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Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive #1-4
Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive
Yellow trenchcoat? Check. Square jaw? Check. 2-Way Wrist Radio? Check!
Witness the rebirth of one the most iconic comic-strip heroes of all time!
The All-American detective just made the biggest collar of his career, and it only cost him his job! But now the honest cop has packed his bags for "the city by the lake," and its criminals better watch out. It's bizarre villains, crooked cops, and gunfights galore! Reimagined for the 21st century through a retro lens by the superstar team of Michael Allred, Lee Allred, Rich Tommaso and Laura Allred, Dick Dead or Alive is a lock to be the pop-art event of the year!
Collects the four-issue series.
Witness the rebirth of one the most iconic comic-strip heroes of all time!
The All-American detective just made the biggest collar of his career, and it only cost him his job! But now the honest cop has packed his bags for "the city by the lake," and its criminals better watch out. It's bizarre villains, crooked cops, and gunfights galore! Reimagined for the 21st century through a retro lens by the superstar team of Michael Allred, Lee Allred, Rich Tommaso and Laura Allred, Dick Dead or Alive is a lock to be the pop-art event of the year!
Collects the four-issue series.
104 pages, Paperback
Published April 23, 2019
3 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Mike Allred
720 books178 followersMichael 'Doc' Allred (Also Credited as M. Dalton Allred) grew up in the 60's and 70's and was surrounded with the best in pop culture and a steady diet of music, movies and comic books including the three B's: Beatles, Bond and Batman to the point of obsession.
So it should come as no surprise that he keeps a hand in film and music (He's the lead singer and guitarist for The Gear), but comic books have always been a seminal source of joy for Mike and that joy remains the main ingredient in most of his work.
Allred first tasted success in the comics field with his wildly popular MADMAN series, which is currently being developed for a live action film with filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. His earlier work from GRAFIK MUZIK was turned into the cult hit movie G-Men from Hell directed by Christopher Coppola (featuring Robert Goulet as the Devil). Other work includes Red Rocket 7, his history of Rock and Roll told in the context of a sci-fi adventure storyl the Madman spin-off THE ATOMICS and his magnum opus, THE GOLDEN PLATES, where he's illustrating the entire Book of Mormon.
Mike counts the secret to his success to be his wife, and creative partner, Laura Allred, who is is considered to be one of the best colorists in the business.
So it should come as no surprise that he keeps a hand in film and music (He's the lead singer and guitarist for The Gear), but comic books have always been a seminal source of joy for Mike and that joy remains the main ingredient in most of his work.
Allred first tasted success in the comics field with his wildly popular MADMAN series, which is currently being developed for a live action film with filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. His earlier work from GRAFIK MUZIK was turned into the cult hit movie G-Men from Hell directed by Christopher Coppola (featuring Robert Goulet as the Devil). Other work includes Red Rocket 7, his history of Rock and Roll told in the context of a sci-fi adventure storyl the Madman spin-off THE ATOMICS and his magnum opus, THE GOLDEN PLATES, where he's illustrating the entire Book of Mormon.
Mike counts the secret to his success to be his wife, and creative partner, Laura Allred, who is is considered to be one of the best colorists in the business.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 28, 2020
When Dick Tracy rolls into the city by the lake, he means to clean up the streets. Standing in his way are the entire corrupt police force and the underworld...
My exposure to Dick Tracy is limited to that movie starring Warren Beatty and Madonna but I'm a fan of the Allreds so I was all over this.
Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive, as much as I hate the term, is a reboot of Dick Tracy, adding in some modern technology and firmly establishing him in the city by the lake into four issues, laying the groundwork for more Dick Tracy from IDW, which I'm not sure has happened at this point.
The art by Rich Tommaso and Mike Allred has that timeless feel I've come to know and love, both retro and modern at the same time. You can tell they had fun with Tracy's grotesque enemies as well as his lantern jaw and Roman nose. You can feel the love for the source material in the Allred brothers' writing. Dick comes off as a hard boiled cop with a sense of humor and the criminal scheme was outlandish and entertaining. Dick had Robert Stack's voice in my head.
I have to say this made me really curious about early Dick Tracy so I'll have to track some of that down on the cheap.
Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive is a reboot of Dick Tracy for the modern age. Four out of five honest cops.
My exposure to Dick Tracy is limited to that movie starring Warren Beatty and Madonna but I'm a fan of the Allreds so I was all over this.
Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive, as much as I hate the term, is a reboot of Dick Tracy, adding in some modern technology and firmly establishing him in the city by the lake into four issues, laying the groundwork for more Dick Tracy from IDW, which I'm not sure has happened at this point.
