Dick Tracy Collection - 1941

by Mr. Chester Gould, Mr. Dean Mullaney (Series Editor), Mr. Jerry Ordway (Cover Art)

160 pages, Paperback

Expected publication February 24, 2026

Reviews

[Gary Sassaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first volume in a major project from Clover Press and the Library of American Comics, reprinting Chester Gould’s masterful syndicated newspaper comic strip, Dick Tracy. It’s predecessor, The Complete Dick Tracy reprinted the entire run by Gould (from 1931 to 1977) in hardbound editions, with a lot of historical material, including essays by Tracy author Max Allen Collins, who took over the writing of the strip after Gould retired. In this new series, we get paperback editions encased in fancy slipcases, and each volume represents one year of continuity, pretty much from January 1st through December 31st, dangling storylines be damned, and it’s strips only: no essays. I’m fine with that, although the slipcases and new interpretations of Tracy on each volume (Clover is publishing them four at a time) leave me kind of cold. I do love re-reading these tales and 1941 is certainly the demarcation line for when Tracy started to become really good, with the introduction in that year of two of Gould’s famously freaky bad guys: Little Face Finny and The Mole. I like the four volumes at once production schedule, too, although I will probably skip everything before 1940 and everything after 1960. Clover Press offered these on Kickstarter first, so buying all four volumes at once gave readers a bit of a price break (retail price is $29.99/volume; Kickstarter made it about $25.00 each). I’m looking forward to getting more of these and restarting my Dick Tracy collection … or at least some of it.