Reviewed by Jeanne
I grew up reading the comic strips in the local paper. I read them all, from Peanuts to Far Side to Little Orphan Annie, so of course I also
read Dick Tracy. Tracy was created by Chester Gould and
made its first appearance in the papers in 1931. By the time I came along, Tracy had his iconic
two-way wrist radio (which appeared in 1946, so talk about being ahead of its
time!), a wife named Tess, and a son called Junior who met and married a girl
from the moon. She was named Moon Maid
and their daughter was Honey Moon.
I am not making this up.
Dick Tracy was one of those strips that was both serious and
over the top at the same time. Tracy was
a strong-jawed, rather grim figure who was out to deliver justice. His adversaries were often mob figures with
names like Pruneface and Flattop.
Characters often met violent ends, and there was corruption in high
places, both government and corporate.
When I saw the Dick
Tracy graphic novel come in, I was immediately intrigued. It was both
immediately recognizable and noticeably different: Tracy wore his trademark yellow fedora and coat
and was appropriately square-jawed, but in a more realistic style. I found the graphic novel did reflect the
tone of the original in a lot of ways, but it was also set firmly in the late
1940s. The opening scenes have a reporter meeting with a nervous councilman who
wants to unburden himself, but the two are rapidly murdered along with everyone
else who had the misfortune to be at a local café. The councilman’s daughter, one Tess Trueheart,
joins forces with Tracy to find out who was behind the hit. An old war buddy of Tracy’s also shows up,
trying to figure out what happened to his brother, a WW II veteran who had been
struggling with civilian life before his disappearance. And he’s not the only
vet to go missing: there’s something
very wrong going on in the city.
Being used to the flatter newspaper style, it did take a few
pages to get used to the artwork in this graphic novel. It’s dynamic and more realistic, not to mention
more colorful. The old daily strips were black and white, with the only color
being on Sunday. The graphic novel uses
the expanded color palette to good advantage, giving a moody, noir feel to some
scenes. The plot is well supported by the strong tension that runs through the
art and dialog; there’s a lot of action to keep a reader turning pages. It
seemed a bit more violent than the strip, but on reflection it’s probably just
the color and larger page size.
In short, I was impressed with this effort which remained true
to the original while—in my opinion—making Dick Tracy more interesting to a
modern audience. For me, it was a trip down memory lane. I was very surprised at
how many of the names I remembered, including some who didn’t appear in this
incarnation. (B.O. Plenty, for example—Gould
really liked descriptive names.) It’s apparently coming out in comic book form
on a regular basis; this is listed as volume 1 in the series, containing issues
1-5 of the comics. Volume 2 is due out
in the summer of 2025 and I’ll be on the lookout for it. In the meantime, I now
want to find a copy of the Dick Tracy movie with Warren Beatty and watch
it.
