Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for June 28, 2022

MYSTA!… always DID like her… and Moon Governor, too…

Good morning™, everyone!

Something weird is happening! What can it be? Apparently, lunar DNA can sense it.

does Mysta know the Lunarians are hunkered down in the Antarctic?

So we have the Moon Period without the Moon…why not have them terraform Mars?

A disturbance in the Force…

Mad Mindy actually looks domesticated today, like a I Dream of Jeannie wannabe.

If only MAC didn’t irretrievably and unnecessarily terminate the original Mysta

They still have Teen Magazines? I thought magazines were like dinosaurs and nearly extinct. The latest thing is Tik Tok and Instagram. Amazing that Honey is not glued to her phone or listening to music with headphones like any other pre-teen.

Tess is looking a wee bit frumpy today.

Is it just me, or does the artwork seem different today?

The Seattle Times STILL has Joe’s name and not Shelly’s.

Let’s keep the protests peaceful please!

It would be nice if this story will shed light on the Lunarites origin. Are they mutated humans from Atlantis pehaps?

Mr Memory ended too soon but maybe he is affecting the Tracy household ?

“And now for something completely different.”

With Mr. Memory caught, the subplot involving our old pal CK wrapped up, and the scene shifting to characters who didn’t have anything to do with Mr. Memory, it appears we’ve reached the start of a new story. When I’ve decided a new story’s started, I do a list of every Tracy story on GoComics. Unfortunately, soon after I started doing this GC imposed a stupid, asinine character limit of only 2000 characters which includes every letter, space, punctuation, & html, which means I have to do this over several posts. I’ll do my initial introduction in this post and start the list in the next one, because otherwise, I can’t even get past the second year.

My notes are fairly simple. Just my name for the story (usually the name of the main villain or villains, unless they just aren’t the emphasis) followed by the dates the story began and ended. If someone was the main villain for more than one story, I add a “II” and so on to emphasize this. If more than one villain from a past story are in the same story committing major crimes, I include them altogether. Finally, for the 4 cases of more than one villain with the same name (Chameleon, Mr. Crime, Shaky, the Ace of Spades) I add, “The Second” in front of their names.

Minit Mysteries Note: at the request of people who wanted to see these listed here, I’ve decided to make a separate post for them to keep the listing of Mike Curtis stories in as few posts as possible.

At the start of the GoComics archive, the writer was the late Mike Kilian. Personally, I like his work on Tracy and think he’s very underrated. At the very least, he knew how to tell a story in the daily strip format where every day, something happens that moves the story along, a quality his successor sorely lacked. I recommend anyone here who hasn’t read these stories to check them out.

TBC cuz GC decided to suck now

Good morning™, Teen Bombs !

Mysta has been aged backward to late teen years. I sense impending high drama coming.

Mysta has her own spider-sense!

But which grandfather, Tracy or the Moon Governor?

Curtis Crossovers

At the request of Ray Toler, I’ve started taking notes on all the crossovers Curtis has written into the strip. I wasn’t taking notes of these when they first came out, so I had to start from scratch. I’m able to do this because I’ve taken on trying to read every single Dick Tracy story in the comic strip, alternating between reading Gould’s original strips (which I can read in my complete collection of IDW reprints), the post-Gould pre-GoComics period (which I can read in Newspapers.com) and the GC period. This is a WIP (Work In Progress) that will take a very long time for me to complete. In the meantime, I’ll post that WIP here on the same day I list GC stories, listing the year, then the titles of the stories in boldface and Ray and anyone else can use my GC list for cross reference.

IMHO, there are several different types of crossovers: characters from other comic strips, characters from other media outside comic strips (including characters that originate from Dick Tracy media outside the DT comic strip), real life celebrities appearing as themselves, and Written Around Trademarks (WAT) cameos from other strips and media. A WAT cameo is one where it’s never directly stated, so there’s room for plausible deniability, but it’s pretty obvious it’s this character.

Finally, I decided not to include characters based on real life celebrities but with different names, because I feel the changed names mean they’re not really crossovers. However, will give honorable mention to the two most prominent such characters here, and the stories they debuted in: Jerry King (based on real life wrestler Jerry Lawler) who made his debut in the Thunderchild story, and George Tawara and his husband Brad (based on real life actor George Takei and his husband Brad) who made their debuts in the Sweat Box story.

My list is coming up in the reply.

