Presenting the third volume of IDW Publishing's deluxe hardcover collection of Chester Gould's timeless comic strip, Dick Tracy. Volume Three once again contains over 500 comic strips from the series' early years, this time covering material that originally ran from January 1935 through June 1936. This special volume features an introduction from Consulting Editor and longtime Tracy writer Max Allan Collins. Each volume will feature book design from award-winning designer/artist Ashley Wood. -The Library of American Comics is the world's #1 publisher of classic newspaper comic strips, with 14 Eisner Award nominations and three wins for best book. LOAC has become "the gold standard for archival comic strip reprints... The research and articles provide insight and context, and most importantly the glorious reproduction of the material has preserved these strips for those who knew them and offers a new gateway to adventure for those discovering them for the first time." - Scoop
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.
The third volume of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, published by IDW Publishing in 2007, takes the comic strip from January of 1935 to July of 1936. Throughout the volume we see Chester Gould experiment with different approaches as he honed his storytelling chops. Gould’s strip follows the titular detective as he battles criminals using his brain, his brawn, and the very latest in scientific advancements. From the very beginning, Dick Tracy was very popular, and very violent.
As Max Allan Collins writes in the Introduction to Volume 3, Gould “has already started to focus on his primary mode of storytelling: the chase.” Many Dick Tracy storylines focus on the desperate decisions that criminals make as the noose around them tightens. Gould was a master of claustrophobic horror, as villains often get trapped in small physical spaces, mimicking the way in which their moral choices are also shrinking.
Volume 3 finds Gould introducing numerous supporting characters who assist Tracy and his sidekick Pat Patton at various points. Among these characters are: Chief Yellowpony, Toby Townley, Jim Trailer, and Memphis Smith. None of these characters became regulars in the strip, and it might be that Gould was simply trying different things out to see what worked the best.
Chief Yellowpony was a Native American who hailed from Pawnee, Oklahoma, also the hometown of Chester Gould. Chief Yellowpony is a broad stereotype, speaking in choppy sentences of broken English: “Much thanks! Me heap grateful.” Chief Yellowpony is ultimately a good and honorable character, as he helps Dick Tracy and Pat Patton track down Boris and Zora Arson and “Cutie” Diamond, but he is a stereotype, nonetheless.
Toby Townley was a cute blonde girl with big eyes. She’s a nice girl, but unfortunately her boyfriend was a bank teller who eventually “borrowed” some of the bank’s money to bet on horse races. Toby’s storyline takes up much of the summer of 1935, as she is wrongly convicted of murder, and the strip follows her to prison, where she’s blinded during a prison riot. Toby’s storyline is one of the few times in Dick Tracy when we see someone falsely convicted of a crime. (Of course, Tracy is able to prove Toby’s innocence and get her released from jail.)
Toby may have been intended to serve as a love interest for Tracy’s sidekick Pat Patton, as it’s Pat who finds the specialist that cures her blindness. Toby and Pat go to a movie together, but that’s as far as things go. It’s curious Gould didn’t keep Toby around as a girlfriend for Pat, although maybe it would have been too much for the strip to have two long-suffering girlfriends of detectives. I also find it odd that Gould never fleshed out Pat Patton’s home life, especially given Gould’s interest in comedy—Pat was always the comedic figure during the early years of the strip, and Gould surely could have found some comedy in Patton dating Toby. Many years later, after Gould had retired from the strip, Pat and Toby reconnected and were married in 1982.
Jim Trailer was a “G-Man,” 1930’s slang for government agent, who first assisted Tracy during the Cut Famon case. Trailer made sporadic appearances in the strip until 1940. Like many other characters, he returned to the strip after Chester Gould’s 1977 retirement.
And then there’s Memphis Smith. Memphis is gangster Lips Manlis’ valet. Memphis is firmly in the Stepin Fetchit tradition of African American servants. Even by 1936 standards, he’s a terrible example of the worst racial stereotypes. Memphis’ chief personality characteristic is his cowardice, he speaks in a stereotypical dialect straight out of Amos ’n’ Andy and he frequently punctuates his speech with “yowsah.” In short, Memphis Smith is just the worst. Thankfully, Chester Gould had sense enough to drop Memphis fairly quickly.
And speaking of African American characters in Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, the unfortunate truth is that there simply aren’t very many. Memphis Smith is the most prominent African American character that Chester Gould ever put into Dick Tracy. The only major African American character in the strip, female detective Lee Ebony, was introduced in 1980, after Gould no longer wrote or drew it. To my knowledge, Chester Gould never had Dick Tracy taking on an African American criminal. The positive spin on that is Gould didn’t create African American villains who were crude stereotypes. The negative spin is that Gould didn’t include African Americans at all in his fictional universe—even as bystanders, innocent victims, police officers, etc. Gould’s blind spot towards African Americans is especially jarring since the unnamed city where Dick Tracy works shares many similarities with Chicago.
