Dick Tracy Colorful Cases of the 1930s Review

Reviews

Dick Tracy: Colorful Cases of the 1930s

When 31-year onetime Chester Gould, after trying for years to create a successful comic strip, had the idea to mirror the Chicago gangland violence reported on the forepart pages of newspapers, he called his new creation Plainclothes Tracy.

It was sometime police beat reporter and Chicago Tribune comics editor, Joseph Medill "Helm" Patterson, who suggested switching out "Plainclothes" for "Dick," cleverly using the slang word for "detective" (in use since 1908, according to the Oxford English language Dictionary).

Information technology sounded right, shortening the name and snapping together hard-edged sibilants similar the crack and echo of a gunshot. Dick Tracy debuted in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday October iv, 1931 and thereafter ricocheted into pop culture history.

The stunning new collection from the esteemed Sun Printing, Dick Tracy: Colorful Cases of the 1930s, explores Gould's first decade of four-color powder burn nightmares. Reprinted for the first time in their original sizes and colors, these impeccably restored pages make into the encephalon unforgettable images of raging fires, murderous floods of water, hallucinogenic snowfalls and the grim rictus of evil carved into the grotesque faces of angry, wounded souls.

Edited past Peter Maresca and intelligently designed by the astonishingly talented Philippe Ghielmetti, this oversized, eleven by 16 inches, volume offers an exquisitely curated selection of full-page Sunday Dick Tracy comics from 1931 to 1939. With the back up and assistance of Jeff Kersten―co-founder and President of The Chester Gould/Dick Tracy Museum―and Garyn G. Roberts (Dick Tracy and American Culture: Morality and Mythology, Text and Context, McFarland & Company, 2003) Maresca has lovingly crafted, notwithstanding again, a wonder chiffonier of comic strip art.

Four-Color Pulverization Burn Nightmares

In these Sunday pages from the 1930s, we are a long way from the signature icons of Dick Tracy. The two-fashion wrist radio comes along in 1946. The Crimestopper'due south Notebook starts in the early on 1950s.  Flattop, Pruneface, 88 Keys, Mumbles and the other trademark bizarre villains all come along after the 1930s. However, in this collection―hopefully the commencement of a serial of decade-by-decade retrospectives―we can trace the evolution of Dick Tracy into one of America'south strangest and about compelling serial graphic symbol narratives. Y'all could call this volume the blacktop to Flattop.

A typically violent late 1930s DICK TRACY by Chester Gould (September 11, 1938)

Dick Tracy: Colorful Cases of the 1930s presents four complete stories from the mid-to late 1930s, groups of virtually 25 pages/weeks each. The stories are each based around the rising and take-downward of criminal masterminds: Boris Arson, Cutting Famon (Gould's 2d villain based on Al Capone), The Purple Cross Gang and Johnny Mintworth. Because Gould carried his stories through both Sundays and dailies, and because the daily strips are not included in this book, the continuities of these four cases are a little disjointed at times. Each Sunday, however, opens with a epitomize of previous events. I was initially disappointed not to see a example department on The Blank, a personal favorite from the 1930s Dick Tracy comics, or the nefarious Doc Hump, who caused one critic of the time to ask:

 "Is a continuous diet of lurid melodrama told past pictures of vicious men doing vicious deeds good for children or for adults who are mentally young and emotionally unstable?" (John Kenneth Ryan, "Are the Comics Moral?" The Forum, May 1936)

Notwithstanding, upon reading the selected cases, I was delighted to observe superlative-quality crime sagas that ultimately exceeded my expectations for this book.

For me, the first thrilling sense I got that the strip had slipped into the dreamlike territory information technology would fully embrace in the 1940s and across, comes in the climax to the first of the four consummate cases, with Boris Arson, described by Garyn G. Roberts as the "premier rogue" of the 1930s Dick Tracy comics. A hush-hush hideout is shown, hidden in an elaborate cave that resembles the surreptitious lairs of James Bail villains to come up along xxx years later. The entrance, a giant hallway, is guarded by unreal fell striped big cats oddly called "wildcats" instead of tigers. "Human-killing Ozark wildcats," to exist exact.  A long sliding cage tin exist moved through the entrance, protecting those inside it from the wildcats. In this moment, the strip assumes the hyper-obsessed and fetishistic qualities for which it is known, although I doubtfulness Gould, himself would accept approved of those terms. I think he was reaching into his imagination to tell a practiced story, something he succeeded at dozens―if not hundreds―of times.

The Blacktop to Flattop

The Sunday Press book also offers a section of extremely rare pages from 1931-32 when the Dick Tracy Sundays squeezed a whole offense story in a single Sunday episode. In these first pages, Gould's way shifts and grows weekly. For a cursory while, these pages ran another Chester Gould creation, the single-tier topper, Cigarette Sadie, a gag strip I quite like about a nightclub cigarette girl.

Chester Gould in his studio, with an inspirational give-and-take on the wall

Equally if that weren't quite plenty, a tertiary department in Dick Tracy: Colorful Cases of the 1930s offers a file of annotated Sun pages from the 1930s, each presenting an example from the steady parade of increasingly monstrous criminals that may have influenced the baroque villains in the early superhero comic books of the tardily 1930s and early 1940s. Included in this section are strips that feature Large Boy (Gould's beginning version of Al Capone), the sadistic Md Hump, and The Blank, whose featureless face is more disturbing than any imaginable disfigurement.

The three sections of the book characteristic introductions by Dick Tracy expert Garyn G. Roberts. In the front, a long illustrated essay by Jeff Kersten provides background and context for understanding and appreciating Dick Tracy in the 1930s. (In full transparency, I as well contributed a mini-essay to this volume, but otherwise had nothing to with it).

A bonus insert (Sun Press books come with extras) offers a replica of a large four-folio colour promotional sample sheet the Chicago Tribune News Syndicate sent to potential subscriber newspapers.

Why Sunday Printing is Important

Sun Press is something special, I think. The importance of reading and studying American newspaper comics in their original sizes, especially the ones that ran in the color supplements, cannot be overstated. Restoring visual context brings the art live. Most publishers cannot (or choose not to) make the economics of this enterprise work, and then opt to reprint the large older comics in smaller formats, sometimes fifty-fifty recoloring and editing them. Sunday Press publisher Peter Maresca miraculously pulls off the hat trick of  presenting the glorious paper comic fine art of times past as it was meant to exist seen.

This expertly curated selection of feverish early Dick Tracy Sundays, restored and presented in their original sizes and colors, enhanced with informative essays and rare fine art, is a delight to read and an of import resource for understanding the full brilliance of Chester Gould's dark vision in Dick Tracy.

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Source: https://www.tcj.com/reviews/dick-tracy-colorful-cases-of-the-1930s-2/