the complete dick tracy, vol. 15 preview

7/28/2019 The Complete Dick Tracy, Vol. 15 Preview

1/18

THE DAUNTLESS

DETECTIVE

TACKLES

VOLUME 15:

1953-54DAILIES & SUNDAYS

DICKTRACY


2/18

DICK TRACY


3/18

VOLUME 15 19531954

IDW PUBLISHING SAN DIEGO


4/18

DICK TRACY VOLUME 15: 19531954

STORIES AND ART BYCHESTER GOULD

THE LIBRARY OFAMERICAN COMICS

EDITED AND DESIGNED BYDean Mullaney

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Bruce Canwell ART DIRECTOR Lorraine Turner

INTRODUCTION BYMax Allan Collins CONSULTING EDITOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jeffrey Kersten

MARKETING DIRECTOR Beau Smith ORIGINATING DICK TRACY SERIES EDITOR Ted Adams

Special thanks to Jackson Glassey, Joseph Ketels, Jay Maeder, the Bill y Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum

at the Ohio State University, Stephen Tippie, Julie Josephitis, Justin Ei singer, Alonzo Simon, and Don McGregor.

ISBN: 978-1-61377-668-1 First Printing, June 2013

LibraryofAmericanComics.com

Dick Tracy and 2013 TMS News and Features, LLC. Allrights reserved. The Library of American Comics is atrademark of Library of American Comics, LLC. All rightsreserved. A Good SamaritanStabbed to Death 2013

Max Allan Collins. With the exception of artwork used forreview purposes, none of the comic strips in this publicationmay be reprinted without the permission of TMS News andFeatures, LLC. No part of this book may be reproduced ortransmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopying, recording, or by any information and retrievalsystem, without permission in writing from TMS News andFeatures, LLC. Printed in K orea.

Published by:IDW Publishing

a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC5080 Santa Fe Street

San Diego, CA 92109www.idwpublishing.com

IDW Publishing

Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/PublisherGreg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President

Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic ArtistChris Ryall, Chief Creative Off icer/Editor-in-Chief

Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Of ficerAlan Payne, VP of Sales Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing

Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services

Distributed by DiamondBook Distributors

1-410-560-7100

OTHERBOOKS IN THE LIBRARYOFAMERICAN COMICS

ARCHIE BYBOB MONTANA

BLONDIE BYCHICYOUNG

BLOOM COUNTYBYBERKELEYBREATHED

BRINGING UP

FATHER

BYGEORGE MCMANUS

CANIFF:AVISUAL BIOGRAPHY

CARTOON MONARCH:OTTO SOGLOW AND THE LITTLE KING

CHUCKJONES:THE DREAM THAT NEVERWAS

THE FAMILYCIRCUS BYBIL KEANE

FLASH GORDON ANDJUNGLEJIMBYALEX RAYMOND

GASOLINEALLEY BYKING AND MOORES

GENIUS, ISOLATED:THE LIFE ANDART OFALEX TOTHBYDEAN MULLANEY & BRUCE CANWELL

KINGAROO BYJACKKENT

LILABNER BYAL CAPP

LITTLE ORPHANANNIEBYHAROLD GRAY

LOAC ESSENTIALS:BARONBEAN 1916 BYGEORGE HERRIMAN

THE GUMPS 1929 BYSIDNEYSMITH

MISS FURYBYTARP MILLSPOLLY AND HERPALS

BYCLIFF STERRETT

RIP KIRBY BYALEX RAYMOND ANDJOHN

PRENTICE

SCORCHY SMITH ANDTHEART OF NOEL SICKLES

SECRETAGENT CORRIGANBYALWILLIAMSON & ARCHIE GOODWIN

SKIPPY BYPERCY CROSBY

STEVE CANYON BYMILTON CANIFFTARZAN BYRUSS MANNING

TERRY AND THE PIRATES BYMILTON CANIFF


5/18

T

he greatest, most creative decade of Dick Tracy1942-1952is over.Nonetheless, the 1950s would be a solid decade for creator Chester

Gould and his popular comic strip, with the square-jawed detective andhis parade of grotesque enemies remaining a staple not just of the comics pagesbut of popular culture. Still, when other pop icons would invoke the Tracystrip, itwould be the triumphs of that prior decade that would be recalled, as when JerryLewis in The Ladies Man(1961) would mimic Tracys 2-Way Wrist Radio, callingPruneface.

