Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 10, 2021

Look to see humanity. Herculaneum and Pompeii

Eruption of Mount Vesuvius remembered to this day.

A fateful trip, the drone did slip to 79 AD

Molten rock and ash did spew and splash. Too few survived to flee.

In the “Garden of the Fugitives” victims curled up to die

Heat shock brought death with rapidity. No time to pray or cry.

Organs and blood were vaporized. The dead dropped where they stood

To try and outrun lava an instinct that did no good.

Smith did gaze and was amazed. Soon forced to bow his head

Extinguished then his stogie out of deference to the dead.

I hope Diet has a self destruct mechanism built into that drone!

That’s pretty silly. Everyone knows Tunguska was an alien spacecraft that crashed. No debris was found because the Rooshians gathered up the pieces and have been trying to reverse engineer it ever since.

Good morning™, ladies and gentlemen!

Meet “the mole”! So, now we know it wasn’t the “googles guy.” It’s amazing that he has worked for the new Ace of Spades for years, but apparently hasn’t been inside the Apparatus HQ before.

A massive explosion in 1908 in the Tunguska forest in a sparsely populated part of Siberia flattened about 80 million trees, but no impact crater was ever found. It is thought to have been a meteor and it was the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

Mount Vesuvius famously buried the city of Pompeii in 79 AD. It is the only volcano in Europe still active in the last 100 years.

I’m surprised the neighbors haven’t reported all that smoke coming out of Apparatus HQ to the fire department.

Good morning™, sneaky subversive snakes !

I see insider trading about to commence. Morocco Mole he aint !

I’m surprised Smith Industries does not have secret surveillance cams going at all times. You never know what you’ll catch.

I’m still picturing holding down a rabid coyote until help arrives!

Sterling’s job must be as Diet’s smoking buddy!

Not for nothing but he’s such a sterotype character that team Tracy would certainly get in trouble if anyone important read the strip! LOL!

It may be time to quit and I don’t mean smoking!

Should he be telling this to the whole group? The more people who know an informer’s identity, the greater the chance that his cover will be blown!

I would hate to be breathing the air in that smoky room!

I’m sure the Apparatus was just THRILLED to know those two situations: "Hooray, finally science will be able to definitively identify what year Vesuvius erupted! "

Not.

Eliot should tell them that the drone’s been to ancient Egypt. Maybe the drone’s the reason nearly all the Pharaohs’ tombs have been broken into! ;-)

According to one of my books, the comet that landed in Tunguska was actually a spaceship from another planet.

So, how long was the time drone back in Pompeii? I am assuming that is the Vesuvius eruption Smith wanted investigated… Damn thing has erupted quite a number of times, but Pompeii would make sense – however nothing else in the story arc does so not sure we would expect this to. The burning (if I can use the adjective for a volcanic eruption) question is the date when the drone found the two days of eruption. Changes in dating systems, evidence from the site, and perhaps faulty memories of those who wrote about it years later, leave us with a traditional date and modern estimates spread out over three months. Does the drone hang around for months? Do you keep adjusting it for small increments of an hour or two until you find the right date? Do you keep filming for two days during the destruction of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and lesser explored sites?

I take it the “Apparatus” is named after the most commonly used apparatus the group uses, the ciggy lighter!

the overwhelming stench of cigarettes’ might give you away unless they’re nose blind.

Super great images again today , But all of that smoke isn’t good for the lungs for sure .

So the MC is a fan of 60s cartoons with the stereotyping depiction of Mr. Eliot, especially with the moustache.

Does Sterling have more than a mere passing resemblance to Lafayette Austin, Crystal’s father? Somebody check his belt buckle.

Interesting that The Apparatus is made up of nicotine addicts.

At first, I thought in P4 that Sterling had a pacifier in his mouth.

And it boils down to that!

Gangsters are not known for being well educated. I wonder just how many of the thugs in that room even know what Tunguska and Vesuvius are?

1-RATFACE: Everybody lit up? Yes? Ok, I hereby call this Board Meeting to order…

2-…This guy here is Scarfy Face. He claims that there is a lot more money in narcotics than we’ll ever make in selling untaxed tobacco products.

the room WHAT? NO WAY! BOOOOO! LIAR!

