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The Complete Dick Tracy #1
The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1: 1931-1933
Presenting a deluxe hardcover collection of Chester Gould's timeless comic strip, Dick Tracy. The first volume of this multi-year project will include the five sample strips that Gould used to sell his groundbreaking strip, as well as nearly 500 comic strips encompassing the series' beginning, from October 1931-May 1933. Among these strips are the first appearance of many long-time Dick Tracy characters, such as Tess Truehart, Junior and Chief Brandon. This special first volume features an overview and introduction from Consulting Editor and writer Max Allan Collins, as well as a never-before-published interview between Collins and creator Chester Gould. Each volume will feature book design from award-winning designer/artist Ashley Wood. -The Library of American Comics is the world's #1 publisher of classic newspaper comic strips, with 14 Eisner Award nominations and three wins for best book. LOAC has become "the gold standard for archival comic strip reprints... The research and articles provide insight and context, and most importantly the glorious reproduction of the material has preserved these strips for those who knew them and offers a new gateway to adventure for those discovering them for the first time." - Scoop
352 pages, Hardcover
First published November 14, 2006
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278 people want to read
About the author
Chester Gould
335 books23 followersChester Gould was a U.S. cartoonist and the creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, which he wrote and drew from 1931 to 1977. Gould was known for his use of colorful, often monstrous, villains.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 20, 2023
Las primeras tiras de la serie. Un poco toscas pero se nota como va mejorando a lo largo del tomo.
December 28, 2015
Dick Tracy is a mixed bag early on. For one thing, Gould is years away from his artistic peak, so a lot of this looks pretty rough. He's also a long way from his narrative peak, as well, so although the strip is innovative from early on (e.g. Gould has Tracy engaging in forensic ballistics analysis within the first couple of years of the strip--at a time at which it was still relatively infrequently applied in real police work--as well as other forensic work, which is one of the hallmarks of the strip), it also features some pretty unlikely plotting (e.g. Tracy becomes a detective because his fiance's dad is murdered and ends up the Department's hot-shot detective almost instantly, despite zero training as a policeman--it's actually pretty amusing when he gets busted down to uniform, given that he was never in uniform in the first place). And while one ought not to expect a comic strip to adhere too closely to how the law actually works, perhaps, Tracy's often blatant disregard for proper police prodedure--even by 1930s standards--is at times hair-raising. In one story line, he shoots and kills a woman who is hiding in the woods with a gun; admitedly, she did fire her weapon, but not at Tracy. Even worse, in one armed pursuit, Steve the Tramp has commandeered a truck and engages in a gun battle with Tracy and the cops while the driver, forced by Steve to help with the getaway but otherwise, takes a bullet and dies. Um, it was the police firing at the truck, not Steve, so they are the ones who killed the driver, a fact conveniently elided over as Steve gets the blame for that one too. Yikes! Most of what made the strip really stand out is nowhere near evident yet, but it does at times have a raw power, and Gould has a good sense of drama and pacing--the hectic, pell-mell forward momentum characteristic of his best plots, and some hints of the ingenuity with which his best villains operate, are in evidence from early on. there are also some very good early xamples of his use of stark design and heavy blacks to create mood.
Format-wise, I think IDW erred doubly with these early volumes. For one thing, the reproduction size is too small, especially for the Sunday pages, which look very cramped here. For another, the decision to print the Sundays in black and white is incomprehensible--especially since the early, non-continuity Sundays collected at the end of the book are in colour. Perhaps doing them all in colour was deemed too cost-prohibitive, but IDW's Little Orphan Annie series runs all those Sundays in colour, so who knows?
Format-wise, I think IDW erred doubly with these early volumes. For one thing, the reproduction size is too small, especially for the Sunday pages, which look very cramped here. For another, the decision to print the Sundays in black and white is incomprehensible--especially since the early, non-continuity Sundays collected at the end of the book are in colour. Perhaps doing them all in colour was deemed too cost-prohibitive, but IDW's Little Orphan Annie series runs all those Sundays in colour, so who knows?
February 26, 2017
what kind of a hobo name is "Steve"
June 22, 2023
This first volume is so much fun, giving you a sense of being present at the creation of something both familiar and unique. Can't wait to explore the subsequent volumes.
November 26, 2019
Chester Gould wrote and illustrated the comic strip Dick Tracy for 46 years, from 1931 to 1977. Gould created a detective strip that became a sensation, spawning movies, radio shows, and all kinds of tie-in merchandising. In the years before he created Dick Tracy, Gould had written several gag-a-day comic strips like The Radio Catts and The Girl Friends. None of these strips had become a hit with the public. But Gould was a hard worker, and a persistent man. Gould bombarded Joseph Medill Patterson, the founder and owner of the New York Daily News, with ideas for strips all the time. Gould rarely received a reply, but he didn’t let that dissuade him. In August of 1931 Gould sent off 5 strips titled Plainclothes Tracy. It was unlike anything Gould had drawn before. The strips featured a hoodlum being tortured with a blowtorch applied to his feet, highlighted Tracy’s sharp skills of observation, and ended with the threat of an imminent shoot-out. Patterson cabled back to Gould: “Your Plainclothes Tracy has possibilities.” It was Patterson himself who changed the title of the strip to, simply, Dick Tracy.
The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, an ambitious project undertaken by IDW Publishing and the Library of American Comics, began with the publication of the first volume in 2006. The project is still not complete—the next book will be Volume 27, due to be published in January of 2020. Volume 1 of The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy includes all the strips from October 1931 to May of 1933.