The art by Rich Tommaso and Mike Allred has that timeless feel I've come to know and love, both retro and modern at the same time. You can tell they had fun with Tracy's grotesque enemies as well as his lantern jaw and Roman nose. You can feel the love for the source material in the Allred brothers' writing. Dick comes off as a hard boiled cop with a sense of humor and the criminal scheme was outlandish and entertaining. Dick had Robert Stack's voice in my head.
I have to say this made me really curious about early Dick Tracy so I'll have to track some of that down on the cheap.
Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive is a reboot of Dick Tracy for the modern age. Four out of five honest cops.
October 16, 2023
Deeply disappointing.
Sorry you feel that way, Dick, but it's the truth!
Dick Tracy in the smartphone age is a weird vibe, and both the writing and art felt rushed and lacking real depth. Skip this one.
Sorry you feel that way, Dick, but it's the truth!
Dick Tracy in the smartphone age is a weird vibe, and both the writing and art felt rushed and lacking real depth. Skip this one.
June 2, 2020
This Dick Tracy reboot tries real hard to capture the wild spirit of Chester Gould's police detective comic strip but just doesn't do it for me.
Part of the problem is the setting which simultaneously tries to be the 1930s and the present day. How can Tracy's two-way watch radio be special in an era of ubiquitous mobile devices? By adding quantum entanglement so it's a smart watch with great reception? Really? Without cutting-edge technology and strict police procedures, we are left with Tracy just running around talking like a tough guy and shooting at everybody. And who wants to see that sort of rogue police work in today's environment?
Stick to the roots or revamp entirely to modern times. Pick a lane!
In the end, the plot is a tangled mess with dozens of criminals from Tracy's rogue gallery wasted in pointless cameos.
Part of the problem is the setting which simultaneously tries to be the 1930s and the present day. How can Tracy's two-way watch radio be special in an era of ubiquitous mobile devices? By adding quantum entanglement so it's a smart watch with great reception? Really? Without cutting-edge technology and strict police procedures, we are left with Tracy just running around talking like a tough guy and shooting at everybody. And who wants to see that sort of rogue police work in today's environment?
Stick to the roots or revamp entirely to modern times. Pick a lane!
In the end, the plot is a tangled mess with dozens of criminals from Tracy's rogue gallery wasted in pointless cameos.
January 13, 2022
3.5 Stars
This reboot of Dick Tracy does a decent job with the character. It was set in an odd art deco world somewhere between now and the 1930s. For example the buildings and cars looked like something out of the 30s, but the characters were using cell phones.
Dick Tracy has always had an interesting cast of characters, and many of them show up here. Dick Tracy shows up in what I suppose is Chicago in an attempt to clean up the town. He's lured there by the corrupt city government, but manages to outfox them at first. Then he's framed for murder, and finds himself on the run from cops and bounty seeking crooks as well. Thankfully, he does have some allies.
The art was pretty good and fit the story well, doing a good job of evoking classic Dick Tracy with a more modern look at times.
A good reboot of the character.
This reboot of Dick Tracy does a decent job with the character. It was set in an odd art deco world somewhere between now and the 1930s. For example the buildings and cars looked like something out of the 30s, but the characters were using cell phones.
Dick Tracy has always had an interesting cast of characters, and many of them show up here. Dick Tracy shows up in what I suppose is Chicago in an attempt to clean up the town. He's lured there by the corrupt city government, but manages to outfox them at first. Then he's framed for murder, and finds himself on the run from cops and bounty seeking crooks as well. Thankfully, he does have some allies.
The art was pretty good and fit the story well, doing a good job of evoking classic Dick Tracy with a more modern look at times.
A good reboot of the character.
February 15, 2022
Some things are just better left alone.
August 1, 2019
Incorruptible cop Dick Tracy is one of those properties that is visually stunning. With it's bright colors and ever so colorful villains, you can't look away from this gritty crime comic created by Chester Gould.
My biggest problem with Dick Tracy was that it wasn't readily available in my area growing up as a kid. You would think a big city such as Raleigh, NC would have a newspaper that carried Dick Tracy. But except for when I would travel into very rural country to see either my grandmama or my great-grandmother, I never got to read Tracy's exploits all that often.
I was a big fan of the Warren Beatty picture from the 90s. Being only 11 or 12, I didn't know that it was supposed to suck. But even looking at the film today, you can't deny that the producers and make-up team did a pretty darn good job of making a comic strip come alive on the silver screen.
When it was announced last year that Dick Tracy was coming to comics in an all-new series and that not just one, but 3 Allreds were to be involved, I was overjoyed. Michael and his brother, Lee Allred wrote the script to this quasi-modern rebooted origin of the world's greatest cop. Comics legend Michael also penciled everything with his equally legendary wife Laura coloring the book. Dark Corridor's Rich Tommaso inked the book and he's so good at it that his inks don't flush out Mike Allred's iconic art style.
