Information AboutDick Tracy |
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Dick Tracy is a Comic Strip Detective and a popular character in American Pop Culture . The character of Dick Tracy is a hard hitting, fast shooting, and supremely intelligent Police Detective who has matched wits with a variety of often grotesquely ugly Villain s. Dick Tracy was created by Cartoonist Chester Gould in 1931 for a Newspaper Comic Strip also entitled ''Dick Tracy''. The strip, which made its debut appearance on October 4th , 1931, was distributed by the '' Chicago Tribune '' Syndicate. Gould wrote and drew the strip until 1977 . THE COMIC STRIP Early years Chester Gould introduced a raw violence to comic strips, reflecting the violence of 1930s Chicago . Gould also did his best to keep up with the latest in crime fighting techniques and, while Tracy often ends a case in a shootout, he uses Forensic Science , advanced gadgetry, and plain hard thinking to track the bad guy down. It has been suggested that this comic strip was the first example of the Police Procedural mystery story. Others have noted that actual mystery plots were relatively rare in the stories since the comic strip format is a difficult one for that kind of plot. The real focus, they argue, is the chase with the criminal seen committing the crime and Dick Tracy figuring out the case and relentlessly pursuing the criminal who becomes increasingly desperate as the detective closes in. The strip's villains are arguably the strongest appeal of the story. Tracy's world is decidedly black and white where the bad guys are sometimes so evil, their very flesh is deformed to announce their sins to the world. The evil sometimes is raw and coarse like the criminally insane Selbert Depool ("looped" spelled backwards, typical Gould). At other times it is suave like the arrogant Shoulders, who can't help thinking that all women like him. It can even border on genius like the Nazi Spy Pruneface who is not only a machine design engineer but also dabbles with a chemical Nerve Gas . , Dick Tracy's famous enemy]] However, by far the most popular villain was Flattop Jones , a freelance hitman who had a large head that was as flat as an Aircraft Carrier 's flight deck. In a classic storyline, Flattop was hired by Black Market eers to murder Tracy and he came within a hairsbreath of accomplishing that before deciding to Blackmail his employers for more money before he did the deed. This proved to be a fatal mistake since it gave Tracy time to signal for help and he eventually defeated his assassin in a spectacular fight scene even as the police were storming the hideout. When Flattop was eventually killed, fans went into public mourning. Reflecting some of the era that also produced Film Noir , Gould tapped into the existential despair of the criminals as small crimes lead to bigger ones and plans slip out of control and events happen sometimes for no reason at all because life can be unpredictable and cruel. Treachery is everywhere as henchmen are killed ruthlessly by their bosses, bosses are betrayed by jilted girlfriends and good people in the wrong place at the wrong time are gunned down. Evolution of the strip Gould changed Tracy with the times, sometimes with mixed results as with the introduction of Science Fiction elements such as the two-way wrist radio which proved to be the first of a variety of personal wrist communicators and other futuristic gadgets provided by the eccentric industrialist, Diet Smith. This eventually led to what Gould thought was the logical conclusion in the 1960s of the Space Coupe, a spacecraft with a magnetic propulsion system. This started a much-derided science fiction period that had Tracy and friends having adventures on the moon and meeting the late Moon Maid and her race in 1964 . This in turn led to an eventual sharing of technologies and the villains had to be even more exaggerated in power to challenge Tracy in an escalating series of stories that completely abandoned the urban crime drama roots of the strip. Finally, Junior actually ''marries'' the Moon Maid, and they produced two children! In the 1970s , Gould even less successfully tried to modernize Tracy by giving him a longer hair style and Mustache , adding a supposedly "hip" Sidekick , Groovy Grove. More successful was the decades-long substory of the Plenty family, a group of goofy Redneck yokels headed by former villains, Bob Oscar "B.O." Plenty and Gravel Gertie . The family provided a humorous counterpoint to Tracy's adventures. Their daughter, Sparkle Plenty , first gave the strip an infant character, and later a pretty young adolescent girl character, since, unlike most comic strip children, she was allowed to grow up. Another successful addition was that of Lizz the Policewoman as one of Tracy's sidekicks. She proved be to an active and formidable female character in a manner that was groundbreaking for comic strips of that era. However, the later stories were often shackled with a stubborn grousing condemnation of the Rights Of The Accused which often involved Tracy being