IDW spins out a comic great's adventures one day at at time...
IDW Publishing is in the process of compiling the complete Dick Tracy strips (which continue to this day) and has just released Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 10
, which covers from September of 1945 until March of 1947. IDW’s effort here is a reminder of the work and legacy of Chester Gould’s great creation Super Cop Dick Tracy.
Of all the great comic characters Dick Tracy might be the least appreciated. Dick Tracy first appeared in October of 1931 as the creation of comic artist Chester Gould. The strip was nothing if not timely, reflecting some of the violence of organized crime that was prevelant in the US at the time, particularly big cities like New York and Chicago. The violence of the Tracy strip was apparent from the beginning, as was Gould’s interest in some of the advances in forensic techniques that came into play at a time when organized crime was getting more sophisticated and even corporate.
Tracy’s exploits also reflected some of the pulp and literary themes of the time, particularly the noir aspects of writers such as Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler and later films like
The Thin Man,
The Big Sleep and especially
The Maltese Falcon, which had some of the freakish and exotic villains which would help distinguish the Tracy strip from some of its lesser competitors such as Red Barry (which was considered a less successful strip while being even more violent than Dick Tracy). Among the most memorable of these villains was Flattop (probably the most memorable of Tracy’s many memorable villains) who literally had a flat top skull shape. The character appeared in several of the early Tracy stories and was eventually killed at which point many Tracy fans protested (an early example of Fanboy outrage). Also of note was Pruneface, a Nazi spy and mechanical genius who had a face that, yes you guessed it, resembled a prune.
Dick Tracy is often caricatured as a square-jawed super cop which, while accurate, is not representative of the whole picture of the character. Tracy had real intimacy issues with his girlfriend Tess Trueheart (before anyone knew to put a name on that kind of thing). The friction between the two, mostly stemming from Tracy’s dogged devotion to crime fighting even reached a point where she married another guy. Needless to say, this did not last and ended with family tragedy and her husband committing suicide. Again, needless to say, Trueheart eventually made her way back to Tracy and they resumed their romance.
Tracy also had a partner for a time named Pat Patton who had some issues with growing into the role of a cop and through Tracy’s influence became a very solid cop. This realistic portrayal of personal relationships and character evolution signaled a level of sophistication that was mostly far ahead of its time and would be picked up much later in the work of guys like Will Eisner and Frank Miller.
This most recent volume chronicles Tracy’s adventures from late 1945 until early 1947 and features the first appearance of Tracy’s famous, near iconic, two-way wrist radio created by one of Tracy’s colleagues named, appropriately enough Brilliant. The two way radio was a pretty cool gadget at the time when radios were as big as ovens and put out as much heat as a sunlamp. This forward thinking as it related to law enforcement techniques was a reflection of Gould’s interest in technolgy as it related to law enforcement methods (and links the character to other gadget minded operatives like James Bond).
IDW’s work here is a major undertaking and by my amateurish estimation could span another 50 volumes or so (if IDW continues to the present). It is a worthy effort by the company to put together the works of a great American master and his influential creation. Gould's legacy has not completely gotten its due since the strip is not all that fashionable at present and also becasue for whatever reasons newspaper strips don't seem to age as well as some of the older comic book stuff. In any event, this is a great thing for comic snobs and as with many of these kind of things might rekindle an interest in bringing the character to the big screen (again).
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