Gould’s vision for Dick Tracy was unlike anything else that had come along in newspaper comics. Gould created a mixture of scientific detective work, grotesque criminals, and hard-hitting violence, mixed with the occasional serving of humor. In doing so, Gould essentially invented the modern police procedural. But all that would take time to perfect, and in Volume 1 we see Gould figuring things out as he goes along. If you’re expecting over the top villains with bizarre deformities, you’ll be disappointed.
Dick Tracy began with two Sunday strips on October 4th and October 11th, 1931. The Sunday strips were originally stand-alone stories unconnected to the action of the daily strip. Indeed, on the second and third Sunday strips, Tracy captures the crime boss Big Boy two weeks in a row, while in the daily strip Big Boy remained at large until May of 1932. That same month, the Sunday strips finally connected to the Monday through Saturday continuity of the strip. The daily strip Dick Tracy started on Monday, October 12, 1931, and the initial storyline examined Tracy’s first case as a plainclothes police officer.
Dick Tracy became a detective by accident. One night, Tracy is having dinner with his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart, and her parents. Shortly after Tracy and Tess announce their engagement, hoodlums break into the Truehearts’ apartment, shoot Tess’s father, steal the $1,000 he has saved, knock out Tracy, and kidnap Tess. When Tracy regains consciousness, he pledges to bring the guilty parties to justice. Police Chief Brandon is impressed by Tracy and almost immediately offers him a job as a plainclothes officer. Tracy accepts.
What probably strikes modern readers as odd is that there’s no explanation of who Dick Tracy is, where he came from, or anything about his background. In fact, throughout the strip there’s precious little background information about Dick Tracy, the man. But maybe we don’t need an explanation of how Dick Tracy came to be who he is. Dick Tracy simply is honest and tough and fearless and smart. In a 1980 interview with Chester Gould printed in Volume 1 and 2 of The Complete Dick Tracy, Max Allan Collins asks Gould what Tracy did before he became a cop. Gould replies, “I never gave that one bit of thought.” When Collins presses again, Gould says, “He was just a nice young guy.” And there you go.
By the end of November 1931, certain trademarks of Dick Tracy are already there—Tracy’s ever-present fedora and trench coat have made their first appearances, and we get a gun battle in the street that fells the hood who killed Emil Trueheart. The violence of Dick Tracy was truly shocking for the time, and even today it’s still incredibly violent for a newspaper comic strip.
Dick Tracy goes through some growing pains professionally. After a raid goes wrong in early 1932, Tracy is busted down to a beat cop. When he’s a beat cop, Tracy is uncharacteristically morose and full of self-pity. Fortunately, he quickly snaps out of it and gets promoted back to a plainclothes officer.
The action in this first volume moves too fast at times. An example would be when Tracy is trying to find the kidnapped child Buddy Waldorf, crime boss Big Boy throws Tracy overboard from an ocean liner. Tracy gets thrown overboard, picked up by a Norwegian tramp freighter, transferred to a British aircraft carrier, and flown back to the ship, all in 6 days! It happens so quickly that there’s no real suspense to it. Had this sequence happened say, ten years later, Gould would have stretched it out and ratcheted up the drama.
The Dick Tracy of the early 1930’s was a talky strip. Gould eventually streamlined his dialogue and narration, but in these early strips he’s very loquacious, as many comic strips of that time were. The very first Dick Tracy daily has 100 words of dialogue and narration in it! That would be enough for a week’s worth of strips in 2019!
There are moments in this first volume of Dick Tracy that are very dated. For example, when Tracy rescues Buddy Waldorf and captures Big Boy, Tracy challenges Big Boy to a fistfight, no weapons, and promptly beats Big Boy to a pulp. I’m not endorsing the excessive force used by a comic strip cop 87 years ago, but I think Chester Gould intended Tracy’s pummeling of Big Boy to be a stand-in for the readers’ desire for the punishment of criminals like Al Capone, whom Big Boy was clearly modeled after, and the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby, the crime that inspired Gould’s Buddy Waldorf storyline.
Gould is still figuring out how to best tell a story in this volume. There are numerous clunky times when Gould makes strip time real time: i.e., someone will say “I haven’t seen Pat for 3 days.” Eventually this rightly falls by the wayside, as Gould makes it clear that the action of the strip is continuous.
Dick Tracy was influenced by Sherlock Holmes, and several times in Volume 1 Tracy disguises himself, something that rarely happens after 1933. Like Holmes, Tracy is a sharp observer of human behavior and many times finds clues that others overlook.
There are odd little continuity errors here and there, such as Gould not being able to decide if Dan Mucelli’s last name is Mucelli or Muzel. In the same speech bubble, Tracy uses both last names. Oops.
For me, Dick Tracy turns a corner for the better in September of 1932 when Gould introduces the character of Junior, a 9-year-old boy who has no parents and has been riding the rails with Steve the Tramp. Junior is eventually taken in by Dick Tracy himself, and the boy becomes key to the rest of the stories in this volume.
Personally, I think Steve the Tramp is the most terrifying villain that Gould had created so far in the strip. Sure, I wouldn’t want to meet any of the other villains in a dark alley, but Big Boy? Stereotypical Mob boss. Broadway Bates? He looks like the Penguin from Batman. Dan Mucelli? Meh, just a typical drug pusher, with a strange nose. Steve the Tramp, on the other hand, is a ruthless figure out of a nightmare—he strangles a postal worker just to get his hands on a postcard. Steve threatens severe bodily harm to Junior on an almost daily basis. He’s really, truly awful. I suspect Chester Gould’s response to my feelings about Steve the Tramp would be: “Good, he’s supposed to be terrifying and disturbing!”