3-SCARFY FACE: It’s true. Twice as much in fact…

4-… And here’s why – as you know, lots of places have banned smoking which has reduced the places and time people have to smoke. Well, PEOPLE CAN SECRETLY SNORT AND POP PILLS ANYTIME, ANY WHERE!

the room HE’S RIGHT! HEAR HEAR!

5-RATFACE: I hereby move that we stop smoking and start taking drugs instead.

SCARFY: Ummm, that’s not the takeaway here, Rat, I meant…

DENTHEAD: Let us all recite for one last time our Apparatus ID code:

DO YOU SMOKE AFTER SEX?

the room I DON’T KNOW, I’VE NEVER LOOKED

RATFACE: Meeting adjourned. SCARFY: AY YI YI…

“Don’t worry. Gaining access to the time drone will be no problem”. Will a drugged guard be part of this storyline? Too bad, had he been drinking the same brand of coffee as MCU, he would be awake until the break of dawn.

Cigar smoke….cigarette smoke…what a combination…suitable for background music… “smokin’ in the boys room, smokin’ in the boys room, nah, teacher don’t you fill me up with your rule, ‘cause everybody knows that smokin’ ain’t allowed in school”…

Sterling Eliot….inside man for Ace of Spades….and a gigolo for the ladies….put a beret on him and he could pass as a Hollywood director.

…..must be a ventriloquist, too…..his decks of teeth don’t part when he talks……….

There are several elements of this story that we have seen before.

When Diet Smith Industries invented X-Ray Goggles, the Apparatus knew about it from a plant inside the company. The majority of the story took place in Cuba and dealt with a Cuban gang which used to have ties to the Apparatus, which once owned several casinos in Cuba pre-Castro revolution. The stereotype look of Eliot makes one think of a Cuban or South American.

Little Notting was Ace in that particular story. I’m wondering if we may have met the new Ace in this arcas well?

During this story Smith’s X-Ray Goggles proved to have other abilities like curing migraines or sending out waves of force strong enough to cause rock falls.

Specs and Spicy were the main antagonists although we met others (It’s a pretty good story but with several interruptions and guest appearances that have nothing to do with the main story). https://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2015/12/26

(Also during the story, Smith Industries invented a miniature drone called the Sunbug which was .75 inch, the size of a large insect. I don’t remember that Tracy has made much use of it. This was before Riger introduced a large police drone he invented so Riger’s could have been unnecessary if anyone had remembered Diet’s invention. Of course, Riger’s drone was introduced in a story not written by Mike.)

Thanks for the background. Its nice to have the continuity highlighted!

Hmmm…The Time Drone can only record history… Not affect or change it…And nobody can be teleported there a la the " Time Tunnel ", " Star Trek " and some " Twilight Zone " episodes and return…

Besides, hasn’t most of the " unclaimed riches " been claimed ?

So why hijack it ?

Oh that’s right ! This is Tracyland… Where anything can, and will, happen… \sarcasm

You tell everyone who your secret mole is?

Arcangelo was that little girl’s Archangel from Tracy’s Hall of Fame! ;o)

I’m surprised the smoke alarm hasn’t gone off yet!

Since Diet Smith is on a disaster kick, maybe next time he’ll send the time drone back to the opening of “Heaven’s Gate”.

I’m pretty sure Sterling Eliot doesn’t get to smoke so heavily, or at all, at his job (whatever it turns out to be) at Smith Industries, where there is a very different atmosphere (literally). Is he positioned highly enough to guarantee that security will be easily bypassed when Ace of Spades makes his move to grab the Time Drone? It looks as though he is, or perhaps he has allied finks in the security branch, such as it is (it’s been rather porous, at best)!

I’m fascinated by two things here outside the story arc:

That’s a lot of people smoking. I say this as someone who doesn’t mind people smoking. I haven’t smoked for 30 years, but I don’t care if someone wants to light up. That Apparatus headquarters is going to look a sickly yellow when they turn the lights on. I don’t even want to see everyone’s lungs.

It’s nice to see that Sterling’s skin tone is legit as represented by the MC, save for that one instance of mis-coloring on Friday. I notice that the ‘official’ coloring here doesn’t add white for his eyes, but the MC does. Contrast this to the Ace of spades standing next to him who has whites in his eyes showing behind his head and face covering. It’s interesting that the MC adds a detail that the art from team Tracy doesn’t add. That’s certainly forgivable, but it shows a care was taken that we haven’t seen much. Was the MC replaced between Friday and Saturday?