Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for October 02, 2021

Good morning™, everybody!

Tracy has correctly surmised that Diet is producing various proofs of the concept he recently announced. Lizz has yet another non-crime idea for the Time Drone — the thing has many potential uses.

Is that a new hairstyle for Lee Ebony? I think we’ve seen it before, at least once.

Definitely a potential window into past adventures. ✨

The queue to Diet’s office will be a long one

Good morning™, bereaved sisters !

A sad heartbreak moment for Lizz. May she get that wish come true and Diet wont charge her a dime for it.

I would love for this story to go back to this “period”. What an interesting twist.

“. . . a year’s pay . . .”

Diet Smith’s ears perk up.

So Lizz’s sister’s last name is “Marrlin?” Did Shelley make a spelling error? It’s not “Marlin?”

Again with the parallels to Asimov’s “The Dead Past.” In it, it was when a grieving mother wanted to see her dead daughter again that things started to go south. I wonder if Mike or Joe have read it.

Poor Lizz. That’s so sweet and sad.

Lizz’s reaction is probably indicative of some big problems with this technology. Morbid fascination with lost relatives is a very dangerous slope to slide down.

SEE her again? Lizz, Diet could PREVENT HER DEATH if he wanted to. How does that make you feel, Lizz? It is really bonkers how small-minded all these characters are being about Diet’s ability to send a controlled physical object back in time.

Tracy’s assumption of Smith’s plan makes less sense than mine (see yesterday’s deeply insightful comment). In a world where they put a person on the moon twenty years ago (their time) the photoshop capabilities are so good that simple pictures of historical events would prove absolutely nothing. The evidence used to verify a picture could have been used to fake the picture. Find Judge Crater, or Jimmy Hoffa, or Dutch Shultz’s treasure, or the Clotilda (someone claimed to have located it a couple years ago, but I think that was later shown to be a premature claim).

And why in the heck would Diet Smith feel a need to prove to anyone he had a time top? Unless you’re going to make an IPO what does it matter? Smith would simply do what he wants to do, or what fabulously wealthy people pay him to take pictures of and not give a d**n what the public thinks.

Hopefully not stretched out on the floor…

Everyone will be bugging Diet to see a lost loved one, or find a hidden treasure or…it’ll be a mess.

1-SAM: Oh. You woke up.

DT: Yeah. I’m like a cat. A few winks at a time are all I need. And some tuna. I need some tuna…

2-DAUGHTER: And as Dick’s Daughter – ooh. Alliteration! DICK’S DAUGHTER! DICK’S DAUGHTER! DICK’S DAUGHTER! Anyway, I’m like a cat too. Check out these claws!

DOLL: Yeah, great. Hey! Lookit!…

3-…Sam finally made a fresh pot after drinking the last cup! You know, that wouldn’t even be an issue if we just got one of those K-Cup machines though I suppose then we’d have a problem with Sam never refilling the water reservoir plus those things come in so many flavors and we’d never agree on what flavor to buy not to mention the plastic we’d be sending to the…

EVERYBODY IN UNISON: SHADDAP!!!

Oh-oh. This doen’t sound good.

The Time Drone could enable Lizz to see her sister….who was it that said “the past is prologue”. Can’t change the outcome. Tony was not able to save his father on the Time Tunnel episode where Pearl Harbor was bombed.

I read the sad tragic story of Julie Marrlin, Joe Period and Mr. Nobody in the Blackstone reprint specials which are in my personal comic book collection! As for ABony’s new hairstyle, I suppose that I haven’t seen it much lately!

I am sure Sam would not give a year’s pay to cross path with that lumber jack who threw an ax at him. He literally dove under a parked car to save his life. Ended up doing a wrestler flip on the lumber jack which sent him over the cliff and through the ice. I believe all this took place in 1962 or ’63. Come to think of it the lumber jack was tall as " Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown".

Where are all these recorded images going to end up? In a museum?

Liz’s maiden name was Marrlin? I learned something new today.

Now Liz is pouring herself a cup of coffee. It must be Sanka….good to the last drop or maybe Maxwell House.

Ace of Spades should have his “blueprints” ready by now to steal the machine. The Apparatus may end up throwing him under the bus because he is a double-crosser. Oh I know what is going on, Ace of Spades wants to be in a spin-off strip of his own titled “Death Wish”.

Hark….did my ears deceive me? I do believe I heard Lizz, in memory to her sister, humming the song " If Ever I see you again…maybe this time it well work out alright….maybe this time we won’t say good bye but only goodnight….with a love that won’t end….if ever I see you again"….

“Hiya, hiya, HIIIIIIIIIIYA, all you cool cats and swell swingers who love to gracefully groove out there in Terrific Tracy Town! This is your gear, ginchy guru, that dashing, delightful deejay, JPuzzle The Whiz, with the wild, wonderful wax to wow all you young youths to yell “YAY!” and get your vivacious vibes about!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1rMeYnOmM

Boy, Ivan sure likes to see his name a lot

I’m flashing back to my college writing class, when the teacher would regale us every class with two or three examples of bad expositionary writing, the kind where dialogue would include brief descriptions before a name characters would mention, so the readers would know who the character was.

Another unforeseen swerve? Will The Hunt for Julie Marrlin become a new facet of this rough-cut gem of a story? Or is Lizz just doing some wishful thinking that will not result in any Time Dronery? We shall, I expect, see, one way or the other. Meanwhile it is nice to see both Lee Ebony and and Lizz Worthington (or whatever name she currently uses) get some Face Time, even if just as padding to the plot…..

Landmark day today. I’ve been reading past strips 7 per day and I’m now exactly 4 years behind. I’m getting to the climax of the Nitrate’s Lincoln scam. It’s been fun. Full speed ahead! :)

Hhmmm…. I thinking that there may have been hacking of the heart like button because both Lizz and Lee are in the same panel, for there to be so many likes. ;P

Great Lee Ebony panel today.

Now t hat somebody h as finally mentioned “the little punk”,I would like to state that it would be a bad mistake to b ring back Joe Period;while you hunt for Tracy villains thatsomehow were alive at the end of the story,

Every TraCY villain has a “gimmick”.Period’s sole gimmick was his youth(“How can anybodyso young be so rotten….etc.”).

It was only his youth that kept him out of the electric chair.But he had no actual talentthat you can hang another story on .Let him anonymously rot in jail,