Steve the Tramp and Stooge Viller are the most interesting villains Gould had yet created, and in Volume 2 they will join forces and take up much of the strip’s storyline in 1933. Viller makes his first appearance in January of 1933, and he’s the opposite of Steve the Tramp, a well-dressed city slicker whose stock in trade is being an expert pickpocket. Viller, who resembles the actor Edward G. Robinson, was responsible for getting Tracy kicked off the police force by planting counterfeit money in his pockets. And to add insult to injury, Viller hangs around town and romances Tess Trueheart, who has broken her engagement to Tracy in the wake of his dismissal from the force. What a jerk!
By the end of Volume 1, the strip has gone through some growing pains and is starting to emerge into the strip that readers of the classic Dick Tracy period will recognize. Gould’s artwork has also improved, and his visual style is becoming more distinctive. Gould could work wonders with shadows, and we see more of that as Volume 1 ends. Particularly effective is the strip from January 27, 1933, as we observe a 3AM phone call from Tracy to Tess, as he professes his innocence about the counterfeit money, and she hangs up on him. All four panels occur in darkness, with only shadows and cross-hatching, and it’s tremendously effective.
The science of crime-fighting always played a large role in Dick Tracy, and we see examples of this throughout Volume 1. In November 1932, a nurse asks Tracy “But what’s ballistics?” This was a question that probably many real-life police officers would have also asked at the time, as the science of matching markings on bullets to specific guns was in its infancy. Throughout his career, Gould worked hard to keep Tracy ahead of the curve in any scientific advancements that would aid his crime-fighting.
During my earlier boyhood Tracy-mania, I read all the strips in Volume 1, as they were collected in the 1978 anthology Dick Tracy the Thirties: Tommy Guns and Hard Times. At the time, in the early 1990’s, I had hoped that book would be the beginning of reprinting all the Dick Tracy strips, but Tommy Guns and Hard Times was just a one-off, as no books ever continued the story. Reading Dick Tracy as an adult, different things strike you. Like the wordless final two panels of the May 28, 1932 strip, as Buddy Waldorf’s mother is reunited with her son. It’s only two panels, but it’s so moving. Gould knew he didn’t need any narration to trigger emotion from his readers.
The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1 is an interesting look at the beginning of an iconic American comic strip, and I would recommend it to any fan of Dick Tracy.
The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, an ambitious project undertaken by IDW Publishing and the Library of American Comics, began with the publication of the first volume in 2006. The project is still not complete—the next book will be Volume 27, due to be published in January of 2020. Volume 1 of The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy includes all the strips from October 1931 to May of 1933.
Gould’s vision for Dick Tracy was unlike anything else that had come along in newspaper comics. Gould created a mixture of scientific detective work, grotesque criminals, and hard-hitting violence, mixed with the occasional serving of humor. In doing so, Gould essentially invented the modern police procedural. But all that would take time to perfect, and in Volume 1 we see Gould figuring things out as he goes along. If you’re expecting over the top villains with bizarre deformities, you’ll be disappointed.
Dick Tracy began with two Sunday strips on October 4th and October 11th, 1931. The Sunday strips were originally stand-alone stories unconnected to the action of the daily strip. Indeed, on the second and third Sunday strips, Tracy captures the crime boss Big Boy two weeks in a row, while in the daily strip Big Boy remained at large until May of 1932. That same month, the Sunday strips finally connected to the Monday through Saturday continuity of the strip. The daily strip Dick Tracy started on Monday, October 12, 1931, and the initial storyline examined Tracy’s first case as a plainclothes police officer.
Dick Tracy became a detective by accident. One night, Tracy is having dinner with his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart, and her parents. Shortly after Tracy and Tess announce their engagement, hoodlums break into the Truehearts’ apartment, shoot Tess’s father, steal the $1,000 he has saved, knock out Tracy, and kidnap Tess. When Tracy regains consciousness, he pledges to bring the guilty parties to justice. Police Chief Brandon is impressed by Tracy and almost immediately offers him a job as a plainclothes officer. Tracy accepts.
What probably strikes modern readers as odd is that there’s no explanation of who Dick Tracy is, where he came from, or anything about his background. In fact, throughout the strip there’s precious little background information about Dick Tracy, the man. But maybe we don’t need an explanation of how Dick Tracy came to be who he is. Dick Tracy simply is honest and tough and fearless and smart. In a 1980 interview with Chester Gould printed in Volume 1 and 2 of The Complete Dick Tracy, Max Allan Collins asks Gould what Tracy did before he became a cop. Gould replies, “I never gave that one bit of thought.” When Collins presses again, Gould says, “He was just a nice young guy.” And there you go.
By the end of November 1931, certain trademarks of Dick Tracy are already there—Tracy’s ever-present fedora and trench coat have made their first appearances, and we get a gun battle in the street that fells the hood who killed Emil Trueheart. The violence of Dick Tracy was truly shocking for the time, and even today it’s still incredibly violent for a newspaper comic strip.
Dick Tracy goes through some growing pains professionally. After a raid goes wrong in early 1932, Tracy is busted down to a beat cop. When he’s a beat cop, Tracy is uncharacteristically morose and full of self-pity. Fortunately, he quickly snaps out of it and gets promoted back to a plainclothes officer.
The action in this first volume moves too fast at times. An example would be when Tracy is trying to find the kidnapped child Buddy Waldorf, crime boss Big Boy throws Tracy overboard from an ocean liner. Tracy gets thrown overboard, picked up by a Norwegian tramp freighter, transferred to a British aircraft carrier, and flown back to the ship, all in 6 days! It happens so quickly that there’s no real suspense to it. Had this sequence happened say, ten years later, Gould would have stretched it out and ratcheted up the drama.
