Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy Volume 13

I bought this book after reading "The Gould Rush, The Mad Allure Of Dick Tracy", an essay by Frank Young in the Comics Journal. Young's premise was that Chester Gould hit his peak as a storyteller in the fifties. After reading this volume, which presents the strip from March 27th 1950 to September 15th, 1951, I think Young hit it square on the head. Gould by this time the complete master of the art of the continuing narrative newspaper comic strip. I read an interview with Gould, in which he said that the average reading time if a daily comic strip was about 3 seconds. I think this is the reason for the stylized art, which quickly caught the readers eye and made the characters instantly recognizable. I think this, while a brilliant method of holding an audience, somewhat detracts from Gould's solid draftsmanship of cityscapes, weaponry and everyday objects. Gould's writing at this stage had progressed from the reflection of current events in the thirties and the beginnings of the grotesque villains, which became a staple of the strip, in the forties. By the fifties, Gould's imagination had reached the perfect balance of discipline and the bizarre. This volume abounds in freakish villains still grounded enough in reality, in both action and motivation to create a consistently compelling narrative. While some of the plot elements are a little on the comic book goofy side, the strip maintains a grim consistency in even the filler continuities. While I would dispute the claims made by some proclaiming Gould's "greatness" as a mystery writer or artist, I think that within the narrow parameters of the comic strip, there was no one better. Check it out, I think you will agree.

Leveraging my opinion as an (accomplished) artist, I too wish to express my extreme disappointment that the daily panels in these past two volumes have been cropped! While Gould certainly drew these with the awareness that they would be cropped in many newspapers, there is still incredible beauty and sophistication in how those "lower quarters" were rendered... they actually amplify the often stark and ominous, often minimal scenes in their entirety. This cropping is as much a disservice as the editing of films from their original formats to fit the old TV screens! Please IDW, please go back to your old format from volumes 7 through 10! And I implore you to republish the "cropped" volumes with the appropriate corrections. I am devoted to Gould's work and to your otherwise wonderful reprints. But I feel you have an obligation to do it right!

I cannot criticize IDW's efforts to preserve and bring us those wonderful vintage strips from the past, of which DICK TRACY is one of the Top Ten. That Gould was a consummate artist has already been seen. That he will reveal himself to be a consummate storyteller will be revealed in the upcoming Mr. Alpha" sequence, when he (Tracy) is shot in the head and tumbles out of a racing speedboat. I do have one slight question, one niggling criticism, though: IDW - why are you cropping the bottom fourth of each daily strip? I've followed this strip (as a wee tad) since 1949; I know it intimately. I'm ecstatic to see a quality reprint; but it just doesn't look right. So...answer, IDW?

I second John J. Pocsik's desire to see the Dick Tracy daily strips uncropped. In the middle forties editors began squeezing the size of the panels to make way for more advertizing. This required artists to compose panels with less subtlety in both art and dialogue. The ultimate result was a dumbing down of the comics that ended in the death by strangulation of the great narrative adventure strips of the thirties and forties. Gould and other artists, however, continued to design panels in the longer size for editors who chose to use them. The panels had to be composed to include essential story information in the cropped version, but readers who don't see the longer panels are deprived of details that enhance the composition's emotional power. When Blowtop seals Junior into an oil drum and sends it rolling down an incline toward the edge of a cliff, the cliff must be seen as the dizzying abyss Gould imagined. When Vitamin Flintheart is pursuing Blowtop through desolate woods and rocky terrain on a night so dark he at one point stumbles into an abandoned well, the bottoms of the panels show only an inky black silhouette of the hillside, but it fills the space below Vitamin's running figure with a sense of isolation and menace that the cropped version cannot match. Even the length of a figure's stride or the way he plants his feet can portray his mood and define his character--but not when he's cut off at the knees. The Blackthorne reprint of the Blowtop story (Dick Tracy Monthly, No. 18, September, 1987) showed the original art uncropped. It's baffling and disappointing that the editors of the IDW reprint, which is in other respects superbly produced, chose to truncate the full expressive range of Gould's genius. If those of us who cherish Gould's art let IDW know that we care, perhaps its editors, who only began using the cropped panels with Volume 12, can be prevailed upon to reconsider a decision that mars an otherwise splendid project.

Really good stuff. I still prefer the rustic charms of the 1930's and early 40's era Tracy, but this later stuff is great, too. Note: I found these books awkward to read, due to their width and weight, and it was easy to fold and tear the dust jacket while moving the book around. I now remove the dust jacket before I begin reading a volume, and set it aside in a safe place until I am finished. Without the dust jacket, the book is much easier to grip and the cover art stays in pristine condition.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I bought this second hand. It was in very good condition. Another addition of my 50's collection.

excellent book

Excelente título. Um dos melhores da coleção.