Chester Gould always felt that he was competing not only against other comic strips, but also against the news headlines of the day. In Volume 3 Gould is working from real life: Boris Arson’s escape from prison with a gun carved from a potato echoes John Dillinger’s escape with a wooden gun, Cut Famon is meant to be Al Capone, and the photo that Zora Arson and “Cutie” Diamond pose for echoes the famous snapshot of Bonnie and Clyde. During the gangster era of the 1930’s, Gould had more than enough real-life material to pick from. Dick Tracy always reflected its era, but perhaps never more so than in the early days of the strip.
The major stories in Volume 3 are all quite different from each other. Boris Arson and his sister Zora embark on the type of chase that will become a Dick Tracy classic. This is straight-forward action comics at its finest. Then we have Toby Townley’s storyline, which occupies much of the summer of 1935, and is a more melodramatic tale of an innocent caught up in circumstances beyond her control. Toby’s storyline might have been an attempt by Gould to interest female readers in the strip. Towards the end of 1935, Tracy gets an offer to serve as chief of police for the small town of Homeville. He gets a leave of absence from Chief Brandon and goes off to clean up the corrupt small town. It’s an interesting interlude, and it finds Tracy getting enmeshed in small town politics as he battles mobster Cut Famon. After that, it’s on to the “Hotel Murders,” a rare example of a whodunit in Dick Tracy. That case introduces us to Lips Manlis, and although Manlis is innocent of the murders, he plays a large role in the strip for months to follow as Tracy convinces him to go straight.
For me, Lips Manlis always conjures up an image of Paul Sorvino playing him in the 1990 movie Dick Tracy. Specifically, I think of the scene where he’s noisily slurping down oysters. In the comic strip, it’s never made very clear what exactly Lips Manlis does, or has done. Manlis is questioned in the hotel murders, but he’s not the guilty party. When Tracy questions Manlis again two months later, Tracy suddenly gets the notion that Manlis should go straight.
It's an interesting plot twist, and Tracy raises some fascinating questions about human nature, and how we perceive people. As Tracy says to Pat Patton in the May 16, 1936 strip: “Did it ever occur to you that maybe a gangster wouldn’t be a gangster if he was treated like an ordinary human?” But because we don’t really know much about Lips Manlis, it’s hard to be very invested in his rehabilitation. And Manlis’ desire to go straight happens so quickly, it doesn’t have much drama in it. The guy just tried to blow up Tracy in an elevator, and now Tracy thinks he can go straight? The storyline is an interesting contrast to the later Dick Tracy strips of the 1960’s and 1970’s, where Gould was often critical of the judicial process, and the whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing.
Tracy gives Manlis a new name, calling him “Bob Honor.” And while Manlis’ rehabilitation might seem like a lame beginning to a new storyline, it does introduce us to his girlfriend, Mimi, who will wreak havoc and chaos in the strip throughout the summer of 1936, spanning Volumes 3 and 4. Ultimately, Mimi proves to be a more interesting villain than Manlis ever was.
When Mimi finds Lips at his new job as a watchman at a warehouse, he pretends he doesn’t know her and sends her packing with this cruel parting shot: “I’ll give you two seconds to haul your fat face down the street—before I call a wagon and turn you over to the dicks.” That’s just harsh. But Mimi proves the adage, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” as she makes it clear she’ll stop at nothing until she gets Lips back. Mimi even causes a fiery car crash, in which her left hand is crushed. As Volume 3 ends, Mimi learns from an underworld doctor that her hand is infected and will have to be amputated. She blithely says, “Then amputate.” This is not a woman to mess with.
There are some odd moments in Volume 3. Like when Tracy inexplicably tells Tess Trueheart’s kidnappers that he knows where they are and sends Toby Townley in to be the intermediary. It’s just a plot device to have her demonstrate that she’s on the side of the law. But realistically, it makes no sense. Tracy could have taken the kidnappers by surprise, but he chooses not to.
Another weird plot point that seemingly comes out of nowhere is when, at the end of the Cut Famon storyline, Tess reveals that she’s been dressing as a man and driving an oil truck in order to learn some clues. We never find out what those clues are. This plot device allows Tess and Junior to participate in the final ambush of Famon, but it’s quite odd. Also random: the time when Tracy, in disguise as a member of Famon’s gang, shoots up with a drug, presumably an amphetamine, at the urging of Famon before a robbery. Huh.
Volume 3 of Dick Tracy is an excellent example of the strip’s combination of engaging villains, scientific policework, and thrilling action sequences.