The Dick Tracy of the early 1930’s was a talky strip. Gould eventually streamlined his dialogue and narration, but in these early strips he’s very loquacious, as many comic strips of that time were. The very first Dick Tracy daily has 100 words of dialogue and narration in it! That would be enough for a week’s worth of strips in 2019!
There are moments in this first volume of Dick Tracy that are very dated. For example, when Tracy rescues Buddy Waldorf and captures Big Boy, Tracy challenges Big Boy to a fistfight, no weapons, and promptly beats Big Boy to a pulp. I’m not endorsing the excessive force used by a comic strip cop 87 years ago, but I think Chester Gould intended Tracy’s pummeling of Big Boy to be a stand-in for the readers’ desire for the punishment of criminals like Al Capone, whom Big Boy was clearly modeled after, and the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby, the crime that inspired Gould’s Buddy Waldorf storyline.
Gould is still figuring out how to best tell a story in this volume. There are numerous clunky times when Gould makes strip time real time: i.e., someone will say “I haven’t seen Pat for 3 days.” Eventually this rightly falls by the wayside, as Gould makes it clear that the action of the strip is continuous.
Dick Tracy was influenced by Sherlock Holmes, and several times in Volume 1 Tracy disguises himself, something that rarely happens after 1933. Like Holmes, Tracy is a sharp observer of human behavior and many times finds clues that others overlook.
There are odd little continuity errors here and there, such as Gould not being able to decide if Dan Mucelli’s last name is Mucelli or Muzel. In the same speech bubble, Tracy uses both last names. Oops.
For me, Dick Tracy turns a corner for the better in September of 1932 when Gould introduces the character of Junior, a 9-year-old boy who has no parents and has been riding the rails with Steve the Tramp. Junior is eventually taken in by Dick Tracy himself, and the boy becomes key to the rest of the stories in this volume.
Personally, I think Steve the Tramp is the most terrifying villain that Gould had created so far in the strip. Sure, I wouldn’t want to meet any of the other villains in a dark alley, but Big Boy? Stereotypical Mob boss. Broadway Bates? He looks like the Penguin from Batman. Dan Mucelli? Meh, just a typical drug pusher, with a strange nose. Steve the Tramp, on the other hand, is a ruthless figure out of a nightmare—he strangles a postal worker just to get his hands on a postcard. Steve threatens severe bodily harm to Junior on an almost daily basis. He’s really, truly awful. I suspect Chester Gould’s response to my feelings about Steve the Tramp would be: “Good, he’s supposed to be terrifying and disturbing!”
Steve the Tramp and Stooge Viller are the most interesting villains Gould had yet created, and in Volume 2 they will join forces and take up much of the strip’s storyline in 1933. Viller makes his first appearance in January of 1933, and he’s the opposite of Steve the Tramp, a well-dressed city slicker whose stock in trade is being an expert pickpocket. Viller, who resembles the actor Edward G. Robinson, was responsible for getting Tracy kicked off the police force by planting counterfeit money in his pockets. And to add insult to injury, Viller hangs around town and romances Tess Trueheart, who has broken her engagement to Tracy in the wake of his dismissal from the force. What a jerk!
By the end of Volume 1, the strip has gone through some growing pains and is starting to emerge into the strip that readers of the classic Dick Tracy period will recognize. Gould’s artwork has also improved, and his visual style is becoming more distinctive. Gould could work wonders with shadows, and we see more of that as Volume 1 ends. Particularly effective is the strip from January 27, 1933, as we observe a 3AM phone call from Tracy to Tess, as he professes his innocence about the counterfeit money, and she hangs up on him. All four panels occur in darkness, with only shadows and cross-hatching, and it’s tremendously effective.
The science of crime-fighting always played a large role in Dick Tracy, and we see examples of this throughout Volume 1. In November 1932, a nurse asks Tracy “But what’s ballistics?” This was a question that probably many real-life police officers would have also asked at the time, as the science of matching markings on bullets to specific guns was in its infancy. Throughout his career, Gould worked hard to keep Tracy ahead of the curve in any scientific advancements that would aid his crime-fighting.
During my earlier boyhood Tracy-mania, I read all the strips in Volume 1, as they were collected in the 1978 anthology Dick Tracy the Thirties: Tommy Guns and Hard Times. At the time, in the early 1990’s, I had hoped that book would be the beginning of reprinting all the Dick Tracy strips, but Tommy Guns and Hard Times was just a one-off, as no books ever continued the story. Reading Dick Tracy as an adult, different things strike you. Like the wordless final two panels of the May 28, 1932 strip, as Buddy Waldorf’s mother is reunited with her son. It’s only two panels, but it’s so moving. Gould knew he didn’t need any narration to trigger emotion from his readers.
The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1 is an interesting look at the beginning of an iconic American comic strip, and I would recommend it to any fan of Dick Tracy.
April 30, 2021
Chester Gould comes out of the gate at a narrative sprint. While the art work only hints at the stylized genius he’d lock into in the coming decade, the stories are as addictive as a soap opera and more lurid.
March 23, 2018
This book has a nice introduction by Max Allan Collins, followed by part one of an old interview with Gould, so you get some context to go with the stories. Fortunately, context or not, the stories themselves are well worth your time. Although the characterization isn't terribly deep (it's still MUCH better than the vapid characters of some Silver Age comics though!), the stories are extremely well paced and plotted, with excellent twists and plenty of ingenius (and believable) schemes. Gould works in plenty of different styles, including romance with Tess Trueheart, some kid hijinks when Tracy takes in a street urchin, dubbed Junior Tracy, and plenty of gunplay, violence and wickedness thwarted.
