Comic Strip Review: Dick Tracy

Comic Strip Review: Dick Tracy by Joe Staton and Mike Curtis.

The Dick Tracy comic strip was started way back in 1931 by Chester Gould, who saw criminals constantly in the headlines of Chicago newspapers and imagined a brave and clever police officer fighting back against them.The thrilling stories and colorful villains made it a long-runner.

So long-running, in fact, that it’s still around today!  Recently, long-time strip artist/writer Dick Locher retired.  The new creative team are Mike Curtis, a former deputy sheriff, and Joe Staton, a well-known comic book artist.  In my opinion they’ve revitalized Dick Tracy.

Staton’s art is clear and evokes Gould’s style, and Martin’s writing has restored coherence to the plotlines.  They’re clearly well-versed in the strip’s continuity without being slavishly shackled to it.  Early on, the syndicate stuck the team with a mandatory time limit for storylines, so some of the stories ended abruptly or had inadequate development, but that restriction has eased now.

The most recently completed storyline brought back a villain from the 1930s named Broadway Bates (the strip has long since entered “comic book time”.)  Bates strongly resembles the later Batman character the Penguin, so the creative team ran with that.  After getting out of jail, Bates had spent “the last few years” in “another city” (clearly Gotham City) infested with costumed crimefighters.

Broadway and his girlfriend/partner Belle returned to Dick Tracy’s city only to find that costumed characters Cinnamon Knight and Black Piranha had suddenly appeared.  The strip followed the parallel plotlines of Broadway’s plan to kill the “costumes” to prevent them from taking root, CK and BP’s own journey from playacting to seriously considering crimefighting and Dick Tracy’s attempts to make sense of what was going on.

The story ended remarkably happily for a Dick Tracy plot, with no actual deaths.

Currently, the strip is featuring a guest appearance by George Takei as George Tawara, a character strongly based on Takei’s real life.  George and his husband Brad are called in to help Dick Tracy solve a cold case involving Camp Freedom, the internment camp Tawara was imprisoned in as a child.  (Again, this is based on George Takei’s real life.)  There are some touchy subject matter here, but the creative team is handling it well so far.

A running subplot in the new stories has been the apparent return of Moon Maid.  In the 1960s, Chester Gould took the strip from techno-thriller (Tracy has had the best law enforcement gadgets since 1946) into outright science fiction with the introduction of Moon People.  One of them, Mysta the Moon Maid, became a huge part of the strip, even marrying Junior Tracy and having a daughter named Honeymoon with him.

Moon Maid was killed off in the 1970s as part of excising the more fantastic elements of the strip, and her people cut off all communication with Earth.  But now, after all these years, someone who looks like Moon Maid and seemingly has her powers has popped up. Although most of the characters are convinced that Mysta is really dead, Honeymoon is investigating the apparent return of her mother.

A secret trip to the Moon has found the Moon People vanished, their homeland airless and in ruins.  So no answers were forthcoming from there.  But the creative team has promised that the mystery will be cleared up in a full plotline later this year.

While few newspapers still cover the Dick Tracy comic strip, it can be found online, and it is well worth searching out.