Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for September 29, 2021

“We’ll get to the bottom of the Black Socks scandal!”

“How old are you dude?”

Good morning™, time jumpers !

Aaannd back to the time drone travels. I bet Diet is not searching for the Tracy souvenirs.

Good morning™, everyone!

More testing on the Time Drone: I’m pretty sure that west longitude (west indicated by the minus sign). Here’s a list of places that 77 degrees west passes through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_meridian_west This coordinate would be a tiny bit west of there. Once he got the coordinates put in, he’s honing in on a particular date.

Smith: “How can you tell? Maybe it’s just coming back. Oh, and just a thought, you know the Earth moves through space-time, right? Can you promise me it won’t pop out of time in the middle of someone important? Like, me?”

Someone mentioned the “Time Drone” and it’s back! Wonder where the coordinents are going to lead it?

The time drone will be hard to steal. The drone itself will be easy but the machine that makes it work will need some heavy equipment to move it.

Why doesn’t Diet Smith wear goggles? Is cigar smoke enough to protect him from the bright light?

Then some redneck with a shotgun blows the probe out of the sky.

The MC had an opportunity to give us a kaleidoscope-like mass of swirling color in panels 2&3. Instead, we get a dull peach shade and some black lines. How boring.

Oh, and I still wonder if “Goggles Guy” is the Ace’s mole.

Maybe it’s 77 years ago – June 6, 1944.

What a weird way to set the date, just in order to keep us guessing.

Time (drone) really does fly!

i know exactly where it’s going: tomorrow’s strip

1-SCIENCE GUY: What? Do you really want me to “set the controls for the heart of the sun”, DOIT???

DOIT TOIT: NO, YOU IDIOT! I was just singing a Pink Floyd song!

2-SCIENCE GUY: Oh. Good. Well, thar she blows! WHOA! I ALMOST SENT MY ELBOW BACK IN TIME! CAN WE MOVE THIS CONSOLE A LITTLE FURTHER FROM THE ACTION???

3-DOIT: NO! You’re the one who said we should bring it out into the open so we can see it disappear and that having to place the Time Drone inside the safety of the Sphincter Cavity I designed “made you uncomfortable”

SCIENCE GUY: SNIFF! I didn’t know I had that phobia until my first Digital Prostate Probe in Med School! My whole life changed that day!

DOIT TOIT: I’m gonna probe yours with my boot if you lose that Time Drone! WHERE IS IT???

SCIENCE GUY: It’s … OH MY GAWD!!!!

Dun dun dunnnnnn

If someone were to go on the lam after stealing the Time Drone, could he be considered a “tempus fugitive”?

Please don’t throw things…

At last….back to the object which started this story.

The Time Drone is on its way, I trust Diet Smith Industries came up with the technology to monitor its whereabouts.

Next, Ace of Spades and the Apparatus will be making their moves.

At last! We learn who sawed Courtney’s boat!

“Goggles’” remark in panel 2, that he is “homing in on the date,” shows unequivocally that what precedes it is not the date but something else. A location coordinate would make sense. If it is a West Longitude, then whatever Diet Smith proposes tracking could be (should be) interesting. Federal government stuff?

In any case, the Time Drone is at last in action again. Can’t wait to see when/where it does its thing….

We shall soon find out who stole Diet Smith’s bag lunch from the break room.