And the kid stuff isn't insulting or juvenile. There are light-hearted moments, and some jokes, but it's pretty awful when Steve the Tramp kidnaps Junior and beats him up.
The art - sometimes rushed to hit a daily deadline - is mostly clear and easy to read, and the colors on the Sunday pages are muted and washed out, but it works in an "old comics" sort of way. I wish that all the Sunday pages were colored, but only the early, "out of continuity" pages were colored (at the back of the book). When the later Sunday pages started tying into the daily storylines, those pages were included in sequence, in black and white.
There is some overlap caused by the daily format - recaps and such, but nothing terribly distracting or hard to get through. The book is really fun ride, and plot-wise, I truly don't believe that most modern adventure comics are much more engaging that these stories.
And the kid stuff isn't insulting or juvenile. There are light-hearted moments, and some jokes, but it's pretty awful when Steve the Tramp kidnaps Junior and beats him up.
The art - sometimes rushed to hit a daily deadline - is mostly clear and easy to read, and the colors on the Sunday pages are muted and washed out, but it works in an "old comics" sort of way. I wish that all the Sunday pages were colored, but only the early, "out of continuity" pages were colored (at the back of the book). When the later Sunday pages started tying into the daily storylines, those pages were included in sequence, in black and white.
There is some overlap caused by the daily format - recaps and such, but nothing terribly distracting or hard to get through. The book is really fun ride, and plot-wise, I truly don't believe that most modern adventure comics are much more engaging that these stories.
May 21, 2014
I like the later stories when the villains become weirder
January 14, 2020
If you have been following my Goodreads reviews, you know that comics history is a bit of an interest of mine, and in the last year I've read
The Complete Peanuts
, Will Eisner's
The Spirit
,
Pogo
and
Prince Valiant
among others. So in that regard, I don't think it is much of a surprise that I decided to start reading Chester Gould's The Complete Dick Tracy. And even though Dick Tracy is still a going concern on the "funny pages" whenever I think of Dick Tracy I think of the movies.
My first "real" experience with Dick Tracy was the Warren Beatty/Madonna vehicle from 1990. There was a promotion that was run at the time where punters could buy a Dick Tracy t-shirt that also served as your ticket into the midnight showing of the movie. This was in the days before "comic book" movies were a thing, but I was a huge fan of anything that appeared in panels, so I had to see it. The excitement of that night has dimmed (all I remember is the bit about the t-shirt) and being a month before my fifteenth birthday, I wasn't woke enough to know the films of some of the acting heavy hitters who appeared in Dick Tracy (Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Madonna, although she's included for other reasons.) But I do remember that for film based on a police detective and his adversaries, there were some odd ducks amongst the rogues in that film. And that was cool, because really there hadn't been over-the-top villains like the ones from Dick Tracy in the movies before.
If the film was your only exposure to Dick Tracy, then there is a possibility for a let down when reading The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1: 1931-1933. Nowhere in this volume will you find the odd villains like Mumbles or Flattop. Those were in the strip's future as detailed by Max Allen Collins in the introduction to the volume. Of course, Dick Tracy wouldn't be like the strip we all expect from day one. As a matter of fact, when the strip begins, Tracy isn't even a cop (and the way he gets his job is kind of ridiculous--it wouldn't happen that way today. Maybe it did in the 20s and 30s.) Once he joins the force, however, the battle against organized crime is on, and Gould, being from Chicago was more likely interested in organized crime figures like Al Capone, who he modeled the early Tracy adversary "Big Boy" on, and how these guys kept slipping through the fingers of the law, even though everyone knew they were guilty as hell.
From reading the supporting materials and these early strips, it's easy to see why Dick Tracy was a success from day one, because there was really nothing like it on the comics page. As with Charles Schulz's Peanuts these collections are fantastic if for nothing else than to see the evolution of the strip as the creator improves in their craft and becomes more comfortable with the characters. Something makes characters like Dick Tracy ubiquitous--I always love seeing the moment it happens. It just doesn't happen here.
My first "real" experience with Dick Tracy was the Warren Beatty/Madonna vehicle from 1990. There was a promotion that was run at the time where punters could buy a Dick Tracy t-shirt that also served as your ticket into the midnight showing of the movie. This was in the days before "comic book" movies were a thing, but I was a huge fan of anything that appeared in panels, so I had to see it. The excitement of that night has dimmed (all I remember is the bit about the t-shirt) and being a month before my fifteenth birthday, I wasn't woke enough to know the films of some of the acting heavy hitters who appeared in Dick Tracy (Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Madonna, although she's included for other reasons.) But I do remember that for film based on a police detective and his adversaries, there were some odd ducks amongst the rogues in that film. And that was cool, because really there hadn't been over-the-top villains like the ones from Dick Tracy in the movies before.
If the film was your only exposure to Dick Tracy, then there is a possibility for a let down when reading The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1: 1931-1933. Nowhere in this volume will you find the odd villains like Mumbles or Flattop. Those were in the strip's future as detailed by Max Allen Collins in the introduction to the volume. Of course, Dick Tracy wouldn't be like the strip we all expect from day one. As a matter of fact, when the strip begins, Tracy isn't even a cop (and the way he gets his job is kind of ridiculous--it wouldn't happen that way today. Maybe it did in the 20s and 30s.) Once he joins the force, however, the battle against organized crime is on, and Gould, being from Chicago was more likely interested in organized crime figures like Al Capone, who he modeled the early Tracy adversary "Big Boy" on, and how these guys kept slipping through the fingers of the law, even though everyone knew they were guilty as hell.
