Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 22, 2021

Smith’s drone it travels back in time. Union Station platform

Feast your eyes on distant past. Product of a brainstorm.

Look to see a famous face. Flattop disembarks

Pre-crime before his dirty deeds. A hired gun for larks.

Where does it go? What does it see? Mystery does grow

Images that fascinate. Faces we all know.

Look to see, amazingly, a day of infamy

Ninety years of Tracyville. Big Anniversary!

Good morning™, people of the future!

Well, it seems that Diet Smith’s secret is still a secret.

The flying saucer thing in the top optional panel is interesting. It reminds me of Forbidden Planet that somebody told me to watch during the last story. I really liked the movie, but I thought that a saucer shape didn’t seem very practical for a spaceship in terms of interior space. I also thought that the “tractor” that they used for travelling around on the planet’s surface was very “boxy” in comparison to the spacecraft. I suppose it was easier to construct the prop out of plywood or something. Anyway, flying saucers have been a tradition for a long time.

Another exciting adventure begins for our main man Dick

I’m sure whatever awaits us will be exciting unique and slick

Mystery intrigue suspense humor and much much more

Tighten up your seatbelts there’s a lot we have in store

So lift your voice and raise a glass and offer up a shout

We’re gonna believe that by the end we’ll see the team has figured it out!

“This is said in total sincerity"

Bozoscar doesn’t know what he’s missing! LOL!

Well, it looks like Smith has invented a means to send a drone into the past and take videos. And it’s invisible, apparently. I was wrong about it being a time viewer. Ah, well. I bet nothing goes to plan, though…

Good morning™, ghosts of the past !

Will Diet dare watch the “film clip” of his boy being killed …… all over again only this time seeing it happen ?  Some long time open cases are about to be closed.

Diet Smith has invented the rerun?

This kind of reminds me a little of the episode back in late 1980’s or early 90’s where a criminal scientist had his brain become a computer that outlived his body……

For some time now (pun intended) Smith Industries has produced wrist devices that utilize holographic projection. So following that SciFi premise, it’s logical that Diet’s team could have further developed that tech to create a holographic camouflage, similar to the alien hunters in the Predator movies. If Tracy lives in a universe with Lunarians and space coupes, why not add in the established tropes of wormhole time travel and cloaking devices? In for a penny, in for a pound, eh? If this new conceit brings us an interesting, well paced story then I’m all for it.

what I love about this is it is exactly the truth about time travel to the past……theoretically it is possible to view the past from another dimension, just not interact with it…..

Dang! I was hoping Flattop was still alive!

He has do a Flettop replicant? Great! But why?

A Flattop hologram. Who’d have thought?

Figures they’d have a story about a first responder killed during a hurricane when Henri is so close to Boston today.

Diet’s invented… reruns?

I wonder how this technology is limited because it would short circuit any investigation.

This could help with several Cold Cases

If Tracy knows Flattop is dead wouldn’t his response to an image be, “Where did you get the footage?” or, “Wow! Who’s playing Flattop in the scene?” rather than “He’s alive?” (Of course in the Marvel Comics universe a villain can come back to life more often than the Doctor… But I guess some Tracy villains have been given a second shot at life – and Tracy.)

“You see, Tracy, this is what we call a ‘recording’. That somebody is visible in the recording doesn’t mean they’re alive. It’s honestly a bit strange that you need to have this explained to you, Tracy.”

WOW ! , This is " BIG " the flat top reappears and also what great images today . The image of Tracy in the fifth one and the flying space ship in the first one . I do wonder how anyone can stand the smoke that is in the room with that cigar ? Yuck !

Is Diet able to look into the past? Is that what this breakthrough is about?

Oh my GOD! They got footage of Brad Pitt out of makeup The horror!!!

Deepfake?

GADZOOKS Diet! Never mind Flattop. Can you take us way, way back, so I can see how the pyramids were built?

Looks like Smiths device can see “used photons” gather them back to some semblance of cohesion and replay events from the “past” or a probable past at best.

So his project is a video surveillance system?

Time travel? A.I.? (Although why would you waste A.I. on Flattop?) Yet another attempt by Team Tracy to resurrect Flattop and bring him back into the story?

1-DOIT JUST: I hope you got some dough to invest in Smith Industries because the stock is going to take off when people get a load of what I’m about to show you!

DT: That’s Insider Trader and since I’m not a Senator, I can’t get away with it.

2-DOIT: That’s too bad, my boy. Take a gander…

3-FLATTOP: Do you know what deja vu is? I feel like I’ve done this before.

4-DT: YOU CAN LOOK INTO THE PAST??? OMG! So your plan to monetize this invention is…

5-DOIT: BLACKMAIL! And you’re my first ‘client’. Hey Tech Boy! Dial this thing back to when Tracy succumbed to the charms of Breathless. Or one of those many clandestine meetings with Kandi Kane.

DT: OOH! DO ONE OF THOSE! I’d like to see that too!

DOIT: I don’t think you’re getting the idea here, Tracy. This isn’t PAY FOR VIEW!

„Yet another attempt by Team Tracy to resurrect Flattop and bring him back into the story?“ – well, subtract the question mark and add, well, a period.

No exclamation mark here. Others have noted the big anniversary just around the corner.

The only thing certain is that our next „special guest villain“ is going to be the Flattop Joker – er – Jones!

ka-zombie

DIET SMITH: “Tracy, this is my latest project… the Temporal Aerial Reconnaissance Drone Image Scanner, informally known as the… wait a minute… [expletive]!! Somebody’s already used that acronym!”

Don Everly died today. Very sad news. End of an era.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/22/us-music-star-don-everly-dies-aged-84

OK, if this is Flattop’s debut — 1943 — they’re saying that Tracy has been an active cop for more than 78 years. How will they finesse this?

Okay, I give up…what is the big deal with this Flattop fetish. Of all the persons he could have chosen, why him?

Further and further into the Marvel Universe we go. Geez, it was nice when this was a cops/great villains strip.

I wonder how small the time-drone is? Plus it must have some sort of “cloaking device” to make it appear invisible.

Moon Maid Look-alike contest 1964. I think this was the last Promo.

http://bennypdrinnon.blogspot.com/2013/06/moon-maid-contest.html

It could be an AI or a deepfake, or both.

Sunday largely reiterates Saturday. Tracy is astounded, or maybe just shocked, at the “appearance” of Flattop Jones. But Diet Smith reassures him that all is not quite as it seems. Flattop is securely still dead-fish dead. But with Smith’s new technology, we can see the Past as if we were present then. Nothing about any “interaction” with the Past, though. What exactly is the purpose, in Smith’s mind, of this Time-Viewer thingie?

I’m sure there’s a good reason why the original picture of FlatTop several weeks ago was in black & white & today’s is in color.

Where’s “THE CLAW”?Mike has used all the other “movie villains”,and the man’s feelings are probably hurt.