Book Review: The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 6: 1939-1941 (2008)

 

Cover of The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 6: 1939-1941, published by IDW Publishing in 2008.

The 6^th volume of The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy covers the period from July of 1939 to January of 1941. It’s an improvement on the weak volume 5, with hints of even stronger work to come. As usual, Chester Gould’s artwork is fantastic, with every panel full of interesting visual detail and startling images. The stories are somewhat uneven, but the strongest ones rank with some of Gould’s best work.

The main thing you’ll notice in Volume 6 is all the backwards names. This was a trademark of Gould’s for a while, and he really goes overboard with it in Volume 6. Ye Gods, even minor characters have backwards names! Here’s a list of the backwards names in Volume 6:

Edward Nuremoh=home run
John Lavir=rival
Nat Natnus=suntan
Professor Emirc=crime
Jimmy Epod=dope
Rudy Seton=notes
Kress Kroywen=New York
Junky Doolb=blood
Jerome Trohs=short
Roloc Bard=drab color
Toirtap=patriot (Mr. Toirtap is the publisher of a foreign language newspaper)
Johnny Naem=mean
Johnny Lennut=tunnel This character only appeared alive for one day!
Jerry Lesihc=chisel
Even Black Pearl’s real name is Pearl Erad=dare spelled backwards

 

I like how cool some of these names sound, like Nuremoh and Toirtap. Maybe I’ll use those as aliases the next time I need a fake name, or a junk email account. Hopefully edwardnuremoh at gmail isn’t taken yet. I’ll recap the storylines in Volume 6, and I’ll rank them on a scale of 1-5.

 

Tess Trueheart and her fiancee, Edward Nuremoh, July 22, 1939.

Edward Nuremoh/Tess: Tess Trueheart didn’t figure in much of the action in Volume 5, and as Volume 6 begins, it turns out that she has a new boyfriend: former major league baseball player Edward Nuremoh. The Nuremoh family are quite wealthy and live in a Gothic mansion near a clifftop. (Remember, Chester Gould hates inherited wealth!) Edward needs to find a bride that meets with the family’s approval so he can claim his share of the inheritance before Aunt Margot shuffles off her mortal coil. Tess and Edward get married, but, sadly, someone shot poor Aunt Margot in the heart. It’s up to Tess to do some detective work of her own, as Tracy is on the sidelines for this story. When Tess puts the pieces together and figures out that Edward killed Aunt Margot, he chases Tess to the top of a cliff, intent on murdering her as well. As Edward pulls out his gun and fires, his girlfriend Lola jumps out of the bushes and takes the bullet for Tess. (The family never approved of Lola.) Insane with grief as he realizes he has killed the woman he truly loves; Edward picks up Lola’s dead body in his arms and walks over the cliff to his death. It’s a haunting tableau. The Gothic romance element of the story is an interesting change of pace for the strip. 5 stars. (Tess’s marriage to Nuremoh was legally annulled in the October 1, 1939 strip.)

 

Tess Trueheart's not crazy! No way! She's totally sane! Maybe you're the one who's crazy! Tess and John Lavir, September 2, 1939.

John Lavir/Tess: Before the bodies of Edward and Lola have grown cold, Lola’s brother John drives up to the Nuremoh mansion and attempts to kill Tess by forcing her car off the road, as he blames Tess for Lola’s death. Even though Lavir quickly announces his murderous intentions, Tess declines to press charges against him, takes a shine to him, and the two drive off together. Lavir’s real gig is stealing dogs and then training them to be guard dogs for wealthy families. I know, yet another riff on that old con? (That was sarcasm.) Tess is fooled into thinking it’s a legitimate operation and becomes an investor. Once again, she figures out that he’s no good. Very weak plot and character motivations all the way through hamper this storyline from becoming anything more than filler. 2 stars.

 

Nat the Fur King: A very minor storyline, Nat only appears for about a month. His thing is stealing furs from farms and reselling them. Meh. 1 star.

 

In this striking panel, Stooge Viller has spilled alcohol on his daughter's photograph, December 22, 1939.

Stooge Viller: Gould rarely used villains more than once, but he used Viller in several storylines during 1933. At the time, Viller was one of the strongest villains Gould had yet created for his young strip. In Volume 6, Viller is released from prison, and vows revenge on Dick Tracy. He pairs up with Professor Emirc. (Crime spelled backwards!) Emirc is a true grotesque, and he spends his time inventing all sorts of nefarious devices. Emirc is more typical of the types of villains Tracy will encounter during the classic years of the strip, but he was clearly something of an afterthought, as Gould pivots the storyline to focus on Viller’s determination to reconcile with his young daughter. Emirc kicks Viller out of the gang and is never seen again. The storyline about Viller and his daughter is interesting, if perhaps too melodramatic for some tastes. Gould ends up killing off Viller on January 7, 1940, and it seems symbolic that the strip enters a new decade by firmly closing the door on one of its key villains from the first decade. 4 stars.

 

Baby in the suitcase/Kroywen family: After the strong Viller continuity comes this clunker, about a baby Tracy finds abandoned in a suitcase. The baby is connected to the wealthy Kroywen family, and it turns out that the baby’s mother is none other than Toby Townley, last seen in Volume 3. This continuity fits with the melodramatic tone of the previous storylines in Volume 6, but it’s not that interesting. 2 stars.

 

Tracy channels Columbo for a moment, playing dumb with Mr. Mason, April 2, 1940.

Mary X: A beautiful woman wakes up in the back seat of Dick Tracy’s car with amnesia. It turns out she has a beautiful singing voice and gets a gig with bandleader Rudy Seton—a caricature of Benny Goodman. Eventually Mary leads the cops to a body that was dumped in a swamp, and it turns out she’s witnessed a murder. There’s not a strong villain, but it’s an interesting story. 4 stars.

 

Junky Doolb buys the farm, April 24, 1940. Back when you could show bullets going straight through someone's head on the comics page.

Jerome Trohs and Mamma, April 27, 1940.

Jerome Trohs/Mamma: Here’s where things start picking up. Jerome Trohs is a midget, and he enters the strip bringing his Saint Bernard into the police station. He claims he’s a lawyer and wants to see his client in lockup. The cops oblige, and the hoodlum who’s been arrested gets a gun that’s been hidden in the dog’s mouth. But the joke is on the hood, as Trohs slipped him a gun with no bullets in it, and his escape is quickly derailed as he gets shot in the head. Trohs rides away on his dog, cackling manically over his treachery.

 

Trohs’ girlfriend is named Mamma, and she’s everything he’s not: tall and plump. Jerome and Mamma’s story runs nearly three months, and it’s by far the best one in Volume 6. This storyline is like a blast of cold water in the face compared to what’s come before it. It’s like a switch has been turned on in Gould’s brain. In this continuity we see Gould leaning into his sense of humor and the absurd, and his sadistic imagination. He’s really letting it all fly here. There’s much more narrative tension and drive, coupled with two truly memorable villains. Gould is figuring out the things that make his comic strip different from other adventure serials. In contrast to some of the other stories in this book that are over before they’ve begun, Gould spins the story of Jerome and Mamma out longer—he’s not afraid to let his imagination and plotting run wild. He takes Jerome on the run, lets Mamma break out of jail, and just watches what happens. The twists and turns of the narrative would become a trademark of Gould’s most famous stories. While Gould’s improvisational approach to storytelling meant that things might not always be tied up in a neat package, it meant that his stories were full of narrative drive, and the reader had no way of guessing where a storyline might go next.

 

The pursuit of the criminal would become Gould’s obsession, and we see more of that in this story, as we follow Jerome on the run. We also see Gould indulging his whims by focusing more on minor characters in this continuity. He’s able to make them fully realized characters—the rodeo chief who signs Jerome up to do trick riding, the couple who own the cabins that Jerome buys—these are real people, even if they’re not in the strip for very long.

 

While Jerome is being pursued by the law, he’s also being pursued by Mamma, who is incensed that he left her behind when he made his getaway from the cops. It’s just a matter of who will catch up with him first. It turns out to be Mamma, and Gould devises an extremely unpleasant death for Jerome: Mamma scalds him to death in a shower! 5 stars.

 

Yogee Yamma's wife provides a bit of cheesecake for the funnies, July 17, 1940.

Yogee Yamma: A fraudulent mystic who bends people to his will with the aid of a nerve gas. The gas is a creation of “the Professor,” (real name: Roloc Bard) whom Yogee keeps chained up in an abandoned subway tunnel. Yogee comes to a dramatic end, as he neglects to keep the nerve gas refrigerated, so it explodes and burns him to death in his hotel room. 5 stars.

 

Pat Patton and Dick Tracy provide some beefcake while testing Black Pearl's tank/submarine/airplane, October 11, 1940.

Black Pearl: Black Pearl is a female villain, or villainess, if you prefer, who is making a tank that can go underwater and also fly. She’s hoping to sell it to a foreign power. Tracy and Pat Patton are captured by Black Pearl and must test out the machine for her. They’re saved by G-Man Jim Trailer, making his last appearance while Gould drew the strip. It’s an interesting story, with hints of Gould’s sci-fi obsession that would blossom during the 1960’s. Too short of a storyline to really be a classic. 3 stars.

 

Deafy: Okay, so this villain’s nickname is decidedly un-PC. Very low-stakes story of bicycle thieves that sees Junior Tracy at the forefront of the action. Junior hadn’t been very visible in Volume 6, so perhaps Gould felt he owed Junior a storyline? 2 stars.

 

Krome begs for his life, January 16, 1941. Kitty is not amused. That hand looks bad, Krome, it'll probably have to come off.

Krome: This storyline carries over into Volume 7. Krome is a ruthless killer for hire. At the end of Volume 6, Krome’s girlfriend Kitty shoots him in the arm and intends to turn him over to the cops. As she’s phoning the police, Krome savagely kicks her, knocking the gun out of her hands. He ties her to a chair and electrocutes her. Oh, and Krome won’t have his bleeding hand too much longer. This is a great example of Gould’s pursuit tales. 5 stars.

 

Overall, Volume 6 is an improvement over the dullness of Volume 5, and the strip is just getting stronger. There’s more greatness to come in Volume 7, as Tracy will battle Littleface, the Mole, and BB Eyes, among others.

Book Review: The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 1: 1931-1933 by Chester Gould (2006)

Cover of The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 1: 1931-1933. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Chester Gould wrote and illustrated the comic strip Dick Tracy for 46 years, from 1931 to 1977. Gould created a detective strip that became a sensation, spawning movies, radio shows, and all kinds of tie-in merchandising. In the years before he created Dick Tracy, Gould had written several gag-a-day comic strips like The Radio Catts and The Girl Friends. None of these strips had become a hit with the public. But Gould was a hard worker, and a persistent man. Gould bombarded Joseph Medill Patterson, the founder and owner of the New York Daily News, with ideas for strips all the time. Gould rarely received a reply, but he didn’t let that dissuade him. In August of 1931 Gould sent off 5 strips titled Plainclothes Tracy. It was unlike anything Gould had drawn before. The strips featured a hoodlum being tortured with a blowtorch applied to his feet, highlighted Tracy’s sharp skills of observation, and ended with the threat of an imminent shoot-out. Patterson cabled back to Gould: “Your Plainclothes Tracy has possibilities.” It was Patterson himself who changed the title of the strip to, simply, Dick Tracy. 

The first appearance of Dick Tracy, in the first of the five Plainclothes Tracy strips that Chester Gould submitted in August of 1931. In these strips Tracy doesn't yet have a first name, and he wears a straw boater hat instead of his famous fedora.

The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, an ambitious project undertaken by IDW Publishing and the Library of American Comics, began with the publication of the first volume in 2006. The project is still not complete—the next book will be Volume 27, due to be published in January of 2020. Volume 1 of The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy includes all the strips from October 1931 to May of 1933. 

Gould’s vision for Dick Tracy was unlike anything else that had come along in newspaper comics. Gould created a mixture of scientific detective work, grotesque criminals, and hard-hitting violence, mixed with the occasional serving of humor.  In doing so, Gould essentially invented the modern police procedural. But all that would take time to perfect, and in Volume 1 we see Gould figuring things out as he goes along. If you’re expecting over the top villains with bizarre deformities, you’ll be disappointed. 

Dick Tracy began with two Sunday strips on October 4^th and October 11^th, 1931. The Sunday strips were originally stand-alone stories unconnected to the action of the daily strip. Indeed, on the second and third Sunday strips, Tracy captures the crime boss Big Boy two weeks in a row, while in the daily strip Big Boy remained at large until May of 1932. That same month, the Sunday strips finally connected to the Monday through Saturday continuity of the strip. The daily strip Dick Tracy started on Monday, October 12, 1931, and the initial storyline examined Tracy’s first case as a plainclothes police officer. 

Dick Tracy announces his engagement to Tess, October 15, 1931.

Dick Tracy became a detective by accident. One night, Tracy is having dinner with his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart, and her parents. Shortly after Tracy and Tess announce their engagement, hoodlums break into the Truehearts’ apartment, shoot Tess’s father, steal the $1,000 he has saved, knock out Tracy, and kidnap Tess. When Tracy regains consciousness, he pledges to bring the guilty parties to justice. Police Chief Brandon is impressed by Tracy and almost immediately offers him a job as a plainclothes officer. Tracy accepts. 

Tracy joins the force, October 22, 1931.

What probably strikes modern readers as odd is that there’s no explanation of who Dick Tracy is, where he came from, or anything about his background. In fact, throughout the strip there’s precious little background information about Dick Tracy, the man. But maybe we don’t need an explanation of how Dick Tracy came to be who he is. Dick Tracy simply is honest and tough and fearless and smart. In a 1980 interview with Chester Gould printed in Volume 1 and 2 of The Complete Dick Tracy, Max Allan Collins asks Gould what Tracy did before he became a cop. Gould replies, “I never gave that one bit of thought.” When Collins presses again, Gould says, “He was just a nice young guy.” And there you go. 

By the end of November 1931, certain trademarks of Dick Tracy are already there—Tracy’s ever-present fedora and trench coat have made their first appearances, and we get a gun battle in the street that fells the hood who killed Emil Trueheart. The violence of Dick Tracy was truly shocking for the time, and even today it’s still incredibly violent for a newspaper comic strip. 

Dick Tracy, in a rare moment of reflection as a beat cop, January 25, 1932. This isn't a classic snowstorm yet, but Chester Gould's snowstorms are great examples of his artistic skill.

Dick Tracy goes through some growing pains professionally. After a raid goes wrong in early 1932, Tracy is busted down to a beat cop. When he’s a beat cop, Tracy is uncharacteristically morose and full of self-pity. Fortunately, he quickly snaps out of it and gets promoted back to a plainclothes officer. 

The action in this first volume moves too fast at times. An example would be when Tracy is trying to find the kidnapped child Buddy Waldorf, crime boss Big Boy throws Tracy overboard from an ocean liner. Tracy gets thrown overboard, picked up by a Norwegian tramp freighter, transferred to a British aircraft carrier, and flown back to the ship, all in 6 days! It happens so quickly that there’s no real suspense to it. Had this sequence happened say, ten years later, Gould would have stretched it out and ratcheted up the drama.

The Dick Tracy of the early 1930’s was a talky strip. Gould eventually streamlined his dialogue and narration, but in these early strips he’s very loquacious, as many comic strips of that time were. The very first Dick Tracy daily has 100 words of dialogue and narration in it! That would be enough for a week’s worth of strips in 2019!

There are moments in this first volume of Dick Tracy that are very dated. For example, when Tracy rescues Buddy Waldorf and captures Big Boy, Tracy challenges Big Boy to a fistfight, no weapons, and promptly beats Big Boy to a pulp. I’m not endorsing the excessive force used by a comic strip cop 87 years ago, but I think Chester Gould intended Tracy’s pummeling of Big Boy to be a stand-in for the readers’ desire for the punishment of criminals like Al Capone, whom Big Boy was clearly modeled after, and the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby, the crime that inspired Gould’s Buddy Waldorf storyline. 

Tracy's sidekick Pat Patton shooting a hood on June 30, 1932 is an example of the sometimes awkward artwork of the strip's early days. I know the guy's getting shot, but there's something about this panel that just makes me laugh.

Gould is still figuring out how to best tell a story in this volume. There are numerous clunky times when Gould makes strip time real time: i.e., someone will say “I haven’t seen Pat for 3 days.” Eventually this rightly falls by the wayside, as Gould makes it clear that the action of the strip is continuous. 

Dick Tracy was influenced by Sherlock Holmes, and several times in Volume 1 Tracy disguises himself, something that rarely happens after 1933. Like Holmes, Tracy is a sharp observer of human behavior and many times finds clues that others overlook. 

There are odd little continuity errors here and there, such as Gould not being able to decide if Dan Mucelli’s last name is Mucelli or Muzel. In the same speech bubble, Tracy uses both last names. Oops.

Mucelli or Muzel? Even Dick Tracy doesn't seem to know the crook's last name on November 27, 1932.

For me, Dick Tracy turns a corner for the better in September of 1932 when Gould introduces the character of Junior, a 9-year-old boy who has no parents and has been riding the rails with Steve the Tramp. Junior is eventually taken in by Dick Tracy himself, and the boy becomes key to the rest of the stories in this volume. 

Junior's first meeting with Tess Trueheart doesn't go so well, September 26, 1932. If you're annoyed by incorrect speech, Junior's litany of "dese" "dem" "dat" and "dose" will drive you nuts.

Personally, I think Steve the Tramp is the most terrifying villain that Gould had created so far in the strip. Sure, I wouldn’t want to meet any of the other villains in a dark alley, but Big Boy? Stereotypical Mob boss. Broadway Bates? He looks like the Penguin from Batman. Dan Mucelli? Meh, just a typical drug pusher, with a strange nose. Steve the Tramp, on the other hand, is a ruthless figure out of a nightmare—he strangles a postal worker just to get his hands on a postcard. Steve threatens severe bodily harm to Junior on an almost daily basis. He’s really, truly awful. I suspect Chester Gould’s response to my feelings about Steve the Tramp would be: “Good, he’s supposed to be terrifying and disturbing!” 

Steve the Tramp and Stooge Viller are the most interesting villains Gould had yet created, and in Volume 2 they will join forces and take up much of the strip’s storyline in 1933. Viller makes his first appearance in January of 1933, and he’s the opposite of Steve the Tramp, a well-dressed city slicker whose stock in trade is being an expert pickpocket. Viller, who resembles the actor Edward G. Robinson, was responsible for getting Tracy kicked off the police force by planting counterfeit money in his pockets. And to add insult to injury, Viller hangs around town and romances Tess Trueheart, who has broken her engagement to Tracy in the wake of his dismissal from the force. What a jerk! 

 

Stooge Viller romances Tess Trueheart, February 6, 1933. Just six days later, he'll shoot her. Tess's first warning that he was no good should have been his name. Stooge, really?

By the end of Volume 1, the strip has gone through some growing pains and is starting to emerge into the strip that readers of the classic Dick Tracy period will recognize. Gould’s artwork has also improved, and his visual style is becoming more distinctive. Gould could work wonders with shadows, and we see more of that as Volume 1 ends. Particularly effective is the strip from January 27, 1933, as we observe a 3AM phone call from Tracy to Tess, as he professes his innocence about the counterfeit money, and she hangs up on him. All four panels occur in darkness, with only shadows and cross-hatching, and it’s tremendously effective. 

The science of crime-fighting always played a large role in Dick Tracy, and we see examples of this throughout Volume 1. In November 1932, a nurse asks Tracy “But what’s ballistics?” This was a question that probably many real-life police officers would have also asked at the time, as the science of matching markings on bullets to specific guns was in its infancy. Throughout his career, Gould worked hard to keep Tracy ahead of the curve in any scientific advancements that would aid his crime-fighting. 

During my earlier boyhood Tracy-mania, I read all the strips in Volume 1, as they were collected in the 1978 anthology Dick Tracy the Thirties: Tommy Guns and Hard Times. At the time, in the early 1990’s, I had hoped that book would be the beginning of reprinting all the Dick Tracy strips, but Tommy Guns and Hard Times was just a one-off, as no books ever continued the story. Reading Dick Tracy as an adult, different things strike you. Like the wordless final two panels of the May 28, 1932 strip, as Buddy Waldorf’s mother is reunited with her son. It’s only two panels, but it’s so moving. Gould knew he didn’t need any narration to trigger emotion from his readers. 

The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1 is an interesting look at the beginning of an iconic American comic strip, and I would recommend it to any fan of Dick Tracy.