The weight of his own success must have pressed heavily on Chester Gouldin 1953 and 54. He considered as competition not just his fellow cartoonists butthe rest of the newspaper and beyond that, the wider popular culture of TV,radio, and movies. He must have relished the enduring popularity of Tracyspecifically, and comics in general, in an era during which both movies and radiotook a shellacking from the new most popular entertainment form, television.

One way Gould dealt with the competition of the tube was by stayingcontemporary.

The first story in this volume (continuing from the previous volume) centerson the threat of radiation poisoning, a concern of many Americans in a post-Hiroshima world. Initially Gould treated the topic rather lightly, if spookily, withan angelic glow-in-the-dark effect on Little Wingy, daughter of villain Odds Zonn,soon to be the adopted child of the Plentys. The radiation threat soon becomes areal, disturbing one, with the childs life clearly endangered. Her gangster father hasbeen similarly exposed, and Gould is at his storytelling best, cutting back and forthbetween the struggle to save Little Wingy and her evil fathers terror-filled attemptsto deal with his own radiation poisoning.

Goulds interest in, and reflection of, contemporary times is also seen invillain 3-D Magee, whose sunglasses recall the cardboard variety worn by theater

patrons watching 3-D movies. Magees three-dimensional size is another referenceto that film fad, although Gould finds it necessary to explain the connection (Athird-dimension body with a third-dimension brain, says Magees blackmailvictim, Kincaid Plenty).

Goulds depiction of Hedda Hopper, the famed movie columnist (hereinHedder the Hat) is on the sexy, flattering side, though many despised thepowerful real-life gossip monger. Having Hedda Hopper in his cornerthe RalphByrd-starring Dick TracyTV show was just starting syndicationwas a wise andvery calculated move on Goulds part. Though his preference was to remainhunkered in at his drawing board (either in the Tribune Tower in Chicago or athis rural home in Woodstock, Illinois), the cartoonist was always willing to findtime to do promotion for Tracynote his appearances on such contemporary

TV programs as The Ed Sullivan Showand Person to Person.The positive depiction of Hopper led to numerous appearances by Tracy

himself on the very popular Perry MasonTV series. A framed Tracy drawingaddressed to Paul Drake (played by Hoppers son William) appears prominently inscenes shot in Drakes office, the prop showing up occasionally on the series wellinto the 1960s.

The line-up of villains in 1953 and 54 is a typical one, if falling shortof Tracys greatest foes. The crimes themselves, however, are imaginative andsometimes shockingly brutal. 3-D Magee and his plump paramour Pony (shehas a ponytail) are indeed fairly one-dimensional, although Pony shows somedepth when, upon capture, she comes to regret the life she led.

5

A Good SamaritanStabbed to Deathby MAXALLAN COLLINS

[Spoiler Alert: Important story elements are revealed in this introduction. Readers may wish to read the strips before this essay.]


6/18

What Magee and Pony may lack in distinctiveness they make up for in sheer evil. Magee plays ice-cream vendor,delivering lethal ants to Sparkle and Little Wingy in a disturbing sequence with undertones of pedophiliaas intaking candy from strangers. And Pony viciously, impulsively stabs Cynthia Smithly, the good-Samaritan societydeb who comes to Uncle Kincaids aid.

