Dick Tracy Collection - 1943

by Mr. Chester Gould, MR Dean Mullaney (Editor), MR Jerry Ordway (Contributor)

160 pages, Paperback

Expected publication May 26, 2026

Reviews

[Gary Sassaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished my reading of the four-volume set of Dick Tracy comic strip reprints published by Clover Press. This is a no-frills reprinting of the Library of American Comics hardbound from over a decade ago, minus all the historical articles. They were offered on Kickstarter in a plan where you get all four volumes at once, with this initial package including years 1941 through 1944, each being a separate volume running from January 1 to December 1 of each year. I jumped at it, even though I’ve read a lot of these stories numerous times. 1943 is the weakest of the bunch with 88 Keys and Mrs. Pruneface as the main villains, but lo and behold, Chester Gould gifts us with Flattop right at Christmas 1943, and he’s the gift that keeps on giving until almost halfway into the 1944 volume, one of the cartoonists’ most popular villains ever (he even introduced the character’s son a decade later, in one of my all-time favorite storylines, in a successful effort to capture some of that 1944 Flattop magic). I like these volumes, but I don’t dig the fancy-shmancy slipcases or the new interpretations of Tracy that adorn the covers. Just give me the stories, please, with Gould art. Also, it would’ve been nice to reprint the Sunday strips in color, like Clover’s other current reprint project, the Amazing Spider-Man comic strip by Stan Lee and John Romita, offered in a similar Kickstarter scheme and price-point. Not sure why they didn’t do that.