From reading the supporting materials and these early strips, it's easy to see why Dick Tracy was a success from day one, because there was really nothing like it on the comics page. As with Charles Schulz's Peanuts these collections are fantastic if for nothing else than to see the evolution of the strip as the creator improves in their craft and becomes more comfortable with the characters. Something makes characters like Dick Tracy ubiquitous--I always love seeing the moment it happens. It just doesn't happen here.
February 20, 2018
I'm a huge fan of comic books, comic strips, and animation. I decided to look into what are considered the all time greats of comic strip history. I was very happy to discover that IDW Publishing has a huge library of books collecting these hard to find comic strips from long ago. The books are in hardcover with 352 thick sturdy pages. The comic strips are lovingly well reproduced in fine detail and solid blacks of the dailys. The Sunday pages have sliglty saturated colors but it seems that it stay true to the original color process of newspapers of the time.
Chester Gould is definitely a master of the ink brush using fine line, bold blacks, and cross hatching to depict texture, color, and atmosphere. The Dick Tracy comic strips are hardboiled detective stories and as such they depict gangsters, brutality, drug dealing, and murder.
The book shows how Tracy got his start in crime fighting with the comic strip initialy titled Plain Clothes Tracy and after a few strips later changed to Dick Tracy . In this volume we are introduced to the cast of characters like Tracy's girlfriend Tess Trueheart, Chief Brandon, adopted kid Junior, and Tracy's crime busting partner Pat Patton. The main villains are Big Boy, Broadway Bates, Hobo Steve, Dan "The Squealer" Mucceli, Larceny Lu, and Stooge Viller.
*Just as a head, take into consideration that these comic strips are from the 1930s and reflect the society of the time. There are several instances in which minorities are drawn and depicted in a racist manner such as black people drawn with big white lips and buggy eyes and a Mexican villain named "Greaser" which is a racial slur towards those people from south of the border. I am Latino-American and I am glad that these stories have remained unedited and that they reflect time in American history.
I thoroughly enjoyed volume 1 and look forward to reading the next volumes in the series. There are currently 23 volumes with the 24th volume coming out in June 2018.
Chester Gould is definitely a master of the ink brush using fine line, bold blacks, and cross hatching to depict texture, color, and atmosphere. The Dick Tracy comic strips are hardboiled detective stories and as such they depict gangsters, brutality, drug dealing, and murder.
The book shows how Tracy got his start in crime fighting with the comic strip initialy titled Plain Clothes Tracy and after a few strips later changed to Dick Tracy . In this volume we are introduced to the cast of characters like Tracy's girlfriend Tess Trueheart, Chief Brandon, adopted kid Junior, and Tracy's crime busting partner Pat Patton. The main villains are Big Boy, Broadway Bates, Hobo Steve, Dan "The Squealer" Mucceli, Larceny Lu, and Stooge Viller.
*Just as a head, take into consideration that these comic strips are from the 1930s and reflect the society of the time. There are several instances in which minorities are drawn and depicted in a racist manner such as black people drawn with big white lips and buggy eyes and a Mexican villain named "Greaser" which is a racial slur towards those people from south of the border. I am Latino-American and I am glad that these stories have remained unedited and that they reflect time in American history.
I thoroughly enjoyed volume 1 and look forward to reading the next volumes in the series. There are currently 23 volumes with the 24th volume coming out in June 2018.
January 6, 2025
The early Dick Tracy strips show are a lot of fun, though it would be a few years before Chester Gould's narrative and artistic styles meshed to make Tracy the brilliant strip it would be during the 1940s and 1950s. He hasn't yet developed the grotesque and unique villains that will eventually clash with Tracy.
All the same, the stories here are already filled with frenetic energy and great action. Tracy battles crooks and--at one point--battles a grizzly bear. He's taken hostage, tossed off an ocean liner in the middle of the Atlantic, and gets shot, but by golly Tracy does NOT quit. If you've broken the law, he'll eventually run you down. Even though not yet at his peak, Gould was a fantastic storyteller.
All the same, the stories here are already filled with frenetic energy and great action. Tracy battles crooks and--at one point--battles a grizzly bear. He's taken hostage, tossed off an ocean liner in the middle of the Atlantic, and gets shot, but by golly Tracy does NOT quit. If you've broken the law, he'll eventually run you down. Even though not yet at his peak, Gould was a fantastic storyteller.
April 12, 2023
I read this book primarily for historical purposes. This was a very popular comic during the “heyday “ of newspaper funnies. The gags and storylines don’t work well today, but they do give a lot of insight into that period of time.
August 14, 2017
It was fun to read.
October 30, 2016
As many of you know, I have a love for the detective story. I really wish I'd have gotten a chance to read the strip daily, but we didn't get a paper back then, and now that I could, no one around here carries the strip. (Though I just found a comics online website that does, so I'll have to check that out.) Still, the little bits I saw on Sundays always intrigued me, and I remember going to see the Dick Tracy movie with my aunt in a nifty little act of disobedience against my mom, who I guess figured Madonna would come out of the screen and snatch my virginity or something.
At any rate, I've read so very little of this, with the exception of the very cool Collins Case Files (see my goodreads entries on these) that when I found out they had started an archives series, just like for Peanuts, I was ecstatic. Here was a chance to see Dick Tracy as he'd been originally conceived.
I was not disappointed in the least. Introduced by Max Allan Collins, Gould's successor on the strip, he sets the stage for what is to come, even noting that in the test strips--reproduced here--Tracy is wearing a straw hat!
