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Dick Tracy: America's Most Famous Detective
Gathers selected stories from the long running police detective comic strip, and offers profiles of the artists and writers who have worked on the strip
- GenresComics
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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January 17, 2018Saw this on a bookstall the other day and it reminded me that while I've never read any Dick Tracy comics, beyond what's excerpted herein, I did read this coffee table celebration of him as a child. I was an odd kid.
March 17, 2013
The big problem with this book, and it is huge, is that none of the contributors realize that the comic strip DICK TRACY is not wonderful. Chester Gould created something truly novel when the strip was launched, many imitators grew from it, and it has lasted, with diminishing returns, until today. Add in all the books, comic and coloring books, Tracy toys, the films, radio, and television series, and that is a big success. The problem is that Tracy is not great art nor was Gould a great artist. Somebody should tell the contributors. Let that be me.
Credit Gould with using black and white spaces to direct the eye as important design elements in a panel all you wish, but know that his work breaks down after that. Design is an important concept here, because his art was more often a design, like a blueprint. He laid out where everything is a room was located, including the people, so TRACY readers understood the space, but his rendering and especially his anatomy were week. An object might look enough like a chair that you understand it is a chair, but it is a damn unnatural chair. When Rick Marschall comments on Gould’s “abstract design” that focuses attention on a character’s breasts, they are the fakest looking breasts in cartooning history and of no interest to the male gaze (110). He was a poor visual story teller. Panel sequence lacked narrative flow more often than they had it.
His writing was formulaic, at best, with ridiculous villains who had absurd names and physical characteristics, nearly always, with predictable plot elements that included capture, torture, escape by the villain, a chase to capture him, usually ending in his death. There are far more Gould stories with all of these than there are stories with even just one of these plot points eliminated.
The writers here praise his sense of humor. It must be the unfunniest sense of humor I have ever encountered. I have studied the strip through the mid sixties, and while I find the lighter moments a good balance for the heavier, the harder Gould strives for a big laugh the more eye-rolling his writing becomes. We are too often asked to laugh at characters, not at their jokes or quips. It becomes mean and it is condescending.
So why did the strip flourish for so many decades? The writing and art were good enough. In the weird-ass world of Dick Tracy, Gould’s storytelling had a kind of surreal verve that could be very entertaining and the stories at the their best could be well paced and exciting, but readers had to put up with the bad to enjoy the good—at least that was true until the last 10 plus years of Gould’s involvement. His drawing was just as bad, then, but his story sense went out the window. He had always walked right up to the absurd but somehow managed to stay on the right side of the threshold. In the last years he walked right through that door and never went back. The strip, always self righteous, was also ill-served by the times. The protests and alternative lifestyles of the late sixties and early seventies were something that Gould could not resist mocking, but his mocks show no understanding of the people he mocks and are just mean. Long time readers must have suspected that there was meanness behind all that self-righteousness, but now it was out and it was ugly.
Gould’s replacements from 1977, Max Allen Collins writing with Rick Fletcher and later Dick Locher on art, managed to keep DICK TRACY going, avoiding most of Gould’s excesses and telling good enough stories, but they failed to capture that excitement that made this not just the first detective comic strip, but the only one to have lasted until today.
The four stars are for the wealth of information, raw facts, that make this book worthwhile. They are not for the bullshit that the authors seem to believe about the quality of Gould’s work.
Credit Gould with using black and white spaces to direct the eye as important design elements in a panel all you wish, but know that his work breaks down after that. Design is an important concept here, because his art was more often a design, like a blueprint. He laid out where everything is a room was located, including the people, so TRACY readers understood the space, but his rendering and especially his anatomy were week. An object might look enough like a chair that you understand it is a chair, but it is a damn unnatural chair. When Rick Marschall comments on Gould’s “abstract design” that focuses attention on a character’s breasts, they are the fakest looking breasts in cartooning history and of no interest to the male gaze (110). He was a poor visual story teller. Panel sequence lacked narrative flow more often than they had it.
His writing was formulaic, at best, with ridiculous villains who had absurd names and physical characteristics, nearly always, with predictable plot elements that included capture, torture, escape by the villain, a chase to capture him, usually ending in his death. There are far more Gould stories with all of these than there are stories with even just one of these plot points eliminated.
The writers here praise his sense of humor. It must be the unfunniest sense of humor I have ever encountered. I have studied the strip through the mid sixties, and while I find the lighter moments a good balance for the heavier, the harder Gould strives for a big laugh the more eye-rolling his writing becomes. We are too often asked to laugh at characters, not at their jokes or quips. It becomes mean and it is condescending.
So why did the strip flourish for so many decades? The writing and art were good enough. In the weird-ass world of Dick Tracy, Gould’s storytelling had a kind of surreal verve that could be very entertaining and the stories at the their best could be well paced and exciting, but readers had to put up with the bad to enjoy the good—at least that was true until the last 10 plus years of Gould’s involvement. His drawing was just as bad, then, but his story sense went out the window. He had always walked right up to the absurd but somehow managed to stay on the right side of the threshold. In the last years he walked right through that door and never went back. The strip, always self righteous, was also ill-served by the times. The protests and alternative lifestyles of the late sixties and early seventies were something that Gould could not resist mocking, but his mocks show no understanding of the people he mocks and are just mean. Long time readers must have suspected that there was meanness behind all that self-righteousness, but now it was out and it was ugly.
Gould’s replacements from 1977, Max Allen Collins writing with Rick Fletcher and later Dick Locher on art, managed to keep DICK TRACY going, avoiding most of Gould’s excesses and telling good enough stories, but they failed to capture that excitement that made this not just the first detective comic strip, but the only one to have lasted until today.
The four stars are for the wealth of information, raw facts, that make this book worthwhile. They are not for the bullshit that the authors seem to believe about the quality of Gould’s work.
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