I thought that this was a great origin tale. It had a classic feel to it with very little modern changes. Dick Tracy had always been ahead of it's time with two-way radio wrist-watches and engine-less cop cars. Thus, any new changes to the technology, while far-out, didn't seem all that odd.
The extra material was really my only complaint. There's a timeline of important moments in Dick Tracy history which I really enjoyed. But for some reason, it stops abruptly sometime in the 1950s without any warning or explanation. Are later years planned for future collected works of Dick Tracy comics? I know that there's a new Dick Tracy miniseries being published right now (Dick Tracy Forever). Is that the plan? A small blurb promising such would have been greatly appreciated.
Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive was a super fun book by those amazing Allreds. I love their work so freakin' much. I hate that the only blemish to this awesome miniseries from IDW Publishing. It just doesn't seem fair. But I must stick to my ratings. Otherwise, this was a nearly flawless work.
My biggest problem with Dick Tracy was that it wasn't readily available in my area growing up as a kid. You would think a big city such as Raleigh, NC would have a newspaper that carried Dick Tracy. But except for when I would travel into very rural country to see either my grandmama or my great-grandmother, I never got to read Tracy's exploits all that often.
I was a big fan of the Warren Beatty picture from the 90s. Being only 11 or 12, I didn't know that it was supposed to suck. But even looking at the film today, you can't deny that the producers and make-up team did a pretty darn good job of making a comic strip come alive on the silver screen.
When it was announced last year that Dick Tracy was coming to comics in an all-new series and that not just one, but 3 Allreds were to be involved, I was overjoyed. Michael and his brother, Lee Allred wrote the script to this quasi-modern rebooted origin of the world's greatest cop. Comics legend Michael also penciled everything with his equally legendary wife Laura coloring the book. Dark Corridor's Rich Tommaso inked the book and he's so good at it that his inks don't flush out Mike Allred's iconic art style.
I thought that this was a great origin tale. It had a classic feel to it with very little modern changes. Dick Tracy had always been ahead of it's time with two-way radio wrist-watches and engine-less cop cars. Thus, any new changes to the technology, while far-out, didn't seem all that odd.
The extra material was really my only complaint. There's a timeline of important moments in Dick Tracy history which I really enjoyed. But for some reason, it stops abruptly sometime in the 1950s without any warning or explanation. Are later years planned for future collected works of Dick Tracy comics? I know that there's a new Dick Tracy miniseries being published right now (Dick Tracy Forever). Is that the plan? A small blurb promising such would have been greatly appreciated.
Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive was a super fun book by those amazing Allreds. I love their work so freakin' much. I hate that the only blemish to this awesome miniseries from IDW Publishing. It just doesn't seem fair. But I must stick to my ratings. Otherwise, this was a nearly flawless work.
June 21, 2019
Dick Tracy zasazený do moderní doby, nečekaně pořád docela dobré čtivo.
Už na začátku je potřeba varovat, že musíte být fanoušci původních příběhů, jinak pro vás tenhle kousek moc nebude (a klidně si jednu až dvě hvězdy odečtěte). A i tehdy vlastně zase hrozí, že vám úplně nesedne ono zasazení do moderní doby. I když nutno říct, že je většinu času hlavně kosmetické, protože zbytek zůstává stejný.
Jako fandové možná ony stejné vnitřnosti oceníte, pokud se dokážete smířit s tím, že postavy ze staré školy tu občas vytáhnou z kapsy mobilní telefon anebo ukážou jinou moderní technologii. Jako nedotknutí před sebou máte nový rozjezd, kde jenom musíte přežít, že postavy mají za sebou minulost, kterou neznáte a která je vysvětlena jenom, jak to příběh zrovna potřebuje. Když se s tímhle smíříte, tak si můžete užít příběh, který jako by vypadl z jedné ze starých knih, s padouchy, kteří jsou humorní, jak svým vzhledem a chování, tak svými jmény (Yesterday Knewes rozhodně pobavil) a zápletkou, která už je tak provařená, že to snad více nejde.
Kresba tu funguje na výbornou, tedy pokud čekáte lehce over-the-top stylizaci a užijete si, když většina postav vypadá jako by sem přicestovala z první půlky minulého století. A pokud se vám po tomhle stýská a vydání starých stripů od stejného vydavatelství vám nestačí, tak tohle může být příjemná jednohubka na oddálení absťáku.
Mohlo by se vám líbit, pokud:
- vás bavila původní série a překousnete její posun
- se vám stýská po jednodušších dobách, kdy všechny postavy byly dvourozměrné a padouši měli jednoduché plány
Spíš vás zklame, pokud:
- nejste fanoušci původní série a neláká vás ztřeštěná detektivka s postavami z 30tých let, ale zasazená do moderních kulis
Už na začátku je potřeba varovat, že musíte být fanoušci původních příběhů, jinak pro vás tenhle kousek moc nebude (a klidně si jednu až dvě hvězdy odečtěte). A i tehdy vlastně zase hrozí, že vám úplně nesedne ono zasazení do moderní doby. I když nutno říct, že je většinu času hlavně kosmetické, protože zbytek zůstává stejný.
