The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 21: 1962-1964

The Complete Dick Tracy #21

by Chester Gould

Dick Tracy leaps into the Space Age when Diet Smith's experimental Space Coupe brings back a visitor from outer space! Meet...Moon Maid, the most outrageous character in the strip's entire history. Prior to venturing where no detective has gone before, Tracy deals with some very earthbound--and gruesomely entertaining--adventures, including the use of napalm (!) to flush out a gang of crooks from their hideout. In these strips from August 27, 1962 through April 12, 1964 Tracy mixes it up with the criminal 52 Gang--each named for a card in the poker deck--who have found a novel way to dispose of the corpses of their enemies, Junior is smitten by a girl who literally wants him dead, Sparkle Plenty falls into the hands of crazed modern artists and their ape accomplice, and (six months before it happened in the "real world") a doctor has perfected heart transplant surgery--but in this case it's on unwilling victims!

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comic Strips, Comics, Mystery, Adventure

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Chester 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.

Reviews

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume kicks off with one of Chester Gould's more controversial storylines: the introduction of the magnetic space coupe. Science fictional gadgets had appeared in the strip before, but this marked the most overt foray into the SF genre in the strip’s history. Long time fans railed against it, but, as Max Allan Collins points out in his introduction, younger readers tended to accept it as simply another fantastic element, no worse than some of the more grotesque villains in Tracy’s rogues gallery.

I think my favorite sequence in this volume would be the heart transplant storyline. In real life, the first successful such operation didn't occur until 1967. Gould, as usual, was ahead of events with this 1963 sequence. Part of what I love is the sheer strangeness of the reveal, where the police discover a live human heart in a box, visible through transparent side panels and hooked up to some sort of machinery. In a comic strip known for its grotesque imagery, this sequence still stands out as particularly outré …

The Pallete Brothers story was enjoyable also, although Gould’s conservative roots are showing more than a little in his opinions on modern art.

And the bit where Junior professes his love for Moon Maid was surprisingly touching.

The entire 1960’s has been poorly served by Dick Tracy reprints up until now. Yes, the storylines of the 40’s and 50's would appear to represent Chester Gould at the peak of his creative powers, but, as this book shows, he was still capable of some fine work. Yes, the overt SF elements don't fit in well with the strip as a whole, but kudos to Gould's inventiveness at the very least. Ever since discovering Dick Tracy as a child (back in the mid-70's or so, if you must know), I’ve dreamed of being able to read the entire strip from the beginning. Many thanks to IDW for helping that dream come true!

[Paul Hasbrouck · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this volume the saga of Dick Tracy arrives to the year 1962 and leap into the space age. Gould gives the readers Diet Smith's Space Coupe, a hooded international gang, drug dealers, assorted group of animal sidekicks, organ thieves(in 1963!), and finally he brings in the strange but delightful-The Moon Maid. Who he uses for one of his thrilling winter arcs, with a massive snow storm, a helpless mother and a hungry pack of wolves.....superb!!!
Now many Tracy fans do not like this time, but I do. I have a few reasons, the love of science fiction, I was ten years old when these first appeared and I remember reading this strip(plus Terry and the Pirates, Little Orphan Annie, Dondi(boring) in the great comic pages of New York Daily News), with my grandfather. Later during the Great Newspaper Strike 1962-1963, the comedian Chuck McCann used his kids show on WPIX tv to read the comics to the New York/New Jersey area. He appeared dressed as the characters-Dick Tracy, Annie, Dondi , Smiling Jack and The Dragon Lady's Grandmother!
This volume ends on a cliffhanger, the next one will have more events about the Moon Maid and introducing one of the great Tracy villain-Mr. Bribery!

[Ihsan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the volume where Dick Tracy goes insane.

Chester Gould received some kind of energy boost in 1962. His already robust imagination, attuned to the macabre and hardboiled, went into overdrive, this time in a grandiose, science-fictional direction that proved incredibly divisive. For 30 years Dick Tracy had been a police procedural, and many fans resented its sudden lurch from detective to science fiction. Those with fonder memories of the moon period tended to be children at the time; space cop Tracy was what they grew up with. I didn't start reading Tracy until much later and find myself in the middle. The strip was reinvigorated by these radical changes, but the elements underpinning them were sometimes ludicrous and unconvincing.

Whether or not the stories were in decline, Gould's artwork was reaching its peak. By the early 60s Gould (aided by assistant Rick Fletcher) was unrivalled in his mastery of chiaroscuro and spotting blacks. No one before or since has shown an equivalent sense of balance between light and absolute darkness. And now Gould was refining his linework too, gracefully alternating thick and thin lines with ravishingly delicacy. This volume is worth purchasing for the artwork alone. But on to the stories...

This volume starts with the introduction of the Space Coupe. It looks airborne trash can but is able to reach the moon in three hours, thanks to the vaguely-defined powers of magnetism. Gould endlessly dotes over this toy, which he trumpets as greater than anything NASA could begin to think of, but it feels more like science BS than fiction.

The Space Coupe is hijacked by the 52 Gang, whose organization is quickly (and a bit too easily) infiltrated and destroyed by Tracy, who strafes the gang's headquarters with napalm in a freakish prelude of Vietnam.