The sudden death of Miss Smithly underscores Goulds willingness to visit murder upon sympathetic characters.The cruelty of crimethat sociopaths like 3-D Magee and Pony are a disease that can strike any innocent victimis a key component of Dick Tracy. Whatever side roads of slapstick comedy he may go down, Gould never lets thereader forget that the criminal world where Dick Tracy does battle is unforgiving. Getting involved is a citizens duty,

Gould says, but Tracys papa does not sugarcoat the danger a good citizen faces in doing so.From Miss Smithlys death comes an interesting sub-plot involving the victims sister, Chick Smithly, self-professed social butterfly. She is clearly a shallow, selfish girl, but, to avenge her sister, she nonetheless steps up totake on a dangerous undercover assignment, posing as the maid for 3-D Magee and Pony. Neither Tracy nor Gouldhave much hesitation about putting another Smithly girl in deadly peril.

Though Chick Smithly disappears from the continuity, she has made an impression on Gould. After thesuccessful completion of her undercover assignment, Tracy asks her to consider becoming a policewoman, butChick laughs that off (Are you kidding?). Still, Gould has seen the usefulness, the effectiveness, of a policewomancharacter, and Chick Smithly will soon evolve into Lizz, the policewoman who becomes the strips final major castmember, on a footing with Sam and Tracy himself.

Theres a sense here that Gould is trying things out, auditioning new characters and concepts, even as heoccasionally looks backward for inspiration. Flattop and the Mole are prominently mentioned, unusual considering

Goulds policy of moving forward and, in particular, not reusing villains. Are the less-than-superstar villains of thisperiod enough to make Gould look back over his shoulder at past successes? Very soon he will re-introduce Flattop

by way of an offspring who will become perhaps the most memorable villain of thedecade.

And of course Gould is always looking for strong comic-relief characters. UncleCanhead (Kinkaid) is given an extraordinary introduction by way of a story of almostepic length (starting June 12, 1953 and concluding January 17, 1954). Its fair to say thatGould intended Uncle Canhead to be a major addition to the Plenty family, and to his castof recurring comic characters, much as (the now unfortunately absent) Vitamin Flinthearthad been.

Perhaps Kincaids finest comic moment is his presentation of the only knownpicture of all eight Plenty boys togetheron a merry-go-round whirling fast enough toblur all eight. Astonishingly, this epic seven-month continuity largely revolves around richUncle Kincaid replacing the Plenty familys outhouse with a real bathroom. Generousthoughhe may be, Uncle Canhead is just passing through. While he serves as a fine blackmailfoil for villains 3-D Magee and Pony, the can-headed Plenty uncle does not impress inthe way B.O., Gertie, and Sparkle did before him.

Neither does Little Wingy, who appears to be yet another attempt by Gould toduplicate the success of Sparkle Plenty, whose f ame led to licensing glory, in particular byway of a best-selling doll. After being introduced by a canny Gould as the lovely child ofa hideous couple, Sparkle was a beautifully designed, charismatic creature. Little Wingy, onthe other hand, is a fairly standard little-kid character (Me fank you very much).

6


7/18

Left: A studio portrait, late 1940s.

Opposite top: Cover to the

Tribunes July 5, 1953 magazinesection.

Opposite bottom: The same comic

book with different covers, both

produced by Harvey Comics. Left:Harvey Comics Library #2from 1952 with a provocative crime-

oriented title. Right: A 1953

giveaway comic highlighting the

television angle, produced for

Motorola (makers of television sets).

7


8/18

Just as Bonnie Braids failed to (in Gould vernacular) wow the public, so did LittleWingy fail to match Sparkles sparkle.

This not for lack of Gould tr ying. Little Wingys near death by radiation poisoning,drawn out over a month and a half, is dramatic enough. But Gould had done hospitalmelodramas before, and this is one place where hes fairly predictable: if a sympathetic

character doesnt die a quick, startling death, but instead goes to the hospital for aprolonged dramatic stay, that sympathetic character is going to make it (with the notableexception of Model, whose death makes the point of an unusual, even unique story inthe Tracycanon).