Mysta has a new wardrobe. She probably lost her old ones from that accident at Smith Industries

Well drawn today, the ladies look their best!

A myriad of variations have made the “little black dress” (LBD) a fashion staple since Coco Channel’s 1926 creation. Audrey Hepburn wears a floor length evening gown in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Her ensemble includes long black gloves that go past the elbow. Such gloves were often part of Moon Maid’s ensemble in the 1960s. Gould made good use of fashion, as we saw with Lizz and other women in the strip. Shelley’s simple yet elegant version suits Mysta, who wears it well.

It is always a pleasure to see Mysta and Honeymoon. The characters, their strong friendship, and the changes wrought in Mysta by Moon Maid’s DNA, make for a strong and satisfying aspect of the strip. Mysta and Honeymoon sense something weird. Mysta wisely takes this information to Tracy. Count me in.

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

MYSTA: “Er…there seems to be an owl in the blender?”

TESS: “I thought an owl smoothie might be a nice treat! Sam said he found it in Evidence.”

MYSTA: “Well, there’s your weirdness…”

1-MYSTA REE: You have a lovely home, Mrs. Cleaver. TESS: Thank you, Eddie!

2-HONEYMOONS: Do you smell something? MYSTA: sniff GROSS!

3-HONEYMOONS: Wasn’t me! MYSTA REE: Wasn’t me either. Hmmmm…where’s the Beaver?

HONEYMOONS: Where it always…oh. Him! He’s making the scene with a Teen Magazine in his room, I think.

MYSTA: That wanker. I oughta yank a knot in his tail! I oughta toss him off the roof! I oughta spank…

HONEYMOONS: Yeah! You need to get this in hand before it gets outta control!

Is this the first time we’ve seen Shelley draw Mysta?

“Hi, there – remember us?”

What a start…Mysta’s “senses” reminds me of those “spider senses” Peter Parker would get.

Joe must be a teenager or a tween ager by now. Is he involved with something his parents don’t know about such as gang activity? Nah…he being the son of a well known cop.

Speaking of characters who did not have anything to do with the last story…I am at a loss as to what purpose the guy cleaning out the garage with boxes served. Maybe a place will be found for him in this story.

“I’m going to see your grandfather”. Gee, is he home? Would be a rarity if he is. Everybody at MCU seem to be work alcoholics. I have never seen what Lee and Liz’s lives are like when they are off duty. Tracy has a family, Sam has a family, do these ladies date at least?

Oh great, Frankenmindy is back

It is a new story because Mysta is going to grandad, Dick Tracy. There is something weird going on?

If Sparkle was there, they could have a blonde convention.

Please, no sci-fi

MOVIE QUOTE===

“I always carry a knife with me.You never know when you might run into a piece of cheese”

Marlene Dietrich—THE SPOILERS—1942

The Moon Governor and the survivors are currently hiding in an Antarctic crevice;and they have the only Space Coupe’ left.So it BETTER be Dick Mysta’s going to see.I don’t think she could afford the air fare.

And for some reason,Mr.Memory insists on being tried in an Egyptian court….

“Do you sense something weird?” – well yeah she senses moon people with antennae. But that wouldn’t be weird to her, no.

UNLESS a Lunarian contingent is approaching and THAT is what she may be sensing… so she MAY being seeing both Dick AND Gov soon…

YAY! Mysta and Honeymoon! :D Hehe, “Live Whyre”, love that whether it’s a headline or an ad for a publication! (probably an ad considering it’s on the back page)

Can’t be Janice Trohs, whose kidnapping ring was discovered by Joe back in 1988. She’s been dead for nearly 35 years.

I sense something Lunarian! Let’s go see Tracy and find out if he senses anything weird, too. Mysta will get the action started up, though I’m not sure how direct it will be. What she and Honeymoon sensed (panel 2) was most likely the presence relatively nearby of one or more other Lunarians. Ex-Moon Governor? If not, who? And will Diet Smith Industries get sucked into this tale as well, because of all their lunar-related technology?

BTW, I mentioned earlier that the panel 1 profile of Mysta reminded me of Juice Newton. Here’s a video of her: https://tinyurl.com/in8obk3

Hi all— going to VA to visit family, be back late July (I hope I remember that I’m reading the strip, once I went a couple of week w the computer in the shop and it took 6 months before I realized I hadnt been reading the strip).