At the beginning, Tracy isn't even a detective. Not unlike Batman or Spider-Man, a family tragedy causes him to start fighting crime, and he does so with a vengeance, going after the killers of his true love's father without any concerns for his own life. (We'll ignore that he has no formal training in this, because, after all, this is a superhero book, just one without capes and tights.) Asked to stay on permanently, he goes through a series of adventures, all of which have a way of linking together in a nifty manner that we don't see today. Tracy is a daily strip that has storylines, but rather than end them dead, as in the comic books, Gould opts to find a way to carry on from one to the other. For instance, after saving an orphan, Tracy discovers his reward is paid off in counterfeit notes, leading to the next several months of story. It's a rather clever device that I know Stan Lee uses, to not quite as good an effect, on the daily Spider-Man strip.
This Dick Tracy is more of a disguise-and-rumble guy, with only a few gadgets here and there. I am amused at the idea of Tracy's forensics use as being cutting-edge technology at the time. The villains, too, are pretty straightforward, basically clones of Capone and the rest of his prohibition-era cronies. They're clever, but not quite as clever as Tracy, and for the most part, they take the fall hard.
These are actually good detective stories that hold up rather well over time. Gould plots things nicely and does a good job of keeping the story moving without it feeling as though he's just trying to fill space day after day. He also keeps Tracy moving around, so that the location isn't always the city. We see him on vacation, on a boat in the open ocean, and even out West. I'll be curious to see how often this stays the case. My only plotting quibble, and it's a minor one, is the frequent "Tracy gets in trouble with his boss" riff that feels like a cliche to me. Perhaps that's because I've read a lot of this type of material over the years. It's one part of the writing I hope goes away.
I would be remiss if I don't also compliment the art. Gould's art lines are very clean and the use of shading to keep the clothing looking varied from character to character is well done, too. He's not at his best when drawing women--they tend to look a lot alike--but the men are in all shapes and sizes and he uses that to help us see what type of person they are. For instance, a confidence man looks like Oswalt Cobblepot while a tough gangster overlook has more of a Wilson Fisk build. Gould also has a great way of drawing expressive faces, which I think is something of a lost art nowadays.
There is a bit of stereotyping of the female characters that goes along with the territory, and Gould's drawing of African American characters is not the best--though the only one we really see was shown in probably the best light possible for a major publication in 1933. However, those kinda come with the territory when reading material from before the civil rights movement and modern feminism so I tend to give them a pass in light of the bigger picture, which is these are every bit as good as what his contemporaries were writing in print. In addition, their use of the cops as heroes and not antagonists put them in a light all their own.
Dick Tracy is over 75 years old now, so there's a lot of material to be published over the next several years. I greatly look forward to reading more. (Library, 11/07)
At any rate, I've read so very little of this, with the exception of the very cool Collins Case Files (see my goodreads entries on these) that when I found out they had started an archives series, just like for Peanuts, I was ecstatic. Here was a chance to see Dick Tracy as he'd been originally conceived.
I was not disappointed in the least. Introduced by Max Allan Collins, Gould's successor on the strip, he sets the stage for what is to come, even noting that in the test strips--reproduced here--Tracy is wearing a straw hat!
At the beginning, Tracy isn't even a detective. Not unlike Batman or Spider-Man, a family tragedy causes him to start fighting crime, and he does so with a vengeance, going after the killers of his true love's father without any concerns for his own life. (We'll ignore that he has no formal training in this, because, after all, this is a superhero book, just one without capes and tights.) Asked to stay on permanently, he goes through a series of adventures, all of which have a way of linking together in a nifty manner that we don't see today. Tracy is a daily strip that has storylines, but rather than end them dead, as in the comic books, Gould opts to find a way to carry on from one to the other. For instance, after saving an orphan, Tracy discovers his reward is paid off in counterfeit notes, leading to the next several months of story. It's a rather clever device that I know Stan Lee uses, to not quite as good an effect, on the daily Spider-Man strip.
This Dick Tracy is more of a disguise-and-rumble guy, with only a few gadgets here and there. I am amused at the idea of Tracy's forensics use as being cutting-edge technology at the time. The villains, too, are pretty straightforward, basically clones of Capone and the rest of his prohibition-era cronies. They're clever, but not quite as clever as Tracy, and for the most part, they take the fall hard.
These are actually good detective stories that hold up rather well over time. Gould plots things nicely and does a good job of keeping the story moving without it feeling as though he's just trying to fill space day after day. He also keeps Tracy moving around, so that the location isn't always the city. We see him on vacation, on a boat in the open ocean, and even out West. I'll be curious to see how often this stays the case. My only plotting quibble, and it's a minor one, is the frequent "Tracy gets in trouble with his boss" riff that feels like a cliche to me. Perhaps that's because I've read a lot of this type of material over the years. It's one part of the writing I hope goes away.
I would be remiss if I don't also compliment the art. Gould's art lines are very clean and the use of shading to keep the clothing looking varied from character to character is well done, too. He's not at his best when drawing women--they tend to look a lot alike--but the men are in all shapes and sizes and he uses that to help us see what type of person they are. For instance, a confidence man looks like Oswalt Cobblepot while a tough gangster overlook has more of a Wilson Fisk build. Gould also has a great way of drawing expressive faces, which I think is something of a lost art nowadays.
There is a bit of stereotyping of the female characters that goes along with the territory, and Gould's drawing of African American characters is not the best--though the only one we really see was shown in probably the best light possible for a major publication in 1933. However, those kinda come with the territory when reading material from before the civil rights movement and modern feminism so I tend to give them a pass in light of the bigger picture, which is these are every bit as good as what his contemporaries were writing in print. In addition, their use of the cops as heroes and not antagonists put them in a light all their own.
