Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 25, 2021

Good morning™, Egyptologists!

Three days ago, charliefarmrhere said, “GADZOOKS Diet! Never mind Flattop. Can you take us way, way back, so I can see how the pyramids were built?” Apparently, he can.

The “original decoration,” by the way was apparently gleaming white, fine quality limestone that covered the whole Great Pyramid. Here is a before and after view:

https://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/12/04005947/original-giza-pyramid.jpg

The beautiful white stone was plundered for nearby building projects in the middle ages. One of the few remaining casing stones is now in the National Museum of Scotland, the only such stone on display outside of Egypt.

https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/world-cultures/ancient-egyptian-collection/ancient-egyptian-collection/pyramid-casing-stone/

Here is a short video from the Smithsonian, showing the labour-intensive process that must have gone into preparing that smooth white casing:

https://youtu.be/ujX9MEnYzU4

Sadly, Diet Smith was assassinated and the time probe destroyed by a team of historians and archeologists.

Can you go back go the Garden of Eden and have Tracy save Adam and Eve from that snake?

I guess this plays the assumption that the Sphynx was originally a statue like this, later transformed into the lion figure we now see. I expect archaeologists have observations that support this scenario.

Good morning™, Geezers of Giza !

Wow !  This takes me back. ;-D

Can he take us back to when the Fendahl guy was trying to lift off and his ship blew up which started the reaction of the creation of life ?

ZZZZzzzz,,,,

Pretty cool…I want one (^.^)

Next Diet will take them to see the discovery of tobacco, a key moment in the shortening of lifespans!

Zzz….

Pretty good!!! I bet they can do that in any movie studio too!!!

For crime fighting, the drone would be bound by the terms of a search warrant, and its purview would be constrained to the date in question and by the bounds of the statute of limitations. Geez, looks like a Lawyer’s real job is to make the simple very complicated!

I seem to recall the statuary was brightly painted at the time, so…

I just remembered the radio Adventures of Superman story in which an eccentric scientist developed a device that picked sound up from the past. Most of the story was recovering it from crooks who’d stolen it, then the “proof” was that Superman and the scientist could listen in on the Gettysburg Address. The next story started with them accidentally tuning in on a crime that had happened minutes before across town. Superman flew off to deal with that crime and the listening device was conveniently never mentioned again.

Actually they’re both looking at an old Camel cigarettes billboard out on US Route 20.

Now we can see if aliens built the thing or not.

Great images again today . But it seems a little slow to me .

This opens up all kinds of plot possibilities, with lengthy returns to the past for story lines, as old cases are revisited.

How will the future (present) be changed by those in the past seeing a strange flying object in the air?

“We tried organic transfer, but we lost Doug and Tony.”

1-DT: Ya know, I’ve always wondered about the first porno movie ever made. Like – did it have a story? How was its production values? Can you dial that up?

2-DOIT: Of course, my boy! Here it is. As you can see from the opening scene it had a story line and pretty good production. And, like modern pornos, its title was a play on words. It was called The Sphynxter and the actress who starred in it had some bodacious “pyramids”.

DT: Ummm, can you Fast Forward this thing?

Look up King Tut?

“What happened to the original decoration anyway?”

“I plan to send it back in time to my past self so he can sell it for dough. I sure as heck didn’t make my money by WORKING for it! Oh, don’t give me that look, it technically already happened.”

Sometime soon Diet has to mention how no one in the past can see the drone.

Oh,look.An illegally parked chariot.

Next on the time machine parade—-“The Rookie Mistakes Of Pat Patton”.

We’ll be here until Labor Day.

This could be fun! What will we see?

To get serious for a second——

The strip usually does an Annual “9-11” tribute.

The current issue of AARP magazine has a lengthy article where survivors of “9-11” areinterviewed.Absolutely wonderful,And hair-raising.

where are the ancient aliens?

“Here’s one of Junior when he was five, playing with your toothbrush in the bathroom. It doesn’t end well.”

As Mike Curtis well knows,the first rule is “You Can’t Change History”.Ask any Silver AgeSuperman story.

Doggone Lex Luthor and that Red Kryptonite.

Am I the only one here who’s read Isaac Asimov’s classic, The Dead Past?

….Orrrrrrr…..a skillfully installed painting of that stupendous moment……..like, y’know, the Planet Of The Apes conclusion when the Statue Of Liberty buried up to her armpits in rubble looked so……..real….gosh!!

This new storyline can go one of two ways, seems to me. 1: As some commentators have suggested, Tracy & Diet Smith use it to look back on famous crimes & criminals of Tracy’s past, meaning it could go on indefinitely & raise havoc with the Tracy Time Line, or 2: Word of this deice quickly leaks out, some villains steal it for their own nefarious purposes, Tracy catches them, Diet Smith then destroys it, once again learning the lesson there are some thing Man is not meant to know. & this storyline is wrapped up by Halloween.Place your bets.

That should be “Word of this device”.

& that should be “there are some things”

I expect that some way this story bit will start off the next story. Something they see in the past figures into the coming story. That’s what I would do.

A reminder from my post yesterday: looking into the past one day ago = one hour ago = equals 1 second ago = equals seeing the present. It’s all in the machine settings. What a potential for privacy abuse!

Sure, Diet, prime Tracy with a little flashy look back at some popular history bit like the pyramids of Gizeh. Then, once he’s been softened up, hit him with what you really want to do with your new little gizmo, the Time Drone….

Any second now…someone is going to committ a crime which they’ll see on screen but can’t do anything about it. Just shock and awe.

Drone seems like a combination of The Time Tunnel and the Wayback machine courtesy of Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

The time traveling drone is a disaster waiting to happen…..who knows what horrible things will occur when some genius does something that triggers an alternate reality or changes history and eliminates people or events.