Ye Gods! Cartoon detective Dick Tracy lauded at 75
Tue Oct 31, 2006 1:33 PM ET
By Ros Krasny
WOODSTOCK, Illinois (Reuters) - With his trademark square jaw, yellow fedora and a two-way wrist radio, crime-buster extraordinaire Dick Tracy is still catching criminals at the age of 75.
Tracy admirers have flocked to the Chester Gould-Dick Tracy Museum in this quaint northern Illinois town this month to mark the 75th anniversary of the comic strip hero and remember his creator, Chester Gould.
Gould, who lived for about 50 years in Woodstock, launched the cartoon in October 1931 and drew the strip until 1977. He died in 1985, aged 81, but his creation lives on.
For the "funny pages," the Tracy strip was a departure from the usually upbeat fare. It offered often violent reflections of Prohibition-era lawlessness in a fictional city modeled on Chicago.
Big Boy, the strip's first villain, stood in for legendary gangster Al Capone. Later came memorable grotesques such as Flattop Jones, Pruneface -- and Mrs Pruneface -- and the Brow.
"The success of Dick Tracy is in the characters. Tracy holds up the tent, and the characters act as a three-ring circus down below," said Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Dick Locher, 77, who now draws and writes the strip for Tribune Media Services.
Gould's grandson, Tracy O'Connell, said the strip has enduring moral clarity.
"There are no gray areas in Dick Tracy. He always gets his man. He wanted the bad guys to be ugly so there was no question as to who is good and who is not," O'Connell said.
The strip surfaced first in the Detroit Daily Mirror and at its peak was seen in more than 700 papers. It still appears in more than 50, as well as on the Internet -- one of the few surviving "continuity" strips that keeps a single story-line moving for months or even years.
"The goal of the Tracy strip is simple: If you are reading it Wednesday, we want you to read it Thursday," Locher said.
"TRACY HAS POSSIBILITIES"
The clean-cut Tracy was modeled by Gould on the most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, but the American dick battled crime in a much grittier environment.
Woodstock police chief R. W. Lowen, 54, absorbed the Tracy message en route to a career in law enforcement.
"It was the first thing I flipped to every morning ... I still read the strip," he said.
Over the decades the Tracy's story-lines ran the gamut of topical crimes: from Nazi spies in the '40s, feminist bank robbers in the '70s, video pirates, and, yes, terrorists.
Gould, raised in Pawnee, Oklahoma, drew the strip for over 35 years -- but not before enduring 10 years and 60 rejection letters trying to crack into the cartooning business.
Gould's artistry was praised by his peers, and he twice won the Reuben Award as cartoonist of the year from the National Cartoonists Society.
The strips seemed ripped from the headlines. Gould received letters from mothers upset their children were seeing images of "some gangster on a marble slab with a bullet in his head."
"He was an absolute master story teller," said Matt Hansel, 30, a museum board member. "There was always something to connect the eye from panel to panel."
Woodstock's museum -- which features artwork and memorabilia -- runs on a shoestring budget of about $40,000 a year and faces that most ugly of villains -- the budget shortfall. An auction to celebrate the 75th anniversary raised a few thousand dollars funds that could help keep the enterprise afloat.
Tue Oct 31, 2006 1:33 PM ET
By Ros Krasny
WOODSTOCK, Illinois (Reuters) - With his trademark square jaw, yellow fedora and a two-way wrist radio, crime-buster extraordinaire Dick Tracy is still catching criminals at the age of 75.
Tracy admirers have flocked to the Chester Gould-Dick Tracy Museum in this quaint northern Illinois town this month to mark the 75th anniversary of the comic strip hero and remember his creator, Chester Gould.
Gould, who lived for about 50 years in Woodstock, launched the cartoon in October 1931 and drew the strip until 1977. He died in 1985, aged 81, but his creation lives on.
For the "funny pages," the Tracy strip was a departure from the usually upbeat fare. It offered often violent reflections of Prohibition-era lawlessness in a fictional city modeled on Chicago.
Big Boy, the strip's first villain, stood in for legendary gangster Al Capone. Later came memorable grotesques such as Flattop Jones, Pruneface -- and Mrs Pruneface -- and the Brow.
"The success of Dick Tracy is in the characters. Tracy holds up the tent, and the characters act as a three-ring circus down below," said Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Dick Locher, 77, who now draws and writes the strip for Tribune Media Services.
Gould's grandson, Tracy O'Connell, said the strip has enduring moral clarity.
"There are no gray areas in Dick Tracy. He always gets his man. He wanted the bad guys to be ugly so there was no question as to who is good and who is not," O'Connell said.
The strip surfaced first in the Detroit Daily Mirror and at its peak was seen in more than 700 papers. It still appears in more than 50, as well as on the Internet -- one of the few surviving "continuity" strips that keeps a single story-line moving for months or even years.
"The goal of the Tracy strip is simple: If you are reading it Wednesday, we want you to read it Thursday," Locher said.
"TRACY HAS POSSIBILITIES"
The clean-cut Tracy was modeled by Gould on the most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, but the American dick battled crime in a much grittier environment.
Woodstock police chief R. W. Lowen, 54, absorbed the Tracy message en route to a career in law enforcement.
"It was the first thing I flipped to every morning ... I still read the strip," he said.
Over the decades the Tracy's story-lines ran the gamut of topical crimes: from Nazi spies in the '40s, feminist bank robbers in the '70s, video pirates, and, yes, terrorists.
Gould, raised in Pawnee, Oklahoma, drew the strip for over 35 years -- but not before enduring 10 years and 60 rejection letters trying to crack into the cartooning business.
Gould's artistry was praised by his peers, and he twice won the Reuben Award as cartoonist of the year from the National Cartoonists Society.
The strips seemed ripped from the headlines. Gould received letters from mothers upset their children were seeing images of "some gangster on a marble slab with a bullet in his head."
"He was an absolute master story teller," said Matt Hansel, 30, a museum board member. "There was always something to connect the eye from panel to panel."
Woodstock's museum -- which features artwork and memorabilia -- runs on a shoestring budget of about $40,000 a year and faces that most ugly of villains -- the budget shortfall. An auction to celebrate the 75th anniversary raised a few thousand dollars funds that could help keep the enterprise afloat.