Similarly, Gould seems almost obsessed with replaying the brilliant CrewyLou/Bonnie Braids continuity in which Bonnies life is endangered. He has already, inthe Mr. Crime story, endangered Sparkle and Bonnie in the same North Woods setting.Now, after Little Wingy survives her hospital stay, Gould subjects her and Sparkle to life-threatening ants, only to a few months later engineer a flood sequence in which bothSparkle and Little Wingy get put through the child-endangerment paces, yet again in aNorth Woods setting.

As with the Mr. Crime continuity, the flood sequence ultimately transcends any

sense of Gould repeating himself by the cartoonist stirring in new elements. This timeits a character right out of his friend Al CappsLil Abnerplaybook: Rainbow Reiley is aleggy, lovely blonde in tattered attire worthy of Daisy Mae or Moonbeam McSwine. Herability with a rifle is similarly a Capp-like touch, but making a blind girl a crack shotseems a typically Gouldian move. Shes a wonderful character, exquisitely designed, andworthy of another appearance; but like Uncle Canhead, she will not become a part ofthe regular cast.

The villains in 53 and 54 are often outshone by their own villainy. Dewdrop is abland, even stupid-looking girl, a casually evil sociopath who commits perhaps the worstcold-blooded crime in the Gould/Tracycanon: patricide. This fiendish act Gouldcharacteristically depicts in haunting silhouette (February 22, 1954).

In a period during which Gould has temporarily traded in his famous thin/thickline for a more delicate one, the use of silhouette is perhaps the most striking weapon inhis artistic arsenal. Witness the sequence in which cranky old Dr. Von Nucleus strugglesto save Little Wingy; watch Tracy and Sam search a forest in heavy snow (February 14,1954); and shudder as Rainbow, Sparkle, and Little Wingy face seemingly certain death atthe hands of gangsters in the North Woods (September 23, 1954).

Dewdrops husband, Sticks, may be just another second-rate villain, but that hes ajazz drummer allows Gould to utilize the mans bass drum as an impromptu method forcorpse transport (and to set up a very clever switch on the reader). Fur thief Rugheada villain apparently tired of his former sobriquet, Chrome Dome, who has affected apainfully obvious toupeeis a more traditional Gould villain and perhaps the strongestin this volume, beautifully designed from his rug to his droopy eyes.

8


9/18

Goulds fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants plotting alternates flashes ofbrilliance with unfulfilled promises. The Wailing Tree continuity (as theHarvey reprint comics dubbed it) has an arresting set-upa baby left in acraftily designed hiding place in a tree. Junior, largely absent since the tragicModel story in 1952, makes the haunting, chilling discovery, as the cries ofa child echo through the forest...a child that cannot be found. The carefullyconstructed hiding place in the tree allows Dewdrop to borrow the baby ofanother mother as part of a scheme to fool Dewdrops dying father intothinking he has a grandson. Tracy goes to impressive forensic lengths topinpoint the tree on the map, which leads to discovering the proximity ofthe rich mans estate. But why Dewdrop and the mother couldnt trade offthe baby in a more conventional fashion is never explained.

Again looking to the past, to that time when his detective wasnt sowell known, Gould sends Dick Tracy undercover first as a waiter and later

as a gas man. Was there ever a less likely candidate for undercover cop thanthe hook-nosed, square-jawed Tracy? When villain Open-Mind Montyclaims not to know what Tracy looks like, and sends one of his cronies tosnap a secret photo of the detective, Gould ultimately has to backtrackits absurdly obvious Tracy is well-known in his unnamed metropolis, andthat a simple trip to a newspaper morgue would provide a picture. SoOpen-Mind Monty suddenly announces that really he did know what Tracylooked like and was intentionally sending his own man into a trap. Notplotting ahead led Gould frequently to fancy footwork of this kind, thoughin fairness, keep in mind that readers taking in these continuitiesin daily snippets seldom if ever noticed or complained about such lapses.

Gould continues to use violence effectively, and is both sparing andbrutal in its depictionviolence, as Mickey Spillane once said, should beused as exclamation points in a story, and this is Goulds philosophy, as

Above and opposite:Syndicate ads for stories

that are reprinted in this

volume.