Dick Tracy is over 75 years old now, so there's a lot of material to be published over the next several years. I greatly look forward to reading more. (Library, 11/07)
March 25, 2016
My first introduction to Dick Tracy was on Josh Fruhlinger's Comics Curmudgeon blog, where he often mocked the mid-2000s strips as filled with incomprehensible plots and gratuitous, graphic violence. Thus I was primed to think of Dick Tracy as a fairly nonsensical adventure strip, and while that may be true of some of its modern day zombie-esque incarnations, the original stuff sure packs a punch. There are a few odd plot moments (Tracy uses planes to track down missing kids on two separate occasions in ways that don't quite feel right to me) and there's some pretty grisly violence compared to what I'm used to from the comics (including a van of crooks getting hit by a train, within the first few months of the strip, no less). However, there's also a lot to enjoy here. Dick is a pretty smart policeman, and I really appreciate that his origin is one of revenge for his fiancee's dad, rather than his fiancee - there's no killing of women for manpain here. I agree with the introduction's comparisons between Tracy and Sherlock Holmes - both make use of plenty of disguises, analytical minds, and cutting edge police techniques. Tracy uses fingerprinting a lot, and also brings in a lie detector machine at one point. His attitudes towards police regulations are freewheeling and even rather corrupt by modern standards, but after all, it is the 30s - and it makes him a sort of prototypical loose cannon cop in a lot of ways. On the other hand, he does clearly have a sense of honor and justice, working to take down a number of crooks, and doing a good job of caring for Tess and his adopted son, Junior. The villains are pretty mundane early on - none of the deformed, schtick-laden badguys that show up later. Still, they're a nicely done bunch, and you always feel glad when Dick takes them down. The secondary characters are pretty good, even if the other officers are largely there to be dunces next to Tracy - especially true of his sidekick Pat in the early Sunday strips (which have a great deal of humor compared to the other stuff). Of course, Sherlock Holmes is also showing up the police constantly, so I can accept it as being part of the genre. All in all, I had a great time reading these adventures, and I want to make a point of tracking down the rest of this series. Partly that's because I want to see some of the iconic runs, like the rise of the "weird" criminals and the Space Era, but mostly it's because I really do want to find out what happens next. It's just too bad my library only has one or two other volumes. Still, this is an excellent collection of a really great early comics character, and I think fans of 30s police stories and anyone curious about what Dick Tracy used to be like will get a real kick out of reading it.
August 4, 2013
This introductory volume to IDW's excellent Dick Tracy series does not represent Chester Gould at his best, but it is an interesting read to watch him slowly flesh out his creation. Early on the series is heavily influenced by 1920's gangland Chicago- Big Boy is clearly a take-off on Capone- but this would gradually change. The "Buddy Waldorf" storyline is a ripped-from-the-headlines take on the Lindbergh kidnapping, albeit with a happier ending.
Even this early on there is an emphasis on police science and procedure. The strip would help introduce ballistics, fingerprinting, and polygraphs to a broader general public.
The villains (who would eventually become the star attraction of the strip) here are pretty non-descript. Other than Big Boy we meet Ribs Mocca, Texie Garcia, Dan Mucelli, Alec Penn, Broadway Bates, and Larceny Lu. But it is two others that stand out well above the rest: Steve the Tramp and Stooge Viller. Gould must have known he was dealing with stronger characters here as he would bring both Steve & Stooge back multiple times over the course of the 30's, even teaming them up at one point. Stories revolving around the twosome take up the latter third of the book and so the stories get increasingly better as Gould was progressing into 1933.
Even this early on there is an emphasis on police science and procedure. The strip would help introduce ballistics, fingerprinting, and polygraphs to a broader general public.
The villains (who would eventually become the star attraction of the strip) here are pretty non-descript. Other than Big Boy we meet Ribs Mocca, Texie Garcia, Dan Mucelli, Alec Penn, Broadway Bates, and Larceny Lu. But it is two others that stand out well above the rest: Steve the Tramp and Stooge Viller. Gould must have known he was dealing with stronger characters here as he would bring both Steve & Stooge back multiple times over the course of the 30's, even teaming them up at one point. Stories revolving around the twosome take up the latter third of the book and so the stories get increasingly better as Gould was progressing into 1933.
April 19, 2009
This, like many of the old newspaper strips, only really becomes "itself" as known by the general public a couple of years down the road. Here Gould is finding his way, his characters and his tone, as a result it's going to be a frustrating read for those expecting classic later pulpy shinanigins. For those of you yearning for that, go straight to volume 3, and then come back, suitably reassured that your fond memories of this strip are not playing tricks on you, to see how Gould started it all off.
August 1, 2015
One of the most famous and long-running newspaper continuity strips (as opposed to a humorous comic strip) of all time. Here we find out exactly how and why Tracy entered law enforcement (you'll be surprised), who were the first villains he faced, and how he met the boy he begins to raise as Dick Tracy Jr.. And all this before he acquired the famous two-way wrist radio. Great for relaxing afternoons.
May 2, 2015
Maybe it gets better when Gould hits his stride in later years, but I couldn't find the interest to keep going.
March 22, 2016
If you love comic strips, especially golden age strips, this is a book you don't want to miss.
Want to read
February 13, 2020Synopsis: The first years of comic hero Dick Tracy include appearances by his usuals, Tess Truehart, Junior, and Chief Brandon.
May 9, 2008
Dick Tracy had the ugliest villains.
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