Jako fandové možná ony stejné vnitřnosti oceníte, pokud se dokážete smířit s tím, že postavy ze staré školy tu občas vytáhnou z kapsy mobilní telefon anebo ukážou jinou moderní technologii. Jako nedotknutí před sebou máte nový rozjezd, kde jenom musíte přežít, že postavy mají za sebou minulost, kterou neznáte a která je vysvětlena jenom, jak to příběh zrovna potřebuje. Když se s tímhle smíříte, tak si můžete užít příběh, který jako by vypadl z jedné ze starých knih, s padouchy, kteří jsou humorní, jak svým vzhledem a chování, tak svými jmény (Yesterday Knewes rozhodně pobavil) a zápletkou, která už je tak provařená, že to snad více nejde.
Kresba tu funguje na výbornou, tedy pokud čekáte lehce over-the-top stylizaci a užijete si, když většina postav vypadá jako by sem přicestovala z první půlky minulého století. A pokud se vám po tomhle stýská a vydání starých stripů od stejného vydavatelství vám nestačí, tak tohle může být příjemná jednohubka na oddálení absťáku.
Mohlo by se vám líbit, pokud:
- vás bavila původní série a překousnete její posun
- se vám stýská po jednodušších dobách, kdy všechny postavy byly dvourozměrné a padouši měli jednoduché plány
Spíš vás zklame, pokud:
- nejste fanoušci původní série a neláká vás ztřeštěná detektivka s postavami z 30tých let, ale zasazená do moderních kulis
April 15, 2022
This was so clever and well written it took me by surprise. I am not a Dick Tracy fan by any means but it felt like it captured the spirit of the strip and reinvented it at the same time. I had wanted the art to be by Mike Allred but he did the inks and overall it was fairly good. But the star was the pace of the story and the inventive twists and turns it took and the fact it kept up a great pace from start to finish. Also - the humour of Dick Tracy's dialogue was top notch. His snark reminded me a bit of Nick Fury but it was even better written than Stan Lee's ever was.
I think this was supposed to be the start of a bigger series but it never happened and that is a shame. I would have loved to see where it went from here. But these four issues were a perfect start.
I think this was supposed to be the start of a bigger series but it never happened and that is a shame. I would have loved to see where it went from here. But these four issues were a perfect start.
March 20, 2020
This is an attempt to try and revisit Dick Tracy. It had some good moments. Such as tributes to the extensive Tracy rogue gallery and many inside jokes such as Moon Maid on a movie marquee. There was a small dose of realism in that Tracy has been booted off several police forces for being to intent on cleaning up the city in question. Overall, the story-line is very weak. I also did not like the art. Gould's artwork was highly stylized and this artwork is too humorous. I gave it two starts more for nostalgic reasons than anything else.
January 5, 2020
I loved this collection. Rich Tomasso was the PERFECT choice for art on Dick Tracy and Mike Allred did an excellent job crafting a story that simultaneously seemed modern and fit in to the feel of Dick Tracy. I'm sad they only did a short run but I'll probably go look up some more Dick Tracy runs (including the old Chester Gould stuff) now.
April 5, 2020
Fun enough reinvention of Dick Tracy, mixing in some modern technology and even sci-fi elements into the more classic vibe. I just wish Michael Allred has done the interior art in addition to writing and doing covers (no offense to Tommaso, whose cartoony style is a decent match for Tracy...but Allred is my favorite artist, so I’m biased).
February 15, 2022
It's everything you remember from the newspaper comics page, but updated. Dick Tracy versus Big Boy in a war between law and organized crime. What more could you want?
This was created to pay homage to the classic strip, so it looks and feels just like it, although with more of an action-oriented approach.
This was created to pay homage to the classic strip, so it looks and feels just like it, although with more of an action-oriented approach.
May 9, 2019
Allred delievers his flavor of Dick Tracy while remaining truthfull to the fun and wacky original strip.
March 11, 2021
3.5 stars.
Gorgeous, winkingly hokey, and fun as hell.
Gorgeous, winkingly hokey, and fun as hell.
March 23, 2021
It ain’t perfect. It’s simple. It’s clever. It drips with style. It’s fun as hell.
May 16, 2021
A fun, light hearted read.
June 17, 2021
I think Dick Tracy fundamentally only works as either a period piece or a parody
January 22, 2022
Good throwback comic to 1930s era Dick Tracy but I wish they didn't back away from their ACAB premise
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews