Book Review: The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 3: 1935-1936, by Chester Gould (2007)

The cover of The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 3: 1935-1936, published by IDW Publishing in 2007.

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.  

Boris Arson telephones for Chief Yellowpony, March 27, 1935. Pawnee, Oklahoma, was Chester Gould's birthplace, and it gets referenced occasionally in the strip.

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 and his wife and daughter, March 30, 1935. This is typical of Chief Yellowpony's stereotypical speech patterns.

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. 

Mobster Cut Famon, January 23, 1936. Famon was based on Al Capone, and had just finished serving a sentence for tax evasion.

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. 

Dick Tracy has some words of wisdom for the Mayor of Homeville, November 13, 1935.

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. 

Dick Tracy waxes philosophic to Pat Patton, May 16, 1936.

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. 

Dick Tracy spreads the good word to Lips Manlis, May 20, 1936. Despite Tracy's "reborn" phrase, he's actually not talking about religion.

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. 

Bob Honor gets harsh with his ex-flame Mimi, June 4, 1936.

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. 

Tracy, in disguise as Boyle, gets offered drugs by Cut Famon, January 25, 1936. Boy, you could really show a lot of stuff in the comics back in the day!

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.

Chester Gould's Dick Tracy: An Appreciation

Dick Tracy with some of his most memorable villains from the 1940's. (This must date from 1947 or 1948, as it shows Mumbles, who appeared in 1947, but it's before Chief Brandon stepped down in late 1948.)

When I was a little boy, I went through a phase where I was obsessed with the comic strip Dick Tracy. It was right around the time Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy movie was released in 1990. I was very excited when the movie came out, so my fandom must have begun shortly before then. Neither of the metro area papers in the Twin Cities, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press carried Dick Tracy, so my fandom was all about the old Dick Tracy comic strips. 

I was never into superheroes. Batman, Superman, and Spiderman did nothing for me. What I liked about Dick Tracy was that he was real. Okay, sure, there was no way Dick Tracy was ever going to get killed. But he didn’t have superpowers. Dick Tracy used his intelligence to get out of the impossible situations he found himself in, and that appealed to me.

Dick Tracy, written and illustrated by Chester Gould, began in 1931. The strip quickly became a hit with Depression-era America, at a time when gangsters and bank robbers were seemingly around every corner. But Gould was able to keep the strip going long after the real-life gangsters of the 1930’s had been killed or arrested. Part of Gould’s genius was his ability to keep coming up with more and more outrageous villains for the square-jawed Tracy to battle. The first of Gould’s grotesques might have been 1937’s “The Blank,” a man without a face. (Okay, so it was just cheesecloth covering his face, but he still looked creepy.) In the 1940’s Gould really got on a roll, with eerie villains like “Little Face” Finney, the Mole, B.B. Eyes, Pruneface, Mrs. Pruneface, Flattop, the Brow, and Influence. A notable non-grotesque from the 1940’s was Breathless Mahoney, a shapely blonde with a Veronica Lake-like hairstyle. 

Many of the Dick Tracy books I had focused on the first twenty years of the strip, and the 1930’s and 1940’s were certainly the most popular era for Dick Tracy. And it’s probably true of any comic strip that runs for more than twenty years that the first twenty years of the strip are the “classic” period and everything else is just, well, keeping things going. 

Dick Tracy lives here and likes it! This drawing was promoting Woodstock, Illinois, where Chester Gould lived. It's a great drawing of the square-jawed detective.

But Gould found ways to keep the reader’s interest. Dick Tracy had always been focused on the scientific part of police work and crime fighting, and Gould kept Tracy up to date on all the latest technology. And sometimes he put Tracy ahead of the latest technology, like when he introduced the two-way wrist radio to the strip in 1946. The radio allowed Tracy to communicate with the station even when he was out in the field. Chester Gould would have been thrilled to see Apple Watches, which are basically really fancy two-way wrist radios. The two-way wrist radio was eventually supplanted by the two-way wrist TV in 1964. 

Gould’s interest in technology blossomed during the 1960’s, as he inaugurated what has become known as Dick Tracy’s “moon period.” Diet Smith Industries, the company behind the two-way wrist radio and other inventions, had pioneered space travel with the invention of the “Space Coupe.” Human-looking aliens who lived on the moon became recurring characters in the strip, and Dick Tracy’s adopted son Junior ended up marrying Moon Maid, the daughter of the moon governor. The moon period was a very bold choice for Gould to make, as he took what was basically a gritty, urban crime procedural, albeit with a highly eccentric cast of characters, and turned it into a sci-fi strip. I haven’t read very many stories from the “moon period,” in part because that era was not well represented in the Dick Tracy anthologies I bought. In one of those anthologies, 1990’s The Dick Tracy Casebook, the last Chester Gould story is from 1960, thus totally ignoring the moon period. 

I’m not going to say that the moon period was a success, but I admire how Chester Gould went all in on it. It was a bold gamble to make, and one that ended up costing him a lot of readers, as newspapers started dropping the strip. From 1960 to 1974, the number of newspapers carrying Dick Tracy went from 550 to 375. (Dick Tracy: The Official Biography, by Jay Maeder, p.199)

The moon stories receded after Apollo 11 landed in 1969, and Tracy returned to being a mostly Earth-bound detective. During the 1970’s, the strip got more political, as Gould got more heavy-handed in his criticism of the rights of the accused. Some sample questions the characters posed during the 1970’s: Lizz the policewoman asking, “Have the courts become an ally of the underworld?” Sam Catchem: “What chance has law enforcement got in today’s judicial climate?” and Dick Tracy himself mused on December 31, 1975: “With the milksop backing a cop gets, should he quit his profession?” 

It’s not really that surprising that Chester Gould held such views. After all, he was literally working in a black-and-white world. In Chester Gould’s world, Dick Tracy was always right, and the criminals were always wrong and guilty. Of course, in the real world it’s more complicated than that. 

As comic panels got noticeably smaller in the 1970’s, it became harder for serial strips like Dick Tracy to keep going as dialogue and exposition was severely limited. As Jay Maeder writes of Gould, “He never successfully adjusted to the reduction, and his pacing fell off badly.” (Dick Tracy: The Official Biography, p.203) Chester Gould retired at the end of 1977, handing the strip over to Max Allan Collins, who would write the stories, and longtime Dick Tracy art assistant Rick Fletcher. Gould had been working with assistants since the 1930’s, but supposedly Gould never let anyone else touch Dick Tracy. 

Gould might not have received the rave reviews as an artist that contemporary Milton Caniff did, but in my opinion Gould’s artwork was superb. Gould’s style was always more cartoony than Caniff’s detail-packed realism, but it was extremely effective. Gould was particularly effective at using shadows. 

A great example of Chester Gould's dramatic artwork. The book this image is from notes that this could be a Roy Lichtenstein painting.

Another single-panel from Dick Tracy that highlights Chester Gould's dramatic use of shadows.

Gould was also a master of pacing and narrative drive. Part of this was because he was never very far away from his deadlines. The furthest Gould ever got ahead of deadline was 14 weeks. And most of the time Gould would only plot out the strip a week at a time and then draw it! (Dick Tracy: America’s Most Famous Detective, p.42) Maybe that accounts for the breathless pace and excitement that were hallmarks of Dick Tracy. 

While re-reading many Dick Tracy strips for this essay, I’m more and more intrigued by what kind of a person Chester Gould was. What I do know about him is that he was unflashy, and lived on a farm in Woodstock, Illinois for most of the years he drew the comic strip. So how did this seemingly simple fellow come up with all the elaborate storylines and crazy villains that inhabited the universe of Dick Tracy? I have no easy answer for that question. Suffice it to say, Chester Gould had one heck of an imagination.