9


10/18

Right: Circulation promotion from November 1953 playing off the wealth of

then current character Canhead (Uncle Kincaid Plenty).

Opposite and pages 12-13: Volume Twelve in this series reprinted the Dick Tracy

Black Bag Mystery strips, used as a circulation booster by the Chicago

Tribune and other papers. The best research at the time indicated that no solutionhad been published. Further research, however, has uncovered the official solution

published in theTribunefrom March 28-April 2, 1949, re-published here forthe first time.

10

well. When the bullets fly, they really fly. Tracy uses a bullet-proof shield to confrontOdds Zonn at the hospital (recalling the Gargles finale), and of course dice tumblefrom the pocket of the dead gangster, rolling snake eyes. A shoot-out with Sticks issimilarly brief and fatal (April 18, 1954). Tracy never gloats over a corpse, but neitherdoes he show any regret for ending lives that were already lost.

Police science is developed here in perhaps more detail than ever before. Amongthe techniques explored, often in depth, are fingerprint enlargement and comparison;the use of cameras with telephoto lenses in aerial photography; a lie-detector test;identification by wire photo; dust analysis; exhumation of a corpse; and the use ofmicrofilm cameras, oblique light, and fluoroscope. Uncle Kincaid is even wired (by

use of 2-Way Wrist Radio) for a visit to blackmailers 3-D Magee and Ponyan effortthat goes badly awry, leading to a very tense, well-managed sequence in which Tracymust play one-man bomb squad after Uncle Kincaid is forced to wear a time-bomb-enhanced vest.

Coming off his classic decade, Gould lives up to the expectations of hisreadership with a unique blend of brutal action, eccentric characterization, distinctiveartwork, and hillbilly humor. Trying to point to one or two things about Dick Tracythat make it one of the most memorable of American comic strips is a hopeless task.Consider a seven-month story whose central concerns are the building of an indoorbathroom for the Plentys and the blackmailing of their rich uncle for a murder hedidnt commita murder involving a corpse hidden in a capped oil well. Only one

mind could have conceived this particular, peculiar mix of humor and melodrama.Still, there is a sense that Gould is repeating himself, even spinning his wheelsat times, however entertainingly. Never fearsome of Dick Tracys greatest cases arestill to come.

Max Allan Collins took over writingDick Tracyfrom Chester Gould in 1977. His highly-regarded run continuedinto 1993, working first with Rick Fletcher and then Dick Locher. His other notable comics include Ms. Tree,Batman, the graphic novelRoad to Perdition, on which the Academy Award-winning film was based, andReturn to Perdition, a graphic novel conclusion to the saga. An award-winning mystery novelist and indie

filmmaker, Collinss most recent works includeLady, Go Die! (a Mike Hammer novel begun by the late MickeySpillane) and his JFK Nathan Heller novel, Target Lancer. He lives in Iowa with his wife Barbara, withwhom he writes the award-winning Trash n Treasures mystery series under the penname Barbara Allan.


11/18

11


12/18

12


13/18

13


14/18

14

DICK TRACY FAMILY ALBUM

DICK TRACY1931

TESS TRUEHEART1931

EMIL TRUEHEART1931

MRS. TRUEHEART1931

CRUTCH1931

CHIEF BRANDON1931

BIG BOY CAPRICE1931

RIBS MOCCO/SPIKE1931

TEXIE GARCIA1931

PAT PATTON1931


15/18

15

& MUG SHOT FILES

HY HABEAS1931

DUBBS1931

HEINIE STEUBEN1932

BELLE1932

CLANCY1932

BROADWAY BATES1932

OSCAR1932

BUDDY WALDORF1932

THE NANNY1932

CAPT. LANG1932

First in a Series

Our current story begins on the next page


16/18

April 19, 1953

16


17/18

April 20-22, 1953

17


18/18

April 23-25, 1953

18

the complete dick tracy, vol. 15 preview

Documents