Book Review: The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 5: 1938-1939, by Chester Gould (2008)

The cover of The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 5: 1938-1939, published by IDW Publishing in 2008.

The 5^th volume of The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy covers the adventures of the titular detective from January of 1938 to July of 1939. Unfortunately, it’s a weak volume, in my opinion the weakest in the series so far. There aren’t many memorable villains, and the storylines simply aren’t that compelling. The artwork, as always, is fantastic, as we see Chester Gould using the crisp, bold black lines that will delineate the classic Dick Tracy look of the 1940’s and 1950’s. But unfortunately, just as the strip is starting to look the way it should, the quality of the stories really falls off. 

Dick Tracy punches Rottur, a minor villain, March 13, 1938. This panel is a great example of Chester Gould's brilliance as a comic artist. There's so much going on here: Tracy's askew hair and tie flying back give you a sense of the momentum behind his powerful punch. The blood spurting out of Rottur's face is gross, but at the same time, you can't look away from it.

In my review of Volume 1 of Dick Tracy I wrote that Tracy didn’t use disguises much after 1932. Well, I was very wrong about that. There are tons of disguises in Volume 5—Pat Patton goes undercover as an Asian waiter, Tracy disguises himself as a French count, an unkempt anarchist, and a bomb maker named “Reppoc.” More on that later.

Two panels from May 8, 1938, revealing the "Cask of Amontillado"-like fate of the real mayor of Chinatown. Super creepy, with compelling artwork. "Great Caesar!" is an interjection that really needs to make a comeback.

The first story in the book deals with “Stud” Bronzen, whom we first encountered at the end of Volume 4, as the Blank was trying to exact murderous revenge upon Bronzen. “Stud” is a ship captain who deals in what we would now call human trafficking—getting Asian “aliens” into the country. The storyline is an interesting one, as it leads Tracy into his city’s Chinatown district. The storyline also fits into the politics of the era, as after the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed, immigration to the United States from Asia was banned. (The Immigration Act of 1924 was finally overturned by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.) Some of the story being set at sea allows Gould to work his magic and produce some superb snowstorms. 4 stars. (I’ve started ranking each storyline on a scale of 1-5, 1 being the worst, 5 being the best.)

Left to right: Noana, with her hair dyed blonde, Johnny Ramm, who always looks like he's wearing eye shadow, and the mysterious Reppoc. (Spoiler alert: Reppoc is actually Dick Tracy in disguise!) June 10, 1938.

Aboard Bronzen’s ship, Tracy finds the beautiful Noana, who was kidnapped from her South Pacific island to be brought to gangster Johnny Ramm to work as a dancer in his restaurant. Ramm kidnaps Noana and forces her to become part of his gang. Tracy then fakes a nervous breakdown, and leaves clues that lead everyone to believe that he’s committed suicide. Using makeup, he pretends to be a bomb-maker named Pete Reppoc, who seems to be Italian, given his dialect, and infiltrates Ramm’s gang. Note the last name reppoc: “copper” spelled backwards. This is an early use of the backwards spelled name, something that will become a trademark of Dick Tracy in the decades to follow. 

As Reppoc, Tracy is able to foil Ramm’s scheme of bombing local businesses by purposely making the bombs incorrectly, or otherwise ensuring they don’t explode. Tracy plays his role as Reppoc to the point of being arrested by the police, and only reveals his identity once Ramm gives him incriminating information in their jail cells. Personally, I wasn’t a fan of the ridiculous plot twist of Tracy faking his own suicide. When Tess Trueheart sees Tracy again, she hugs him and then immediately slaps him. I don’t blame her. As Tess says to Dick, “You’ll never know the agony you caused us.” Tracy replies, “I realize it was a pretty severe scheme.” And also, a dumb one to take on single-handedly. 2 stars.

Finding a severed forefinger is definitely worthy of a "Great Caesar!" As usual, Brighton Spotts baffles everyone else in the strip. July 10, 1938.

The next tale begins with the introduction of Brighton Spotts, an insufferable character who fancies himself to be a budding detective. It wasn’t clear to me how old Brighton is supposed to be at first, but eventually I figured out he’s just a little older than Junior Tracy. Brighton is meant to be insufferable, and he really succeeds at it. But he did find a severed finger, belonging to a thief who has been stealing goods from railroad cars. (Again, we see Gould’s continued fascination with amputations.) 

Train bandit Jojo Nidle, August 24, 1938.

The man with the missing finger proves to be Jojo Nidle, who is a freakish character with bulging eyes and a dark five o’clock shadow. He’s almost a classic Gould grotesque, but he’s only in the strip for about a month and a half—too short to really qualify as a major villain. But his demise is a great set-piece: Jojo has commandeered a locomotive, and Tracy is able to hop on a train on a parallel track and eventually he overtakes Jojo’s train and shoots him dead in the inevitable gun battle. The climactic train chase would make an amazing movie scene. 3 stars.