frustrated by criminals because of legal technicalities and prosleytizing about it. The fact that newspaper comics were sharply reduced in space for each feature during that time also negatively affected Gould's storytelling abilities as he failed to adjust. The strip often included a frame devoted to "Crimestoppers' Textbook", a series of handy illustrated hints for the amateur crimefighter; for instance, when attempting to memorize the face of an evildoer for later identification purposes, make sure to note the size and shape of the ears and Earlobe s. Later years .]] Gould retired from the strip in 1977 and Dick Tracy was taken over by Max Allan Collins and longtime Gould assistant Rick Fletcher . Collins reversed some of Gould's science-fiction changes by having the character Moon Maid killed off in 1978 , as well as doing away with other Gould creations of the 1960s and 1970s , and generally taking a less cynical and simplistic view of the Justice System . Rick Fletcher died in 1983 and was succeeded by Dick Locher , who had assisted Gould on the strip in the late 1950s, early 1960s. In 1992 , Tribune writer and columnist Mike Kilian took over the writing; Kilian died on October 27 2005 . Since January 9th , 2006 Dick Locher has been receiving sole credit on the strip, meaning he is now drawing and authoring the storyline. AWARDS AND RECOGNITION Chester Gould won the Reuben Award for the strip in 1959 and 1977. In 1995 , the strip was one of twenty included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative Postage Stamps . OTHER MEDIA DEPICTIONS Early films The popularity and success of the Dick Tracy’s comic strip spread to Radio and to Movie Serial s. Ralph Byrd first played Dick Tracy in a movie of the same name in 1937 . Byrd’s career continued through a series of B-grade Tracy movies. The best known of the films is '' Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome '', with the title's villain played by Boris Karloff . Television The strip also had limited exposure on Television with a short-lived live action series and two Animated ones. In the first cartoon, Mel Blanc voiced several characters including a junior detective named Go-Go Gomez which was essentially a human version of his famous fast mouse Speedy Gonzales . Tracy would simply sit back and let Gomez and his other subordinate flatfoots mop up crooks like Pruneface, Itchy, Mumbles, Flattop, Cheater Gunsmoke, B.B. Eyes, and Tracy's other idiosyncratic villains. The show has not been seen in years because of its slightly racist undertones and use of ethnic stereotypes and accents, but recently resurfaced on pay-view digital cable channels. The second exposure to television was a feature in '' Archie's TV Funnies '', produced by Filmation , which adhered more closely to the comic strip. There was also an unsuccessful Television Pilot from the producers of the live action '' Batman '' Television Series . 1990 film & Video Games In '' spawned two top-ten hits including "Vogue" and "Hanky Panky". Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim wrote several songs for the film, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)" which won the Academy Award for Best Song. There were also several other Unreleased Madonna Songs that were recorded for the Film but not used at all, and several in the film whose versions were changed for the album. The track "Back in Business" in the movie is not at all related to "Back in Business" on the album, for example. Disney had designed a ride for their . The ride was killed by several factors: one being the financial disappointment of the movie's run in theaters and the second being that Eisner was not keen to the idea of tourists "shooting up" bad guys. In August 1990, Bandai America, Inc. made Dick Tracy into an NES game loosley based on Beatty's film. It was also released in 1991 on the Game Boy . Sega also made a Dick Tracy video game for the Sega Genesis and Master System in 1991 as a Side-scrolling arcade action adventure game. Recent events Media outlets recently reported that there is a legal battle being waged over just who owns the rights to the Dick Tracy character. Warren Beatty has announced plans to make a sequel to his 1990 movie. At the same time, television producers have announced plans for a new Dick Tracy TV series. Both sides claim that they are the legal owners of the rights to Dick Tracy. A lawsuit is pending. Although the comic strip's public profile has diminished since the 1990 Beatty film, it is still run in several newspapers. Apart from that, it is a common Allusion in North America for unusual-looking criminals often to be described as resembling the strip's grotesque villains, while the lead character's wrist communicator is a typical example used when the possibility of an actual communication device being developed along the lines of something from science fiction is raised. Dick Tracy on film and televison
At no charge, most of the old serials and films with Ralph Byrd are legally available to download here . TRIVIA
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