Dick Tracy
English
- Notes:
- Dick Tracy is an American comic strip featuring Dick Tracy (originally Plainclothes Tracy), a tough and intelligent police detective created by Chester Gould. It made its debut on Sunday, October 4, 1931 in the Detroit Mirror, and it was distributed by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. Gould wrote and drew the strip until 1977, and various artists and writers have continued it. Dick Tracy has also been the hero in a number of films, including Dick Tracy in which Warren Beatty played the lead in 1990.
Tracy uses forensic science, advanced gadgetry, and wits in an early example of the police procedural mystery story—although stories often end in gunfights just the same. Stories typically follow a criminal committing a crime followed by Tracy's relentless pursuit. As the story progressed, Tracy adopted an orphan under the name Dick Tracy Jr., or "Junior" for short, who appeared in investigations until becoming a police forensic artist in his father's precinct. He also cultivated a professional partner, ex-steelworker Pat Patton, who gradually became a detective of skill and courage. His love interest was Tress Trueheart.
The Mystery Writers of America honored Gould and his work with a Special Edgar Award in 1980. This was the first time MWA ever honored a comic strip.
In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative postage stamps and postcards.
Tracy made his first comic book appearance in 1936 as one of the features included in the first issue of Dell's Popular Comics. These were reprints from the newspaper strip, reconfigured to fit the pages of a comic book, as was the case with most Tracy comic book appearances. Tracy remained a regular feature in Popular Comics through the publication's 21st issue.
The first comic book to feature Tracy exclusively was the Dick Tracy Feature Book, published in May 1937 by David McKay. McKay's Feature Books were magazines that rotated several popular characters from comics strips through 1938. Three more of McKay's Feature Books starred Tracy in the following months.
In 1939, Dell started a comic magazine series called "Black and White Comics," essentially identical to McKay's "Feature Books". Six of the 15 issues featured Tracy. In 1941, Dell's "Black and White" series was replaced by the "Large Feature Books", the third issue of which featured Tracy. As with the McKay series, the Dell "Black and White" and "Large Feature" series were abridged reprints of the strip.
In 1938, Tracy became one of several regular newspaper strips featured in Dell's regular monthly Super Comics, remaining a regular part of that publication until 1948. In 1939, Tracy was the sole feature in the very first issue of Dell's Four-Color Comics. Tracy was featured in seven more Four-Color issues throughout the 1940s.
Tracy was frequently featured in comic books used as promotional items by various companies. In 1947, for example, Sig Feuchtwanger produced a comic book that was a giveaway prize in boxes of Quaker Puffed Wheat cereal, sponsor of the popular Dick Tracy radio series.
In January 1948, Dell began the first regular Dick Tracy comic book series, Dick Tracy Monthly. This series ultimately ran for 145 issues, the first 24 of which were published by Dell, after which it was picked up by Harvey Comics. Continuing the same numbering, Harvey published the series until 1961. As with most previous Tracy comic book incarnations, these were, with the exception of the last few Dell issues which featured original material, slightly abridged and reconfigured reprints of the newspaper strips. - Keywords
- crime; detective; police; police procedural
Genre: detective-mystery
Created in: 1931
Editing
Feature Logos
| Logo | Name | Year Began | Year Ended |
|---|---|---|---|
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Dick Tracy [Locher Tracy Head in Profile] | ? | ? |
Feature Relations
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