Sci-fi is put aside for the next story, when Junior Tracy is targeted for death by femme fatale Thistle Dew, her vengeful uncle Punky, and their accomplice Patience Peek (whose chihuahua becomes an alcoholic like its owner ). The hardboiled story grows delightfully wacky with the introduction of talking raven who dispenses legal advice.

Next comes a meandering but imaginative tale set in Virginia, involving a pair of criminal modern artists who live in a hollowed-out mountain and employ an artistically inclined quasi-bigfoot named Lil' Dropout. Tracy and inventor Diet Smith employ advanced technology (audio and video bugging) to achieve another fiery victory.

Gould moves on to a tale of rogue doctors engaging in heart transplants (only a few years before they became a reality). The story benefits from gory heart imagery but suffers from hasty plotting, weak villains, and the delusion that a new heart give an old man the gymnastic skills of a young one.

Finally Gould flings the strip irrevocably into sci-fi with the introduction of Moon Maid, a curvaceous lunar nymph with horns who can drastically shift her body temperature and explode rockets by pointing at them. Gould tended to plot by the seat of his pants and much of this story is spent on Moon Maid showing off her powers while Gould decides what to do with her. Eventually he decides on rushing Junior Tracy and Moon Maid into an unconvincing romance; the volume collection ends in melodrama. At this point Moon Maid is not much of a character; future volumes will determine whether she grows into one.

[John Yingling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even with some really over the top storylines--an artistic ape, a space vehicle that can reach the moon in a few hours, a blabbermouth bird, a humanoid being from the moon---this is still a fun, thrill ride of a compendium of the Dick Tracy comic strips from 1962-1964. Along with Charles Schulz, Chester Gould was, and is, one of my very favorite cartoonists. Love that two-way wrist radio and Crimestoppers Textbook!

[Carl Waluconis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has the entrance of the Moon Maid on January 1, 1964. To introduce an alien and space travel in the strip with his iconic cop detective was very daring for Chester Gould, who was quite accustomed to taking chances, and had full confidence when doing so. His "tried and true" fans and followers were indignant. They wanted their Dick Tracy, who was at times an inhuman jerk. So Chester Gould, whose politics were - well, earlier in this volume without a qualm Tracy napalms a plateaued bluff, leaving the many on it to burn or jump to their dooms. That's the kind of material I think those who disliked Moon Maid had no problem with. But this pixieish, young woman, who did save a mother and baby from a blizzard, with powers like electric blasts from her tiny horns, was more than they could take. In fact, she signals that in 1963 Mr.Gould was on a new track, and as often previously, very prescient. Moon Maid's powers really do foreshadow the powers of super heroes coming in the decades of comics after this. We do have space travel, at least to the moon, introduced in 1962, with a mobster meeting Tracy's justice by being dumped to float in orbit forever. Also, this volume has some of Gould's freakiest stories, with Punky going to the zoo to talk with Stoolie, a cigarette-smoking crow. I don't think anyone else could get away with these kinds of situations and stories in the Sunday comics, which was still a mass medium during those years. As is well known, Moon Maid finds a soft spot in Junior's heart, the same Junior who tangled with a woman villain earlier in the volume and defeated her by tearing out her hair with his teeth. A major change is coming for Tracy as well in the next volume, all heralded by the 1964 visit from an alien - what fun.

[Woody Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haha! It only recently occurred to me that these collections might be on this site/app! My younger brother and I were comic book collectors from the first time that our late Pops took me to the now long-defunct Ye Olde Book Shoppe & bought me a coverless Archie comic book of my choosing.

I was a reader from the age of 2 y/o, but pictures & reading were really up my alley. Archie did not last long & we moved onto Disney & DC's House of Mystery/House of Secrets. At some point, I chose Marvel over DC & that became the focus for many years. We then regressed to Harvey (Richie Rich, Casper & the like), but in their archives were Dick Tracy, Joe Palooka & Terry & the Pirates.

I really latched onto Tracy, but their run was broken & marred with reprints as well as gaps, etc. In the late-1980s, Blackthorne Publishing began reprinting the series in its entirety, starting at the beginning, but at some point, they lost steam & stopped. Grr.

It has taken a while for these guys to catch up, but this is the first volume to contain new (to me) material. I have no animosity towards the Moon digressions & the demise of The 52 Gang has to be one of the most memorable (for me) outside of The Sphinx (Crewy Lou's sidekick). People jumping off of a mesa's cliff to avoid being burned alive as machine gun fire sends them off is astounding!

Onto the next volume!

[Yosef Shapiro · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first part of this volume contains basic Tracy story elements. The last set of strips begins an era where Gould gets away from traditional grounded stories and forays into Sci Fi. While I am a fan of Sci Fi, I don't feel it belongs in the Tracy stories. Tracy creator Chet Gould felt differently.

[David R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection covers the "Dick Tracy" strips run between 1962 and 1964 at the dawn of Gould's "science fiction" period. At the center is "Moon Maid", a lunar denizen who is brought to Earth. The villains aren't lame albeit a little forgettable. Thistle Dew and Smallmouth Bass are most interesting as characters. And the artwork is terrific.