Unlikely as it sounds, a tank car of molasses leads Tracy to poison gas dealer Karpse. If a Dick Tracy movie had been made in the 1950's, I think Gregory Peck would have made an excellent Dick Tracy.

In my opinion, the next story is the best one in the book. It concerns Karpse, a poison gas manufacturer. Karpse is by far the most interesting villain in Volume 5, and his storyline becomes a classic Dick Tracy pursuit. This is the kind of story that Gould would spin variations of many, many times throughout the strip. Karpse’s story takes numerous twists and turns, and after Tracy wrecks Karpse’s poison gas manufacturing plant in the Dakotas, Karpse eventually makes his way back to the City. Once back in the City, Karpse does something not many villains in the strip do: he tries to go straight and get a regular job until the heat’s off. Turns out, Karpse was a baker back in the old country—the country itself goes unnamed, but Karpse says he “won prizes in Stuttgart,” indicating that he’s German—and guess who has a job opening for a baker? That’s right, old Mrs. Trueheart, Tess’s mother! So, there’s Karpse, working right under the very nose of Dick Tracy! The irony is as delicious as his pastries! 

Karpse and Dick Tracy meet, December 10, 1938.

Meanwhile, Tracy was blinded by poison gas, and he’s in the hospital recovering. Mrs. Trueheart sends Dick a basket of pastries from her new baker. There’s a boiler explosion at the bakery, and Karpse ends up in the hospital just down the hall from…Dick Tracy. One day, the nurse wheels Karpse into Tracy’s room so the two men can meet. Karpse doesn’t know Tracy’s a cop, and Tracy is unaware that Mrs. Trueheart’s new baker is actually the poison gas dealer who caused his blindness. It’s a brilliant scene. By giving Karpse a shred of humanity, Chester Gould makes him a much more interesting character, and thus elevates the story. 5 stars.

An example of Gould using a double panel in the Scardol story, March 28, 1939. Shown are the grotesque Scardol, Mickey, who had the odd birthmark on his face, and Pop.

Of course, Tracy gets his sight back just in time for Christmas. And he takes a vacation! But of course, while he’s resting up, he stumbles across some criminals. The story of Mickey, a minor criminal who hangs out with Wolley and then with the truly grotesque Scardol, is dull and takes up way too much time, taking us from January 1^st of 1939 to the end of April. The best part of these four months is Scardol’s character design—he has a giant pockmarked forehead, beady eyes, and an underbite—and Gould’s experimenting with the size of the comic panels. In these days, Dick Tracy was pretty much always four panels, each panel being the same size. But during the Scardol storyline, Gould repeatedly breaks this pattern, offering up double panels, or breaking the space up into three regular size panels and two smaller panels. I almost wonder if Gould was getting bored with the storyline and was keeping himself amused by playing around with the panels. Whatever the reason, it highlights Gould’s skills as an artist and storyteller. 2 stars.

The fake Bovanian princes, June 18, 1939. I love the phrase "pretentious pent house home."

Mickey’s storyline leads directly into the tale of Whip Chute, an ex-aviator who, along with another criminal, are impersonating crown princes from Bovania who are visiting the City. (The real princes are being held hostage.) It’s a dull story with a boring villain. The most memorable thing about Whip Chute is the way he dies—he’s climbing down a theater marquee when the sign breaks and he falls to his death. 2 stars. 

As I said in my introduction, I found Volume 5 of Dick Tracy unremarkable. In Volume 5, Dick Tracy does some annoying things. He fakes his suicide, goes undercover as “Reppoc” without telling anyone, and then six months later he never tells the police when he and Pop come back into town and they’re trying to take down Wolley’s gang on their own. Tracy’s really a loose cannon in this volume.

And here’s the part where I finally complain about the way the first 6 volumes of Dick Tracy were packaged. The books are small and fat, and the decision was made to put two daily strips on each page, with Sunday getting its own page. Unfortunately, the Sunday strips were shrunk to fit the size of the book. The result is that especially in the dialogue and narrative-heavy 1930’s, you’re craning your neck to read all the type on the Sunday pages. The combination of having just two daily strips on each page, and the slightly glossy paper the first 6 volumes were printed on, also means that you’re constantly adjusting the damn book to get the light right. If anyone saw me reading one of these volumes in a coffee shop, they probably thought I was a nutjob. But all that changes with Volume 7, as the books get taller and a little skinnier. From Volume 7 on, the Sunday strips are reproduced at their original size, and we get three strips on each page. The paper is also different—it’s not glossy and basically normal paper stock.