Editing Dick Tracy (section)

===Space period===
As technology progressed, the methods that Tracy and the police used to track and capture criminals took the form of increasingly fanciful [[atom]]ic-powered gadgets developed by Diet Smith Industries. This eventually led to the 1960s advent of the Space Coupe, a spacecraft with a magnetic propulsion system. This marked the beginning of the strip's "Space Period," which saw Tracy and friends having adventures on the Moon and meeting [[Moon Maid (comics)|Moon Maid]], the daughter of the leader of a race of humanoid people living in "Moon Valley" in 1964. After an eventual sharing of technological information, Moon technology became standard issue on Tracy's police force, including air cars, flying cylindrical vehicles. The villains became even more exaggerated in power, resulting in an escalating series of stories that no longer resembled the urban crime drama roots of the strip. During this period, Tracy met famed cartoonist Chet Jade, creator of the comic strip ''Sawdust'', in which the only characters are talking dots.

One of the new characters, Mr. Intro, was only manifested as a disembodied voice. His goal was world domination in the vein of a [[James Bond]] villain. Tracy eventually used an atomic laser beam to annihilate Intro and his island base.

Junior married Moon Maid in October 1964. Their daughter Honey Moon Tracy had antennae and magnetic hands. In the spring of 1969, Tracy was offered the post of Chief of Police in Moon Valley. However, he ended up back on Earth when the [[Apollo 11]] mission in 1969 showed that the moon was barren of all life. Many of the accoutrements of the space period stories remained for many years afterward, such as the Space Coupe and much of the high-tech gadgetry. Moon Maid receded from the storyline.

The stories of this period took an increasingly condemnatory tone pertaining to contemporary court decisions concerning the [[rights of the accused]], which often involved Tracy being frustrated by legal technicalities. For example, having caught a gang of diamond thieves red-handed, Tracy was forced to let them walk because he could not ''prove'' beyond a reasonable doubt that the diamonds were stolen. As he saw the thieves get off without penalty, Tracy was heard to grumble, "Yes, under today's interpretation of the laws, it seems it's the police who are handcuffed!"

The strip was criticized for advocating violence. For instance, Moon Maid, incensed at a woman being attacked by a criminal and no one helping her in an obvious reference of the [[Murder of Kitty Genovese]], becomes a mysterious murderous vigilante to Dick Tracy's open approval in violation of his profession's ethics<ref>{{cite book |last1=Maeder |first1=Jay |pages=194–5 }}</ref> In 1968. On June 7 — the day after Senator [[Robert F. Kennedy]] was killed by an assassin — the strip's final panel announced, "Violence is golden, when it's used to put down evil." The strip was obviously prepared weeks before the assassination, but the timing of the strip's publication attracted negative attention. Some newspapers dropped the strip as a result.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wells |first1=John |title=American Comic Book Chronicles: 1965-1969 |date=2014 |publisher=TwoMorrows Publishing |isbn=978-1605490557 |page=221}}</ref> From 1960 to 1974, the strip's newspaper coverage dropped from 550 to roughly 375<ref>{{cite book |last1=Maeder |page=198 }}</ref>