Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 20, 2022

Well, he’s done some thinking.

I thought space coupes were already impervious to attack and to the elements of space…

Good morning™, everyone!

Ro-Zan must have had a high level of access to the facilities to outfit all the ships with ray cannons. The base might be near Antactica, but I’m not sure that it’s in Antarctica, judging by the last panel.

Who’s talking in p2 and p3? Thorin?

One high level nuke above New Moon Valley could render it uninhabitable, since the EMP would render most of their tech nonfunctional. And the coupes would prove quite vulnerable to SAM and air-to-air missile technology.

There’s no MILLITARY bases in Antarctica – “Us” or “Them” – just research bases So are they going to attack the unairmed scientific bases…

or are they NOT in the Antarctic – but the Artic circle? (The North Pole or near it?)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Arctic_circle.svg

Mike’s just been working we’d assume it was the Antarctic becuase of it being so remote – but if they could hide from the research stations – couldn’t they easily hide from the US, Russia, Canada, Greenland and Finland coastline bases?

Plus the time it took the space coup from “Chicago” to the Colony seemed a little short…even for the coups known speeds.

The reference to a single base might imply they are closer to one of the coasts than the others.

Or Mike did piss-poor research…

Good morning™, pending Armageddons !

Ro-san knows what he wants and is wasting no time in getting the machinery and his sycophant followers into shape and ready to rumble.

I thought Thorin said the Lunarians used pretty much all their space coupes to escape from the Moon, & there weren’t enough for everyone, which is why some are now in New Moon Valley. This strip makes it seem like they still have an armada.

Maybe Tracy will set a sting operation up of his own and take this moon chump down…

Story is getting a bit complicated, the future should be interesting!

RO-GAINE: Let’s arm all the Space Coupes with “frickin’ lasers”

you think thee ambassador would have known that… but I’m not all that informed of military status or ranks. :\

The battle begins………..

the Ambassador must have been asleep at the switch if RoZan could retrofit the coupes with weapons without him noticing.

And she was on board with this whole plot until they killed her friend?

Knowing what Ro-zan plans to do, how are the Ambassador and Tracy going to make a counter-move? They cannot let him know that they are on to him.

I can see Tracy in a situation similar to David Vincent, no one at MCU is going to believe him. Even Diet Smith will give Tracy the side eye or Tess for that matter. So what happens in Moon Valley stays in Moon Valley.

There’s that weird hand gesture again. HEY! If Shelley didn’t want me to point out its overuse, she wouldn’t draw it so much!

I just flashed back to Tracy in 1968 (about the time of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination) when moon technology vaporized some Tracy-is gangsters who had made it to the moon. That led to this memorable exchange of dialogue:

“Where’s the enemy?”

“You’re breathing them.”

1-THOR-IN: Never mind my jokes about how the cold effects parts of your anatomy, Shag-Gin! Tell me why I keep hearing all that hammering in the Space Coupe bays!

2-SHAG-GIN: Well, Bro-Zan is having the Space Coupes reinforced.

BRO-ZAN: Use a couple more nails, boys. I want that to stay on!

THOR-IN: That’s nice. But why?

3-SHAG-GIN: Well, he wants them to be able to withstand the impact of all the inevitable collisions that result from ALLOWING WOMEN TO DRIVE THEM!

THOR-IN: WHAT??? THE FIEND! I see his long range goal here! Next, he’ll give women the Vote and they’ll all support him for Governor!!!

DT: I’d vote for him.

nice imagery there of a coupe launching a devastating assault… made even more enhanced and spectacular by the bluish-white coloring… a well-done to Shelley and her colorist…

Again, Mike has dropped something on us out of the blue. Somehow duplicating the powers of an individual Lunarian and putting that power into a “ray cannon”. How was that done? it would seem something like that would require research, experiments, trials, etc. The equivalent of a physician would have to be involved, and test subjects. Surely, some of that would have caught the attention of the amb/gov. Yet here he is, just hearing of it for the first time?

Our satellite tracking systems should detect the space coupes unless they have developed stealth technology as well.

All this could have been avoided if only Mysta had just said “Why sure Ro-zan honey, gimme a little kiss.”

Hmm. Lots of “techno-babble” exposition today. And it’s all pitched as if coming from Shay-Gin, as if she heard it all at the revolutionary meeting.

That strikes me as highly improbable. Nothing so far has suggested that Shay-Gin was uniquely privy to all of Ro-Zan’s plans, and I doubt that his Cabal Rally speech would have been so heavy on technical stuff. In short, it seems to me we are being asked to accept that Shay-Gin is All-Knowing about the cabalist plan, technology, activities, and intentions! It’s a lot of “willing suspension of disbelief” being asked of us.

Shay-Gin, the Lunar-&-Geopolitical Mavin and Military Analyst Extraordinaire! ? She is a blonde mavin, at that!

Remember that 3 or 4% of Antartica is normally free of snow and ice (and that doesn’t include nunataks, since those are just mountain tops sticking above the ice, tho geologists and archaeologist find them very critical for their access to the local actual ground). If I remember correctly, the McMurdo dry valleys (such as Wright Valley) are around 5000 sq km (about 2000 sq miles). [they are oft called antarctic oases]

So the last panel could be in the antarctic or not. [I’m not pushing either guess, nor how closely the authors are following the science.]

He uses too much force to blast his way in, he’ll destroy the tech he wants to take.