Happy 75th Birthday, Dick Tracy!



Today marks the 75th anniversary of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, the long-running, iconic comic strip featuring the plainclothes detective of the same name. The feature Dick Tracy has become well-known for a lot of things: a grotesque rogue's gallery so recognizeable and distinctive that Batman could appropriate the concept and people still think recognize it as being Dick Tracy's; the successful addition of soap opera tropes; violence so brutal and over the top that an Al Capp frying pan-subtle parody (Fearless Fosdick) worked on its own two feet; the successful introduction of advanced technology into the strip that not only predicted a future item or two but gave the feature a hook in iterations, like cartoons for kids, where relentless violence wouldn't really fly; and a bold, pleasing look that made strengths of some of comics' more rudimentary formal broad strokes, like variations in character design, the use of flashy, basic colors and a generally flat look to some of the art.

* Daily Cartoonist tracks today's tribute strips

* Infozine On Anniversary
* American Profile On Anniversary
* Michael Sangiacomo On Anniversary

* Official Web Site
* Wikipedia Entry
* Don Markstein's Toonopedia

* IDW's New Dick Tracy Collection Series

pictured: an example of Tracy's "shoot first, shoot more later" crimefighting philosophy
 
posted 1:29 am PST | Permalink
 

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