My interaction with Dick Tracy has been sporadic. I saw some parodies from Mad Magazine (such as "What if Gilbert and Sullivan wrote Dick Tracy?"), had a few times when I was able to follow the strip ('81-'84, '86-88, and some in the 2000's), saw a few books reprinting a story, and seeing the old movie "Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome" (co-starring Boris Karloff) and the 1990 feature starring Warren Beatty. So it was fun reading some of the old strips.
I have a hunch that volume 2 ends with Dick Tracy and friends arresting Boris Arson. (I've only read volumes 3 and 4 at this point, and don't expect to read most of them). This collection starts off with Boris escaping with the help of his sister Zora, followed by three other stories (I was surprised that the stories lasted 5 months; I'm more used to 3 month stories in comic serials).
I only recognized one of the villains: Lips Manlis, who was in the 1990 movie, played by the late Paul Sorvino. Besides large lips, the only thing in common between the movie version and the original comic character was they started out as a gangster. In the film version, he was bumped off early. In the comics, Dick Tracy offered him a chance to go straight with a new name ("Bob Honor"). I loved seeing the development of the character. He rescued some of his former gang members to keep them from dying in a fire. This volume ends with Bob recovering and one member at large. How long to get that lone wolf into custody? You'll have to read volume 4 for that answer.
These early strips are good in showing what Gould was doing for Tracy. He starts the story with one caper and they finish it with some ending of the villain.
These are not the prime entries that would happen a few years later. But they are still fun to read.
Volume 3's highlights include the continuation of the Boris Arson storyline, the Addie Gothorn mystery, and the character of Mimi from the Lips Manlis arc. As I've mentioned before, Arson is directly influenced by the career of John Dillinger. Another gangster in this volume, Cut Famon, very clearly is modeled after Al Capone. And his tommy gun-toting ma is a takeoff on Ma Barker. Gould's stories are typically products of their times.
But there's a lot of melodrama too. For the better part of 1935, Toby Townley (a parody of Toby Wing) plays a major role in the strip. Toby is a sympathetic character who gets mixed up with the wrong people. In another time, this might have meant death in Gould's universe. But he seems to have been trying to add a second, recurring female character to the strip. Toby would all but disappear from the strip after 1936.
Racial stereotypes also begin to pop up in this volume. Chief Yellowpony is almost passable. But the black valet, "Memphis", is cringeworthy. Thankfully neither stays in the strip for very long.
I'm also not a big fan of the Lips Manlis 'reformed criminal' storyline. Manlis' transition from hoodlum to saint is too easy, too simple. Tracy also seems very out-of-character in this story, with Gould too obviously inserting himself into his main character's thoughts.
Still, this is good material, but comes in a little lower than Volume 2 of the series.
A lot of silliness here, balanced against some good action and clever plotting. Gould's pretty clearly still figuring things out--laying groundwork that never gets anything built on it, starting plots that trail out, having problems with pacing, difficulty keeping the dailies and Sundays fully consistent, massive over-reliance on coincidence and luck--and the art is still inconsistent (either that or the difficulty the publisher evidently had finding consistently good source strips led occasionally to some less than stellar restoration work). There are some really dumb plots, including Tracy deciding on no good basis whatsoever that "Lips" Manlis can be rehabilitated, getting him a job as a watchman--because the luxurious life of a gangster could be traded easily for a blue-collar one--and giving him a new name, Bob Honor (!). Nevertheless, even this silly story features some great moments, notably the panels of "Lips"/Bob, pistols in fists, ablaze from a car fire. !!!!! Strangest moment: Tracy in disguise as a hoodlum (another highly implausible plot twist) casually follows the advice of the gang leader, "Cut" Famon, and injects himself with an unnamed drug to help calm his nerves for the upcoming job. Dick Tracy: hophead? The comics page sure has changed! Good, but uneven; the best is still a few years away.
Gould really hits his stride with these strips, which came out from 1935-1936. The action is fast, the characters are memorable, and the pace never lets up. Gould pays homage to the gangsters that were making headlines at the time, so we see Dick Tracy facing off against an Al Capone look-alike, and several other criminals who seem (literally) "drawn from the headlines." There's some good soap opera here, too, with misunderstandings, health problems, and the usual relationship struggles. Several racial stereotypes pop up in this volume, showing what was widely accepted at the time, but seems very off-putting today. Still, the context is there, and even though the stereotypes are present, they aren't so prevalent as to ruin my enjoyment of the story. This volume ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger, so I'll be moving on to volume 4 soon!
Great stuff with a great essay in the beginning that matches period scandals to its contemporary strips. In this volume we get some great action like a riot in the women's prison or Tess in drag as a truck driver, mixed with the more bizarre Tracy moments, such as brainwashing villain Lips Manlis into thinking he's an upstanding citizen called Bob Honor and the introduction of his former valet, a caricature called Memphis.