all over the place like they currently are the end results are usually disappointing, and that’s being kind.

Just an opinion which I’m sure is agreed with by more people than the apologists and the keepers of the truth want us to know!

The wreakage in yesterday’s and todays pictures are different and you can’t blame this goof on the colorist!

Diet Smith must have disgusting breath which explains why Tracy never gets too close to him! LOL!

Good morning™, gruesome reveals !

They could be dead just from all the good air running out regardless the rest of the coupe being intact. Orrr… this could have only been a two day trip in strip time and the men are yet alive while rationing what meager food is left and still having reasonably good air to breathe. Former Moon Gov will be asked to go out and retrieve the retrobates (reprobates) to be brought back to “face the music”, as Willy says.

A mission will be mounted and then we get back to the kiddies and the question of will protection will be used or if Astor will be going “bareback”. Then a visit to a large underground tunnel where city workers find a badly deteriorated corpse. How is Sam doing with his hangman comic and has the breakroom pastry machine been restocked ?

“…and that’s a good thing, right?”

I like how he avoids the obvious answer.

The space coupe was stolen, but I recall it was Smith who set the controls for deep space. So this makes Diet’s statement a murder confession, No one can possibly infer what the original trajectory of the coupe was from a piece of debris.

Similar builds, similar mustaches…could Archival be a clone of Smith?

Not to nit pick, but I think they meant Ganymede since it has a more solid surface.

“On” Jupiter? Jupiter is a gas giant. There is no Jupiter to crash “on” to. Torn apart by friction entering the atmosphere, maybe. Crushed by high atmospheric pressure, no doubt. But there is no actual surface for crashing onto or into.

This is way out there , or is it just me ? Images are just great as usual .

Built the space coup in Europe (metric) and launched it from the USA (imperial)

Except, of course, that Jupiter is a giant ball of hydrogen gas. You can’t crash on it, you can only fall into it.

Mike seems to have his Robert Altman hat on again, lavishing so much space on ancillary threads that the main story is getting very little facetime thus far. Wagging the dog….

Last I heard, Jupiter is a gas giant without a solid surface…

Maybe NASA should contact ole Diet Smith?

I think it crashed on a moon of Jupiter.

Flash could have been a rock star because he had a smash hit.

How is it that suddenly, there is only one space coupe that could travel that far? Even the original prototype, back in the 60s, zipped to the moon in minutes.

A crash would display an entire debris field not just a broken magnetic arm

I suppose it would be pointless to tell the want wits writing this that jupiter is a gas giant and you don’t land on the surface you would earth or mars. and you sure don’t take pictures of it

Has anyone mentioned that Jupiter doesn’t have a solid surface or am I the first to point this out?

This meandering story makes me believe that Mike is trying my writing approach whereby Joe just submits daily pictures and Mike just throws some words on/at them. That reminds me…

1-DT: What’s this then?

2-DOIT JUST: That, my friend, is, wait, are? Anyway, leftover pieces of the Space Coupe I purposely crashed in space with two people on board. BWAAA HAAA HAAAAA!

3-DT: FINALLY! A crime I can act on. Doit, you’re under arrest for Space Littering. Are you going to come quietly or do I have to put a couple of slugs in you?

DOIT: I’ll come quietly of course – I’m smoking a Calmgar, patent pending. To borrow an old slogan from Lucky Strike- C.M.E.T.H.C: Calmgar Means Extra Tetra Hydro Cabinol!*

Jeez all you astronomy majors, just ask Branson. He was just up there. The boys are trying extremely hard to make this epic adventure of Tracy & company irrelevant before the 90th anniversary. Nice “work” guys. Does anyone remember the last time these stooges pumped out a straightforward, clean, no sidetracked story with a good Villain?…. Bueller, Buelller, anyone?

Hopefully, optimistically, (foolishly?)… I think the reappearance of Bribery’s ring and Diet Smith’s “story” about the “final fate” of the Doctors aboard the space coupe are related to a bigger story that might take awhile to reveal itself. I’m basing this on the fact that when Mike was at the top of his game, he had Bribery at work secretly behind the scenes for many, many months before his suspected involvement was confirmed. Plus, I’d like to think that the little detail about Jupiter not having a solid surface to crash onto is not a glaring mistake but a deliberate red flag to readers that something’s not quite right with the narrative that Tracy is being fed.

It never struck me as feasible that Smith would voluntarily, unprompted by any external pressure, destroy something as valuable as a space coupe. What is entirely feasible, based on real-world events where Nazi scientist were not punished for their war crimes but instead put to work by either the U.S. or Soviets, is that the coupe was used to secret away the doctors by Smith so they could be put to work by him.

A more far-flung possibility involves the Lunarians. What if an internal rogue element snatched the doctors and has had them developing technology they intend to use to subjugate the rest of their race? The “reappearance” of Bribery’s ring might actually be a newly-constructed duplicate, intentionally leaked to an outside actor as a working prototype.

But then again, what do I know?? I’m just another apologist fanboy who’s only as correct as a stopped clock…

I thought it was Elon Musk’s?

I was back into this strip by 2013……..I was under the impression that Diet deliberately sent those guys on route to Jupiter….he was “having a dark night of the soul” at (we assume) the very same desk from which he called Tracy at home to report (while laughing hysterically!…….) that “we have under this roof the first known inhabitant of another planet!”…..(something along that line…I dunno, 1963 (or was it still ’62?) was a long time ago). Anyway I remember Diet saying to himself: “I wish I had never invented the Space Coupe”……….

Who took the picture?

One of the Sunday respondents correctly stated that the coupe could not have crashed on Jupiter. Jupiter is a gas giant with no visible surface. It would have made more sense for the coupe to have crashed on one of Jupiter’s moons.

A cross-section of Jupiter:

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/cross-section-of-jupiter-showing-the-outer-atmosphere-to-the-core-picture-id641457280

What bugs me is that this strip is just a recap of yesterday’s. I like stories with multiple threads, because that’s like real life. But a recap has all the appeal of a Friends “clip show.” Man, I felt cheated whenever they ran one of those.

I read some strips from October 2013 and noticed some details relevant to today’s and yesterday’s strips.

1) Mumbles shot Dr. Ghote in the left arm. Dr. Sail bandaged it but Ghote would need more care than that.

2) The doctors clearly state that they have no water or food and limited oxygen. A person will die of dehydration before they starve.

3) That same panel depicts them in the asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter and Flash says that they’re on a collision course with Jupiter.

4) After Mysta finds out who she really is, we’re told that Retik and Stellaluna would help her adjust to society. Are they still there? If so, wouldn’t they be the first to notice that she’s been gone for few days without calling?

In conclusion, I think that Ghote, Sail and Flash are either all dead or that they were rescued within days, assuming their oxygen lasted that long.

Maybe they convinced Flash to try to override the controls and the coupe exploded as a result.

That would explain the part on the moon with rest of the wreckage “consumed” by Jupiter’s gravity.

Nah, I don’t think so, Diet. For one thing, Jupiter is a gas giant, and nothing would “crash on its surface.” Maybe on one of its 79+ moons, yes, especially the the big four “Galilean” ones (that were observed by Galileo). But, even then, loss of one magnetic control arm does not prove the errant Space Coupe crashed. The evidence is deficient. At most it demonstrates a possibility that the Space Coupe crashed. Show me more substantial evidence. Meanwhile, I’ll remain cautiously skeptical.

Don’t be a gullible detective, Tracy. Diet Smith is brilliant, but he blusters and has been know to shade the truth. He may have a hidden agenda….