Moon Maid (comics)
| Moon Maid | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Tribune Media Services |
| First appearance | 1964 |
| Created by | Chester Gould |
| In-story information | |
| Team affiliations | Dick Tracy |
Moon Maid was a major character at one period in the Dick Tracy comic strip, then drawn by its creator, Chester Gould.
Gould, hoping to keep the strip evolving and changing with the times, slowly began changing the focus of the strip from a crime drama into one whose primary focus was science fiction. Tracy had always been equipped with the latest, most up-to-date police equipment, including forensic science, but with the introduction into the strip of eccentric industrialist Diet Smith as Tracy's friend in the 1940s, Tracy began to have the assistance of devices such as the two-way wrist radio, and later the two-way wrist TV.
The logical extension of this in Gould's mind was the introduction of space travel. Smith invented the magnetic-powered Space Coupe. With the use of this vehicle, Tracy and company landed on the moon in 1964, finding there an advanced race of humanoids whose high technology meshed remarkably well with that of Smith's. The Moon race looked like Caucasian humans except for having abnormally large eyes and giraffe-like horns on their foreheads.
When the impending 1969 NASA moon landing threatened to make the preceding Moon stories look silly, Gould chose to return to the material that made the Dick Tracy strip famous—Earth-bound crime. The strip made one oblique reference to the Apollo 11 landing shortly after its completion, with Diet Smith commenting about some "equipment left behind" on the Moon (in a caption above a panel showing the abandoned Lunar Module).
After Apollo 11, Moon Maid and Honeymoon continued to remain on Earth, as wife and daughter of Junior; all references to their selenic origin were phased out, with Honeymoon never demonstrating her magnetic talents, and Moon Maid identified solely as "Junior's wife". Both characters continued to appear sporadically, in greatly reduced roles, until her eventual demise.
When Joe Staton and Mike Curtis took over the comic strip in 2011, they inaugurated a period in which many characters of the 1940s were reintroduced, including the Lunarian theme and the seeming reappearance of Moon Maid.
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